By Hasan Abu Nimah

Relations between European Muslims and their host countries need to be firmly placed on the agenda of European Arab and European Muslim debate.

Despite crises, serious sometimes, this matter has not yet been receiving the attention it urgently requires. The longer it is neglected the more difficult it will be, for both sides, to deal with it and with its likely future complications.

Figures vary, but some put the number of Muslims in Europe at 17 million. That excludes the 28 million Muslims in Russia and the 2 million Muslims in Ukraine. If Turkey were to join the EU, as envisaged, the European Muslims will top the 85 million mark, without Russia and the Ukraine.

Migration, movement of people, for varied and ever-changing reasons, taking with them their ideas and cultures across natural or, at a later stage, man-marked borders, has been occupying a huge part of historical records. The trend has been accelerating, with better means of communication and easy reach transforming our otherwise unknown world into a small accessible village.

Interaction amongst peoples and cultures has always motivated people’s adventurism as well as their persistent pursuit of learning, discovering, opportunities and better living conditions.

It was within that context that Europe attracted so many immigrants from its environs. Many of the newcomers who settled there happened to be Muslims, and many of them integrated well in a new and quite different culture. They learned the language, often at the expense of their own. They got accustomed to a life mainly different from what they left back home. But despite that, very broadly speaking, they were neither required to abandon their original character nor was their freedom to practise religious beliefs affected in any disapproving manner.

It is hard to maintain, however, that interaction amongst varying cultures had always been smooth and trouble free. Of course there were frictions and discord, but mostly manageable. Recent developments on the world scene, however, created a different climate altogether.

The linkage between Islam and terror, following the September 11 attacks on targets in the United States, and later in Madrid and London, heightened the tensions between Muslim communities and their host countries, in Europe in particular. Both the attack on a Madrid railway station, in March 2004, and the attack on London transport system, in July 2005, were linked to the US war on Iraq and the strong support rendered to it by Spain and the United Kingdom.

As Muslim extremists were believed to be responsible for those major terrorist attacks, as well as many other smaller acts of violence or attempted violence elsewhere in the world, the view that all Muslims are suspects and that they should be treated that way gathered strength. The trend was further fuelled by two factors. One was the hostile propaganda from Israel and its supporters in the United States who had been ruthlessly striving to make Islam a source of terror and instability, to distance from responsibility the real starting place for mounting threat to world peace, security and stability, which are the Israeli practices and accumulated injustices its permanent aggression in our region had caused with increasing US endorsement and support.

The other was the expressed Muslim sentiment worldwide in support of combating injustice and rejecting “Western” hostility towards Islam, which had turned indiscriminate and ruthlessly aggressive under the slogan of “war on terror”, now rightly and quietly dropped by the Obama administration.

This Muslim sentiment has been widely misconstrued as an Islamic endorsement of terror, a perception that was largely helped by the irrational use of unacceptable tactics such as suicide attacks on civilian targets by some organisations pretending to act in the name or under the banner of Islam.

The task of clarifying the picture remains not only unfulfilled, but not even undertaken, simply due to the deteriorating circumstances in the region. It is rather impossible to engage in any meaningful debate on clarifying the mess in relations between “Islam” and the “Western world” while terrorist acts continue to happen, such as the latest major attack in Mumbai, and while conflicts continue to rage in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Gaza and Lebanon. These political volcanoes, whether active or temporarily dormant, pose the constant threat of devastating eruption any time.

It has been distinctly difficult to separate European Muslims from what has been happening in the region. Their understandable predisposition to identify with the cause of mother nation, mother home or, most importantly, the faith placed them in a delicate position, with their hosts starting to view them as possible incubators of unrest, if not outright violence, and therefore dangerous elements in otherwise tranquil societies. Entrenchment on each side and the ensuing polarisation led to mutual erosion of confidence, normally a basic requirement for normal relations within any society with varied ethnic or religious components.

It is this lost confidence that needs to be reinstated. That is not easy under the circumstances, but not unattainable either.

The key words are integration, respect for the rule of law on the part of the Muslim immigrant communities, and adequate consideration for the Muslims’ religious and cultural commitments, on the part of their hosts.

In any democracy, no matter how secular, one should never underestimate the power of religion on the entire social setup, even when its invisible effect lacks legal basis. Accordingly, and although the Muslim newcomers should be required to abide by the supremacy of practised law, wherever they chose to settle, they would not be unreasonable in expecting special provisions in the law to accommodate their religious duties, beliefs and sentiments. This has neither been unusual nor exclusively demanded for Muslims; similar privileges have been granted to other religions recurrently, despite implied exceptions to the rules of law.

What helps is the adoption of mutually approved equilibriums. With respect to integration, the appropriate medium for the immigrant is to be able to adjust and feel at home in a new environment, but without the need to sever all links with ones indigenous culture, beliefs, traditions or past. And with respect to citizenry and the unqualified commitment to the rule of law, immigrant communities need not decline their religion or religious duties.

No country, in Europe in particular, has ever interfered in the freedom of worship and of the performance of religious belief of any community, as long as such practices are compatible with the law. Only when contradictions between the law and religious practice often appear do problems arise. This can also be dealt with successfully on the ground of flexibility in both the law and the interpretation of religious teachings.

Evidently, it may be far fetched to expect normal and smooth relations between Muslim communities in Europe and the countries that host them before circumstances back home improve substantially, which unfortunately will not happen any time soon. But that should not be a reason for leaving problems to grow nor should one submit to the notion, though valid, that little can done before the root causes of the discord - the Arab-Israeli conflict mainly - are successfully resolved.

In fact a lot can be done and should be done without delay.