Social Science Research Council

The September 11th attack on the World Trade Center by Islamic militants has focused uneasy attention on Islam and Arabic immigrants in the United States and raised questions about the relationship between immigrants and homeland security. This spotlight has compelled Muslims to clarify- publicly and privately- “who” they are and the extent to which they share and/or reject the terrorists’ identity and concerns.

Recognizing September 11th not only as a pivotal event for policy purposes but also a turning point for Muslims in the United States and Europe, our approach in this project is to seek a broader understanding of the Muslim population as a whole within the United States and Europe. Further, our search for wider empirical and analytical contexts leads us to seek insight from the broader study of religion and immigration in both the United States and Europe.

Drawing upon comparison between European and American experiences with Islam and Muslim immigrants has two basic rationales. First, there are similarities and differences with regard to the growing salience of Islam in both regions due to post- World War II immigration as well as the presence of meaningful minority of indigenous Muslim populations. Second, scholarship on issues of religion and migration have become increasingly internationalized, with Europeans and Americans beginning to share intellectual concepts and explanatory frameworks. European research on the Islamic presence, with its longer history and somewhat different scholarly development, can help to guide our efforts here.

Within both the United States and Europe, three broad approaches to the study of Islamic immigrants are the most prevalent. These approaches are loosely allied with disciplinary traditions.

- Theologians and historians of religion focus on Islam as such and examine how the religious tradition itself (as opposed to its practitioners) migrates and adapts. While this approach is necessarily concerned with the relationship between religious norms and practices, it tends to dissembed Islam from its practitioners and social contexts.

- Among some anthropologists and sociologists, the concern is with Muslims themselves and how their religious identity and behavior affects and is affected by their experience in countries of immigration. This approach examines group relations and identity formation and asks how the social context affects the practices of Islam.

- The predominant approach among political scientists and many sociologists is to take immigration as the point of reference, treating Muslims and Islam as variables in this broader field of study.

Each of these three approaches in combination is crucial to the study of Islamic immigrants in the United States and Europe. With an eye to each of these lenses, the central questions of the project becomes how do Muslims and Euro-American societies place demands upon and accommodate one another, and to what extent is Islam a factor in determining the identities, group formation and political/economic inclusion or exclusion of Muslims within American and European societies?

Three themes emerge as central to the questions posed above:

The articulation of religion and culture in the migratory experience Under this theme, we are interested in exploring the empirical implications of the difference between cultural/ethnic and religious identities, especially as it relates to political participation and social status. Here, as elsewhere, our primary interest is in the socio-political ramifications of Islamic identity and doctrine for immigrants. However, the investigation must be informed by the expertise of specialists in religion.

How are Muslim identities formed and group relations constructed? The focus here is on Muslims and their religious practices and identities in countries of immigration. Identities are multiple, but we are particularly concerned with how religious identity and behavior affects and is in turn affected by the experience of immigration. Research on this topic is rigorously comparative in order to explore how religious practices in countries of emigration affects the transition to receiving countries.

Contexts, claims and recognition In examining the socio-political contexts of Muslim migrants, we use the term “accommodation” rather than the cognate concepts more commonly employed in migration studies, such as “integration”, “assimilation”, or “incorporation” because the latter notions all imply that immigration poses challenges of adaptation only for migrants. We are interested, however, in exploring the ways in which Muslim immigrants and receiving societies mutually adapt to one another. The earlier themes are crucial to the exploration of this theme because interactions between specific forms of Islam as practiced by particular immigrant groups, on the one hand, and varying local/institutional/national contexts, on the other, are the foundation of accommodation. These interactions include not only the “religious cultures” of both host societies and immigrants, but also the institutionalized religious settlements (i.e. different versions of church/state separation and secularism) that immigrants must negotiate in receiving societies.

The project on Islam and Muslims in the United States and Europe has been generously supported by the Russell Sage Foundation as part of its Response to 9/11.