Europe and its Muslim “strangers” : combating the challenges faced within the socio-cultural integration process
Europe and its Muslim “strangers” : combating the challenges faced within the socio-cultural integration process
Date
2020
Authors
Vazaiou, Maria-Athina
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Abstract
The relationship between Europe and Islam has always been a subject of cultural
controversies. The increasing Muslim migration flows in Europe during the last decades,
together with the recent sharp manifold crises and dramatic events that took place around the
globe, have exposed a great uneasiness with regards to the presence, accommodation and
socio-cultural integration of Muslims within European societies, leading to divergences over
cultural and religious matters, and thus phenomena of panics and of deep communal
segregation among populations. As a consequence, there has been an explicit renouncement
of multicultural policies and a subsequent shift into the concept of civic integration as a
model of accommodation at a European level, progressively understood in a strict and more
assimilative sense. This prevalent shift, however, brings to the forefront serious concerns over
the management of cultural and religious diversity, as it seems to have a negative and
disproportionate impact on the lives and consciousness of Muslims in their European
societies of settlement. Meanwhile, and in order to provide alternative solutions, the Council
of Europe has developed the theory and practice of interculturalism as a more coherent
approach to migrant integration. Focusing on the European context and especially in the
countries of Belgium and Greece, this thesis aims to reflect on the current challenges faced by
Muslims within their European socio-cultural integration process, suggesting, at the same
time, that a combination of critical multicultural policies and of intercultural dialogue could
positively affect the smooth inclusion of Muslim communities in Europe.
Keywords: European values; Islam; culture; religion; moral panic; Muslims; migration;
integration; civic integration; assimilation; multiculturalism; interculturalism; human rights;
Description
Second semester University: Université Libre de Bruxelles
Keywords
Europe,
Islam,
social integration,
muslims,
migrations,
culture,
religion,
intercultural relations,
Belgium,
Greece