Christian-Muslim Relations in Western Europe

Abstract

The statistical and other information which has been referred to regularly in previous chapters say little about the degree to which the people concerned are Muslim in any active or self-conscious sense. All local and research evidence suggests that by such more stringent definitions possibly about one-third, and maximum one-half, of the ‘Muslims’ in Europe are Muslims by the kind of criteria which are usually applied when assessing numbers of, say, Methodists in Britain, Protestants in France, or Catholics in Sweden. The total figures suggested earlier, and their equivalent within the individual states of western Europe, still retain some significance, however. They represent communities for whom Islam is a ‘default’ position when under pressure and when challenged in circumstances where loyalties and solidarity are demanded. But the fact remains that, by any measure, a significant proportion of the Muslim communities in western Europe are, or have become, active Muslims in one way or another. Because of this religious dimension, it was only in the churches of Europe that one saw a recognition of the religious dimension of the new settlement during its early phases. It was also in church circles that recognition of Muslim dimensions to various episodes during later stages was most commonly to be found.