Paper short abstract:

Muslim claims upon European states are not exceptional or unreasonable but can be understood in terms of the development of racial equality and multiculturalism. Responding to Muslim demands by reviving a discourse of secularism makes democratic integration more difficult.

Paper long abstract:

There is a widespread perception that Muslims are making politically exceptional, culturally unreasonable or theologically alien demands upon European states. My contention is that the logic of Muslim claims-making is European and contemporary. The case of Britain is illustrative. The relation between Muslims and the wider British society and British state has to be seen in terms of a development and rising agendas of racial equality and multiculturalism. Muslims, indeed, have become central to these agendas even while they have contested important aspects of it - especially, the primacy of racial identities, narrow definitions of racism and equality and the secular bias of the discourse and policies of multiculturalism. While there are now emergent Muslim discourses of equality, of difference, and of, to use the title of the newsletter of the Muslim Council of Britain, 'the common good', they have to be understood as appropriations and modulations of contemporary discourses and initiatives whose provenance lie in anti-racism and feminism. While one result of this is to throw advocates of multiculturalism into theoretical and practical disarray, another is to stimulate accusations of cultural separatism and revive a discourse of 'integration'. While we should not ignore the critics of Muslim activism, we need to recognise that at least some of the latter is a politics of 'catching-up' with racial equality and feminism. In this way, religion in Britain is assuming a renewed political importance, as there is a growing understanding that the incorporation of Muslims has become the most important challenge of egalitarian multiculturalism. One consequence is that, after a long period of hegemony, political secularism can no longer be taken for granted but is having to answer its critics. This debate, however, has a tendency to become confrontational. For while Muslim demands can, with some adjustments, be accommodated within existing institutional structures and policies, as various Christian denominations and the Jews have been, they nevertheless are being opposed by a more radical, ideological discourse of secularism. The latter, consciously or unconsciously, makes accommodation more difficult and so should be resisted for the sake of democratic integration.