ABSTRACT
Social scientists agree that, by the end of the twentieth century, Islam had become a
permanent feature of European society and that the transnational nature of the
Muslim population in Europe plays a role in the process of European integration
(Allievi, 2003; Cesari, 2003; Nielsen, 1999; Roy, 2004). It has also been argued that
‘much of our relationship with Islam and our capacities to understand it, both within
and outside Europe, comes into play in the weave of . . . two dynamics’: an ‘internal’
or ‘national’ one, and an ‘external’ or ‘international’ one (Allievi, 2003: 451). Yet
(and perhaps also owing to the challenges posed by this dual dimension of Islam), at
the popular level, Islam and Muslims are often still perceived, both in cultural and in
political terms, as a threat to European identity and cohesiveness, as well as to the
integration process of the EU. The crisis of Europe and the West facing Islam
became more acute in the aftermath of 9/11 (and, later, with the bombings in Madrid
in 2004 and in London in 2005), when the analogy ‘Muslim-terrorist’ was hastily
established by many. While the official US response to the terrorist attacks was
primarily military and based on a Manichean discourse of absolute good versus
absolute evil, the EU adopted an approach founded on the notion of dialogue
between cultures and societies.
