ABSTRACT
The arrival of several million Muslims in Western Europe during the past twenty-five years has introduced into the region, in so far as the history of religion at least is concerned, something radically new. Not so long ago in many Western European countries Islam was little more than an exotic appendage to the everyday religious, cultural, political and social way of life of the wider society in Western Europe. For many, learning about Islam was above all else a matter of erudition, something that could be carried on quite adequately from a distance, for it was a religion that existed and was practised by people ‘out there’, beyond the boundaries of Western Europe, so to speak. Now, however, it is becoming increasingly evident that it has to be understood from within, for it is central to an understanding of the religious, cultural and social life of over 2 per cent of the population of Western Europe, and as such has important implications of a legal, educational, political, ideological and religious kind for the rest of Western European society. Already, as we shall see, Islam is performing a similar role in determining the future of the various Muslim ethnic minorities in Western Europe to that played by religion among the various Christian and Jewish immigrants to the United States in the last century. In what follows we consider the numerical growth of Islam in Western Europe, the profound changes in the social composition of the Muslim community there, and in addition provide a brief survey of the fortunes of Islam in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union during the past twenty-five years, focusing on this religion’s persistence in these parts, despite the combined onslaught of Slav nationalism, and Marxism-Leninism which has sought to eradicate all traces of it. There will be only passing reference to Islam in Turkey since that is considered elsewhere in this volume (see pp. 390–407).
