ABSTRACT
Over the past few decades the Muslim population and the visibility of Islam in public life have grown in Australia, Germany and the UK, as in many other countries in the West. This presence of Muslim communities and reification of Islamic faith and Muslim cultures are often regarded as fairly recent trends in the ethnic and religious diversification of Western societies. While it is true that the vast majority of Muslims (like most other religious or ethnic minorities) in these three countries have a personal or family history of immigration dating back no more than 50 years, Islam is by no means a new religion that has only recently entered the social stage in the West.
