The political mobilisation of Muslims in the European Union: The cases of Great Britain and France

Abstract

This essay has a twofold objective: to describe the evolution of Muslims’ political awareness in the United Kingdom and in France, and the way such awareness has materialised in political participation and action’; and to present the different types of Muslim political mobilisation. We argue that neither the Islamic State nor the Jihadist terrorism poses an existential threat to the countries of the European Union, but rather the likely sectarian political mobilization of its increasingly larger Muslim population. The essay underlines the need to understand the different reasons behind the political mobilisation of Muslim communities in the European Union’s countries and what lies at its genesis. Reducing the understanding of what is Islam in Europe to vacuous references to “Islamists” and “Jihad” is reductive, factually incorrect, and dangerous. It underlies the need to debate and find realist solutions to incorporate Muslims into the political system of liberal democracies and supports the idea that the future of the EU may depend on how its member states manage to assimilate Muslim communities and integrate them into the social and political mainstream.