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The Muslim Question in Europe: Political Controversies and Public Philosophies
An estimated twenty million Muslims now reside in Europe, mostly as a result of large-scale postwar immigration. In The Muslim Question in Europe, Peter O’Brien challenges the popular notion that the hostilities concerning immigration—which continues to provoke debates about citizenship, headscarves, secularism, and terrorism—are a clash between “Islam and the West.” Rather, he explains, the vehement controversies surrounding European Muslims are better understood as persistent, unresolved intra-European tensions. O’Brien contends that the best way to understand the politics of state accommodation of European Muslims is through the lens of three competing political ideologies: liberalism, nationalism, and postmodernism. These three broadly understood philosophical traditions represent the most influential normative forces in the politics of immigration in Europe today. He concludes that Muslim Europeans do not represent a monolithic anti-Western bloc within Europe. Although they vehemently disagree among themselves, it is along the same basic liberal, nationalist, and postmodern contours as non-Muslim Europeans.
- GenresPolitics
298 pages, Paperback
First published February 29, 2016
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January 17, 2017
The author has a hard time following the goals set by himself. P. 65 he stars talking about citizenship and how immigrants should or should not have it. Than he plops isolated cases explainable only in the precise historical context as signs of opening:
"Many European governments needed little or no nudging on behalf of cosmopolitanism. Well before the EU Race Directive of 2000, for instance, Sweden (1986), Belgium (1993), the Netherlands (1994), and Denmark (1994) each instituted anti-discrimination laws and/or commissions. Similarly, well before the Tampere Council of 1999, many European states made citizenship automatic or easy for nonnatives. As early as 1947, France conferred full French citizenship on Arab men from Algeria, a status those born before independence in 1962 retained thereaft er. In the British Nationality Act of 1948, the United Kingdom guaranteed fully equal rights of citizenship to all members of the Commonwealth."
France in particular gave the citizenship to only a handful of muslim individuals in 1947.
"Many European governments needed little or no nudging on behalf of cosmopolitanism. Well before the EU Race Directive of 2000, for instance, Sweden (1986), Belgium (1993), the Netherlands (1994), and Denmark (1994) each instituted anti-discrimination laws and/or commissions. Similarly, well before the Tampere Council of 1999, many European states made citizenship automatic or easy for nonnatives. As early as 1947, France conferred full French citizenship on Arab men from Algeria, a status those born before independence in 1962 retained thereaft er. In the British Nationality Act of 1948, the United Kingdom guaranteed fully equal rights of citizenship to all members of the Commonwealth."
France in particular gave the citizenship to only a handful of muslim individuals in 1947.
Displaying 1 of 1 review