After the 9/11 attacks in the US, the 3/11 explosions in Madrid, and the 7/7 bombings in London, Muslims in the US and Europe faced increasing social and political discrimination as well as pressure to fully “integrate” into Western societies. Amidst the hysteria, however, emerged significant, yet largely unanswered, research questions. How are Muslims currently perceived in Western societies? Do Muslims themselves feel that they are unable or unwilling to integrate into liberal democracies? If this is not the case, what is reinforcing these perceptions and discourses? Jocelyne Cesari systematically tackles each of these questions in this volume.

Cesari points out that Western societies have frequently depicted Muslims as either unable or unwilling to integrate, and that Islamic symbols such as “headscarves, mosques, and minarets” are viewed as “rejection[s] of Western democratic values” or as a “direct threat to the West” (p. xiii). Western perceptions, Cesari suggests, place Islam and Muslims as the “internal enemy” within national boundaries due to the assumptions of Islam's hostility towards Western values.

Based on five years of extensive fieldwork in five countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and The Netherlands), this book is a product of a wealth of information gathered from focus groups. This work tries to provide a comprehensive explanation as to how “symbolic national boundaries,” meant to place Islam and Muslims “outside of these boundaries,” are created and reinforced in these Western contexts.

In the introduction, Cesari cautions that any conclusions drawn from surveys that indicate that Western publics are uncomfortable with Islam and Muslims are potentially suspect given how many of their questions are extremely nuanced and easily manipulated. For example, there are significant differences in the levels of hostility expressed depending on if respondents are asked questions that associate Islam with violence or terrorism, as opposed to relating the issue of Muslim integration in broad social arenas like education and immigration (p. 14). Public opinion also appears to support the perception that Islam and Muslims belong in the “internal enemy” category as well as the “external enemy” category, which views Muslims as the main source of international terrorism, but again, the author points out the difficulty of constructing objective poll instruments. Unfortunately, the majority of the poll data is incorporated in the text in a way that makes it difficult to follow. Due to the constant shifts from one country to another, the reading experience is a bit disjointed, particularly if one is looking for data on a specific country.

Part 1 of the book presents the reader with excerpts from several discussions held with different Muslim focus groups from London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Boston (p. 21). The groups, organized by Cesari in conjunction with the Islam in the West Program at Harvard University, discussed topics regarding religiosity and political involvement, as well as whether group members felt there had been an increase in anti-Muslim sentiments following 9/11, in order to gain insight into Muslims' actual lived experiences. External poll data is incorporated into these discussions to show trends, but Cesari clearly explains the difficulties in ascertaining baseline levels of religiosity through polls alone. Simply calculating the frequency of mosque attendance is not adequate. The focus groups’ excerpts highlight this, and show that there are wide variations among self-identifying Muslims as to the definition of a “good” Muslim, the importance of Islamic practices, feelings toward interreligious marriages, experiences of anti-Muslim discrimination, and attitudes toward “civic participation and politics” (p. 59). Sometimes there are too many topics covered in the short space provided for the focus group excerpts in the book, which leads to abrupt shifts, but overall the collective framework succeeds in demonstrating the striking varieties of “Islam” within Western societies.

From insights gained from the focus groups, the Berlin survey (2010) was created by Cesari and her team that serves as a “new questionnaire to better understand the interaction between Islam and political participation” (p. 23). Some of the results are included among the analysis of the focus group discussions, but the majority of the results from this survey are located in section 4 of the appendix. The organization of this section of the appendix is a bit hard to follow, and it would have benefited the reader if some graphs of the data collected had been included in the text. Many correlations between religious practices, beliefs, and civic engagement are presented, but the strength of those correlations is not clearly defined. Moreover, while this survey offers an interesting addition to the book by providing quantitative data complementing the qualitative insights from the focus group conversation, due to the small sample size (82 males + 75 females, n = 157), it would be hasty to draw any strong conclusions from the this test location, especially since Berlin might not be the most representative Western city to address most of the concerns of all Muslims in Western societies. Germany does not provide citizenship to children of immigrants born there. This was in contrast to all other cities where focus groups were conducted, where a person could become a citizen of the country, without having to be born to nationals and citizenship holders of that country. It would be more worthwhile to see this survey repeated elsewhere, and maybe with a slightly larger sample size to reach more concrete conclusions.

After providing the results of the focus groups and survey data that offer insight into real Muslims lives, in Part 2 of the book, Cesari argues that Western governments have used the “securitization” of Islam as a tool to reinforce the “externalization of Islam” (pp. 81–83). In Europe, a paradox exists: while political actors “seek to facilitate the socioeconomic integration of Muslims, antiterrorism and security concerns fuel a desire to compromise liberties and restrict Islam from the public space” (p. 83). Politicians have been able to speak in terms of security, and present Islam as a menace outside of the domain of normal political structures (p. 83). They have done this to justify “political measures indirectly related to terrorism, such as immigration policies, and administrative measures limiting Islamic practices” (p. 83). The author points out that these discourses are not merely the creation of politicians; academics have added to the rising tide of anti-Islamic discourse, thus contributing to its legitimation (p. 84). One outcome of this has been an increase in policies aimed to restrict immigration (in Europe), and place restrictions on Islamic practices, such as building mosques and minarets, limiting access to Islamic education, bans on the hijab and niqāb, and anti-shariʿa laws in the United States (pp. 94–103).

The author also explains how popular perceptions of Islam as being against secularization have contributed to its externalization within public discourse. In Europe there has been a wave of bans on the niqāb, a minaret ban in Switzerland, and the Danish cartoon incident. All of these factors have raised concerns that “Islamic practices from dress code to minaret are seen as a major challenge to the private/public dichotomy” (p. 107). External displays of religious identity, such as wearing a veil, are viewed as being at odds with secularism and modernity, because they violate the principle that within a secular society, religion should be confined to the private sphere. These views have further reinforced the “Islam versus the West” discourse.

However, shifts in Islamic discourse have also contributed to these narratives, as Cesari rightly notes in her balanced account. Due to financial support from the Saudi state, Salafi interpretations of Islamic practice dominate other forms of Islamic guidance on how people should live their lives in new Muslim communities. Unfortunately, “the widespread diffusion of Salafi teachings means that even non-Salafi Muslims evaluate their Islamic practice by Wahhabite standards” (p. 132). This is also ironic, since the Salafi worldview mirrors Western xenophobia by adopting a binary mentality and placing Islam at odds with Western values. The “Fatwas from Salafi Websites” in Appendix 12 offers a range of these traditionally nonbinding legal opinions on a variety of topics. Though useful, this section would have benefited from some contextual discussion and analysis (pp. 255–303), especially considering this section includes Shiʿi interpretations of certain questions, and the processes in which traditionally Shiʿi interpretations take place differ greatly from the Sunni process of interpretation.

In sum, this book contains a wealth of information, including public survey results from Gallup, Pew, and other organizations, regarding European and American attitudes toward Muslims. This information will serve as a valuable resource for seasoned scholars studying Muslims in the West. However, it may not be appropriate for beginning students, as general knowledge about the topics discussed is required to understand the context of the material. The author seems to expect the audience to be familiar with the terms used, as they are not clearly and fully defined. For example, she does not discuss the distinctions between the hijab and niqāb, or the jurisprudential meanings of the fatwa. Sometimes, the presentation of data takes precedence over readability, resulting in confusing or obtuse organization.

The challenge with attempts to provide one theoretical explanation that encompasses different social contexts is quite clear: it is hard to discern one reason to the rationale of why Islam is feared in different Western contexts, since Western countries have policies and social contexts that vary greatly. Despite these challenges, this book brings us closer to understanding the conditions under which Muslims live in a number of Western societies, which makes this contribution a worthy addition to the growing scholarship on Muslim communities in Western societies.