Setting the Terms of the Investigation

One of the most topical issues in Europe today concerns the question of whether Islam can be integrated into Europe or not, but is there really a possible answer to this question? According to Talal Asad’s immensely influential Formations of the Secular, ‘the problem of understanding Islam in Europe is primarily, so I claim, a matter of understanding how “Europe” is conceptualized by Europeans’ (Asad Reference Asad2003, 159). In this article it is claimed that it is impossible to understand the real and imagined problems addressed in the ‘integration of Islam in Europe’ debate with the categories ‘Islam’ and ‘Europe’.

In most countries in Europe, the present-day debate about the integration of Islam is driven by populist-nationalist movements. However, it is having more and more of an impact and is finding space in established politics and discourses (Hafez Reference Hafez2018). Arguments for the impossibility of integrating Islam in Europe comprise everything from factually grounded concerns about unemployment and criminality among immigrant groups with backgrounds in Muslim majority countries to populist anxieties about a hidden Muslim plan to take over Europe and set up a sharia-based Caliphate (Hafez Reference Hafez2014). This is also reflected in academia, where ‘Islam in Europe’ has gained increased attention during the last 25 to 30 years. As Rodgers Brubaker notes with respect to the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies:

Building on Brubaker and others, this article expands on an argument that politically funded research too often seems to accept, and thereby normalize, the binary categories of ‘Islam’ and ‘Europe’ instead of investigating if these make up a relevant frame for academic analysis or explaining why they cannot do so (Amir-Moazami Reference Amir-Moazami2018; Asad Reference Asad1993; Brubaker Reference Brubaker2012; Dussel Reference Dussel2000; Spielhaus Reference Spielhaus2011).

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Europe is ‘the name of the continent consisting of the western projection of the Eurasian land mass lying north of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, north-west of the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, and west of the Ural Mountains’, whereas Islam is ‘the religious system established through the prophet Muhammad; the Muslim religion; the body of Muslims, the Muslim world’. One definition covers an exclusively geographical category, the other a religious, cultural and geographical one. If Europe was a mere geographical entity, it would be hard to understand how it could be threatened by the religion of ‘Islam’. There are also hundreds of years of overlaid and more or less articulated cultural borders drawn around Europe. Like Islam, Europe is a highly charged ideological and cultural concept. Both concepts could best be described as essentially contested, meaning that they have no meaning outside of the ideologically charged efforts to define them (Connolly Reference Connolly1974).

To simply accept that academic work is inevitably intertwined in ideology would be simplistic and defeatist. We must explore other paths. In doing so, we can build on Pierre Bourdieu’s discussion of the negative influences of journalism on social science research. Bourdieu argued that autonomy is a prerequisite for scientific progress. A research field must not let journalism and its contestations modify the internal power relationships and the field’s focus on explaining societal phenomena. Journalism is a heteronomous field dependent on public demand and attention. The output of a research field that accepts journalistic conceptualizations and questions will not manage to uphold its internal standards of expertise. Like journalism, such research will be circumscribed by public opinion (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1998 [1996]). In this article, integration of Islam in Europe-research is treated as an example of a heteronomous field, influenced by public demands and understandings of both ‘Islam’ and ‘Europe’ and their cultural borders.

On Meaningful Terminology

Empirical study of the possible integration of Islam in Europe is confined within extra-scientific borders. Results gained through such study reinforce the unarticulated understanding that the categories ‘Europe’ and ‘Islam’ have explanatory value. This article argues that a critical examination of the categories used to analyse the phenomena concerned is more urgent than the collection of further empirical data, configured around the concepts ‘Islam’ and ‘Europe’, that risks normalizing asking if Islam can be integrated into Europe. The point is not that Islam can or cannot be integrated in Europe, it is rather that the categories that the question rests upon are too vague to be operationalized in any verifiable or testable way.

The question itself is meaningless, at least in the language of the logical positivists. A question that cannot be proved or disproved is the result of a misuse of language. Any question that cannot be empirically tested is meaningless for research. Asking if it is possible to integrate Islam in Europe can therefore be described as meaningless. Any possible answer does not depend on matters of fact but on an arbitrary choice of linguistic framework (Carnap Reference Carnap1936). The public, journalistic framework that the question is embedded within is too ambiguous to help us resolve the problem. If there is no coherent phenomenon behind the term Islam and no meaningful way to define what is meant by Europe, we cannot decide what empirical evidence could prove or disprove the question (Grinell Reference Grinell2016, Reference Grinell, Andrén, Lindkvist, Söhrman and Vajta2017). The question also presupposes that ‘Islam’ and ‘Europe’ are separable categories, taking as its starting point something that ought to be tested in the investigation. But as Ian Almond has argued, trying to empirically disprove the validity of the concepts by showing transgressions, commonalities and interdependencies might be caught up in:

The ‘European game’ is also institutionalized in other ways than just in the nominal Europe. ‘Islam in Europe’ is also played out through project calls, research funding and other institutional arenas (Amir-Moazami Reference Amir-Moazami2018). It is highly problematic when research uncritically follows public calls to investigate whether Islam is compatible with European cultural values or not. Every attempt to answer such questions lends strength to the idea that ‘Islam’ constitutes a problem, and also supports a reification of politically informed and funded supposedly foundational European values (Grinell Reference Grinell2016, Niklasson Reference Niklasson2017).

The categorical frame leads to investigations of whether different ideas, habits, rituals, identifications and values expressed or interpreted as in some way Islamic live up to vague and unarticulated European cultural standards or not. How could we instead set up investigations to test if the concerns about Islam in Europe have anything to do with Muslim lives, Islamic traditions and values (if we could find ways to delimit such categories in an empirically verifiable way)? The real-life discrimination and hate crimes emanating from the inflated attention on Islam in Europe must not lead us to start from the premise that there is an actual problem with Islam in Europe (Kaya Reference Kaya and Cesari2015, Larsson and Spielhaus Reference Larsson and Spielhaus2013). We must keep open the possibility that the calls for integration might have more to do with the state and future of European nation states, European national identities, and the crisis of multicultural ideologies (Amir-Moazami Reference Amir-Moazami2018).

One initial step is to wring the ambiguous language loose from public debate that implies that diverse and different people, histories, countries and political developments are driven by the same force – Islam. World historian Marshall Hodgson distinguishes between ‘Islamic’ as a term for religious phenomena, and ‘Muslim’ for cultural traits common among people of some strand of Islamic faith or religious practice. To talk about areas that are, or have been under the influence from Islamic religion, he used the term ‘Islamdom’, analogous with ‘Christendom’, terms that merely denote that the society in question is a carrier of a culture and civilization. In his effort to refine the terminology of Orientalism and Islamic Studies, Hodgson defined his subject as being about ‘the society of Islamdom and its Islamicate cultural traditions’. ‘Islamicate’ denotes cultures that have been shaped in Islamdom. ‘Islamic’ in turn refers to religious aspects of these cultural traditions (Hodgson Reference Hodgson1974, 31–58). The attempt to introduce this more precise and autonomous terminology has not found widespread acceptance. In the Index Islamicus database, a search for 'Islamicate’ gives only 137 hits, many of them referring to articles in the peer-reviewed journal: Intellectual History of the Islamicate World, which aims to provide ‘a forum for research that systematically crosses the boundaries between three major disciplines of academia and research, viz. Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies and the study of (Eastern) Christianity’. A search for 'Islamdom’ gives a mere four hits, while ‘Islamic’ returns 14,623 articles. The latter term has been described as ‘convenient if incorrect’ (Blair and Bloom Reference Blair and Bloom2003, 153). In the context of this article, the major problem with it is that it has a more religious connotation that rubs off on all things discussed as Islamic.

More recently, Cemil Aydin has charted the rise of the idea of the Muslim world and the concurrent construction of ‘Islam’. Prior to the twentieth century, Muslim intellectuals rarely used the term ‘Islam’. Their categories were more precise and specific. The overarching category of ‘Islam’ came in use as a response to European anti-Muslim writings. There had always been an idea of a Muslim community (ummah), but that was a religious belonging and had little to do with geopolitical issues. Until 1878, the British Empire, then home to half of the world’s Muslims, and the Ottoman Empire, home to the spiritual leader of Sunni Muslims (the Caliph), were allies. After the break with Great Britain, anti-colonial Muslim intellectuals started seeing Istanbul as a hub for pan-Islamic resistance against the European Empires. Inspired by Western Orientalists, these writers formulated novel tropes about an Islamic civilization; of Islam as a universal religion; of an antagonistic relationship between Islam and a colonial West; an eternal conflict between the Muslim world and the Christian West; and of a Muslim majority-territory as a Muslim world (Aydin Reference Aydin2017, 65–79). Still, as part of their colonial rule, the Christian Empires of Great Britain, Russia and the Netherlands were some of the largest sponsors of Muslim pilgrimage, and also in other ways thoroughly intertwined in intra-Muslim life and debate (Kane Reference Kane2015; Slight Reference Slight2015).

The Islam versus Europe dichotomy is a political construction inscribed with colonial and anti-colonial interests, established long before the current focus on integration of Islam in Europe. At the same time, the imperial power relations had a range of other ways of defining belonging, identity and social interests.

The call for a more nuanced and autonomous terminology should not be read as a search for a set of rigidly defined concepts. Instead, I further Edward Said’s use of ‘a critical and geographical rather than an encyclopaedic or totalizingly nominative or systematic terminology’ (Said Reference Said2000, 467). Examples such as Hodgson’s, presented above, cannot be read as universal solutions. Every investigation must critically examine the prevalent terms and develop them, or find new words that help the reader see the richness of the empirical field. Said recommends the use of terms that ‘slide over rather than fix on what they talk about; they illuminate and make possible elaborations and connections, rather than holding down, reifying, fetishizing’ (Said Reference Said2000, 467).

On Suitable Criterion of Demarcation

Instead of losing ourselves in a sea of empirical data on ‘Europe’, we need to examine the theoretical and methodological starting points of the investigations. Karl Popper argued that a valid scientific result must not only be a collection of positive examples. A sound investigation must start by independently defining its question, a material, and what Popper calls a ‘suitable criterion of demarcation’ (Popper Reference Popper1959 [1935], 34). Even if these strict criteria for scientific work have been shown to be difficult to realize, the core of his argument is foundational for academic work. From this follows that arguments for European exceptionalism, based on a study of only ‘European’ materials, are un-falsifiable, as no comparison with other materials are made (Popper, Reference Popper1959 [1935]). In historical studies, methodological nationalism has been heavily criticized, a critique that could also be applied to the methodological Europeanism, or Eurocentricity, of handbooks in European studies (Beck and Sznaider Reference Beck and Sznaider2006). An investigation of patterns of integration into systems of exchange at some specific European location is bound to be both more local and more global than ‘Europe’. The modern world is a global place that needs to be studied through ‘the map of interactions, the actual and often productive traffic occurring on a day-by-day, and even minute-by-minute basis among states, societies, groups, identities’ (Said Reference Said1994, 20).

A Popperian scientific method to avoid self-gratulatory cherry-picking of examples is to attempt to falsify the assumption that ‘Islam’ has any explanatory part in the social problems of ‘Europe’. According to Popper, we do not need to eliminate our extra-scientific interests to become objective. This is a misreading of his theory of science that he explicitly pointed out. ‘Objectivity rests solely upon pertinent mutual criticism’, he argued and he urged the scientist to make sure to differentiate between the categories of relevance, interest, significance, explanatory power, precision, simplicity and truth. Like Bourdieu after him, Popper argued that these categories belong to different value spheres. Being passionate about one’s research is a good thing, if we remember that our scientific task is to critically examine if what seems relevant and serves our interests is actually true (Popper Reference Popper1976 [1969]). Theodor Adorno criticized Popper for neglecting that a distinction between relevance and truth depends on whether the scientist can stand outside of society. It takes more than a logical examination of propositions to escape the ideological frames of our societal position (Adorno Reference Adorno1976 [1969]). This is a genuine dilemma. As Erwin Goffman stated, ‘methodological self-consciousness that is full, immediate, and persistent sets aside all study and analysis except of the reflexive problem itself, thereby displacing fields of inquiry instead of contributing to them’ (Goffman Reference Goffman1974, 12). We must therefore try to find a middle ground that is not caught in mere critique of the inescapable ideological frames of any empirical investigation.

The adaptation of any concept in new localities and circumstances will always meet pre-existing concepts, categories, institutions and practices and give rise to new configurations (Chakrabarty Reference Chakrabarty2000; Taylor Reference Taylor2004). How then, if ever, can we find ways to talk about shared concerns without denying individual, class, gender, language and generational differences in experiences of what we share in different ways, without being caught in dichotomous categories?

Paul Ricoeur distinguished the integrative function of ideology from ideology in a classical Marxist definition of false consciousness, and from ideology as a legitimation for a societal order. Inspired by Adorno, Ricoeur holds that the most fundamental form of ideology is the integrative form. However, not all cultural integration is ideological; according to Ricoeur, symbolic orders cannot be called ideological. Ideology requires that there are other alternative, competing efforts to explain the world and the ideals that should reign in it. Ideology, even in its integrative version, always delimits one group from another; it is always tied to social antagonism (Ricoeur Reference Ricoeur1986). This is what Popper downplayed according to Adorno.

A Popperian criticality operates within the existing liberal ideology. An aspect of this is the assumption that all of world history and sociology is analysable through categories obtained from European history. A claim that we could gain new insights by analysing European histories using concepts and models from, for example, Islamicate history, is unthinkable (Chakrabarty Reference Chakrabarty2000; Grinell Reference Grinell, Andrén, Lindkvist, Söhrman and Vajta2017). The challenge a revised Popperianism poses is to simultaneously criticize Eurocentric claims to scientific universality, while staying committed to an ideal non-Eurocentric universalism in which we maintain our search for truths beyond cultural enclosures. Nationalism or Europeanism are not benign in relation to this.

In order to build European integration on a united identity within a clearly delimited European territory, existing European dependencies and protectorates around the globe must be excised from the notion of Europe, together with the colonial history that explains their presence. ‘Defining the boundaries of Europe, both culturally and institutionally, is a necessary function of claiming a collective identity’, writes Gurminder Bhambra (Reference Bhambra and Rumford2009, 70). This, read together with William Connolly’s argument that the nation’s ‘form of unity seems to be inspired by the traditional imagination of race’ (Connolly Reference Connolly1999, 74, emphasis in original) is why nationalism so easily retorts to populist race arguments when threatened.

In the optimistic 1990 s, when the belief in European integration stood strong, it was common to argue for a new regionalism and a concurrent regional studies field that would build on empirical criteria for the definition of regions. Nationalism was treated as a historical stage in European development. According to Jürgen Habermas, who was a prominent voice in this debate, this would function as a step towards a deeper coordination and development of a global interior politics (Weltinnenpolitik) (Habermas Reference Habermas1998, 156). New regionalism was seen as a spontaneous process stemming from the regions themselves, in a fashion similar to the earlier phase of nation building. It took place in a new multipolar world order secured by a Pax Americana, an integrated world economy and the structural transformations of the post-Cold War global order. Foreign policy was predicted to move from bilateral relations to interregional ones, leading to the creation of a multiregional world order (Hettne et al. Reference Hettne, Inotai and Sunkel1999). Regional studies developed criteria for the delimitation of regions on theoretical and empirical grounds. Yet, the underlying optimism of the 1990 s has faded dramatically in the last decade, in the face of the post-9/11 War on Terror, the great global recession of 2008–2009, the rise of European anti-Muslim Populism and Nationalism, and the European Migration crisis of 2015 (Armingeon and Ceka Reference Armingeon and Ceka2013; Brubaker Reference Brubaker2017; De Goude Reference De Goude2008; Greenhill Reference Greenhill2016). Instead, Samuel Huntington’s competing clash of civilizations theory has gained currency, with its more antagonistic view of regions and its return to national, and even civilizational security perspectives. The Huntingtonian perspective also resorted to old and un-scientific civilizational categories that treated Europe and Islam as opposing entities with almost metaphysical qualities (Huntington Reference Huntington1993).

Handbook Definitions of ‘Europe’ and ‘Islam’

Let us now consult a couple of handbooks in the fields of European studies and Islam in Europe to get an impression of the linguistic frameworks in which they operate (Cesari Reference Cesari2015a; Rumford Reference Rumford2009a). Framing the presentations in the categories ‘Europe’ and ‘Islam’ means that an existing division of natural and cultural phenomena into these categories is reified. Even if this framework is sometimes critically discussed in the handbooks, the bulk of the material presented follows paradigmatic, normal science, accumulating observations within a settled explanatory framework (Kuhn Reference Kuhn1970, 25–28).

The Oxford Handbook of European Islam presents a vast resource of data about the disparate living conditions, organizations and restraints of European inhabitants more or less arbitrarily labelled as Muslim. The discussion is established within the ruling political context and linguistic framework, focusing on what kinds of Islam it is possible to integrate in Europe. ‘Europe’ is thereby both reified and floating as it is left undefined. Most of the chapters are concerned with individual nations, national statistics and data. Politically inspired questions, such as ‘Is Islam compatible with democracy and secularism?’ and ‘What are the causes of radicalization among Muslims in Europe?’ structure the presentation (Cesari Reference Cesari and Cesari2015b, 3). There are, of course, also attempts to break with the methodological nationalism and reification of Islam and Europe that frames the handbook; for example, in the chapter on Belgium, where it is argued that ‘a process of de-centring from dominant theoretical and normative concerns with integration and secularism is needed in order to render the scholarship about Muslims and Belgian society, intellectually, academically, and politically, more challenging and vibrant’ (Fadil et al. Reference Fadil, el Asri, Bracke and Cesari2015, 254). What we see though, is a field that is ridden by heteronomy.

The SAGE Handbook of European Studies, on the contrary, presents a critical field:

The relatively few mentions of the categories ‘Islam’ and ‘Muslims’ in this handbook concern perceived threats such as migration, changing demographic patterns in Europe, conflicts and terrorism. At the same time, European studies is said to suffer from a secularist bias where religion as such is viewed as a problem (Devji Reference Devji and Rumford2009; Fokas Reference Fokas and Rumford2009). Philomena Murray adds critique by arguing that ‘the study of the EU has often been confined to the study of European integration’ and concludes that it is now being supplanted by more critical conceptualizations, such as governance and Europeanization (Murray Reference Murray and Rumford2009, 227, 241). This is still within established European cultural borders, from which Gerard Delanty stands out with his argument that the issue is ‘whether European heritage can be defined in a way that includes Islam’, even if he says that this question cannot be explored within the confines of a handbook of European studies (Delanty Reference Delanty and Rumford2009, 42).

The two handbooks consulted very seldom engage in empirical comparison with other parts of the world (Cesari Reference Cesari2015a; Rumford Reference Rumford2009a). The cultural borders of Europe are also defined mostly in majoritarian terms, presenting an entity that has never included all European dwellers (Delanty Reference Delanty and Rumford2009).

That publicly funded European academia is focused on the welfare of Europe is perhaps no surprise, even if this competes with scientific ideals of unbiased research that should strive to develop universal explanations (Popper Reference Popper1959 [1935]). We must ask whether ‘Europe’ is an appropriate framework for investigating the phenomena we are interested in.

Concluding Remarks

Popperian theories of science might be too conformist to take us where we need to go, but it would be a mistake to dispose of Popper’s insistence that ‘it is the character and the quality of the problem – and also of course the boldness and originality of the suggested solution – which determine the value, or the lack of value, of a scientific achievement’ (Popper Reference Popper1976 [1969]). This, together with the insistence that all suggested solutions must be subjected to pertinent criticism is still valid and useful. Considering also Adorno’s remarks on society and ideology, we come close to William Connolly’s call for what he terms critical responsiveness – that we must always be open to the limits not only of our formulated problems and solutions, but also of our own socially imagined views and institutions (Connolly Reference Connolly1999). Like Popper, he encourages us to constantly strive to produce universal explanations and then find and critique the lapses in our inevitably particularistic ways of thinking. I would add that we need to develop un-popular categories to escape the popular and political frames of our topic.

Academic discussion on the integration of Islam in Europe too often overlaps the terms of public discourse, rather than analysing if the questions posed around Muslim presence in geographical Europe are meaningful. It thereby risks enforcing dichotomous cultural borders.