What happened to the FIS exemplifies a general process: the detachment of the new Islamic radical youth of Europe from the Islamic political parties of their countries of origin. A polarization has resulted: radicalized Muslim youth in Europe become less attracted to the purely political and national approach of any Islamic mother-party, and those parties become even more Islamo-nationalist than internationalist as a result. While many Islamist movements are consolidating a stable constituency within their own countries, they are simultaneously losing appeal beyond their borders.

This polarizing tendency has affected groups other than the Algerian FIS. The 2001 split of the Refah-Fazilet party has partly dissociated Milli Görüs from domestic Turkish politics; the movement is now far more "European" than Middle Eastern, often associating with the Europe-based Arab Muslim Brothers. Its internal debates concentrate on what it means to be a Muslim in Europe. It is also dividing within itself in its European context. On one side is a dominant conservative body; on the other is a liberal wing represented by its Dutch section, headed by Haci Karacaer--of whom more below.

Two Examples

The Salman Rushdie affair exemplifies the shift from a diasporic to a universalist Islam. Pakistani immigrants to Great Britain from the Barelwi current were responsible for the public burning of The Satanic Verses in 1989. The Barelwis are considered moderates by Pakistani standards, but their special devotion to the Prophet rendered Rushdie's "insult" particularly grievous in their eyes. The fact that Rushdie is a renegade in their estimation was also very important. What was at stake was the definition of a new Islamic community in a European context that had nothing to do with possessing a particular passport. The Barelwis were trying to define a community that has no territorial, ethno-linguistic or juridical base. They were trying to pre-emptively determine the definition of a "Western" Muslim, which is a huge existential question for observant Muslims in Europe. Rushdie, of Indian Muslim origin, was targeted precisely because he is a British citizen who writes only in English and disclaims being a practicing Muslim. Had a Christian written The Satanic Verses, the Barelwis would have launched no street demonstrations.

At a deeper level, the objective of the anti-Rushdie campaign in England (before the matter was seized by Imam Khomeini in Iran for his own reasons) was to pass a new British law on blasphemy--to date reserved exclusively for the Church of England--for the benefit of Islam. Thus it was the demand for recognition on the part of Pakistani immigrants to Britain that lay behind the anti-Rushdie campaign, though Western public opinion, naturally enough, was oblivious to this angle. It is, however, interesting to note that two non-Muslim groups lent them an attentive ear: the left wing of the Labour Party, probably for electoral reasons but also in the name of multiculturalism; and a conservative group of Anglican and Catholic priests for whom this was a heaven-sent opportunity to forge a sacred alliance against the profanation of religion in the name of art--the controversy over Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, it should be recalled, was a near-contemporaneous affair.

Finally on this point, it bears noting that the anti-Rushdie campaign flowed more from fear than from aggression. The demand for communal recognition ran parallel to the attempt to define the borders of a community that, as its leaders saw it, was in danger of disintegration through assimilation. The internal vision of a beleaguered Islam in decline is important: many Muslims in the Middle East and outside of it share this vision--a view confirmed, in their eyes, by the Gulf War, the failure of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the sanctions against Iraq and so on. Such motives contrast sharply with those attributed to Muslims in the Western view of an expanding Islam. In any case, it is clear that the European Muslim reaction to The Satanic Verses had nothing to do with importing Islamic radicalization to Europe; on the contrary, it evidenced a sui generis Muslim-European process of ideological radicalization, with the potential of exporting radicalism to, rather than importing it from, the Middle East.

The rise of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Europe also exemplifies the transition from a diasporic to a universalist mode of Islamic identity. Hizb ut-Tahrir ("Liberation Party") is a fundamentalist party based in London that was originally set up as a Palestinian Islamic movement in 1953. Officially non-violent, its ideas are nevertheless very radical. It advocates the immediate re-establishment of the caliphate and the ultimate conversion of the entire world to Islam. Hizb ut-Tahrir is now a genuinely international movement; indeed, it is difficult to identify and locate precisely its controlling authority. Officially, its leader is Sheikh Abdel Qadir Zalum, a Palestinian from Beirut who succeeded Taqiuddin Nabhani, the movement's founding father, in 1977. But Zalum appears to have lost effective control to a group of militants based in London. And it is a movement that is rapidly growing.

Hizb ut-Tahrir's growth is revealed through an analysis of its relationship with the Muhajirun organization of Sheikh Omar Bhakri, a Syrian residing in London who maintains a high profile in the English-language media. Though Bhakri does not make explicit reference to Hizb ut-Tahrir, their pronouncements and website content are often identical. The Muhajirun movement, therefore, is likely a front for Hizb ut-Tahrir in Europe, which developed in the 1980s and 1990s in Great Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands--and to a lesser extent in the United States. Starting in 1997, Hizb ut-Tahrir established new chapters in Muslim countries including Sudan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan. The Pakistani branch, led by Dr. Abdul Qayyum, is more recent than the Uzbek branch, set up in 1999, and also more visible, with its meetings announced in the press. It seems to have been set up at the instigation of the London leadership. During a trial for sedition in Lahore in the fall of 2002, the defendants were British-born Muslims who spoke exclusively English with a cockney accent. Hizb ut-Tahrir thus represents another example of a re-communalized European radicalism being deliberately and systematically exported to Muslim countries.

The transition from diasporic to universalist Islam is also illustrated by the fact that very few Muslims in Europe mobilize on the basis of Middle Eastern conflicts. Although the Palestinian cause is popular among European Muslims, their support has never gone further than street demonstrations numbering fewer than 5,000 people in Paris, in company with traditional left-wing and anti-imperialist non-Muslim European sympathizers. Support for the Palestinian cause is generally not expressed in religious terms, and neither is opposition to a U.S.-led war against Iraq.

The Radicalization of the Uprooted

What is the essential nature of supranational, ideological Islam in Europe, and what recruitment patterns does it manifest? Only by understanding these matters can we hazard a guess as to how significant a security problem European states--and the United States--may face in the future from such movements.

Identification with a supranational umma in Europe can be experienced as a purely religious identification. This is often the case among Muslim middle-class populations, but, particularly among disenchanted and alienated youth, such identification can lead to a process of political radicalization. This process varies from place to place, and from one immigrant community to another, but the general trend is clear--as is the reason for it.

When Muslim immigrants live in open, cosmopolitan societies, particularly ones offering economic dynamism and social mobility, efforts by diasporic elders to keep them segregated from the mainstream usually fail, albeit in varying degrees and at varying speeds. As the original culture falls away, it is replaced by new cultural norms--either fully, as with assimilation, or partly, as with integration. When these new norms come from the host country, they can sometimes take the form of a subculture--such as the "suburban" youth culture in France, whose combative nature is Western, not Islamic, in origin. But as we have seen, sometimes a process of identity reconstruction ensues that seeks to preserve the essence of difference. Without the actual anchors of a diasporic community to sustain them, however, they require an imagined community. In the case of European Muslims, this constructivist community is usually based on a transnational religious identity. (Interestingly enough, many European Muslims nonetheless require their host society's freedom and openness to advance the cause of a transnational identity that bypasses both Muslim nations and local European patriotisms. This is illustrated by the creation in Antwerp of a controversial organization, the Arab European League, which lobbies for recognition of minority rights for Muslims at an all-European level.)

The rejection of the culture of origin, together with the refusal to assimilate into the surrounding Western culture, finds perfect expression in neo-fundamentalism (or salafism). Fundamentalism--meaning a return to the "true" tenets of religion--is nearly as old as Islam itself. The contemporary trend, justifiably called neo-fundamentalism, combines technical modernism, de-culturation (rejection of both traditional Muslim and modern Western cultures) and globalization (exemplified by websites like umma.net). Neo-fundamentalism is particularly appealing to alienated youth because it turns their cultural alienation into a justification for forging a universal Islam stripped of customs and traditions and thus adaptable to all societies. It envisions the whole world as a great potential umma, and it does not require the thousands of hours of study that traditional Islamic piety requires from would-be leaders and community activists. It discards native religious cultures as UN-Islamic and polluted by superstitions, folklore and accretions from non-Islamic sources. Thus, contrary to what many casual observers seem to think, traditional and national culture, even if they are Muslim, are connoted negatively in the neo-fundamentalist vision.

Essay Types: Essay