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Haunted Presents: Europeans, Muslim Immigrants and the Onus of Histories

Amikam Nachmani

Relationships between Europe and its Muslim minorities constitute an extensive focus for discussion both within and outside the Continent. Europe’s readiness to coexist with its Muslim communities, ... More

Relationships between Europe and its Muslim minorities constitute an extensive focus for discussion both within and outside the Continent. Europe’s readiness to coexist with its Muslim communities, not to exclude them from its culture and wealth, and not to forcibly Europeanize them, is repeatedly questioned. Likewise challenged is the ability and desire of Muslim migrants to change, to absorb, to adapt themselves to European standards and laws, to Western culture, etc. Europeans who have never been too tolerant of the “other,” now confront different ethnic groups who adhere to a different religion. Europe that for centuries marginalized religion now faces the active Muslim religion. The encounter often emphasizes the distinctions and differences between Europeans and Muslim immigrants, rather than existing or potential shared views and values. This work focuses on recent and past history, used by both sides, when describing present and future communal, racial and religious relations. This discourse often makes reference to European Jewry as a guiding precedent. As a result a very meaningful triangle of views, images, and insights has been formed. Among the topics one meets are the painful European-Jewish record and its implications for European–Muslim relations, the Holocaust, the European Right, mass Muslim immigration and its repercussions, contacts and reference to the State of Israel, Muslim violence, terror and anti-Semitic activity against European Jews and Jewish interests, European restrictions against Muslim and Jewish religious rites and worship, internal issues between states and a look into the future of Islam in Europe.Less