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Islam and Wider Europe

Research Paper
Rough Outline
Draft, September 1, 2005
 
Preliminary Table of Contents

 
1). Introduction.                                                            

2). Islam and Politics.                                                   

Approximately 20 pages

2.1. The relationship between religion and politics within Islamic tradition – historical and doctrinal background.
2.2 Religious authority in Islam as an issue of public and political life.
2.3 Ruling regimes, identity politics and political participation in the Muslim majority world.
2.4. Societal Islam and religio-political movements in the Arab-Muslim world: from mechanization to Mecca?
2.5. Muslim publics in the predominantly Islamic countries and the West: towards a religious public sphere.
2.6. The fragmentation of religious authority in contemporary Muslim societies: divergent interpretations and perceptions if public Islam.
2.7. Moderate and radical voices in the Muslim public sphere.
2.8.Challenges to the predominantly Muslim world and Europe.

 3). Islam and Europe: The Otherness of a Neighbour.          

3.1. An overview of the relations between the Muslim world and the Christendom.
3.2. Before and after September 2001: changing attitudes and perceptions.
3.3.Islam and the European Union (EU): identities and new perspectives.
3.4. Muslims in and around Europe: divergent perspectives.
3.5. Secular Europe and its predominantly Muslim ‘neighbourhood’ in the Balkans and the Mediterranean: the changing public role of “Euro-Islam” and the new agenda of the Arab World after the Cold War.
3.6. Islam and the Barcelona Process: political and intercultural dimensions.

4). The Challenge of Wider Europe and Islam: Muslim perspectives to the EU and its ‘neighborhood’ project.                                   

4.1. The Wider Europe Initiative and the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP): concepts and policy instruments.
4.2. The predominantly Muslim word and the EU.
4.3. The Arab world: unity or diversity in the context of Wider Europe.
4.4. The cases of Lebanon and Egypt – the Arab favorites of the ENP.
4.5. Turkey: between candidate and strategic ‘neighbour’.
4.6. Muslim minorities and majorities in the Balkans: the Albanian Muslims of Macedonia and Kosovo, and the Bosniacs.
4.7. Bulgaria as the first EU full member state in Eastern Europe with a large Muslim minority: towards sharing experience within the Wider Europe processes.

5). Islamic religion in secular Europe.

Approximately 15 pages

5.1. The ‘traditional’ European modernist approaches to religion.
5.2. The issue of ‘avoiding’ Islam in the public sphere: advantages and disadvantages.
5.3. Towards a new secularist approach to work with and through religion in Europe.
5.4. Implications in Bulgaria and the other Balkan countries in the context of the ENP.

 6). Conclusion.

Approximately 3 pages

7). Bibliography.

 

8). Appendices.

8.1. Intercultural communication template used within the research process.
8.2. Questionnaire for non-standardized interviews with Muslims from the Balkans.
8.3. Expert questionnaire for interviews with Muslim religious leaders and policymakers in the Middle East and in South East Europe.
8.4. Basic information and documents around the European Neighbourhood Policy.
8.5. Glossary of the basic terms from Islamic history, doctrine and practice.

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Related Texts

•  Policy Paper – a policy study of approximately 20 pages. Please see the draft outline of the Policy Paper.
• The Research Paper (approximately 80 to 100 pages with the bibliography and all the appendices and glossaries) can be considered for publication in English by the OSI and the Central European University in Budapest.
• Besides, this Research Paper will also underlie a book in Bulgarian language tentatively entitled Islam and Europe: the Remoteness of a Close Neighbour. The book will target both the academic/expert community and the larger public. In this way it will also serve as a tool for dissemination of the project’s results in Bulgaria combining them with the academic background of the author.

 

Text Sample from the Research Paper

 Introduction
Draft

 The re-emergence of Islam in the public sphere is a plural and varied process, and re-Islamization is a diverse and complex process which occurs not only in countries and regions with Muslim majorities as those in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) but also among the large Muslim minorities in Europe and America. Muslims in the Balkans, like Muslims worldwide, are turning Islam into a significant public and political force. Yet “religion is obviously central to the political life of peoples around the world, not simply to Muslims" [i]; however, the notion of an “Islamic threat” coming mainly from Middle Eastern political regimes and movements has been created in the West. Observers speak of the alleged incompatibility of Islam and democracy, of the fanaticism of “Islamic fundamentalists” and of the strong opposition to the secularization and modernization of Middle Eastern societies that have completely different cultural values than those of the West. Furthermore, many still maintain that there is a single monolithic political doctrine of Islam and that this doctrine is incompatible with pluralist democracy, an idea that first developed in the West [ii].

Islamic actors with an agenda in the public sphere challenge the domestic politics of various EU countries as well as the political life in many of the EU ‘candidates’ and ‘neighbours’. Both the Muslim majority world and the Muslim minorities in Europe outside the EU are perceived as one of the major challenges for the Wider Europe Initiative and the new European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) [iii] which seeks to share the benefits of the EU’s enlargement with the neighboring Eastern and Southern countries [iv]. For these Muslim minority communities the long-standing cultural links with the Arab world or with Turkey are getting more and more important in the period after the Cold War.

The Balkan countries are pursuing their relations with the EU in several different frameworks. Bulgaria and Romania are well advanced and aim to join the Union in January 2007. Turkey is a country with a different timetable remaining for now between ‘candidate’ and ‘neighbour’. Except Croatia, which is already a candidate country, the other Western Balkan countries – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and Serbia and Montenegro, including Kosovo, are defined by the EU as ‘potential candidate countries' [v].These potential future EU members are developing their relations with the Union supported by the Stabilization and Association Process (SAP). Yet, the ENP does not cover any Balkan country, however, Bulgaria and Romania will be involved in its implementation after they become EU members. There is a variety of perspectives to the EU in South-East Europe where the population is ethnically and religiously mixed, for apart from the Christians there are significant Muslim communities. For all of these Muslim communities the long-standing cultural links with the Muslim majority, particularly with Turkey and the Arab world, world are getting more and more important in the post-communist period.

In this context Bulgaria is the only EU acceding Balkan country with a substantial Muslim minority (more than 12%). In this context of regional and increasingly globalizing Islam-related challenges, the policy of Bulgaria to the Muslim-majority world, and sometimes even to the local Muslim community, since the democratic changes in early 1990s has been erratic and virtually non-existent on a conceptual level. As a result Islam is underestimated and misused as a factor in the design of the public policy in Bulgaria. Public interest has been mainly sensation-based, and the vague attempts for public discussions on important issues get drawn in stereotyping, misinterpretations and misunderstanding. As a result Islam is underestimated and misused as a factor in the design of the Bulgaria’s public policy in spite of its full EU membership from January 2007 onwards.

This paper aims to contribute to the development of new EU strategies and Bulgarian national policies and instruments that bear in mind the cultural and religious factors, particularly Islam, in the context of Wider Europe processes and the European ‘neighbourhood’ project. This purpose will be achieved through:

• Interdisciplinary research on Islam and the manifestation of Muslim identity in the public sphere, particularly in the Balkans but with reference to the processes in the Middle East and within the broader context of the EU and its 'neighbourhood' project;
• Debating the capacity of the new Muslim publics to participate in the process of overcoming the broader cultural divide between “Islam” and the “West”, exploring also the Bulgarian, and more generally the Balkan, model for interethnic and interfaith coexistence in the ENP context;
• Outlining possible ways and the extent at which Islam should play a role as a factor in the design and the implementation of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) from the perspective of the Balkans, and particularly Bulgaria as EU member;
• Identifying and suggesting new secular mechanisms for working with and through religion, particularly Islam, in the process of policy design.
  

Islam and Wider Europe: Towards Bridging the Divides

Policy Paper
Rough Outline
Draft – September 1, 2005

1). Executive Summary.                                                            About 2 pages

 2). Introduction.                                                                         1 to 2 pages

 

Contains a presentation of the issue and explains why there is an urgent need to search for new strategies, continually re-thinking the role of Islam and its potential to collaborate in addressing the more trenchant problems of domestic and international affairs in the context of Wider Europe challenge.

 
3). Islam as a Public Force: Challenges to the Muslim majority World and Europe.

Approximately 7 pages

3.1. Religious authority in Islam: the issues of its fragmentation and diversity.
3.2. Muslim Publics in the Middle East in Europe: Islam as a Public Force.
3.3. Before and after September 2001: changing attitudes and perceptions.
3.4. Relations between “Islam” and the “West”.
3.5. Muslims in and around secular Europe: divergent perspectives.

This chapter is concentrated around the scope of the problem, i.e. the history and the current context of the issue. It contextualizes the issue of the relationship between “Islam” and the “West” from the angle of such relevant problems as identity, religious authority and new Muslim publics.

 4). The EU and its ‘neighborhood’ project: Muslim perspectives.                           

Approximately 7 pages

4.1 Islam and the Barcelona Process: political and intercultural dimensions.
4.2. The Wider Europe Initiative and the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP): concepts and policy instruments.
4.3. The predominantly Muslim word and the EU.
4.4. The Arab world: unity or diversity in the context of Wider Europe.
4.5. The cases of Lebanon and Egypt – the Arab favorites of the ENP.
4.6. Turkey: between candidate and strategic ‘neighbour’.
4.7. Muslim minorities and majorities in the Balkans: the Albanian Muslims of Macedonia and Kosovo, and the Bosniacs.
4.8. Bulgaria as the first EU full member state in Eastern Europe with a large Muslim minority: towards sharing experience within the Wider Europe processes.

 

Apart from the current context of the issue this chapter consists of important relevant materials collected and analyzed during the research process dealing also with consultations, i.e. the positions of the different actors involved – the EU, the Lebanese and the Egyptian states as relevant to the ENP (mainly through the prism of the political issues), Turkey, the Balkan countries, and particularly Bulgaria. In the case with Bulgaria the paper attempts to outline which elements of the peaceful Bulgarian model of interfaith coexistence have completely local character and which could be used in the implementation of the European ‘neighbourhood’ project contributing to the development of new policy instruments and strategies.

 

5). Towards Working with and through Islamic religion in secular Europe.

Approximately 4 pages

5.1. The issue of ‘avoiding’ religion in the public sphere.
5.2. Working with and through religion in secular Europe: new approaches.
5.3. The European contribution of Bulgaria and the other Balkan countries in the context of the ENP.

 

This Chapter of the paper outlines distinct options for consideration when developing new strategies regarding the Islamic factor in the context of the European ‘neighbourhood’ project.

 

The policy paper makes a rationale of the chosen policy alternative and the outlined policy recommendation to show that that policy analysis and policy design should not simply rely on the modernist strategy which identified religion as the problem and proposed the solution by way of “classical” secularism, which is to avoid religion’s conflictual terrain by setting it outside the public sphere. The intense quest for cultural authenticity within Islam today requires an adequate response, particularly in the context of the ENP. The future success of the European project depends in a considerable degree on the re-conceptualization of the cultural factors in the design of the new European ‘neighbourhood’ project.

 

6). Conclusion.

Approximately 2 pages

7). Bibliography.

Approximately 2 pages

8). Appendices.

Maximum 2 pages

8.1. ENP documents.

8.2. Glossary of the Islamic terms.

 

• The Policy Paper, the core text of which is planned to be approximately 20-pages, is designed to move along the following major tracks:

- identifying problems;

- policy options analysis;

- policy recommendations.

• The project’s Policy Paper will contain policy recommendations about the role of Islam in the ENP context for the European Commission and the Bulgarian government, particularly the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Directorate of Religious Affairs which the governmental agency responsible for the functioning of the different religious denominations and faith-based communities in Bulgaria.
• The focused and succinct Policy Brief (3 to 5 pages) resulting from the policy research and containing the policy recommendations, could be considered for publication by the Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels.
• The Executive Summary of the Policy Paper will be designed to give overall information about its major components making the text easily accessible for decision-making agencies and individuals.
• The Policy Paper will be consulted with outstanding academics before publication.
• In Bulgaria the Policy Paper and the Policy Brief could also be published on the website of the Sofia-based Center for Intercultural Studies and Partnership (CISP) to be discussed within the CISP team and its partners in the region and internationally, thus contributing to the current policy debates around Islam.
• The Policy Paper will also be sent for publication to another partner websites.
• The interviewed policy-makers and Islamic religious leaders in South East Europe and internationally will receive an electronic copy of the paper by e-mail when this is possible.
• The media publications will provide mechanisms for a more productive public debate of the themes of the policy paper among the larger public.