European Muslims, Civility and Public Life

This collection is a welcome and timely publication. It stresses several options and questions which face the Muslim communities of Europe and in particular the Muslim community in the UK. Firstly, are you prepared to be a minority contributing to the social well-being of the societies in which you are placed? Secondly, are you prepared to be a minority with other faith communities who are minorities in functionally secular states? And thirdly, are you more inclined to withdraw into fantasist, pietist enclaves (akin to Ballard’s Desh Pardesh, 1996) or into aggressive cadres, and/or to assimilate into secularism? This edited collection is an assessment of the influence and impact of the Islamic scholar and activist Fethullah Gülen [b.1941], and those inspired by him, on contemporary Islam in the context of the UK and Europe. It deals with the new Sitzim Leben and opportunities faced by Muslims and the wider society in Europe following the Madrid train bombings of 2004 and the London Transport attacks of 2005. Those events challenged the concept and practice of civility in public life in a European context.