Europe's Muslim Youth: An Inquiry into the Politics of Discrimination, Relative Deprivation, and Identity Formation

Europe's Muslim Youth:

An Inquiry into the Politics of Discrimination, Relative Deprivation, and Identity Formation

Several academic observers and policy analysts insist that Europe has become a breeding ground for jihadists.¹ According to these arguments, Muslim migrant communities in France, Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands have become recruiting grounds for Muslim terrorists.² As Rohan Gunaratna, a leading authority on Islamic terrorism, argues, "Every major terrorist act in the West in the past decade, with the exception of Oklahoma City, utilized immigrants or immigrant communities."³ Other authors argue that the emergence of European-grown mujahideen—holy warriors—threatens the national security of Europe and the United States. It is clear that local and national influences appear to play a far greater role in the radicalization of populations than previously assumed. In other words, many Muslim communities are turning inward and rejecting European institutions and traditions.

In this essay I argue that diverse Muslim communities entrench themselves in secluded, segregated, and separate segments and in groups disenfranchised from their surrounding societies because of the socioeconomic and political conditions they experience in their countries of settlement, rather than for any religious reasons. The terrorist attacks in London on 7 July 2005, the riots in France in October and November 2005, the rage ignited by Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during spring 2006, and the terrorist plot involving passenger planes leaving London's Heathrow airport for diverse US airports interrupted on 10 August 2006 have shown that Europe's integration policies have failed. Europe's current Islamic alienation, however, is more about Marx than Mohammad or bin Laden.

Focusing on Muslim communities in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, in this comparative analysis I search for the roots of the discontent of young Muslims within the context of the specific nations' integration policies. This essay has a focus on Muslims' relative deprivation, their resentment toward their host societies, and their identity construction within three European nations. The first section includes an exploration of the de facto segregation of Europe's Muslims that resulted from distinct settlement patterns in many European cities. The second has a focus on cohorts of Muslim youth in the United Kingdom, a seemingly multicultural country in which exclusions may not be very obvious but are nevertheless deeply entrenched and long standing. In the third part light is cast on the living conditions of the most disadvantaged young Muslims in France against the backdrop of French assimilation policies that stress uniformity and the existing widespread discrimination against Muslims. In France these policies resulted in state-sponsored ghettoization, while in Germany, a Muslim middle class arose from the guest worker programs implemented in the 1960s and 1970s. Nevertheless, in Germany segregation and relative socioeconomic deprivation also resulted in the rise of a parallel traditional Turkish society. I argue that the failed integration efforts of European states are contextualized for Muslims as a form of double exclusion, based on ethnic and economic factors.

Historically, immigrant communities tend to establish parallel societies within their host societies. Immigrant groups seek to provide their communities with their own religious organizations, interest groups, commercial associations, soccer clubs, cultural facilities, private schools, and scholarships mirroring those that exist in their host societies.⁴ However, what is new within the communities of Muslim youth in Western Europe is that these parallel societies include individuals who are proud of their isolation, purist and traditional, and often contemptuous of the European host society. Although the vast majority of Muslims in Europe is not involved in radical activities, Islamist extremists and vocal fringe communities that advocate terrorism exist and reportedly have provided cover for terrorist cells.⁵ However, citizens and denizens who align their beliefs with al Qaeda or radical Islam are not unique to Europe. In the course of its fight against terrorism, the United States has captured or identified several US citizens with similar views...