Adaptation or change: Making home for Muslims and Islam in Western Europe

Dr. Dietrich Reetz

Dietrich Reetz is a senior research fellow at the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin, where he is directing a collaborative research project on Muslims in Europe. He graduated in International Politics in 1975 in Moscow and defended his Ph.D. dissertation in modern history of South Asia at the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1987.

Since 1991 he is a Senior Lecturer of political science at the Free University Berlin, among others on Islam and politics, Islamic militancy and radicalism in South Asia and Muslims in Europe. He is also a Principle Investigator for Political Science/South Asia at the Graduate School of Muslim Culture and Societies at the Free University of Berlin from 2008.

Selected Publications

(Ed.), Islam in Europa: Religiöses Leben heute (2010), Münster (under publication).

Islam in the Public Sphere: Religious Groups in India, 1900-1947 (2006), Delhi, Oxford.

Germany and Islam - Dialogue for the Future (2006), in: (Hamdard Foundation Pakistan), Muslim Ummah in the Modern World: Challenges and Opportunities, Karachi : Bait al-Hikmah, 2006, pp. 194-203.

(Ed.), Sendungsbewußtsein oder Eigennutz: Zu Motivation und Selbstverständnis islamischer Mobilisierung. (2001), Studien / Zentrum Moderner Orient; Nr. 15, Berlin.

(Ed.) Die "Reorientalisierung" des Orients? Zur Rolle der Tradition in Gesellschaftskonflikten der achtziger Jahre. (1991) (asien, afrika, lateinamerika, Sonderheft 4), Berlin.

Adaptation or change: Making home for Muslims and Islam in Western Europe

Muslim movements and institutions in western Europe operate as translocal actors in close contact with their countries and societies of origin in Asias, the Middle East or Africa. Both Islamic critics and  western analysts question the validity of talking about a European Islam. Yet Muslim actors and institutions in Europe go through a process of striking roots and adapting to everyday life. They are making home in Europe. This process is reflected in adjustments to the legal environment, to political, social or cultural conditions of host societies. While this process is not absent from Muslim societies elsewhere in the world, it takes on its own character in Europe. The paper discusses this process on the basis of findings of a collaborative research project coordinated at ZMO in 2006-2009.