Conference on “Muslim Youth and Women in the West: Source of Concern or Source of Hope?”
Interim report

From May 14 to 16, 2007, New York University Center for Dialogues: Islamic World – U. S. – The West, in conjunction with the Salzburg Seminar convened a conference in Salzburg, Austria to address the question, “Muslim Youth and Women in the West: Source of Concern or Source of Hope?” The conference brought together 60 policy makers, community leaders, scholars, media professionals and activists from Europe, North America, and the Muslim World.

Conference participants gave serious consideration to a number of questions, including: How best can tensions created by the presence of Islam and of Muslims in the West be overcome? Do these tensions arise from economic and social factors, or from cultural and value differences? What role does public policy play in addressing these tensions? What does the current landscape of Muslim communities in the European West look like? What visions might be offered for the future? In what ways can Muslim youth and women help infuse new vitality into Europe? What best practices, if any, can be developed regarding security and integration? Is it appropriate and feasible to speak in terms of a “Western Islam”?

Attendees included deputy mayor of the Hague, Rabin Baldewsingh; secretary general of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Marc Perrin de Brichambaut; professor emeritus of humanities and Islamic studies at the University of Tunis, Abdelmajid Charfi; director of the Center for Urban Studies at the Sorbonne, Sophie Body-Gendrot; Middle East and Islamic affairs analyst for the BBC World Service, Roger Hardy; Brooklyn Academy of Music president, Karen Hopkins; visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Shireen Hunter; rector of the Grand Mosque of Lyon, Kamel Kabtane; filmmaker Zarqa Nawaz; director of the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies, Farhan Nizami; senior advisor, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, State Department Farah Pandith; professor of Islamic studies at St. Antony‘s College, Oxford University Tariq Ramadan; special advisor to the United Nations secretary-general on the Alliance of Civilizations, Iqbal Riza; professor of politics at New York University Martin Schain; and director general for equalities in the United Kingdom‘s Department for Communities and Local Government, Susan Scholefield.

Dialogues founder and director Mustapha Tlili opened the conference with a call for creative thinking about the inclusion of Islam and Muslims in the West. He noted the multiple complexities with which such efforts must contend: the weight of historical memory, the distortions of globalization, the simplistic reductions of the media and the instrumentalizations of politicians looking for short–term gains. Tlili proposed that, in working towards policy recommendations for the integration of Muslim communities in Europe, participants consider developing a new “citizenship pact” in which the reciprocal obligations of state and citizens would take into account today’s pluralistic societies.

Salzburg mayor, Heinz Schaden, welcomed the conference to his city, which has the largest foreign-born population in Europe, and in which Islam is the second–largest religion in the schools. Salzburg Seminar senior vice-president and chief program officer, Edward Mortimer, added that conference participants had an important contribution to make in redefining mutual expectations among people of different religions and cultures.

Austrian Federal Minister for European and International Affairs, Ursula Plassnik, argued that policy makers should consider as fundamental the issue of building confidence among diverse peoples to live harmoniously together, and should critically assess whether current policies favor coexistence or stifle differences. With regard to integration, she mentioned the need to develop tools that prevent hopelessness in young Muslims, especially males, who suffer most acutely from the limited education and poor job prospects that plague many immigrant groups. Plassnik also acknowledged policymakers’ tendency to speak about Muslim women rather than to them, thereby masking the reality that these women are anything but a homogenous group, and that many of their problems are faced by non-Muslim Western women. She cautioned against the frequent practice of camouflaging indifference as tolerance.

The conference continued with a roundtable discussion featuring a five-person panel. Tlili asked each panelist to respond to a set of questions related to his or her professional experiences working with Muslims in Europe and/or North America, after which the floor was opened for a general question and answer session.

Ambassador Ralph Scheide, Deputy Director General for Political Affairs and Director of the Near and Middle East Department and Africa of Austria‘s Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, discussed how Austria‘s 1912 recognition of Islam, as well as the state‘s more contemporary efforts, has furthered the integration of Austrian Muslims. Scheide said his country represents a middle ground between states like France and Poland because it provides official status to “churches” of all religions, and has official interlocutors from all of its religious communities.

Marc Perrin de Brichambaut, Secretary General of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), assessed ÔIslam‘ as a security variable, specifically speaking of the changes in Muslim majority states since the fall of the USSR. He noted that the OSCE has historically been more successful in transitioning former Soviet states to democracy than in integrating new groups and minorities within democratic states. The OSCE now focuses on tolerance, fighting terrorism and respecting the rule of law, and builds on common values to ensure security while respecting national traditions.

Iqbal Riza, Special Advisor to the United Nations Secretary General on the Alliance of Civilizations, explained what this initiative can do to facilitate the integration of Muslims in the West. He described the Alliance’s work as occurring on two levels, the political and the operational. Politically, the sources of Muslim world/Western world tensions are the internal states of Muslim societies, which face the difficulty of trying to keep up with a rapidly changing world, and the external Western interventions in the Muslim world of the past five decades. Operationally, the Alliance involves itself in immigration and media programs.

Ambassador Hans Gnodtke, Commissioner for Dialogue with the Islamic world and Dialogue among Civilizations at the German Federal Foreign Office stated that switching today’s focus on “integration” (a contested term with no obvious standards of assessment) to the development of a new “citizenship pact” would merely change the label without solving the problem. He said the stresses that population shifts produce for both the host country and the migrant community must be dealt with on a state-by-state basis rather than at the European level. In his experience, Muslims in Germany were happy to be there. While in many cases they felt that they could practice Islam more freely than in their countries of origin, they also often felt unable to realize their hopes for an improved life in their new home. Gnodtke listed two “classic problems” of migration: limited access to the labor market, and difficulty in reconciling often–patriarchal cultural backgrounds with newfound gender equality and youth independence. He suggested that states address these issues by establishing dialogues with the communities and leaders directly affected, bearing in mind that not all Muslims in Europe are organized by religious community, and that there is great religious diversity within Muslim communities.

Farah Pandith, senior advisor on Muslim engagement at the State Department, discussed lessons learned from the American experience of integrating Muslims and other minorities, and assessed the extent to which integration would undercut support for extremism. She said an important distinction between the U.S. and many European countries is that the former is a country of immigrants, and hence has no integration policy regarding Muslims per se. Muslim immigrants have benefited from the labors of previous generations of immigrants, who have fought to ensure that all Americans are equal before the law and cannot face discrimination due to their religion. She said that in her conversations with European Muslim youth she had heard a number of questions like, “Why do we have to choose, and not be allowed to be both European and Muslim?” and noted that it is easy to feel victimized if you are unable to find a place in the community.

After a lively roundtable discussion, the conference continued with two panel sessions. Panel one, “A Survey of the Current Economic, Social, Cultural and Political Landscape,” opened with NYU Professor Martin Schain‘s presentation of the same name. Zsolt Nyiri, the Gallup Organization‘s Regional Research Director for Europe, followed with “The European Story in Numbers,” which reported the findings of three Gallup surveys carried out in Berlin, London and Paris to gauge identities, integration, religion and confidence in democratic institutions among Europe‘s Muslim and non–Muslim populations. Oxford University Professor Ceri Peach presented an analysis of “The Social Geography of Exclusion,” which used a case study of Pakistani Sikhs and Muslims in Britain to suggest that second and third generation European Muslims are better educated than the first, but less well educated than the rest of the population or other minority groups, which adversely affects their prospects for employment and integration.

The second panel session, “A Vision for the Future,” began with Susan Scholesfield, Director General for Equalities at the Department of Communities and Local Government in the United Kingdom, who spoke on “Building Resilience and Preventing Violent Extremism.” She shared the experiences of her organization, which focuses on education and employment, as well as housing, and works to build the capacities of Muslim communities to defeat terrorism at the grassroots level. Shaarik Zafar, Senior Policy Advisor from the United States Department of Homeland Security‘s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, followed with “Successful Integration – Is it the Key to Enhanced Security?” He acknowledged that there is no magic formula for preventing radicalization, but said that engaging communities and promoting civic participation minimizes the isolation and alienation that can lead to it.

After the panel sessions, Oxford University Professor Tariq Ramadan and University of Tunis Emeritus Professor Abdelmajid Charfi each addressed the question, “Can Muslim youth and women infuse new vitality into old Europe, and on what terms?” Ramadan expressed his concern that European policy–makers are ’Islamizing a social problem,‘ thereby ignoring the real issue: providing equal citizenship, freedom and democracy consistently for all. Charfi talked about the need for a renewal of Islam by Muslims living in the West, who are most likely to find solutions to the new questions being asked of their religion, and to carry these answers to the Muslim world.

Tlili closed these vigorous panel sessions by noting that the key outstanding question is what needs to be done for Muslim communities in Europe and North America to be accepted without qualifications as full citizens. Conference participants then divided into three working groups on security, integration and religious practice, whose findings were presented during final deliberations.

The ‘security’ group focused on terrorist activities that occur within or around Muslim communities, and on identifying the contexts within which extremist violence occurs or is permitted. Discussion centered on ways to increase community ownership of the issues, with a focus on empowering women and youth. The group suggested calling upon Muslim communities to identify root causes of terrorism; involving them in crisis management; discussing the impact of international issues; talking with people outside individual and institutional comfort zones; working to dispel notions of a “clash of civilizations” conflict; understanding language sensitivities; using media, civic institutions and the Internet to combat fear; and establishing transparent and meaningful contact with local imams. The group proposed partnerships that stretch beyond traditional government programs and include NGOs and private firms in facilitating internships, community exchanges etc.

The ‘integration’ group agreed that since there is no universally accepted definition of the term, individual states need to define what it means in their particular context, recognizing the comfortable existence of multiple identities, and not linking integration to fears of extremism and violence. They added that Muslims should not be asked to shoulder the burden of integration, nor expected to adhere to a higher standard of civic engagement to “prove” their assimilation. The group encouraged the countering of Muslim stereotypes through outreach efforts and emphasized the need to promote a sense of pride in Islamic heritage. They were eager to develop a list of best practices that groups have found effective in achieving integration–related goals.

The ‘religious practice’ group focused on connections between the universal message of Islam and the specific Western contexts of individual believers. Discussions centered on the relationship between “belief” and “belonging,” with some arguing that the former can underpin the latter, and others that the state should remain outside the sphere of belief. The group agreed that while the articulation of belief may be a Muslim responsibility, fostering a sense of belonging must be a reciprocal process that engages the wider society. Participants disagreed as to European states’ roles, if any, in the organization of Muslim social and religious tasks and were divided regarding how imams should be trained, organized and paid. They agreed, however, that imams must be cognizant of the European social contexts in which they work. Participants also cited often–clichéd issues that require deeper reflection: that of a dialogue between Muslims and non–Muslims, and that of common values, for which merely rhetorical invocations are not helpful.

The conclusions reached during final deliberations and the closing session were expressed as an “action plan” to facilitate their concrete implementation by governments, NGOs, community and religious leaders and others. The plan has three aspects. The first addresses Western media stereotypes through training workshops and the dissemination of media guides providing basic information about Muslim communities in the West. The second promotes the exchange of best practices through a Dialogues–compiled catalogue of successful grassroots experiences, as well as meetings between Muslim youth and adult role models, and follow–up sessions to assess progress and evaluate ongoing issues. It also encourages local governmental authorities and Muslim communities to develop exchange programs, and recommends tapping celebrities and other successful individuals, both Muslim and non–Muslim, to help promote positive images of Muslim communities. The third aspect of the action plan encourages national governments and the European Union to establish objective indices for evaluating the success or failure of integration – indices that do not conflate cultural and religious integration. The plan also encourages governments to collaborate with NGO and community organizations to conduct voluntary–participation censuses that address the critical need for good statistical information on Europe’s Muslim communities, upon which effective public policy measures, among other things, depend heavily.

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© 2006, The Center for Dialogues: Islamic World - U.S. - The West

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