The Emancipation of Europe's Muslims: The State's Role in Minority Integration.

• Author: Yegen, Brian Van Wyck
• Position: Book review

The Emancipation of Europe's Muslims: The State's Role in Minority Integration

By Jonathan Laurence

Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012), 392 pages, $30.95, ISBN: 9780691144221.

As Jonathan Laurence observes in the preface to The Emancipation of Europe's Muslims, calling attention to the extent of European governments' efforts to institutionally incorporate Muslims might seem Pollyannaish in a time of rising Islamophobia across the continent. Events subsequent to the book's publication, particularly the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France and the PEGIDA demonstrations in Germany would seem to encourage such objections. Nevertheless, as Laurence argues in his compelling and rigorous overview of European policies toward Islam, such instances of Islamophobia do not reflect any deeply rooted incompatibility of Islam with European liberal democracy. Instead, Islamophobia and restrictions on Islamic religious expression such as the Belgian burqa ban or the Swiss minaret referendum speak to anxieties about the growing incorporation and adaptation of Muslims in liberal European democracies.

Muslims, once conceived of as essentially and irreducibly foreign in European policies, are now being asked by the same governments to adapt culturally in order to receive recognition and access to state resources as a recognized religious minority. Laurence argues throughout the book--most directly in chapter four--that precedent for incorporating an ostensibly alien religious minority exists in the form of Jewish emancipation in the 19th century. The specific mechanisms of Muslims' incorporation--what Laurence deems neocorporatism--were also developed in a response to a historical crisis of the liberal state: in this case, working-class radicalism.

When confronted with far-left worker activism in the 1960s and 1970s, European states sought to defuse potentially violent extraparliamentary, transnational movements by bringing them within a democratic institutional framework. This was accomplished through the creation of intermediary, consultative bodies under the state's patronage with a representative monopoly. Participation was incentivized through access to recognition and state resources. The state could thus play the role of a gatekeeper, barring extremists and admitting moderate elements.

Laurence draws parallels between this neocorporatist response to working-class radicalism and the creation of Islam councils. These councils have...