FP: Jonathan Laurence, welcome to Frontpage Interview. 

Laurence: Thanks for your interest in our book.

FP: What inspired you to write this book?

Laurence: Justin Vaisse and I found that many of the accounts of Islam in France coming out of the media and think tanks were light on data and heavy on fatalism. We were struck by the unavailability of social scientific analysis of this complex topic for English-speaking audiences and wanted to add some facts to the debate. The image of "Eurabia," for example, is compelling -- but it doesn't square with the fieldwork, interviews and data collection we had been carrying out since the year 2000.

FP: Ok, for the sake of our readers, explain a bit what the image of “Eurabia” means exactly and why that image doesn’t square with the facts. What facts are you referring to?

Laurence: The notion of Eurabia, popularized by the Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, relies on Bernard Lewis's projection of an "Islamicized" Europe by the end of this century. This mutant continent in the making would be hostile to the US and Israel, and would be governed by Shari'a law. In the writings of pseudonymous Bat Ye'or, who has promoted the term Eurabia, "dhimmitude" (minority status for non-Muslims) is never far away. 

Ye'or engages in a fanciful reading of some early 1970s trade agreements and the "Euro-Arab Dialogue" (EAD) to justify her views that Europe long ago succumbed to an Arab-Muslim invasion. Yet I don't quite know what she means by this. Keep in mind that the EAD began soon after the Netherlands and the US were hit with the oil embargo. The aim of these diplomatic and commercial ties, from the Europeans' perspective, was to keep a steady flow of oil during the energy crisis. This was also clearly a power play to reassert French and European diplomatic and commercial weight after the postwar period of decolonization; 1973 was just over a decade after French withdrawal from its last Arab outpost, in Algeria. The politicians involved didn't see why the region should be left to be divvied up into American or Soviet spheres of influence.

From the perspective of some of the oil producing Arab states involved, the EAD was a forum in which to pursue economic ties and to press the case of the Palestinians and Israel's Arab neighbors who had just suffered another military defeat in the Yom Kippur war. So the participating Arab governments implicitly used the "oil weapon" in order to broach the question of Palestine. Yet isn't this just the kind of discussion that Saudi princes have with American Presidents?

I just don't see how this all adds up to a grand European capitulation. In fact, this was the moment when France began a major push towards energy independence through nuclear power. Precisely at the time of the embargo, moreover, European states with growing immigrant minorities from North Africa and Turkey officially ended mass labor migration -- there were perhaps 2-3 million migrant workers living in the European Community then, mostly single men. And no one can accuse the French (who have the largest Muslim minority in Europe) or the Germans (who have the second-largest) of being overly accommodating towards cultural or religious diversity. At least not with a straight face. To the extent that European governments accepted Arab states' offer of cultural programs for migrants at that time - e.g. in Arabic language and far less often, religious programs - they were motivated by a desire to eventually facilitate return migration and/or to police potential religious extremists who posed a threat to their home countries' political stability. 

Under examination, the Eurabia claim boils down to an attempted explanation of Europeans' contemporary support for Palestinians in the Israeli-Arab conflict. But even as such it is unsatisfactory: it isn't clear to me how European attitudes towards Israel --which are hardly uniformly hostile -- would be any different without their Muslim minorities. 

Finally, in my last several years of field research and interviews across Europe -- for Integrating Islam with Justin Vaisse (2006), for the report I wrote for the International Crisis Group on Islam in Germany (2007), and for my own PhD thesis on Muslims and the state in Europe (2006) -- I have not received the impression that the continent is on the verge of "Islamicization." There is indeed a new, visible minority. It creates a spectacular new set of policy challenges, including the potential threat of terrorism. But the integration problems that we witness do not seem linked to Islam as a religion, per se. It would take another discussion to get into how European governments have addressed the religion issue in concrete and even constructive ways in the last few years -- the French Council for the Muslim Religion, the German Islam Conference, the Italian Islamic Consultation, etc. These are all signs of state strength to me, not of weakness, since they are wrestling with the fundamental challenge of how to "domesticate" a transnational religion: an issue that preoccupied 19th century states as well (though with Catholicism and Judaism instead of Islam).

FP: I don’t quite get your point about the "oil weapon" and the analogy to the Saudi-U.S. relationship. You are assuming, without evidence, that the Saudi connection with US presidents has been benign. And it clearly hasn’t been. And this is all the more reason to regard everything connected here with suspicion.

I also find it interesting that you do not mention the EU pledges to eschew assimilation and foster the growth of Islamic culture in Europe. You also do not mention demographic trends either.

Furthermore, I am not so sure that how the integration problems we see are not linked to Islam as a religion. I think many Muslims in Europe would have quite a bit to say in reference to their religion in explaining why they don’t want to integrate into their host societies. Readers are welcome to read my recent interviews with Bat Ye’or, Bruce Bawer and Melanie Phillips, to consider the alternative thesis that Eurabia may not be such an unrealistic scenario, and that Muslims may indeed pose a threat to Europe -- and precisely because of the theological mandates of their religion.

Laurence: It appears we are coming to these questions from different perspectives and experiences. 

Please tell me which French policies towards its Muslim minorities would fall into the category of "eschewing assimilation and fostering the growth of Islamic culture"? Additionally, if that were indeed a Europe-wide policy agenda, don't you think it would have been easier in the past for Muslims to get building permits for mosques, separate sections in cemeteries, halal slaughter facilities, visas for imams, or religious instruction for their children in schools? These accommodations were hardly forthcoming. Indeed we've seen laws against headscarf wearing, mandatory co-education in physed classes, deportations of radical imams, etc. To the extent that religious accommodations have emerged over the course of the last few years, they resemble existing arrangements for other faith groups and are subject to rather strict state oversight.

I appreciate your instinct to be suspicious and look for "everything connected here." But try to take a step back. The relationship of Europe and the Arab world is a nexus of diplomacy, trade, pragmatism and past history and cannot be reduced to a single variable. I didn't say that the Saudi-US relationship was benign, just that one can consider the ways in which US foreign policy can be distinguished from its energy policy. Is the US less supportive of Israel because of the government's close relationship with oil-producing Arab states who themselves don't recognize the Jewish state? European policies towards the Arab world are similarly the expression of their complex sets of national interests. This doesn't mean the US and Europe see eye to eye on these matters, or that they ever will. But their divergences cannot be explained simply by pointing to some secret Euro-Arab pact from 1973.

Finally, you raise an interesting point about the "theological mandates" of religion. But don't these change over time? Recall the connection between the development of civic and political rights for Jews and the emergence of the Reform Judaism movement in the 19th century. There is a spectrum of Muslim theologians -- from the very conservative to the very liberal -- who are at work across Europe to align the obligations of faith and the duties of citizenship. This does not happen overnight, but there are some promising developments.

FP: Well, suffice it to say that the mandate of jihad in the Islam religion is something quite different than anything that exists in Judaism and Christianity. All the schools of Islamic jurisprudence teach that it is part of the responsibility of the umma to subjugate the non-Muslim world through jihad.

But we’ll have to save the debate over this matter and the others for another forum.

So tell us the critical challenges that Islam poses to France today.

Laurence: Many Muslims in France experience socio-economic integration problems that do not have anything to do with their religion in particular, but which in the aggregate can threaten social stability - as we saw in October-November 2005. High unemployment and spatial segregation are chief among these. The religion itself, as it is practiced by the vast majority of Muslims in France, poses mostly practical challenges that are typical of newly settled religions, e.g. inadequate prayer spaces, insufficient religious personnel, and regulatory issues that still need to be ironed out (e.g. cemeteries, animal slaughter, etc.). The challenges of terrorism and anti-Semitism emanating from the Muslim population, which Justin Vaisse and I discuss at length in separate chapters, are also critical.

FP: Just to crystallize things: it should be the responsibility of Muslims to assimilate into the values of their new host society, right?

Laurence: I'm not sure what you mean by assimilation -- but if you mean respect for the law and speaking the local language then yes, sure. But smart governments will think of ways to encourage everyday integration without placing the entire onus on migrants and their descendants. If the children of immigrants do not have good educational opportunities and job prospects, or if they face discrimination at work or in housing searches, etc., then it is the state's responsibility to do something about this. 

FP: Well I wonder whose responsibility it is to do something about the reality of many Muslim immigrants despising their host society, not wanting to integrate or assimilate in any way, and doing everything in their power to destroy the host society and to create a Sharia state in its place.

Laurence: You could begin to satisfy your curiosity about this reality by looking at poll data from Pew, Gallup, Zogby, the US State Department (see pp.45-47), or the French Institute for International Relations (IFRI). I humbly suggest these supplements to your Bawer, Ye'or and Phillips reading list; these data tell a rather different story and I encourage you to look at them. 

You raise a fundamental question about diverse societies yet I fear you miss the forest for a single tree. Are you ready to ask Hasidic or Amish communities in the US to "integrate and assimilate"? Would you ask local archbishops to renounce their implicit (or explicit) legislative agendas? If not, it's worth considering how to extend your practice of religious tolerance to include Islam in western societies. Muslim populations, just like Jews and Catholics and many other groups, include some more fervent believers than others, including some who would like to live according to their own rules and/or who would like the majority society to adopt their particular set of values. So long as they pursue these goals in the same peaceable fashion that observant Jews and Catholics and others now do, I don't see how you could exclude Muslims from the pluralist framework in contemporary western political systems. 

FP: Again, I think you are overlooking that the imperative to subjugate the world under the rule of Islamic law is deeply embedded within Islamic tradition (Qur’an 9:29,  Sahih Muslim 4294; and a host of other evidence from all the Sunni madhahib and Shi’ite sources). This is the threat of radical Islam from abroad and also from within. There is nothing comparable in the cases of Jews and Christians.

But let's move on. Tell us some of the ingredients about Muslim integration in France.

Laurence: The existence of a universal model of citizenship and the accessibility of French language and culture are important ingredients. French Muslims' optimism about their future and their faith in French institutions --repeatedly demonstrated in the opinion surveys cited above -- will also remain a key factor in everyday integration. French politicians received a major wake-up call with the riots of 2005, however, and will need to remain vigilant that "liberté, fraternité, egalité" does not become an empty slogan.

FP: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about Muslim integration in France as well as in the pluralistic and democratic West overall?

Laurence: It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future. But it seems that Muslims in France and elsewhere in the West are going through a process of integration -- and reconciliation of the competing claims of religion and politics -- similar to what Catholics, Protestants and Jews went through before them. This makes me optimistic overall but I'm mindful that previous experiences of emancipation and integration were not all unmitigated successes. 

FP: But again, surely you cannot compare these experiences. Christians and Jews believe in the separation of Church and State. Islam rejects this separation.

Laurence: It is interesting that you say "Christians and Jews" believe in the separation but "Islam" does not. You can find plenty of fodder for sweeping generalizations like the one you just made (or the opposite) in the original texts of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. What matters, in my view, is how people live their religion today -- especially those outside of their respective holy lands. As Justin Vaisse and I write in Integrating Islam, there is no single "Islam" -- it is what Muslims make of it. 

FP: Well it doesn’t really matter whether it is interesting or not that I say that Judaism and Christianity support a separation of Church and State and that Islam does not, because all of this is independent of the reality that it is a fact. That’s why Christians and Jews built societies, and today live in societies, that respect the principle of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s. This way of living is rooted in their theological texts. Islam rejects the separation of Church and State. It does not support a secular sphere.

So yes, Islam is what Muslims make it. But unfortunately to make Islam a religion that spawns a culture where the secular sphere is respected, and where individual rights are guaranteed, Muslims will have to remake their religion and change the theological mandates that negate the possibility of individual rights in a secular society.  As I mwntioned earlier, all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence teach that it is part of the responsibility of the umma to subjugate the non-Muslim world through jihad. That we have some Muslim allies that would like to change this reality is true. That they face a huge task remains a troubling reality.

Laurence: You may have missed my point, but at least we can agree that this is a huge task. 

FP: Jonathan Laurence, thank you for joining us today.

Laurence: I appreciate the invitation.