ABSTRACT
The history and current activities of Muslims in Europe sharply challenge older notions of “Muslim societies.” The very idea of “Europe” as a cultural region rests on notions of its Christian roots, and the recent debates about the European Constitution testify to the continued strength of these notions. The medieval Papal efforts to rally Christians to fight Muslims in the Crusades depended on a sense of an infidel enemy opposed to Christendom, and this way of thinking has continued to shape European attitudes toward Muslims. And yet belying this idea is the long presence of Muslims in Europe: in southern Spain, the Balkans, Turkey, and Russia. The expansion of British, Dutch and French empires led European traders and rulers to live in and eventually control many long-standing Muslim societies, and immigration from these societies to all parts of Europe has redefined what it is to be European. Muslims also have begun to question ideas about boundaries between a land of Islam and the lands of non-Muslims as they have settled in large numbers across Europe and begun to build Islamic social and religious institutions.
