ABSTRACT
European nations face a paradox: even though they seek to facilitate the socioeconomic integration of Muslims, anti-terrorism and security concerns fuel a desire to compromise liberties and restrict Islam from the public space. At the same time, this visibility of Islam in public spaces has re-opened heated discussions on the nature and content of European secularisms. State actions are critical in both the securitization and the reshaping of Islam in secular spaces. These two processes are paradoxically centripetal: the former tends to construct Islam as an exception, while the second tends to normalize Islam to include it into the state-church template specific to each country.
