A world Without Islam pdfdrive com

Who Are the Muslims of Europe?
Muslims make up about 5 percent of the total EU population. France has the
largest number of Muslims, about 4.5 million, followed by 3 million in
Germany, 1.6 million in the UK, and more than half a million each in Italy and
the Netherlands. Under half a million each live in Austria, Sweden, and
Belgium. Of all this Muslim population, approximately half are foreign-born.
The first serious immigration of Muslims into Europe occurred in the 1960s,
sparked by Europe’s need for menial laborers to perform the kinds of work that
Europeans did not want to do. Thus began the era of the “guest workers.” What
was initially seen as a temporary arrangement by both sides soon became
semipermanent. Numbers increased when European states began to permit the
guest workers to bring family members to join them. A key problem for Europe
lay in the socioeconomic background of the immigrants: a high proportion of
them were unskilled and poorly educated workers who were less able to adapt
and integrate into the European social order; they have subsequently often
drifted into ethnic ghettoes. The predominantly working-class origins of
European Muslims contrast significantly with the more professional
backgrounds of Muslim immigrants to North America.
These populations come from different parts of the Muslim world: in France,
the majority is from North Africa; in the UK, the majority is from South Asia; in
Germany, most are from Turkey, and later from Bosnia and Kosovo. By ethnic
breakdown, Arabs make up 45 percent of total European Muslims, followed by
Turks and South Asians. Other Muslim groups are represented in much smaller
numbers. Clearly, the Muslim population is diverse both regionally and
linguistically and cannot be considered monolithic.
As the Sorbonne political scientist Jocelyne Cesari points out, “the
socioeconomic condition of European Muslims is one of great fragility,”