This chapter's objective is to give an overview of Muslims in the European context before restricting the areas of research to two countries: France and Great Britain. The challenges implied by research on Islam and Muslims in the European context are highlighted, diving into the conceptualization of integration issues, first and foremost, identity debates, which imply certain constructions regarding Muslims’ loyalty. This general picture serves as a background to the second part which focuses on the framework of domestic politics and international relations, more specifically on Muslims and foreign policy. This part shows the specificities of the literature dedicated to this issue, especially assumptions, without strong evidence, of Muslim lobbying on foreign policy in Europe, assumptions inspired by ethnic lobbies in the United States.

I. Exploring Islam in Europe

Islam and Muslims in the West as an Object of Research

The European Union is home to 13 million Muslims, representing 6% of Europeans (Pew Research Centre 2016). Germany with 4 760 000 Muslims, France with 4 710 000 and the United Kingdom with 2 960 000 have the largest populations (Hackett 2016). The share of Muslims has been increasing, going from 4% of the total European population to 6% in 2010 (Hackette 2016).

Issues related to Islam in the European sphere have increasingly been at the forefront of European public spaces and decision-makers’ agendas. For Jocelyne Césari, “Muslim immigration to Europe and North America can be seen as the foundational moment for a new transcultural space – a space where individuals live and experience different cultural references and values that are now disconnected from national contexts and boundaries” (Césari 2009a, 162). Europe is largely secularized, and the majority of people living in European countries do not in fact consider religion to be important in their lives (The Pew Global Attitudes Projec 2008, 19). The forceful emergence of a transnational religion, Islam, in a secularized public space, thus necessarily leads to tensions: European Muslims’ relations with their respective governments are difficult (Silvestri 2007a, 169-170). The quite spectacular debate over the ‘burkini’ which raged in France in Summer 2016 was only one of the multiple controversies occasionally emerging in relation to Islam in the public sphere.