176. Karen ArmstrongMuslims in a Minority
The spectre of Islamic fundamentalism sends a shiver
through Western society, which seems not nearly so threat-
ened by the equally prevalent and violent fundamentalism of
other faiths. This has certainly affected the attitude of West-
ern people towards the Muslims living in their own countries.
Five to six million Muslims reside in Europe, and seven to
eight million in the United States. There are now about a
thousand mosques each in Germany and France, and five
hundred in the United Kingdom. About half the Muslims in
the West today have been born there to parents who immi-
grated in the 1950s and 1960s. They rejected their parents'
meeker stance, are better educated and seek greater visibility
and acceptance. Sometimes their efforts are ill-advised, as, for
example, Dr. Kalim Siddiqui's call for a Muslim parliament in
the United Kingdom in the early 1990s, a project which re-
ceived very little support from most British Muslims but
which made people fear that Muslims were not willing to in-
tegrate into mainstream society. There was immense hostility
towards the Muslim community during the crisis over The Sa-
tanic Verses, when Muslims in Bradford publicly burned the
book. Most British Muslims may have disapproved of the
novel, but had no desire to see Rushdie killed. Europeans
seem to find it difficult to relate to their Muslim fellow
countrymen in a natural, balanced manner. Turkish migrant
workers have been murdered in race riots in Germany, and
girls who choose to wear a hijab to school have received ex-
tremely hostile coverage in the French press. In Britain, there
is often outrage when Muslims request separate schools for
their children, even though people do not voice the same ob-
jections about special schools for Jews, Roman Catholics or
Quakers. It is as though Muslims are viewed as a Fifth Col-
umn, plotting to undermine British society.