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Katherine BullockWestern EuropeThe political mobilization of
Muslim minorities in the West:
a gender (un)friendly project?
Mass migration movements are very sympto-
matic of this age we call global. Massive flows of
people move from north to south, from east to west
to seek a better future for themselves and their chil-
dren (Appadurai 2000). During the 1950s and the
1960s a sizeable number of Muslims participated
in an exodus from south to north within the scope
of larger labor agreements that brought them to
Western Europe (see, for example, the case of Bel-
gium in Martens 1976). Having left with the hope
of returning home after a few years of hard work,
they found that the few years became an indefinite
period once the second generation was born. Today
this diaspora of Muslims, which is ethnically very
heterogeneous in its composition, forms with its 12
million citizens one of the largest religious minori-
ties in Western Europe (Dassetto et al. 2001). How-
ever, the considerable unemployment rate and low
level of education make this group also one of the
weakest groups on the sociopolitical level. In most
western europe 293Western European countries the Muslim popula-
tions are locally perceived as a problem category,
which can only be dealt with through adjusted pol-
icy measures focused on the key concept of integra-
tion. Events like those of 11 September 2001 have
added to this problematic perspective through
inscribing this group into a wider, global discourse
in which terrorism and security are the key words
(Zemni 2002, Shahid and van Koningsveld 2002).
The actual development of European Islam is mon-
itored on the premise that certain tendencies may
develop that could threaten the national security.
In a context in which Islam is perceived as a
threat and Muslims are seen as a problem, several
counter-movements have been developing to con-
test these a priori racist positions. At first these
protest movements mainly organized themselves as
a reaction against the electoral successes of extreme
right movements in several European countries and
also against the persistent exclusion of Muslims.
The driving ideology of universal humanism of this
first anti-racist movement, however, has under-
rated the importance that minorities accord to the
recognition of their cultural and religious identities
(Modood 1997). This importance in the last de-
cades has become clear through the mobilization of
different groups around cultural and religious
claims, for example the Islamic headscarf issue in
most Western European countries. More than just
seeking socioeconomical and political equality, these
groups redefine the notion of citizenship, including
a recognition of their religious and cultural identity
(one of the clearest illustrations of this development
can be found in the spectacular rise of the Arab
European League in Belgium and in Holland). The
so-called neutrality of the universalistic premises of
citizenship is defied and unmasked as a particular
white middle-class self definition (Werbner 2003).
The notion of identity politics – to which this last
political mobilization refers – is, however, not an
undisputed concept, either in politics or in theoret-
ical writing. In a large sense identity politics refers
to any political mobilization centered around a par-
ticular identity, be it ethnic, sexual (women’s issues,
gay movement), or functional (labor movement
centered around the workers as a defined category)
(Calhoun 1994). In this entry this concept is used
primarily to refer to the mobilization of ethnic and
religious groups. The entry tries to offer a summary
elaboration of this issue through a focus on the
relationship between identity politics and women’s
rights. When the political mobilization of Muslim
minorities in Western Europe is discussed, the issue
of gender quickly pops up into the foreground.