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  Muslims in Europe: "There is a Real Fear of Radical Imams"

Muslims in Europe "There is a Real Fear of Radical Imams"

Part 2: Continue reading the interview on page 2

SPIEGEL: You highlight the growing problem of mixed messages facing the Muslim community in Europe. In Germany, for example, the relaxation of naturalization laws to 'welcome' Muslims, at the same time as some states are banning the headscarf and declaring that the country is a Judeo-Christian state.

Klausen: I think politics and ignorance both play a big role in this. The double messages are unavoidable at the moment when you've got voters who are angry at the levels of immigration, and about Muslims in particular. Nicolas Sarkozy, for example, is giving out very mixed messages as he attempts to rein in the far-right anti-immigrant vote while at the same time being supportive of Islam. But the politicians are playing a dangerous game. Just look at the Netherlands, where there are up to 60 attacks a month on Muslim property and Mosques. Politicians there need to be very careful about the language they use. People are very bitter about it. All these mixed messages are serving to consolidate Muslims as a group in a way which they were not linked before. It isn't just encouraging radicalism, though, but also increased political mobilization. In Britain, for example, where there is a very strong sense that Muslims are discriminated against, 87 percent of all the Muslims in the country eligible to vote turned out to cast ballots in May's election, which was much higher than the general turnout.

SPIEGEL: You point out that we simply do not know how many Muslims there are in Europe -- do you see this as a problem?

Klausen: It is a problem, yes, because it means you cannot target public policy. If you do not know the figures, you cannot allocate budgets. In France, for example (where censuses do not ask about the respondent's race or religion), the government is flying blind. This causes even bigger problems, because young Muslims see that there are zero job opportunities, and then you get urban legends starting about how if you apply for a job with a 'Christian' name you will get it, but if you apply for the same job with a 'Muslim' name you will be turned down. In France, there is simply no way to contradict stories like this, whereas in Britain, where they do have the statistics, they are able to see when there has been an improvement, and it helps to put things in perspective.

SPIEGEL: We've recently seen problems in France and in Britain involving some of the areas where many Muslims are living in close-knit communities or ghettos like the banlieues. Do you think something needs to be done to change this? Does Europe need a big gesture like the bussing schemes which were attempted in the United States?

Klausen: Yes, I think Europe does need a large, dramatic gesture. If you look at the Bronx, for example, and LA, the renovation projects there have actually worked. It takes a long time, a decade and a half, but to start a building program, to go in and start razing these public housing projects is actually meaningful. You can't do that in places like Bradford or Kreuzberg, but you could do it in some of the suburbs around Paris, and I have been surprised that there hasn't been any attempt to use any of the regional development program to do something like that. Birmingham is trying to rebuild its center, but there they have hauled in a casino, of all things, to do it -- that's not terribly intelligent. Bussing could be tried, but only on a volunteer basis. I think one of the big lessons from the US desegregation program is that one has to be careful not to reach for really coercive measures, and bussing did create a horrible conflict.

SPIEGEL: You interviewed people in six very different countries - is it possible to say where integration policies are working best and where they aren't?

Klausen: There are some striking differences. Partly that is to do with the history of immigration to a particular country, but also it has to do with basic geographical and economic factors. For instance Denmark and the Netherlands are doing much better in educating young immigrants, but they have the worst employment records for immigrants, that is in part because they have very lenient anti-discrimination policies, practically non-existent, and also because they are reliant on small employers to create jobs. In many ways, France is simply the country that has failed in the last 10 years, more than any other, though that is partly because France's economic growth has been really poor. By comparison, Britain has had a pretty robust economic growth and that makes it easier to absorb this younger generation. Talking to Muslim leaders about what they think is needed, they all said they wanted to see more anti-discrimination legislation. I pointed out that the EU's rules on it, which came into effect two years ago, were the first of their kind, and yet it is still legal in most of Europe to stop someone from renting a room in your house for whatever reason you decide –- religion, race, whatever. And these things are not being addressed. It is about a change in mindset, and there is no quick fix for that.

SPIEGEL: Do you see the situation in France as a hiccup in the process of integration, or is it a warning sign of a phenomenon which could spread to other countries that have large Muslim populations?

Klausen: I think that many local governments are very anxious right now. There are a number of communities where unemployment rates regularly hit 40 to 50 percent -- towns around London for example, Luton, Tottenham, where you could imagine something like the riots happening, but I think one has to bear in mind the French geography, the city planning was a big issue in this case. I can't see something like the riots happening in Berlin's Kreuzberg neighborhood, where the local authorities have worked hard. Provision of local services, community policing, working with residents, all these things play a role, and they were entirely absent in the French case, which is unique because of the high degree of segregation.

SPIEGEL: Is the problem simply European racism?

There was a lot of sentiment among the people I spoke to that Europeans really have a problem with pluralism. It goes very deep. In my personal experience I am shocked by the kind of statements people feel free to make about other people. In Europe you have politicians and others who say things which would be completely unacceptable in the United States. A Danish newspaper, for example, recently ran a competition for cartoonists about how to draw a cartoon of the prophet Mohammed -- things like this are a deliberate effort to insult. The lack of respect and understanding for other people's sensitivities is extraordinary. I also think the Muslim community is a bit at fault here -- and this is where I stick my neck out -- because I think there has been a tendency for many Muslims to circle the wagons, and for moderate Muslims not to speak up, not to willingly display that disagreement among Muslims is okay. The truth of the matter is that Muslims are like everybody else, they have different views of what their faith means and they disagree among themselves about what the solutions are and those problems. An open debate would be very useful to everybody, because we would get an overall view of where possible compromise positions are.

Interview conducted by Bryony Jones