Facing ambiguous secularism: Revisiting the collective action problem among Muslims in Europe

Why don’t Muslims in Europe seem to organize collectively in order to advance common interests, living as religious minorities in secular states? In the 2000s, a small literature explored this question (Pfaff and Gill 2006; Warner and Wenner 2006). These contributions maintained that Muslims did not seem to organize collectively qua Muslims to a significant degree. The reason, they argued, was that Islam is a decentralized religion that is not conducive to collective action. Since then, no studies have explored this issue further. This paper updates and revisits this debate. When surveying the collective action landscape among Muslims across Europe, we see that the observation from the early 2000s still stands. There are few examples of successful political parties that mainly cater to Muslims, there are few large-scale Muslim demonstrations, and Muslim umbrella organizations are often plagued by conflicts and splits. I argue that this lack of collective action among Muslims remains a paradox. Muslims in Europe possess characteristics that have been linked to collective action and social movement formation. They possess a collective identity as Muslims, which is reinforced by anti-Islamic discourses in society at large. There are institutions in place - mosques and Islamic associations - that could coordinate collective action. Muslims in European states arguably also have some fundamental interests in common, which cross denominational and ethnic divides. Nevertheless, collective action on a large scale has not emerged. Building on a thorough case study of Muslim umbrella organizations in Norway, and a comparison with shadow cases in other countries, I claim that the existing explanations for this lack of collective action are insufficient. Diversity and decentralization among Muslims is not not an insurmountable challenge, given that there are many examples of Muslims cooperating closely across denominational lines. Another reason for this lack of collective action, I argue, is that Mu0slims in Europe are facing political conditions which are ambiguous - they can be perceived both as discriminatory and emancipatory. The kind of secularist arrangements they are facing sometimes ensures the rights of Muslims, and sometimes discriminates against them (Laurence 2012, Modood and Sealy 2024, Spektorowsky and Elfersy 2020). As a result of this ambiguity, Muslim elites sometimes become divided. In the Norwegian case, a part of the Muslim elite assumed that they could work with the authorities to ensure the interests of Muslims. Another part of the Muslim elite assumed that there was no point in cooperating closely with the authorities or non-Muslim organizations. As a result, neither a cooperative kind of collective action nor a defiant kind of collective action emerged in full force. Through a comparison with four shadow cases - France, Germany, Austria and the UK - I argue that this pattern can be found elsewhere as well. Collective action among Muslims in Europe is probably more likely to emerge under political arrangements and types of secularism which are less ambiguous: which are perceived as either fully discriminatory or fully emancipatory by significant parts of the Muslim population.