Muslims and Contemporary Religion-State Relations: On the Issue of “Churchification” of Islamin Europe
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Abstract
The problem of institutionalization of Islam has been one of the key topics in the context of the analysis of religious dynamics in modern Europe since the second half of the 1990s. In particular, researchers have pointed to the great variability of ways of integrating Muslim organizations into the system of state-confessions relations of various European countries in accordance with local, historically shaped models of interaction between the state and the dominant religious centers. One of the latest attempts to understand these processes can be found in the framework of “churchification” of Islam in Eastern and Western Europe. According to this approach, it is “church” – in its sociological and not Christian theological definition – that serves as the basic, often legally enshrined model of religious institutionalization in the European space. As a result, in order to receive recognition at the legislative level or even certain preferences from the state, Muslim organizations are forced to “churchify” themselves, i.e. to adapt institutional forms that are not relevant for Islam. At the same time, pursuing their own political interests, government agencies in some European societies seek to push Muslims to create single national representative centers (i.e. “Muslim churches”), despite significant ethnic and ideological variabilities of Muslim communities which can be a constant source of internal conflicts and competition. Overall, as this article demonstrates, while the “churchification” of Islam thesis has significant analytical value, it also has certain theoretical flaws that do not allow using it as an overarching explanatory framework. The problematic nature of this approach is also evident in what concerns the formation of the Muslim fields in Ukraine and Russia in the post-Soviet period.
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Islam; Europe; state; Muslims; Ukraine
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