Turkish Islam in Germany: A Problematic Tradition or the Fifth Project of Constitutional Patriotism?

Abstract

Taking its vantage point from José Casanova's observation that Muslim communities worldwide seem to undergo a process of aggiornamento (adjustment), the paper asks why European publics nevertheless perceive the presence of religious Muslim communities as an extraordinary provocation. Examining the German case, the paper suggests that part of the answer lies in the way post-war European societies have forged a particular historical compromise (“constitutional patriotism”) between diverse socio-cultural projects (Christianity, socialism, liberalism, nationalism), based on the relativizing of the metaphysical foundations of these projects. It is suggested that the tensions with religious Muslim communities in Europe stem partially from the fact that Muslim communities are not yet incorporated in this historical compromise. This incorporation is hampered by the fact that, at least in the German example, this historical compromise has come to be defined in terms that not only exclude the historical experience of these Muslim communities, but build an inner-European consensus formulated explicitly in contrast to that experience. The inclusion of Muslim communities within this historical compromise would thus need to entail a partial rewriting of the “secularist” European historical narrative.