The European market for Islam: Turkish Islamic communities and organizations in Germany and the Netherlands

This dissertation focuses on how different Islamic groups attempt to assert their authority to represent "True Islam" for Muslims living in Europe and how they cope with challenges from rivals with different interpretations. It focused on four Islamic communities (cemaat) that represented the spectrum from moderate to radical Islamic opinions: multi-national political Islamists (Milli Gorus), a mystical Sufi order (Suleymanli), Turkish civil Islam (Gulen) and a movement seeking an Islamic revolution in Turkey (Kaplancilar). The research included twelve months of intensive ethnographic fieldwork among Turkish Muslims in Germany and the Netherlands that included thirty formal interviews with leaders and activists.; Despite differences in goals and beliefs, leaders in all of these four communities played an intermediary role, negotiating between the social and religious needs of Muslims and the socio-economic, legal, and political context of Europe. Islamic communities (i.e. Milli Gorus and Gulen) with outward-oriented and decentralized religious authorities adapt their Islamic interpretations to Europe. Their religious activism in the public sphere, education, and inter-religious dialogue promotes Muslim integration. Inward-oriented and highly centralized Islamic communities, which are active in Quranic schools (Suleymanli) and mass mobilization of Muslims (Kaplancilar), hold on to their religious interpretations and isolate their followers from larger society.; A comparison of organized forms of religious authority indicates that while Islam in Europe is not a single fixed set of beliefs based on Islamic history and texts that allow no change, it is also not infinitely malleable because it cannot be interpreted and changed equally by individual Muslims. Instead Muslims engage in a multi-directional process of interpreting Islam, negotiating between the dogmatic principles and adapting aspects of their faith in the European context. There is thus no single form of assimilated "European Islam," but rather Islamic communities in Europe. The study shows that this tension has produced two responses: communities of believers who seek to develop new European forms of Islam while others not only resist that adaptation but also seek to radicalize their followers as a way to affirm their faith in an alien context.