Theories of the State Accommodation of Islamic Religious Practices in Western Europe

Abstract

In their work on Muslims in Western Europe, social scientists often employ four theories to explain the state accommodation of Muslim minorities’ religious practices: resource mobilisation theory, political opportunity structure theory, ideological theories, and approaches highlighting the influence of church–state relations. In this article, I propose a dynamic-compound framework which outlines the interactions between these four theories, and argue that it is necessary to include a fifth independent variable to account for the religious traditions characteristic of a particular group. In analysing the state accommodation of the religious practices of Muslim minorities, taking the institutional framework of Islam into account clarifies the impact of church–state structures, based on Christianity and a history of conflict between church and state in Europe.

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