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Problems and challenges

we can not go past this point without shedding some light on the Problems that Muslim communities in Europe are facing. The vast majority of Muslim immigrants living in Europe still do not know anything about the past and present of Europe.

The majority of Muslim immigrants do not know the history of the country where they live, its institutions, its intellectual figures and major officials. This ignorance deprives them of the chance to adapt to European society and integrate into it. Add to that, the vast majority of Muslims is neither educated nor intellectual; they are ignorant of the Islamic religious culture and the Western culture as well. Muslim communities also lack enlightened, mature, intellectual leadership that can encompass the immigrant Muslims and offer them the needed guidance to tread the right path.

Muslim communities also suffer from internal differences such as ethnic or sectarian disagreements. Among the most serious problems that face Muslims in Europe are those faced by the second and third Muslim generations in particular. The problems of the first generation are often confined to alienation from their homeland. However, the last two generations suffer from the risk of intellectual and spiritual alienation because of the lack of cultural communication with their countries of origin. Such Muslim generations grow up to be hesitant and confused, and sometimes even reject their origins, seeking to melt in the new society completely and lose their identities. The suffering reaches its peak when this generation disowns its origins and sides with its new environment that rejects it in turn.

The Arab migration to European countries was compulsory at the beginning, especially for the people of the Arab Maghreb who were under French occupation. Then, over time, it became voluntary and was controlled by objective circumstances. Colonialism was the main drive and motivation of Arab migration. However, with the passage of time it became motivated mostly by direct economic and social reasons.

Recent decades witnessed a noticeable increase in the number of Arab immigrants to Europe. Arab immigration even turned from male migration into family migration during the eighties.
In most cases, Arab migration to Europe was for the purpose of work. Most Arab immigrants are ineligible workers who usually carry out the most difficult and most demanding professions. In return, they receive lower wages compared to their fellow European workers. They usually reside in unhealthy and inappropriate dwellings that are isolated from other neighborhoods. Thus, they represent the least-affluent social group in terms of financial status in European society.

The children of Arab immigrants in Europe experience a range of problems, the most important of which is their failure at school. Most of them drop out of school (almost three-quarters of the children of Arab immigrants).

The percentage of academic failure and school dropout among children of Arab immigrants is very high. The selective educational policies that are adopted in Western countries direct the children of immigrants to vocational education in the same field as their fathers. This impedes their aspiration to practice the professions that require high technical expertise. Hence, these conditions create a sense of inferiority in the hearts of these children, depriving them of having pride in the traditions and values of their parents.

No one can deny that the deteriorating situation in most of the countries of the Islamic world was a direct reason behind this series of migrations, in addition to the scattered individualistic state from which Muslims suffered since the abolition of the Islamic Caliphate. The Islamic Caliphate was the protective shield of all Muslims anywhere in the world, and no one dared to derogate or violate the rights of Muslims until it fell. Since the fall of the Islamic caliphate til our present time, we have not found a clear and specific policy for the Arab and Islamic governments concerning the Arab-Muslim presence in Europe or the West in general.

One of the main intellectual challenges that Muslim communities in Europe are facing is the ever-present intellectual gap in Islamic history and in Islamic jurisprudence regarding Muslims in the West. The source of this gap is that throughout Islamic history scholars have been addressing non-Muslim communities who are living in Muslim lands. Many books were written and many rulings were developed to cover this topic thoroughly. However, these scholars – save a few - did not give much attention to the situation of Muslim communities living in the West.

Therefore, there is an urgent need to establish Islamic jurisprudence of Muslim minorities who live in non-Muslim countries. It is critical to study the lives and conditions of Muslim migrants in order to identify the optimal Islamic rulings that facilitate the lives of our brothers and sisters abroad.
There are some commendable efforts that have already started in this regard, including the establishment of the European Council for Fatwa and the World Federation of Muslim Scholars.

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Problems and challenges