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Islam in Europe – The Exception to the Rule?, by Olivier Roy

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Deculturation and Christianity

The phenomenon described in the context of Islam affects Christianity, too. It manifests itself in the continuous drifting apart of national and traditional Protestantism as well as in Protestant communities which are mostly influenced by the U.S.A. There is a danger that traditional Protestant churches which hold more liberal views than the Evangelical ones (with regard to abortion, homosexuality or divorce) may fall behind.

In Denmark, the situation is quite unusual, as there is no separation between Church and State. Protestantism is the official religion (it is the only country in Europe where there is no separation between the institution of the Church and the state, thus no secular sphere). Catholics, Jews, and Muslims must register their births and marriages with a pastor. Nevertheless, Denmark might be the least "Christian” country in Europe (that is also the reason why the integration of church and state does not cause similar tensions as in Greece or even Spain). Protestants do not return to religion through their traditional churches. The born-again and converted believers tend to follow the charismatic direction which offers a perfectly standardized product. If we examine religious TV channels, it is only the language that differs; the content of the sermons, the gestures, and often even the background are identical. The only point of reference is the Bible which is taken literally. In the great tradition of the Pentacostal movement, language is not a bearer of culture but a purely technical instrument of communication. The message does not change and is to be passed on, irrespective of the cultural context which is ignored rather than fought.

The Evangelical movement is particularly active in recruiting new followers where it finds culturally uprooted people: among immigrants (e.g., among Hispanics in the U.S. but also among people in Spain) and among people in social or societal crises (in West Africa, Central Asia or Albania). It has had considerable success with the Roma in France. Paradoxically, after it proselytized first among traditional Protestants and later among Catholics, especially Christians from the Orient, it is now spreading among Muslims (in Central Asia, but also in the Maghreb and Europe) and even among Jews (such as "Jews for Jesus,” an organization that tries to introduce Jews to a Jewish version of Christianity by invoking the first Christians in the "Holy Land.” There is often tension between Evangelicals and the "national” churches, especially Orthodox ones, which outlaw cults and Protestantism. On the other hand, the Orthodox Christian churches have increasingly identified themselves with individual nation states (sovereign countries, whether Ukraine or Macedonia, want their own patriarchs). Many thus deprive themselves of the opportunity of conversion, except for a few churches which define themselves beyond the European paradigm of the nation-state.

Located in an area of conflict defined by a European identity on the one side and the dechristianizing (secularization) of Europe, the increased appearance of priests and movements from the developing world and above all, a fascination with charisma on the other side, the Catholic Church is also experiencing difficulties in shaping its relation with culture. On the one hand, it sees itself as an expression of culture or, in fact, does not perceive a contradiction between belief and culture (just as the antinomy between faith and philosophy found one or even several solutions in the teachings of Thomas Aquinas); on the other hand, it tries hard to separate its religious message from a cultural environment perceived as an Atheist negation of the Catholic religious message as its outrage at the success of Dan Brown's work "The Da Vinci Code” shows.

The following incident furnishes further proof. In April 2005, the Catholic Church in France succeeded in getting the Court of Appeals to prohibit an advertising campaign that used Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper and replaced the apostles by young, sparsely clad women (according to the image of the female apostles in "The Da Vinci Code”). The call to prohibit the depiction of the Last Supper in advertisements raises the question of how the Catholic Church understands Christian symbols. Are they universal and part of the occidental culture or are they the property of the community of believers? In the latter case, is the community represented by an institution, and if so, is it the Catholic Church? One cannot simultaneously fight for Christianity as the cultural foundations of a secular Europe and for an institution to continue its monopoly of managing religious symbols.

The Vatican pleaded to make reference to Europe's Christian roots in the preamble of the proposed European constitution. When this request was turned down, the Holy See declared, "What is being rejected is a historic fact and the Christian identity of the people of Europe.” By now, only a minority of people in Europe practice religion. The Christian identity as mentioned by the Church in connection with the European constitution was not one of a community of believers but of a cultural community where faith does not play a central role. Religious symbols belong to non-believers as well as to believers. A living culture constantly faces new changes, new perspectives, and new interpretations, even in its everyday aspects. To insist that one has a common heritage also means that the individual must be allowed to claim it, even if to make a parody of it. If the advertising industry has won the right to use the Last Supper, then it would have been because it means something to us. This new perspective is nothing but a tribute to familiar religious images (in Yemen such a joke would make no sense).

Prohibiting the ironic, even blasphemous use of a religious paradigm means taking it out of its cultural context and using it for sacral purposes only, thereby making it the exclusive good of the community of believers which strives for recognition as such. It is no longer culture that shapes a person's identity but one's religious faith alone. "Pure” religion is one that has no cultural links whatsoever. By securing control over the administration of religious symbols, the Catholic Church reinforces the opposite of what it intended to communicate when it insisted on the importance of Christian culture in Europe. It no longer defends the principle of universality but that of a closed community, even a minority that expects the law to protect the feelings of its members. It represents a type of community logic similar to that of the opponents of sexual jokes or of those people who defend the rights of homosexuals.

In this sense, the Church's behavior does not differ from what one sees among other religions, including Islam. Religion is experiencing a renaissance by detaching itself from culture, cutting loose religious indicators from their social context, and drawing a bold dividing line between religious followers on the one side and non-believers, those breaking away from their faith, and skepticals on the other. This development was behind the call for banning Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses.” This is understandable in an environment characterized by cultural uprooting and loss of culture which are pack and parcel of migration. When society no longer reflects religious contents, then explicit norms, even sanctions must be introduced. Fundamentalism, whether Christian-Evangelical or Islamic-Salafist, has known this for a long time. It recruits new followers who have recently been culturally uprooted, and it offers them a pure and virtual community of true believers as an alternative. The reactions of the churches show that deculturation is now taking place in the Occident. With the Catholic Church separating religion from culture, it becomes yet another virtual community. The more or less Christian culture that Europe justly claims to be based on has not much to do with the pure, fragile faith that needs to be protected by law. Religion has disbanded from culture; the church has become involved in secularization.

Deculturation weakens religion as faith depends on having a "community of believers” and faith itself. Consequently, the mutual convergence of current forms of religiosity (spirituality) leads to two conflicting developments: convergence of values and a clear divergence from dogma and the separation of the community. So we have come to witness how Evangelicals, conservative Catholics, and devout Muslims fight against homosexual marriage, pornography, and blasphemy (the Vatican, too, condemned the Danish Mohammed caricatures while many Islamic institutions called for a ban of "The Da Vinci Code”). Such agreement in terms of values goes hand in hand with the crisis of ecumenism and the inter-religious dialog. Pope Benedict XVI has not continued the tradition of the Assisi meetings and has emphasized (as Salafists and Wahhabists have done) that there is only one truth. Religions are drawing new borders; fronts are hardening. Issues such as conversion and apostasy are moving into focus.

At the same time, this illustrates the interplay between believers of the different religions. While the peaceful coexistence of Christians and Muslims in the Near and Middle East for over one thousand years was characterized by a lack of theological dialog and a profound indifference towards people of other faiths, today Western religious followers are not so much in conflict with other religions but with secularization. To admit that the community of believers has become a minority in a secular environment results in the fact that they prefer to deal with their faith instead of reforming society, where their influence is dwindling. Their call for respect and recognition involves the internalization of their minority status. In this sense, Islam in Europe presents an opportunity for Muslims all over the world to reform themselves – not in terms of dogma but in terms of their relation to the world.

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