Europe's Muslims: A Foreign Policy Issue

Some 15 to 20 million Muslims now reside permanently in Western Europe, which has led some observers to speak of a veritable "revolution.'' In this article it is suggested that "mutation'' might be a better term than "revolution''; the possibility that Muslims will dominate all of Western Europe (creating "Eurabia'') is remote; discrimination against Muslims undoubtedly exists, but other factors contribute to the difficulty of integration-including construction of a separate identity that reinforces an ethnic fracture within European society. The cultural and political links between Muslims in the West and their coreligionists elsewhere raise issues that are high on the agenda of global diplomacy.