Islamization

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In the historical sense, Islamization refers to the territorial expansion of the Islamic religious community in its early phase, which began after the death of the Prophet Mohammed and continued into the 10th century. In contemporary texts, Islamization is understood to mean an increase in the importance of the Islamic religion in states, regions or societies.

Under Islamic Rebirth (also Tadschdid or Sahwa , the return is called) understood to religious values and traditions, as in some Islamic countries took their starting point in the second half of the 20th century.

Islamization as a historical term

Unlike the conversion of a single person to Islam, the term Islamization describes a collective process of transformation in a historical-political dimension - partly analogous to Christianization .

Historically, the Islamic expansion led in the long term to the Islamization of the respective areas under Islamic rule: Although there was little interest in converting non-Muslims to Islam on the part of the Muslim rulers due to the great importance of the jizya for the Muslim tax revenues of the time, but due to their lower legal status as non-Muslim subjects , they often preferred a conversion to Islam. The Reconquista , through which all Muslims and Jews were expelled or forcibly Christianized (see also: Conversos ) , was directed against the Moorish rule in Spain since the High Middle Ages .

The last Islamization on European soil took place from the 15th century by the Ottomans in the Balkans ( Bosniaks , Albanians ), while in Greece it had only a very limited effect due to the strong cultural resistance to Ottoman domination . However, influences on the visual arts , music (e.g. numerous operas) and the kitchen can also be found in these areas .

According to classical Islamic law , a forced conversion is permitted for polytheists and apostates from Islam and, under certain circumstances, for women, children and prisoners of war: They can be given the choice between accepting Islam or death. Even in today's Islamic world there are several states that provide for the death penalty for apostasy from Islam (see apostasy in Islam # legal situation in the present ).

In the Islamization of West Africa , the Mali Empire (13th – 14th centuries) and the Songhairie (14th – 17th centuries), both of which were strongly oriented towards trade, played an important role. During this time, Dioula traders traveled to what is now the Ivory Coast . Its northern part was almost completely Islamized in the 18th century by preachers - called karamakow by the Dioula . The development of Islam towards a majority religion in the south of the Ivory Coast is one of the most important Islamization processes on the African continent in the last thirty years.

The Ottoman boy harvest is the name given to a consummation or forced recruitment and conversion practiced from the late 14th to the early 18th century, in which Christian, predominantly male youths were abducted from their families and Islamized, in order to subsequently place them in a prominent place in the To set up military and administrative service of the Reich; especially the Ottoman infantry, the elite troop of the Janissaries , were at times mainly recruited from the boys' harvest, "one of the strangest phenomena in Turkish history".

In the 20th century, Da'wa (“Call to Islam”) became the basis for social, economic, political and cultural activities as well as domestic and foreign policy strategies. The term also served to justify breaking away from the secular and colonialist West, to legitimize claims to an independent authority within nation states and to call for membership in the righteous Islamic community.

“Islamization” as a political catchphrase

Use of the term in Europe

The warning of the Islamization of Europe is regularly found in right-wing populist circles and is linked to nationalist motives and complaints of the threat of " foreign infiltration " and " population change ". In January 2008 in Antwerp, Belgium, the politicians Heinz-Christian Strache ( Freedom Party of Austria ) and Filip Dewinter ( Vlaams Belang ) as well as Markus Beisicht from the citizens' movement pro NRW presented a “European City Alliance against Islamization”. Their demands include, among other things, the registration of the religious community in every passport and the collection of fingerprints from "persons with an Islamic background". Strache was "appalled by the degree of Islamization and foreign infiltration" of Antwerp and called for an immediate immigration stop, as this was the only way to save "Europe from impending doom".

In connection with the thesis of an Islamization of Europe, reference is made to the social and cultural changes that are caused by this. The French philosopher Robert Redeker, for example, warned in 2006 against an “Islamization of thought” and cites as examples “swimming times only for women in public bathing establishments, the ban on caricaturing this religion, the right to a special menu for Muslim children in the school canteens, the fight for the Islamic headscarf in schools ”and finally the“ charge of Islamophobia against all free thinkers ”.

Some proponents of the thesis differentiate between Islam or Muslims in general, Orthodox Islam and Islamic fundamentalism . For example, the Göttingen sociologist and Muslim Bassam Tibi thinks : “Anyone who is familiar with the Islamic diaspora of Europe knows that it is not only the Islamists who dream of an Islamic Europe ruled by Sharia; Orthodox Muslims also do this and count Europe through demographic Islamization through migration to Dar al-Islam / House of Islam. ”However, Tibi adds that“ it is not about removing Islam from Europe, but about removing it from Europe as Euro-Islam to reconcile ”. Tibi criticizes above all the "hidden Islamization of Europe" through Islam, which is organized in mosque associations, which cultivates an "anti-secular and anti-European mosque culture" and "fights with all means for special rights for the Islamic community". The Islam officials of the mosque associations would be financed from Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Tibi cited in support of his assertions a document of the " Muslim World League ," which in the Asharq al-Awsat published on 28 July 1993: "The Muslim World League has at its substantive session in Cairo called for a new strategy for the Da'wah (call to Islam) ... This includes the establishment of Islamic centers in Europe ... to prepare the Muslims living there for their role in the future ... The application of Sharia as a guideline in the life of Muslims is to be demanded. "

The term Islamization is also used in conservative circles . Beat Christoph Bäschlin, a member of the Swiss Ministry of the Interior and author in the weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit , wrote in 1990:

“France is the bridgehead of the Islamic invasion. That is why France is a deadly threat to Europe today. Its opinion-making and political leadership caste systematically and extremely effectively promotes African-Asian immigration. Sooner or later the immigrant masses infiltrated into France will pour into the rest of Europe. […] Immigration was assigned a fundamental role in the strangulation of nation states and state nationalisms: a kind of unified European state people was programmed. By 1993 all French or other nationalism should be overcome and a kind of pan-European human race should emerge. Through a massive injection of Arab-Black African elements, a standardized tint should be achieved across Europe. "

Edmund Stoiber ( CSU ) warned in 2006 against a creeping “Islamization of Germany” and in this context called for the protection of Muslim girls from forced marriages , that preaching should be in German in the mosques and that the Muslim communities should outlaw so-called honor killings and extremists in their own ranks of the police should report.

When warnings of the Islamization of Europe, the term Eurabia coined by Bat Yeʾor is often used .

Criticism of the term "Islamization"

Daniel Bax (taz) accuses supporters of the Islamization thesis that they consider the foreign to be bad due to xenophobic reflexes and succumb to old fears of foreign infiltration. This opposing position recognizes no Islamization. Some of their representatives raise allegations of Islamophobia .

Björn Schwentker points out that the future scenarios are largely speculative and that no reliable statements can be made about the development. In addition, there is not enough data available to make a prognosis about the future population development of Muslims. There was no precise information on how many Muslims live in European countries today. In the summer of 2010, the dissertation of the sociologist Nadja Milewski was published, according to which the birth rate of migrant women is approaching the German birth rate, but with a significantly higher fertility of Turkish women also in the second generation. Jenny Stern describes the thesis of "Islamization" as a conspiracy theory and a narrative that seeks to construct a contrast between "we" and "the others". This thesis would also not take into account any Muslims with German citizenship, because they would "fall into both categories that the supporters of the 'Islamization' thesis want to so strictly separate from one another."

The data for prognoses are insufficient, as there are only a few European countries with current or reliable figures on the proportion of Muslims in the total population. A number of countries, including Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg and Spain, do not raise the creed question in censuses or other official documents. In Germany, this question was last raised in the 1987 census. Often people whose ancestors come from Islamic countries are automatically included in this. Based on national data and various no, medium and high immigration scenarios, researchers at the Pew Research Center estimated that the proportion of Muslims in Europe could rise to 7.4-14% by 2050. For Germany, the scientists at this institute come to a possible proportion of the population between 8.7 and 19.7% by 2050. According to the Federal Agency for Civic Education , “Islamization” cannot be proven.

literature

Historical

  • Adel Theodor Khoury : Tolerance in Islam . Kaiser, Munich / Grünewald, Mainz 1980, ISBN 3-459-01250-1 (Kaiser) / ISBN 3-7867-0848-7 (=  development and peace ).
  • Albrecht Noth : Early Islam . In: Ulrich Haarmann (Hrsg.): History of the Arab world . Beck, 1987, pp. 58-100.
  • Anton Minkov: Conversion to Islam in the Balkans. Kisve Bahasi Petitions and Ottoman Social Life, 1670-1730 ( The Ottoman Empire and its heritage, Volume 30). Leiden 2004, ISBN 90-04-13576-6 .
  • Yohanan Friedmann: Tolerance and Coercion in Islam. Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition . Cambridge University Press, 2006, ISBN 0-521-02699-7 .

Current

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Katharina Hierl: The Islamization of the German Integration Debate. On the construction of cultural identities, differences and demarcations in post-colonial discourse (= politics, community and society in a globalized world. Volume 13). LIT Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-643-11744-1 , p. 31.
  2. ↑ Re-Islamization. In: Federal Center for Political Education .
  3. ↑ Albrecht Noth : Early Islam . In: Ulrich Haarmann (Hrsg.): History of the Arab world. CH Beck, 1991. pp. 92 f.
  4. ^ The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Volume 9. Brill, Leiden, p. 484.
  5. ^ Yohanan Friedmann: Tolerance and Coercion in Islam. Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition. Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 106, 121.
  6. ↑ Cf. Marie Miran: Islam, histoire et modernité en Côte d'Ivoire . Karthala, Paris 2006, pp. 37-41.
  7. ↑ Cf. Marie Miran: Islam, histoire et modernité en Côte d'Ivoire . Karthala, Paris 2006, p. 8.
  8. ^ Basilike D. Papoulia: Origin and nature of the 'boy picking' in the Ottoman Empire. Munich 1963, p. 42.
  9. ^ Dawah in: Oxford Islamic Studies Online
  10. ↑ FPÖ vs. Islam: Strache founds “Alliance against Islamization”. In: Die Presse , January 16, 2008
  11. ↑ Strache confirms town twinning in Antwerp against the threat of Islamization in Europe. FPÖ press release, January 18, 2008
  12. ↑ Michaela Wiegel: A philosophy teacher on the run. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , October 6, 2006.
  13. ↑ Bassam Tibi : Europe is threatened with Islamization. In: Die Welt , May 28, 2002.
  14. ^ Bassam Tibi: The hidden Islamization of Europe. In: Basler Zeitung . October 11, 2016, accessed January 4, 2017 .
  15. ↑ Beat Christoph Bäschlin: Islam will eat us up! The Islamic onslaught on Europe and the European accomplices in this invasion . Selvapiana-Verlag, 1990, p. 11.
  16. ↑ Stoiber warns of the “Islamization” of Germany. ( Memento of October 22, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: Financial Times Deutschland , October 14, 2006.
  17. ↑ Daniel Bax: Islamization in the mind. In: the daily newspaper , March 26, 2007.
  18. ↑ Björn Schwentker : Everyone has a good reason. In: Die Zeit , June 22, 2006.
  19. ↑ Matthias Kamann: Migrant women adapt to the German birth rate. In: The world . August 10, 2010.
  20. ^ Nadja Milewski: Fertility of Immigrants. A Two-Generational Approach in Germany. ( Memento from March 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Springer, Hamburg 2010.
  21. ↑ Milewski 2010, p. 148.
  22. ↑ a b Jenny Stern: Conspiracy Theory “Islamization”. www.bpb.de, June 6, 2018
  23. ↑ Islam on the rise in demographics. In: Focus , April 23, 2007.
  24. ↑ Germany: Federal government replies to a major inquiry about Islam. ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) In: migration-info.de .

Web links

Wiktionary: Islamization  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations