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With more than 10 million Muslims living in Western Europe, states are struggling to accommodate the religious needs of Muslims in state-supported institutions. Such issues include whether to fund separate Islamic schools and how or whether to teach Islam in state-supported schools. Despite these common concerns, national governments vary widely in their response to the religious needs and practices of Muslim citizens and permanent residents. This paper looks at how Britain, France and Germany have resolved these issues. We explore how pre-existing Church-State practices and institutional arrangements structured the politics of state accommodation of Muslims' religious needs in each country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the media consumption of members of the Arab minority in Germany, and addresses the implications of the modes of media consumption on this group in general and in terms of differences according to gender and generation. The main claim of this study is that the access of minority members to the Arab satellite media in the 1990s has strengthened their sense of belonging to their Arab homeland and identity. Consequently, in national terms it creates a form of ‘instant Arab nationalism’ while, from a religious perspective, the media functions as a ‘cyber mufti’. Members of the first generation tended to consume mainly television media, while the younger generation, who grew up in the German culture and possess computer skills, tended to rely more on the Internet. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]