Constructing and Deconstructing Islam in Europe: British and French Policies toward Moderate Muslims.

I will argue that there has been a shift in Muslim incorporation policies around the 1990s which privileged a “religious” component. I will explore this in two case studies, Great Britain and France, through a controlled case comparison coupled with a within-case design. Through an analysis of the historical processes, this paper will offer an argument for when and why religion rose in salience when it did -- starting in the 1990s and accelerating after internal security issues connected to the Muslim community in the early 2000s. This paper will then move to a closer examination of the policies to address the issue of Muslim incorporation, paying particular attention to how the British and French governments created new institutions and emphasized funding and research strands to legitimize certain actors, particularly moderate and mainstream Muslims. In looking at the form of policies, this paper will suggest that the important distinction to be made is not between church-state institutional structures but the more general philosophies regarding the role of religion in public life. This will result in a typology of the Anglo-American model versus the Continental European model. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]