Islam, Europe and Emerging Legal Issues brings together vital analysis of the challenges that Europe poses for an expanding Islam and that Islam poses for Europe, within their ever-evolving religious, legal, and social environments. This book gathers some of the best thinking on Islam and the law affecting current and contested issues that can no longer be ignored, particularly as they have found their way before the European Court of Human Rights. Contributors include leading authorities who are working at the heart of this generation's law and religion questions in Europe and across the world. This book outlines implications for all those who look to Europe-from both within and without-for models of human rights implementation and multi-cultural accommodation.

Islam, Europe and Emerging Legal Issues brings together vital analysis of the challenges that Europe poses for an expanding Islam and that Islam poses for Europe, within their ever-evolving religious, legal, and social environments. This book gathers some of the best thinking on Islam and the law affecting current and contested issues that can no longer be ignored, particularly as they have found their way before the European Court of Human Rights. Contributors include leading authorities who are working at the heart of this generation's law and religion questions in Europe and across the world. This book outlines implications for all those who look to Europe-from both within and without-for models of human rights implementation and multi-cultural accommodation.

11 Concluding remarks, Giorgio Conetti

Cultural and religious identity and family law are inter-related in a number of ways and raise various complex issues. European legal systems have taken various approaches to meeting these challenges. This book examines this complexity and indicates areas in which conflicts may arise by analysing examples from legislation and court decisions in Germany, Switzerland, France, England and Spain. It includes questions of private international law, comments on the various degrees of consideration accorded to cultural identity within substantive family law, and remarks on models of legal pluralism and the dangers that go along with them. It concludes with an evaluation of approaches which are process-based rather than institution-based. The book will be of interest to legal professionals, family law students and scholars concerned with legal pluralism.

In all countries of the European Union, the Muslim communities, numbering about 15,000,000 people, represent a substantial religious minority, although it is a very varied group, both in terms of religious practice and national origin. The very weight of this minority forces the legal systems to come to terms with its presence. However, these changes are highly diversified and are evolving rapidly, not necessarily towards greater tolerance. This volume provides a brief sketch of these changes, describing the situation of some member countries of the European Union (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and UK) and of one of the enlargement candidate countries, Romania. The book also contains an initial attempt at comparison between European countries and the USA and an overall analysis of the problems posed by the Islamic presence in Europe and the strategies to manage them. This work allows readers to draw some general conclusions on convergences and divergences within the European Union and the factors that determine them.

"This title was first published in 2000: The presence of large numbers of Muslims within their borders is a relatively new phenomenon for most European states which introduces a radically different way of viewing the world and forces liberal states to reassess their own liberalism. This book explores the varying legal reactions throughout Europe to the rise of Islam. Essays on the legal systems of the leading European jurisdictions are complemented by others on general issues arising out of the impact of Islam in Europe on traditional concepts within European legal systems. In assessing how countries do and should react to demands from muslims within their borders, the relationship between religion and law is brought into question. The position of Muslims within non-Muslim European states is destined to become a key legal issue, not only for Muslims themselves, but for all religious minorities."--Provided by publisher.

This book addresses some of the fundamental issues borne of the several million strong Muslim presence in Europe in our times. Based on a thorough study of Islamic sources, it seeks to answer basic questions about a European Muslim’s social, political, cultural and legal life as a practising Muslim while living together in multi-faith, pluralistic European nation states.