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This introductory chapter discusses some questions on the contradictions and challenges in the lives of German converts to Islam. It aims to provide a preliminary understanding of what it means to embrace Islam in a society that increasingly marginalizes and racializes Muslims. The chapter begins with a discussion of conversion to racialized religions, before considering whether Islamophobia is similar to anti-Semitism or homophobia. Afterward, the chapter narrows the context to Germany, revealing that even though Germany has a long history of racializing religion, especially Judaism, the racialization of Muslims with a clear class dimension is relatively new. This chapter also discusses the role of converts for a European Islam and Germany's long history of European conversions to Islam. Finally, the chapter lays out the methods and sources of research for this volume.

This chapter discusses the future prospects for Muslims' political and social integration. A number of the social, cultural, and political adjustments that will characterize Europe in coming generations are already under way, although often the results are not visible to the naked eye. This chapter examines the pre-electoral political behavior and earliest known voting preferences and demographic future of the postcolonial—and post-guestworker—Muslim minorities of Europe. It argues that the most serious threats to successful emancipation—violent extremism among Muslims and right-wing nativism among “host societies”—may ultimately be weakened by a confluence of demographic trends and old-fashioned integration processes.

This chapter concentrates on the theological aspects of Salafism that attract non-Muslims in postunification Germany. It argues that certain characteristics of Salafism, particularly its conversionism, literalism, and anticulturalist, antinationalist stance, make it appealing to many Germans of diverse backgrounds. In these respects, it works in quite similar ways to Evangelism and Pentecostalism in fulfilling people spiritually and psychologically—aspects greatly ignored by most scholars of contemporary Islam and especially Salafism. The chapter contends that it is these characteristics of Salafism, which introduces itself as free of human interpretation and independent of national tradition, that works well in the anti-Muslim context of Germany.

This chapter compares Muslim populations in Western Europe and in the Balkans, and discusses the different dimensions and interpretations of the contested notion of a “European Islam” (hermeneutical, public policy, theological, and discursive). It highlights the profile of “Balkan Islam” and looks at attempts by local Muslim political and religious leaders to claim a representative European status for “their” Islam. It argues that “European Islam,” understood as a dynamic public space shaped by intellectual debates, institutional models and evolving everyday practices related to Islam in Europe, is linked to many factors and players, Muslim as well as non-Muslim, national as well as transnational.

This chapter discusses the qur’anic Golden Calf episode as it is traditionally interpreted in both Muslim exegesis and Western scholarship. The qur’anic references to the image worshipped by the Israelites are usually understood as depicting the Calf as alive or at least possessing some semblance of life—as ? lowing image of a calf, as the Qur’an puts it. Further, the Qur’an seems to posit that the Calf was made and animated by a character called al-sāmirī—the “Samaritan”—and not Aaron as in the biblical story. Western scholars and traditional Muslim commentators have always agreed on this interpretation of the qur’anic version of the episode. However, this chapter shows that Western scholars have generally relied upon the explanation of the episode in Muslim exegesis or tafsīr, misunderstanding the role that early Muslim commentators played in introducing a radical revision of the story that was quite different in major details from the account found in the Qur’an itself. This can be demonstrated by examining historical translations of the Qur’an in the West, beginning with some of the earliest translations and commentaries of the medieval and early modern periods in Europe. In the specific case of the Calf narrative, Western scholars’ reliance on tafsīr has typically been motivated not by a desire to validate the claims of Muslim authorities, but rather by the assumption that Islam is at its root thoroughly dependent upon Judaism. This assumption has colored not only the overarching approach to the qur’anic narrative per se, but also the characterization of a number of rabbinic traditions that have been cited as the sources of that narrative.

Strachan’s personal copy of Raimondi’s published New Testament in Arabic was once part of the library of the Jesuit mission station in Srinagar. The chapter’s attempt to explain this includes a discussion of the history of Jesuit presence in the East with their headquarters in Goa and their missions to the Mughal court. Despite Strachan’s long established connections with the Society and the possibility of an introduction to the Mughal court, Goa was not a safe place for him due to the presence of the Inquisition. Following the death of Mīr Dāmād in 1632, Strachan remained in Iran until 1634 but the following year he appears to have participated in an ill-fated Jesuit expedition to Tibet in which he died. A summary of Strachan’s contribution to European understanding of Eastern societies and religions is given in which an appeal for wider recognition of his achievements is made.