European Islam is a hypothesized new branch of Islam that historically originated and developed among the European peoples of the Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Turkey) and parts of countries in Eastern Europe with sizable Muslim minorities (Bulgaria, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and some republics of Russia) which constitute of large populations of European Muslims, alongside Muslim populations of Albanians, Bosniaks, Greeks, Cretan Turks, Vallahades, Turkish Cypriots, Romani, Balkan Turks, Torbesh, Gorani, Pomaks, Yörüks, Volga Tatars, Crimean Tatars, and Megleno-Romanians from Notia today living in Turkey, although the majority are secular.
The terms "European Islam" and "Euro-Islam" were originally introduced at a conference presided by Carl E. Olivestam, senior lecturer at Umeå University, in Birmingham in 1988, and subsequently published in the Swedish handbook: Kyrkor och alternativa rörelser ("Churches and Alternative Movements"). "European Islam" defines the ongoing debate on the social integration of Muslim populations in Western European countries such as France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. There are three Islamic scholars who participate in the debate on "Euro-Islam": Enes Karić, Bassam Tibi, and Tariq Ramadan, who adopted the term in the second half of the 1990s but use it with different meanings. The foremost Western, Non-Muslim scholars of political science and/or Islamic studies involved in the debate on "Euro-Islam" are Jocelyne Cesari, Jørgen S. Nielsen, and Olivier Roy.
Proponents
Bassam Tibi
German-Syrian Bassam Tibi is considered the original coiner of the term "Euro-Islam", which he used for the first time in his 1992 paper Les conditions d'une "Euro-Islam", published in 1995, to describe a type of Islam that embraces Western political values, such as liberal democracy, religious pluralism, secularism, tolerance, and the separation between religion and state. He argues that Muslims in Europe must create a specific form of Islam that can coexist with European values. The term reflects a concept for the integration of Muslims as European citizens, often assuming a liberal and progressive interpretation based on the idea of Europeanizing Islam. Tibi dissociates himself from the Islamists, who reject Euro-Islam; he estimates that they amount to 3–5% of the Muslims currently living in Europe. He says they are nevertheless a dangerous minority since they want to "hijack" the Muslim community and other values of civil society. More precisely, Tibi seeks to dissociate his reasoning on Euro-Islam from that of Tariq Ramadan, whom he considers a rival within Islam in Europe.
Tibi speaks of the need of Muslims to become "European citizens of the heart". Tibi insists that Euro-Islam means secularity, the acceptance of separation between religion and state, as well as that Muslims living in Europe should embrace European values. As contrast he sees the ghettoization of the Muslims with potential for conflict. Therefore, Euro-Islam is for Tibi a way out from the issue of the ethnicization of Muslim migration in Europe and a democratic alternative to the so-called "ethnicity of fear". Despite his efforts for the establishment of European Islam, after 25 years of leadership towards promoting it as a driving force of reform among Muslims living in Europe, Bassam Tibi in 2016 announced "I capitulate" in the German political magazine Cicero, stating that the "headscarf Islam" has triumphed over the "Euro-Islam".
Tariq Ramadan
Tariq Ramadan is erroneously considered to be one of the coiners of the term "European Islam". Ramadan calls for creating a new European-Muslim identity in his book To Be a European Muslim (1999). He demands participation of Muslims in social and cultural life in conformation with European culture and Muslim ethics and says Muslims should disassociate themselves from Saudi Arabia and Islamic terrorism. He also thinks that European Muslims "need to separate Islamic principles from their cultures of origin and anchor them in the cultural reality of Western Europe." However, Ramadan says that "Europeans also must start considering Islam as a European religion."