Pillarization and Islam: Church-state traditions and Muslim claims for recognition in the Netherlands

Public policy responses to Muslim immigration in the Netherlands are often presented as crucially shaped by ‘pillarization’. This article takes issue with this perception by challenging two related assumptions. On the one hand, that the Dutch church-state model is essentially about pillarization and, on the other, the idea that strategies of pillarization were applied to accommodate Muslim immigrant groups. The latter claim comprises three main hypotheses: first, that there actually exists an Islamic pillar in the Netherlands; second, that the forming of an Islamic pillar was a policy objective; and third, that pillarization shaped institutional and discursive opportunities for the institutionalization of Islam. On the basis of a reconstruction of public policy over 35 years, the article concludes that pillarization did not play this crucial role in shaping the development of Islam in the Netherlands.