Institutional change and the incorporation of Muslim populations: religious freedoms, equality and cultural diversity

The incorporation of Muslim populations in West Europe, largely but not exclusively due to immigration, has resulted in a variety of changes. This chapter proposes a framework to think about the dynamics and politics of "host society" institutional changes in response to Islamic presence. Institutional changes include the creation of novel institutions and Islamic varieties of existing structures (such as Islamic religious schools or Muslim sections in graveyards), amendments of legal and constitutional arrangements, or changes in administrative practices. Of course, many institutional changes, for example in education, state-religion relations or health-care, are also, and often more strongly, caused and shaped by other factors, including demographic changes that are not primarily related to immigration (such as changes in the composition of the population in terms of age), social and cultural changes (individualization, greater social and physical mobility, secularization), technological changes, or "Europeanization" of policy domains. Still, the incorporation of Muslim populations did play a role, and it is on that role that I focus here.