Taming the Imams: European Governments and Islamic Preachers since 9/11

Religion

Muslim communities in Europe have come under increased government scrutiny and pressure since investigators discovered links between the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001 and immigrant groups in Hamburg, Germany. Though European governments have monitored Muslim groups officially and clandestinely since the late 1970s, such scrutiny has intensified since the Madrid bombings of March 2004 (Sciolino, 2004), the murder of the Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, in November 2004 (Simons, 2004) and the London bombings of July 2005 (Cowell, 2005; Hussain, 2005, pp. 115 –129). In the aftermath of these events, European governments that pursued multicultural immigration policies, as well as those that had long regulated their immigrant communities closely, have adopted stricter measures in the attempt to contain—if not transform—‘radical’ Islam.