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Landman describe in their study of the Netherlands, resistance can also vary from one
city to another within the same country. Two small cities, Deventer and Diebringen,
resisted the creation of a mosque for months, whereas in Utrecht the process went
much more smoothly. In France, several mosques have already been built (Lyon, Evry,
Mantes-la-Jolie); others are in the process of being built; everywhere these projects
entail a process of negotiation between the municipality and the interested parties.
The proposed mosque projects in Marseilles and Toulouse provide an example in
which the primary obstacle is no longer the resistance of the local authorities but
rather conflicts and competition among various Muslim associations. The delay of
both mosques is exacerbated by France’s policies on Islamic matters. Sea´n
McLoughlin also emphasises the non-conflictual aspect of mosque construction in
Bradford, and the mosque’s incorporation into the urban space. One reason for this
lack of conflict, according to him, is the spatial concentration of Muslims in Bradford.
Demographic concentration is also one of the reasons cited by Claire de Galembert in
the case of Mantes-la-Jolie, one of the first mosques built in France towards the end
of the 1970s. She also highlights the political aims of the municipality, which
favoured such a decision. Ural Manc¸o and Meryem Kenmaz emphasise, in the case of
Schaerbeek (Brussels), the importance of electoral strategies and the consideration of
the Muslim vote. This led the municipality to a complete reversal of policy regarding
its Muslim population, i.e. from an institutionalised discrimination to collective
dialogue.
In all these situations, the non-conflictual character of any project for the building
of a mosque was the result of communication between non-Muslim members of the
community, representatives of the political authority and local Islamic leadership.
The emergence, particularly in France and Great Britain, of a new generation of
educated Muslim leaders and of a Muslim middle class has advanced the level of
negotiation that had previously been attained by the first generation of immigrants
(see the papers in this special issue by Cesari and by McLoughlin). Thus this new
generation has been much more successful in getting their proposals accepted by the
community at large. The relative social harmony that surrounds existing mosques in
other cities is another reason for citizens and politicians to be less hostile to new
mosque projects. This argument has also begun to be used by Muslim actors in their
discussions in the political sphere.
In contrast, resistance to new mosques continues to be strong in countries such as
Spain and Italy, where Muslim immigration is a relatively recent phenomenon.
Chantal Saint Blancat and Ottavia Schmidt di Friedberg3 describe how the request to
construct a mosque in Lodi encountered the opposition of both the community and
the town council; today this conflict serves, to a certain degree, as a model of the
resistance to mosque construction throughout Italy. Similarly, in Germany*/where
despite the longstanding presence of Turkish immigrants, the realisation of the
definitive nature of this immigration is relatively recent*/projects for mosques
encounter numerous obstacles.
The arguments put forward on the local level to justify refusal are the same
throughout Europe: noise and traffic nuisance, incompatibility with existing urban
planning, non-conformity with existing security norms. But beyond these technical
obstacles, the resistance to new mosques is always linked to a meta-narrative about
Islam. This narrative, prevalent on the international level, also exists on the national
level, and in many European countries; Islam is systematically conflated with threats
to international or domestic order. Gerdien Jonker points out how this essentialising
tendency was reinforced in Germany after the events of September 11th, and how its
effects make themselves felt in the negotiations between municipal authorities and
Muslim groups in the urban space of Berlin.