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Resistance is also tied to*/and often justified by*/the marginal socio-economic
condition of Muslim groups. Such economic marginalisation has the effect of
reinforcing the victim status of Muslims, and often makes communication between
Muslim groups and municipal authorities difficult. It also has consequences for the
financing of mosque projects (as in the example of the Mevlana mosque in Berlin
analysed by Jonker), a fact often used as a supplementary argument for refusing an
application for a building permit. Lastly, socio-economic marginalisation also has
consequences for the implementation of future mosques: the fact that mosques are
frequently relegated to the city’s periphery is often seen by Muslims as a sign of their
own marginalisation.
It is important to note that the aforementioned resistance occurs whatever the
nature of the proposed mosque in question. All the examples studied in this issue
show that the Islamic actors in these negotiations consider the specific features of the
mosque, such as a minaret or the presence of a muezzin, to be negotiable. All of the
mosque projects in progress take into account the restrictions associated with their
immediate urban surroundings.
But the islamicisation of urban space, as exemplified in the mosque, is not limited
to questions of minaret or muezzin. A new and largely misunderstood phenomenon
in the secularised society of Europe is the mosque’s role in organising social or
cultural activities aimed at the entire population*/Muslim and non-Muslim*/of the
neighbourhood. As the articles in this issue show, such activities increasingly form
part of current mosque projects. In Berlin, for example, the promoters of the Mevlana
mosque project, in the Kreutzberg quarter, campaigned to get state subsidies in order
to carry out local social-service projects. And in Birmingham, the main mosque has
recently conducted successful negotiations with the municipal authorities for the
authorisation of an Islamic school*/see the paper by Richard Gale.
Urban Policy and Islamic Needs
With the exception of construction permits and security regulations, the question of
Islam should technically not be a subject for urban policy. The conflicts over permit
requests for the construction of mosques thus constitutes a new phenomenon within
social and cultural contexts where more-established religions have operated for
centuries. If the international perception of Islam is a determining factor in the
public’s reaction, existing local and national political standards serve to define urban
policy on Islamic issues. There is thus a striking difference between those countries
which combine a culturally sensitive politics with the decentralisation of political
power, and those countries in which a single cultural norm holds sway, and which
tend to subsume the issue of the islamicisation of urban space within existing
common-law policy (e.g. municipal policies, urban planning). The Netherlands and
Great Britain are among those in the first category. The application for construction
of the mosque in Deventer, for example, has been the subject of a conflict not
between the municipality and the Islamic association in charge of the project, but
between the municipality and an association of local residents who wish to use the
land for another purpose. The fact that the application to build the mosque can be
considered by the municipality in the first place is explained by the fact that such a
petition now falls thoroughly under the jurisdiction of policies for the recognition of
minority cultural rights, which are administered by local and national authorities.
In theory, Islam should be primarily a matter for the existing laws which govern
religious practice. However, because of the lack of organisation within Islam, in terms
of both its leadership and its institutions, the question is in reality more complicated.
The urban space emerges by default as the principal regulatory and administrative
body for Islamic religious institutions. Thus subsidies to mosques for social and
cultural activities can be placed under the jurisdiction of local urban planning
policies (see the cases of Berlin and Birmingham in the papers that follow). At the