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same time, the national interest in transforming Islam into a viable cultural minority,
in accordance with current laws, can also affect policy on Islam in urban spaces. For
example the election, under the aegis of the French Minister of the Interior, of an
Islamic representative body has been a powerful influence on Islamic visibility and
leadership in Marseilles and Toulouse. In Italy and in Spain, the influence of the
Catholic Church, as important on the national level as it is on the local, has been
significant in those countries’ negotiations over the islamicisation of public space.
This islamicisation is affecting the perception of Muslims as citizens. It concerns both
those countries which have a sizable number of Muslim citizens (such as France or
the United Kingdom), and those which allow foreigners to vote at local elections
(such as the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries). It takes on various forms:
participation by Muslims in political battles at a local or national level, Islamic
lobbying alongside the main parties, or the creation of parties or political forces.
Political involvement at the local level is the most significant. In countries where
immigration has a longer history, local Islamic associations have become the partners
of local councils in all matters related to the organisation of worship, and sometimes
on social and cultural issues (when existing multicultural systems provide for
consultation with the Muslim population). There are more than 950 Muslim
associations in Great Britain, almost all of which are recognised as rightful
participants in matters of religion (ritual slaughtering, cemeteries etc.). In certain
towns, these associations are grouped together as advisory boards in order to keep
dialogue permanently open with local authorities, such as the Bradford Mosque
Council, or Leicester’s Federation of Islamic Associations. This local activism that
grows around the mosque is to be found all over Europe. Although the existence of a
mosque implies that the city has a large Muslim community, this does not mean that
Muslims are well represented at the political level. With the exception of the United
Kingdom, Muslims in Europe remain politically under-represented. In the UK
Muslims have had political representation since the early 1970s. In 1971 the city of
Bradford had 90 borough councillors, of whom three represented the Muslim
community. Ten years later, in the early 1980s, this number had grown to eleven. In
June 1994, in the Waltham Forest district to the north of London, a Muslim woman
was elected mayor for the first time. In 1997, a Muslim candidate (from Glasgow
Govan) was elected to Parliament under the Labour Party banner. In 2001, it was the
turn of the Muslim candidate from Birmingham, Perry Bar, to be elected. Moreover,
there are three Muslims in the House of Lords. In the Netherlands, too, there are a
significant number of political figures who are Muslim immigrants (or descendants of
Muslim immigrants), and who exercise political responsibilities at the local level.
More than 150 representatives of various minorities are borough councillors, not to
mention that approximately 7 per cent of Members of Parliament are of immigrant
origin (Howley and Hein 1999).4 The same proportion was elected on 15 May 2002,
keeping at 11 the number of Dutch MPs of Muslim origin.
In contrast, Germany cuts a poor figure. Cem Uzdemir, of Turkish origin and a
member of the Green Party, was the only Muslim elected in the Bundestag as of 1994.
In 1998, he was joined by Ekin Deligoz, also a member of the Green Party, and Dr.
Lale Akgu¨n from the Social Democrats. France, too, fairs poorly: at the parliamentary
elections held on 9 and 16 June 2002 not one single candidate of Maghrebin origin
was elected, despite the fact that 123 of the 8,424 candidates had such origins. For
sure, with the 1980s beur movement (North Africans born in France of immigrant
parents) and its political consequences, certain political figures did emerge at the
local level. During the local elections of March 2001, more than 130 local councillors
of North African origin were elected throughout France’s major towns and cities. In
Belgium, during the 1994 commune-level elections and the May 1995 parliamentary
elections, nearly 30 Muslims or individuals of Muslim origin were elected. They had
numbered only four beforehand: three ecologists and one under the banner of the
Christian Social Party (CVP). During the 2001 commune-level elections, nearly 120
councillors of Maghrebin origin were elected. This increasing number of Muslim