Professor Steve Pfaff

1
Professor Steve Pfaff Department of Sociology
Integrating Muslims in Western Democratic Polities
Inside the Sehitlik mosque, Berlin-Neukolln
Sociology 496 Honors Senior Seminar Fall 2007
2
PERSONAL BACKGROUND

• I grew up on the North Shore of Staten Island in
  New York City. When I was 6 years old, my
  parents and I moved back into the house my mother
  had grown up in.
• Both of my parents continue to live within 5
  miles of the place of their births.

3

• I graduated from Curtis H.S. in 1988.
• My grandmother, Dorothy Schmidt (nee Matthius),
  graduated from the same a public school in 1929
• I entered SUNY Albany and graduated with a double
  major in German and History

Ralph H. Curtis H.S.
Dorothy M. Schmidt (1912-2004)
4

• Next, I attended UNC Chapel Hill, where I
  earned MA degrees in Modern European History and
  Sociology
• Unexpectedly, I transferred to NYU. After
  spending 9 months doing dissertation research in
  Leipzig, Germany, I received a PhD in 1999.
• The same year I was hired at the UW.

5
ORIGIN OF RESEARCH PROJECT

• I have become increasingly interested in the
  sociology of religion.
• Initially, I was recruited into this field
  through close collaboration with a graduate
  student, Paul Froese, with whom I have published
  two papers applying the religious economies model
  to explain patterns of religious change in
  Central and Eastern Europe.
• More recently, I have become concerned with the
  status of Muslims in Western democracies and with
  the politics of religious accommodation.
• This led to collaboration with Prof. Anthony Gill
  in Political Science which has so far produced a
  published paper.

6
SOCIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF PROJECT

• Comparative sociological research on Muslims and
  organized Islam in Western democracies.
• Under what conditions do religious newcomers
  integrate into a societys existing institutions?
  What leads them to embrace or reject integration?
  
• How will Muslim identities and interests be
  shaped by Western societies and how will they
  reshape the society and politics of the countries
  they settle in?
• What are the social and economic conditions
  favorable to Islamist mobilization?
• What are the predominant patterns of Muslim
  organization?
• What are the political and institutional factors
  that tend to promote integration rather than
  separatism?

7
CENTRAL HYPOTHESES OR QUESTIONS

• P1 The greater the economic disadvantage of the
  members of a Muslim minority, on average, the
  more pronounced will be the reactive
  identification of Muslims with Islam.
• P2 Reactive identification among Muslims in
  Western polities increases the appeal of
  Islamism.
• P3 The formation of Muslim interest groups and
  mobilization into collective action is most
  likely to occur among members of the same ethnic
  group.
• P4 The greater the ethnic homogeneity among
  members of Muslim groups, the greater the
  potential for coordinated mobilization.
• P5 As an intervening institutional variable, the
  greater the state regulation of religion in a
  society, the greater the potential for radical
  Islamism.
• P6 Muslim religious leaders will tend to oppose
  state-initiated recognition as an official
  religion if it requires reforms that threaten
  doctrinal and organizational autonomy.

8
(No Transcript)
9
METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH

• Type of Evidence Used
• Comparative Survey data from the Pew Foundation
  including five Western polities (US, UK, France,
  Germany, Spain)
• Case-Study In-depth interviews with religious
  leaders, government officials, and human rights
  advocates in Berlin
• Organizational survey of mosques and religious
  organizations in Berlin
• Units of Analysis
• 5 Western democracies
• Islamic organizations in Berlin case-study

10
RESULTS/FINDINGS
11
(No Transcript)
12
(No Transcript)
13
(No Transcript)
14
(No Transcript)
15
(No Transcript)
16
(No Transcript)
17
(No Transcript)
18
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

• Cultural division of labor probably increases
  appeal of Islamism.
• The extent to which Islam is chosen as a rival to
  the society in which Muslims have come to reside
  is variable. It appears much greater in Western
  Europe than in the U.S.
• American Islam appears to be largely
  integrationist, while Islamism has made greater
  inroads into Western Europe.
• Ethnic heterogeneity within the Muslim population
  obstructs extensive, well-coordinated action
  regardless of whether the resulting politics were
  integrationist or Islamist.
• Extensive, well-organized Muslim immigrant
  communities may be prone to Islamist mobilization
  but be able to restrain radical tendencies, for
  example Turkish Muslims have built an extensive
  organizational and cultural milieu and this
  promotes a reformist agenda and moderates social
  conflict.
• The historical institutions regulating religious
  life can have moderating or radicalizing effects
  that are most apparent in the case of the US.

19
CHALLENGES OR SURPRISES

• Importance of homeland ties, especially
  homeland nationalism.
• New technologies have lowered costs of
  long-distance coordination and activity.
• Difficulty of obtaining reliable data on Muslims
  because most surveys do not include adequate N of
  Muslims and because Muslims underrepresented in
  surveys.

20
FUTURE DIRECTIONS

• Along with Sarah Valdez, I have obtained
  individual-level data from Pew surveys in 6
  Western countries that over-sampled Muslims.
• Next step is to test our propositions with
  individual-level data.
• In the future, Id like to study the politics of
  contemporary religious change in Europe,
  examining not only Muslims but other religious
  minorities in the context of ongoing
  secularization.