Objectives

In addition to our target Muslim populations, we aim also to gather information on their community leaders, as well as the policy makers whose policies confront them. We aim through a series of semi-structured interviews to gain information on the position of a variety of community leaders who publicly represent their communities in the society of settlement. Here we aim to compare between leaders of religious organisations, and those of...

Objectives

In addition to our target Muslim populations, we aim also to gather information on their community leaders, as well as the policy makers whose policies confront them. We aim through a series of semi-structured interviews to gain information on the position of a variety of community leaders who publicly represent their communities in the society of settlement. Here we aim to compare between leaders of religious organisations, and those of organisations which mobilise using ‘Muslim’ as a label for an ‘ethnic’ group, and/or ‘homeland’ labels (e.g. ‘Turkish’), which maybe more secular in their political orientation. This will allow us to examine variations in different community leaderships’ views of strategies for cultural interaction. A further possibility is that we will be able to investigate whether community elite positions vary significantly from those held by their communities according to their survey responses. Potentially, this will be important information to provide as feedback to the organisations as well as more generally to the public domain and the policy community. This work package also includes an in-depth analysis of the (interactive) policy processes that result in specific policy outcomes.

Description of work

In each country, we shall use media visibility (drawn from work package 2) as well as secondary information (e.g., attendance and consultation on interfaith and policy committees), to select between 15-20 important organisations per country, spread across the different groups. In addition, we propose also to interview the leaders of European- level organisations and transnational ones to the extent that they exist. We shall aim to interview organisations’ leaders. There will be a common set of questions and topics to address that will allow for reports at the national level, and then subsequent cross-national pooling of insights, information and comparative analysis. The interviews will be carried out face-to-face on the basis of a common interview grid prepared jointly by all the partners.

Finally, we shall also conduct a small number of interviews with key policy-makers (12-15 in total including national and EU levels) who are directly involved in central government attempts to ‘outreach’ to Muslim communities. Each country will establish contact early in the project with a few key actors in this field (for example, in the UK, key actors from the Communities and Local Government Department) to ask advice and direction. Here our findings will be used as a basis for a series of questions to the policy makers with the expressed aim of providing feedback within a setting where a relationship has been established. EURISLAM coordinator UvA/IMES (the Netherlands) is the coordinator of this work package.