Review: Islam's role in shaping Europe

Maryyum Mehmood on a work that recasts the role of Muslim minorities

The World Today Published 4 February 2022 3 minute READ

Maryyum Mehmood

Associate Director, The Edward Cadbury Centre for the Public Understanding of Religion, University of Birmingham

Muslims and the Making of Modern Europe
Emily Greble, Oxford University Press, £26.99

When discussing the historical role of Muslims in Europe, most authors focus on Muslims in the western part of the continent, many of whom arrived as immigrant settlers from Muslim-majority nations. As a result, Muslims are easily identifiable as a foreign ‘other’. 

Emily Greble takes a different trajectory. In Muslims and the Making of Modern Europe, Greble centres her analysis on south-eastern European Muslims who are native to the region and, despite this fact, have still been subject to continuous stigmatization. 

Access the archive

The current issue is open access with previous editions reserved for our members and magazine subscribers.