Vienna, Austria - The agenda for a high-level meeting of European imams touches on politics, job creation and the role of women, but at heart there is really one issue — how to create a distinct identity for European Muslims.
The two-day gathering of 150 imams that starts Friday will work toward a final statement that tries to carve a path between secular Europe and the conservative Islam of the Arab world.
A declaration by the head of Bosnia's Islamic community that has been circulating among European mosques illustrates the balancing act for the continent's more than 33 million Muslims.
The document calls on European Muslims to fully accept Western norms of openness and publicly reject groups promoting violence. But, it adds, Europe must come to grips with Islam's presence with measures such as aiding Islamic-oriented education and allowing Islamic law some jurisdiction over family matters.
"There's kind of psychological warfare now between East and West and Europe is at the center of it," said Mustafa Ceric, the leader of Bosnia's Muslim community and author of the "Declaration of European Muslims" issued earlier this year.
Finding a way for Islam to thrive peacefully in Europe is a task that is being made increasingly difficult by right-wing groups such as the British National Party and Austria's Freedom Party that claim the continent's way of life is under threat.
Those questions grew louder with the 2004 slaying of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh by a suspected Muslim extremist and probes into radical preachers such as Abu Hamza al-Masri, who was convicted in February of fomenting racial hatred and inciting followers to kill non-Muslims during six years as imam at London's Finsbury Park mosque.
The Madrid and London transit bombings only hardened views and, last year, polls across the
European Union showed widespread reservations about the decision to keep mostly Muslim Turkey on track for possible membership in coming decades.
The debate took on a critical urgency during the violent Muslim backlash to Prophet Muhammad caricatures first published by a Danish newspaper. What began as a stand for free expression turned into a grim lesson of a divided world. Both the Western and Muslim worlds felt they were under siege from the other.
Ceric, who cannot attend the Vienna meeting because of a scheduling conflict, plans to have an aide present his document. It urges European Muslims to embrace modern views and change "a bad global image to a good global image of Muslims," but also blames the West for fanning prejudices against Islam following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
He makes a clear distinction between the Muslims in the United States and in Europe, where economic and social systems are more rigid and Islamic communities are often caught in a cycle of few jobs and few opportunities.
In France — with Europe's largest Muslim community of about 5 million, or more than 8 percent of the population — it boiled over into weeks of rioting last year in poor suburbs where many North and West African immigrants live with their French-born children. The number of Muslims in the United States could reach as high as 6 million, or roughly 2 percent of the population.
"I am more optimistic about Muslims in America," Ceric told The Associated Press. "Europe has a historical predicament, and it will take a great effort on all sides to change it."
There are some signs of progress.
Centers have been established in France and the Netherlands to train new imams with a European perspective. In Denmark last week, state broadcasters allowed for the first time a Muslim woman co-hosting a television talk show to wear a head scarf. On Monday, the powerful Greek Orthodox Church said it would not oppose efforts to open the first mosque in Athens since the end of Ottoman rule more than 170 years ago.
"The biggest challenge is to recognize the identity of Muslims as Europeans. We are aiming for integration, to learn the national languages, to participate in society on every level," said Mouddar Khouja, a top adviser with the Islamic Community in Austria, a group overseeing Muslims in the country and an organizer of the imam conference. Austria currently holds the presidency of the EU.
Rashied Omar, a South African imam currently leading a program on conflict and religion at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, urged both Muslims and Christians to understand that their religious traditions can encourage intolerance and violence.
"I'm worried about the future," he said, "unless we come together and say, 'We are all complicit in this madness.'"