Muslims are simultaneously included in and excluded from secular Europe

Evidence

The problem of understanding Islam in Europe is primarily, so I claim, a matter of understanding how “Europe” is conceptualized by Europeans. Europe (and the nation-states of which it is constituted) is ideologically constructed in such a way that Muslim immigrants cannot be satisfactorily represented in it. I argue that they are included within and excluded from Europe at one and the same time in a special way, and that this has less to do with the “absolutist Faith” of Muslims living in a secular environment and more with European notions of “culture” and “civilization” and “the secular state,” “majority,” and “minority.” — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 768

Categorization

• XREF: The claim that exclusion stems from European categories (culture, the secular state) rather than Muslim religiosity corroborates Cooper’s thesis that ‘secular modernity’ quietly privileges Christian-coded norms.