All of the major categories of Muslim belief can be found in Europe. This diversity reflects the religious practices in the countries of origin of Europe’s Muslim population. The difference between Muslim communities in Europe and those in the Muslim world, of course, is that in Europe, Muslims are a minority in non-Muslim majority countries; therefore, the practice of Islam takes place in a social context where Islamic norms do not always fit comfortably with, and sometimes clash with, the norms and social practices of the majority society.

This tension has generated two parallel and opposite phenomena within Europe’s Muslim communities: one, on the part of liberal Muslims, is the effort to construct a “European Islam” that harmonizes the core principles of Islam with modern Western values. The second phenomenon is the rejection of both secular Western values and the traditional, culturally bound beliefs of the majority of Europe’s Muslims in favor of a reconstruction of what its followers regard as a more authentic practice of Islam known as Salafism. The combination of the increasing secularization of Western society with the globalization of religion has led to the liberalization of the religious marketplace – in which religions and ideologies compete to meet the demands of consumers – and the emergence of new religious ideologies and practices formerly unknown in Europe. Because of its potent elucidation of the alienation felt by Muslims in Western societies and its emphasis on their empowerment through the reaffirmation of the basic tenets of Islam, Salafism has been one of the major beneficiaries of this phenomenon.