MUSLIMS AND NON-MUSLIMS in Europe may express the above question with interest, and it has been asked a number of times in the past few decades, while it gained increasing importance. A simple reason for this maybe the demographic growth of the Muslim population in Europe; but the underlying reality is more complex.

A large proportion of the Muslim population in the EU is made up of immigrants or descendants of immigrants. In practice, Muslim immigrants are often similar to non-Muslim immigrants, moving from place to place for mundane and worldly concerns rather than spiritual ones, and, as a result, the queries above surrounding religion are not always applicable.

Thus the first immigrants, even if they were quite committed to Islam as something beyond their identity, may have treated the above question with some apathy. Pakistani immigrants, for example, came with the idea of eventual return to Pakistan, even after long residence in their newly adopted homelands in the UK or elsewhere in the EU. As immigrants who viewed themselves as temporary dwellers rather than permanent citizens, they may have given only limited consideration to the engagement with the shariah, as a comprehensive philosophy.