A trend to a “bipolar development” between “Islamism and Euro-Islam” can be observed among Muslims living in Europe, said Father Hans Vöcking, expert on Islam, in his address to the 6th Symposium on Globalization, which ended in Vienna on 6 June. Vöcking said that the 10-16 million Muslims currently living in the old continent are divided between those who tend to traditional Islamism and those who are developing a form of “Euro-Islam” in which “religion and politics are separate” and “Islam becomes spirituality”. Vöcking also pointed out that Muslims coming from agricultural areas “are crossing the border of modernity and modernization by their immigration into the heart of European cities, and of European working environments and lifestyles”. “The growth of Islamic movements in Europe raises in turn the question of the intrinsic limit of tolerance”, he added. That tolerance, he warned, “cannot be taken to the point of self-destruction”. “Further reflection on the limits of tolerance is a political task but also one of public opinion”. Participants at the symposium also included Albert Rohan, former secretary of the Austrian Foreign Ministry, who expressed his clear support for Turkey’s accession to the Eu. Turkey is a country in which he observes “a moderate form of Islam”. Another focal point of the meeting was the phenomenon of “capitalism as substitute religion”. Wolfgang Palaver, Professor of Social Ethics at Innsbruck, underlined the removal of religion from public life and the wish to confine it to the private sphere, a tendency that “favours surrogate religions. A social climate needs to be created that may permit economic development without people becoming victims of the idol of money”.
