The impact of dramatic events on public debate concerning accommodation of Islam in Europe

Using the data of the EURISLAM project, this article investigates the impact of dramatic eventson the public debate with regard to Islam in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Switzerlandand the UK. It assesses the extent to which dramatic events such as 9/11, the bombings in Madrid andLondon and the murder of Theo Van Gogh in Amsterdam impacted on the debate on multiculturalism,notably the accommodation of Western-European institutions to Islam. In this contribution, weanalyse the overall evolution of public debate in the written press on Muslims, and moreparticularly Muslim rights, for the period 1999–2009. Our aim is to empirically analyse thetransitions that the public debate on Islam in Europe has undergone in the wake of the most dramaticterrorist acts perpetrated by Muslim extremists during the last decade. We hypothesize that dramaticviolent events involving Muslim extremists had an impact on the number of claims about Muslims andIslam in general, but not on the debate about religious rights for Muslims in Europe. Descriptiveanalysis and time series plus intervention analysis were undertaken to test these hypothesesSCOPUS: ar.j