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 dramaticevents on the public debate with regard to Islam in Belgium, the Netherlands, France,Germany, Switzerland and the UK. It assesses the extent to which dramatic events suchas 9/11, the bombings in Madrid and London and the murder of Theo Van Gogh inAmsterdam impacted on the debate on multiculturalism, notably the accommodation ofWestern-European institutions to Islam. In this contribution, we analyse the overallevolution of public debate in the written press on Muslims, and more particularlyMuslim rights, for the period 1999–2009. Our aim is to empirically analyse the transi-tions that the public debate on Islam in Europe has undergone in the wake of the mostdramatic terrorist acts perpetrated by Muslim extremists during the last decade. Wehypothesize that dramatic violent events involving Muslim extremists had an impact onthe number of claims about Muslims and Islam in general, but not on the debate aboutreligious rights for Muslims in Europe. Descriptive analysis and time series plus inter-vention analysis were undertaken to test these hypotheses.