Research on Islam and Muslim minorities in Europe has generally
been focused on the active representatives of these groups, in the form
of research on the development of movements and organizations, their
legal and political status, activities and relations with the wider
political contexts both at home, in the countries of origin and in the
Muslim world at large. On the other hand, social sciences research
on Muslims and Islam has tended to be focused on Muslims as ethnic
minority groups linked into the broader fields of race relations and
migration research. Since the 1980s researchers in the fields of race
relations and migration have increasingly mobilized ‘Muslims’ and
‘Islam’ as a common denominator. Initially, among social scientists the
motivation seems often to have been the necessity of refining larger
unmanageable ethnic groupings.