Clashes over Muslim minorities in Europe throughout the past ten years Research Paper

Clashes over Muslim minorities in Europe throughout the past ten years - Research Paper Example This has happened because of world developments relating to Muslims such as the Arab revolution, Afghanistan war, uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia and the revolution in Iran. Additionally, Europeans countries have recently seen an increasing number of Muslim immigrants to their countries. This has led to reactions by some of those governments to the differences in the religions and the political system of Muslims. Furthermore, the case of September 11th has led to fear of Muslim individuals in most European countries. More of this has also been accelerated by the laws which European government enacted relating to terrorist activities. Clashes by Muslim minorities are an expression of fury because of perceived insults expressed to them by secular European communities. European nations have seen increasing number of immigrants for the past four decades. The immigrants are mainly driven by economic changes in their countries of origin. For example, the immigrants are in search of jobs and better living standards as compared to their countries. With this increasing number of movement to European countries, the Islamic population has so far increased in percentage in comparison to the majority population. Consider the case of France, according to Islam in France (1), the number of Muslims in France are about 3.5 to 5 million which is approximately 6 to 8% of the whole population. With these figures it is clear that the number of Muslims in European countries is large. Most of those Muslims are immigrants from North African countries like Algeria, Tunisia. Others are from Middle East and Turkey. The Muslims in France have settled in most parts of the country. In addition, Taras (54) shows that approximately 70% of the Muslims in France are from Algeria and Tunisia respectively. The author points out that since 1950, there has been an increase in the number of Islamic communities in Europe. The approximation provided by the author is 800,000 to 15 million from the 1950s to 2000. The number has so far risen and by year 2008 there were 20 million Muslims in Europe. The high growth of the Islamic population in Europe has increased the attention from Europeans because the population is more and increasing as compared to other minorities. The reproduction rate caused by the previous settled Muslim contributes to the increasing population including the immigration flows. Tara (55) presented statistics showing that in 2011, the number of Muslims throughout Europe were 44 million in all parts of Europe. This increasing number has caused questions from some of the prominent people especially journalists. One of the journalist blogged about the increasing number of Muslims throughout Europe, with the explanation given being that the growth is high in big cities like London, Paris and Berlin. Most bloggers have been talking about the increasing number, according to the research conducted by US Department of State; the percentage of people talking about incre asing number of Muslims in their country has risen. The statistic of the research showed that 61 percent of people in Hungary agree that there is an increase in the number of Muslims in the country. Other European countries have had the same talk, Italy, Poland, Germany and Britain have falling percentages respectively. The research showed