Which european region did muslims control

What role does forestry play in the european region? Muslims in Yugoslavia? How did Italy come to control European trade with Asia? What type of Muslims are Arabs? What European country was ruled by the Muslims? What did the European Christians do to try to free Palestine from the Muslims? Why is the European Union considered a region?

Which group took control of the Muslims empire after the umayyads was the? What do the Muslims call the region? What European country did Muslims take over?

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Take our quiz to find out. Take our quiz to find out which one of our nine political typology groups is your best match. Follow Us. He assembled a formidable army of experienced fighters who received land from Charles in exchange for their loyalty. Charles went to war to take land, sometimes from churches and monasteries, which enabled him to increase his army. While Charles and the other Franks were fighting one another, the Muslims in Iberia were preparing to fight the Franks.

In , they mounted raids across the Pyrenees Mountains into Aquitaine, the southernmost dukedom of the Franks. Duke Eudo of Aquitaine defeated the Muslims in one battle, but they continued their raids.

The Muslim cavalry looted and burned churches, monasteries, and entire cities. Around , the Muslim governor in Iberia, Abd ar-Rahman, led thousands of horsemen and their families into Aquitaine once again. They killed, burned, and looted as they went.

Duke Eudo, a longtime enemy of Charles, had to call upon him for help to stop the Muslim invaders. Charles responded quickly, and an epic battle soon took place near Tours.

It is known as the Battle of Tours also as the Battle of Poitiers. There are many uncertainties about this battle. We are not sure exactly where it took place, the length of it, the number of combatants, the tactics used, or even the year in which it occurred or But we do know that a major battle took place and the Franks led by Charles won.

The Muslim horsemen attacked numerous times with swords and spears against the Franks in square formations, fighting with battleaxes, spears, and massive broadswords. Only a few accounts of the battle were written down at the time. A Frankish chronicle related that Charles "rushed in against them," perhaps indicating that he also used cavalry. In the confusion, Abd ar-Rahman was speared to death.

Charles did not pursue the Muslims as they burned and plundered their way back to Iberia. The Battle of Tours came to be known in the West as the great battle that stopped the Muslim advance. To Muslims, it was a minor battle. Muslim forces continued to mount raids north of the Pyrenees.

These raids only ended after , when the Berbers revolted in Iberia and North Africa. Charles continued warring against his Frankish rivals, but with the added glory as the savior of Christendom. Charles was later given the name Martel, meaning "The Hammer. The Muslims, however, remained in Iberia for another years. Their influence on the country remains today. The Spanish language contains many words derived from Arabic, e. In , the same year as Columbus' voyage to the New World, Christians finally reconquered all of Spain.

They expelled the Jews and Muslims who refused to convert to Christianity. In , a new family, the Abbasids, took command of the Muslim Empire and established its capital in Baghdad. By , however, the empire had splintered into separate caliphates. But Muslim conquests continued. Muslims also spread into India and further east. In the 11th century, popes and kings in Europe launched a series of wars, known as the Crusades. Their goal was to retake Jerusalem and the surrounding Holy Land from Muslim control.

The Crusaders finally did occupy the area and held it for almost years. But the Muslims eventually expelled them. The Mongols from Central Asia captured Baghdad in and massacred its population. The Baghdad caliphate was gone. But a new Muslim power, the Ottoman Turks, arose in what is now modern Turkey. The Ottomans reignited the push into Europe. This time, the Muslims were successful.

Both assaults on the city failed. How could Europe encourage Muslim integration into secular states? Are radicalisation and extremism linked to economic marginalisation? Are they a product of a narrative that divides the world into two camps: us and them?

Is extremism is only faith-based? If so, why did an extremist Norwegian kill, in , dozens of his compatriots who were not Muslims? European states continue to grapple with these thorny questions without being able to devise a coherent response. My arguments are that Muslims are settling permanently in Europe, that the vast majority want to live in peace, that European integration policies have been erratic and inconsistent and that only a tiny minority of Muslims are engaged in radical activities.

I also argue that in addition to faith-based radicalisation religiously-motivated groups or individuals , there is an identity-based extremism far-right parties , which is no less dangerous, and Europe should confront both problems by drying up the ideological sources of extremism.

Finally, I make the point that Islamist radicalism in Europe remains marginal. This radicalism is not the result of failed integration, but rather local-global connections, which are linked to identity rupture and the exposure of young European Muslims to the unbearable images of destruction and violence in many Muslim countries, mainly those in the Middle East.

Whether this violence is the result of Western intervention, such as the invasion of Iraq and the Israeli offensives in Gaza, or the result of the assault of Muslim regimes on their own populations, such as in Iraq or Syria, is irrelevant.

The presence of Muslims in Europe is not a new phenomenon. Starting in , Muslims conquered large swathes of Northern Mediterranean shores and set up Caliphates and Emirates mainly in the Iberian Peninsula for more than seven centuries. The fall of the last Emirate of Granada, in , marked the end of Muslim political rule in Spain. Almost concomitantly, in the Eastern Mediterranean, Islamised Ottomans defeated the Greeks, ejected them from Anatolia, took Constantinople , which later became Istanbul, and conquered the Balkan region.

Balkan States achieved their independence in the 19th century, before the dismantlement of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of the First World War. Indeed, as European states started their reconstruction at the end of the war, they resorted to their ex-colonies to offset labour shortages. Hundreds of thousands of North Africans, most of them Berbers from traditionally rural areas of the Rif Mountains, immigrated to France.

The case of Germany is more specific since it has been the main destination of Turkish and Kurdish labour immigrants, although Turkey was not a German colony, but simply an ally in the First World War. Obviously, not all labour migrants in the s were Muslims, but given that the immediate belt surrounding Europe consists of Northern African and Middle Eastern Muslim countries, most of which have been colonised by European countries, it is no wonder that the majority of foreign labour migrants in Europe are Muslims.

Those migrants left their countries in the s and s in search of work, social advantages and higher wages. The vast majority of these first generation migrants were young.

They did not intend to settle permanently but hoped to accumulate sufficient savings, which would allow them to build a house, open a shop, buy a taxi, etc. On the whole, these migrants contributed to the economic boom of many European states as they built roads and railroads, worked in the coal mines, cleaned streets and offices and, on the whole, did the jobs that Europeans were reluctant to do.

Migrants were largely invisible in public places. They had no specific demands related to their religion as they did not intend to settle permanently, and they did not suffer from discrimination or prejudice as they were contributing to the well-being of European societies.

There was no Islamophobia, although class racism did exist. In summary, migration was seen as a gift, not as a burden and even less as a threat.

In the early s, the European economic boom came to a halt. From that year on, European states enacted laws restricting regular migration but, at the same time, relaxing restrictions of family reunification. Immigrants hurried to bring over their families. These measures produced significant quantitative and qualitative effects. Statistically, the sheer size of the migrant population increased considerably in the s and the s.

Economically, the number of workers among migrants dwindled drastically. Sociologically, there has been a process of feminisation of the migration stocks while the presence of children inaugurated the second-generation phase. All of these transformations produced unforeseen effects. Secondly, the visibility of migrants in public space increased veiled women, children going to school, etc. Thirdly, immigrant families congregated in certain areas where they could find informal support structures and social networks.

Families could thus keep in constant contact with their home countries by phone, internet or travel. The EU faces a daunting challenge, since defensive and protective policies in the Mediterranean did not succeed in deterring asylum seekers, refugees and migrants.

Finally, in the last three decades, marriage immigration peaked as the first and second-generation youth entered the marriage market. To take just two examples from Holland, between and , Turkish marriage immigration peaked at 4.

Obviously, marriage immigration has maintained the migration dynamic intact. This significantly differentiates Muslim immigration to Europe with the Muslim expatriation in the USA on two grounds. Finally, the rate of mixed marriages in the USA is higher than in Europe. This differentiation explains, to a certain extent, why Islam and Muslims in the United States are not a major concern while in Europe, at least since the s, migration has become an issue, mainly because two-thirds of the migrants are Muslims.

It is in this context that far-right parties emerged and started to garner support in presenting migration as a threat. In reaction, Western European states began erecting new defences against the much mediatised threat of mass immigration by strengthening direct immigration control through severe visa regimes, internal surveillance and outsourcing border control on the external borders of the EU.

But all cordons sanitaires put in place could not stop or even slow the flow of irregular migration from southern countries. The long land border and coastlines of many European states hindered the effective policing of frontiers.

In many cases, land and maritime controls only served to displace the routes of migration, making the travel longer and riskier and making traffickers richer as they showed their ability to adapt to the new regulations. Southern European countries were particularly exposed to irregular migration. But later, in the s, they became countries of final destination for waves of irregular migrants. But hundred of thousands made it. They lived in precarious situations, as illegals, irregulars or indocumentados , but over the years, they have been legalised, in what Spain has called regularizacion , and Italy, sanatoria.

In this respect, the case of Spain is emblematic as the number of asentados Moroccans, to take just one example, jumped from The same happened in Italy.

Undoubtedly, restrictive visa regimes affected legal migration but triggered irregular migration. Externalised control of migration and detention camps have not discouraged migrants.

It is, therefore, not surprising that today, there are more than one million Muslims in Spain and a similar figure in Italy. The problem has become more acute recently with the substantial increase of asylum seekers from impoverished or devastated countries in the South, like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Eritrea and even the Gaza Strip.

While the Mediterranean is being transformed into a cemetery of drowned dreams, European countries are bickering about the cost-sharing of land borders and coastline policing and about distributing asylum seekers among European states.

Let us recognise that the challenge is daunting since defensive and protective policies in the Mediterranean did not succeed in deterring asylum seekers, refugees and migrants. European leaders found themselves caught between alarmed rejectionists, who invoke financial costs, security risks and social challenges and who ask for more muscular policies to stem the flow of mass immigration, and vocal refugee advocates, who posit the problem in terms of human dignity and the necessity to protect, recalling the example of Jordan and Lebanon, which are hosts to more than a million Syrian refugees each.

There is no doubt that the situation is difficult to manage. On the one hand, in face of the magnitude of the human tragedy, Europe cannot remain blind, deaf and with its arms crossed. On the other, it cannot leave its doors wide open to the misery of the world. This historical review clearly shows that through natural increase and new migration flows, in all their forms, the Muslim population is increasing rapidly in the European Union to the bewilderment of European states, caught off guard by the sheer numbers of refugees and asylum seekers.

One can easily bet that the anxieties which surround the migration issue will not vanish as long as neighbouring Muslim countries remain feverish and destabilised and as long as European Islam is constructed as a problem. In France alone, there are some From January to August , In this article, we shall deal only with Muslims of migrant origin in the European Union.

They fall into three categories: a those who are registered as foreigners; b those who acquired the nationality of the country where they live and work; and, finally, c those who are native European.

On the whole, I estimate that there are some 23 million Muslims living in the 28 European states, three-quarters of whom are already European citizens by naturalisation or birth.