Interview with Ruud Koopmans: Understanding Muslim Immigration to Europe

“[Historically,] Islamic societies were actually more advanced, more liberal, and more tolerant than Western societies. So, there is nothing intrinsic to Islam that explains these problems.”

Every country that welcomes immigrants must ask fundamental questions about who will be allowed in and who will be excluded. Prior to the pandemic of 2020, global migration was greater than at any previous moment in history. The immense social pressures of migrants, particularly to Western liberal democracies, brought an overarching question to the fore: How well do they fit in?

Fretting over this issue of integration is, by no means, a novel concern. Even in fifth century B.C. Greece, says writer Peter Jones, of Mediterranean immigrants making a home in Athens “discretion and orderliness were expected.” At the turn of the twentieth century, it was Irish and Italian immigrants who were seen with cultural suspicion in the rising global hegemon of the day, the United States of America.

Today, rightly or wrongly, one group more than any other is viewed as difficult to integrate into Western society: Muslims. But is their sundry reputation deserved?

At Europe’s largest independent social science institution—WZB, Berlin Social Science Center—one researcher, former advisor to Germany’s Office for Migration and Refugees, and current academic at Humboldt University is the sought-after expert on this issue. This is Dr. Ruud Koopmans.

While it would have been a great pleasure to chat over coffee in a Berlin café with Dr. Koopmans, the combination of pandemics and planes dashed that idea. Instead, from half a world apart, Dr. Koopmans at the end of his day and I at the beginning of mine speak online about this topic of his expertise.