What explains the way in which public institutions in Europe deal with
religion and religious diversity and with Islam in particular? Comparative
studies in the sub-field of migration research have come up with two kinds
of explanations: 1) accommodation of Islam can be explained by
cross-national differences in the relationship between state and religion
or 2) the way Islam is accommodated in specific contexts defies all
national models and reveals the dominance of a pragmatic approach to these
questions. It is the aim of the present research project to open a third
perspective that focuses on organization-specific opportunity structures
for religious accommodation and their relationship to national principles
of state-religion relationship. I suggest that this focus on the
organizational meso-level can help to explain some of the within-country
variance in religious accommodation (i.e. Islam is accommodated
differently in schools, prisons, hospitals etc.) as well as cross-national
commonalities in how a particular public institution deals with religion
and with Islam in particular. I present evidence from a qualitative
comparative research project on religious accommodation and the
integration of Islam in the military of five European countries and the
U.S.. I focus on aspects of organizational change induced by the
integration of Islam, most importantly the creation of a Muslim military
chaplaincy but also time off for prayer, the accommodation of dietary
requests and religious holidays.
