Geography midterm examination topics and study guide

Geography of Europe

Current religious trends in Europe can largely be traced to one of three significant factors. The first is the increase of Muslim immigration. The second is the decline of Soviet-Style Communism, which had an official atheist ideology. Finally, there is the question of the long-term prognosis for religion in Western Europe, as more people identify themselves as non-religious or as atheists.

The growing Islamic presence in Europe is a recent trend, although hardly a trend that has been unknown to history before. The Moorish dominance of Spain and Portugal continued into the early modern period, until their expulsion. The Ottoman Empire made frequent incursions into eastern Europe in the middle ages and into the enlightenment, conquering territory as far as Vienna. And present trends have their origin in the post-war German economic boom of the late 1960s and 1970s, when German manufacturing was sustained by large numbers of Turkish Muslim Gastarbeiter or guest-workers. What is perhaps new is the large-scale Muslim immigration into countries where the only connection is by way of colonialism, like England and France. In 2008, Travis reported that the "400,000 increase in the size of the Muslim community in less than seven years demonstrates its position as the fastest growing faith community in Britain, and also reflects the age structure of the community, with more than one-third under the age of 16 at the time of the 2001 census." (Travis 2008). But the lion's share of British Muslims are from the Pakistani community, and therefore might be directly traced to the British colonial enterprise on the Indian subcontinent. In any case, the increased Muslim presence has led to political tensions in many European countries, where often it sparks quasi-fascist response (Le Pen in France, Wilders in the Netherlands, Haider in Austria) or an increased assertion of secularism in the face of perceived religious fundamentalism (as with the headscarf ban in France, the provocations of Theo van Gogh's films and cartoons of Muhammad in the Netherlands, or public controversy over arranged marriages in the UK).

The official atheist stance of the U.S.S.R. had an effect in eastern Europe and anywhere that fell roughly under Communist dominance. Paradoxically this effect was often a strengthening of religion in some of those territories: the chief example here is Poland. The Catholic church in Poland offered a focus for popular resistance to Soviet political dominance, and the Catholic church overall was quick to capitalize on this rationale for faith in an era of declining social prestige by naming the first Polish Pope (John Paul II) in the late 1970s, who remained enthroned until the early 2000s. However, the death of both Soviet Communism and John Paul II have showed the social context which made Poland the "most Catholic" country in Europe may no longer prop up the church: Walton in 2002 quoted a Polish undergraduate as summarizing the change, stating "Once the Catholic Church was a symbol of opportunity…But now people of my age see it as trying to become a political power, rather than a religious institution." (Walton 2002). In other words, the Church filled the political vacuum, and the Polish people are reacting against it accordingly.