Frum: Perhaps the conflict is generated by conceptualizing people—who come from across the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia—as “Muslims” rather than as (for example) descendants of certain ethnicities or nationalities. Maybe the very project of imagining people from many different places and cultures—and especially people who may not personally be very religious at all—as “Muslims” imposes an identity that so many people from Muslim-majority lands seek to escape?

Ahmed: In each European country the relationship of the Muslim minority to the host country is different and depends on the historical relationship with their country of origin and the circumstances of their arrival. After 9/11 however, the common factor that defined Muslims in the U.S. and Europe was that they were seen simply as Muslim—that is, defined by religion and no longer by their nation of origin, ethnicity, sect, class, or profession. We were told for example by a German ambassador, when we asked him about German identity and Muslims living in Germany, that before 9/11 they were called Turks. Now he said, they are all known as Muslims, whether they are Turks, Kurds, Iranians, or Pakistanis. The third generation of Muslim immigrants born as citizens in the U.S. or Europe feels the full backlash of the prejudice against Muslims, and it is from here that some young men and women are susceptible to the preaching and allure of the more extreme literalists who argue that there can be no coexistence between Islam and the West. At the same time we must not overlook the fact that Muslims are also contributing to Western societies in significant ways—[as] the mayors of London and Rotterdam, [as] more than a dozen members of the House of Lords and Commons, [as] members of parliament in places like Germany and France, [as] major television presenters, and [as] sports heroes in cricket and football.

Frum: European Muslim communities seem to assimilate at different rates and in different ways. A Pew survey from 2006 found that 42 percent of French Muslims defined themselves as “French first, Muslim second”—the highest such rate in any of the European countries Pew surveyed. Only 7 percent of British Muslims identified as “British first, Muslim second.” I’ll personally note—and perhaps you’ve shared this experience—that it’s not uncommon to meet people of North African Muslim origin at senior levels of the French security services, something highly uncommon for their counterparts in the United Kingdom.

Ahmed: The answer to this question is rooted in the colonial encounter—the French saw Algeria, for example, as an extension of France, and therefore the immigrants from this part of Africa carried that sense of identity with them to France, seeing themselves as French with the dominant philosophy of laïcité. Thus their Muslim identity was colored by laïcité. Whether they are fully accepted as French is a separate question, and I have explored it in detail in the book. As far as the British colonies were concerned, in India for example, after the 1857 uprisings that almost toppled British rule on the subcontinent, the British consciously left religion alone. [This] allowed Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs to maintain their religious identity and even nourish it. Besides, there was a distinctly different approach to imperialism between the British and the French—after 1857 the former tended to be more inclusive and promoted schools, colleges, and participation in the army and civil services, while the French ruled their African colonies through harsh military force and compelled their subjects to give up their Islamic identity. Yet it’s also true that many Muslims in Britain told us we are proud to be British and proud to be Muslim, as distinct from France, where Muslims constantly expressed their sense of alienation, anger, and feeling of rejection by French society.