The West has a problem with Muslims living in their midst.
You ask Westerners in polls, Islam is the faith
that they would least like their neighbors to belong
to and they'd least like their children to marry into.
It's not the details of the Koran
that bother people, it's fear of terrorism.
What a lot of people haven't noticed
is that Islam itself is evolving in Europe,
evolving into a more Western, if you like, form.
In Europe the number of jihadist terrorist attacks
have fallen by nine tenths since 2015 but still
any murder is one too many and the pictures
of people having their heads cut off by Islamic State
in Syria and Iraq are seared onto people's brains.
There's a great worry that some of the fighters who
left Europe and went to Islamic State in Syria and Iraq
might come back to Europe and wreak havoc there.
Western governments have responded in two ways.
Firstly, by trying to catch terrorists directly
and secondly, and more controversially,
by trying to curb Islam itself.
We see this in Donald Trump's travel ban
on travelers from some Muslim countries
and in efforts by governments in places like
France to restrict displays of Islamic piety
in public by banning the burka.
The first generation of modern Muslims to move
to Europe didn't know how long they were gonna stay
and didn't tend to get too involved in the local culture.
For religious guidance, they depended on imams
usually from the countries that they came from.
That changed with the second generation who spoke
the local languages extremely well and had no illusions
that they were ever going anywhere else but felt slightly
alienated from their parents' foreign religious influence
and also from the societies that they were living in.
A few of these people became so alienated
that they turned to terrorism.
The third generation of Muslims in Europe appear
to have fewer hang ups than the previous ones.
They're culturally more assimilated, they're much more
liberal than the earlier generations on questions
about things like homosexuality or premarital sex.
They're creating a new kind of Islam
which in many ways is more liberal.
Half the Muslim students in the United States admit
to having had premarital sex, something that in countries
that many of them came from would carry a death penalty.
How can Western governments encourage
the integration of Muslims?
The first thing is that they have to be very strict
about the real crimes being committed by the few.
They have to be tough on catching terrorists
and tough on sending them to prison.
What they should not do is attempt
to meddle with the faith itself.
That's something government's not very good at
and it's evolving anyway without official interference.
Once you start having things like burka bans
and state sponsored mosques and public funding
for the right kind of preacher you risk creating
a backlash and further alienation.
As people realize that newcomer's cultures are not set
in stone and the way that they interpret their religion
doesn't necessarily mean they're not gonna get
on with their neighbors, people become more accepting.
That's probably why, for example, London,
the biggest city in Europe, now has a Muslim mayor,
Rotterdam, the biggest port
in Europe also has a Muslim mayor,
and why two Muslim women were elected to the United
States Congress this year, one of them veiled.
Islam has a long, and frankly underappreciated,
history in the West.
Muslims have governed parts of Europe for 13 centuries.
They helped rekindle the renaissance.
And if today the new slightly more liberal form of Islam
that we see flourishing in the West continues to do so,
it could serve as an example for Muslims
in other parts of the world.