Muslims are currently the largest religious minority in western Europe. This presence of Islam in Europe is a direct consequence of the pathways of immigration from former western European colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean that opened up in the early 1960s. Since the official end of work-based immigration in 1974, the integration of such immigrant populations has become irreversible. Concerns regarding integration are connected with an increasing number of policies on family reunification that contribute to a noticeable increase in family size ‘within the Muslim communities in’ Europe. In such a context, asserting one's Islamic faith becomes a major factor in population sedentarisation. In each country, this increasing visibility of Islam is at the origin of many questions, doubts, and often violent oppositions.

We no longer seek to grasp, as certain culturalist-based approaches have sought to do, the traditional attributes that define an individual or group essence. Our aim here is to understand the practices of differentiation used by individual Muslims in certain social circumstances. Identity is to be conceived not as a structure, but as a dynamic process. Accordingly, it is more relevant to talk about identification than identity, and it is important to emphasise the fact that the ways an individual defines him-/herself are both multidimensional and likely to evolve over time.

When studying religious practices and the formation of identities of European Muslims, one must take into account relationships of domination which tend to impose a reference framework that permanently places Islam and the West in opposition.