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Abstract
To understand the concerns and issues related to Muslims and Islam in Europe, this article makes use of a framework that qualifies 'Islam' as two manifestations of 'physical' and 'virtual' Islam and 'Europe' as two discourses defined as the political-legal and cultural-religious discourse. The resulting matrix of these four dimensions will be applied to several of the main issues of the interaction between Islam and Europe: the numerical presence of Muslims, their visibility, the legacy of centuries of European-Islamic interaction, and the (in)compatibility of Islamic and European values. Based on these examples, the author observes that the European concerns regarding 'Islam' mostly relate to virtual Islam and are dominated by cultural-religious discourse. The author therefore questions the often-heard two-choice question between 'Europanization of Islam' or 'Islamization of Europe', arguing that the real choice to be made in Europe is whether it will adhere to its political-legal values, such as liberalism, equalit and human rights, or will prefer its cultural-religious values.

The political development in Indonesian during the first decade of reform erawitnesses a resurgence of Muslim politics, which had been facing a political impassduring the 1970s and 1980s. In contrast to current political development in theArab World, the resurgence of Muslim politics in Indonesia has been marchinghand in hand with democratization. The blossoming of tens of Islamic politicalparties by no means that they speak with a single voice. Rather, political Islam isnow represented by parties with more diverse platforms. Those parties are notonly varied in their commitment to an Islamist agenda but also strongly dividedon this agenda. Yet, they all welcome and uphold "Muslim" aspirations. As far astheir performance in the 1999 and the 2004 elections is concerned, there was asignificant decline for Muslim politics compared to the first democratic election of1955. The results reflected the minority appeal of Islamism, regardless of boththe fact that the majority of the Indonesians are Muslims and the fact that therehas been increasing Islamic revivalism within Indonesian society.

Looking back on Yugoslavia's break-up and the subsequent warfare involving Bosnian Muslims, Croats, Albanians (Kosovars), and Serbs, two constants seem fundamental over the past two decades: Slobodan Milosevic and the ascension of Islam to independent statehood. Most academic and popular accounts, as well as official US and European positions, have placed emphasis on Milosevic's machinations to build Great Serbia, yet in the Serbian narrative itself the rebirth of Islamic power in Bosnia and Kosovo proved fundamental. This essay examines both narratives and concludes with some observations about writing contemporary history and certain risks from a hasty, inadequately prepared foreign policy consensus.