Islamic knowledge in Europe: Where does it come from? Transformation as a structural condition

The presence of Islam in the West is characterized by a condition of structural and accelerated transformation that involves the production and dissemination of Islamic knowledge and theology. The condition of mobility, the internal plurality, the fact of being a minority, the generational turn, the reciprocal feedbacks with the countries of origin, the reactions of the host societies and the fact that all these variables are intertwined and influence each other imply a continuous process of rethinking, at the individual and collective level, in private and in public. Orthodoxy and orthopraxy influence each other: the latter, being different from that in the countries of origin, produces a different understanding of the former. Categories such as that of consensus, tradition, law school (madhhab) and many others have a different meaning in a secular context that is not Islamic and is plural both internally (among the Muslim communities) and at the societal level, and imply the need for a new fiqh that is produced also in interrelation with non-Muslim public opinion and through debates on the role of Islam in the West.