Luther College students traveled to Europe to study Islam--then one day later the Paris bombing occurred

The topic of one Luther College January term class was already intriguing: the political and cultural debates concerning the place of Muslim minority communities in Europe.  And then, less than 24 hours after 26 students and two Luther professors landed in the Netherlands, Muslim extremists armed with assault rifles killed 11 people and injured 11 others in an attack on the offices of a French satire magazine in Paris.  Says Luther College religion professor Todd Green, "Suddenly we were in the middle of the debate."

January was the second time that Green and political science professor John Moeller had taken a J-term group to Europe, where they listened to everyone they could--scholars, reporters, politicians, relgious figures and others who were involved in the issue.

"Immigration is an issue everywhere in Europe," Green tells decorahnews.com.  In the United States most Muslim immigrants are better educated and have more money, but Muslims in Europe often are laborers and often live in the poorer neighborhoods of larger cities.  The Luther students visited several of those neighborhoods during January--in part so that they could get a feel for what it means to be a minority.

Green says one of the most common statements they heard was that many are concerned about a backlash against ALL Muslims, not just extremists.  There has been a rise in anti-Muslim crimes in some European countries, especially in France.

The Luther students also discussed issues pertaining to the freedom of speech.  Green notes that some speech in Europe is NOT protected, especially speech about the Holocaust and Jews.  But that leads some Muslims to question why it is a crime in many European countries to deny that the Holocaust occurred--but cartoons ridiculing Allah are not a crime.

The debate over such issues in Europe is further complicated by the fact that most countries have parliamentary systems that allow multiple political parties.  That means that when anti-Muslim political groups get 13 percent of the vote, as they did recently in one European country, they have a large amount of influence, despite 87 percent of the vote going to other political parties.

The Luther students who accompanied Green and Moeller on the J-term trip were a mixture of Luther students, many of whom were not political science or religion majors.  That made for better discussions, Green tells decorahnews.com, since the students came from a variety of backgrounds.

While still in Europe, Green wrote in his blog, "What an extraordinary opportunity my students have this month to experiencefirsthand the difficult and tense debates concerning Islam in Europe. And whatan honor it is for me to journey with them here and to be one of theirconversation partners as we all struggle to make sense of what happened inParis and what this means for the future of Europe's Muslims."