The Idea

Under the title Our Shared Europe (OSE), the British Council proposes to initiate a project which will explore one of the more delicate, sensitive and potentially creative cultural frontiers in contemporary Europe, that between those Europeans who are Muslims and those who are not. It is part of a larger lacework of cultural frontiers between populations defined by faith, ethnicity and custom. Seen from one angle – the angle that Our Shared Europe will take – this is scarcely a frontier at all, at most a segmentation amongst fellow-Europeans; but seen from other angles this cultural frontier, and others, can appear formidable and loom large. Quite how large it looms depends upon the mutual knowledge and – springing from knowledge, curiosity and goodwill – the trust that cross it.

Our Shared Europe is an ambitious project, which aims to change the way Europeans think about each other. It is a cultural project that looks for the deeper cultural roots of alienation and mistrust, undertaken because we believe that it is profoundly unhealthy for any society to tolerate the levels of separation and incomprehension that we see existing – and growing - in Europe today. We are all citizens of our European countries: the project might take as one of its texts the words of Barack Hussain Obama: ‘For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers.’

Our own formulation of the project’s objective is to demonstrate that Muslims are an integral part of Europe’s past, present and future.

Our Shared Europe has been in preparation through much of 2008. Wide research and consultation was summed up in a report written by Ehsan Masood, called Our Shared Europe: Swapping Treasures, Sharing Losses, Celebrating Futures. Its findings have been discussed by a Partners Workshop at Barcelona in November 2008. The report and the feedback we received on it form the basis of our planning for the project’s pilot phase.

Naturally, the logic of Our Shared Europe applies in different ways to all minority communities in Europe, whether defining themselves by faith or ethnicity. However, although we intend to involve others, we do not intend to lose sight of the fact that it is a project that concentrates, one way or another, upon Muslim Europeans. This is a statement of focus, not of exclusivity: ultimately every community deserves a variant of Our Shared Europe.

Our Shared Europe goes to the heart of the British Council’s Cultural Relations mission. It brings to bear the experience and skills of an organisation with a long history of earning trust through the careful nurturing of long-term relationships; and of doing so at arm’s length from government.