NAVIGATING THE POLY-CENTRIC LEGAL ARCHIPELAGOES. A STUDY OF THE RELATIONS BETWEEN EUROPE AND ISLAM UNVEILING MUSLIM FAMILIES' ROUTES AMONGST THE ITALIAN AND BRITISH "LEGAL ISLAND"

In the XXI century, the relations between Europe and Islām remain problematic. Continuous debates on the Muslim presence in Western countries characterise the political discourses at domestic and international levels. In the EU, Muslims are somehow regarded as unpleasant guests. At the same time, foreign Muslims who enter Europe as reunited family members, are increasingly perceived as exploiting an ingenious legal stratagem to circumvent high migration barriers. As scholarship anticipated in the late XX century, Muslims settled in Europe gradually began to develop an autochthonous legal culture. Contemporaneously to the reawakening of Islām, European Muslims built for themselves new identities and learned a way to navigate across diverse legal systems. As a result, nowadays an intricate web of unofficial and quasi official alternative Islamic/Muslim fora actively competes with the international, European, and domestic judiciary. Additionally, we can witness a dramatic increase in the the number of partly concealed alternative courses that can be potentially mapped by European Muslims within the European legal context. Regardless of the relevance and implications of such competing administrative, legal and judicial structures, European national authorities and legal experts appear to be only partially conscious of these dynamics, and are experiencing difficulties in decoding all the European Muslims’ options. Accordingly, the relations between Islām and the West continue to be grounded on misunderstandings. This study aims of being instrumental in properly perceive, understand and manage the XXI century European legal arena in regards of Muslim/Islām related issues, by challenging the traditional perspectives of analysis of the European Muslim presence. A shift of paradigm in approaching the legal field is thus suggested in order to untangle the post-modern geography of the current legal systems. Consequently, the European Muslims’ perception of the XXI legal scenario can eventually be revealed. The current legal framework is thus re-interpreted as a sea populated by “legal archipelagoes”. When adopting a European Muslim’s perspective, the “legal archipelagoes sea” assumes a poly-centric aspect and four typologies of legal systems are disclosed. These “legal islands” are then observed producing effects communally, sublocally, locally, nationally, globally, and glocally. This thesis also delineates a pluralistic (fragmented, multi-centred and poly-centred) legal scenario through a critical re-evaluation of the historical contacts between Muslim communities and the countries object of the present study. The complex relations between Europe and Islām are explored employing Italy and the UK as case studies while focusing on pivotal key issues - such as political participation, domestic labour, ḥalāl food, religious guidance, religious education, cemeteries, worship centres, cultural memories of early Europe/Islam encounters, colonialism, immigration policies, and marriage dissolutions. This analysis sheds light on the reciprocal processes of accommodation currently enacted by Italian and British state authorities and by local Muslim communities. In order to mediate amongst diverse legal cultures, in-depth comparative qualitative research has been undertaken, and an ad hoc comparative method has been developed and combined with multiple field analysis methods (interviews, questionnaires, document analysis and observation). European Muslims’ family routes were thus decoded as being the paramount target of the navigation process enacted within a sea of concurrent “legal islands”. Accordingly, a map of the possible navigation courses followed by European Muslim spouses and Islamically married partners is drawn, and the rationales behind their “forum shopping” are unveiled. Thanks to the contemporary poly-centric “legal archipelagoes” model, the reader is given sufficient familiarity to untangle and understand the European Muslim families’ sailing procedures across diverse legal cultures. The questing after answers in the past and in the domestic judicial procedures also elucidates that the legal, cultural, identitarian navigation process is not a peculiarity enacted by the XXI century European Muslims alone.