conflict & communication online, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2008
www.cco.regener-online.de
ISSN 1618-0747

Ilhan Kizilhan
Islam, Migration and Integration: Conflicts of youthful migrants with an Islamic background

Directly or indirectly, Islam, with its various behavioral patterns and prescriptions, continues to play an important role in the everyday life of many migrants. Characteristic of religious prescriptions is that they give force to their observance not legally, but through social pressure (kin, religious teachers, Islamic community, religious associations, etc.) and that noncompliance has consequences in the form of ostracism, disrespect and discrimination.
The cultural conceptions of the first generation differ from those of the second and third generation on the basis of different biographies, through the degree of rootedness in a cultural identity and solidarity with traditional value conceptions.
The absence of integration concepts, exclusion in the country of migration, on the one side, and international state and parastatal conflicts in the name of Islam going as far as terrorism, on the other side, have a considerable influence on the degree of integration of youthful migrants in the receiving country.