Categories of analysis and categories of practice: a note on the study of Muslims in European countries of immigration

Abstract This article reflects critically on the study of Muslims in European countries of immigration. ‘Muslim’ is both a category of analysis and an increasingly salient – and contested – category of social, political and religious practice. The traffic between categories of analysis and categories of practice makes it important for scholars to adopt a critical and self-reflexive stance towards the categories we use. The article sketches some ways in which the use of ‘Muslim’ as a category of practice – a category of self- and other-identification – has changed in recent decades, and it concludes with some cautionary remarks about the use of ‘Muslim’ as a category of analysis.