What Is at Stake in Military Chaplaincy When Muslims Join the Ranks? an International Comparison.

This paper analyzes the ‘strategic action field’ evolving in five European countries (and the U.S.) around the inclusion of Muslims into military chaplaincy. The paper shows that cross-national institutional differences (in particular the state-religion relationship) have an influence on the accommodation of Muslims in military chaplaincies. Countries with a strong focus on equality in their state-religion relationship are more advanced in setting up a Muslim military chaplaincy, whereas countries whose state-religion relationship explicitly allows for the differential treatment of religious groups lag behind, in particular if Muslims are among the groups that have not acquired the requested legal status. At the same time, the paper shows that there are organization-specific opportunity structures that push for religious accommodation and equal treatment and thus a convergence of practices across Armed Forces in Europe. In fact, similar things are at stake in the strategic action field that lead to the inclusion of Muslims: the distribution of scarce chaplaincy positions, training and education of chaplains, security and control of religion, attracting new recruits and assuring social cohesion as well as being in line with principles of equality and religious liberty. France stands out in this comparison because it reached a high level of Muslim accommodation in military chaplaincy that contradicts the limited accommodation of religion reached in public schools. All European countries in the study differ fundamentally from the U.S. where the distribution of chaplaincy positions is organized along a marked-based system that does not depend on the European institutionalization of faith-specific military chaplaincies.