This article deals with the history and evolution of the presence of Islam in Europe. According to the German Central Institute Islam Archive (de), the total number of Muslims in Europe in 2007 was about 53 million (7.2%), excluding Turkey. The total number of Muslims in the European Union in 2007 was about 16 million (3.2%).

Islam came to Europe in various ways, including through conquest. New research has uncovered a Böszörmény Muslim community in 12th century Hungary with roots in Muslim merchants in commerce with Asia over the Silk Road. Significant communities of Muslim Lipka Tatars lived throughout the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, worshiping in small wooden Mosques and playing a key role in the history of Poland and Lithuania.

Muslim Arabs fought the Byzantine Empire soon after the establishment of Islam. The then Christian Syrian, Armenian, Egyptian and North African provinces of the Byzantine Empire were overrun. Soon after, Constantinople was besieged twice, once in a long blockade between 674 and 678, and once again between 717 and 718. However, the Byzantines successfully defended Constantinople and were able to re-establish control over much of Anatolia. This blocked further expansion of the Arab Caliphate towards Eastern Europe.

In Europe is an album by Miles Davis, released in 1964.

A spoken introduction by Andre Francis precedes these.

Geert Wilders (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈɣɪːrt ˈʋɪldərs] or [ˈʝɪːrt ˈβ̞ɪldərs], born 6 September 1963) is a Dutch right-wing politician and the founder and leader of the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid – PVV), the third-largest political party in the Netherlands. Wilders is the Parliamentary group leader of his party in the Dutch House of Representatives. In the formation in 2010 of the current Rutte cabinet, a minority cabinet of VVD and CDA, he actively participated in the negotiations, resulting in a "support agreement" (gedoogakkoord) between the PVV and these parties, but withdrew his support in April 2012, citing disagreements with the cabinet on proposed budget cuts. Wilders is best known for his criticism of Islam, summing up his views by saying, "I don't hate Muslims, I hate Islam". Wilders' views regarding Islam have made him a deeply divisive figure in the Netherlands and abroad.

Raised a Roman Catholic, Wilders left the church at his coming of age. His travels to Israel as a young adult, as well as to neighbouring Arab countries, helped form his political views. Wilders worked as a speechwriter for the conservative-liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie – VVD), and later served as parliamentary assistant to party leader Frits Bolkestein from 1990 to 1998. He was elected to the Utrecht city council in 1996, and later to the House of Representatives. Citing irreconcilable differences over the party's position on the accession of Turkey to the European Union, he left the VVD in 2004 to form his own party, the Party for Freedom.

Christopher Caldwell (born 1962) is an American journalist and senior editor at The Weekly Standard, as well as a regular contributor to the Financial Times and Slate. His writing also frequently appears in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, where he is a contributing editor to the paper's magazine, and The Washington Post. He was also a regular contributor to The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Press and the assistant managing editor of The American Spectator.

Caldwell was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, and is a graduate of Harvard College, where he studied English literature. His wife Zelda is the daughter of the late journalist Robert Novak. He has five children.

He is receiving increasing attention for his contributions to public debate of the issues of the day. David Brooks, reviewing the best journalism of 2008, includes Caldwell for his articles questioning the morality of capitalism.

Although Caldwell's 2009 book Reflections on the Revolution In Europe has been accused of stoking Islamophobia, or what The Guardian refers to as a "culture of fear", he insists that he is "instinctively pro-immigration" and conscious of the media tendency to "sensationalise stories against Muslims".The Economist newspaper reviewed it: "this is an important book as well as a provocative one: the best statement to date of the pessimist’s position on Islamic immigration in Europe." The Marxist historian Perry Anderson concurred, calling it 'the most striking single book to have appeared, in any language, on immigration in Western Europe'.