Ignore state institutions. Don’t think the sheikh has the solution. Forget about your elected representative. Political economist and columnist Tarek Osman has some of the best advice we’ve ever read for Muslims living in ‘The West’ who want to help less affluent (and / or more easily radicalized) co-religionists into society: work with “local civil society – not state vehicles, religious authorities, or political parties. The objective is to get the small educational, occupational, entertainment, and other social organizations that serve local Muslim communities to interact with counterparts that serve the ‘rest’. ‘Communities’ is the key word here. Hundreds of thousands of European Muslims have rich, varied, and multi-faceted interactions with their wider societies, but many of those are at the upper (affluent) segments of European Muslim communities, which as a whole, often have shockingly limited exposure to the ‘rest’.” His essay The Future of European Muslims on the Yale University Press’ blog is eminently worth reading. New to Osman? Scroll down past the essay for his bio and links to his latest works.