This paper examines the treatment of Islam and Muslims in the social sciences since the Seventies, using the Belgian case as an example. Four groups of specialists have taken an interest in this subject. While few sociologists of religion have integrated Muslims in their research, Orientalists were the first ones to be interested in them, but in an essentializing perspective inherited from colonialism. More recently, political scientists have also taken an interest in Islam as a fact of power and as a potential threat. The most recent group to take an interest in the subject is that of Muslim theologians, but they were unable to free themselves from the normative and apologetic patterns that are prevalent in the Muslim world. The paper is an invitation to reflect on the relationship between this object of study and the scientific world and the political class in Belgium. It proposes some epistemological considerations on the study of Islam and Muslims in Europe.