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| Volume VIII, June 2001, Number 2 |
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| ABSTRACT: Islam in Europe:Quest for a Paradigm |
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| Mustafa Malik |
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Mr. Malik, a journalism
fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMFUS), has returned
from fieldwork in six West European countries to write a book on the outlook
for Islam in the West. The GMFUS is an
independent U.S. foundation created to deepen understanding, promote
collaboration and stimulate exchanges of practical experience between Americans
and Europeans.
Secular Schism: Muslim Youth
and Europe underscores a sociological paradox that Mustafa Malik encountered during his
fieldwork on Muslim cultural patterns in six European countries. He found out that young European Muslims are
secularizing fast and yet stubbornly resisting assimilation into secular European
societies.
A journalism fellow with the
German Marshall Fund of the United States, Mr. Malik examines the Muslim
phenomenon in light of the Weberian secularization theory. Should secularity germinate from man's
direct accountability to God -- as Max Weber and Talcott Parsons say it does –
then Muslims should have secularized long before Protestants. Muhammad had preached man's direct
responsibility to God and hence, individualism, 900 years before Martin Luther
echoed the same doctrine.
The author notes that European Muslims are
undergoing the secularizing effect of modernity, which was spurred by the
Protestant Reformation. But he argues
that Muslim and Protestant secularity may not be identical as the link between
faith, modernity and secularity is not coterminous. The Hellenistic, Sinic and some pre-Christian European societies
were quite secular even though they never knew of man's direct relationship
with the Transcendent. Besides, he
cites the works of sociologists Peter Berger, Gerhard Lenski and Gabriel Le
Bras to argue that the decline of a civilization or creed and cross-cultural
communication are potentially as secularizing as any religious doctrines.
Some of the social scientists that Mr. Malik
interviewed in Europe have said modernity would secularize Muslims and
assimilate them into secular native cultures. Their prognosis, he notes, has been only partially realized. Among the European-born Muslims fewer than
10 percent pray "regularly" or "fairly regularly." The practice is comparable to regular church attendance among
West European Christians, ranging from 5% of the population in France to 23% in
Northern Ireland. Yet these secular
Muslims remain culturally estranged from the secular Christian society.
Secular Schism cites Muslims' communal (umma)
tradition as a major deterrent to their assimilation into European
societies. They have nurtured a sense
of solidarity through jihads,
Crusades, empire-building and anti-colonial struggles. Many of their offspring
in Europe share their worldview, which differs in many ways from that of white
Europeans.
Also working against Muslim social assimilation is
European racism. As an ideology
implying the superiority of the white race, Europeans' racism is a
psychological complex that they acquired during their colonial expansions. Polls show that large pluralities of
Europeans admit to their racist proclivity and betray it in their attitudes
toward Muslim and other non-white immigrants.
Yet this cultural divide, observes the author, is
yielding to varying patterns of pluralism that allow Muslims to preserve their
evolving identities. Globalization,
European integration, the decline of sovereign nation-states and the drop in
the European population are promoting coexistence between Muslims and their
non-Muslim neighbors. Europeans are now
used to seeing minarets share their skylines with spires, head-covered women
roam the street and the campus, and downtowns being dotted with halal meat shops, Islamic bookstores and
restaurants that serve humus, falafil
and doner kebab.
Slowly, government policies toward Muslims are
changing as well. In January Germany,
the so-called "non-immigrant country," granted citizenship to most of the
German-born children of Muslim and other "guest workers." Last fall France, perceived by most Muslims
as hostile to their culture, was discussing the easing of curbs against certain
Islamic rituals.
Islam, says the author, is helping promote pluralism
in Western Europe, most of which has been a liberal cultural monochrome. And as Muslims partake of the European
political and civic life, they discover that secular Europe is more hospitable
to the Islamic doctrine of individualism than their native Islamic lands.
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