Islam in Europe

[ElPunto]

Charlemagne

 

Islam in Europe

Apr 12th 2006

From The Economist print edition

 

Sending a message to the faithful back home

 

 

“I BELIEVE there is no European Islam,†said Mustafa Ceric, a Bosnian imam, at a meeting of Islamic clerics and advisers in Vienna. Yet two months ago, his supreme Islamic department of Bosnia said that “Muslims who live in Europe have the right—no, the duty—to develop their own European culture of Islam.†Such contradictions are part of a broad debate over the role and character of Islam in Europe, which could have profound implications, and not only because Muslims are the continent's largest minority. It might affect the wider Islamic world if it shows that Muslims can adapt to modern, secular democracies.

 

Traditional teaching frowns on the idea of distinctive forms of Islam, holding that there is a single community of believers, the umma. Differences clearly exist between Sunni and Shia, or between Saudis and Malays, but Muslims are reluctant to proclaim fresh ones. As a declaration by Islamic organisations in Europe put it in 2003, “a ‘European’ Islam is non-existent; only the term ‘Islam in Europe’ offers an adequate definition.†Traditional teaching also divides the world into a house of Islam, under Muslim laws, and a house of war, where infidels prevail. But since Islam's earliest years, it has been accepted that there are also intermediate situations, with non-Muslim regimes that can provide tolerable conditions for Muslims.

 

Theologians have wrestled over the terms under which Muslims may live in non-Muslim lands. In the background is the belief that, if Muslim-friendly conditions do not exist, believers have a duty to migrate in search of more congenial places. But what makes the European Muslim experience challenging is that Muslims have migrated from their heartlands to places where they are a permanent minority. Theologians can hardly say that conditions in Europe are intolerable, when millions have voted with their feet. But given that Muslim life in Europe is a reality, on what terms should believers participate in secular western institutions? Some groups, especially the international Muslim Brotherhood, consider that they should participate vigorously in western, democratic institutions, even if they do not abandon their core belief that Muslim governance and law are ideal.

 

In the teeth of traditional teaching, European Muslims are creating a distinctive form of Islam. They are driven by their experience as minorities; by a desire to overcome ethnic differences; and by the trauma of emigration. The first encourages Muslims to co-operate with non-Muslims; the second encourages them to look beyond their traditions; the third forces them to come to terms with change and modernity. Sayed Ghaemmagami, mufti of the Shias in Germany, argues that the situation of Muslims in Europe is unique. “The existence of an Islamic diasporaâ€, he says, “is totally different from the past and requires new thinking about relations with non-Islamic peoples.†The Koran calls for peaceful relations between Muslims and others, so Muslims should engage with their new countries and not set up parallel structures. “We must participate in all activities of life, as students, as businessmen, as social workers,†says Ahmed al-Rawi, president of the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe.

 

Muslims should also respect the difference between religion and politics. As Mr Ceric puts it, “a Muslim has allegiance to God as an act of faith but is a citizen with a duty to the state as an act of reason.†Mr Ghaemmagami says that “parallel societies are unIslamic. Muslims ought to feel accountable to the overall society and not manifest their customs in such a way as to run counter to the societies in which they live.â€

 

Internal ethnic differences are reinforcing the minority experience to encourage a European Islam. Outsiders tend to see Europe's Muslims as all the same. But in fact they fall into at least five categories: those from European countries (Bosnia, Albania, bits of Russia); converts; first-generation immigrants; second- or third-generation Muslims born in Europe, who speak only European languages and, except in their religion, are indistinguishable from others; and those who have become largely secular.

 

The lure of fundamentalism

Olivier Roy, a French academic, has argued that, when Islam is torn from its traditional moorings—customs, family life and cuisine—it can become fundamentalist, and in some cases fanatical. Alienated both from their parents' way of life and their host societies, young European Muslims can be easily attracted by a back-to-basics version of Islam that acknowledges no national boundaries and has been disseminated with the help of plenty of Saudi oil money. As an example of the rupture between young European Muslims and their parents' homeland, take the Muslims of Bradford, England. When imams were brought in from north-western Pakistan to teach them, they failed completely to communicate with their young pupils. It is exactly in these circumstances, as Mr Roy points out, that Saudi-supported “neo-fundamentalism†becomes attractive.

 

The question is whether the search among young European Muslims for a new reading of their faith will stop there. Merely to live in pluralist western societies, where “choice†is important, is to pose questions that their parents never faced. In Bradford, the Islamic teaching curriculum had to be entirely overhauled to make it comprehensible to young Muslims. The development of a European Islam is, in a sense, at a caterpillar stage. As the final declaration of the conference of imams in Vienna said, there is no agreement on how to resolve the conflict between freedom of expression and defending Islam. Nor is there a consensus on the rights of European Muslim women.

 

For all these reasons, Europe's emerging Islam has not so far had any impact farther afield. But it is hard to believe that an Islam that is more open to democracy, sexual equality, and modernity would have no effect in the Middle East. And, uncertain and gradual as its gestation may be, that seems to be the Islam that European Muslims are trying to create.