"If we continue to speak as a minority, we are ourselves excluding ourselves from our own western society, " Ramadan said

Additional Reporting By Mustafa Abdel-Halim, IOL Staff

CAIRO, September 11 (IslamOnline.net) – The most difficult challenge facing Muslims in the West is to avoid standing on a defensive line and to present Islam as a universal message, a Muslim Swiss activist told IslamOnline.net audience in a live dialogue on Wednesday, September 11.

"Muslims should know more about their own religion not to respond to the West, but to know who they are," said Tariq Ramadan, a professor of Islamic studies in University of Fribourg.

Ramadan, a prominent Da’wah leader and speaker on Islam, warned that missing this, Muslims will not present what their religion really is and what its followers stand for.

"It is now the time for us to study our religion, to know more about our environment in the West (laws, political and social institutions, social fabric) and to act within our societies as at the same time full citizens and convinced Muslims," he contended, speaking on the eve of the 9/11 attacks, that helped raise anti-Islam sentiments in the West.

The Swiss intellectual said Muslims have to do exactly the opposite of what is expected from them by people promoting Islamophopia, asserting it is high time now to ask for their rights and act against any discrimination.

And this, he insisted, should be done not only among Muslims or with Muslims.

Ramadan called on Muslims in the west to create bridges with fellow citizens from all the religious backgrounds.

He added they should open a dialogue with the authorities in order to make clear that their religion should be respected.

Adapting

The Islamic thinker declined to be drawn into giving solutions against the French authorities’ decision to force Muslim women to make ID photographs with their hijab.

"Muslim women should try as much as possible to find a way at the local level to be accepted with the hijab or something covering their hair," he said, confirming that some Muslim women had found what he called a temporary solution.

"This is accepted because we are facing the darurah (necessity)," argued the scholar, adding "the process of renewing and adapting is as old as Islam".

Ramadan, who had told IOL in an earlier interview that secularism was not a problem for Muslims living in Europe, said Muslims in the west need rooted understanding of their religion as well as deep and wide knowledge of environment around.

"As we are living in the West, it is our responsibility to spread the right information about Islam and Muslims and to be self-critical in order not to sell our religion but to behave as we are recommended," he said.

Ramadan maintained that speaking on Islam in the West requires Muslims there not to speak as a minority, noting that opening dialogue with Western people is not a question of language but of environment, culture, history and psychology.

"If we continue to speak as a minority, we are ourselves excluding ourselves from our own western society, and citizenship is the field within which there is no minority or majority," he averred.

There is no minority citizenship in the west, and Muslims should avoid accepting to be pushed in that way and to be considered as specific community and then criticized because they are nurturing the feeling of being a specific community, the Islamic thinker said.

Avoiding Trap

Ramadan set it plain that Da'wah is not aimed at spreading the message of Islam only, as its deep meaning is to bear witness to the message before mankind.

"Come to the Qur'an and read the verse where it is explicitly said that you have to invite the people to the way of God. It is said ‘with wisdom’, and then ‘the good exhortation’, and then ‘speak to them in the best manner’, " he said.

For wisdom, Ramadan testified, the best thing Muslims have to do is to act according to Islamic principles.

"That is to say to speak about Allah without speaking too much, but by acting at different levels as we have to act with our neighbors, colleagues, at the social level, and with the political authorities."

He said that it is of course more difficult to someone living in the West to instill in his or her child the feeling that he or she should show concern towards Muslims throughout the world.

But he pressed for avoiding the promotion of a loyalty to Muslims based on emotions only, as the "access of our struggle is not to feel that we are emotionally linked with the Muslim Ummah (nation) but through spiritual links."

"The difference is huge, as the first emotional link pushes you to think about the Muslims only because you are a Muslim yourself. But the spiritual link is based on the fact that you rely on Allah and the revealed principles of justice," clarified the Muslim thinker.

"Allah is Al-`Adl (Just) and He says in the Qur'an: ‘Allah commands justice.’ And this is what we have to teach our children. Wherever you are, whatever the society you live in, you cannot be beloved by Allah if you are not promoting justice and helping the oppressed people," he said.

This is why living in the West could be a trap, Ramadan warned, because if Muslims only take from this society the money and comfort and forget to use the freedom to be the voice for the voiceless, "we are going to be lost".

Different Challenges

Ramadan said the challenges facing Muslims in the West could be different in light of the different nature of societies in which they are living.

Citing the United States and Europe, he said in both societies "we have to deal with Islamic education, identity, loyalty, secularism, and our issues".

About the political and jeo-strategic interests Muslims have contradictory realities in America and in Europe, he maintained.

"It is very important for the European Muslims to take part in these debates in order to help the European policy not to follow blindly the American policy or to be more precise, the Bush Administration policy, especially in Palestine," cautioned the Muslim Swiss activist.

He expressed conviction that Muslims living in the States or in Europe should find the respective and specific ways to promote justice.

Ramadan said there is only one Islam as of principles but many Islamic cultures.

"So if we speak about a European Muslim or ‘EuroIslam’ (I don't like very much this last concept because it is confusing) on the cultural aspect, it is not a problem as long as we are respecting the common Islamic principles.

"We should not accept to diminish the respect of the Islamic principles in order to promote a European Islamic culture, but we should have both: a European Islamic culture relying on the Islamic principles."