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Muslims As Co-Citizens of the
West . . . Rights, Duties, & Prospects
By Murad Wilfried Hofmann
One major side-effect of the current process of economic and cultural globalization seems to be that our world is becoming multireligious. In particular, this results from the accelerated spread of lslam. There are already six million Muslims in the United States, virtually all of them American citizens, with an impressive and growing infrastructure. In Europe, due to labor migration, foreign students, war refugees, and asylum seekers, the number of Muslims is around four million in France, perhaps three million in the United Kingdom, and 2.5 million in Germany. Altogether, including Bosnia-Hercegovina, there may be about twenty million Muslims in western and central Europe today.1
Due to its structural tolerance vis-ŕ-vis "peoples of the book,2 the Muslim world has always been multireligious. Islam expanded into formerly Christian territories-the Near East, North Africa, Spain, Byzantium, the Balkans-without eliminating the Christian communities. Nowhere is this more evident than in Cairo, Damascus, and Istanbul, and in countries like Greece and Serbia. This situation was facilitated by the fact that the Qur'an contains what may be called an "Islamic Christology.3 Coexistence with the large Jewish populations within the Muslim empire-aside from the Near East in Muslim Spain,and subsequently in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire-was facilitated, in turn, by the extraordinary focus of the Qur'an on Jewish prophets in general and Moses in particular.4 On this basis, Islamic jurisprudence developed the world's first liberal law called al-siyar for the status of religious minorities (al-dhimmi).5
In the Western world, developments were entirely different. Here, reli-gious intolerance became endemic, even between Christian churches; many sects were outlawed (as during the first Ecumenical Council in Nicaea, in 325), massacred (e.g., the Donatists in North Africa in the 5th century and the Albigenses and Cathari in the thirteenth century), subdued as victims of a "crusade" (Constantinople in 1205), or deserted (like Orthodox East Rome during the siege by Sultan Fatih in 1453). In Germany, a war lasting thirty years between Protestant and Catholic princes decimated the population (1618-1648).
Under these circumstances and fueled by the Church dictum extra ecclesia nullum salus (no salvation outside the church), even minimal tolerance of Muslims could not be expected. The expulsion of both Muslims and Jews from Spain in the sixteenth century-the first case of "ethnic cleansing" in modern history-made Europe virtually "Muslim-free." There was interaction between the two camps-trade, scientific penetration, diplomatic missions-but no living Muslim presence in the Occident until the twentieth century. Against this background, it is not surprising that Muslims find it difficult to be accepted as fellow citizens in the West. There simply is no historical precedent for such a coexistence. Worse, collective memories dating from the Crusades and the Ottoman campaigns into central Europe linger below the surface. The Catholic Church, too, has not fully amended its negative attitude toward Islam. Although the Church (since the Second Vatican Council) has come to accept Islam as a way to salvation, it still shuns Muhammad as the guide on this way and refuses to acknowledge the Qur'an as God's Word. This unfavorable climate has of course been reenforced by events inside the Muslim world-not least of them being the Salman Rushdie affair, the second Gulf War, and massacres in Algeria. Therefore, what appears as discrimination against immigrant Muslims is frequently a result of real fear of a fast growing foreign population seen as potentially aggressive and culturally very different. In the process, Islam risks becoming more the victim of ethnic prejudice than religious prejudice. To put it crudely: The man in the street in Cologne does not see Islam as the religion which opposes the notion of Trinity-he couldn't care less about that!-but rather, as the civilization which makes Turks so strangely Turkish.
Under these conditions, contemporary Muslims may well pose themselves the question already posed in Spain 500 years ago, i.e., Is it permissible for a Muslim to take up residence in what has been labeled dar al-harb or dar al-kufr? This question was discussed in considerable depth when Spanish Muslims, overrun by the Reconquista, chose to stay, and even before this event, because the Prophet sent a group of Makkan Muslims to Christian Ethiopia (615-622). Some of the 'ulama, including Imam Abu Hanifa, disapproved of permanent Muslim residence in non-Muslim territory. Imam Shafi'i, on the other hand, believed that Muslims could stay behind in former Muslim lands, provided that they could practice Islam and were not subject to Christian missionary efforts. In contrast to that, already in the eighth century, Imam Jafar al-Sadiq underlined that Muslims might serve Islam better when living among non-Muslims than when living only with Muslims. Al-Mawardi concurred with this opinion in the eleventh century. Later on the Hanifa madhhab became even more liberal. It accepted the idea that there might be pockets of dar al-Islam inside non-Muslim territories; in addition, they were ready to exempt emigrant Muslims from observing certain parts of the shari'ah if this seemed necessary because of ikrah (compulsion), durura (hardship), or maslaha (benefit).6
Sociology
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