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Today, during the third Industrial Revolution-the communications revolution-there can be no doubt that Muslims in non-Muslim countries are not prevented or discouraged by fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) to maintain their residence there. In fact, (non-Qur'anic) concepts like dar al-Islam and dar al-harb have virtually lost their relevance.7Most Muslims in the West find it rather easy to practice the essentials of their faith for the following two reasons: First, the West has become irreligious to a point where it tolerates almost anything posing as religion, assuming that it is a "private matter." Second, freedom of religion has become part of the human rights bills and conventions universally applicable today.8
Indeed, Islamic research institutes are now flourishing in the West uncensored 9; mosques are being built from Zagreb via Rome to Lyon; and Islamic communities enter into treaty relationships with their countries of residence.
10
Should this trend continue, as it is my wish and my hope that it will, then sometime in the twenty-first century, Islam in Europe might become part of what is considered "normal." And there is a model to be followed: German Catholics at the end of the nineteenth century were still suspected of being disloyal citizens because of their links to Rome. Because of the bitter division between the two Christian denominations, in many German cities and even villages one still finds a Protestant church facing a Catholic church in the very center of town.
11Today, this architectural confrontation no longer makes sense, and it is only logical for mosques, too, to be added.
The prospect of normalization of the Islamic presence in the West raises the issues of integration and assimilation. To what extent can Muslims be integrated without losing their identity (and their faith with it)?
As it is, Muslims-whether foreigner or citizen (born outside the West or born in the West)-are seen as different in four respects:
- Appearance: Men wearing large beards and caftans or other national dress, and women abiding by the traditional Islamic dress code, more often than not without any redeeming touch of fashion. Many of the Muslim population, even of the second generation, speak the local language with an accent.
- Eating habits: The Muslims refuse alcohol and other drugs as well as pork and blood-sausages and demand halal slaughtering, thus clashing with local legislation.
- Rituals: The Muslims want to interrupt their work for prayer, celebrate their own religious holidays, go on pilgrimage during specific days, build mosques with minarets (used for the adhaµn), and bury their dead in a particular way, also frequently clashing with local legislation.
- Faith: The Muslims deny major tenets of Christian dogma (divinity of Christ; the trinity; original sin; Jesus dying on the cross); in addition, their ideal of the relationship between men and women, inside and outside of marriage, clash with what is considered politically correct. Also Muslims are seen as having second thoughts about democracy and human rights.
It is obvious that normalization, let alone integration, hinges on whether the Occident is willing to compromise with such features, and to what extent the Muslims are able and willing to compromise.
As far as the Muslims are concerned, there is room for flexibility, but only to the extent of what is considered "Islamic" civilization and not Islamic creed. Looking at the four points just listed, obviously there is no room for compromise as far as points 3 and 4 are concerned; there is no leeway within aquida and 'ibadah. In particular, the old Hanafi idea of exempting emigrant Muslims from parts of the shari'ah should be rejected; otherwise, there would be no end to this process of assimilation, leading the Muslims to compromise their din. A case in point is riba. If the Muslims allowed it, how could they propagate their scheme of profit and risk-sharing as a panacea for some woes of Western economies in which people increasingly refuse to accept risks, a behavior bound to destroy the essence of entrepreneurship? However, by this I do not want to argue against the possible development of what might be called a madhhab al-urubi, a fiqh for Muslim dhimmi (!) as developing from fatawah issued by Western 'ulama for specific Western problems-if there is such a thing at all.
Concerning points 1 and 2, however, there is considerable room for adaptation. Hardly anybody will deny that a Muslim in the West is not obliged to eat with his hand, sit on the floor, or clean his teeth with a siwwak after eating. But it should be equally obvious that Western Muslims are under no obligation to wear the national dress from their countries of origin and-regarding Muslim women-to dress without any attempt at making their Islamic attire aesthetically pleasing. Nor is it indispensible that Muslims spice their everyday language with exclamations in Arabic-from subhana Allah to masha' Allah. In fact, anything which reenforces the misconception that Islam is the specific religion of the Arabs (as Judaism has become for ethnic Jews) should be avoided. The result of such attempts should not be a "European Islam" or "American Islam," let alone a French or Belgian Islam, but an eternal Islam practiced by people who in some other respects adhere to a particular culture. Indeed, as long as a Moroccan Muslim can easily be distinguished from a Pakistani one, and a Turkish Muslim from a Senegalese one, why not a German Muslim from an Emirati one?
In the process of helping the West to become acquainted with Islam, Western Muslim intellectuals have a large role to play. Foremost is making the extremely important point that Islam, far from being a religion for obscurantists, is a religion for rationalists. Is there any holy script that appeals to man's power of reasoning more often and more emphatically than the Qur'an? Is Islam not the religion which began with the appeal "Read"?12 In contrast, Christian dogma is based on "mysteries" and extrarational Gnostic concepts. It is Islam which-like (later) European philosophy (especially Hume and Kant)-has always denied the existence of a natural law of causality,13 and it is Islam which has remained conscious of the philosophically insoluble dilemma between predestination and responsibility: features of rationality which the Western intellectual world should positively appreciate.
Muslim intellectuals should help also to respiritualize Islam in the West.14 All too many immigrants from the Muslim world practice their religion in a rigid, legalistic fashion which impresses by its routine more than by its spiritual content so that Islam is not recognized, in a Christian environment, as a living creed which satisfies the spiritual aspirations of an "emancipated" individual.
Local Muslim intellectuals have an additional, indispensible task: Only they can develop the organizational infrastructure necessary for the Muslim communities in the West in their legal dealings with local authorities at the highest level15; and only they can provide the literature indispensible for effective da'wah. Time and again, it is proven that Islamic books coming from the Muslim world are usually unsuitable for Western audiences. There are many reasons for this, such as faulty printing and translation; however, the major reason for this failure is that only a Western Muslim, raised within Western culture, can fully know how Western people "tick," what their hang-ups are, and what makes them anxious. In this context, it is essential-and possibly decisive for the future of Islam in the West-that Western Muslim intellectuals explain the Islamic position on the following three points: women's rights, human rights in general, and democracy.
Sociology
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