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As far the the gender roles are concerned, Muslims cannot and will not abandon God's own dictum that boys are not like girls (Al-Imran:36).
Concerning human rights and democracy the matter is different. There never has been a valid justification for Islamic jurisprudence to absent itself from the universal human rights discourse. It is entirely possible to make a case, based on the Qur'an and Sunnah, for the legitimacy of an Islamic democratic republic which practices division of power and judicial control over the rule of law, enforces a human rights bill, encourages a multiparty parliamentary system with free elections of an amir and shura council. Prestigious Western Muslims and Muslim fuqaha living in the West have defended this position-from Muhammad Asad to Fathi Osman and Rashid al-Ghannoushi.16 But such voices tend to be discredited and drowned-out by statements-as in Germany by Bassam Tibi-about the incompatibility of Islam with democracy.17 For this, European and American Muslims are paying the price.
To some extent, we have surveyed the historical background and a bit of the present situation of Islam in the West. The question is, Under the given circumstances, what are the prospects? Will Islam become the dominant religion of the next century? Will it fade away in a process of assimilation, engulfing the third generation of immigrants who, like the previous two, have found themselves mesmerized by the paradise of Western consumerism? Or, as a third alternative, Will Islam be forcibly ejected from Europe? I submit that all of the above are possible.18
Superficially, prospects seem good for Islam, thanks to the prevalent ideology of postmodernism (provided it is prevalent!). Modernism is the arrogant conviction that man is the measure of everything, that his reason is capable of solving everything, and that the resulting Western culture means everything to everybody and therefore rings in the end of history (the Fukuyama-Huntington syndrome which was, and is, most inimical to Islam). This kind of thinking threatens to relegate the Muslim world to a sort of zoological garden, a marginalized reservoir of obscurantism, fanaticism, and bigotry.
In contrast, postmodernism promises to honor whatever wants to remain particular, seeing to it that "small is beautiful" and "black is beautiful." Also, postmodernism-the ideology of the so-called green movements-emotionally favors the Third World and its cultures.
There are other trends that seem to come to the aid of Islam: Re-enforced by food scandals and animal diseases, many Western people are now more conscious than ever of the need to eat healthy food and to stay away from pork. The addiction to drugs of all kinds has started to frighten many people. Even the all-powerful American tobacco industry is heading for financial disaster. All this might help westerners to appreciate the Islamic position on food and drugs.
Western feminists have recognized that it is was a mistake to seek, be-yond equal opportunities, an equality with men that borders on the impossible, i.e., identity. But their basic aim-to protect the dignity of women and to save them from male sexual exploitation-is identical with the Islamic concern. So, there too, prospects seem to be bright for better understanding.
Finally, not only in the United States-which hardly practices atheism-but also in Europe-which largely practices a de facto atheism-there now is a remarkable resurgence of anti-establishment religion at the grass roots level.19 In addition, the dogmas of the Incarnation and the Trinity have rapidly been losing credibility, even within the Christian churches. Both factors could create a more favorable attitude toward Islam.
Nevertheless, in spite of such silver linings on the horizon, there are quite a few black clouds as well. As far as postmodemism is concerned it seems, alas, that all minorities might profit from it except Islam. It is the one minority that is considered dangerous, aggressive, and intolerant.
While concern about drugs has grown, it is also true that the police consider the "drug war" virtually lost. The green movements, the great proponents of postmodernism, favor drug legalization and the "right to drug oneself," a position in direction opposition to Islam.
While more women than men convert to Islam in the West, it is also true that the average Western woman continues to be lslam's most fervent foe, considering Islam an unacceptable threat to the very hard fought freedoms Western women have only recently gained.
While religious resurgence is a good thing, it has also produced fanatically anti-Islamic Christian groups whose professed aim is the elimination of Islam from Europe.20 Even the president of the Protestant Church of the German State of Hesse, Dr. Steinacker, in writing and on TV continues to maintain that Christians and Muslims "do not have the same God," implying that Allah is a mere idol.
Which of the contradictory trends will prevail will largely depend on the acceptance of Islam as part of European heritage. When reference is made to it, people speak of Europe's "Christian-humanistic" heritage, which may include Judaism but definitely is meant to exclude Islam. Therefore, it is essential to remind the Occident that all three monotheistic religions were born in the Near East and that Christianity has absorbed many more elements of Oriental thought and speculation than Islam. The Occident should also be reminded that
- the largest city, by far, on the European continent-Istanbul-is Muslim;
- Spain has been Islamic longer than it has been Catholic;
- the European Renaissance would have been unthinkable without the Muslim "input"; and
- the absence of a "church" in Islam saved the Muslim world from a situation that required Voltaire's and Lessing's confrontation (the Enlightenment) with a stifling Church; Islam therefore had no need for reenacting the European experience.
In other words, Western Muslims have to bring home the idea that not only is Islam there to stay, both in Europe and the United States, but also that it belongs there as much as Christianity. They have to convey the idea that it is not an Arabic or a Turkish religion but the universal religion of submission to God as first practiced by Ibrahim, our common forefather.
Unfortunately, this task will be made more difficult by the effects of economic globalization on the employment possibilities in Europe. Resulting from the free flow of capital, technology, industrial products, and labor, all European countries currently experience structural crises which lead to a decline of the standard of life and demand severe cut-backs in all fields of social State intervention. It is almost certain that the present high level of unemployment will become structural, and it looks as if Western democracies cannot effectively cope with the unpopular measures thus required. All this spells possible disaster for the Muslim work force in Europe, which is already effectively accused of taking away jobs from local workers. It does not take much for a populist leader like Le Pen in France to focus public frustration in such a way that economic anxiety and racial phobia combine to make Islam in Europe the victim. However, I admit this is the worst case scenario. Wa Allahu 'alim.
Sociology
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