Thabet mentioned the spread of Salafism among British Muslims. Of course most of you know that North Indian Islam has an indigenous form ‘reformist’ Islam, Deobandism, which is not in intents all that different from Salafism. But the majority of North Indians are ‘traditionalist’ Barelvis, a variant of Hanafism. Despite these historical precedents there is a tendency among non-Arab Western Muslims to ‘Arabicize’ their Islam, or at least reform it so as to expunge local accretions & interpretations (e.g., the veneration of Sufis and the recourse toward folk religious practices such as amulets). This is natural, when age old customs & traditions are extracted out of their original social and cultural context they lose their power & relevance for generations raised in totally different circumstances. The reconstruction and evolutionary process of a ‘traditional’ religious identity can be probably be illustrated by analogy with American Judaism; contrast shtetl rabbinical Judaism with suburban reform Judaism. It is not surprising that Hasidism in the United States only persists in a strongly communitarian environment which attempts to reconstruct most of the Eastern European elements which made it such a vital force in the first place. For example, Hasidic Jews are segregated from mainstream society and continue to speak in Yiddish dialects.
But one thing that I wonder about the “Middle Easternization” of Western South Asian Muslims in places like Britain: might it be that the Arab tinged neo-Islam is less appropriate to the multicultural context that Western Muslims have to live with than South Asian traditionalism? To be short, I believe that South Asian (and Southeast Asian, and African, etc.) Islam has had to grapple seriously with pluralism and the fact that Islam may not necessarily always be the commanding force in the public square. In contrast, Middle Eastern Islam has been conditioned by a history where non-Muslims have over time moved further to the margins so as to exist at sufferance, not positions of equality where they can bargain as free agents (aside from aberrations such as the Christian viziers of the Fatimids). Quasi-Muslim groups who did attain a central position in society re-Islamicized their identity appropriately to maintain their legitimacy (see the evolution of both the Kizilbash and Alawites into Twelver Shia; they could never shift all the way toward vanilla Sunni Orthodoxy, but very few Sunnis would deny the Twelver Shia are Muslims).
To illustrate what I’m talking about in terms of aspects of a tradition which might be less congenial toward Western society, a common mainstream argument in the Middle East among religious scholars is that believers can not live under non-Muslim rule; one must migrate or rebel. This is not the universal consensus, nor is it exclusively a Middle Eastern opinion, but the range of practical choices here is strongly conditioned by geography. Many Crimean Muslims did emigrate after the Russian conquest of their lands during the 18th century, relocating to the Ottoman Empire (others remained and their scholars argued that so long as Muslims are left alone that is sufficient to obligate their loyalty to their ruler). Obviously the choice of migration to a Muslim land is less practical if you are resident in China, so that Chinese Muslims formulated very different responses and rationales during the early modern period. But with the awareness by Chinese speaking Muslims of the normative stances in Arab lands after more frequent hajj during the 19th century, there was greater friction with the overwhelming non-Muslim Han majority due to new religious currents which emphasized the distinctiveness of Muslims. As a practical matter the migration of millions of Chinese Muslims to a Muslim land was not practical (Chinese Turkestan would not be able to support such a population, and today there are more Hui, Chinese speaking Muslims, than Turkic Muslims; that was likely true during the 19th century). The subsequent rebellions of Muslims against the Manchus also inevitably ended in failure simply because of the weight of numbers.* Though new attitudes influenced by sojourns among the Arabs are, in my opinion, not the sufficient or necessary causes for the troubles during this period they clearly interjected themselves into the ideological arguments trotted out to justify rebellion against the Emperor. In contrast, up to the 18th century Muslim scholars viewed themselves as somewhat peculiar variant of literati who were in keeping with the fundamental values of Chinese society.
I think the analogy to Western Muslims is rather obvious; Muslims are a minority who can not expect to impose their values on society, nor does it seem likely that they are predisposed toward migration en masse to Muslim majority states. They are here to stay. I would submit that a religious tradition which is shaped by centuries of a necessary give-and-take with non-Muslim powers & peoples may offer better hope for social amity than schools shaped in a society where Islam is initial frame of reference for non-Muslims; e.g., the atheist Arab American intellectual from an Anglican background, Edward Said, would contend that Islam was still his civilization. What seems necessary today is for Muslim intellectuals to reinforce the point that the West is their civilization; I am skeptical that the Arab ulemahave would have any answers to this sort of position.
* These rebellions had a variety of casus belli.
I completely agree that arabophilic Islam is counterproductive to the self-interest (and general interest) south asian muslim community in Britain, but I also note that Islam in the US is both more diverse than the monoethnic Islam in the UK, and more assimilationaist. I think that the two communities, in teh UK and the US, are on very different tracks partly because of the difference in demographics and origin - in the UK, labor class postcolonial immigrants, in the US upper class professionals. Also, the societal pressures are very different - it’s not kind nor PC to say this, but the UK is fundamentally more racist towards pakis/desis than the US is. Again this is partly due to colonial legacies as well as the different founding tehos of the US, which was formed in response to British colonialism in the first place. This is why I’ve argued that the US is the greatest muslim country in the world, whereas in the UK muslims are nothing more than.. ni66ers. (I am being crude deliberately, so there is no mistaking my meaning).
However I do take issue with ownership of civilizations as you phrased it. I see no validity to the construuct of The West whatsoever and it’s usually islamophobes who invoke the West as something that exists and is defined solely in opposition to Islam. There’s no reason for muslims to have any mindshare in a fictional entity which exists primarily to insult them.
Rather than nebulous and silly concepts like The West (or even The Ummah) I think that what is best is to simply encourage good citizenship, patriotism, and civic duty. This is done by lowering barriers to participation in the public square - easily done in the US, where a Jindal can be a governor to rednecks, but very likely in the UK where the bus drivers joke about ethnic last names oblivious to the passengers seated directly behind them (direct observation).
Rather than nebulous and silly concepts like The West
i don’t think it’s nebulous or silly. you can disagree, but i don’t believe cultural traits are characterized by a uniform distribution or lack of correlation structure across independent dimensions. the borders on the margins are contestable, but i don’t think that the categories are useless (i think it is useful, up to a point, to talk about an “islamic world” despite its diversity). the idea of the west is less relevant in the united states; we’re basically a nation-civilization. but it is going to be more salient in europe for a whole host of reasons (not least due to the post-national trajectory due to the EU integration process).
re: uk muslims…i think the less downscale demo of indian (as opposed to bangladeshi or pakistani) group suggests that being one can avoid the pitfalls due to the factors you point to. of course, a disproportionate number of “indian” muslims are actually secondary ismaili east african migrants.
well, ok maybe I overstated my case. I don’t think “The West” is silly, and maybe it’s not nebulous, but it definitely is amorphously and situationally defined. In fact i find the lack of definition to render the concept essentially useless except for the vaguest and most obvious of statements.
precisely - the US is a nation-civilization on its own, akin to Iran or India. If anything the West has come to mean the sphere of Anglo-US influence.
but it definitely is amorphously and situationally defined. In fact i find the lack of definition to render the concept essentially useless except for the vaguest and most obvious of statements.
well, sure it is situational. where you start matters. if you’re a muslim obviously ‘the west’ is going to be viewed through a muslim-christian interaction lens. to a large extent ‘the west’ and ‘islam’ developed through a dialectical process simultaneously. but during the early medieval period the borderlands of the west were not just with islam; they were with pagan scandinavia and the baltics. when the pagans were gone there was also a fissure with orthodox christianity; which is not really part of the west.
what is the west? probably the most useful “all around” definition would encompass the societies which arose out of the synthesis of the late antique latin christian societies and the barbarians. there was a civilizational boundary that you were are crossing when you moved from poland to belarus, from transylvania (which until recently was mostly german and hungarian, and catholic and reformed) to wallachia (the core of romania, which though latinate in language is orthodox christian). this compound of roman, christian and barbarian (whether german, slav or magyar) was conditional upon islam in places like italy, spain and france (far less so in scandinavia where baltic pagans are more critical), but its genesis predates islam. it arose during the period that the roman empire had collapsed in the west, while it persisted in the east….
i have a feeling the very people most invested in defending “the west”(from whatever) would take issue with your definition. I’ll tell you what The West is - it’s a synthesis of the geographical extent of Christendom at its maximum extent, with the temporal span of liberal political philosophy that began with the Enlightenment and culminated in the Declaration of Independence (but is curiously truncated after that point in time). That these axes of geography and time have very little overlap, if any, is irrelevant, since The West is fundamentally a construct to claim ownership of ideas and land.
with the temporal span of liberal political philosophy that began with the Enlightenment and culminated in the Declaration of Independence
…sounds more like the ‘english-speaking peoples.’ which is also a real cultural construct IMO.
i thought about defining The West as English-speaking but English is an official language of places as diverse as India, Singapore, Madagascar, and many more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_where_English_is_an_official_language
i thought about defining The West as English-speaking but English is an official language of places as diverse as India, Singapore, Madagascar, and many more:
right, but most people in india and singapore don’t speak english fluently as their first language. in both countries it has strong class connotations.
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