Deficits

An observer of Muslim communities cannot fail to notice, even after only a few days’ fieldwork, that Muslim communities are very diverse and diversified and that they are shot through with strong currents of identity awareness that are often tied to more than their shared religion. There would be nothing to say about this if it were a matter of confident diversity, and so of richness, in which these various levels of allegiance were not contradictory. But, in practice, this kaleidoscope is often an expression less of diversity than of divisive animosity, or rejection and separation on the basis of origin or social class. Western Muslim communities have not usually succeeded in overcoming a number of barriers essential to the growth of a semblance of unity (not in the sense of uniformity). Some immigrante arrived in the West believing in ideology of a particular school of thought, one that was sometimes in conflict with another school. Often they simply imported their old disputes into Europe and North America. We are witnessing conflicts between ideological trends the origin and meaning of which are often not very well known, and a multiplication of overlapping organizations, mutual rejections, disputes about Muslim representation, and so on. Intracommunal dialogue between trains of thought, as well as among national and local organizations, is virtually nonexistent. People ignore or exclude one other while at the same time they say, “We are all brothers.”

To this sad reality must be added two other kinds of separation that are no less operational and no less serious. Although one might have hoped that, in the new territory of the West, Muslims would succeed in overcoming their differences of origin, it is evident everywhere that the norm is still ethnic segregation. It was, of course, to be expected that the first immigrants would form organizations with other people of the same origin and language; it is less normal to note that, after decades, there are mosques for Moroccans, and others for Algerians, for Pakistanis, for West Africans, for Afro-Americans, for Arabs from the Middle East, and so on— and sometimes in the same street. One even finds, in Switzerland, France, Britain, and the United States, that converts who have not found a place within the communities have established small mosques for themselves, which, although they are in their own country, have ended up making them into strangers in their own land. It is a surprising tendency, and a serious dysfunction.

On another level, it must also be noted that there are frequent splits between the social classes. Affluent Muslims3 have less and less contact with their less wealthy, or frankly poor, coreligionists. So we see the emergence of two kinds of belonging: one is related to a very sophisticated discourse on Islam produced by the universities and leaders of organizations that have “a house of their own”—a sort of middle-class Islam; alongside is another, with which the first often no longer has any contact, that has stronger leanings toward reclamation and draws more on the shared Islamic allegiance to the development of social solidarity movements and a spirit of mobilization that is often in confrontation with the social and political system. This split already exists in practically all the Western countries, more or less sharply according to the social circumstances, but it is clearly in the United States that the rift is most evident between a so-called educated Islam and that of the less affluent, who refuse, usually with reason, to be treated as second-class Muslims who have not understood the “wisdom of the message of Islam.” The response of some is that there is a great difference between “wisdom” and the “compromise” and “resignation” actually displayed by some well-off and comfortably settled Muslims. Without denying the relevance of these discussions, it has to be stated here too that there is a real division at the heart of the Muslim communities and that they should find a way to deal with it.

Another patent deficit is the mentality of isolation that burdens Muslims everywhere in the West, whether because this is the way the organization of society in the Anglo-Saxon system treats its citizens or because of a natural inclination to protect oneself from an environment perceived as dangerous. Again, this attitude may have been normal during the first years of the Muslim presence in the West, but it is nevertheless a major handicap when it comes to improving the quality of life of the community. Confusing the “community of faith” we have referred to earlier with a communal withdrawal, even communitarianism, some Muslims live entirely on the margin of society and never interact with it. In the West but outside the West, they identify themselves only in terms of difference, otherness and even confrontation. Although the various discourses may tend to express a deep awareness of the urgent need to stop taking this kind of stance, it is still true in practice, and even more perhaps in the psychology and “feeling” of Muslims, that a significant number of them are feeding this reactionary isolation. The “ghetto” is as much intellectual as social, and the evidences of this thorny problem can already be seen in the kinds of “Islamic education” proposed for Muslims in the West and in the motivations that have prompted the emergence of some private educational bodies that sell their particular advantages more on the basis of their being different than on the basis of their being original. This frame of mind is significant.

The consequence of this kind of isolationist stance is the emergence of a “minority consciousness” that comes into play at several levels and in sometimes contradictory ways. Muslims are, of course, on the simple basis of numbers of religious adherents in the West, in a minority in the various countries, but this does not mean that they have to hold and refer to this “minority” character and behavior in all the areas where they act as citizens.4 Nevertheless, what happens is that, on the social level and in the political arena, Muslims continue to consider themselves a minority on the defensive. It is as if the Western Muslim personality has to be formed around a minority consciousness alone, and we see the clear result in everything that follows: social and political discourses and demands that almost never express a sense of true belonging to a shared citizenship, or even to a universality of values, but are reduced simply to a declaration of distinctness, even oddness, and of protectiveness and action in reaction.5 This mentality has perverse and contradictory effects: minority claims that were expressed so powerfully and so forcefully in demanding religious rights seem to have had the exactly opposite result when it comes to sensitive national and civil issues. For the very reason that they feel they are a stigmatized minority, people cannot now express or expose themselves for fear of arousing suspicions about their allegiance and loyalty. Demanding the application of equal rights for all or questioning the government about its alliances with dictators or on political security issues, as should have happened after the 11 September atrocities in the United States and the “natural” retaliation against the people of Afghanistan, raises a critical and autonomous discourse in the midst of the turmoil. Too few Western Muslims are able un–self-consciously to take an intellectual position that, in the end, acknowledges that one is speaking from home, as it were, as an accepted member of a free society, and in full awareness of that—with causes and fundamental values that must be respected.

We must end this incomplete list of deficits with a last difficulty that is often, too often, encountered in Western Muslim communities. Anyone who tries to evaluate the ways in which Muslims are drawn to the discourses offered to them will discover that emotion is the main means of attraction. Discourses that touch the heart, that invoke a supposed communal unity, that relate an often idealized history of Islamic civilization, that “prove” the greatness of Islam through a routine criticism of the West . . . and people’s hearts and minds are transported for an hour or so. The truth is saved: we are right, the other side is wrong. There is a patent lack of self-criticism every day, and in the minds of many Muslims “to criticize a Muslim is to criticize Islam,” or, even more seriously, “to play the game of the enemy—the West.” This skin-deep emotiveness has caused a whole swathe of Muslim communities, in the West as in the East, to lose the faculty of critical response and awareness of the Prophetic tradition we have already referred to: “ ‘‘Help your brother whether he is unjust or the victim of injustice.” One of the Companions asked: “Messenger of God, I understand helping some who is the victim of injustice, but how should I help one who is unjust?” The Prophet replied: “Prevent him from being unjust. That is how you will help him.”6 To look critically and constructively at the action of one’s brother in religion or one’s community is a requirement of faith, and self-criticism serves the interest, and above all the dignity, of those who attempt it without complacency or exaggeration.7 It is this critical and self-critical awareness—and its daring to express itself—that is largely lacking in Western Muslim communities.

The sum total of these deficits explains why Muslim discourse in the West today finds it so difficult to be clearly expressed and heard. Much has evolved, as we have seen, but there is much to do. Some immediate objectives clearly arise from this exposition, but it is less easy to set out clear steps by which these objectives may be attained in the longer term. The next section introduces some ideas about this, but it is actually the whole of part II that will shed light on the priorities and concrete stages that will enable us to realize them.