In The West : First Attempts at Reform [3/6]

The four elements referred to—the nature of the population living in the country, the ownership of the land, the nature of the government, and the laws in force in the country—are no longer relevant if we wish to set out a correct perception of the real situation of Muslims in the world. Three points must be made on this subject: for something between 150 and 175 years, colonialism and then political actions defined as various kinds of “protection” have caused major changes in Muslim countries. Alliances between a significant number of Muslim rulers and Western governments and the progressive introduction of a foreign and Westernized legal system have led to major modifications in the markers of Muslim societies themselves. They do not constitute—and never will—a unique and closed world, “unsullied” by any “foreign” influence.

Political and economic factors have pushed millions of people to leave their own countries to look for work and security in the West. This process has led them to settle abroad, and they now form part of societies whose main characteristics seem to be diversity and religious and cultural pluralism. These Muslims represent minorities in the West, though the children of the second and following generations are at home there, as are all those who have converted to Islam. The West is therefore permeated by a new religiously based citizenship dynamic based on the fact that there are individuals who consider themselves both Muslims and completely European or American.

So we are living in an age of diversity, blending, and extremely deep complexity that cannot be understood or evaluated through a binary prism, which is as much simplistic as reductionist. It is apparent that today it is neither sufficient nor relevant to concentrate on questions of the nature of government, the laws that are in force, or ownership of the land, given that the state of the world makes these questions as difficult to deal with comprehensively in Muslim countries as in the West.

The process of internationalization and globalization brings us back to an analysis that should take into account the realities in which people live. Such a study would show that a radical change in our state of mind is needed. It is difficult today to be a consistent and balanced Muslim in every aspect of life because the world that surrounds us and the criteria on which evaluations are based, whether in Islamic areas or in the West, are not themselves very consistent. This is the least one can say. This means that we must go back to the sources of Islamic teaching in order to find out whether we can discover a framework, a guide, or a direction that will enable us to fully take on the challenge represented by our contemporary situation.

Two things must be constantly kept in mind. First, for a Muslim, the teaching of Islam—when it is well understood and well applied—is valid in every time and place, and this is the meaning of the idea of the alamiyyat al-islam (the universal dimension of the teaching of Islam). Second, the concepts of dar al-islam, dar al-harb, and dar al-ahd were not first described in the Qur’an or in the Sunna. In fact, they constituted a human attempt, at a moment in history, to describe the world and to provide the Muslim community with a geopolitical scheme that seemed appropriate to the reality of the time. This reality has completely changed: it is becoming necessary today to go back to the Qur’an and the Sunna and, in the light of our environment, to deepen our analysis in order to develop a new vision appropriate to our new context in order to formulate suitable legal opinions. To reread, reconsider, and “revisit” our understanding of the teachings of Islam therefore appears to be a necessity.

At a time when all the old criteria have been overthrown because of the great changes that have come about in society, and when it is becoming difficult to find guidance or solutions in the old works of the ulama, it seems imperative to go back to the sources and to set out clearly, from an Islamic point of view, the priorities in the life of a believer, both as an individual and as a community. It is a question of defining who we are and what our religion expects of us as Muslims. At first sight, these two questions may appear simple, but they are crucial: by setting a general framework for the Islamic identity, beyond the contingencies of a particular setting such as Europe or North America, they permit us to decide what is already acceptable and what is needed by way of reforms and improvements in order to create both a balanced existence and a positive coexistence.

The Islamic sciences are only the means by which Muslims can protect their faith and live and practice their religion as it is required of them. They are instruments that the ulama use to provide the Muslim community with a general understanding and a legal framework that allows them to be and remain Muslims, whatever their circumstances. In the same way, we could say that the environment, whatever it may be, is a space within which Muslims should find the resources necessary for them to be in harmony with their faith: understood in this way, the environment must be thought of as a means through which an identity may come into being and flourish.

The philosopher Bergson stated that there are two ways of knowing an object: from the outside, by adding up the points of view, and from the inside, through a sort of “intuitive experience” of the object. Without pursuing this “experience” to its extreme, we may take inspiration from this distinction at the point when we want to define the “space” in which we live, in interaction with the identity by which we define ourselves, and to do this in the light of our sources. Before studying the foundations of Muslim identity, it seems necessary to set out the fundamental principles that are the prerequisites of living space and that allow that identity to flourish. We shall also avoid the methodological error of reading reality through pre-established concepts formulated in another age for another context. Our reflection will thus put forward a classification of the preliminary basics for developing a “positive space” that may serve as a measure by which we can evaluate the Western sociopolitical environment. This new method is, as we shall see, in some sense close to the approach of some Hanafi ulama who, as we have seen, preferred to define areas (as dar al-islam or dar al-harb) on the basis of the security (al-amn) of the believers before they turned their attention to the form of the legal system or government. In doing this, they not only considerably modified the criteria and conditions according to which the various “abodes” had been defined but also acted as the precursors of the global vision we need today as a result of the massive upheavals we have witnessed in the past century.

An environment that guarantees freedom of conscience and worship to Muslims (that is, of their faith and their practice), that protects their physical integrity and their freedom to act in accordance with their convictions, is not in fact a hostile space. In North America, as in Europe, five fundamental rights are guaranteed that allow them to feel at home in their countries of residence: the right to practice Islam, the right to knowledge, the right to establish organizations, the right to autonomous representation, and the right to appeal to law.