Can Maghreb expatriates living in Europe reform Islam?
By: Iqbal Al Gharbi
As we all know, religion is also a culture. It structures the spacetime, allows the domestication of the world and represents a fermata, a destination for personal itineraries. It is a way for groups to recognize and build themselves.
Muslims in Europe are experiencing – for the first time in their history – the feeling of being a minority. They learn to live – in their territory of residence – an Islam that is adapted to the new legal standards and political and social requirements of the host country.
The ideal of western modernity has always been to delimit religion as a private practice. By establishing the freedom of belief, it enshrines individual autonomy as a fundamental project of emergence of the individual and democracy.
This modernity is not anti-religious. As a matter of fact, secularism means that religion is rather civilian and linked to associations and private law, which does not ban visibility, pilgrimages, freedom of worship and financing by the State. The civilian space is reserved for collective particularities while the public space is that of coexistence by equality before the law that applies to everyone.
This principle of “living together” within the State of law proves to be a school of citizenship, and allows Muslims in Europe to overcome the backward interpretation of Islam which establishes inequalities between women and men, Muslims and non-Muslims, and allows them to reconnect with its best human values.
The public status of religion in Europe vacillates between a status that calls for a clear separation between State and religion (the French way), a communal management of religious institutions (the British way), and an involvement of the State regarded as a “neutral” element in religion.
Regarding Islam, there are two contradictory trends in Europe. One is a culturalist trend that focuses on the cultural autonomy of Muslims, and advocates autarky and the preservation of all Islamic customs – including those that contradict universal values prevailing in today’s societies, especially in Europe.
The other trend is rather reformist, advocates a cultural integration of European Muslims and adopts a progressive interpretation of Islam that allows them to harmonize Islamic values with the universal values of Europe, in order to upgrade their traditional values that are no longer adapted to the needs of our time.
This needed integration does not necessarily mean that Muslims should renounce their spiritual values, they should only give up customs that contradict with the humanism of Islam on the one hand, and with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international conventions on the other hand.
This process is far from being complete and presents many difficulties. However, these difficulties and the concomitant debates are – somehow – the evidence of this inclusive process.
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Your Comments
commentsAnonymous About over 2 years ago
It requires honesty and courage to admit that the number one problem of Muslim countries, such as Tunisia, is not really religion, but it’s rather criminality. Corruption, nepotism, power abuse, influence peddling, and the absence of the State of law disturb the practice of free economy, and do more harm to society than a piece of cloth with which some women prefer to cover their hair, while others – like yourself – prefer to show off their trendy haircut. In both cases, I do not see any problem other than the hysteria conveyed by the media and fueled by opportunistic and unscrupulous politicians for whom a contract is well worth ignoring some issues, such as Sarkozy or Chirac who – while visiting Tunisia – praise the human rights policy and close their eyes on dictatorship, but scream of indignation as soon as the Islamic veil is mentioned. To explain their silence regarding the corruption of power and violations that they would not like to see in their own countries, their excuse is that they should not be giving lessons to others. If that is the case, they should be consistent with themselves and stop the policy of selective indignation. In a word, and even though I support the separation of religion and politics, I think that it is more urgent for some countries, under the current circumstances, to rather separate between criminality and State.
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