Muslim Communities In The West

Mona Makram Obeid     Al-Hayat     2003/07/25

The Muslim minorities in the West, whether in the European countries or in the U.S., represent a significant extension to the Arab and Islamic nations, given that the Islamic culture is an essential component of Arab civilization. Herein derives their significance as strengthening the bridge between the Arab relations and the West. 

The Muslim minorities' presence in the West dates back to the Umayyads era in Andalusia, which witnessed the first migration wave of Muslims to Europe from its South Western parts. Then, the Muslims arrived to South of France, then to Eastern Europe as the Ottomans reached Vienna, the capital of the Austrian Empire back then. As a result, a large number of Balkan residents converted to Islam. Later on, they were to form the core of the Muslim minorities currently present in Eastern Europe, which is an early indication of the historical interaction between the Islamic culture and the West. 

The Islamic community gradually grew in the West over the past years, with the increasing number of Islamic minorities and their growing activity in the fields of culture and information.

In this regard, statistics show that there are at least seven million Muslims in the U.S., with several Muslim organizations and cultural centers established in the past few decades, and which have been playing a major role on the American scene.  

There are about 35 million Muslims in the EU and the Muslims are expected to form about 10% of Europe's population by 2020. According to statistics, there are 7,000 Islamic associations, centers and mosques in the EU, at the service of 16 million Muslims.

The Muslim minorities in the West have benefited from the political and cultural freedom present there to establish themselves in the societies they lived in. However, this was accompanied by problems specific to the Islamic communities abroad.

Indeed, the Muslim minorities faced major challenges in the West, even if they varied between the U.S., the EU and every other European country.

In the U.S., the Zionist hegemony over the media played a major role in preventing Muslim representatives from appearing on televisions, because of the Jews' control over one of the most important sectors of the American economy. 

In the EU, the situation varies between one country and the other. In Italy, for instance, with over one million Muslims and 80,000 Italian Muslims, and 450 mosques, the government still doesn't recognize Islam as an official religion. In Germany, where the number of Muslims exceeds three million, mostly Turks, the Germans still look at Muslims as foreigners and a threat to society.  

In the UK, the Muslims constitute more than 5% of the population "for their number exceeds 2 million individuals with the Indians as their third. They speak about 100 different languages, with origins from over 56 countries. They have 600 mosques registered as religious charity organizations, compared to 13 mosques in 1963. There are also 1,400 Islamic associations." 

This is clear in the UK more than in any other country, for the British law looks positively at the different groups and allows them some differences; and thanks to the freedom to express one's political identity, the Muslims were able to express themselves in the political system.

In France, "which harbors the largest Muslim community, with six million Muslims and 1,300 mosques, and about 600 associations, and national radio stations, not to mention the 100,000 Muslims of French origin, there is a clear confusion regarding the Muslims, as far as the issue of integration and a lack of clear policies to integrate the immigrants." Thus, the immigration issue became a pivotal issue in the last presidential elections, especially after the rise of the extremist right, which pledged to limit foreign immigration. Thus, the government started adopting a new policy designed to limit the feelings of hatred against foreigners.  

However despite these challenges, the Muslim communities grew considerably over the last decade, and started asserting themselves in Western societies, especially in light of the qualitative development of the Muslim presence in the West.   

The new Muslim generation grew up in the West, and has been impregnated in its culture, and as a result, enjoys better positions than their fathers, who long suffered for the sake of integration in Western societies. This same period also saw the development of cultural activities among Muslim minorities in the West. This growing Islamic presence in the West started facing challenges of a different nature during the past decade, which prevented the development of its role. 

These challenges stem from the nature of the relation between the West in general and Islam, for it includes a considerable number of contradictions that make its development a true paradox. These contradictions derived from the inherited conflict marked by mutual mistrust ever since the Crusades. The Crusades represented a violent confrontation between both sides, combining politics and religion at the same time, despite the fact that the religious aspect often conceals political ambitions and despite the fact that different historical periods have passed since then. This dates back to the savagery of these wars, the reality that kept them alive in the Arab as well as Islamic and Western minds. 

Despite the fact that the new international system is grounded in communications technology, disregarding racial and cultural differences, globalization paradoxically came to nurture the idea of clash between Islam and West, especially with the endless debates about clash of civilizations.   

In fact, one essential factor led to the rise of a confrontation between Islam and globalization. Globalization presents itself as an integrated system. In addition to its cultural and economical dimensions, political globalization aims to foster democracy the Western way, through plurality and freedom of expression and thought.

On the other hand, Islam is not considered to be solely a religion, but rather a comprehensive system of life, with criticisms of what the globalization tries to spread, and special studies contradicting in different ways the concepts of globalization. The September 11 attacks, considered as one of the main aspects of the new international system following the Cold war, came to reinforce the clash between the civilizations.

The result is that these events set off once again the controversy about the relation between the Islamic world with the Arab world on one hand and on the other hand, the West with the U.S., which remains the sole superpower following the era of bipolarity.

All that matters to us here is that this situation had negative repercussions on the Muslim communities in the West in general, even if the situation was different between the U.S., which was where the 9/11 attacks took place, and Europe. In fact, the discrimination against Muslims was more obvious in the U.S., to the point where a number of Muslims were killed after these events.

It could be important here to note that the sense of cultural belonging in the U.S. is not as strong as in Europe, and in parallel, there are historical and geographical relations between the Arab and Muslim world and Europe. As a result, the lives of Muslim communities in Europe are better than in the U.S.

The main problem is that the Muslim minorities in the West don't constitute a unity and this reinforces the difficulties facing them. This unity is hard to establish because of the racial and linguistic differences between these communities, which came to the West from different countries for different reasons. As such, the associations representing these minorities have a larger role in unifying them, towards becoming one front, similar to the Jewish communities in the American society.

It is even more important that these associations present the true image of Islam to the West, which demands establishing more Islamic cultural centers and supporting the existing ones. This is a very important matter considering the West's ignorance of many concepts of Islam.

However, efforts towards integrating the Muslim communities in the West and in the societies they live in doesn't mean that these minorities should lose their distinctive identities, which represent an important bridge with their original countries, which they depend on to establish strong relations between the West and the Arab and Muslim countries.   

This calls for establishing a notion of loyalty and reinforcing the sense of allegiance of these minorities to the Islamic world, which can't be implemented unless through learning the true ideology, especially in the new generation born in the West.

Needless to say how important it is for the Arab and Muslim worlds to support the Arab and Muslim communities in the West, helping them became a voice that is heard in this mostly active region of the world, especially with the fall of frontiers and geographical limits in the era of globalization, characterized by a revolution in communications and information.

The writer is a Professor at the American University of Cairo and member of the former Egyptian Parliament.