I was having dinner the other day with some European friends who
are reasonable center-left types. London riots were in full swing.
Anders Breivik had killed more than 80 of his countrymen in an apparent
bid to halt the “Islamization” of Europe. Greece’s economy had
collapsed. The consensus among my friends was that the next five to 10
years could turn out “very scary” for Europe.
Muslims are only one part — and a small part — of these problems.
But, unfortunately, economic collapse tends to fuel racism and
intolerance, which is exactly what is happening now. The slow progress
made on Muslim integration is likely to unravel as more Europeans find
refuge in populism in general and far-right, radical parties in
particular.
While dutifully disavowing such groups, my leftish friends, like so
many Europeans, asked why European Muslims weren’t doing more to
assimilate and respect the culture of their new countries. And this
brings us to the issue at hand: there is a clash of values, one which
will make it considerably harder to find a path of compromise between
Muslims and the rest of Europe.
Secularism, as its understood and practiced in Europe, is not
value-neutral. It asks conservative Muslims to be something that they’re
likely not. “Secularism,” the thinking goes, allows all groups,
including Muslims, to practice their religion as they see fit. This
assumes that the practice of religion is fundamentally a personal,
private act detached from public, political life. It is here that Islam
(how it is understood, if not necessarily practiced by most Muslims) and
Europe’s traditional identity and culture find themselves at odds.
It is this expectation or, rather, hope — that Islam will somehow
cease to be what it is — that colors so many debates not just in Europe
but also in a rapidly changing Middle East.
There is, in fact, something uniquely “uncompromising” about Islam,
at least compared to other faiths. This is not a value judgment but
rather a descriptive statement about what Islam is today (rather than
what it could or should be). Many Muslims take pride in this very fact.
It is this unwillingness to compromise in the face of secularizing
pressures, they would say, that makes Islam both vibrant and
distinctive. Indeed, Islam has proven remarkably resistant to the
persistent attempts to relegate it to the private sphere.
The fact that someone like Swiss scholar Tariq Ramadan and tens of
thousands his fellow “Euro-Islam” followers are seen in Europe as too
conservative is illustrative of the problem. Ramadan’s proposed
moratorium on the hadd punishments (for example cutting off the hands of
thieves and stoning adulterers) was seen as beyond the pale in secular
France. In a memorable debate on French television, Nicholas Sarkozy, then the interior minister, attacked Ramadan for refusing to unequivocally condemn the stoning of women.
In a place like Egypt, however, such a moratorium would likely
provoke controversy for the opposite reason — for being too “liberal.”
Whether we like it or not, Ramadan’s version of Islam, by the standards
of mainstream Islamic thought, is actually quite “progressive,” which is
one reason it has, so far, failed to catch on in the Arab world.
Consider the findings of a December 2010 Pew poll.
In Egypt, 82 percent of respondents supported the stoning of adulterers
while 77 percent said they favored cutting off the hands of thieves.
As I note in my recent Foreign Affairs article,”The
Rise of the Islamists,” many Western observers made the mistake of
thinking that this year’s Arab revolutions were “secular.” There was the
naïve view — one almost entirely divorced from the Egyptian reality —
that once the yoke of dictatorship was removed, Egyptians, and Arabs
more generally, would turn out to be fluffy pro-American liberals. Well,
they aren’t and won’t be anytime soon.
From an American perspective, the rapid rise of Egypt’s Salafis —
conservative Islamists who advocate a strict, uncompromising view of
Islamic law — is indeed troubling. That said, it is undemocratic, as
well as illiberal, to ask millions of Salafis to stop being Salafis once
they enter the public sphere, as some Egyptian liberals seem to be
demanding. Similarly, it is undemocratic and illiberal to ask European
Muslims to be as religious as they want at home but to keep their Islam
out of public view. For many, if not most religious Muslims, such a
distinction is as odd as it is inconceivable. Yet asking Muslims to
respect such distinctions is also entirely understandable in the
troubled, bloody context of European history. In the pre-Enlightenment
period, mixing religion with politics brought Europe close to the brink
of destruction, with the Thirty Years’ War being only the most obvious
example. The French Revolution was, in part, about correcting this
“imbalance.” For Europe to prosper, religion would have to be controlled
and constrained by the state. And so French laïcité was born. Laïcité,
in turn, became central to France’s social fabric and to French national
identity. To be French is, in some sense, to believe in this
constructed secular ideal.
The French national ideal, then, and the beliefs of a large number of
French Muslims are in tension, if not contradiction. French Muslims
much more strongly identify with their religion than the French
population at large. According to a 2009 Gallup poll,
52 percent of French Muslims either “very strongly” or “extremely
strongly” identify with their religion — compared to only 23 percent of
the French public. The numbers for Britain are even starker — 75 percent
versus 23 percent. Other poll results underline this clash in values.
Remarkably, zero percent — yes, zero percent — of British Muslims believe homosexuality
is morally acceptable. Inevitably, such views, informed by religion,
are not simply a matter of private concern. They have an effect on
public policy (just as the anti-gay attitudes of conservative Christians
shape Republican policy in America).
It doesn’t have to be this way, but that’s the way it is now. In
times of economic distress — and with the euro zone inching toward
collapse — Europeans may increasingly take refuge in anti-Muslim
scapegoating. This, in turn, will hurt the already dim job prospects of
the European Muslim underclass. For their part, European Muslims who
face heightened discrimination may very well find refuge in an
increasingly rigid construction of their Muslim identity. Unemployment,
immigration fears, the ascendance of the far right — along with a very
real clash of religious and cultural values — make for a potent
combination.
If there was a strong, confident left in Europe, then perhaps this
dangerous mix could be effectively fought and opposed. For now, though,
we may just have to hope – and pray – that cooler heads prevail.
