An Arab district in Brussels. Photograph by Flickr user Aldask (CC-usage).

It comes up in conversation all the time with colleagues at neweurasia: what do I think about the situation of Islam in the West?  I think Central Asians are really curious to know about it because they’re probably looking for insight not only into the West’s relationship to them and the larger Islamic world, but also for insight into themselves.  After all, Muslims living in the West are exposed to lifestyles and a quality of life little experienced in the umma.

Why me?  Well, for one, I’m studying Islamic history and philosophy here in the West, which, unfortunately, is still a rare thing for a Westerner to do.  For another, I’ve previously written about the concept of an “American” or “Americanized” Islam, which I wrote after a very long personal struggle with the religion.

Nowadays I’m no longer so hot for the idea of an “American Islam” as a theoretical project, i.e., reforming Islam to better match American culture or somehow fusing American philosophical principles with Islam.  However, as a way of describing the ways in which Islam is expressed and practiced in the United States as opposed to elsewhere, talking about an “American Islam” still makes sense — perhaps all the more so if we compare it “European Islam”.

What the heck do I mean?

Muslims trying to understand the situation of their religious kinsman in the West need to realize that there are two humongous divisions that cuts it right in half.  The first is, obviously, geographical: water.  The second is culture.  And in both cases, the divisions really come down to language — English.

It is perhaps wiser to speak of “Anglophonic Islam” since the situation for Muslims in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States is actually very uniform.  (I should note, however, that British Muslims have very sharp class, ethnic, and generational divisions within their community).  Once we step across the Atlantic or the English Channel, we find ourselves in a very different world.  The political traditions of the Continent are very different from those which prevail in the British Isles, North America, and Australasia.

I should also note that I’m not including Turkey or the Balkans, which obviously have historical Muslim populations, in my definition of “Europe”, nor am I including most of the former Communist bloc.  I’m speaking very specifically of the Continent’s Romanic zone (France, Italy, Romania, Spain) and Germanic Zone (Austria, the Benelux, Germany, Scandinavia, and Switzerland).

Ethnic make-up

American Muslims are both immigrant and native.  Like Britain, we have an historical immigrant population, albeit small, that dates back to the 19th Century, but unlike Britain, we also have an historical native population of converts from among the former slaves (or re-converts, as they tend to envision themselves).  Moreover, since the 1970s we have been drawing immigrants from every corner of the Muslim world — the umma, in all its manifoldness, is best represented not only in Mecca but also the streets of American cities.   All told, this means that American Muslims have an incredible array of intellectual, cultural, and human resources to draw upon.

Europe’s Muslims, however, are entirely immigrant — the last natives were chased out of Spain in the 15th Century.  They also tend to be homogeneous, drawn largely from only two sources, namely, Morocco and Turkey.  Of course, there is a healthy contingent of Muslims from African, Balkan, Central Asian,  Middle Eastern, and Southeast Asian countries, but they are smaller.  Moreover, they tend to be more effective at integration, or at least keeping themselves out of the spotlight.

Education

American Muslims tend to have skills and education before they moved to America. Yes, America is, quite literally, brain-draining the umma.  And, although it is not uniform — Black American Muslims are still struggling academically and economically in many quarters — it is a consistent enough of a phenomenon to the point where it is being passed onto the first and second generations of Muslim children born and raised in the United States.

European Muslims, however, were originally imported as unskilled labor.  It’s a strange, even laughable, fact that the Europeans really believed the Moroccans and Turks would simply go home after their contracts ended.  Today, after three generations of continual immigration and ghettoization, European Muslims have the highest secondary school drop-out rates, and with it, the highest petty and violent crime rates.  They are also consistently the single largest group on the welfare rolls.

Integration

This element of ghettoization is critically important: with the notable exception of Black American Muslims, American Muslims are integrated — heck, we have a President of Islamic descent!   And where they aren’t, such as in Black communities, they nevertheless tend to have an ameliorative effect by uplifting otherwise self-destructing neighborhoods.  Indeed, Black American Muslims score higher in secondary school exams than their Christian or otherwise non-religious peers.

Europe’s Muslims, on the other hand, isolate themselves and are isolated by the surrounding cultures.  Speaking candidly, I take the Europeans to task for this: after all these centuries they still look upon themselves as “civilization” and the rest of the world, including America, as barbarous.  At the same time, they are very nervous about difference to the point where they have an almost pathological disinterest in other cultures.

Tim Pauwels, a Flemish journalist with Belgian State Television, put it to me bluntly:

For three generations we just didn’t care about the Moroccans and left them to rot in our cities.

“They have no respect”

As a result, there’s a massive conflict between cultures going on here.  Europeans fail to realize that the Muslims they encounter are impoverished strangers in a strange land; Muslims, in turn, resent that the Europeans they encounter would rather pretend that they don’t exist.

Putting aside all the big theory, here’s an example of what I mean: a Dutch friend of mine, who would like to have the Moroccans deported from the European Union, complained about an incident involving his girlfriend.  They were walking through a Moroccan neighborhood in the Hague during which she was whistled at, heckled, and called a whore.   “They hate women!” he said.  “They have no respect.”

There’s no country called “Asshole-stan”

I informed him that, to the contrary, the Moroccans do actually have a lot of respect for women.  Any stroll through a city park will be revelatory.  You can find Moroccan couples of all ages and religious inclination cuddling, laughing, and joking.  Some of my nicest memories of the Hague’s main park is of Moroccan guys taking their girls for bike rides through the forest.

What did my friend miss?  Well, for one, he failed to realize that the Moroccan punks cat-calling his girlfriend were precisely that — punks.  Alas, there isn’t out there in the world some country called “Asshole-stan” where all the citizens are punks; all nations have young hooligans.  For another, there is actually a legitimate cultural difference at operation.  Whether we Westerners agree or disagree with it, the fact remains that in the Moroccan’s home culture an unveiled woman in jeans or a short skirt in the company of someone who isn’t her husband or male relative is, in fact, a prostitute.

This is not to say that the punks’ behavior is defensible.  For one thing, after living in Europe for three generations one would think that by now the Moroccans overall would have some sense, however vague, of the difference between their culture and that of the Europeans, and would try to be more circumspect; indeed, the Turks for the most part seem to have learned this.  For another, the red light districts are packed with Moroccan men, so there’s a bit of hypocrisy going on here.

Beyond the nation-state

So, what’s the future of Islam in the West?  Simply put, the American model, while not perfect (just ask American Muslims how they felt during the paranoid Bush years), works.  The European model doesn’t.  I think at the heart of this is the concept of the nation-state, which, for Americans, is built around an idea — liberty — but for Europeans is built around a linguistic ethnic.  In other words, America integrates Muslims better than Europe because it is ideologically prepared to do so.

The European nation-state is creating the conditions for a “clash of civilizations”.  The only answer, then, is to abandon it.  What does it mean to be Dutch, French, German?  Whatever it means, it certainly no longer means what it did two hundred, one hundred, or even fifty years ago.  If they are to avoid very real ethnic conflict from erupting within their cities, the Europeans need to re-define European-ness.

Of course, in many ways, the Europeans are attempting to do precisely that — the European Union is the grand experiment in re-definition.  So there is real hope that conflict can be avoided.  And, indeed, we are seeing hints of integration all around: mosques in Rotterdam, Zurich, and Paris, and Muslims getting elected to government.   Time will tell.

That’s my two cents on this subject.  On the one hand, keep in mind that I’m talking in terms of gross generalities here.  On the other hand, my views will probably continue to evolve while I’m here in Europe, so stay tuned!