By IRSHAD MANJI
Published: November 18, 2004
As a young Canadian Muslim who has called for reform in Islam,
I've been
traveling throughout North America and Europe over the past year.
Last week, I
toured France and Spain. God help me.
I didn't expect a warm reception from fellow Muslims. But now,
I'm also not
sure that liberal Muslims like me fit comfortably in a secular
European crowd. I
say this even after the murder of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch
filmmaker, who police
officials say was shot and stabbed by a Muslim extremist. Mr. van
Gogh had
exercised his right to criticize Islam - a right that I, as a modern
Muslim,
defend unequivocally.
What then gives me the sense that even modern Muslims can't be
modern enough
for Western Europe? It's precisely that, from Amsterdam to Barcelona
to Paris to
Berlin, people incredulously ask me one type of question that I'm
never asked in
the United States and Canada: Why does an independent-minded woman
care about
God? Why do you need religion at all?
I'll answer in a moment. To get there, allow me to observe key
differences
between the debate over Islam in Western Europe and North America.
In Western
Europe, the entry point for this debate is the hijab - the headscarf
that many
Muslim women wear as a signal of modesty. By contrast, the entry
point in North
America is terrorism.
Some might say that difference is understandable. After all,
Sept. 11 happened
on American soil. But March 11 happened on European ground, yet the
hijab
remains the starting point for Europeans. Meanwhile, it makes barely
a ripple in
North America.
This difference speaks to a larger gulf in attitudes toward
religion. To a lot
of Europeans, still steeped in memories of the Catholic Church's
intellectual
repression, religion is an irrational force. So women who cover
themselves are
foolish at best and dangerous otherwise.
Not so in North America. Because it has long been a society of
immigrants
seeking religious tolerance, religion itself is not seen as
irrational - even if
what some people do with it might be, as in the case of terrorism.
Which means
Muslims in North America tend to be judged less by what we wear than
by what we
do - or don't do, like speaking out against Islamist violence.
But there's something else going on. The mass immigration of
Muslims is
bringing faith back into the public realm and creating a post-
Enlightenment
modernity for Western Europe. This return of religion threatens
secular
humanism, the orthodoxy that has prevailed since the French
Revolution.
Paradoxically, because many Western Europeans feel that they're
losing
Enlightenment values amid the flood of "people of faith," they wind
up
sympathizing with those in the Muslim world who resent imported
values that
challenge their own. Both groups are identity protectionists.
We see such protectionism playing out in the debate about whether
Turkey may
join the European Union. Reflecting a sizable segment of public
opinion,
European Union commissioners have argued that Turkey is
too "oriental." And let
us stay that way, proclaim some Muslim puritans who fear the
promiscuity of
pluralistic values. But is Turkey all that different from Europe?
It's a longtime member of NATO. Its so-called Islamist government
has updated
the country's human rights statutes to conform to the standards of
the European
Union. It's home to an astonishingly free press. Recently, a left-
wing newspaper
questioned the Koran's origins, a right-wing newspaper wrote about
gays and
lesbians lobbying for sexual orientation to be included in anti-
discrimination
laws, and a centrist newspaper editorialized that the education
system should be
reformed to promote diversity.
As one young Turk told me, "If Western values are tolerance,
democracy,
justice, equality and freedom, then I live in a Western country:
Turkey." Try
explaining that to those Europeans who want to impose their baggage
from the
Vatican onto Muslim immigrants. Their secularism can be zealous,
missionary -
dare I say it, religious.
Which brings me back to the question of why I, an independent-
minded woman,
bother with Islam. Religion supplies a set of values, including
discipline, that
serve as a counterweight to the materialism of life in the West. I
could have
become a runaway materialist, a robotic mall rat who resorts to
retail therapy
in pursuit of fulfillment. I didn't. That's because religion
introduces
competing claims. It injects a tension that compels me to think and
allows me to
avoid fundamentalisms of my own.
Islam today has deep flaws, and I know saying so makes me a
blasphemer in the
eyes of countless Muslims. C'est la vie. If they move beyond
emotion, they'll
come to appreciate that for the rationalists among us, religion can
be a
godsend.
Irshad Manji is the author of "The Trouble with Islam: A Muslim's
Call for Reform in Her Faith."
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