What Does It Mean to be a Muslim in a Secular Country?

This question was posed by Dounia Bouzar (n.1), an anthropologist and member of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM). She said, “Young Muslims born in France cannot turn to foreign countries to find the answer to the key question – what does it mean to be a Muslim in a secular country – because none of those countries is secular,” (1).

This question is not easy to answer at the first sight particularly because it is not very clear either as to what it means to be a Muslim in a Muslim country. There is no consensus of opinion as to what a Muslim is, see for instance, (2). But without nitpicking as to who exactly a Muslim is, Dounia’s question can be considered in the perspective of a personal and cultural religion, though many hardliners and orthodox religionists will hardly consider worthwhile to dwell on it that way. They have their own outlook on who is a Muslim and they wouldn’t consider any other way to look at this issue. For them Islam is unique and everything else needs to be brought in line with Islam (fundamentalist version). Their aim is to Islamize the whole world even though they do not seem to have any clear cut vision of the goal that they are pursuing.

The actual situation is however more fundamental in ways on which the orthodox and conservative Muslims do not have control. The younger generation that is born and bred in the western secular countries is exposed to much broader influences than are allowed by the fundamentalists who either live in the Muslim world or else have immigrated with their old inbred beliefs into the western countries. The young people who go to secular schools for education do not generally imbibe the orthodox prejudices and are amenable to have peaceful symbiosis with others of differing faiths. Many of them do not prejudge others on the premise that the others are misguided and do not have the right faith. They have relatively open minds (unless they are sealed at home by their conservative parents) and ask critical questions about Islam which are totally taboo and forbidden in the conservative Muslim world. The risk of being influenced by their conservative parents (if they are still conservative), although exists, is less because the secular society gives them freedom of thought and expression and they cannot be forced into any ideology, which they do not want to accept. The secular and free society also has its impact on the parents who in spite of having orthodox roots are likely to think “out of the box” due to liberal external influences.

Deliberating on the young women growing up in France and trying to integrate in French secular society, it was reported (3), “Religious leaders agree that teenagers born and educated in France are growing up quite differently from the way their mothers or grandmothers did in the villages of North Africa. ‘They are liberated, - look, they choose their own husbands. They want to establish a new Islamic identity,’ said Khalil Merroun, rector of a large mosque south of Paris.’ The last thing a lot of these girls want is for a man to tell them what to do. Said L’haj Thami Breeze, president of the Union of French Islamic Organizations (UOIF).” This is already happening in the USA and continental Europe. The boys and girls find their own mates. The orthodoxy is giving way to modernization and secularization.

Although there is no perceptible and final answer to Dounia’s question yet, different individuals will find their own visions at some stage in their life. No matter how liberal a person is, it is probable that (s)he will remain attached to the cultural roots of her (his) religion.

I plan to consider this issue in the perspective of an individual Muslim living in a secular country and existence of a Muslim community in a secular country. I begin first with an individual Muslim.


Individual Muslims in Secular Milieu

An individual Muslim can live in a secular country quite comfortably without any interference in his religious beliefs and practice. As a matter of fact, unbelievers live equally freely in a secular country without any interference in their individual outlook on religion. Here I would like to quote from Steven Weinberg (n.2) as an example to illustrate my point. He (4) wrote in his essay “Zionism and Its adversaries”, “I write about Zionism as one who has no interest in the preservation of Judaism (or, I hasten to add, any other religion), but a great deal of interest in the preservation of Jews.” Einstein had a similar kind of strong cultural affinity with Jews although he was not a practicing Jew. Likewise, Bertrand Russell was an agnostic leaning more towards atheism than belief in any organized religion. Culturally, he was a Christian in spite of his famous essay, “Why I am not a Christian?” For others who have reasons to believe in theistic Islam or any other religion, there are no problems for them to live peacefully in a secular country unless of course they plan and work for Islamizing it or converting it to their own faith-systems.

From my own experience, I can testify that until 9/11, no body ever asked me my religion or discussed it. Even after 9/11, my religion did not become a topic of any serious discussion although some Native Americans showed interest out of curiosity to know more about Islam in a general way. If religion ever became a problem at the work place, it was between some Hindus and Muslims who fought their ethnic and religious battles there. They were disciplined according to the departmental guidelines.


Muslim Community in Secular Milieu

There are numerous Muslim organizations in every major city of the US and continental Europe, where Muslims like other ethnic immigrant communities, assemble and formulate policies for preserving their religious and cultural identities in the secular societies in which they are living. There are all kinds of people with all kinds of visions and ideas for achieving their objective and at the same time smoothly assimilating with the host societies. There are orthodox visionaries also who want to reverse the tide of time and go back to the 1400 years old roots of Islam. I personally think they are fighting a losing battle; time like an arrow moves only in the forward direction. The important thing is that “it moves”, it is not stationary. The secularization is already occurring in the households of these visionaries also if they care to open their eyes and see. There are instances of some Muslim immigrants who found it impossible to live in secular society in which, they feared, their children would lose faith and they went back to their countries of origin. Many of them could not live there also and returned.

The concepts of ‘khilafah’ and Islamic State, which many of our orthodox brothers preach are merely a chimera. Where does khilafah exist in the Muslim world? If it does not actually exist and they want to install it, the rational point of departure should be the Islamic world. History shows that khilafah was merely a front for the Muslim autocrats who wanted to exploit the masses in the name of Islam. The concepts of khilafah and Muslim State are not even logically consistent.

In the recent history, the Taliban government in Afghanistan can be quoted as a reflection of hypothetical khilafah. How many Muslims would like that kind of illiterate and anachronic rule in the new century? Most of the Afghanis, particularly the women, wanted an end to the stifling government of Taliban. The label of Islam is attractive to majority of the well-meaning Muslims but the kind of utopian Islamic State envisioned by Maulana Maudoodi and other orthodox zealots could exist only in their books; it can never be put into practice.

Has any of these fundamentalists living in the west seriously considered what they are talking about. The secular governments in the west are truly Islamic in character for all intents and purposes. They are for the ‘common good’ of the people. The poor and resourceless people are properly taken care of and are not left to die on the roadside a languishing and indifferent death. Can any Muslim country match the health system, education system, retirement system and any western welfare system, for God’s sake? What do they want to replace the secular system with? Chaos and confusion?

If you want a social change, set good individual examples for others to follow. Show by example that Islamic system (whatever it is) is better than secular system. Our historical examples are horrible. Most of the orthodox preachers are hypocritical and set bad examples individually.

The trouble is fomented mostly by orthodox imams, preachers and their followers. Again quoting from Dounia (5), “There is an abyss between the imam’s vision of the world and that of young Muslims born here.” It was reported in “Citizens for Peace and Tolerance”, May 6, 2004, (5), “Dalil Boubaker, the head of Paris’s Grand Mosque, is harsher. There are 1500 places of Islamic worship in France.. Five hundred of them have proper imams. The other thousand are clowns.”

All these various forces interact and in due time the Muslim community will evolve its direction and develop its own weltanschauung, which will be harmonious with secularism and not at war with it. The world has moved far, indeed very far, from what it was 1400 years ago; it cannot be pegged into the past.

I will conclude this essay with Dounia’s conclusion, “Before we can decide what we want from our imams we have to reflect on what it means to be a Muslim in a secular society, and we have a long way to go in this reflection,” (5).


Notes

n.1. Dounia Bouzar was born in 1964 in France and she converted to Islam in 1991. Dounia was one of the two women who are members of CFCM. The other is Fatiha Ajbli.

Dounia is an anthropologist. She resigned her membership of CFCM on January 5, 2005. She said she resigned because the board is dominated by male members who were born in foreign lands. Their objective is to Islamize France and not to allow Frenchfying Islam.

CFCM was set up in 2002 at the urging of the French government. “As long as there is not a majority of French born Muslims on the board, the CFCM will suffer from rivalries that divide its members according to their countries of origin,” she said (Dhimmi Watch, January 6, 2005).

n.2. Steven Weinberg is a physicist who shared Nobel Prize with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow, in 1979, for unifying the weak and electromagnetic interactions. He is a born Jew and a self-professed atheist.

References

1.Mohammad Gill, “Who is a Muslim?” chowk.com, February 29, 2004.
2.“French Woman quits Muslim Council,” Dawn, January 5, 2005.
3.“Issue misread, say Muslim Leaders,” Dawn, February 9, 2004.
4.Steven Weinberg, “Facing Up,” Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2001, p. 182.
5.“France tries to soften local style of Islam,” Citizens for Peace and Tolerance, May 6, 2004.