Daily Times

To pick up the thread from last week, it is important to consider the impact of Islam’s continuing immigration into the West and especially Europe in throes of its own populist backlash. Dr Akbar S Ahmed’s book Journey into Europe, Islam, Immigration and Identity is a magnum opus which should be mandatory reading for any scholar studying the challenge and opportunity Islam poses for a new Europe.

The issue is an urgent one because it pitches populist ethnocentrism of European society against fundamentalism of Islamic orthodoxy. In his extensive travels, Dr Ahmed interviewed a number of people who confirmed that the schism is indeed deep. There is almost an aversion amongst Muslims settling in the west for the cultures that they have voluntarily sought to come live in. We see especially the evidence for it when the head of the Minhajul Quran centre in Denmark breaks into a vicious tirade against Denmark. One wonders why then the Imam decided to settle there. Similarly at one point during the book Dr Ahmed and his research team are attacked a group of religious fundamentalists in Britain, simply because the researchers are not Muslims.

These attitudes are deeply problematic and embedded in Muslim society. While Muslims from around the world have been travelling to Europe in search of a better life, in their enthusiasm to hold onto their Islamic identity, they say and do things which make them suspect in the eyes of those right wing neo-Nazis and ultra-right wing nationalists who now pose a danger to the very integrity of Europe.  Things therefore are likely to become much worse before they get better.  Yet there is much in both the European and Islamic traditions that lends itself to the cause of co-existence, tolerance and accommodation between the Muslim immigrants and their host countries. La convivencia is a concept that developed in Spain through interaction of Europe with Islam over a 700 year period, during Muslim rule. This refers to a period where Jews, Christians and Muslims lived together and created together. Muslim Spain was a model of tolerance and harmony at a time when Europe was in darkness. Soon afterwards began the inquisition in Spain.

There is a war for the hearts and minds in the Islamic world waged between the humanists and globalists on the one side, and retrogressive religious orthodoxy on the other

To be fair this idea of la convivencia has been questioned by some academics but in the balance it is undeniable that Muslim rule in Spain stood at variance to the violence and bigotry in the rest of Europe. The art and culture left behind was phenomenal.  Some of the most influential and remarkable figures in the higher echelons of the Muslim government were Non-Muslims, especially Jews. Indeed Jews were especially held in great esteem. Obviously this doesn’t mean things were always perfect. There was of course the great Granada Massacre of the Jews but that had been prompted by jealousy against the Jewish grand vizier of the Kingdom. Cordoba was also home to such great Jewish philosophers as Maimonides. His contributions to Jewish Law are well known.  On the Muslim side you had the great Averroes who features prominently in European Renaissance.  This was Islam’s historic contribution.

This fresh engagement between Islam and Europe has come at a time when Islam is going through a massive internal crisis. There is a war for the hearts and minds in the Islamic world waged between the humanists and globalists on the one side and retrogressive religious orthodoxy on the other. The tragedy of course is that the latter group does not understand that the real reason behind Islam’s golden age was the extraordinary religious and academic freedom accorded to men of religion and science in the early period.  Perhaps this is what the greatest take away for the 21st century. We have been persecuting our freethinkers and killing our dissenters instead of celebrating them as early Islamic civilization did. Avicenna, Razi and other greats from that period were all staunch atheists — a fact that is often swept under the carpet.

So the spirit of La Convivencia was very much present in Islam’s earliest interaction with Europe. What Islam has gone through in the interim has been an experience with colonialism which has driven it inwards. This has led to several new innovations, such as the codification of Sharia — an entirely new obsession, which has only hardened the retrogressive and fanatical attitudes that stand in the way of meaningful reform. Reform is an urgent task that has to be undertaken by academics and philosophers both in Muslim majority countries and Non-Muslim majority countries. For Europe specifically and West generally this is of immense importance because we cannot have a continuation of a vicious cycle where the populists and ultra nationalists feed off of Islamists and vice versa with the result being that Muslim migrants escaping war and persecution are denied the opportunity to begin their life anew.

Here Dr Ahmed’s narrative assumes central importance. By looking at Muslim life in Europe as an anthropologist and juxtaposing it against Europe’s history, culture and heritage, he has shown that new vistas of cooperation and coexistence can still be opened. That is what is needed the most today.

The writer is a practising lawyer and a Visiting Fellow at Harvard Law School in Cambridge MA, USA. He blogs at http://globallegalforum.blogspot.com and his twitter handle is @therealylh

Published in Daily Times, March 26^th 2018.