Globalized Muslims

Currently gearing up for the Citizens Dialogue Tour to Norway, Ireland, and Belgium. I'll be leaving May 10 and will return May 24, full of observations and conversations worth sharing. In the meanwhile, my preparation has included reading some articles on Islam in Europe and in those countries specifically, and I am shocked by not just the vast differences in the Muslim experience over there, but also by my ignorance of it up till now. How did I before assume that all Muslims in all Western countries lived the life of mutual respect and dignity that I as a Muslim American live here, among my fellow Americans? European Muslims, though more politically involved than American Muslims, are subject to discriminatory actions on the part of their governments and some fellow citizens too. European Muslims are also less educated and less prosperous than their American brethren, and are composed primarily of immigrants rather than the indigenous Caucasion and Black Muslim contingency in America that constitutes 35% of the American Muslim population. And, perhaps linked to that is the fact that European Muslims are more likely to hold extremist views than the vastly moderate Muslim population of America.

On that note, I have to mention an interesting article I read by Olivier Roy about how globalization is in fact the root cause of Muslim extremism. He points out that it is a mistake to assume that extremism is something that Muslim immigrants bring from their homeland to their new European/Western homes. The displacement of Muslims from Muslim countries where Islamic rituals and way of life are supported and fortified by cultural practices to their new Western context forces Muslims to make the culture v. religion distinction. In separating those two concepts, Muslims often decide to let go of the cultural elements and practice only the religious ones, which in turns focuses them on rules and rituals. Rules and rituals make you measure your religiosity in terms of the degree to which you abide by them.

Which reminds me of an interesting, but sort of unrelated, point made by Hijabman at yesterday's bookclub meeting for Blue-Eyed Devil: He noted that extremists, both present and those who have left that ideology but still haven't found a stable middle ground, tend to be inherently contradictory. One second they will be lambasting women who don't cover completely, and the other second they will be ogling women. Strict ritualists who realize that it is impossible to abide perfectly by the rules, all the time, all the way, become disillusioned and sway to the opposite end of the spectrum.

In Roy's terms, where does that leave globalized, displaced Muslims? At the opposite end of strict ritualists? And what is that exactly?