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CIAO DATE: 04/05/07
Islamic Reform or Designer Fundamentalism?
Review by Ebrahim Moosa
Tariq Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003, 272 pp. $45.00.
Europe’s Muslims have replaced the “Jewish problem” of “old” Europe. The recent misgivings of influential European figures about Turkey’s accession to the European Union and the prohibition of the scarf in French public schools only confirm such fears. If media reports are to be believed, Europe is becoming increasingly paranoid about Islam. Latent fears of the Muslim threat flared once again last year when a Dutch filmmaker’s use of Islamic symbols provoked a Moroccan to murder. Regular revelations about the presence of militant Muslim networks in European capitals only compound anxieties. At one level, Muslims in Europe are confined to cultural perceptions that change in name only over time: the memory of the “Turk” of folklore has been replaced by the simple cipher of “Muslim”; the veiled woman of Orientalist fantasies is now the hijab-wearing female, and the red threat of Communism is currently embodied by the fanaticism of Muslim terrorism. Spectacle is the word that comes to mind when social relations are formed only around images. Such confrontations powerfully reinforce a sense of impersonal relations, distance, and enmity.
In Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, Tariq Ramadan seeks to redress some of these negative Muslim images by proposing a blueprint for a “Western Muslim” or a “European Muslim” identity. Ramadan is from Geneva, where he combines the roles of a religious figure, a university professor, and a public intellectual. He enjoys wide popularity among Muslim audiences in Europe, North America, and beyond. In 2004, however, the Bush administration barred him from taking up a position at the University of Notre Dame after certain American neo-conservative lobbyists objected to his presence in the United States. Ironically, he now serves as an advisor to Bush’s closest transatlantic ally, Prime Minister Tony Blair, and will be a regular fellow at Saint Antony’s College at Oxford University. Some critics believe that Ramadan’s pedigree renders him less appealing than the actual causes he defends. He is the maternal grandson of Hasan al-Banna, the early-twentiethcentury founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that spawned the Egyptian equivalent of the Islamic International. Other critics allege—without convincing proof or substantiation— that he is a protean figure.
What Ramadan forgot was that when dealing with the Muslim issue, Europe’s best minds regress, and sentiment in the United States does not lag far behind. Many Europeans consider Muslims to be the new “barbarians,” and this attitude drives many to adopt positions of intolerance and xenophobia. Given the controversial Rushdie affair in the eighties, the recent affaire du foulard in France, and growing resentment of the Turkish immigrant community in Germany, it is often difficult to distinguish the mentality of many European intellectuals from that of the mob. The recent train bombings in Madrid and London have only exacerbated these tensions.
In Western Muslims, Ramadan ambitiously attempts to construct a narrative of reform that is internal to Muslim discourse. Armed with this approach, he believes he can provide the Western Muslim an entry point into the discursive framework of Western political and cultural life. While his paradigm is not oblivious to the larger European political and cultural contexts, he rejects claims that there is a difference between Western and Islamic realities. Ramadan laments that such a “bipolar vision is widespread” and is critical of Muslims who bask in the intimidating power and legitimacy that their otherness produces. He dismisses such a simplistic vision as a decoy, and argues that the claims that justify it are boldface untruths.
Ramadan rightly asserts that the power such a skewed vision bestows on angry and disgruntled Muslims “is a pure illusion.” Muslims only “isolate themselves, marginalize themselves, and sometimes, by their excessive emotional, intellectual and social isolation, even strengthen the logic of the dominant system whose power, by contrast, lies in always appearing open, pluralistic, and rational.” Incredibly, Ramadan follows this assertion with the claim that his analytic framework is apolitical. In light of this dispassionate approach, he refrains from addressing concerns about Muslim security and Islamophobia. To him these are secondary questions. Still, Ramadan’s views on this matter run counter to most of the critical literature that examines the place of Muslims in Europe.
Ebrahim Moosa teaches in the Department of Religion at Duke University and is director of the Center for the Study of Muslim Networks at Duke. He is the author of Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination (University of North Carolina Press, 2005) and editor of Fazlur Rahman’s last work, Revival and Reform: A Study in Islamic Fundamentalism.