Islam And The West: From Discord To Understanding - Critical Essay

Contemporary Review, May, 2001 by Sharif Shuja

And now there is the emerging information revolution which leaves the West both triumphant and vulnerable - but is also leaving Islam marginalised. This is the revolution which is transforming the relationship between man and knowledge itself. But the question arises: can the Muslim world enter the positive sphere of globalisation without risking the negative aspects of Westernisation?

One of the remarkable things about the twentieth century is that it combined the cultural Westernisation of the Muslim world, on the one hand, and the more recent demographic Islamisation in the Western world, on the other. The foundations for the cultural Westernisation of the Muslim world were laid mainly in the first half of the twentieth century. The foundations for the demographic Islamisation in the Western world were laid in the second half of the twentieth century. The cultural Westernisation of Muslims contributed to the brain drain of Muslim professionals and experts from their homes in Muslim countries to jobs and educational institution in North America and Europe. It is in this sense that the cultural Westernisation of the Muslim world in the first half of the twentieth century was part of the preparation for the demographic Islamisation in the West in the last fifty years.

Islamic Revivalism in Context

There are scholars and policy makers in the West who are concerned with recent Islamic revivalism and face tensions about how Islam is to be treated in Western textbooks and the media, especially as Islam becomes a more integral part of Western society. As one observer (Ali Mazrui) put it:

Judaism, Christianity and Islam are the three Abrahamic creeds of world history. In the twentieth century the Western world has often been described as a 'Judeo-Christian civilisation', thus linking the West to two of those Abrahamic faiths. But if in countries like the US Muslims will soon outnumber Jews, is Islam becoming the second most important Abrahamic religion after Christianity? Numerically Islam may overshadow Judaism in much of the West, regardless of future immigration policies.

The question has therefore arisen about how Islam is to be treated in Western classrooms. In the Muslim world, 'education has become substantially Westernised. Is it now the turn of education in the West to become partly Islamised?' Can the Western world enter the positive sphere of globalisation and draw on the traditional wisdom of cultures such as Islam which point towards a more integrated society with drastically decreased levels of crime and violence?

The rise of Islamic movements in different parts of the world, aimed at resisting Western domination and control over Muslim territories and resources, Muslim cultures and communities, has provoked a new wave of aggressive emotions against the religion and its practitioners. That it is resistance to Western domination and control - and not some threat to the West as such - which is taking place within the Muslim world is a reality that is concealed from the general public. What Islamic movements are opposed to is the annexation and occupation of their lands as in the case of Palestine and Lebanon, the usurpation of their rights over their own natural resources as in the case of the Gulf Sheikhdoms, and the denigration of their religion as often happens in the Western media, sometimes abetted by local elites and writers.