So much for the clash of civilizations. Though Washington hawks and Muslim militants play up a rising extremism, the likely future for Muslim civilization is not so melodramatic. After the shock of September 11, the next decade will likely see a slow reformation, as moderate Muslims seize back the religion that, as American Muslim scholar Hamza Yusuf says, “was hijacked along with the planes” that toppled the World Trade Center.
As war looms over Iraq and conflict racks the Middle East, what cause for optimism could there be? The rest of the Muslim world. In a recent British poll of nearly 5,000 people 15 to 25 years old in nine Muslim countries, the young respondents voted the United States their favorite country in the world. And last month a U.N. report damned the lack of freedom, development and access to knowledge in nearly all Arab countries. It was written by distinguished Arabs. The fact is, there’s less distance between Western and Muslim world views than 9-11 made us think.
There’s a new strain of honest self-appraisal in writings on Islam as well. Scholars like Muhammed Shahrur, Said Binsaid and Fatima Mernissi are re-examining the Qur’an. Their readings show that Islam isn’t the hidebound dogma of obscurantists but a rich and flexible faith, as compatible with humanist values in Seattle or Stockholm as in Quetta and Qom. “Until recently, there’s been a view of Islamic tradition as static and unchangeable,” notes Abdullahi an-Naim, author of “Toward an Islamic Reformation.” “It’s downplayed the role of human agency in history. But there’s been a gradual overcoming of this psychological barrier. There’s a new awareness that this tradition was made by people, and it can be unmade by people.”
The vast majority of Muslims, of course, have always been moderates: conservative religious parties have rarely done well at the polls. Militant Islam took root in the 1970s and 1980s, when the United States was fighting communism and Arab regimes were using Islamic parties to counter domestic leftists. Until recently the Saudis distributed the works of anti-Western Islamists like Sayyid Qutb and Abu Ala Maududi across the Islamic world and bolstered hostile regimes like the Taliban’s. Muslim reformers hope that the new era will end the Saudi stranglehold over Islamic debate.
September 11 also reshaped the relationship between Muslims in the West and their adopted countries. In Europe, immigration from South Asia and the Middle East is creating a new constituency of Westernized Muslims. In America, Muslims are being accepted as just another minority. Newspapers have run thousands of column inches on Islamic civilization; institutions from NASA to Oprah have held teach-ins on Islam.
The suicide bombers have also sharpened American Muslims’ sense of being American. The dangers of losing their civil liberties to the war on terror forced Muslims to organize to defend their rights, and to agitate against wars on their fellow Muslims overseas. They’ve been assert-ing their right to information about imprisoned Muslims, and marching in the Martin Luther King Day parades under banners proclaiming MUSLIMS AND ARAB-AMERICANS SHARE MLK’S DREAM. In the long term, this new community of Westernized Muslims has an opportunity to reshape America’s relationship to the Islamic world. Just as the Jews’ integration into American life helped define Washington’s Israel policy, newly politicized Muslim Americans may eventually shape Washington’s policy in the Middle East.
