Tariq Ramadan, Western Muslims and the future of Islam

Excerpt

The philosopher Tariq Ramadan has become a symbol of the new European Muslim: the Muslim born and bred in Europe, whose intellectual heritage is both Islam and European humanistic thought. In Europe first generation Muslim immigrants still dominate Muslim organizations and Islamic activities so that prevailing understandings of Islam are in accordance with traditional Turkish, Arabic, and Pakistani cultural practices. Ramadan’s book can be regarded as a reaction towards these traditional understandings and practices, and he proposes re-readings of the Islamic sources in order to be able to live Islam in the new cultural context of “the west”. In the book he acknowledges both that “it is essentially the ways of reading the Qur’an that distinguish the various trends of thought among Muslims” (p. 22), and that sharia is the “work of human intellect” (p. 34). Ramadan discusses the Islamic ideals in view of “the principle of integration”, which he sees as a process by which Muslims should adapt and make their own “all that people have produced that is good, just, humane – intellectually, scientifically, socially, politically, economically, culturally and, and so on” (p. 5). This view of integration, he claims, is contrary to what most believe integration to be, namely integration into majority society as a minority (p. 51–55). In view of his perception of what integration is, Ramadan speaks of the need for reform, but as he is a philosopher and not a faqih (an expert of Islamic jurisprudence), his work is marked by elaborations of concepts and construction of new understandings of “old” perceptions rather than legalistic discussions of the problematic issues Muslims encounter in new social contexts. …