A theoretic approach on Arab-Western transcultural relations

Transculturalism is defined as "seeing oneself in the other" or involving, encompassing, or combining elements
of more than one culture.
KEY ELLEMENTS
- Globalization
- cross-cultural network
- crossing cultures
- western countries absorbing Arab immigrants
- the actual context > Europe islamization
- More than 13 million Muslims, both immigrants and converts, live today in Western Europe and the
United States.
- Muslim communities tend to concentrate in urban areas and especially in the center of cities, making
them very visible.
- This Muslim population came into existence during the second half of the twentieth century. Before
1955 negligible numbers of Muslims lived in Western Europe and North America; just the odd student,
merchant, sailor, worker, exile, or convert. Their numbers began to swell in the 1960s as five major
developments took place. The advanced industrial economies of Western Europe sought new sources of
unskilled and semi-skilled labor. The Muslim countries experienced a demographic explosion, with
attendant unemployment and poverty. Large bodies of Muslim students enrolled at universities in the
West.
- Problems in the newly independent Muslim states (especially their internal repression and many wars)
dispatched an unceasing stream of exiles to seek refuge in the stable, free Western countries. And several
developments in the West (self-doubt, intermarriage, separatism) prompted significant numbers of
native-born Westerners to convert to Islam.
- Most immigrants arrived in the West intending to return home before long, then changed their minds.
Workers got accustomed to higher incomes, students stayed on beyond their schooling, and exiles found
that the troubles besetting their home countries did not pass. What started as migration a temporary
sojourn in many cases turned into something permanent. Around 1980 especially, large numbers of
Muslims went from migrant to immigrant status (the former expects to return home, the latter does not).
This prompted worried European states to restrict entry and to offer financial incentives for long-time
residents to return home, to little avail. Muslim numbers continued steadily to grow through
reproduction, further immigration, and conversion.
- The conditions for strife are generally more ripe in Western Europe than in North America. In part, this
has to do with differences in the societies; in part too it reflects that the Muslim presence in Europe
began earlier and has grown larger. Accordingly, we expect that many of the problems found in Europe
will eventually emerge in the United States too. The arrival of ever-larger groups of Muslim immigrants
in the United States-Iranians, Afghans, Somalis, Kuwaitis, Kurds, Albanians, Bosnians-might bring
European-style issues of culture and public safety here. With this in mind, the authors suggest that
Americans learn European lessons in order not to replicate the European travails.
- Tensions arise from both sides, the Muslim minority and the Western majority. On the Muslim side,
Islamism is the major culprit; others sources of problems include violence, family issues, and financial
scandals. On the Western side, nativism poses the deepest threat to comity.

Islamists living in the West at a minimum seek to establish an autonomous zone in which to live their
lives. More often, they seek to impose their views and ways of life on other Muslims and even on the
non-Muslim majority. And in some cases, they hope to vanquish the West itself, purging its blemishes
and making its strengths their own.
Culturally the Islamists remain outsiders, getting to know just low culture and street culture, and even
those superficially. While this picture is hardly unique (Chinatowns from Amsterdam to San Francisco
share it), Muslim communities do have a special quality; they alone have a profoundly anti-Western
ideology to fall back on. No immigrant group has an institution to parallel the Islamist mosques which
teach that the West is evil, Westerners unclean and unworthy-old, somewhat abstract doctrines which
acquire new tangibility when Muslims live in Europe or America. The xenophobia of Europeans and the
racism of Americans take on explosive qualities once made to fit into this frame of reference.

Family Problems
-

The immigrant Muslim treatment of wives, sisters, and daughters serves as a fertile source of dispute
with host communities. Westerners commonly perceive Muslim practices as inhuman; some go further
and consider Muslim women to lack basic human rights.
Thousands of Muslim girls run away from the severity of their homes to find shelter with government
agencies or pimps. More than a hundred cases of suicide or attempted suicide add urgency to the
problem. Fathers and brothers sometimes abduct Muslim girls from school or social welfare agencies to
ship them home and marry them off by force. They have sometimes resorted to murdering the
recalcitrant daughter or sister.

Intermarriage leads to enormous strains. While Islam allows men to marry non-Muslim women, and
even for those wives to remain infidels, it requires that women marry within the faith. This means that
Muslim girls often cannot marry the man of their choice. Liberal Muslim scholars might agree that
marriage between a Muslim woman and a Christian or Jew is not to be ruled out categorically, but
traditionalist Muslims and Islamists dissent sharply.

The prohibition on Muslim women marrying out has immense potential for conflict, contributing to a
general hostility toward Muslims and resulting in gang fights and other acts of violence. East Berlin in
the mid-1970s witnessed periodic brawls over girls between male Germans and Arabs, sometimes
leading to riots of a sort otherwise unheard of in Soviet bloc countries. Groups working for ChristianMuslim understanding often take up the explosive issue of female choice in marriage; Crislam, a
Spanish group chaired by Padre Emilio Galindo Aguilar, a White Father, has deliberated at length on this
issue, but to little avail.

Demographic Fears
-

The efforts of European governments notwithstanding, Muslim immigrants continue to arrive from
around the world, looking for work, education, family members, or refuge. As their numbers grow, so
does the sense of alarm.

Officially Recognize Islam

-

EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS NEED URGENTLY TO RECOGNIZED ISLAM, THE SECOND

LARGEST RELIGION ALMOST EVERYWHERE. NOT TO DO SO ANTAGONIZES MUSLIMS
AND MAKES THEM MORE SUSCEPTIBLE TO ISLAMIST SUBVERSION.
While the United States is far more devout than most of Western Europe, the latter remains officially far
less secularist. Government recognition of religion continues to make a difference in Europe.

Lutheranism remains the religion of the Scandinavian states, just as is Anglicanism in England and
Catholicism in Spain. Most other countries, including France and Germany, recognize Catholicism,
Protestantism, and Judaism as official religions; in practice, these are quasi-state religions. Official
recognition of Islam would mean its acceptance as part of the religious fabric of European life. This
would facilitate the construction of mosques (including prayer rooms in public institutions like
hospitals), the provision of land for Muslim cemeteries, chaplains in the armed forces, religious lessons
in public schools, programs on radio and television, recognition of the two major religious festivals, and
the provision of halal (properly butchered) meat.
Grant Voting Rights and Citizenship
-

EUROPEAN AUTHORITIES OUGHT TO EXTEND VOTING RIGHTS AND CITIZENSHIP TO

MUSLIM MINORITIES, FOR REASONS OF PRINCIPLE AND EXPEDIENCY ALIKE.

Municipal voting rights. Should long-time residents who are nationals of another country have the right to
vote in municipal elections? The issue was hotly debated in much of Western Europe throughout the 1980s.
Despite considerable opposition, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Holland permit foreigners to participate in
local elections. The Swedes have even considered permitting foreign citizens participation in national
elections. In Hamburg, Germany's most liberal state, the authorities granted permanent residents the right to
vote, but a court overruled this on constitutional grounds. The ruling came as a rude shock to Germans
proud of their pluralism and to Turkish professionals who settled in Hamburg to escape the discrimination
rampant in southern Germany. This was not, however, the last word on a much-debated subject. The issue is
beginning to arise in the United States, where it primarily concerns Hispanics rather than Muslims.
Citizenship. Should long-time residents be granted citizenship? What about second generation Muslims?
The situation is confusing, with Western governments adopting different, indeed contradictory, positions. Of
the major European countries, France has been most open, Germany least so. Overall, the United States has
been most generous in dispensing citizenship, Switzerland the most restrictive.
Educate Immigrants for Citizenship
As Western Europeans (and, one day, perhaps Japanese too) adjust to multiethnic life, they may find it helpful to
look at the experiences of Europe's daughter countries-the United States, Canada, and Australia. Grudgingly and
haltingly, the leaders of these immigrant countries gave up the vision of racial or cultural purity and adopted a
more open attitude. Initially, this meant accepting the Irish in America and the Greeks in Australia; more
recently, it meant Vietnamese and Chinese. In the future, it will almost surely mean large numbers of Muslims.
Historically, these immigrant societies absorbed new peoples through three mechanisms: idealism, education,
and secularism.
Ideals such as the pursuit of happiness and freedom of speech have been vital to all immigrant societies, making
up for the absence of shared ethnic bonds by providing the population with a common purpose. The authorities
ought to encourage Muslims to live harmoniously with their Western neighbors by absorbing the ideals of the
host society.
Education of children is critical, for even if the adult immigrants cannot understand the ideals of their adopted
country, it is imperative that these be communicated to the next generation. Ideals provide a substitute for
lineage. Symbolic of this, George Washington is the symbolic ancestry of every American child, even if his
parents arrived at the time of his birth. If the European states are to absorb the Muslim (and other alien)
immigrants, they must move in this direction. It will not be easy for old societies, but education has to stress

ethnicity less and principles more. The glorious history of France, for instance, needs to concentrate less on the
victories over others and more on efforts to attain liberty, equality and fraternity.
Secularism is a principle that involves two basic propositions. The first is the strict separation of the state
from religious institutions. The second is that people of different religions and beliefs are equal before the
law.
Further, Muslims need to be encouraged to adopt a secularist outlook themselves. Only secularism makes it
possible to transcend the historic Christian-Muslim conflict and treat the other as an equal. But secularism has
its costs; it means having to give up all notions of molding Western countries in the Islamic image. Instead,
Muslim leaders in the West must push their followers to integrate into the larger society. This means, for
instance, no pressure on the government to pay for Muslim schools, no attempts to get Islamic law accepted in
courts, and no extension of blasphemy laws to cover Islamic topics. To integrate into the West, Muslims need
not forego their faith, but they must accept the supremacy of civil law-and freedom of speech is a critical
element of that law. Only if Muslims accept secularism can they fully integrate into society.
Accept Cultural Pluralism
For three decades, European politicians spouted that "England is not the United States" and "France is not a
country of immigration." The Federal Republic of Germany went further and officially defined itself as a "nonimmigration land" (kein Einwanderungsland). Some public figures and intellectuals, such as Heinrich Bll,
argued against this notion, but with little success.
The time has come to close the debate. Clinging to visions of Ye Olde Englande is not just futile but profoundly
reactionary, as are the like pastoral visions that exist in the other countries of West Europe. But Western Europe
has changed in a fundamental way; its cultures include new languages, religions, and ways of life and its
politics are subject to new influences. Multi-ethnic and multi-racial societies came into being in the early 1960s
when Muslim laborers moved in by the hundreds of thousands, bringing with them rustic and exotic ways.
Thirty years later, whole new communities exist, complete with grandchildren and grandparents, neither of
whom have any intention of returning to the old country. Other than in Switzerland, the old notion of rotating
workers is defunct, for permanent communities now exist. Nor can the idea (tried in Germany in 1983) of
paying "go-home premiums" change the basic situation. Looked at from the long perspective of history, this
development is enormously ironic: after fighting off Muslim warriors for so many centuries, Europeans invited
in Muslim laborers. While the one eventually left, the other will not.
EUROPEANS NEED TO ACCEPT THE REALITY THAT THEY LIVE IN IMMIGRANT SOCIETIES. THEY
ALSO SHOULD UNDERSTAND THAT INTEGRATION DOES NOT NECESSARILY IMPLY
ASSIMILATION. THE WHOLE POPULATION NEEDS TO HEAR AND UNDERSTAND THESE
MESSAGES. ANYONE WHO CAN HELP-POLITICIANS, PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS, PRIVATE
ORGANIZATIONS, JOURNALISTS, ADVERTISING COUNCILS-DOES HIS COUNTRY A SERVICE.
BUT IT SHOULD NOT BE PROPAGANDA WHICH DROWNS OUT DISSIDENT VOICES; THAT
MERELY MOVES THE DEBATE TO THE FRINGES. NOR SHOULD IT BE THE MULTICULTURALIST
ASSAULT ON "EUROCENTRISM" THAT HAS EMERGED IN THE UNITED STATES IN RECENT
YEARS. RATHER, A FULL DISCUSSION NEEDS TO TAKE PLACE, WITH ALL RESPONSIBLE POINTS
OF VIEW EXPRESSED. COMPARED TO THE NEED TO ACCEPT CULTURAL PLURALISM, A
PROFOUND AND IN MANY WAYS UNSETTLING TASK, OTHER MATTERS ARE RELATIVELY
SIMPLE.
Educate Westerners about Islam

For Christians to accept Muslim newcomers and the two faiths to co-exist in harmony, requires overcoming a
millennial tradition of mistrust and hostility. This can only be achieved by greater knowledge and understanding
of Islam and Muslims.
Ignorance leads disparate groups of foreigners to be lumped together. Countries with similar sounding names
(Iran and Iraq especially) blur. Arab becomes synonymous with Muslim. Westerners often wish for simple and
clear-cut distinctions between enemy and friend, without having to bother about nuances. Differentiating
between the toadies of a totalitarian regime and its democratic opponents in exile (as in the case of Iran) seems
to demand too much of many in Europe and America. Nativists respond to these complications with a simple
dismissal-"To hell with them all."
Avoiding conflict, however, requires that attention be paid. This does not mean studying Islamic theology or
even becoming acquainted with religious practices, but it does mean that Westerners learn something about the
civilization of Islam and about Muslim communities in the West. The task is hard, for Islam is a profound
civilization with complex constituent parts. Realistically speaking, education about Islam and Muslims will not
dig very deep; yet, real efforts should be made to promote awareness of Islam as religion and civilization.
It is not for Everyman to appreciate the composition, concerns, and attitudes of Muslim communal life, what
with its sectarian divisions, conflicting political loyalties, and diverse national, racial, cultural and linguistic
origins. But those who come into contact with Muslims must be aware of some subtleties. To a certain extent,
they have no choice. French teachers find themselves caught between feuding factions of Algerian pupils:
Islamists versus secularists. Turks and Kurds challenge their German teachers to side with them against the
other. Dutch teachers have to keep peace between the children of pro- and anti-government Moroccans.
The positive effects of increased knowledge would go far beyond acquiring information; respect is implicit in
learning, and that is very important for proud but marginalized peoples. Muslims in the West often complain
about Western neglect, if not contempt, for their civilization. A sense of neglect spawns extreme grievances
among Muslims. Even though such complaints are at times overstated, it would do much good if Westerners
took Muslims and their cultures more seriously.
Muslim students show great satisfaction when European secondary schools provide lectures on Islam. Having
their legacy presented in a positive and appealing manner before their non-Muslim peers creates a sense of joy:
for once, they seem to feel, they are not portrayed as uncouth barbarians. While American universities offer
programs in comparative culture which deal with many types of Americans (Asian, Black, Indian), almost all of
them ignore Arab- and Iranian-Americans.
Study Muslims in the West
What changes in religious life are taking place among Muslims in the West? What are the observable trends?
What attitudes are gaining strength? Integration sounds good, but what does it actually mean? Is it the golden
mean between the extremes of assimilation (exchange of the old identity for a new one) and isolation (retreat
into a self-imposed ghetto existence)? What generational differences are emerging? Will second-generation
Muslims go moderate or radical? Integrate or isolate? Accept pluralism or turn to violence?
THESE KEY QUESTIONS NEED TO BE BOLDLY BROACHED AND THOROUGHLY DEBATED BY
MUSLIMS AND NON-MUSLIMS ALIKE. ANSWERS CAN GUIDE POLICYMAKERS, MAKING IT
EASIER TO ISOLATE RADICAL FRINGE GROUPS AND HELP AVOID FUTURE CONFLICT. SOME
STUDY IS UNDERWAY. THE CHURCHES EMPLOY SPECIALISTS WHO CLOSELY MONITOR THE
MUSLIM COMMUNITIES. POLICE AND INTELLIGENCE SERVICES KEEP TABS ON THEM.
ALTHOUGH BASED IN SAUDI ARABIA, THE INSTITUTE OF MUSLIM MINORITY AFFAIRS
PUBLISHES A JOURNAL OF HIGH QUALITY WHICH PAYS MUCH ATTENTION TO MUSLIMS IN THE
WEST. THE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF ISLAM AND CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM RELATIONS AT SELLY

OAKS COLLEGES, BIRMINGHAM, UNITED KINGDOM, FOCUSES ACADEMIC ATTENTION ON THE

SUBJECT. IN ALL, A SUBSTANTIAL LITERATURE EXISTS, ESPECIALLY IN FRENCH.
If the quantity is abundant, the quality leaves something to be desired. Many efforts to study Muslims in the
West suffer from the subject's novelty and lack of academic rigor. Studies either suffer from scribalism
(documenting rather than thinking) or ideological distortion. To remedy these weaknesses, new intellectually
rigorous, non-partisan institutions need to be established. They should employ independent scholars, Muslim
and Western alike, who work together in close interaction with diaspora and convert Muslims.
Engage in Inter-Religious Dialogue
INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE OFFERS ONE OF THE MOST EFFECTIVE MEANS TO DEFUSE THE
POTENTIAL FOR CONFLICT. IT SERVES SEVERAL PURPOSES.
Most simply, the personal encounter, getting to know one another, usually has the beneficial effect of reducing
prejudices. Psychological barriers disappear. Seeing oneself in the mirror of the discussion partner corrects both
ones own and the partner's errors.
At its best, inter-religious dialogue brings together erudite intellectuals from various religious communities to
discuss intricate theological issues (e.g., revelation, absolute truth). Although inaccessible to laymen, these
learned discussions foster understanding and fellowship among the leaders, thereby legitimizing a fraternal
spirit which then trickles down to the wider communities.
CONCLUSION: BLOCK EXTREMISTS
In the final analysis, the question boils down to this: who will control the European-Muslim relationship,
extremists or moderates? Unless the latter take hold, the former will dominate.
Extremists. Radical Islamists and nativists feed off each other's words and deeds. It works both ways. On June
14,m 1979 in the city of Recklinghausen, Harun Reshit Tuyloglu, the town's chief imam, repeatedly referred to
himself as the "Conqueror of Europe" and offered to sacrifice his life and that of his followers to build a chain
of mosques under a Turkish banner "from Cyprus to Oslo." He called upon the audience to "break the horns of
those who tried to prevent this public function and to tear out the tongues of all our opponents. I shall point out
to you who our enemies are, and you know what to do with them." Over a decade later, Franz Schnhuber, head
of Germany's Republikaner Party, still routinely quoted Tuyloglu, then asserted his determination to fight this
impulse of "world-dominating Islam."