advocated for the revitalization of the “philosophical spirit” within Islam and for a new kalam (ilm kalam djadid in Arabic and Persian and yeni ilm-i kalam in Turkish), emphasizing the relevance of Muslim interaction with modern philosophy and science. This is clearly expressed by Kharputi, who stated that “just as early mutakallimun reacted to Aristotelian philosophy selectively, today’s mutakallimun should study modern thoughts accurately and choose according to Islamic principles what is necessary from them so that a new contemporary lm-i-kalam can be established.”5
And what is the current situation? The relationship between the so- called Muslim world and the West, identified with Western political powers, is still characterized by political and cultural tensions. At the same time, there are very intense interactions between Christian, Muslim and secular intellectuals. For the first time, Muslims have started to experience the West and modernity by living in the West from within. Many Muslim scholars are now employees at Western universities and some of them are doing Islamic theology in cooperation with their non-Muslim colleagues.6 This has resulted in an improved understanding of the relationship between Islam and the others’ religions and has provided new insights into Islam’s potential to respond to challenges that come from the West. The question is how those interactions affect the development of Islamic theology.
Islamic normativeness at the moral level, regardless of how much they are influenced by Western lifestyles.
We can always discuss how the West influences various Muslim societies, but it is almost a logical conclusion that if Muslims in the Muslim world are influenced by Western cultures, then this influence affects Muslims residing in the West.
Bearing in mind that European ways of living and thinking are part of the context in which Muslims live, it would be rather naive to believe that Muslims, as a minority in the West, remain unaffected by the majority culture. The integration of Muslim immigrants is far from perfect in the eyes of many European politicians, but this does not mean that Muslims are resistant to cultural and political change. The European experience has a significant influence on their way of life and an impact on their way of thinking. Let us take a couple of examples that confirm this statement.
The first is about the general challenges of being Muslim in Europe today and the second a vivid experience of Muslim-European identity in the case of Bosnian Muslims.
European secular ways of organizing society and specific working conditions have challenged religious Muslims to find new and alternative ways to practice Islam and also to search for new interpretations of Islamic normativeness.
Besides the effort to solve practical issues such as fasting in the Nordic region during the polar or long summer days, Muslims are challenged to reflect on a number of theoretical questions, for example, on the contextual interpretation of the Qur’an and on the implementation of Islamic normativeness and justice within the new context. The point in question is further emphasized by the fact that many Western European societies meet Islamic principles of social justice better than many of the existing Sharia-based Islamic societies.8 Moreover, they are also challenged to reflect on the principles of Islamic ethics in relation to universal ethics and humanism in new multi-religious and multi-cultural contexts. Finally yet importantly, they must reflect on the question of Islamic normativeness and the meaning of Sharia in a secular society.
In this sense, we can speak of a constant tension between the challenge to reflect in an innovative way and an attempt to maintain Islamic identity under new circumstances. On the one hand, Muslims are aware of the necessity of developing new ideas and new models of interpretation but,
8 A remarkable insight into this is given by the survey, “How Islamic are Islamic Countries?,” by Scheherazade S. Rehman and Hossein Askar from George Washington University (2010), see http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/gej.2010.10.2/
gej.2010.10.2.1614/gej.2010.10.2.1614.xml
at the same time, many of them wish to preserve their Islamic identity in relation to the majority community. As highlighted by Ramadan, Muslim immigrants fear “the potential loss of their religion, culture and distinct identity.”9 In the situation of being thrown into an open space between the need for a new Islamic identity and the fear of assimilation, they respond very differently to the question of rethinking Islamic theology in a European context. Some are very enthusiastic; others take rather an opportunistic position in regard to established theology, as long as it can satisfy their needs; and some are skeptical or dismissive of any theology of Islam being developed under the influence of Western academia.10
The tension between “Islamic” and “European” does not characterize the identity of Muslims who live in Europe like the Bosnian Muslims and who have a long experience of living as a religious minority in a secular society. Unlike Muslims with an immigrant background, Bosnian Muslims are not required to “integrate” and they rely on a well-established Islamic–
European tradition based on the historical institutionalization of Islam in a secular state and a well-developed system of religious education.11
They are used to being part of a multi-religious society and they have experienced that you do not necessarily lose your religious identity just because you live in a non-Muslim, even communist–atheist, society and because you are open to “the other.”
As pointed out by Xavier Bougarel, Bosnian Muslims contributed to
“the building of a European Islam” by creating autonomous institutions and integrating them into a modern national state. This process already
9 Tariq Ramadan, “Europeanization of Islam or Islamization of Europe?,” in Shireen T. Hunter (ed.), Islam. Europe’s Second Religion (London: Praeger, 2002), 207.
10 Apart from the Muslims who maintain dichotomy between Islam and the West (such as radical salafists and Hizb ut-Tahrir), there are voices in the public debate who deny the possibility of a European Islam, either by arguing that there is an incompatibility between European culture and Islam, or by arguing that Muslims are not interested in integration in Europe but in the islamization of Europe, see Nezar AlSayyad, “Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam: On the Discourses of Identity and Culture,” in Nazer AlSayyad and Manuel Castells (eds), Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam. Politics, Culture, and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization (London: Lexington Books, 2002), 9–29.
11 However, Bosnian Muslim identity is not monolithic. Some Bosnian Muslims tend to minimize the importance of Islam for their identity and attach a crucial importance to pre-Islamic Bosnian heritage. On the contrary, some others tend to glorify Islam as the essence of their identity (e.g., salafist groups). The largest majority of them, those who consider themselves as representatives for the so-called Bosnian traditional Islam, insist that they belong to both Islam and European culture.
See Enes Karic, Essays on our European never-never Land (Sarajevo: OKO, 2004).
began in the period when Bosnia, after the Ottoman withdrawal from the Balkans, became part of the Austro–Hungarian empire.12
Factors such as the establishment of religious, cultural and educational institutions (Rijaset, faculties for Islamic studies, high schools for religious education [madrassa], periodicals and publications) were crucial for the articulation of Islam in a European context and for the development of a specific identity based on the harmonization of Islamic principles with European humanist values.