Muslim Minorities in the West By Syed Z. Abedin and Ziauddin Sardar, eds. London: Grey Seal (Publications) Limited, 1995, 212 pp.

Abstract

In this superb compilation of essays, fourteen scholars provide a timely
assessment of the expanding Muslim communities in ten western countries,
carefully describing their growth and development, sometimes in minute
historical detail, as they are increasingly scrutinized under the global spotlight
for a variety of complex reasons. Produced as a serious work of
research, this volume represents one of the first attempts to examine systematically
the status and nature of Muslim collective life in the western
diaspora as seen from the theoretical perspective of the majority-minority
relationship. It developed out of a conference convened to consider the condition
of the Islamic minorities worldwide. After the conference, selected
papers were transformed into chapters written specifically for inclusion in
this book.
Through fourteen rich and original articles, this book explores a plethora
of problems confronting Muslims, both the recent immigrant arrivals in
Europe, Australia, and North America as well as the indigenous followers of
Islam in the Balkans, living within communal collectivities of the Western
world. It considers “how Muslim minorities fulfill their religious rites and
obligations, engage in social and community life and educate their young.” It
examines “the sacrifices Muslims have to make and the price they have to pay
to maintain or to acquire a Muslim identity.” With two essays each on Australia,
Canada, and the United States, and Britain, the English-speaking world,
gets the most attention. But the more obscure cases of Bosnia and Bulgaria,
both the terra incognita of the Islamic world until the recent tragedy, are analyzed
thoroughly by their native sons, Smail Balic and Kemal Karpat. Despite
a diversity of academic orientation, the essays are all highly stimulating, and
the quality of the contributions are all equally superior.
The overarching dilemma, identified by the authors as the culprit responsible
for the Muslims’ difficulties, is the demonization of Islam and the Islamic
people in the western worldview. As a powerful psychological force on western
thinking, this mindset has brought about the victimization of Muslims and has
led to their wholesale discrimination, indeed, to their rejection as the undesirable
“other.” The first two chapters of the book, directly relevant to this concern,
delve into the agony of the Muslims of Bosnia; despite their ethnic and racial
compatibility with the Slavic majority notwithstanding, they have undergone
one of the most gruesome incidents of calculated mass murder and brutality in
recent European history. In spite of Bosnia’s “open-minded, liberal and tolerant”
p. 23) nature, it has not been spared “a ruthless genocide” p. 24), perhaps
because Islam rejects the underlying racist premise of the nation-state and is
therefore seen as a subversive force. Commensurately, history seems to be
repeating itself in Europe. Almost five hundred years after the obliteration of
Islam from Spain, Khalid Duran points out that Bosnia, “truly a cosmopolitan
society” p. 30), is being turned into another Andalusia ...