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“What Does God Say That I Should Be?”

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“What Does God Say That I Should Be?” Abdessamad Belhaj* “WHAT DOES GOD SAY THAT I SHOULD BE?” MUSLIM INTELLECTUALS IN EUROPE AND THE IMAGINED “MUSLIM IDENTITY” Abstract: The narrative of “Muslim identity” is fast becoming a key problem in Europe. The narrative, sustained by Islamic governments, movements and intellectuals, blocks the way of “European Muslims” toward modern subjectivity and citizenship. Nevertheless, there is a growing body of literature and initia- tives by critical Muslim intellectuals that challenge the narrative of “Muslim iden- tity”. This paper offers philosophical-anthropological insights into the problem of “Muslim identity” in Europe through the cases of four Muslim intellectuals: T. Ramadan, M. Chebel, F. Benslama and L. Babès. Keywords: Identity, Muslim intellectuals in Europe, modern subjectivity, alterity, T. Ramadan, M. Chebel, F. Benslama, L. Babès. “What Does God Say that I Should Be?”1 This question is not part of a Muslim theological manual. It was asked by Tariq Ramadan, one of the leading Muslim intellectuals in Europe while lecturing about “Muslim identity”. When I put this question in front of my students, many of them were suspicious of the validity of the question. Some of them think that the answer is evident: God wants Muslims to be believers (a tautology in this case) which renders Ramadan’s question rhe- torical. There is a point to this answer as Ramadan claims that God wants some- thing specific from „Muslims” in Europe and that Ramadan knows the answer. Others think that Muslims’ identities depend on their own choices (free will) and, therefore, God does not meddle in this matter. There is, however, a much more se- rious paradox to Ramadan’s question: imagining a “Muslim identity” in Europe whereby the authority of God is needed to warrant Muslimness. Theology is used to support a political anthropology, although, in Ramadan’s perception, nothing separates the realms of God and that of human beings. As we speak today, the notion of “Muslim identity” in Europe is rarely con- tested. “Muslims” accepted to be identified as such and non-Muslims are satisfied with the designation of a whole range of populations as Muslims. Most partici- pants in the public sphere seem to agree that “these people are Muslims” and they cannot help it anyway. It is what they are and Europe should cope with it. * MTA-SZTE Research Group for the Study of Religious Culture, H-6722 Szeged, Egyetem u. 2. Hungary. Email: [email protected] 1 Ramadan 1999. 117 Abdessamad Belhaj That being the case, the history of “these populations” urges us to criticize the nar- rative of “Muslim identity”. As immigrants stepped into Europe from Africa and Asia in the fifties and sixties, they were not treated as “Muslims”, but as “invited workers”. Social identity defined what they were: Cheap male workers whose ethnic, cultural or religious stock was irrelevant. However, as the descendants of these workers were born in Europe, but not Europeans nor “imported work- ers”, they became for a while identity-less, until the “Muslim identity” came by the end of the eighties to fill the gap. A vicious identity circle came into existence and the shift from social to religious identity transformed entirely the nature of the problem. Both „Muslims” and “non-Muslims” accepted the conversion of the problem into a “Muslim problem”. The process is indeed complex. Political actors used a phenomenon they observed in the „ descendants of immigrants”, namely an islamisation since the seventies, led by exiled Islamists and agents of different “Muslim countries”, to justify a discursive and political machine the dynamic of which is to bog down a problem of immigration, citizenship and integration. It is argued here that the narrative of “Muslim identity” is a simulacrum (Jean Baudrillard) of a discursive tradition (Talal Asad). Muslim states and Islamic movements quickly created an Islamic political imaginary2 for workers and their descendents. This imaginary has been entertained since the veil debate and Salman Rushdie’s affair in 1989. Muslim Ideologues crafted a series of myths to sustain „Muslimness”: Palestine, the narrative of injustice, the Muslim communi- ty, the conspiracy of media, Andalusia, the veil and other symbols, “our identity”, the halal food, Islamic finance, etc. The narrative of “Muslim identity”, always expressed in the third person,3 hides the subjectivity of every subject who is an immigrant worker or a descen- dent of immigration. It refers to an “original Muslim identity” that never was. Nationals from Turkey and Morocco do not define themselves as Muslims in terms of their identity, but as Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Moroccans, Amazigh, etc. One cannot belong to “an identity” that does not exist.4 That is why it is a simulacrum. Furthermore, the first generation of immigrants was cut from Islam as a discur- sive tradition. The second generation, under the influence of religious policies of “Muslim states” and Islamic movements, connected with a discursive tradi- tion they found dignifying, burying themselves in a de- subjectifying imagined identity. The “Muslim” subject is yet to fully claim reflexivity and active citizen- ship in European societies. It is the case that many immigrant workers or their descendants consider themselves citizens and act as such. However, the dominat- ing trend of Islamic intellectuals and activists continuously enhances the narrative of “Muslim identity”. In the following, I suggest a philosophical-anthropological inquiry into the problem of “Muslim identity” in Europe through four voices: T. Ramadan, an advocate of the narrative of “Muslim identity”, and three secular 2 Werbner 1998. 11-31. 3 Tan 2008. 31-49. 4 Shively 2006. 537-542. This does not exclude religion from being a component of identity. 118 “What Does God Say That I Should Be?” Muslim intellectuals who criticize this narrative and rebuild the “Muslim” subject as citizen (M. Chebel, F. Benslama and L. Babès). While Ramadan has been the subject of dozens of studies, this paper offers the first scholarly study on Chebel5, Benslama and Babès.6 Tariq Ramadan and the imagined “Muslim identity” T. Ramadan (Born in 1962) is a Swiss intellectual of Egyptian origin who is par- ticularly active in France, Qatar and the UK. He studied philosophy and French literature, and obtained a PhD in Islamic studies at the University of Geneva. He completed his academic studies with a brief training at Al-Azhar between 1992-1993 then 1994-1995. Although he negates having organisational links to the Muslim Brotherhood, he still claims the intellectual heritage of Ḥasan al-Bannā, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. He is also under the heavy influence of other Islamic ideologues. T. Ramadan formulates the question of “Muslim identity” as follows: “We are entitled to our values and our identity […] the law man- ages specific and shared values”.7 This statement implies a series of understatements. To begin with, it entails that there is a “universal Muslim identity” that adapts to the local context, and in this case, the European context. While this might be tempting for some Muslims to imagine such identity, going so far as to call it an umma, it is a religious ideal, not a reality. An Indonesian and a Qatari do not share a Muslim identity. They share a religion, but their identities are composed of different ethnic, social and cultural elements that radically separate them, the same way a Christian from Texas does not share the same identity with a Christian from Kenya.8 T. Ramadan, like most Muslim thinkers today, attempts to resolve the prob- lem of this “unidentified Muslim identity”, by using the vague expression of “the principles of Muslim identity”, meaning the foundational texts, beliefs and practices required by God and his Prophet.9 These are the guiding lines of such 5 Ruth Mas dedicated a study to Chebel’s secular views of love, but not as a Muslim intellectual: Mas 2004. 273-301. 6 Franck Fregosi offers a useful, although general description of the field of Muslim intellectuals in France in: Fregosi 2008. 93-115. 7 Ramadan 2008. 8 In his study of Muslims in Mumbai, Ari Singh Anand shows that „the ostensibly ‘religious’ domain of Islam is not necessarily the only, or even primary, basis for achieving a self-consciously ethical selfhood for even those who identify as observant and devout Muslims […] the religious domain of Islam in this context is defined as such and intersected by discourses and practices of the self as a political and economic agent defined largely in terms of political modernity”. Anand 2014. 377-398. 9 Ramadan 2008. 119 Abdessamad Belhaj identity. A modern reader, embedded with the ethical sense of the word princi- ples, could think of a principle such as human dignity. It is not the case in Rama- dan’s use of the word principle which has here a religious sense, that of concrete regulations of Islamic law and belief. There are two additional problems with “the principles of Muslim identity”. On the one hand, they are not the same for a Salafi, a Muslim Brother, a Shīʿī, or secular Muslims. On the other, “these principles” are but the tenets of Islamic law which cannot be sustained in the modern world, let alone in European societies. “These principles” lead simply to the disintegra- tion of modern societies. Ramadan’s vocabulary might be misleading. The use of terms such as principles, spirituality, and intelligence to find “shared meaning” between Muslims and non-Muslims is ambiguous. These terms bear a different content whether we think within a post-secular perspective (the case of Christian- ity) or pre-secular (the case of Islam). It would be naïve and erroneous to consider the use of these terms as equivalent. Let us examine further the term principle.
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