When Islam and Democracy Meet
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When Islam and Democracy Meet: Muslims in Europe and in the United States This page intentionally left blank When Islam and Democracy Meet: Muslims in Europe and in the United States Jocelyne Cesari WHEN ISLAM AND DEMOCRACY MEET © Jocelyne Cesari 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 0–312–29401–8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cesari, Jocelyne. When Islam and democracy meet : Muslims in Europe and in the United States / Jocelyne Cesari. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–312–29401–8 1. Muslims—Europe. 2. Islam—Europe. 3. Muslims—United States. 4. Islam—United States. 5. Europe—Relations—Islamic countries. 6. Islamic countries—Relations—Europe. 7. United States—Relations— Islamic countries. 8. Islamic countries—Relations—United States. I. Title. D1056.2.M87C47 2004 305.6’97’0944—dc22 2004044763 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: December 2004 10987654321 Printed in the United States of America. To Jeffrey and Izzy This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: From Clash to Encounter 1 1 The Numbers Debate 9 Part I Islam and the West: Mutual Transformation 19 2 Islam as Stigma 21 3 The Secularization of Individual Islamic Practice 43 4 The Secularization of Islamic Institutions in Europe and the United States: Two Approaches 65 Part II The Imagined Community 89 5 The Absolutized Community 91 6 The Virtual Community 111 Part III The Reinvented Community: New Figures of Islamic Authority in the West 123 7 Bureaucratic and Parochial Leaders 125 8 Transnational Leaders and Charismatic Speakers 141 9 The Reformation of Islamic Thought 159 Conclusion: Toward a Reconciliation of Islam and the West? 175 Appendix I 183 Appendix II 185 viii ● Contents Appendix III 199 Glossary 215 Notes 219 Bibliography 247 Index 263 Acknowledgments any people have contributed to the research for this book. I would like to thank all the Muslim leaders and intellectuals in Europe Mand the U.S. that have made this study possible by giving me their expertise, time, passion, and feelings to help me understand what is to be a Muslim in the West. I am particularly grateful to Fouad Allaoui, Abdellatif Cristillo, Talal Eid, Abdelwahab El-Affendi, Hakim El Gissassi, Hassan Hathout, Dilwar Hussein, Ahmed Jaballah, Sherman Jackson, Larbi Kechat, Ural and Altay Manço, Salam Al-Marayati, Precious Mohammed, Ingrid Mattson, Mohamed Nimer, Suleyman Nyang, Fathi Osman, Tariq Ramadan, Louay Safi, Muzammil H. Siddiqi, and Amina Wadud. I am also grateful to all the Muslim men and women who shared their faith and spiritual life with me during these years. In Europe, I am particularly grateful to CNRS, and especially to the GSRL Institute and their successive directors, Jean Bauberot and Jean-Paul Willaime, for their continuous support. Thanks also to my colleagues from the Network of Comparative Research on Islam and Muslims in Europe for all the meetings and exchanges we had on our common research interests. I am also grateful to my French mentors: Bertrand Badie, Jean Leca and Remy Leveau. In America, I would like to thank Connie Buchanan at the Ford Foundation, and Lisa Anderson at the School of International and Public Affairs, and the Middle East Institute at Columbia University for allowing me to be part of their research program on Muslims in New York City. I am particularly grateful to Cemal Kafadar and Leila Parsons, Director and Associate Director at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University who has hosted me for so many years and given me the oppor- tunity to expand my knowledge on Islam in America by organizing the “Islam in the West” seminar. I would also like to thank my friend x ● Acknowledgments Susan Miller, former Associate Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, who has made many things possible in my life. I am also deeply grateful to Bill Graham, Dean of the Divinity School, for his constant support and intellectual guidance for the project “Islam in the West” during these many years. Many thanks also to Peter Hall, Director of the Center for European Studies, for having agreed to help with the seminar from the beginning and for being open to the idea of a comparison between Europe and the United States. Thanks are also due to Frank Vogel and Peri Bearman of the Islamic Legal Studies Program at the Law School for their help in preparing this seminar. I am also grateful to all my other mentors and models at Harvard, who gave me continuous support and feedback on the project “Islam in the West” in its different stages, and from whom I learned so much: Leila Ahmed, Ali Asani, Steven Caton, Diana Eck, Stanley Hoffmann, Roy Mottahedeh, Nathan Glazer, Roger Owen, Laurence Sullivan, and Werner Sollors. All of them, particularly Ali Asani, Steven Caton, and Roy Mottahedeh, provided generous and effective help in developing the program for Islam in the West. I am also grateful to my friends and colleagues from other institutions: Jose Casanova, Josh Dewind, John Esposito, Yvonne Haddad, Martin Heisler, Glenda Rosenthal, Jane Smith, Martin Schain, and Ari Zolberg. I express my special gratitude to all my research assistants during all these years, in and particular to: Andrea Balan, Maryam Hassimi, Louis Hourmant, and Hussein Rashid. Special thanks to Erica Weitzman for help in editing and for translation into English. INTRODUCTION From Clash to Encounter t’s graduation day at Harvard University, or “Commencement,” as they call it here. The mood of the day—which marks the end of an era for I each student and the beginning of a new one—is always one of great solemnity. On this particular sunny day of July 6, 2002, the families of the graduates have gathered in the Yard, that mythical square bit of greenery that makes up the heart of the University. Zayed Yasin, a major in Biology and Pre-med, stands and walks toward the large tent to deliver one of the commencement speeches, a privilege reserved for only a few. The message he proposes to deliver to the assembled crowd: “Faith and Citizenship: My American Jihad.” In spite of protests, a petition signed by 1,300 people, and pressure exerted on the ceremony’s organizing committee to read the speech in advance, Zayed is there. The word jihad has been struck from the title, but the content of the speech has been neither toned down nor censored. The words are ones of reconciliation and appeasement, and their meaning is clear: it is possible to be both an active Muslim and an American citizen without experiencing a conflict of values. Later, I take the airplane at Logan airport—under heightened security since September 11. My passport is checked by a young woman wearing hijab, alone in the middle of her other colleagues, clean-shaven men and women without veils. In Paris, Woissila and Ilham organized a demonstration on December 21, 2003, to protest a bill that proposed to outlaw all “ostentatious” forms of reli- gious expression in the public schools. More than 3,000 people participated in the demonstration. On January 17, another rally, this time organized by 2 ● When Islam and Democracy Meet the French Muslim Party, attracted over 11,000 protesters. “We must politi- cally terrorize those who insult us,” goes the slogan of Mohamed Latrèche, president of the party. These are the contrasting images of Islam on the two sides of the Atlantic: one, American, conciliatory even in the damaged environment of post–September 11; the other, European, more conflictual and hostile. These two images reflect not only a difference in the styles and attitudes of Muslims in the various countries, but, also and especially, a difference in the societies that are in the process of integrating them. Of course, difficulties certainly exist on the North American continent as well. Who could deny the atmos- phere of extreme suspicion brought on by the “War on Terror,” which has resulted in an explosion of discriminatory acts against the daily observance of Islam? And in Europe, positive signs are beginning to emerge with the ascent of new Muslim political and intellectual leaders on both the local and the national levels. What is common to both continents is the influence of international politics on the domestic conditions of Muslim minorities. In other words, there is a widespread tendency to conflate Islam as an interna- tional political force with the ordinary Muslims living as a minority popula- tion in the countries of the West. This conflation has consequences not only for the minority condition of Muslims themselves, but also for current schol- arship on the European and American manifestations of Islam. Western Perceptions of Islam: The Logic of War The simultaneous visibility of Islam on both sides of the Atlantic encounters equal hostility from the societies that host it, albeit for different demographic and historical reasons. Islam is seen as both the enemy outside and the enemy within.