“Moslims uit!”: American Islam vs. European Islam

An Arab district in Brussels. Photograph by Flickr user Aldask (CC-usage).

It comes up in conversation all the time with colleagues at neweurasia: what do I think about the situation of Islam in the West?  I think Central Asians are really curious to know about it because they’re probably looking for insight not only into the West’s relationship to them and the larger Islamic world, but also for insight into themselves.  After all, Muslims living in the West are exposed to lifestyles and a quality of life little experienced in the umma.

Why me?  Well, for one, I’m studying Islamic history and philosophy here in the West, which, unfortunately, is still a rare thing for a Westerner to do.  For another, I’ve previously written about the concept of an “American” or “Americanized” Islam, which I wrote after a very long personal struggle with the religion.

Nowadays I’m no longer so hot for the idea of an “American Islam” as a theoretical project, i.e., reforming Islam to better match American culture or somehow fusing American philosophical principles with Islam.  However, as a way of describing the ways in which Islam is expressed and practiced in the United States as opposed to elsewhere, talking about an “American Islam” still makes sense — perhaps all the more so if we compare it “European Islam”.

What the heck do I mean?

Muslims trying to understand the situation of their religious kinsman in the West need to realize that there are two humongous divisions that cuts it right in half.  The first is, obviously, geographical: water.  The second is culture.  And in both cases, the divisions really come down to language — English.

It is perhaps wiser to speak of “Anglophonic Islam” since the situation for Muslims in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States is actually very uniform.  (I should note, however, that British Muslims have very sharp class, ethnic, and generational divisions within their community).  Once we step across the Atlantic or the English Channel, we find ourselves in a very different world.  The political traditions of the Continent are very different from those which prevail in the British Isles, North America, and Australasia.

I should also note that I’m not including Turkey or the Balkans, which obviously have historical Muslim populations, in my definition of “Europe”, nor am I including most of the former Communist bloc.  I’m speaking very specifically of the Continent’s Romanic zone (France, Italy, Romania, Spain) and Germanic Zone (Austria, the Benelux, Germany, Scandinavia, and Switzerland).

Ethnic make-up

American Muslims are both immigrant and native.  Like Britain, we have an historical immigrant population, albeit small, that dates back to the 19th Century, but unlike Britain, we also have an historical native population of converts from among the former slaves (or re-converts, as they tend to envision themselves).  Moreover, since the 1970s we have been drawing immigrants from every corner of the Muslim world — the umma, in all its manifoldness, is best represented not only in Mecca but also the streets of American cities.   All told, this means that American Muslims have an incredible array of intellectual, cultural, and human resources to draw upon.

Europe’s Muslims, however, are entirely immigrant — the last natives were chased out of Spain in the 15th Century.  They also tend to be homogeneous, drawn largely from only two sources, namely, Morocco and Turkey.  Of course, there is a healthy contingent of Muslims from African, Balkan, Central Asian,  Middle Eastern, and Southeast Asian countries, but they are smaller.  Moreover, they tend to be more effective at integration, or at least keeping themselves out of the spotlight.

Education

American Muslims tend to have skills and education before they moved to America. Yes, America is, quite literally, brain-draining the umma.  And, although it is not uniform — Black American Muslims are still struggling academically and economically in many quarters — it is a consistent enough of a phenomenon to the point where it is being passed onto the first and second generations of Muslim children born and raised in the United States.

European Muslims, however, were originally imported as unskilled labor.  It’s a strange, even laughable, fact that the Europeans really believed the Moroccans and Turks would simply go home after their contracts ended.  Today, after three generations of continual immigration and ghettoization, European Muslims have the highest secondary school drop-out rates, and with it, the highest petty and violent crime rates.  They are also consistently the single largest group on the welfare rolls.

Integration

This element of ghettoization is critically important: with the notable exception of Black American Muslims, American Muslims are integrated — heck, we have a President of Islamic descent!   And where they aren’t, such as in Black communities, they nevertheless tend to have an ameliorative effect by uplifting otherwise self-destructing neighborhoods.  Indeed, Black American Muslims score higher in secondary school exams than their Christian or otherwise non-religious peers.

Europe’s Muslims, on the other hand, isolate themselves and are isolated by the surrounding cultures.  Speaking candidly, I take the Europeans to task for this: after all these centuries they still look upon themselves as “civilization” and the rest of the world, including America, as barbarous.  At the same time, they are very nervous about difference to the point where they have an almost pathological disinterest in other cultures.

Tim Pauwels, a Flemish journalist with Belgian State Television, put it to me bluntly:

For three generations we just didn’t care about the Moroccans and left them to rot in our cities.

“They have no respect”

As a result, there’s a massive conflict between cultures going on here.  Europeans fail to realize that the Muslims they encounter are impoverished strangers in a strange land; Muslims, in turn, resent that the Europeans they encounter would rather pretend that they don’t exist.

Putting aside all the big theory, here’s an example of what I mean: a Dutch friend of mine, who would like to have the Moroccans deported from the European Union, complained about an incident involving his girlfriend.  They were walking through a Moroccan neighborhood in the Hague during which she was whistled at, heckled, and called a whore.   “They hate women!” he said.  “They have no respect.”

There’s no country called “Assholestan”

I informed him that, to the contrary, the Moroccans do actually have a lot of respect for women.  Any stroll through a city park will be revelatory.  You can find Moroccan couples of all ages and religious inclination cuddling, laughing, and joking.  Some of my nicest memories of the Hague’s main park is of Moroccan guys taking their girls for bike rides through the forest.

What did my friend miss?  Well, for one, he failed to realize that the Moroccan punks cat-calling his girlfriend were precisely that — punks.  Alas, there isn’t out there in the world some country called “Asshole-stan” where all the citizens are punks; all nations have young hooligans.  For another, there is actually a legitimate cultural difference at operation.  Whether we Westerners agree or disagree with it, the fact remains that in the Moroccan’s home culture an unveiled woman in jeans or a short skirt in the company of someone who isn’t her husband or male relative is, in fact, a prostitute.

This is not to say that the punks’ behavior is defensible.  For one thing, after living in Europe for three generations one would think that by now the Moroccans overall would have some sense, however vague, of the difference between their culture and that of the Europeans, and would try to be more circumspect; indeed, the Turks for the most part seem to have learned this.  For another, the red light districts are packed with Moroccan men, so there’s a bit of hypocrisy going on here.

So, what’s the future of Islam in the West?  Simply put, the American model, while not perfect (just ask American Muslims how they felt during the paranoid Bush years), works.  The European model doesn’t.  I think at the heart of this is the concept of the nation-state, which, for Americans, is built around an idea — liberty — but for Europeans is built around a linguistic ethnic group.  In other words, America integrates Muslims better than Europe because it is ideologically prepared and desirous to do so.

Beyond the nation-state

The European nation-state is creating the conditions for a “clash of civilizations”.  The only answer, then, is to abandon it.  What does it mean to be Dutch, French, German?  Whatever it means, it certainly no longer means what it did two hundred, one hundred, or even fifty years ago.  If they are to avoid very real ethnic conflict from erupting within their cities, the Europeans need to re-define European-ness.

Of course, in many ways, the Europeans are attempting to do precisely that — the European Union is the grand experiment in re-definition.  So there is real hope that conflict can be avoided.  And, indeed, we are seeing hints of integration all around: mosques in Rotterdam, Zurich, and Paris, and Muslims getting elected to government.   Time will tell.

That’s my two cents on this subject.  On the one hand, keep in mind that I’m talking in terms of gross generalities here.  On the other hand, my views will probably continue to evolve while I’m here in Europe, so stay tuned!

Obama 2.0 and police brutality…

…what do they have in common?  Web-based New Media, that’s what.  It’s time that we asked ourselves: what will be the long-term consequences of our emerging electronic democracy?

Two videos showing a San Francisco Bay Area police officer fatally shooting an unarmed, cooperating 22-year-old man have surfaced, due to the efforts of a vigilant teen and an anonymous videographer.

Both individuals used their cellphones to record the horrific event, and as you can see from the list of related videos in the embedded video above, the story is quickly breaking out across YouTube.  Call it the revenge of the Fifth Estate.

Defenders of civil liberties should rejoice that this horrible — and fatal — violation on the part of the police officer has been brought to light so quickly, raw, and true.  We have technology, coupled with the videographers’ patriotic use of it, to thank.

However, by the same token, can “patriotic New Media” take our nation down an unpatriotic path?  We should all be on the alert about a secret new development occurring within the office of the president e-elect.

(Cautiously) optimistic for America’s future

A World Series win in Philadelphia and the United States’ first Black president — wow.  WOW. Okay, Schwartzy, take a breath.

“How do you feel?” a close friend asked me this morning.  “Cautiously optimistic,” I replied, to which he remarked: “I think that’s the best thing intelligent people who are not quick to fire can feel right now.”

Hoping that America really is capable of change

A thought-provoking opinion piece by Doron Taussig of the Philadelphia City Paper, which I’m re-publishing in this space without permission (I’m sure the CP guys won’t mind) but which you may link to here.

Regarding electioneering and vote-rigging, a controversial issue from the 2000 election to which Taussig alludes, Mike Gallen The Expatriate alerts everyone to something fishy in West Virginia.  And in the spirit of my adopted city’s overcoming the Curse of Billy Penn, I’d like to say: GO PHILLIES!! The city is hopping and I can’t believe the size of the crowd for the parade!  Also, check out these photos from the celebrations Wednesday night.  Okay, now onto the main event…

The problem is mix-taxation, not over-taxation

Two of my posts, “Can the United States go… bankrupt?” and “If I were running for president,” have generated a pleasant amount of traffic.  Now, I really should be getting to work on my lecture (not to mention fundraising for the World University Project — arrrgg!), but I think the ongoing crisis merits a few more comments.  And in the interest of debate, click on the still from The Grapes of Wrath (1940) to go to an interesting blog post.

Can the United States government go… bankrupt?

Seems like a ludricous idea; after all, how can a government go bankrupt?  Well, according to this powerpoint presentation (which I’ve also provided in video form above), if administrative agencies and municipalities like school boards and entire towns can go belly-up, then so might a national government.  Consider also the recent troubles in Iceland.  Russia has come to their rescue, providing them a €4bn loan from the goodness of their hearts.  Time for a Mr. Rogers moment: “Can you say, ’satelite state’ boys and girls?  How about, ‘return of the Soviet bloc’?”  Of course, one has to wonder whether Russia, with its own earthshattering fiscal crisis, can really afford any financial adventures into the North Atlantic.

What I’m most curious about is what precisely a federal bankruptcy would mean.  Would it be a scenario like that which happens to a company, i.e., it will be restructured and recreated into something signficantly different?  If so, what happens to you and me, J.Q. Public, during the intervening limbo?  What would the new United States government look like, and how would it operate?  (Would it even still be a democratic republic?)

The apocalyptic picture is one painted by Michael Hodges, cumrudgeon author of the Grandfather Report, and John Rubino, the alarmist hack behind DollarCollapse.com, as well as Collapse of the Dollar and How to Profit From It and How to Profit from the Coming Real Estate Bust (very humanitarian titles, wouldn’t you say?)  Two years ago I corresponded with Hodges (Rubino wouldn’t return my e-mails).  We had a bit of an irascible back-and-forth, and I disagreed with much that he said.

Or would federal bankruptcy mean the slashing and burning of government-provided services and programs?  Again, if so, what happens to you and me down here, on the street?  I’m curious to hear everyone’s thoughts.

If I were running for President…

…this would be my platform:

Rescue Main Street if you want to rescue Wall Street

In my last post on the topic of the current fiscal crisis, I wrote,

Our political leadership realizes this, which is why politicians are up in arms about the irresponsibility, gullibility, and sometimes outright cynicism of Wall Street, but dare not breathe a word about the irresponsibility, gullibility, and sometimes outright cynicism of Main Street.  After all, someone had to sign all those subprime mortgages, and let’s face it, he wasn’t a shortsheller and Warren Buffet: he was you and me, J.Q. Public.

This statement in retrospect caused me a lot of ethical concern about myself, for not only is unfair, but also unwise.  You see, like everyone, I’ve been bothered by a double-edged reservation concerning the bail-out which was just rejected.  On the one hand, I am nervous about the direction in which the proposed plan might take our country; my friend Mike Gallen, after the manner of Noam Chomsky, has called it corporate socialism, but I have been arguing that really it’s just the same old crony capitalism utilizing an old Keynsian device (“the lender of last resort”); as such, it does not represent real oversight and regulation.  On the other hand, I am concerned about the effect a lack of a bail-out will have upon our future, as well.  Yet, although the bill had included some basic safeguards, I notice it lacked something critical: help for the home-owners who are being kicked to the curb by bankruptcy.

And here is the crux of the matter: while it is true that the world is suffering for the short-sighted decisions of a few million CEOs, accountants, and homeowners, can we really blame the latter?  Surely the CEOs and accountants knew what they were getting our economy into; in a sense, they were behaving like drug pushers, preying upon the hopes and gullibility of everyday joes who wanted a piece of the American dream pie (which raises the other question, namely, that ultimately what is really the cause of our woes is the particularly materialistic way in which what it means to be American has been construed since the Reagan era).  From a moral perspective, the bail-out plan is very disgusting, for essentially we’re rescuing the drug dealers and leaving the junkies out on Skid Row.

Here’s my logic: the recession is originating from foreclosures; therefore, bail-out homeowners, not (just) their banks.  The two bail-out plans provided for no assistance to J.Q. Public, and for this reason, I’m leaning
toward the “no bail-out” side.  Perhaps the firms do need to be saved for macroeconomic liquidity, but without addressing the fundamental systemic problem — the epidemic of foreclosures — saving Wall Street from its excesses may only delay the inevitable.

Re: “The Power of Money”

My friend Mike Gallen has written a strong response to my post from yesterday. He raises an excellent point: fundamentally, in any borrowing situation, the power in the relationship really resides with the lender.  After all, they are the ones putting up the cash; to paraphrase the Bible, he that giveth may also taketh away.  However, my sense is that lending grants leverage only when there is also a will to back it up.

Historically-speaking, lenders have always been in a peculiar position in that they need a strong state apparatus, replete with police and military forces, to recoup the money owed to them.  In other words, they must have the support of a currency-producing government that enjoys sufficient legitimacy and hard power to compel obedience from populations within (and frequently without) its borders. The great myopia of the laissez faire economics espoused by the Reagan, Clinton, and Bush administrations thus becomes clear: governments do not “get in the way” of markets, they provide the legal space and the physical means by which markets can even exist.  To the extent that the myth and dogma of deregulation can be said to be true, it is only in so far as we see a government restraining itself.  Erasing its influence altogether is an impossibility, and even if the government could accomplish such a feat, the market would be quickly replaced by low-level non-monetary bartering, as we have seen in Somalia.

At root is the issue of political will: the government has to be prepared to back up the lender, and until a few months ago, the United States government was indeed ready to do so.  But now consider the staggering rate at which middle-class Americans are simply walking away from their mortgages — and the total lack of repercussions for their action.  The scale of per capita debt in our country is so immense that were this the 18th Century the entire population would be sentenced to debtor’s prison.  Our political leadership realizes this, which is why politicians are up in arms about the irresponsibility, gullibility, and sometimes outright cynicism of Wall Street, but dare not breathe a word about the irresponsibility, gullibility, and sometimes outright cynicism of Main Street.  After all, someone had to sign all those subprime mortgages, and let’s face it, he wasn’t a shortsheller and Warren Buffet: he was you and me, J.Q. Public.

But just because the politicians are willing to offer up a fex execs to the guillotine doesn’t mean that in the long-run they are actually prepared to exert real regulatory muscle upon the market.  This is where my disagreement lies with Mike: they’ll give us blood, but in the end, that’s all we’ll get; real reform is radically unlikely.  All you need to do is look at the Treasury’s proposed plan to see that the Bush administration is not serious about reigning in Wall Street:

Re: “We are all socialists now”

In response to Mike Gallen’s post, “We are all socialists now,” here are some of my own thoughts.

The first is to question whether we are actually dealing with, as it were, “semi-socialism [i.e., for the rich]“: since its creation during the FDR administration, the Fed has always had the responsibility of being what’s called the “lender of last resort,” and it has performed this function several times, most notably during the savings and loans crisis twenty years ago. Theoretically at least, the Fed’s action is a capitalistic solution to a capitalistic problem, i.e., the boom-bust cycle and the Darwinian weeding out of faulty sectors of the market. Therefore, this is not even regulation per se, much less (semi-)socialism.

The only difference between the current action and its precedents is the sheer awesome scale of the lending — leading me to the second thought. At $700 billion, the bail-out equals the budget for the on-going Iraq War (cf. here and here as well).  That’s no small potatoes.  Can the American taxpayer really shoulder the looming multi-trillion dollar deficit?  Whoever becomes president of dire necessity will have to balance the budget and tackle the deficit, which probably means slashing social programs and raising taxes on all classes of society.  This isn’t an easy sell with the electorate, nor is it just or imaginative (do we really need more neoliberalism to fix what is essentially a neoliberal bungle?), but at least with Obama we can expect the rich to shell out this time, too.

In summary, then, Bush hasn’t gone socialist, just more capitalist.  Nevertheless, Noam Chomsky makes a very good point when he remarks that what we’ve been seeing since the Reagan administration has been a process of socializing cost and risk and privatizing profit (click on the image above).   The difference, however, lies in the fact that whereas in a socialist system the society shelled out via taxes, in a capitalist system it is shelled out via debt and taxes.