Muslim Minorities in the West

In this superb compilation of essays, fourteen scholars provide a timelyassessment of the expanding Muslim communities in ten western countries,carefully describing their growth and development, sometimes in minutehistorical detail, as they are increasingly scrutinized under the global spotlightfor a variety of complex reasons. Produced as a serious work ofresearch, this volume represents one of the first attempts to examine systematicallythe status and nature of Muslim collective life in the westerndiaspora as seen from the theoretical perspective of the majority-minorityrelationship. It developed out of a conference convened to consider the conditionof the Islamic minorities worldwide. After the conference, selectedpapers were transformed into chapters written specifically for inclusion inthis book.Through fourteen rich and original articles, this book explores a plethoraof problems confronting Muslims, both the recent immigrant arrivals inEurope, Australia, and North America as well as the indigenous followers ofIslam in the Balkans, living within communal collectivities of the Westernworld. It considers “how Muslim minorities fulfill their religious rites andobligations, engage in social and community life and educate their young.” Itexamines “the sacrifices Muslims have to make and the price they have to payto 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 analyzedthoroughly by their native sons, Smail Balic and Kemal Karpat. Despitea diversity of academic orientation, the essays are all highly stimulating, andthe quality of the contributions are all equally superior.The overarching dilemma, identified by the authors as the culprit responsiblefor the Muslims’ difficulties, is the demonization of Islam and the Islamicpeople in the western worldview. As a powerful psychological force on westernthinking, this mindset has brought about the victimization of Muslims and hasled 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 racialcompatibility with the Slavic majority notwithstanding, they have undergoneone of the most gruesome incidents of calculated mass murder and brutality inrecent 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), perhapsbecause Islam rejects the underlying racist premise of the nation-state and istherefore seen as a subversive force. Commensurately, history seems to berepeating itself in Europe. Almost five hundred years after the obliteration ofIslam from Spain, Khalid Duran points out that Bosnia, “truly a cosmopolitansociety” p. 30), is being turned into another Andalusia ...