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Fearful Europe vs indignant Islam

Fearful Europe vs indignant Islam

Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: February 24, 2004

After decades of puerile rhetoric over dialectics, deconstructionism, modernism, post-modernism, multiculturalism, et al, Europe is finally realising that it cannot live without fidelity to core values. For even Mammon has social roots, which is why White-dominated multinationals meant 'free trade' in the post-World War II era, but out-sourcing to India leads to revival of nationalism.

Pure economic determinism is proving dissatisfying even to the materialistic West. This is understandable, as economics is only part of a larger pattern by which communities conceive and regulate their lives, and nation states unconsciously or self-consciously accommodate themselves to these concerns. For Europe, weary after two World Wars and revived by American dollars, willful amnesia to this reality was an affordable luxury.

Today, however, Europe can no longer delude itself in this regard, as the growing assertiveness of Islamic communities within her boundaries gnaw at her belief systems and compel her to some painful soul-searching. This is bound to be difficult, as there is neither clarity nor consensus over how to proceed.

Recently, the European Union rejected the Pope's plea to make Christianity the basis of its constitution, as it was the rejection of Christianity as an all- encompassing faith and the recovery of a pre-Christian heritage based on ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, that made Europe the great exemplar of Western civilization. Europe has since steadily lost faith in Christianity. Today, as she grapples with challenges posed by Islam, she sees mirrored in that faith some of the worst excesses of her medieval past, viz., tyranny of the clergy, low status of women, ghettoisation of communities, and resistance to change and progress.

Since the Renaissance, the legal separation of Church and State has been an article of faith with European nations (and by extension, America). Religion has been posited as a private affair and the public realm upheld as too important to be subjected to the religious realm (read clergy); hence the State must be secular (non-religious) to best serve the common good. In my view, the Renaissance perched Europe over a civilisational faultline, the cracks of which are opening, even as she prepares to confront unreformed Islam. A glance at Islamic and Hindu traditions will make my meaning clear. Islam rejects separation of religious and political authority. Kings, dictators and elected rulers exist, but are not legitimised by Islamic theory. Hence the ulema is a real threat to rulers-recall the fall of Shah Reza Pehlavi of Iran, and witness the near-certain inability of America to prevent the rise of Shia clergy in present-day Iraq.

Hindu tradition is wholistic. Dharma encompasses all realms- spiritual, political, economic, secular, intellectual. Yet, the spiritual and political realms have always been kept apart. The superiority of the former is asserted, but there is no theological subordination of ruler to priest. This has probably saved us from the turbulence besetting other traditions.

De-christianised Europe, however, is a fractured society, poorly equipped to resist Islam even militarily, as the American adventure in Iraq proves. Yet Europe has so many problems with its rising Muslim population that it has been forced to respond to the fundamental challenge Islam poses to its way of life. France led the way with its decision to ban the headscarf in public schools. In Belgium, support for the ban on the veil (hijab) came across the political spectrum, including the once politically correct Belgian Socialist Party. A party member explained: "It's not normal that in certain parts of Brussels there are more women in veils than in the streets of Algiers."

Observers are surprised at the speed with which the European Left, which swore allegiance to multiculturalism even after 9\11, has finally begun to acknowledge that Islam represents values sharply at variance with its own ideals. The most prominent of these include separation of Church and State, and the human rights of women and other groups. Growing differences over these has forced Europe to pick up the gauntlet.

As a corollary, the hitherto-rejected views of the late Dutch politician, Pim Fortuyn, are slowly entering the mainstream. Fortuyn warned that the refusal of Holland's 10 per cent Muslim population to assimilate would undermine traditional Dutch values. For instance, Islam's intolerance of homosexuality flouts Dutch acceptance of sexual diversity.

In Spain, women's rights groups won a lawsuit against Imam Mohamed Kamal Mustafa, whose book, Women in Islam, taught men the "proper" way to beat their wives. Mustafa apparently advised husbands not to hit their wives on sensitive parts of the body, but "on hands and feet, using a light rod so that the blows don't leave scars or bruises." He was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment for encouraging violence against women. The presiding judge found the book "infused with a tone of obsolete machismo... incompatible with the reigning social mores." This is the first judicial verdict in Spain to recognise "incitement to violence on the basis of gender" as a crime. European feminists and Leftists are also opposing female circumcision, a cruel and painful genital mutilation that is increasing in the West as its Muslim population grows.

Europe's immigrant Muslims have so far refused to accommodate the liberal and secular concerns of their host societies. This has naturally increased levels of hostility and tensions between groups. Recently, Muslims in the Italian town, Luino, faced physical opposition from animal rights activists as they prepared to celebrate Id in the traditional way, by bleeding the sacrificed ram or lamb to death after slitting its throat.

I personally feel the protestors were being provocative. Few Western activists would dare stage a similar protest at a Jewish festival, though the customs of the two communities are exactly the same in this regard. Secondly, the abhorrent practices of the Western meat industry (which feeds dead carcasses to vegetarian animals like cows, sheep and chicken and has unleashed the most deadly diseases upon the world) make opposition to the Islamic mode of ritual slaughter seem like a petty prejudice.

Yet there is little doubt that a communal confrontation is brewing in Europe, and Europe is at a disadvantage in facing it. The separation of State and Church has deprived Europe of moral certitude, and the current sex scandals involving Christian priesthood across the globe has further diminished the lustre of the Church. Nor can Europe take refuge in its rediscovered Graeco-Roman past, because its culture, like its religion, is lifeless, fractured, partial.

In Hindu dharma, despite the so called exclusivity practiced by the much maligned Brahmins, the sweeper and Shankaracharya alike can speak with felicity about fundamental precepts like karma, dharma, and nirvana. For the average Westerner, however, Graeco-Roman culture is essentially a form of art and architecture, not a living tradition with meaning and resonance in his daily life. A discredited religion and a soulless culture are poor weapons against indignant, assertive, and self-righteous Islam. That leaves Europe with secular values like liberty, equality, and democracy. These have grown out of the struggles of different sections of its society against entrenched power elites; and have resonated powerfully across the globe. Yet, divorced from a larger living cultural matrix, they can hardly prevail over Islamic obduracy. Europe cannot hope to recover meaning from a past decimated by Christianity; to have a future, she would do well to rediscover her old respect for Mother India.
 


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