Beggars
in Hijab in the Heart of Eurabia
By Dr M. A. Muqtedar Khan
University of Delware
The dialogue with Belgian Muslims was getting
depressing and had a dampening effect on my usually
upbeat attitude towards the future of Western
Muslims. After two days of fish, salad and disheartening
conversations, I decided to step out of the Crowne
Plaza Hotel and look for a halal sandwich. I took
a stroll down the Rue du Jardin and it did not
take long to find a place that served shawarma
sandwiches to go.
As I bought the sandwich I noticed a woman in
black Hijab and Jilbab walking purposefully towards
me. I smiled at her, wished her, Assalamu Alaykum
and continued with my vital commerce. A moment
later I was shocked to see this rather young and
dignified woman push a Starbucks coffee mug into
my face. She was begging!
In the land of welfare, on the road of gardens,
in this country whose exports per capita are ten
times that of the US one finds Muslim women begging
for a living on nearly every corner. Theory, philosophy,
ideology aside, this pathetic reality is a poignant
commentary on the condition of Muslims today.
The Muslim world has become such a pathetic, violent,
and miserable place that Muslim women would rather
beg in foreign streets. The West with all its
critique of Islam and the Muslim World and its
self-congratulatory discourse on human rights,
tolerance, pluralism and democracy, cannot rise
above the kaleidoscopic images of Abu Ghraib,
Guantanamo, Katrina victims, Suburban riots and
Hijabi beggars.
I went back to the hotel, angry, frustrated, and
depressed. I took no part in the conference that
day. I had my plenary session in the streets of
Brussels. I kept wondering if we needed to re-institute
the Marshal Plan to help Europe deal with its
poor and marginalized Muslims – in the suburbs
of Paris, in the ghettoes of Birmingham and in
the streets of Brussels.
I was in Brussels to participate in an American-Belgium
Muslim dialogue (Nov. 16-18), co-hosted by US
Ambassador to Belgium Tom Korologos and Ambassador
Claude Mission, the Director General of the Royal
Institute for International Relations. An interesting
group of 32 American Muslim scholars and intellectuals,
community leaders, journalists and activists joined
70 of their counterparts from the Belgium Muslim
community to discuss their mutual condition and
explore possibilities for further dialogue and
civic cooperation.
Belgium has a population of ten million and 5%
of them – over 500,000 – are Muslims.
Muslims also constitute about 20% of the population
of Brussels, the capital of the European Union.
Over 300,000 Belgium Muslims are of Moroccan ancestry
and over 160,000 are Turkish. The rest include
Balkan Muslims, South Asians and some non-Moroccan
Arabs.
Like in France, Muslims in Belgium have enough
presence to now become the “other”
against whom Belgian indigenous identity is constructed.
Repeatedly one heard Muslim and Non-Muslim Belgians
refer to even second generation Turkish and Moroccan
Muslims as “foreigners” or immigrants
even though they were Belgium born, Dutch- and
French-speaking legal citizens.
Unlike American Muslims, Belgian Muslims enjoy
a strong representation in the government. They
boast of two National Senators and five members
in the lower house of Parliament. But unlike American
Muslims they have very few civil society institutions.
There are no Muslim organizations that fight for
civil rights and oppose discrimination. Even though
there are over 350 mosques in tiny Belgium, Muslims
remain underrepresented in most institutions of
the civil society as well as the state.
A peculiar aspect of the Muslim community is the
presence of government paid Imams and teachers.
The Belgium government employs over 800 Imams
and teachers who teach Islam and Arabic in schools
and lead prayers in mosques recognized by the
government. It is clear that the Belgium government
has tried to co-opt Islam by hiring the Islamic
teachers, financing and supporting mosques and
by now creating an Executive that will govern
Islamic affairs in Belgium.
The beggars in the street notwithstanding, the
Belgium government has been very generous towards
its Muslim population. Not only are a large number
of Muslims on welfare, the government also finances
mosques and Imams. In a way this has made the
Belgian Muslim community dependent on the state
and it has therefore failed to create institutions,
other than mosques, that can work and fight for
their political and economic welfare.
I was part of a taskforce on civic affairs and
led the taskforce on Ijtihad (on how Muslims in
the West were reinterpreting Islam to suit their
new conditions). In the civic affairs taskforce
the common themes discussed were issues of rising
Islamophobia, the meaning of acceptance, multiculturalism
and pluralism. Both communities found the challenge
of constructing identities, which incorporated
both the Islamic dimension and citizenship in
the West fascinating. Americans found that the
presence of a large indigenous Muslim population
in the US, nearly 35% of American Muslims are
Black, White and Hispanic, made the collective
identity formation of American Muslims more complicated
than that of Belgium Muslims whose fault lines
were primarily ethnic.
While American Muslims lamented their inability
to have a role in policy making in the US, Belgian
Muslims’ primary concern was systematic
discrimination in the market place. Muslims with
law degrees could not find jobs for years. People’s
application for jobs and for renting apartments
was simply rejected based on their Muslim names.
American Muslims were shocked to hear some of
the stories of discrimination and humiliation
that Muslims faced on a daily basis in Belgium.
As I sat listening to the stories of Muslim life
in Belgium, I caught myself repeatedly touching
the tiny US flag on my lapel. Uncle Sam sure looked
mighty friendly and hospitable. While discrimination
against Muslims in America has certainly risen
after 9/11 it looked insignificant compared to
what Muslims in Belgium faced routinely.
Unemployment was also very high among Muslims
in Belgium. Xenophobia and welfare was preventing
the protestant work ethic from taking root in
much of the Muslim community. Apparently some
Belgian Muslims refused to look for jobs since
the welfare check was normally 70% to 80% of the
salary. For those who were married with children,
welfare provided comfortable living; and with
low property values even those on welfare could
actually own homes. The educated younger generation
that sought work felt surrounded by glass walls
that barred access to public and private sector
jobs.
I find this welfare business quite distressing.
In the UK some rather dubious Muslims –
members of Hizbut-Tahreer and the continuously
morphing al Mahajiroun group - actually live on
welfare and spend their free time campaigning
against the very society and state that feeds
them for free. In Belgium it has become a barrier
to civic integration. The only positive consequence
of the xenophobia-welfare combination that we
found was that those few amongst the youth who
were educated and dynamic were turning towards
entrepreneurship. The Turks and South Asians in
particular were doing well in this sector.
The institution of welfare also prevents the empowering
of the community with necessary, linguistic, professional
and cultural skills for success. Welfare is an
unintended means to prevent the Europeanization
of Muslims and the Islamization of Europe. It
also disables the community from having a dignified
relationship with the state and the society at
large.
In the Ijtihad taskforce we found the subject
of Islamic economics taking center stage. I was
surprised to hear stories of young couples with
children forced to sell their homes by Imams who
claimed mortgages were haraam (not permissible).
Islamic economics is one of many Saudi-sponsored
global Islamic initiatives. Perhaps we should
call it Economic Wahabism. Islamic economics does
little to eliminate poverty, for job creation,
or empowerment of the poor. It has very little
to offer in terms of strategies for economic development.
In the Muslim World it serves to legitimize undemocratic
governments that use Islamization of economy as
a way of justifying their credentials. In the
West it manifests as a racket by mediocre businessmen
who prey on the faith of middle class Muslims
for profit.
I find it interesting that “good Muslims”
in Belgium are worried that mortgages may not
be halal and we see intense debates on the subject.
But I also have noticed that there is absolutely
no debate about the permissibility of taking welfare
money from governments whose policies are deeply
intertwined with interest-based economics. Indeed
often welfare is paid through public financing
based on interest-based transactions. It is only
the Muslim middle classes who worry about interest
and have relatively little to lose by foregoing
it. The upper classes that depend on global capitalism
for their wealth and the poor who depend on welfare
are not too enamored by economic Wahabism.
Belgium’s Muslims have a dearth of scholars
and intellectuals. There is very little local
Ijtihad (interpretation of Islam). Muslims seem
to either abandon Islam in favor of a secular
humanistic ethos or import Islam from the Middle
East with its attendant anachronistic excesses.
There is no clearly marked middle path. The condition
of Belgian Muslims underscores the absolute necessity
for collaboration -- intellectual, political and
developmental -- between the various Western Muslim
communities.
On the subject of interpreting Islam in the local
context, American Muslims are streets ahead of
other Western communities. Not only are there
a large number of scholars pushing for this in
the US, but also national organizations and many
prominent Islamic centers are in principle amenable
to the idea and willing to introduce into practice
the initiatives advanced in the realm of ideas.
An excellent example of this is the adoption of
the guidelines for women friendly mosques, developed
last year by Muslim organizations, by many Islamic
centers. We can see the product of American Ijtihad
in the progressive role that women play in American
Muslim community, and in Islamic scholarship.
Another important indicator is the absence of
embedded radicalism in American Islam.
Muslims in Europe are connected to the state but
marginalized from the mainstream society. American
Muslims are alienated from the state but are quite
integrated in the society. European Muslims benefit
from state largesse, while American Muslims have
enjoyed the fruits of American multiculturalism,
religious tolerance, and economic and educational
opportunities. Muslims in Europe cause a sense
of uneasiness among the host population that is
racist, xenophobic and fearful. American Muslims
on the other hand are more accepted. As it becomes
more and more evident that American Muslims had
nothing to do with 9/11, the barriers to their
reentry into the mainstream are slowly melting
away.
Islam is the second largest religion in the US
and Europe and also the fastest growing faith
on both sides of the Atlantic. The various Muslim
communities in the West are evolving on different
trajectories influenced by the socio-political
context of home states, the nature of immigration,
and the relationship between the host nation and
the Muslim World and by the quality of Islamic
scholarship and community activism. Muslim communities
have a lot to learn from each other’s experience
and so do state and civil society institutions
in the West. We need more dialogues of this kind.
I came home from Belgium wishing that like Belgian
Muslims we too had a senator or two and a few
congressman to represent us in the highest corridors
of power. But I also came home with greater appreciation
for the enormous opportunities we enjoy in the
US and also grateful for the incredibly low levels
of discrimination and exclusion that we experience
in the US. Most importantly, I am proud of the
vibrant, intellectually alive and traditionally
rich Islam that we practice in the US with no
financial favors from the government.
(M. A. Muqtedar Khan is Assistant Professor in
the Department of Political Science and International
Relations at University of Delaware. He is also
a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution.
His website is www.ijtihad.org)
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