Muslims are not a homogenous entity. Far from it. Like all other faith communities, we are divided along sectarian, ethnic, class and political lines. Even a casual tourist to the Muslim lands will vouch for these divisions.
Whether it is Acehnese fighting Javanese domination in Indonesia or the secularists lined up against Islamists in Turkey; be it the Leftists of Pakistan facing up to the Ultra-Right religious parties or the Egyptian “Enough” activists debating the Muslim Brotherhood, Muslims are as divided in their vision of the future as are Christians or Jews.
Yet despite this clear evidence of ethno-social diversity and political division, many Western observers often view all of Islamdom as if it were a monolithic Islamist mob. At times their fears are grounded in ignorance, but quite often it borders on an alarmist fear of the Muslim world.
Among the authors paying particular attention to this supposed war of civilizations is Maclean’s columnist Mark Steyn. Last year Steyn published America Alone, a bestseller that raised the spectre of a Europe that would soon drown in a sea of radical Muslims committed to turning the clock back to the Middle Ages. Excerpts from the book then appeared as a cover story in Maclean’s, “The future belongs to Islam.”
Steyn predicts nothing less than the end of Western civilization as we know it, thanks to an invasion by Muslims deploying the womb as a weapon of mass destruction. His thesis is that Muslims in Europe are failing to integrate or embrace the values of the Enlightenment, freedom and secular democracy, choosing instead to create their own enclaves, which often become hotbeds of fundamentalism. Worse, the numerical growth of Muslim communities in the West, he contends, will allow radical Islamists to dilute the political, social and cultural values of the West beyond recognition.
The Maclean’s article triggered a vigorous debate in the magazine’s letters page and led to accusations that Steyn was being alarmist. Some alleged that his writings could raise hatred against Muslims. One Muslim group, the Canadian Islamic Congress, has even gone so far as to file complaints with the federal, Ontario and B.C. human rights commissions. Yet the reaction of the CIC has only given credence to his premise—that Muslims in the West cannot accept the values of individual freedom, a free press and the right to offend.”
How ironic, and how unfortunate. For Steyn’s thesis could as easily have been disproved, by the traditional means of rational debate. While Steyn’s analysis of the spread and influence of radical Islamic factions in Europe is certainly compelling, the premise of his argument, that Muslims are a monolithic entity hostile to Western values, does not withstand scrutiny.
Steyn writes: “We are witnessing the end of the late 20th-century progressive welfare democracy. Its fiscal bankruptcy is merely a symptom of a more fundamental bankruptcy: its insufficiency as an animating principle for society. The children and grandchildren of those fascists and republicans who waged a bitter civil war for the future of Spain now shrug when a bunch of foreigners blow up their capital. Too sedated even to sue for terms, they capitulate instantly. Over on the other side of the equation, the modern multicultural state is too watery a concept to bind huge numbers of immigrants to the land of their nominal citizenship. So they look elsewhere and find the jihad.”
Steyn is right to raise the alarm against the rise of religious extremism, but wrong in his diagnosis, and especially in his prescription. In predicting the rise of radical Islamist forces, Steyn fails to acknowledge the role of progressive movements within Islam. Both in Canada and abroad, it is Muslims who have stood up to jihadi goons to defend liberal values. It was a Muslim MNA from Quebec, Fatima Houda-Pepin, who spoke out against sharia, not the PQ or the Charest; it was the Canadian Council of Muslim Women who confronted misogynist practices, not NAC and the mainstream feminists. So why launch a tirade against the very people who are standing up to the Islamofascists?
Indeed, the very willingness of many Muslims, such as the Muslim Canadian Congress, to defend Steyn’s right to write, and Maclean’s right to publish, against the CIC’s attempts to suppress both, indicates the fear of “a Muslim tide” was alarmist and without foundation.
Slowly but surely, the progressive narrative within Islam is gaining ground. An increasing number of young Muslims are turning to alternative understandings of their faith. It is therefore not a given that an increase in the Canadian Muslim population will automatically usher in an age of Islamic radicalism in Canada, or that democratic values will be supplanted by a theocracy. The European experience in fact indicates the opposite: secular centre-left and centre-right members of the community have succeeded overwhelmingly, while Islamists have failed to win even in constituencies where Muslims form large voting groups.
In Denmark, for example, four Muslims were recently elected: two women and two men, of Turkish, Kurdish, Palestinian and Pakistani extraction—all of them secularists. In contrast, all the Islamist candidates lost. In Britain, the first Muslim MP was elected in Glasgow in 1992, and several more have since been elected to the Commons; not one of them was from the Islamist camp. The same is true in France, Germany and Scandinavia. So where is the evidence that if Muslims doubled or tripled in population size, they would not embrace the values of Rousseau or Locke?
Steyn’s piece caused much grief to the tens of thousands of Canadian Muslims who could not see themselves reflected in it. We are comedians and journalists; architects and physicians; scientists and cab drivers; pizza delivery men and trial lawyers, trying hard to pay our mortgages and raise our children while forced to act as unpaid ambassadors of a community under intense scrutiny. Did we deserve a cover story in Maclean’s?
Yet if Steyn’s article was based on faulty perceptions of Muslims, that in itself should be a wake-up call to all Muslims not to let the voices of a fundamentalist minority speak on their behalf. The ambitions of the zealous will be checked only if moderate Muslims speak up. They must make their voices of reason heard above the rabid bigotry of jihadis and the din of maddened mobs, whether inflamed by cartoons of the prophet or by a Teddy Bear called Mohammed.
For moderates to speak out, however, they will need to be encouraged and empowered by the mainstream. There is a rich tradition within Islam of rationalists like Averroes and Kindi, Avicenna and Farabi, who stood up to fanatics when in all of Europe there were few willing to take on the wrath of the Catholic Church. Many of the Muslim rationalists paid a heavy price and their latter-day followers are doing the same. It does not help their cause by attacking all of Islamdom as a dark tide of ignorance looming on the horizon.
Both sides need to open their eyes. Steyn must recognize that the struggle for reform is vibrant within Islam, just as it has been within other faith communities. The pace has perhaps been slower than what we would want because of dire political conditions in many Muslim countries, where death stares reformists at every step.
Ordinary Muslims, for their part, must recognize that Muslim silence over the ills that plague Muslim societies has exacerbated Islamophobia and reinforced stereotypes. Nor is the repression of dissent in Muslim lands something to be imported. Muslims coming to Canada, the US or Europe do not want to bring with them the cultural baggage that permits the shutting down of newspapers and the bullying of journalists by Islamist goons.
Steyn may be wrong. His writings may even lead to a negative image of Muslims. But he has the right to voice his views and Muslims must defend his right. Only when we Muslims stand behind the right of authors and writers to freely express their views—even if they are offensive—will we have proven Steyn wrong. By trying to censor him, the CIC only proves him right.
