Contrasts in acceptance mark Islam in Belgium and America

By M.A. MUQTEDAR KHAN

12/14/2005

I recently participated in a dialogue between American and Belgian Muslims in Belgium (Nov. 16-18), co-hosted by U.S. 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 Belgian 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 percent of them -- more than 500,000 -- are Muslims. Muslims also constitute about 20 percent of the population of Brussels, the capital of the European Union. More than 300,000 Belgian Muslims are of Moroccan ancestry and more than 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 Belgian-born, Dutch- and French-speaking legal citizen

Unlike American Muslims, Belgian Muslims enjoy a strong representation in the government. They boast 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 more than 350 mosques in tiny Belgium, Belgian Muslims remain underrepresented in most institutions of the civil society as well as the Belgian state.

A peculiar aspect of the Belgian Muslim community is the presence of government-paid imams and teachers. The Belgian government employs more than 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 Belgian government has tried to co-opt Islam by hiring the Islamic teachers, financing and supporting mosques and by now creating an executive who will govern Islamic affairs in Belgium.

The common themes discussed were issues of rising Islamophobia and 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 United States, nearly 35 percent of American Muslims are black, white and Hispanic, made the collective identity formation of American Muslims more complicated than that of Belgian Muslims, whose fault lines were primarily ethnic.

While American Muslims lamented their inability to have a role in policy-making in the United States, Belgian Muslims' primary concern was systematic discrimination in the marketplace. Muslims with law degrees could not find jobs. Applications for jobs and for renting apartments were rejected based on their Muslim names. American Muslims were shocked to hear some of the stories of discrimination Belgian Muslims faced on a daily basis.

As I sat listening to the stories of Muslim life in Belgium, I caught myself repeatedly touching the tiny U.S. flag on my lapel. Uncle Sam sure looked mighty friendly and hospitable from across the pond. While discrimination against Muslims in America has certainly risen since 9/11, it looked insignificant compared with what Muslims in Belgium faced routinely.

Belgium's Muslims have a dearth of scholars and intellectuals, and as a result they are far behind American Muslims on the subject of adapting their faith to the local context. Not only are there many scholars pushing for this in the United States, but also national organizations and prominent Islamic centers recognize the need to adapt Islam to American conditions.

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 American Islam 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 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 are more accepted. As it becomes more and more evident that American Muslims had nothing to do with 9/11, the barriers to their re-entry into the mainstream are melting away.

I came home from Belgium wishing that, like Belgium Muslims, we had a senator or two and a few congressmen 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 United States and also grateful for the incredibly low levels of discrimination and exclusion that we experience in the United States. Most importantly, I am proud of the vibrant, intellectually alive and traditionally rich Islam that we practice in the United States with no financial favors from the government.

M. A. Muqtedar Khan is assistant professor in the political science and international relations department at University of Delaware. He is also a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution. His Web site is www.ijtihad.org.