In reply to Mr. Shadi Hamid’s Atlantic article:
Here is an excerpt from a December 17,2009 New York Review of Books article by Mr. Malise Ruthven entitled The Big Muslim Problem!: in it are reviewed Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West by Christopher Caldwell and What I Believe by Tariq Ramadan:
“While the figures-and the methodologies used to arrive at them –vary considerably, the conclusions to which they point is that Muslims do not greatly differ in their religious behavior from Europeans. For example, a French study in 2001 found that only 10 percent of Muslims were religiously observant. A study by the demographer Michele Tribalat the same year found that 60 percent of French Muslim men and 70 percent of women were ‘not observant,’ though the great majority respected ‘cultural attachments’ by abstaining from eating pork or drinking alcohol and by fasting during Ramadan.”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/dec/17/the-big-muslim-problem/
To be up front about myself I’m a queer atheist with absolutely no interest in defending any branch of the benighted Abrahamic Tradition: that being said the information that Mr. Ruthven supplies in his review raises some questions about the exact nature of the closely beliefs of the Muslims in Europe, if any real determination can be made of such a diverse population, we are left with statistical data. How many European Muslims believe that stoning of female adulterers and the cutting of the hands of thieves falls into the category of the normative? Could the promise of Europe, to the immigrant, be the advantage of living a life free of the restrictive tribalist ethos of an indigenous Islam? Not willfully forgetting the myriad problems that Muslim immigrants face. Mr. Hamid supplies some statistical data of his own but one is doubtful, skeptical about an area of inquiry so fraught with prejudices and ideological baggage: I include my own set of beliefs, and prejudices in that, in the hope of resolution or, at the least, a pragmatic accommodation: which is one of the central constructs and practices of the modern secular republic. The larger question of the number and power of conservative Muslims in Europe remains open. Mr. Ruthven recommends two books in his indispensable article:
Islam in Europe: Diversity, Identity and Influence
Edited by Aziz al Azmeh and Effie Fokas (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
The Islamic Challenge: Politics and Religion in Western Europe
Jytte Klausen (Oxford University Press, 2005)
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