Post on 26-Feb-2023
1
NETWORKING AND TRANSNATIONAL IDENTITY
SPACE IN THE MUSLIM DIASPORA IN THE
WEST.
One of the unsung features of the
extensively hashed current Globalization
process is the speed in which it
develops - in both reality and academic
research. I say ‘current’ to both
acknowledge and set apart former
historical manifestations of
Globalization that are significantly
different. Looking back at the not so
far budding diagnosis of the current
globalization, McLuhan’s “global
village” comes to mind. At the time it
connoted – and to some minds still does
2
– a one-way process of homogenization
worldwide by a hegemonic
Western/American civilization. It meant
the Lexus overpowering the Olive Tree,
McWorld antiquating Jihad, CNN towering
over local or state sponsored diffusion
of events and opinions.
No sooner, however, following actual
developments, research has been quick to
recognize this initial process as
triggering reactive responses of
assertive localism by both national and
sub-national groups. In realization of
this counter-process the binary model
came into use of local/particular vs.
universal/homogenized. But no sooner it
3
too proved insufficient in view of the
unfolding hybrid quality of the newly
forming entities and identities. Homi
Bahbah, for example, [in reference to a
recent UNESCO report of the World
Commission on Culture and Development
that the last two or three decades have
seen more people living across or
between national borders than ever
before – about 88 million people,]
suggested that globalization should be
conceived of along with minorization in
a dynamic, even dialectical relation
that goes beyond the polarizations of
the global and the local.
4
Another most important manifestation
of new spaces that eludes the binary
model is the revolutionary phenomenon of
trans-national identities. Trans-
nationalism, product of the new
connectivity afforded by the rapid
growth of Information and Communications
Technologies (ICTs) and the new
permeability of borders and massive
emigration of people, was conceptualized
as a hybrid ‘third space’, best known
under Roland Robertson’s coinage of
‘glocalism’. It denoted, among other
understandings, the emergence of an
intermediate social space - global de-
territorialized networks, often
5
connecting on the basis of culture,
rather than the historically familiar
ethnicity or nationalism. It consists in
separating the national “identity space”
from the state, and in allowing for a
“long-distance nationalism”. It involves
such notions developed in the literature
as the “death of geography” – the
disengagement of social forms from
geographical borders, Manuel
Castells’(2002)1 the hegemony of the
(non-bordered) “space of flows” over the
“space of place” (which is territorially
1 Lubeck, P., “The Challenge of Islamic Networks and Citizenship Claims: Europe’s Painful Adjustment to Globalization,” Alsayyad N. and M. Castells (eds.), Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam, New York and Oxford: Lexington Books, 2002.
6
defined and controlled) or Jonathan
Friedman’s (1994) “identity space”2.
My case study is the story of an
ideal model of such new trans-national
“identity space” – a universalized
Muslim common identity and belonging
based on culture; a private, intense
case, of particular or sub-globalism in-
becoming through two prominent strands
of globalization - diasporization and
communication.
It consists of an increasingly
noticeable cluster of novel diaspora
communities that have strong ties with
countries of origin as well as inter- 2 Friedman, J., Cultural Identity and Global Process, London: Sage, 1994.
7
diasporic extensive networking. Even
though diverse in their ethnic origins,
previous nationality, leadership,
customs and schools, Muslim diasporas
have come to be united on the basis of
several basic commonalties - a set of
firmly anchored common values and
singular cohesive traits which makes
them a community of essence, rather than
a mere physical cluster. This common
essence is mostly attitudinal and
mobilizational but it does have some
concrete organizational aspects. While
semi-secular nation-states have become
and still are the prevalent
institutional model in the Muslim world,
8
cross-national organizations, political
and Islamic, have been in operation,
even though in a nebulous rather than a
structured manner. Such are the OIC –
the Organization of Islamic Conference,
which boasts 53 member states, The
European Fatwa Council, and the Muslim
Brotherhood that originated in Egypt,
has proliferated in a variety of other
locales, and is publishing materials and
interacting with other Islamist
movements worldwide. Institutions of
international Islamic scholarship are
established in the Diaspora, such as the
International Institute of Islamic
Thought in Herndon Virginia, the Wisdom
9
Fund, and the Muslim Students
Association in the USA, which lists
several sub-organizations. New
international institutions of learning
are recognized as qualifying graduates
for authority in Islamic sciences and
pastoral services, such as School of
Islamic and Social Sciences in Herndon,
VA, and the International Islamic
University of Malaysia, which is co-
sponsored by the Organization of the
Islamic Conference. Transnational
movements such as the Mouridiyya and
Naqshabandiyya brotherhood, and
missionary associations such as the
Tablighi Jama’at maintain the notion and
10
practice of global Islamic identity,
creating what Eickleman and Piscatori
(1996) call a horizental network.3
Islamist activist organizations
worldwide share commonalities in
doctrine and agenda, in terminology and
temperament. Some of these organizations
have branched out globally, such as al-
Muhajiroun/Hizb al-Tahrir with its
origins in Jordan, at this time based
mainly in Britain, and operating also
in France, New York City, California,
Pakistan and Indonesia. It works in
close cooperation with London-based
Saudi Islamist opposition group known as
3 Eickelman D. and J. Piscatori, Muslim Politics, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996.
11
the Committee for the Defense of
(Shar’i) Legal Rights, and with the
independent activist Usama Bin Laden.
A Need for a New Identity Formulation
Immigration to the West and the
formation of minority communities as a
result is a long-time recorded
historical phenomenon in general, and in
my case study regarding Muslims
specifically. The newly forming
contemporary entities, however, are
different in context and in quantity
that touches on substance. The growing
numbers of new immigrants to the West,
whether in pursuit of livelihood,
12
education, or political asylum, not only
swelled the existing diaspora
communities but also transfigured them,
and created new additional ones. By the
turn of the millennium Muslim
communities in the West have been
already breeding their second or third
generation, and taking on the shape of
organized established communities.
While the first generation of Muslim
immigrants, as is usually the case in
immigrant communities, were striving to
earn a livelihood, get an education for
their children, and mostly trying to
integrate into the host society, by the
second and third generations, they were
13
looking to discover and re-connect with
their roots, to preserve the intactness
of their customs and beliefs, and were
laying a successful claim for public
space within their host societies.
Reshaped by this development Muslim
erstwhile communities have naturally
become in need of attaining expression
by way of a self-declared identity.
Fortuitously, civic conditions in place
in the West provided them with the
license to do so.
Freedom of expression and guaranteed
human rights were already in place in
the West, much unlike the situation in
immigrants’ countries of origin. This
14
newly found freedom afforded even
greater space for self-assertion with
the advent of Multiculturalism - not
mainly as a fact of life, but rather as
a view, a perspective become norm. That
and the related notion of cultural
relativism granted minorities an equal
cultural standing, with no patronage or
regimentation by any one culture.
Re-thinking identities in any pattern
have gained substance and legitimization
by the recent tendency in intellectual
discourse to allow for unconventional
and flexible patterns of political
definition. Such is Benedict Anderson’s
notion of the Imagined Communities,
15
which suggests that communities are to
be distinguished not by their
falsity/genuineness, but by the style in
which they are imagined; or Turner’s
notion that unlike the 19th century
nation state which had a strong policy
of unification, now, with the
entrenchment of cultural diversity and
multiculturalism, nations are forced to
accept the variety of cultures and
ethnic communities as part of their
national self-definition. Within these
expanded boundaries, Muslims, like other
minority groups, gained unprecedented
self-confidence and a voice to claim the
16
status of a distinct group in their own
right.
Factors Affecting the New Identity
formulation
The universal character that the re-
configured identity assumed was affected
by globalization’s general connectivity
and diasporization, conflated with some
private Islamic baggage. The
permeability of borders to audio-visual
and electronic communication - as well
as to human traffic, sparked the
awareness of cultural kin communities
and facilitated contacts with them, as
well as provided an ambiance of super-
17
territoriality. For Muslims specifically
the growth of a global system of
transportation facilitated the
performance of pilgrimage to Mecca,
thereby enforcing the concept of Islam
as a global system. At the same time,
these institutions of global
communications also spread the message
of pan-Islamic unity.4 Their claim and
success in constructing public spaces in
their host countries, further
contributed to the sense - and in fact
the reality - of a global community of
Islam. A Muslim can find in most
European and American cities quarters
4 Turner, B., Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalism, London: Routledge, 1994, p. 90.
18
that use the same language and symbols,
shops, mosques and dress.
The easy traffic of people and goods
made as well for a common consumption of
the self-same or similar Islamic
cultural products - books, periodicals,
magazines, audiocassettes and
videotapes, sold in Maktabas (Islamic
shops) all over the world. Publications
and sermons by spiritual and activist
leaders produced in the Middle East,
North Africa, Pakistan, Europe and the
USA are household items all over the
world. Even more so, electronic
communication vehicles stand out as a
cultural and mobilizing unification
19
agent, revolutionary in its reach,
formulation and impact. The Internet,
overflowing with Islamic webs (mostly
interactive) is a significant vehicle of
trans-border connectivity that breeds
cohesion. While this means of
transnational networking is still
limited in its accessibility and
diffusion, satellite TV actually does
reach almost every home, in real time,
crossing political and geographical
borders, distances and time limits, the
epitome of Harvey’s “time and space
compression”. Its virtual reality
visibility has a more profound and
visceral impact on audiences than the
20
printed word that only imparts meaning
but does not actually show it, and only
to the literate.
A case in point is the popular Qatar
based al—Jazeera satellite TV. With an
audience of between 35-50 million
Arab/Muslims all over the world, about
70 percent of Arabs with satellite
reception, it diffuses intensively and
extensively the message of Pan-Arabism
with special deference to Pan-Islamism;
put otherwise, it actively mobilizes for
transnational Arabism with transnational
Islamism in its heart.
21
Cultural Capital
Other factors in promoting
cohesiveness derive from the specificity
of Islamic history and immigrants’
cultural capital. In their diasporic
situation all Muslims share the
existential challenge of their
unprecedented predicament in the annals
of Islam - that of voluntary, permanent
stay under superior infidel rule.
Islam’s political theory, the
foundational myth of the community and
its self-definition as an imperial power
and a benchmark for civilizational
standards, does not provide for the
egalitarian outlook on other
22
civilizations required in the current
state of affairs, let alone their own
status as a subaltern culture.
Another factor animating Muslim
universalistic proclivity is Western
modern philosophical notions. As
sociologist Bryan Turner points out,
that increased trans-state cohesiveness
is affected as well by post-modernism,
which poses challenges to Islam: it
relativizes its absolute truths, and
deconstructs its ideas to the status of
fairy tales rather than direct
impressions of a truth. Contemporary
Islam responded in an “attempt to create
at the global level a new Gemeinschaft,
23
a new version of the traditional
household which would close off the
threat of post-modernity by re-
establishing a communal ideology”.5
On a more mundane level Muslims share
the everyday acculturation problems that
trigger the ambivalent desire to
preserve their unique way of life, based
on their singular value-system and
culture, while claiming a place away
from the margins of society. Most Muslim
immigrants to the West share a body of
basic articles of faith, ethics and
sensibilities that are traditional and
imbued with religiosity. Modernity and
5 Turner, op. cit., p.93.
24
secularism grates the most tender nerve
in matters such as the central status of
religion in their life, sexual morals,
space allotted to women, and children
socialization. Even as they aspire, and
indeed do integrate in some aspects with
the hosting societies, such issues
present them with shared difficult
choices and are constantly and
predominantly on the minds of both
opinion leaders and the rank and file.
Most Diaspora Muslims share as well a
political loyalty, if not an involvement
with their countries of origin and all
other Muslim states, groups and causes.
It bears the mark of “Pan”ism, that is,
25
the inherent inclination to supra-
national unification - whether Arab
and/or Islamic.
Yet another unifying factor is that
the emergent diasporic re-constructed
identity is a re-actualization and
development of sanctioned classic
Islamic precepts, engendered by the
novel state of affairs, as well as by
the inner dynamics of that process.
These precepts are marked by the
primordial claim for universal
applicability and the politicization of
the collective.
26
Islam’s initial conception was as a
religion framed in a political
community. It sought its expression
through all aspects of life of an
organized community, regulated by a
legal code. It was led by a prophet who
transmitted the voice of the divine, but
whose message was mostly mundane.
In classical theological terms there
is an idealistic construct of the Ummah
(nation) as an integration of politico-
religious authority, a terrain or
household in which Islamic practice is
uniformly followed, and an outward
religious thrust of Jihad involving a
struggle against unbelief. The Message
27
was sent down for all of humanity, and
expected, initially through military
conquest, than through missionary work,
to keep expanding. Therefore no
boundaries were ever set for the domain
of Islam that thus remained a-
territorial.
Through the pre-modern centuries that
followed, due to the splits between
competing dynasties, difficulties in
communication and transportation, and in
modern times the adoption of the nation-
state, the universalistic agenda faded
into a distant grand design. The notion
of a-territoriality, though, persisted.
Islam, hence, was never anchored in a
28
particular holy space – [even though
holy places do exist, both historic and
recent -] but rather in a common
culture, common modes of conduct and
understandings based on the shari’ah,
the legal code. Unlike Muslim states,
where the Islamists consider the state
as a framework for a primary application
of the Islamic order, the center in the
diasporas is the universal man whose
geography is labile, and evolves into a
global sacralized geography with sacred
centers in both countries of origin and
in the West.6
6 Roy, Olivier, “Le neo-fundamentalisme islamique ou L’imaginaire de L’oummah”, Esprit, no. 220, 1996, p. 88.
29
Matching its a-territoriality, Islam
at conception was supra-ethnic as well.
Anybody, regardless of their ethnic
origin, race or color could become a
Muslim on subscribing to the main
dictates of Islam. All through its
annals Islam was opposed in principle to
ethno-national splits in its aggregate
community and labored to maintain that
principle. In modern times, at the
heyday of nationalism in the Middle
East, it scorned and rejected the notion
of the nation-state - as did doctrinaire
Pan-Arabism - as inimical and
destructive to Islam. Islam was thus
marked since its erstwhile identity and
30
later history by a political strain, a-
territoriality, supra-ethnicism, and
universalism.
However, despite the truism that
Islam requires the unity of religion and
politics, this was historically rarely
realized. The military conquest, even
though most impressive at the early
stages, was held back in Europe, and the
thrust had to adapt to co-existence with
the other resistant, and eventually more
powerful, Abrahamic religions.
All of that was reactivated by recent
globalization developments and
31
translated into a modern political
idiom.
The recent availability of effective
global communication systems and the
diasporic growth has made possible for
the first time the pursuit of the claim
for a universalistic status as a
political entity.7
Universalism, dormant for centuries
of regression and deterioration, is back
and alive on the agenda, supported by a-
territoriality past and present. As an
immediate goal it does not connote
military conquest, but rather missionary
work, a revived sense of community based
32
on common language, sentiments and
education, and trans-national contacts
and activity.
Supra-ethnicity persisted as well as
a matter of fact - no matter to what
sub-division Muslims belong, their
spontaneous overriding identification is
Muslim8; but it is now taking on an
activist drive.
New comers to a foreign environment
tend naturally to cluster along the line
of ethnic origins, language, and
customs. To counter this, activists in
western diasporas are taking on the role
7 Turner, op. cit., pp.48-86; 89. 8 Metcalf, Barbara, Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe, 1996, Introduction.
33
of agents of de-communalism and de-
culturalism through the establishment of
a new community on an Islamic basis.
Both on the cognitive and technical
level that means the de-construction of
communal organization and disengagement
from local traditions that are not
essentially or necessarily Islamic.
Instead, an Ummah will be formed that is
based on unmediated drawing from the
canonical sources and the tradition of
the prophet.9 “[There must be no]
British Muslims, African Muslims, Arab
Muslims, etc...” Says a speaker for a
transnational Islamist organization, “so
9 Roy, op. cit.
34
that we preserve the uniqueness of our
Islamic identity...the very idea of a
mosque for Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and
Arabs is completely Haram (religiously
forbidden).10
This educational effort is upheld -
both spontaneously and deliberately by
compatible developments in the field:
various sects - Isma’ilis, Senegalese
Mourids and the Ahmadiyyah are prone to
shed singular customs and adopt common
norms. The younger generations have in
any case abandoned their language of
origin and traditional wear;
Professionals are finding jobs and 10 Sheikh Omar Bakri, al-Muhajiroun organization, U.K., broadcast over
35
moving out of the ethnic neighborhoods,
mosques are in the process of getting a
mixed following, new social
institutions, after the pattern of
western community centers for example,
are conducive to obliterating ethnic
particularity, as do the new converts.11
The idea of a political Muslim
entity, dormant through the centuries of
the Muslim political slump, has been
prepped for revival during the 30 last
decades of the past millennium through
the impressive resurgence of Islam in
all its territories.
MSANews, msnews@msnews.mynet.net, May 6 1998 11 Metcalf, op. cit.
36
During those decades Islam has been
emerging out of it's mostly doctrinaire
and ritual cocoon of recent centuries,
into an increasingly political and
ideological involvement. In theory too,
Islamist thinkers in the first half of
the 20th century such as Muhammad Iqbal,
Mawdudi and Sayyid Qutb bequeathed the
heritage of advocacy for Islamic
political integration through the global
Ummah. [These thinkers distinguish
between resistance to imperialism and
the notion of nationalism, which is
conceived as both divisive and an alien
import, a slavish imitation of the
West.]
37
Transnational Islam in its
contemporary re-constructed self-defined
identity is thus an adopted nationality
and an imagined polity as much as it is
a religion and a way of life. It is a
quasi-novel phenomenon, a national
political identity that is not based on
ethnicity or defined by demarcated
territorial borders. In fact, it creates
a neo-ethnicity - Muslim ethnicity,
turned a neo-nationalism - Muslim
nationalism. Even though its territory
is unlimited, as befits a universalistic
religion, the new politicized Islam does
aspire to a state, political and legal
rule, and a set of moral and
38
philosophical values. “....although
there is no monolithic ‘Islamintern’ per
se”, says an Islamist speaker, “that is
working in unison for the re-
establishment of a world-wide Islamic
state, yet the very precepts of Islam
point in this direction.12 Therefore,
the universalism that derives from a-
territoriality is becoming a
universalism that lays a claim to global
territorialism, and the Ummah as a
political space.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, university
professor in George Washington 12 Kamran Bokhar, graduate student, speaker for al-Muhajiroun USA,
39
University, a long time Iranian
immigrant and widely acknowledged
authority in the West, observes that
“the increase in awareness of the
Islamic world as a single entity is
itself one of the important trends to be
observed in that world, a trend which is
bound to continue...the rise of greater
awareness of the Islamic ethos and
reactions to the onslaught of the West
have made in fact the unity of the
Islamic world a motto for political and
religious forces of nearly every color
and persuasion...”13
Politicizing the Ummah
MSANews, 2 October, 1998
40
The crowning of the shifting Islamic
identity was the politicization of the
Ummah; The revived erstwhile identity of
political Islam, the insistence on the
unity of religion and state combined
with to the supra-ethnicity and a-
territoriality of Islam, makes for the
agenda of creating the Ummah -
traditionally the community of believers
- as a political space; It involves an
affiliation and loyalty to the ideal
construct of the Ummah as nation,
bridging over the diversity of tribal,
ethnic, sectarian etc. divisions.
13 Nasr, Ibid, p. 311
41
A veritable illustration is a
communiquי published in Germany by “The
European Muslim Summit of the Indigenous
European Muslims from Albania, Basque
Country, Belgium, Bosnia, Bulgaria,
Denmark, England, France, Galicia,
Germany........[and more]”. The
signatories declare that “we are one
people, part of the greater nation which
is the Ummah of Islam. Our sole purpose
is the establishment of a sovereign
state in Europe for all Muslims that
will be Dar al-Islam [the domain of
Islam], where the five pillars of Islam
can be established...we call upon the
non-Muslims of Europe to accept the Deen
42
of Islam [Deen is literally religion,
but western Muslims use the Arabic term,
in different language contexts, to
indicate that it is more than mere
religion]”14
An Alternate Agenda
Even though Transnational Islam was
born in the bosom of multiculturalism,
and in its capacity of a supra-ethnic
entity incorporates a sense of tolerance
for pluralism, this does not extend to
other religious cultures. It is
unequivocally exclusive of other
religions, nor expecting in the long
range to co-exist with them. Non-Muslims 14 Islamiche Zeitung, Germany, December 21 1997
43
are bound to see the ultimate truth
eventually, one way or another. It must
be exclusive by force of its absolutism
- Islam is the word of God, the ultimate
truth.
This exclusiveness holds for all other
faiths, but first on the list of Others
is the West. There are certainly
residues of political resentments -
anti-Colonialist sentiments, both past
and present, as well as specific issues
of western policy vis-א-vis various
Muslim states or organizations, or
acculturation problems which may be
subsumed under the revulsion from the
libertine McDonald culture. On the main,
44
however, the rage is philosophical, and
ensuing to no minor degree from the new
reconfigured identity. Whatever the
roots may be, on the emergent Islamic
agenda this sense of polarization and
embattlement has crystallized and been
adopted as a principle that has to do
with the essence, not circumstantial
conditions. “Any ideological state has
a worldview of its own, which in turn
renders it incompatible with the already
existing international status quo.
...both Islam and democratic capitalism
are in opposition to each other,
therefore the possibility that both can
co-exist peacefully at the same time on
45
this planet is highly unlikely....”15
This self-perception is affirmed by an
outsider’s analysis. Turner observes
that it is difficult to see how
fundamentalist religious movements could
tolerate an ecumenism of ideas. It holds
even more so, perhaps, for Islam which
has adopted as a primary mission the
spreading of its message universally,
and has formulated the concept of ‘lands
of war’ as the negation of acceptance of
alternative global households within the
same world cultural order.16
The West is not only The Other, but
The Enemy as well. It is the successor 15 Bokhari, Ibid.
46
of the rivaling religions of yore, now
incarnated in the deadly threat of
secularism. The launch pad and rationale
for the total challenge posed by Islam
is the re-endorsement of the Islamic
universalization of the sacred, that is,
its application to all walks of life;
and it is done in conscious
contradiction and rejection of the
western humanist ethos which “dethrones
God and enthrones man” as put
disapprovingly by Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
An increasing trend calls into question
the prevalent universal, i.e. western
definition of reform, progress, right
16 Turner, Ibid, pp.93,94
47
and wrong. That new trend challenges the
equation of ‘western’ and ‘universal’,
heretofore taken for granted, and
insists on reducing the West to ethnic
territorial boundaries, and a specific
singular history. It propounds a Muslim
independent definition of right and
wrong, of progress and backwardness,
specifically in governance, society,
economics, the sciences, and indeed
epistemology on the whole. All currently
universally prevalent definitions are
said to be the product of a specific
western historical development, such as
the enlightenment with its resultant
liberal maxims of individualism,
48
rationalism, equality and materialism.
That does not necessarily apply to other
cultures, specifically Islam. To the
contrary, it mutilates and oppresses It.
Islam starts off with the assumption of
spiritual advancement and the unicity of
God, and arrives on the institutional
level at a corporatist society which
subjects the individual to the
community, and in politics prefers
spontaneous affirmation of government to
conflictual elections and
factiousness.17
The challenge to the West is the more
substantial one in terms of ideational 17 Cantori, Louis, “Islam’s Potential for Development”, The World and I,
49
contents. As Seyyed Hossein Nasr
observes, recently Islamic thinkers have
begun to come to terms not only with the
social, but also the intellectual and
cultural challenges of the West.
Numerous authorities throughout the
Islamic world have come to realize the
importance of the re-Islamization of
knowledge. He further predicts that this
trend will continue to grow and not lose
its momentum. He believes that efforts
will “continue to be expanded to try to
‘Islamize’ the various sciences ranging
September 1st, 1997
50
from the humanities to the social and
even the natural sciences.”18
Prof. Choudhury of the University
College at Cape Breton, Canada,
specifies the ways to go about it:
establishing independent exclusive
Islamic economic and political
institutions which will phase out any
western imports, as well as a Grand
Knowledge Institute for the Islamic
world.19
This philosophical challenge is
translated in Islamic discourse,
inspired by the intensification of the
18 Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, Traditional Islam in the Modern World, 1987, p.311 19 broadcast over MSANews, 30 Dec. 1998
51
political aspect of the Ummah, to terms
of power politics. The right to
epistemological and value definitions is
diagnosed as resting with the might of
power hegemony, which is currently
occupied by the West, But not
irreversibly so. “Islam does not have a
state that represents it, whereas the US
has existed as a nation for over two
centuries”, says an Islamist speaker.
“But we are definitely living in
fluctuating political circumstances,
where Islamic revivalism is growing
stronger and stronger as the days
unfold”.20
20 Bokhari, Ibid
52
It would seem that the vision of an
Islamic superpower polity can hardly be
considered an operational agenda, and
certainly Muslim thinkers as well as
Islamist leaders are not unaware of the
actualities of power balances. It is
present though, as a mindset, or a meta-
strategy. “One day”, says a mainstream
American Islamic opinion leader, “the
gloom will be lifted from the Nile
Valley, the Indus Valley, and far beyond
and [there will be] men and women who
call themselves Muslims, citizens of the
only remaining superpower in the
world.....Tomorrow, with them, will be
the children of the Old World. Together
53
they will say....verily I am one of the
Muslims. The voices will echo from the
four corners of the continent and
resonate in corridors of power”.21
What that syndrome of new self-identity
adds up to is a first attempt in global
public discourse to challenge the
heretofore universalized agenda of the
West. Values and norms that grew in the
west and came to be considered as the
epitome of humanity’s progress - and
more so after the collapse of communism
- are now being hurled from their place
of honor and authority. It is a first
attempt in the third millennium to put 21 Robert D. Crain, formerly a foreign policy advisor to Richard Nixon
54
forth an alternate agenda to the western
one, an identity that is not offered to
Muslims only, but competes with the West
for a global standing.
and now a convert to Islam, speaking at a sermon at the American Muslim