choicesVol. 15, no. 2, February 2009 ISSN 0711-0677 www.irpp.org

Diversity,Imm

igrationand

IntegrationIIRRPPPP

Karim H. Karim

Changing Perceptionsof Islamic Authorityamong Muslims in Canada, the UnitedStates and the UnitedKingdom

F ounded in 1972, the Institute for Research onPublic Policy is an independent, national,nonprofit organization.

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F ondé en 1972, l’Institut de recherche enpolitiques publiques (IRPP) est un organismecanadien, indépendant et sans but lucratif.

L’IRPP cherche à améliorer les politiques publiquescanadiennes en encourageant la recherche, en mettantde l’avant de nouvelles perspectives et en suscitant desdébats qui contribueront au processus décisionnel enmatière de politiques publiques et qui rehausseront laqualité des décisions que prennent les gouvernements,les citoyens, les institutions et les organismescanadiens.

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Karim H. Karim is the director of CarletonUniversity’s School of Journalism andCommunication, where he is also an associateprofessor. He was a visiting scholar at HarvardUniversity in 2004 and a senior research fellow atthe Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, UnitedKingdom, in 2005. He serves on the advisorycommittees of the Mass Communication Programof the Al Ahram Canadian University and theproposed School of Media and Communications ofthe Aga Khan University, and has served as theelected chairperson of Canadian Heritage’sCommittee on Equal Access and Participation.Karim has managed major research projects on thedepiction of diversity for the CanadianBroadcasting Corporation and on integrationcontent in ethnic and mainstream media forCitizenship and Immigration Canada. His book,Islamic Peril: Media and Global Violence (2000),won the inaugural Robinson Book Prize of theCanadian Communication Association in 2001. Heedited The Media of Diaspora (2003) and haspublished chapters in numerous edited works,including Muslims and the News Media, MediaStudies, Accounting for Culture, and JournalismAfter September 11. His scholarly articles haveappeared in many journals.

This publication was produced under the directionof Leslie Seidle, senior research associate, andGeneviève Bouchard, research director, IRPP. Themanuscript was copy-edited by Francesca Worrall,proofreading was by Zofia Laubitz, production wasby Chantal Létourneau and art direction was bySchumacher Design.

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To cite this document:

Karim, Karim H. 2009. “Changing Perceptions ofIslamic Authority among Muslims in Canada, theUnited States and the United Kingdom.” IRPPChoices 15 (2).

The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of IRPP or its Board of Directors.

Diversity, Immigration andIntegration / Diversité, immigrationet intégration Research Director / Directrice de rechercheGeneviève Bouchard

T his series consists of individual IRPP Choicesand IRPP Policy Matters studies on Canadianimmigration policy and its challenges from a

comparative perspective. Issues discussed in thisresearch program include the relationship betweensovereignty, security and border control; economicintegration; and the reconciliation of economic andhumanitarian objectives.

C ette série comprend des études Choix IRPP etEnjeux publics IRPP qui portent sur la poli-tique canadienne d’immigration et ses nou-

veaux défis dans une perspective comparée. Lesquestions abordées dans ce programme de recherchetouchent aux rapports entre souveraineté et la sécu-rité et le contrôle des frontières, l’intégrationéconomique et la conciliation des objectifséconomiques et humanitaires.

Contents4 Arrival and Engagement with Western Societies

5 Global, Transnational, Translocal

6 Islamic Authority

8 Data Collection Methods

10 Analysis

20 Implications for Policy Development

23 Appendices

26 Notes

27 References

29 Résumé

30 Summary

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I n the aftermath of the terrorist attacks onWestern targets by certain Muslim groups overthe last few years, the media have frequently spo-

ken of “the struggle for the soul of Islam.” The1.2 billion Muslims of the world hold a diversity ofviews on the purported Islamicness of the attacks. Avery tiny proportion of them are involved in terror-ism. The overwhelming majority are opposed to ter-rorism, but their views about the West aremultifaceted (see Adams 2007, 103-10; Pew Center2007). Considerable soul-searching is taking placeamong Muslims regarding issues that go beyond theuse of violence for political ends. For more than 200years, beginning with European colonial incursionsinto Muslim lands, there has been discussion aboutthe relationship between Islamic and Western viewsof the world. A key element of this discourse is thenature of modernity (Ahmed 1992; Al-Azmeh, 1993;Yassine 2000; Peletz 2002; Sajoo, 2008).

Muslims are seeking ways of engaging with thecontemporary world on their own terms. For a longtime, there was a widespread belief that modernityand westernization were synonymous. However, likeother non-Western peoples, Muslims are seeking toembrace modernity within indigenous parameters.But they find themselves burdened by the tendenciesshaped by interpretations of Islam that inhibit inno-vative engagement with contemporary conditions.This problem is particularly acute for Muslim resi-dents of Western countries, who face many issuesthat have little precedent in Muslim contexts.

There are many publications on this topic (forexample, Ramadan 2004; Safi 2003; Wolfe 2002), butfew researchers have studied the role of Islamicauthority. And hardly anyone has sought to hearfrom “ordinary” Muslims about the place of religiousleadership in helping them deal with modernity.Contemporary conditions have substantially altered

Changing Perceptionsof Islamic Authorityamong Muslims inCanada, the UnitedStates and the UnitedKingdom Karim H. Karim

these three Western countries. I provide brief back-grounds of the settlement of Muslims in these countriesand the transnational nature of their world. I discuss theways in which Islamic authority has been traditionallyconceptualized and how education and communicationtechnologies are changing public engagement byMuslims. In the description of the research methodology,I outline how the primary research data were gathered.The information collected is examined in the analyticalsection of the paper, which discusses the problemsMuslims in the West have with “imported imams,” theirexpectations of their religious authorities regarding prac-tical engagement in the world, and the importance theyascribe to an individual’s critical understanding of herfaith. Some of the research subjects are re-evaluating notonly the status of religious leaders, past and present, butalso the primary legal and scriptural texts of Islam, inthe context of their present-day goals. I conclude thestudy with some policy suggestions.

The issues addressed in this study touch upon thenurturing of citizenship among Muslim immigrants. Thestudy uncovers some of the ways in which these immi-grants view successful settlement in their lands of adop-tion. Constitutional and legal structures in the threecountries guarantee the freedom of religion, enablingMuslims to practise their religion. Their adherence toIslam is not an impediment to their integration into thereceiving countries. However, societal and institutionalprejudice and discrimination against Muslims may be afactor in producing alienation and antagonism, possiblyleading to anti-social and even criminal behaviour. Thepressures on marginalized youth to join militant groupsare palpable – demagogic preachers prey on alienatedyoung Muslims, encouraging them to act againstWestern interests (Roy 2004, 315-16). These are devel-opments that Muslim communities and the larger socie-ty clearly want to prevent. The study identifies thediscourses among those Muslims who are positivelyinclined towards citizenship in Western countries. A keyconcern for them is to find appropriate guidance thatwill enable them to remain Muslim while becomingCanadian, American or British. In this paper, I hope tocontribute to the understanding by interested scholarsand policy-makers of the Islamic context that framesthe discourses of Muslims about their aspirations forsuccessful integration into Western societies. Finally, thefindings of this study point to some policy approachesthat could promote a social environment enabling posi-tive engagements between Muslims and their countriesof adoption; these are discussed in the final section ofthe study.

the assumptions under which traditional Islamicauthorities operate. The expectations that adherentshave of their leaders have been transformed by notonly the circumstances produced by modernity andmigration, but also educational and technologicaladvances and globalization

The faithful cannot be expected to think of reli-gious authorities in the same way as they have in thepast, considering that many of them have more edu-cation than the religious authorities. They haveaccess to the primary intellectual resources of Islamictraditions, they are continually exposed to new ideas,and they are able to have discussions with each otherover vast distances using the Internet.

In this study, I seek to examine the changes in theways in which Muslims in Canada, the US and the UKview Islamic authority. The study’s findings have impli-cations for understanding how Muslims in the West arecoming to terms with contemporary life throughIslamic perspectives. The results of the research point tothe emergence of perspectives that may help determinehow they approach choices on issues ranging frommedical treatment to education to political engagement.

For newcomers to be successfully integrated1 intothe receiving society, they need to have a sense ofcomfort in being able to manage change on their ownterms. Individuals and communities tend to resistforceful assimilation into the dominant culture. TariqModood and Fauzia Ahmed’s study, which is basedon interviews with British Muslims, notes that“although ‘moderate’ or mainstream Muslims repre-sent a variety of views, they are pro-multiculturalismas long as it includes faith as a positive dimension of‘difference’” (2007, 206). Muslim immigrants to theWest seek to maintain their religious identity, butthey are not averse to modulating aspects of theirtraditions to achieve material success in the newcountry (Bouchard and Taylor 2008, 235). In order tomaintain this balance between faith (deen) and theworld (dunya), they hope that their religious leaders’guidance will prevent them from straying away fromthe essential aspects of Islam. They also expect theseauthorities to provide an enabling framework that ismindful of the new circumstances in which they live.Whom or what sources Muslims regard as validIslamic authorities, whether they are willing to turnto them for answers, and how they do this are there-fore important in understanding the integration ofMuslims into the countries where they have settled.

My findings are drawn primarily from a series ofdiscussions with “lay” Muslims in several locations in

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Islam among African-Americans began to acceleratein the 1930s and continued in the decades thereafter.

There was an increase in Muslim immigrationbetween 1947 and 1960, including large numbersfrom South Asia and Central Europe. These immi-grants were more educated than their predecessorsand tended to settle in cities. They were also generallymore Western in their outlook (Smith 1999, 52). Muchlarger numbers of Muslims began to arrive after therepealing of national quotas in the Immigration Act of1965. Wars, revolutions and civil conflict in majorityMuslim countries have frequently been the causes ofsudden rises in migration to the United States.Currently the majority of Muslim immigrants arrivefrom South Asia. Statistics on religious affiliation arenot collected in the US national census, but in 1992the American Muslim Council estimated that the num-ber of Muslims in the United States ranged between 5million and 8 million (Leonard 2003, 4). The currentfigure is most likely larger.

In Canada, the population of Muslims doubled inthe period between the censuses of 1991 and 2001.The earliest official record of Muslims in Canada isfrom 1871, when the census counted 13 Muslim resi-dents, although recorded history traces Muslim pres-ence in Canada to earlier in the mid–nineteenthcentury (Hamdani 1994, 8). The numbers of thosearriving remained fairly small until the end of theSecond World War. The remnants of race-basedimmigration restrictions were lifted in the 1960s, andthe last four decades have seen substantial growth inthe diversity of origins. Whereas the early arrivalswere mainly of Arab and Turkic origins, more recentMuslim immigrants also come from many other partsof the world, particularly South Asia. According to2001 Census data on religious affiliation, there are579,600 Canadian Muslims (Statistics Canada 2003),representing 2 percent of the country’s population.Of these, 61 percent live in Ontario, and generallythey tend to concentrate in the larger cities acrossCanada. Muslims accounted for 3 percent of theinhabitants of Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary, and5 percent of Toronto’s population. These figures arelikely to continue to rise due to sustained immigra-tion from majority Muslim countries; the relativelylow median age among Muslims of 28 years alsosuggests higher fertility rates compared to Canadiansas a whole.

There are significant differences in the social, eco-nomic and political integration of Muslims in thethree Western countries under study. Canadian

Arrival and Engagement withWestern Societies

I slam has emerged over the last few decades asthe second largest religion after Christianity inCanada, the United States, the United Kingdom

and most other Western countries. This has largelybeen the result of the migration of Muslims of manynational and ethnic backgrounds to these countries.While the majority are Sunnis, there are also substan-tial numbers of Shia Ithna Asharis and Ismailis.Ahmadis and Druze communities are also present.Sufi groups (tariqas/turuq) are yet another facet ofthe Muslim mosaic in the three receiving countries.

Britain has a long history of contact with Muslims.The best-documented pre-twentieth-century migra-tion is a group of Yemeni men who settled in north-east England, where they worked in the docks (Peach2005, 18-19). Although Muslims of various nationalorigins have migrated to Britain, the majority are ofSouth Asian origin. They began arriving in largenumbers in the late 1940s “to fill the labour shortagein the industrial cities of London, the Midlands andthe former textile towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire”(18). Even though there have been many otherMuslim immigrants, prompted mostly by instabilityin home countries, the poorly educated meniallabourers who arrived in the mid-twentieth centuryhave shaped the social characteristics of most ofBritain’s Muslim communities. The 2001 censuscounted some 1.6 million people who identifiedthemselves as Muslims.

There are stories of pre-Columbian Muslim travelto the Americas. A Chinese Muslim admiral, ZhengHe (1371-1433), is said to have led a naval expeditionacross the Pacific Ocean (Menzies 2003). SpanishMuslims are believed to have arrived in the late fif-teenth century (Smith 1999, 51). A substantial num-ber of West Africans brought over to America asslaves are also thought to have been Muslims.However, few traces remain of these early migrationsin contemporary Muslim communities in the UnitedStates. The first properly documented Muslim immi-grants sailed to the United States between 1875 and1912 from what was then Greater Syria. A secondwave from the same region and other former princi-palities of the collapsed Ottoman Empire arrived soonafter the First World War. Washington permittedfewer to enter from the 1920s onward, but in the late1940s some barriers began to be lifted. The growth of

and Torres-Reyna 2007), there has been a significantnumber of conversions to Islam over the last fewdecades. Estimates of converts2 in the United Statesrange from 20,000 to 50,000 (Smith 1999, 65). African-American Muslims and converts of European originswho have been in the three countries for a long timehave experienced cultural tensions in their relation-ships with the larger immigrant Muslim populations(McCloud 1995; Jackson 2005; Smith 1999, 66).

For their part, Muslims in the larger immigrantpopulations often have difficulties settling into theirnew social environments (Karim 2002a; Nimer 2002b;Vertovec 2002). Nevertheless, it appears that overtime, individuals, families and communities developways of being Muslim and also participating in theiradopted countries (Abdul-Ghafur 2005; Abdul Rauf2004; Wolfe 2002; Khan 2002; Hasan 2001; McGown1999). They are coming into contact not only withWestern norms but also with the cultures of Muslimsfrom around the world who have settled in theiradoptive countries. This is prompting a rethinking ofpersonal and communal identities that in many casesinvolves the separation of cultural norms of Muslimsfrom the universal principles of the faith of Islam.There is also an attempt to better understand the his-tory of Muslims in ways that distinguish custom fromreligion (Safi 2003).

Global, Transnational, Translocal

G lobalization has made possible transnationalrelationships between people that could nothave been maintained in the past. The particu-

lar technological features of globalization, manifestedin vastly enhanced transportation and communication,are enabling people not only to move around the worldwith relative ease but to maintain vicarious contactwith each other on an almost constant basis (Karim2003b). These developments have had an enormousimpact on the lives of migrants. Unlike migrants of thepast, many of whom severed relationships with theirplaces of origin, diasporas are now able to maintainintricate intercontinental networks. They can travelback and forth regularly and be in touch with peopleand cultures across vast distances through the tele-phone, the Internet and satellite television.

Since the inception of Islam, Muslims have nurtureda sense of one singular community called the ummah.As Muslims settled around the world, this concept

Muslims have a very high level of educational attain-ment (Husaini 1990, 25); this may be a result of theCanadian immigration system’s preference for appli-cants with university degrees. However, CanadianMuslims have high levels of unemployment, partly asa result of discrimination (Adams 2007, 98-101; Helly2004). There is significant variation in educationalattainment among Muslims in the highly heteroge-neous Muslim communities in the United States, mostof whom live in low-to-upper-middle-class house-holds (Nimer 2002a, 37). A large majority of BritishMuslims possess poor educational qualifications and“have the lowest proportion [25 per cent] of popula-tion engaged in economic activity compared to otherreligious groups” (Peach 2005, 26).

Nevertheless, there is a substantial level of Muslimpolitical activity in the British public sphere. The2005 general election saw four Muslim members ofparliament elected and several others have beenappointed to the House of Lords. Following the 2006federal election, Canada had four MPs and two sena-tors who were Muslim; there were several others inprovincial legislatures. In contrast, a lone US Muslimcongressman was elected in 2006, and the possibilitythat Barack Obama was a Muslim was viewed nega-tively by mainstream American society.

Institutional development in Muslim communitieshas been significant in the three countries. Almostevery city with a sizable Muslim community hasorganizations that attend to their spiritual and mate-rial needs. In addition, there are several national andumbrella groups that serve adherents in the varioussects, particular approaches to Islam, gender, ethnici-ty and national origin (Nimer 2002a). The most visi-ble structural presences are mosques and otherplaces of worship. A particularly prominent buildingis the Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat on SussexDrive in Ottawa, close to the prime minister’s officialresidence. Another important facet of Muslim pres-ence in the three countries’ public spheres is thegrowth in print, radio, television and Internet media.A number of Muslims have also gained prominencein the major media.

There are multiple manifestations of other engage-ments with the larger society in the three countries ofsettlement, including participation in mainstreaminstitutions, business liaisons and intermarriage.Some British Muslims, however, have chosen to livein areas where there are high concentrations of theirco-religionists. In spite of the widespread anxietyabout Islam in all three countries (Helly 2004; Nacos

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conceiving of themselves as diasporic members of theglobal ummah while being residents of Westernlocales. It explores how their experiences as Muslimsand Westerners shape the understanding of their con-temporary condition.

Islamic Authority

A key difference between Islam and Christianityis Islam’s integration of deen (faith/spirituali-ty) and dunya (society/the material world).

Proper social conduct (including in domains such asbusiness and politics) is viewed as part of Islamicpiety. Muslims who choose to continue practisingtheir faith under conditions of Western modernityoften find themselves in search of authoritative guid-ance in order to remain faithful to Islamic precepts.However, this is turning out to be a fairly difficulttask. Not only do these Muslims face the challengesof dealing with a social setting in which their religionis relatively new, they also tend to lack strong insti-tutional structures to which they can turn for sup-port.4 In addition, the fast pace of technological andsocial change continually puts before them unprece-dented ethical problems.

Those who have come from countries with well-established religious institutions recall the ways inwhich issues of faith were addressed. A problemwould usually be discussed with the local imam, whowould issue a legal opinion (fatwa) on the matter.While a number of Muslims living in the West con-tinue this practice, many others have become dissat-isfied with it. They question the familiarity of imams,who are often “imported” from Muslim homelands,with Western contexts of life. Some even criticizeimams’ lack of intellectual capacity to engage withcontemporary issues. An increasing number of theMuslim faithful living in the West regard Muslimscholars with academic training in Islamic studies,especially those who have studied in both Westernand traditional institutions, as being more authorita-tive than traditional imams. Their familiarity withWestern social conditions, institutions, philosophyand history are viewed as being essential to providingreliable advice. Being able to communicate effective-ly, in person and through various media, is anotherkey criterion of their reliability.

There is not a common Muslim view on religiousauthority. Adherents of Islam are united in the belief

expanded to incorporate a sense of global belonging.The idea of the ummah is a key factor in the transna-tional personal and societal identities of Muslims.There is a strong belief that the more than one billionadherents of Islam around the world constitute onecommunity. This concept overlaps with but also con-tradicts the idea of the citizen as an individual livingwithin the boundaries of a specific state. In reality,the ummah is more of an ideal than a reality, consid-ering the exclusionary way in which even Muslimmajority states treat each other’s Muslim citizens.Nevertheless, it is a factor in the way many Muslimsliving in Western societies conceptualize diasporicrelationships.

Combined with the technological and social inno-vations related to globalization, the concept of theummah encourages transnational linkages amongMuslims worldwide. These connections cut acrossnation-states, maintaining relationships throughinstitutions and communication networks that oper-ate laterally. Individuals travel and maintain contacton a regular basis with counterparts located in citiesof various states; this sociological reality does notnecessarily mean that they are cut off from theircompatriots in their countries of domicile, but it sug-gests a multilayered existence that was not imagina-ble even a few decades ago. Peter Mandaville hasconceptualized this social phenomenon as “translo-calism,” which he defines as follows:

Translocal spaces are hence constituted bythose technologies and infrastructures whichallow peoples and cultures to cross great dis-tances and to transcend the boundaries ofclosed, territorial community. Translocalitydoes not refer simply to a “place,” nor does itdenote a collectivity of places. Rather it is anabstract (yet daily manifest) space occupiedby the sum of linkages and connectionsbetween places (media, travel, import/exportetc.). The notion of locality is included withthe term in order to suggest a situatedness,but a situatedness which is never static.Translocality can be theorised as a mode,one which pertains not to how peoples andcultures exist in places, but how they movethrough them. (2001, 49-50) [Mandaville’semphasis]

Many Western Muslims conceptualize their identi-ties in multiple ways — as citizens of Western states,as residents of specific locations within these coun-tries, as belonging to the global Muslim community,and as members of a specific Islamic sect and/or Sufigroup — all of which exist in individual minds in astate of postmodern hybridity (Kraidy 2005).3 Thepresent paper examines how Muslims in Canadian,American and British cities manifest a translocality in

pluralist, dynamic context” which, after the fourteenthcentury, was replaced by “poor, dogmatic, local discus-sions and views” (2002, 208). The pace of growthbegan to slow in the Arab region, and eventually adecline set in in other Muslim domains as well. Eventhough debates on major issues were pursued by indi-vidual scholars, they were generally placed within theframework established in earlier times. A growing ten-dency toward conformity (taqlid) with established rul-ings tended to limit independent reasoning and wasmirrored by the erosion of intellectual standards.Innovation (bida) came to be seen as inimical to themaintenance of Islamic norms, and was disallowed.

The dominant tendency among Muslims has been torefrain from either critically challenging the receivedwisdom of ages past or questioning the authority ofestablished religious leadership. Even Islamism’s opposi-tion to dominant religious structures generally identifiesits goal as a return to an imagined purity in the practiceof Islam rather than seeking an Islamic engagementwith modernity. However, this situation appears to bechanging. Despite the ideal in Sunni Islam of theautonomous religious believer, the practice is to dependon the ulama, who largely tend to adhere to the legaland theological framework developed many centuriesago. Khaled Abou El Fadl notes that “the juristic con-cept of authority has become a firmly embedded part ofIslamic dogma” (2001, 31). Dominant Sunni discoursesoften foreground notions of the permissible (halal) andimpermissible (haram) in Islamic law. The people withthe power to adjudicate on this are those who have tra-ditional religious training. Under normative structures,they have the institutional legitimacy to interpret scrip-ture in order to make rulings on issues in contemporarylife that are brought before them.

Although the Shia were affected by the general ossi-fication of Muslim society, they maintained distinctforms of religious authority. The Shia held that leader-ship of Islam had been passed on by the Prophet to hiscousin, Ali, whose lineal descendants were to guide thecommunity in spiritual and worldly matters as heredi-tary imams. Following the disappearance of the twelfthimam of the Ithna Aashari (Twelver) Shia, this group’sulama have maintained primary leadership for over athousand years. Compared to the Sunni ulama, Twelverulama who have obtained the rank of mujtahid havemore interpretive leeway. A different situation prevailsamong the Shia group of (Nizari) Ismailis. The presentImam, Aga Khan IV, who claims direct lineal descentfrom Ali, provides religious and worldly guidance to hisfollowers. There are no ulama in Ismaili communities;

that ultimate authority lies with God, but they havedisagreements regarding the implementation of Hiswill on earth. The Shia hold that the Prophet designat-ed Ali as his successor, and that religious and worldlyleadership is derived from his lineal descendants whoinherit the office of imam from father to son. Sunnisbelieve that the Koran, the Prophet’s practice (sunnah)and His sayings/traditions (hadith) are the only pri-mary basis of Islamic authority; these sources providedirection on the pursuit of an ethical and moral life.Some members of both branches seek to follow theProphet’s model of life as much as is possible in con-temporary times and carry out a literal reading of theKoran, which was revealed in seventh-century Arabia.Others tend to search for timeless principles in scrip-ture and the Prophet’s example, applying them to thechanging times and conditions of life. The religiouspractices and outlooks of the vast majority of thefaithful fall somewhere in between the two ends ofthis broad spectrum.

The idea of a “priesthood” was rejected in Islam.However, due to a number of historical factors,including widespread illiteracy, the religious scholars(ulama) adopted the function of providing guidanceand counsel to the faithful. The ulama developedinterpretive means to enable Muslims to adhere to theprimary sources, whose origins in seventh-centuryArabia were often not congruent with changing cir-cumstances. On issues of contention, the Sunni com-munity followed the consensus (ijma) of scholars.Analogy (qiyas) was used as an interpretive tool tocompare contemporary conditions with those of theProphet’s time. Where qiyas reached its limits, schol-ars applied reasoning (ijtihad) to resolve issues (seeHallaq 1997). Various schools of law were establishedand legal codes formalized. However, the shariah,which has come to be translated as “Islamic law,” wasnot a unified, immutable system but a pluralisticframework modulated by custom and changing cir-cumstances (Vogel 2008).

The first few centuries after Prophet Muhammadwitnessed the emergence of a dynamic culture ofscholarly debate and innovative engagement with thechanging conditions of a rapidly expanding Muslimempire. Civilization flowered with the energetic pur-suit of scientific and artistic endeavours. Thisoccurred in a larger intellectual context in whichnon-Muslims, particularly Christian and Jewishscholars, played key roles. According to MohammedArkoun, the early period of Muslim history “sustaineda rich theoretical and practical debate in the dialectic,

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Data Collection Methods

T he empirical evidence presented in this paper isprimarily drawn from the findings of focusgroup discussions conducted with Muslims in

Canada (Ottawa and Montreal), the United States(Washington, DC, area), and the United Kingdom(London, Manchester and Leicester) between March2004 and June 2005.5 It is supported by informationcollected from personal interviews6 conducted as partof the research project. Unlike the random samplingapproach common to broad surveys and polls, theselection of the potential participants for focus groupsis carried out in a deliberate manner called purposivesampling.7 Berg (2001, 111-32) describes the efficacy ofconducting focus groups when seeking specific infor-mation from people with particular social characteris-tics. According to Stewart and Shamdasani, “Insofar asthe researcher has a specific agenda and wishes thegroup to interact in particular ways, he or she willstructure the membership of the group to maximize theprobability of the desired outcome” (1990, 53).

The particular objectives of the research projectprompted the development of very specific criteria inthe choice of individuals invited to participate in thefocus groups (see appendix 1). A primary screeningcriterion was that the potential participant self-iden-tify as Muslim. No restrictions were placed on anygroup that declared itself to be Muslim or on individ-uals who had joined as converts. In order for the dis-cussions to be productive, it was essential that theparticipants had some knowledge of contemporaryMuslim scholarship. They had to have read at leasttwo articles or chapters of a book by a Muslim intel-lectual,8 be familiar with the work of an artist or haveattended a series of lectures. The preference was alsofor people who had lived in the West for at least fiveyears, so as to ensure participation of people whocould speak from the basis of lived experience. Forfour of the sessions, the aim was to have equalmale/female participation; in addition, there were twofemale-only focus groups that were both led byfemale moderators. The latter arrangement sought toensure that the participants would feel free to exploretopics that they might have felt inhibited fromexploring, consciously or unconsciously, in the pres-ence of men. Academics, religious leaders and currentofficials of Muslim organizations were excluded, inorder to ensure that the voices of ordinary Muslimswere privileged in the discussions.

they are administered by local and national councilswhose members are appointed by the imam, in accor-dance with a constitution (Aga Khan circa 1998).

Eickleman and Anderson refer to “an emergingMuslim public sphere” in “Muslim majority states andMuslim communities elsewhere” (2003, 1). They com-ment on how “mass education, new messages, andnew communication media” (16) have vastly expandedthe number of Muslims who are aware of and engagedin discussion of issues that were previously viewed asbelonging to the domain of intellectual elites.Eickleman and Anderson see these developments ascontributing to the growth of Muslim civil societies.Habermas (1989), who initially introduced the conceptof the public sphere, conceived of it primarily as a uni-tary space within which discourse on public affairstook place among middle and upper class, urban,white, Christian males. In addition to feminist critiquesof the concept (Benhabib 1992; Fraser 1992), therehave been proposals to view the multiplicity of dis-courses within society as existing within “public spher-icules” (Gitlin 1998) and a “multi-ethnic public sphere”(Husband 1998). Discussions in “public sphericules,”such as those of minorities, do not occur in isolation,but intersect with each other and with dominant publicspheres in society (Shryock 2000; Karim 2002b).

Some Muslims in the West have sought to partici-pate actively in the larger society through a contem-porary engagement with Islamic sources. Starrett’sanalysis of the use of educational (including media)resources on Islam by an African-American Muslimcommunity in a mid-sized city in the Carolinasdescribes the shaping of local interpretive communi-ties “in which personal and public virtue can beachieved” (2003, 98). Under the leadership of the AgaKhan, Ismailis have been conducting a vigorousengagement with modernity while continuing toadhere to traditional practices (Karim forthcoming).

The present study examines the perceptions ofIslamic intellectual authority among Muslim individu-als in several localities in Canada, the US and the UKin order to understand the characteristics of Muslimpublic “sphericules” as well as national and translocalcommonalities between them. In the analysis of focusgroup findings, I discuss the research subjects’ atti-tudes toward local imams, the scripture and Islamicnorms such as the shariah. Many of the research sub-jects had strong opinions about the validity of tradi-tional structures of authority and were keen to decidefor themselves how they would practise Islam and livetheir lives in their countries of adoption.

Focus group members were encouraged to name theintellectuals whose thinking had influenced them.However, several went beyond this to speak about thenature of their personal searches, and occasionallyeven the methods they used in pursuing answers toissues of faith. The perceptions of the interlocutorswere taken at face value and the moderator made noeffort to correct particpants’ statements of fact or inter-pretations — although other participants occasionallyattempted to do so. There were variances between citieswith respect to how the discussions unfolded and therange of topics that were addressed, but a series ofcommonalities emerged in the six locales where thediscussions were conducted.

The participants in each session were not viewed asbelonging to a unitary Muslim public sphere. They hada plurality of characteristics, and they recognizedthemselves as being affiliated with various communi-ties (in religious and ethnic terms). Separate Muslimpublic sphericules interacted with each other during thediscussions. The interlocutors in the project were notviewed as being representative of those present inMuslim communities in the West. This is not possiblewith the focus group method. It is not assumed that therange of issues represented and opinions expressed inthe interviews and discussions cover all the perspec-tives on the topic of Islamic authority; rather it isassumed they are the result of the specific interactionsthat took place during the meetings with the particularindividuals under the conditions imposed by theresearch methodology. Accordingly, the analysis of thefindings and the discussion of policy implicationsreflect the types of people who were present in thefocus group sessions. Some of the groups that themethodology was not designed to include are thosewho generally do not engage intellectually with schol-arly literature on Islam; those who have literal, highlyconservative, or militant religious viewpoints; andthose who are reluctant to participate in discussionsthat are part of research that will be made public.

Some of the findings are discussed below under theheadings “Imported Imams,” “Praxis” and “CriticalApproaches.” They are presented in a free-flowing man-ner as if there were a single conversation that occurredtranslocally and simultaneously. The focus group dis-cussions are treated as a source of primary evidence,and the interviews are used, when appropriate, to con-firm specific points of discussion. I have chosen toquote the words of the interlocutors directly, despite theoccasional errors in grammar and diction, in order tomake available as much as possible the original

Individuals who met the stated criteria were identi-fied in each location. Participants were recruited withthe help of research assistants based in or familiarwith the respective locations. After a sufficient num-ber of people had been identified, a list of 15 inviteeswas drawn up to reflect a relatively diverse group.Care was taken to exclude individuals who knew eachother, although they were not completely excluded.Between 7 and 13 participants showed up at the vari-ous discussions. All the sessions were held in academ-ic settings and each lasted approximately two hours.Attendees were asked to fill out forms that requesteddemographic information, but their names were notadded to these forms in order to maintain privacy.

The focus groups in Washington, DC, andManchester were composed of women only and weremoderated by women; all the others were mixed ingender. The ages ranged from 18 to 70; ethnic originsincluded the Middle East, South Asia, Europe, Africa,and Southeast Asia; and diverse socio-economicclasses were represented. Most participants had post-secondary training. They were students, working pro-fessionals, and retirees in fields such as engineering,medicine, architecture, media, public administrationand education. The groups included adherents of theSunni and Shia branches of Islam, and some also ofSufism. More detailed demographic data about thefocus group interlocutors are presented in appendix2. Information was not collected on whether individ-uals were converts, but some participants identifiedthemselves as such in the course of the discussions inall the sessions, except the one in Ottawa. It is esti-mated that all the groups had one convert attending,and there were two present in the London discussion.The participation of converts is not viewed as havingskewed the findings; they often expressed themselvesmore sharply on some of the issues than did otherrespondents, as will become apparent below.

The moderator informed the participants that theywere not invited as representatives of any sect orschool of thought, but rather as individuals whowould contribute to the discussion as such. Emphasiswas laid on the need to respect the differences inopinion that were expected to emerge due to thediversity of the respective groups. Even though therewere a few heated exchanges, all the sessions tookplace in a civil manner. Among the questions askedby the moderator were some that sought to identifycurrent issues in the practice of Islamic faith and thesources of guidance that the participants turned to inaddressing them (see appendix 3 for the questions).

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My ultimate fantasy would be to find animam who gives a khutbah (sermon) in aFriday mosque who happens to be someonewho goes out to work from nine to five,takes the bus, is dealing with his kid who ispicking up a marijuana joint at the age ofthirteen. This is the kind of person that Iwant instructing me on Friday, not speakingto me about the battles that we won 1,200years ago.

He referred to the struggles of lived reality that tohim seemed divorced from the context of the imam’sdiscourse. The expectations of this Muslim appear tobe that he should be able to receive informed counselon social issues from Islamic religious leaders. MKdid not see any connection between the renderings ofthe glorious Islamic past and his family’s daily strug-gles to integrate into Canadian society.

DO, who participated in the Ottawa discussion,criticized the lack of intellectual engagement by thecongregation and the poor quality of the imams’ dis-courses. She said that

Most of them [Muslims] don’t even read.What they’re listening to is what their localimam is saying. And most of these localimams don’t have an education. For exam-ple, some of them, they haven’t even had atype of education when it comes to shariah.Yet, they’re issuing fatwas and they’re issu-ing, you know, judgments here and there…I find the local imams have much morepower than any scholars.

This is a strong comment on the influence thatimams, regardless of how ill-informed they are, haveover their congregations. DO even doubted that theyhave sufficient training in Islamic matters. She madean interesting distinction between the local imams,who are not considered to be learned, and “scholars,”who are presumably more knowledgeable than imams.

HY, who left Turkey because she was not permittedto wear a head covering at the college where she wasa lecturer, commented in the Leicester discussion:

What I am looking for is an intellectual Islamthat examines where we are today and howwe move forward; and within my own com-munity [in England] it is a painfully slowprocess; and this lady here [another partici-pant] mentioned fire and brimstone:…when Igo to the mosque…that is all I see, this redface, beard and shouting and screaming.

She appears frustrated at the lack of “an intellectu-al Islam” and the overbearing presence of an unin-formed emotionalism spouted from the mimbar(pulpit). HY reflected an oft-repeated wish in the vari-ous discussion sessions for more elevated discoursefrom religious leaders. There were frequent expres-sions of frustration about the lack of connection withthe imams.

materials of this primary research. The quotations pro-vide indications of the emphasis that interlocutorsplaced on certain points and, in some cases, give asense of the emotion felt by individual participants.The identities of focus group participants and intervie-wees have been kept anonymous in accordance withresearch ethics guidelines. Only the initials and loca-tion are given when citing the individuals.

Analysis“Imported imams”

A t the beginning of every session, each focusgroup participant was asked to identify one ortwo intellectuals who had influenced his or

her thinking. Sources of influence cited by individualinterlocutors included Muslim and non-Muslim aca-demics specializing in Islamic studies and other areas,religious leaders, artists and institutions. Relatives(especially parents), political leaders, historical fig-ures, the Prophet Muhammad and Allah were alsomentioned. Among the reasons participants gave forbeing drawn to specific sources were the institutionsin which the intellectuals were trained, their ability toreach out effectively to Muslim audiences, and theiraccessibility, experience in Western environments,open-mindedness, balanced outlook, practicality,activism, commitment to Islam and appropriate usesof media. In each of the six sessions, several individ-uals mentioned intellectuals who most closely reflect-ed their own sectarian and cultural identities, butsome of these same participants also said they turnedat times to people outside their groups, includingnon-Muslims. A number of participants indicatedthey sought insight from various figures over time,and others commented that the intellectuals them-selves had changed.

The widest agreement was on the need for reli-gious leaders to be familiar with the local conditionsin Western societies; imams of local mosques werefrequently criticized for not having sufficient knowl-edge of the local language (English or French) and forhaving traditional attitudes.9 A number of interlocu-tors in the various focus groups also cited the imams’lack of familiarity with the cultural norms and prob-lems in the location to which they were assigned.They were described as being out of touch with theneeds of their flock. MK remarked near the end of theMontreal session:

by upper middle class professionals who are satisfiedwith the traditional form of religious leadership, andmosques in parts of Britain dominated by immigrantsfrom South Asian villages, appear to influence thekinds of imams they employ. AHU found that she couldnot depend on the “imported imam” for advice on mar-riage, because he had no understanding of her culturaland family background. Interviewee Bob Crane, amember of the Association of Muslim SocialScientists,12 mentioned a similar disillusionment andwithdrawal from Muslim communities on the part ofwhite American converts, and an African-AmericanMuslim interviewee also described his alienation from“imported imams.”13

SH, a woman of Iraqi origin in the Washington dis-cussion, felt that some Western converts to Islam whohad become religious leaders adopted very conservativeattitudes, especially toward women. She recalled that

In school we had one of the people who con-verted to Islam, and he started giving juma(Friday communal) prayer. The problem wasthat he was too conservative. So I rememberwhen we had international week, and youknow girls like to go out dancing. The minuteit was finished — it was Thursday — he startedyelling at the girls and asking why they wereat the mosque. I was so upset but I couldn’tsay anything. But I was about to tell him, onceupon a time you weren’t Muslim, and youwent to the mosque, and now these womenwho are Muslim can’t come inside the mosque.

New converts tend to exhibit a heightened zeal andan inflexibility in beliefs, observes Smith (1999, 66).Regardless of whether the imam is a convert, it is thelack of consideration of the cultural context in whichthe congregants live that appears to be at issue. AsMuslim immigrants integrate increasingly into themainstream of receiving societies, rigid attitudes on thepart of religious leaders have the potential to heightentensions in communities and families.

Speaking from other perspectives, several partici-pants in the Washington session saw some value inwhat “traditional scholars” had to offer. AH, a youngwoman of mixed Shia-Sunni background and Iraqi-Irish parentage, viewed them as a potential “reference,but not a primary source.” SH, in her thirties, indicat-ed that she has to translate culturally the guidancefrom her Sufi shaykh, who is based in her homelandof Pakistan:

You have to be able to go into it in a new con-text and think, now what am I doing here, it’sa different context. And I think if your shaykhhas any understanding of the religion and oflife in general, they would give you that free-dom as well. I do have a shaykh, and that’sbecause I’m in the Sufi tradition, but then

Also in Leicester, DM, a British male convert, feltthat immigrant culture was often confused withIslamic practice in the mosque:

They’ve brought their own imams from theirvillages and they are trying to live the Islamthat they knew in the village, which is not inthe real sense of the word Islam. It is cultureand tradition.

We see here a cultural clash between the villageimams from a majority Muslim setting and a Britishconvert. This highlights the problems that convertsbut also nonconverts face in engaging with a worldview that they find culturally alien. The person DMidentified as having influenced him the most, AhmedBullock, was himself a convert and imam of themosque in Oxford in the 1970s. RB, another Britishconvert in the Manchester group, named Hassan GuyEaton who, he said, “normalized someone from myculture coming to Islam and importantly in his bookIslam and the Destiny of Man addressed a lot of theintellectual and philosophical models I had beenbrought up with and were part of my upbringing andeducation here and broke them down and addressedthem and looked at them and was able to turn themso I could understand how Islam would either fit inor complement or perhaps make them better.” It isinteresting that, while DM implied that there was apristine, essential Islam untainted by any culture,10 RBfound it important that the religion be translated forhim into a British context.

AHU, a female white convert in the Washingtongroup, complained about feeling culturally alienated:

I mean many mosques would not considerme Muslim, would not let me walk throughthe doors the way I’m dressed every day. I feel one big problem is that mosques arewhere conservative-minded immigrantMuslims feel at home. And in general, itcaters to very conservative religious people.And as a result, I mean, look at the datafrom CAIR [Council on American-IslamicRelations] about how many people attendmosque regularly — estimated to be 5 percentof the [Muslim] population of the UnitedStates. Probably 90 percent of that is mengoing to Friday prayers. So if I give theexample of the mosque where I first spent alot of time, and really where I was formedafter converting and met my husband,founded by Arabs who came to Boston to beengineers, extremely Arab-dominated – theold imported imam, who barely speaksEnglish, but recites wonderfully! You know,people say “fastest growing religion andconverts” — but a lot of people walk throughthe door and walk right back out.11

It appears that the power structures in NorthAmerican mosques, which are funded and frequented

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an appreciation of the challenges that mod-ern life poses to Islam and religion in gener-al, and the impact that the interactionbetween Islam and modernity leaves on thepatterns of culture, belief and social behav-iour. (Muslim College 2005)

Muslim communities in the West are beginning tomake a concerted effort to seek out imams with anunderstanding of Western contexts. In 2008 theOttawa Muslim Association, which runs the largestSunni mosque in the city, endeavoured to fill a posi-tion with a person of such background. However, itultimately hired an imam educated at Al AzharUniversity in Egypt, the premier training ground inSunni theology, and the source of the Ottawamosque’s previous two imams.

Focus group participants in all three countries iden-tified imams’ lack of cultural literacy as a key issue inthe search for appropriate religious guidance. This is ofsignificant concern for Muslim communities in theWest. While efforts are being made to address thisissue, it appears that it will continue to persist in theforeseeable future. The faithful are looking for direc-tion to help them remain good Muslims as they engagewith Western societies. They seek religious leadershipthat can guide them as they navigate spiritual andworldly matters in a knowledgeable and insightfulmanner. They expect their imam to have not only anintellectually sophisticated understanding of Islamicsources but also a keen appreciation of the Westerncontexts in which they are living. Researchers, policy-makers and front-line workers serving immigrant com-munities would be well served if they comprehendedthese complex cultural and religious issues facingMuslims. They need to be able to recognize the ten-sions that may be present in communities where con-gregants are not well served by imported imams.

PraxisA key aspect of Islamic intellectual authority men-tioned in many of the focus group discussions wasthat the scholar or religious leader puts belief intopractice. Comments ranged from a perception that theintellectual was able to address issues that were cul-turally relevant in Western contexts to noting that theperson was an activist. Putting belief into practiceincluded enabling Muslims to participate in society ascitizens, endeavouring to establish Muslim institutionsin the West, and carrying out charitable work. Themuch misunderstood term jihad denotes “effort,” andsuch effort can range from one inner spiritual struggleto a defensive war against enemies (Karim 2003a, 38-

again, I would say there are some of thethings that our tariqa [group; literally, “way”or “path”] does that I don’t adhere to. So Ithink there’s a cultural translation, but I doderive inspiration from many people.

There appears to be a negotiating process thatinvolves interpretation and the making of choices,possibly facilitated by the cultural understanding ofthe spiritual guide. MA, in her twenties and ofEgyptian origin, said in the Washington discussionthat some of her contemporaries who had been bornand raised in America, but obtained religious trainingin Arab countries, “are able to take [this religioustraining] and sculpt it to their audience” upon theirreturn. In Leicester, AB, in his fifties and of Indianorigin, stated that

Over the last 50 years or so in the earlierperiod of my religious exposure, our under-standing came from traditionalists who hadgone through the traditional schools, theyonly had one way of thinking: that is right,that is wrong, and this is the way. But sincethen my community has developed institutes,one called the Institute of Ismaili Studies,which specializes and teaches youngsters totrain themselves in teaching us from a per-spective of a modern way, totally modern.They come to our jamat khanas [“congrega-tion houses”] and tell us “look — this is oneway of interpreting your faith but there areseveral others, go away and think for your-self,” and I feel more comfortable with thisbecause my children — I don’t even have totell them to come to the prayers, they comeautomatically. I don’t have to tell them “youmust come,” they join me on Fridays, with-out question.

There is a growing recognition of the problem ofthe cultural illiteracy of “imported imams,” and someMuslim institutions in the United Kingdom and theUnited States are making efforts to address this prob-lem. The Muslim College in London attempts to trainimams in a contemporary Western context,14 and theIslamic Foundation, near Leicester, offers a diplomain Muslim chaplaincy.15 The Zaytuna Institute inHayward, California, is also developing a full-timeseminary. The Institute of Ismaili Studies in Londontrains waezeen and religious education teachers forIsmaili communities in various countries, includingthose in the West.16 These institutions are deliberatelypositioning themselves as being distinct from tradi-tional religious schools. For example, the MuslimCollege’s “aims and objectives” include the following:

Students of the Muslim College are expectedto develop a critical approach to traditionaland contemporary issues of religion, and tocombine theoretical, vocational and practicalexperiences in their evaluation of the reli-giously plural situation…They are to develop

has been declared non-Muslim by the governments ofPakistan and Saudi Arabia; Toshiko Izutsu, a Japanesescholar of Islam whose “academic work on Islam, theconcepts of Koran…increased my understanding of theKoran from a historical perspective and how I can relatethese concepts into my practical life.”

This speaker was critical of the tendency of scholarsto engage in academic discourse without addressingpractical contemporary concerns. She was moreimpressed with Muslim medical doctors in providingdirection than with ulama who were wrapped up inscholastic detail. Referring to a conference panel, shefound that medical practitioners who had “Islamicknowledge” provided more useful information on bio-ethics than traditional scholars of Islam, who tended tobe overly concerned with deferring to the medievalfounders of the schools of Islamic law. In the same dis-cussion, SM stated that for knowledge on a contempo-rary issue relating to the practice of faith, she would“turn to…people who are academics in this country,who do have a grounding in classical Islam and at thesame time they have some sort of specialty in the areathat I am concerned with — they have a science back-ground if we are talking about genetics or GM [geneticmodification], that kind of thing.”

There was a running thread in the Ottawa session onthe involvement of scientists in contemporary Islamicdiscourse, which was seen by AK as being part of thehistorical tradition represented by “Ibn Sina or OmarKhayyam, who were holistic.” He mentioned HasanFathi, a twentieth-century architect; Abdus Salam, aphysicist and the first Muslim Nobel Prize winner;Pervez Hoodhboy, a physicist and political writer; andZiauddin Sardar, who has written on the Muslim histo-ry of science:

They come from the scientific traditions, sothere’s an element of rationality. Because,whether you live in the West or the East, thelaw of gravity applies. So you cannot but berational when you’re pursuing science. So, thatparticular bent sort of gives them an insightwhen they’re looking at the causes of why theIslamic society is…or why the struggles theMuslims are facing…and the consequences oftheir choices.

MT in the Ottawa session went even further thanthat in actually becoming a first-hand observer of ascholar. In response to the question of which Muslimscholar had influenced him most, he said that one ofhis primary role models was

Hasan Fathi of Egypt, because I chose architec-ture as my profession and I was brought up bymy parents to believe that you learn directlyfrom people, you don’t learn from books. You

54). It reflects the Islamic principle of practicalengagement in all aspects of life. Criticism of religiousleaders in the focus groups centred around them notpractising what they were preaching.

In the discussions, participants expressed theirown views and also those of others they had comeacross. In the views of “fundamentalist” activists andmilitants, many scholars were passive. ARM, a partic-ipant in London, reported that she knew of a man

from Finsbury Park [who was] preaching“suicide bombing” kind of thinking. I oncemet him when I was there and he was veryanti-intellectual. It was interesting for mebecause he had been with Hizb ut-Tahrir [aninternationalist, anti-nationalist, pan-IslamicSunni group], Muhajiroon [a banned pro-ter-rorist group] and he wasn’t university edu-cated and had very bad manners…But whatstruck [me] was that he felt the intellectualsdon’t take any action — they just sit aroundand talk.17 He said “I believe in martyrdomoperations.” He was sick of intellectuals.

Such discourse helps to provide some insight intothe ways in which some militants conceive of thechoices between passive intellectualism and terrorism.It is noteworthy that Egyptian-born engineer AbuHamza al Masri, who in 2006 was jailed for sevenyears after being convicted of inciting murder andrace hate, was the imam of the North London CentralMosque in Finsbury Park at the time of the focusgroup discussion.“The shoebomber Richard Reid andZacarias Moussaoui, the alleged 20th 9/11 hijacker,were among the angry young Muslims who wentthere” [to the North London Central Mosque] (Deanand Allen 2006). This appears to be indication of theextreme degree to which an “imported imam” notonly discouraged integration into the larger societybut promoted violent attacks against it.

HY in Leicester said that she was influenced by theway Fazlur Rahman, the late University of Chicagoprofessor, “explained some of the concepts and herelates them to modern life,” and also by “SyedQutb…his understanding of radical Islam, fundamen-talist Islam and how he relates — his understanding ofIslam is not passive Islam. It is active Islam, you seeactivism there, and he influenced me from an activistperspective.” This seems to illustrate how this person’sleanings toward modernist and militant approaches toIslam appeared together. It is even more noteworthythat, although she described herself as a Sufi fromTurkey,18 she was not restrictive in her reading aboutIslam. While HY was a Sunni, among those she citedwere Ali Shariati, an Iranian scholar of Shia back-ground; Ahmed Qadiani, who founded a group that

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certain community and understanding of theproblems and the pitfalls that people face,and how to try to navigate them and how totry and — I guess, pick their fights ... There’sthis group in Chicago…it’s called…IMAN[Inner-city Muslim Action Network]. And,they’ve done a lot of social work but theymake social work sort of broad, and they justtry and make an impact in a broad way,without being overly didactic about Islamicthemes or Islamic whatever. It’s just that theconcept is just that they’re working, andthey’re working within the confines of theshariah, but…we’re doing this, because Islamsays this.

OW admires the activism of these men, who actual-ly have advanced training in Islamic studies, but areable to act in practical ways to effect change in com-munities. AB, a participant of Ismaili background inthe Leicester session, expressed similar admiration forthe work of the Aga Khan Development Network.21 Heviewed this organization, founded by the Western-trained Ismaili imam, as expressing Islamic valuesthrough its transnational philanthropic activities.22

Like others mentioned above, OW and AB appeared toappreciate Muslim leaders who lead by example.

YM, another participant in the Leicester discussion,gave the example of a local activist:

Abu Muntasir who…[has] studied classicalworks — is not formally a scholar but issomeone who has acquired knowledge andhe is involved in social things. So he will beinvolved in local activities such as support-ing a sports hall, raising funds or charity forschools, finding out what kinds of books areavailable in schools for our children and thatour children are reading. Like recently hecame to a mosque and gave a talk sayingthere is a book by Harun Yahya and it wassomething to do with [opposing] terror-ism…When I read it I found everything inthere was acceptable and you could go to theschool and you could tell them to take thisbook…so if there are any Muslims who aregoing towards the more extreme forms, theymay come back to the balanced way.

What YM found praiseworthy in this man was thathe had taken the trouble to read classical Islamicworks but he was not enclosed in an academiccocoon. He was active in community building andwas making practical suggestions to ensure thatMuslim children did not veer toward extremism. RA,a woman in her twenties who participated in theWashington session, cited two people.

Rami Nasruddin — he’s in Chicago. He start-ed a lot of grassroots local work in the innercity, bringing out people and showing Islam,and [religious] practice, and helping peopleto do those things. Native Deen is doing agood job of integrating rap and Islamic cul-ture and trying to put together a message toyoung people who are really confused about

need the person. And, there’s a saying byRumi [a medieval Sufi saint] that “a momentin the presence of masters is worth morethan a thousand years of worship,” so tospeak. So, right from an early age, I tried tofind these people and be with them and Ispent — in my first years of study, I left mystudy and went to Egypt to meet HasanFathi, and spent one month with him. And,what I learned from him was how you livethe life of an intellectual, as a lived life. Thatthere is no separation between your beliefsand the way you… [inaudible]. So, whenyou’re young and you see this embodimentin front of you, it’s an amazing moment. Ithink you learn by looking, really. So, here Ihad this example of an architect who was animportant authority on architecture.

This interlocutor presented the idea of becoming adisciple of a major figure in one’s profession, whoembodied the finest in Islamic living. MT expressedstrong respect and admiration for a man who inte-grated his faith with his calling. In the Montreal ses-sion, EL was appreciative of the work of MohammedElmasry, an engineering professor who is the founderof the Canadian Islamic Congress, and whose workshe described as “practical and theoretical some-times...about how Muslims live in the West.” Elmasry,who was interviewed, described his approach as thatof supporting “smart integration” for Muslims.19

In the London group, IE, originally fromMauritania, cited his Senegalese Sufi shaykh, AliN’Daw, who

has had Sufi training for 33 years, but he isalso an intellectual who was formerly a lec-turer in anthropology. Currently, he is themanaging director of a company that wasfounded to help Muslims integrate into soci-ety. He has travelled extensively and hasdone a lot of work in Europe. He is someonewho understands both spiritual issues andeveryday life issues for Muslims. And, to me,he has come up with some interestinganswers.

The coalescence of scientific pursuit, Islamic knowl-edge and the practice of religious faith appears to be astrong point of attraction for these interlocutors. But inthe eyes of some focus group participants, one did nothave to be a full-fledged scientist to have insight intopractical matters of pursuing an Islamic way of life.

OW, an 18-year old Montreal participant ofEuropean ethnicity, referred to several converts in theBay area in California who had become imams:Hamza Yusuf, Zaid Shakir,20 and Shuaib Webb. Herelated that

these are people who…pursued…education interms of Western sciences, and then pursuedother types of education within the Islamicsciences. But still to a degree, especially thethree of them, have sort of contact with a

Whereas some major Muslim figures in the past wereinvolved in theological scholarship as well as scientificstudy, many contemporary Islamic leaders are farremoved from issues of the material world. Most imamsworking in mosques seem unable to deliver solutionsthat Muslims can use to resolve the problems they facein their daily living. Muslims are therefore turning toMuslim scientists who can provide practical answers.The concern, however, is that sometimes engineers likeAbu Hamza al Masri, who provide deceptively simplesolutions that appear to fix complex social problems,are leading vulnerable individuals into militancy.25 TheMuslim Association of Britain and the British govern-ment did not seem to think that urgent action wasrequired to address the danger that Abu Hamza posed toMuslims in that country, and he had already caused sig-nificant harm by the time they acted against him. Itbehooves Muslim communities, researchers and agen-cies that serve immigrants to recognize situations inwhich Muslim youth in search of practical approachesto life’s problems may be drawn to militancy.

Critical approachesSome participants expressed an interest in criticalapproaches to studying Muslim history and theology.The desired level of criticality varied from person toperson. They took various positions, ranging from theneed for debate to disagreeing with elements withinscripture. They saw such dissent as being an importantpart of the Muslim tradition. However, this is not ausual position in the dominantly conservative Muslimdiscourses, which generally tend to abhor any criticismof the normative creed (Abou El Fadl 2001; Arkoun2002; Safi 2003). It is also noteworthy that no one inthe focus groups appeared to favour a literalistapproach to Islamic scriptures. This was most likely afunction of the criteria used in recruiting participants(see appendix 1).

A number of interlocutors indicated that, while theywere in their native countries, they had accepted atface value what their religious teachers and parentstold them about Islam. However, once they were livingin the West, they were exposed to other ways of think-ing – in works by Muslim and non-Muslim scholars.MN in Montreal said that Khaled Abou El Fadl “was thefirst to sort of open my mind to the fact that you canquestion things in Islam…And, he was very clear inmaking distinctions between the Koran and hadith (theProphet’s traditions) as the basis for shariah, Islamiclaw, and fiqh.”26 It appears that MN’s traditional reli-gious education had made him view the scriptures,

what it means to be Muslim and American atthe same time. There’s also slam poetrygroups — just talking in terms of application.

Contemporary music appears to be a powerful toolfor discourse in Muslim public sphericules, local andtransnational.23 Even as conservative Muslims deridethe permissibility of music in Islamic practice, itretains an age-old utility in fashioning contemporaryreligious messages. In London, GNK, a woman in hersixties who was born in Bangladesh, spoke about howthe music of Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens, ahighly successful pop singer) helped her interfaithactivities outside Muslim communities. She remarkedthat “I always find that converted Muslims are morepractical than those who are born Muslim.”

Some interlocutors saw aspects of practicality inthe work of certain academics. DO in the Ottawa ses-sion referred to Tariq Ramadan:

The reason he impressed me so much is thathe writes about being Muslim and living inthe West. And he was born in the West and Igrew up in the West, so when he talks abouthis own experience, I can actually relate toit. Being Muslim and growing up in a non-Muslim country is very hard. You’re facedwith a lot of challenges. And he talks abouthow you can contribute to this society andstill remain Muslim and remain true to yourown beliefs.

Ramadan’s work is particularly popular withMuslim youth in Western countries. His writingsappear to resonate with their own struggles to adhereto Islamic values while attempting to integrate mate-rially into Western societies. He visits Muslim com-munities in various locations in the West, drawinglarge audiences.24 In contrast to the works of otherscholars who deal with frequently ponderous theolog-ical issues, Ramadan’s work directly addresses thepossibility of being both Muslim and Western. RA inWashington cited Umar Faruq Abdullah and ShermanJackson, whom he saw as striving to create a MuslimAmerican identity. Several of the focus group discus-sions touched on issues of confused identity inMuslims, especially the youth. There was greater con-fidence in the ability of Muslim scholars who wereborn in the West or had lived there for a long timeand were educated in Western universities than thatof traditionally trained imams to address these prob-lems effectively.

The respondents’ preference for practical approach-es to life in the West should not come as a surprise,given Islam’s predilection for societal engagement.But several lamented they were not getting answers tosome of their pressing questions from their imams.

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Bangladesh). SH, a woman in her twenties originallyfrom India, indicated that the religious freedom in herhousehold encouraged her to explore readingsbeyond traditional material:

I guess my views are a little differentbecause of the family environment I grew upin. We, in terms of religion, have a verydon’t-ask-don’t-tell policy, which is, “I don’ttell you what to do, so you don’t tell mewhat to do.” So, in that sense, I’ve neverreally looked to scholars or anything for anykind of religious influence.But…I guess what I look for are narrativesthat I can sympathize with and writers thatkind of discuss and explore issues that I’minterested in. And so the two authors, thenames that really come to mind are… First isAhdaf Sweif. She’s an Egyptian writer, butthat’s based in the UK. And, [in] her novelsshe looks at issues of family and sexualityand things like that, things that traditionalwomen don’t discuss and I find that veryfascinating.

It is interesting that although SH was not drawn toscholars of Islam and was not strict in her religiouspractice, she still looked to a novelist from a Muslimmajority country for insight on issues of family andsexuality, despite their cultural differences.

Even when they are immersed in Western moderni-ty and ways of understanding the world, someMuslims remain cognizant of the distinct epistemolog-ical orientation of Islam. From the perspective of EH,a doctoral student studying Muslim architecture inMontreal, the conception of knowledge in the Islamicworld view was much larger than that of the West.

I think we as Muslims have the most widelyopen epistemology. Our epistemologyencompasses different spectrums of humanknowledge: what’s wrong, what’s right, howwe can know things, and the veracity ofthings, how we establish the veracity of thethings which we know...it’s not only fromMuslim point of view but also through thecritique of Muslim scholars who critiquemodernity, that modernity is a reductivistparadigm. So we have to realize that whenwe are living in Western society, that thisculture doesn’t account for many thingswhich we hold to be necessary and actually[are] at the basis of our epistemology. Thiswill create some kind of miscommunication,or…inability on our part to explain things,because our project is larger, the base onwhich we deal with reality is much larger.They have fewer colours in their spectrum.

According to EH, not only was the Western con-struction of modernity flawed, the very epistemologi-cal basis of Western knowledge was skewed. SyedHossein Nasr, who has written extensively aboutIslamic intellectual heritage (for example, Nasr 1968),also raised this issue in an interview.27

shariah and fiqh as having equal theological value,which he later corrected through his reading of AbouEl Fadl. Most Muslims tend not to know the distinc-tions between the three, and are not aware of thevarying levels of authority they hold.

Even though the moderators asked for names ofMuslim intellectuals who had influenced the partici-pants, several knowingly gave the names of non-Muslims. In addition to Toshiko Izutsu, others includedEdward Said, Karen Armstrong, Maxim Rodinson, andCarl Brockelmann. However, DM, a convert, asked inthe Leicester session, “can a non-Muslim teach theKoran?…most scholars would say ‘no.’” There has beena tendency among some Muslims to question the pro-priety of non-Muslims teaching Islamic studies in uni-versities. But SH, a participant in that session originallyfrom South Asia, commented:

I just like listening to what various peoplesay without just absorbing everything every-body says...I am very interested in the criti-cal side of Islam. I recently read a book onthe Prophet Muhammad by a Jewish person.I can’t remember the name of the author [sheconfirmed later that it was Maxim Rodinson]and it was interesting to read it. At someplaces you might think “how dare he”; thenyou have to put yourself back and…So I amquite interested in reading all the sides andmaking up my own mind.

The large number of publications on Islam by non-Muslim scholars is easily accessible to Muslims livingin the West. These works have frequently been instru-mental in introducing them to specific aspects of theirfaith. However, the political and ideological intentionsof some scholars of Islam (Orientalists) have also beenbrought into serious question (Said 1978).

The understanding of Islam among Muslim youthwas a frequent topic in various discussions. The gen-eral opinion was that traditional imams were failingto reach young people because of the cultural andlinguistic gap. AB, a participant in Leicester, noted: “Ican see the younger generation are questioning andbeing very forthright and frank about what theirthinking is.” He saw this as a direct result of living inthe West. SN in Manchester echoed this perception:

I think when you come to a Western countryyou are always justifying, for me I amalways justifying to my children why we dothis, why we do this, and they always wantproof — “where is it written in the Koran,show me in hadith, whose hadith, mummy.Who told you, did you read it yourself or didyou hear it from one of the priests?”

She noted that she herself had not dared to ques-tion received wisdom of traditional sources whilegrowing up in what was then East Pakistan (now

I am not necessarily saying I agree with them,but there are different voices that are now beingheard and that are now being talked about.Amina Wadud from America who led her prayersat her university — that was groundbreaking. Iam not going to sit here and say she is right, butstill I think it is very important that she lookedinto things, that she challenged things, ques-tioned things. Sometimes we accept things as agiven without looking into them and I think onethe main points of her argument was that there isnothing specifically in the hadith to say “no,women cannot”; although there are varioushadith suggesting that they wouldn’t be allowedto do such a thing. But I think it’s important tolisten to all these voices, and it’s good becausethen it’s not just something that means that fem-inism is something that comes from the West, orsomething that is a non-Islamic thing. I think weneed Muslim women who speak out and say“Wait! No! What about us?”

This interlocutor seems careful not to appear tooenthusiastic about feminism. It has been debated forsome time among Muslims, and some see it as beinginherently inimical to Islamic values (Mahmood 2005).SM is not certain about the appropriateness of Wadud’sactions, but appears glad that she stood up and assertedherself intellectually and through her actions.

Some focus group members commented that a lot issaid about the lofty place of women in Islam but thesocial reality is quite different. Scripture is quoted toaffirm the rights of women, but the established struc-tures in favour of men remain entrenched. SH said inthe Leicester discussion that

no matter how much you state that the Koransays this, the hadith says this, it’s all theoretical.It’s not happening in practice, and maybe in the1960s women’s rights — I don’t really subscribeto them, but that has helped in bringing thewomen’s cause to the fore. And I think Muslimwomen are using this opportunity in differentways to come up and discuss their issues, and it’svery important. A whole lot of men sitting at thetable [at a conference panel]discussing…divorce…when a [single] woman isn’tthere. I do argue “no, you need a woman to beable to put the whole essence of the woman onthe table as well” because a lot of men can bringin all the shariahs and all the laws and all that,but from a woman’s perspective they do needthat input. And I think Islam [i.e. Muslims] in theWest hasn’t fully looked at that because they feelthreatened by the feminist white movements.

Muslim women in the West feel they are caughtbetween patriarchal structures in Muslim communitiesand the dominantly secular and often culturally insen-sitive approaches of Western feminism (Mahmood2005). They are attempting to carve out a distinct nichethat allows them to express their spirituality as well astheir rightful position within Muslim communities(Bhimani 2003; Abdul-Ghafur 2005) without seemingto adopt a non-Islamic Western stance.

Conversely, a number of participants said that asMuslims they did not necessarily eschew Westernknowledge, and cited Islamic scripture to support thisposition. AM, a convert of Italian origin, said in theLondon discussion,

I think it is wrong to think in terms of thesedichotomies of the West and Islam. The bestphilosophy and religion do meet. What I thinkwe should consider out of secular thought isthis idea of self-critique. Inherent within theWest there is a mainstream culture which isalso a counterculture and it is the dialecticbetween the two which is really interesting.And something which comes from Christianreligion is this notion of self-sacrifice toaccept your suffering and your struggle.

MK in Montreal was more aggressive in his criti-cism regarding the current lack of freedom of thoughtamong Muslims: “there’s no space for ijtihad [reason-ing], or skepticism, or reading, or anything. And,that’s maybe why I find that Christians have so muchliberty in exploring the Muslim religion, more thanMuslim people do.” In the same session, EL suggestedreasons why Muslim intellectuals were unable toaddress pressing issues adequately:

some of them have been stuck in the boat,and others are being too afraid from thepublic outcry against them if they becomeprogressives, so they want to please themajority, so they can’t move forward. Thosewho can, move forward — some others can’tmove forward because of the way they havebeen trained.

The travails of Muhammad Said al-Ashmawi andNasr Hamid Abu Zaid, two Muslim intellectuals fromEgypt who openly espoused critical approaches, werementioned in the discussions. MK in Montreal saidthat Abu Zaid

tries to break the literalism of strict followersof the Koran and presents a different opin-ion. And, this person has been hassled bigtime. He was decreed an infidel in Egypt,making his marriage to his wife illegal, andhe had to flee the country.

FO stated in the same session that, although heroutlook was secular, “it’s important for me, as aMuslim to speak,” as a result of such persecution,“and also to give voice to the kind of woman I am.”Despite having distanced herself from the practice ofIslam, out of solidarity she identified with the ratio-nalist approach of Muslim scholars who were seekingto examine Islamic heritage from critical perspectives.

SM, in Leicester, also felt it was important to listento contemporary Muslim scholars who challenged thestatus quo. This was in particular reference to thequestion of whether women should be allowed to leadprayers.

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dom that discourages critical thinking and eventhinking for oneself.

A number of interlocutors commented that Muslimstended to have a binary approach to religious matters.They perceived a resistance to examining the details ofan issue. Several people complained Muslims were notliving up to the rhetoric of engaging in serious debate.SM said in the Washington session:

I see the usual talk about “oh, ikhtilaf [dis-agreement on scholarly matters] is reallygood,” you know, disagreement is very good,and we should accept all disagreement — wedon’t do a little bit of that, not at all...wedon’t accept those differences of opinion. Wedon’t want to accept greyness, we want tosee very simple answers, we want to see avery simple world, and that is our world…SoI see that as our main problem, in that it’salmost like a postmodern kind of problem,our lack of acceptance of greyness. There’s alot of greyness in our current position.

This seems to be a central problem in contempo-rary Muslim discourses: simple, even simplistic,answers are presented to resolve complex questions.Issues are often boiled down to the permitted (halal)and the prohibited (haram) in a binary fashion, leav-ing little room for what SM sees as postmoderngreyness.

A number of women in the focus groups expressedtheir reluctance to approach imams for advice. Theyspoke of how they would pursue their individualquests for answers to personal problems in the prac-tice of faith. AHU in Washington said,

Using this example of deciding to terminatepregnancy, there’s a lot of different opinionsin the Muslim point of view, and ultimately,we have to make a decision on our own. Andto me, reading Khaled Abou El Fadl has beenso important to me. He loves the sources,he’s so immersed in the sources. And I real-ized as a convert, I don’t have an attachmentto this history of fiqh, it’s not compelling forme. I didn’t convert for the fiqh. I convertedfor the five pillars.28

AHU does not find the regulations in fiqh, whichwas constituted centuries ago, relevant to her life as aMuslim in the contemporary world. Religious law’sgovernance of the minutiae of daily life under reli-gious law is contentious not only for WesternMuslims but also for Muslims living in majorityMuslim countries (Mahmood 2005; Arkoun 2002).AHU took a very independent stance on this matter:

There are a lot of things now, personally, whenI’m trying to make a decision about somethingwhere I don’t care what the scholars say. Idon’t care if the scholars say I should fastwhen I’m pregnant, or it’s not okay to pay forthe days you missed for your period, even ifyou’re pregnant or breastfeeding for six years.

Two participants in Montreal also cited IrshadManji, who calls herself a “Muslim refusenik” (2003),in response to the question of which Muslim intellec-tual had influenced them the most. OW noted that

despite the fact that I don’t agree with muchof what she says, I find Irshad Manji veryinteresting…She’s put into a book a lot of theproblems that many Muslims have withIslam as a body politic. I think, when itcomes to her arguments about Islam in termsof fundamental issues, about historicalissues, I think she’s totally out of her league,and she doesn’t know what she’s talkingabout. But she does sort of have a commontouch of what the issues of the body politicof Muslims is towards the way that mosquescan be structured or certainly these otherissues, and it’s, if you want a sense of whatthat problem is, and I’ve been talking to peo-ple over and over again, you hear the samethings that she’s sort of enunciating.

Also in the context of Manji’s work, EH added:“The existence of such writings and of looking at suchlogic and defining the flaws in it, and how each indi-vidual looks at it, helps as well to find your way.”Such a willingness to look at the observations of awriter who has vigorously criticized establishedMuslim structures and values indicates there is anopenness to multiple discourses on contemporaryIslamic practice. SB in Manchester adopted a utilitari-an but ultimately conservative position towards read-ing critical material: “it is always better to know evenif there are a few arguments against what youthink…it might make you stronger in what you believeif you see what different people are talking about.”

A number of individuals in Ottawa raised the factthat in Muslim history there were open criticalapproaches to the pursuit of knowledge. MT referredto the debate between two medieval Muslim philoso-phers, Ibn Rushd and Al Ghazali.

These two people were the intellectuals ofthe world at this time; not the Muslim world,of the [entire] world...and they’re beating thedaylights out of each other, disagreeing com-pletely with each other, and they’re refutingeach other’s claims.

This appeared to be in stark contrast to the per-ceived poverty of debate among contemporaryMuslims on religious issues. DO, also in Ottawa, said:

When I compare to our state of knowledgenow, compared to what we had 400 yearsback, I think that we [have] kind ofregressed. Because, back in the day, theyused to challenge one another. And, if youcome up with some new idea, people weren’tafraid of that. You could talk about it.

Several participants were troubled by a tendencytoward conformism and adherence to received wis-

cant amount of leeway to live their lives. Consequently,he suggested, Muslims do not have to seek answers toissues such as organ transplantation and other bio-eth-ical matters in hadith. This view is not part of the dom-inant discourses of Muslims, but it certainly is presentin contemporary debates. It is indicative of the intellec-tual challenge to normative modes within Islam.

Many focus group participants were not happy withthe conservatism of dominant Muslim discourses. Theywere keen to apply their own reasoning to examine thesources of authority — not only the instruction provid-ed by local imams, but also that of the founders of theschool of law as well as the Koran and the Prophet’shadith and sunnah. Some interlocutors challenged theabsoluteness of these particular sources’ authority. Theywere determined to apply critical reasoning to theIslamic tradition in order to engage effectively with thelarger environment of the countries where they live,while continuing to maintain their Muslim identities.There have been increasing calls over the last centuryto reinstate ijtihad (independent reasoning) to enableMuslims to better face their changing circumstances,particularly in the light of Western modernity (Iqbal[1930] 1977; Ramadan 2004).

Living in the West appears to have significantlyinfluenced the views of Muslims about religioussources. Apart from assimilating the general skepticismof Western societies, some who have higher educationhave been exposed to critical ways of approachingtexts. The members of the focus groups articulated sev-eral avenues of inquiry: (1) going beyond the teachingof the local imams to the writings of classical andmedieval Muslim scholars, (2) consulting the primaryIslamic scriptures, and (3) viewing the scriptures andfoundational writings as shaped by their historical cir-cumstances and not adequate for contemporary times.Several interlocutors referred to Muslim and non-Muslim intellectuals who are encouraging criticalapproaches. While there is a growing tendency amongMuslims to challenge received wisdom and use theirown reasoning, policy-makers and other observerswould be mistaken to assume that this means they areabandoning their Muslim identity. On the contrary, itreflects a complex soul-searching in which manyMuslims are attempting to come to terms with theirWestern and Islamic selves. It would be an error toview these tendencies as being irreconcilable. What weare seeing is the emergence of contemporary ways ofsimultaneously being Muslim and citizens of Westerncountries, and this is challenging conventional notionsof Islam and modernity.

So then you have to make up 120 days. I don’tcare. I don’t care what they have to say,because I know when it comes to some issueslike women, fiqh is so flawed.

The scholars she appears to be referring to are theclassical and medieval authors of fiqh. AHU is defin-ing for herself what it is to be a Muslim (specificallya Muslim woman) by placing emphasis on broaderprinciples, not the legalistic minutiae. But she goeseven further:

There’s stuff in the Koran I cannot agreewith, so how can I give validity to the rest ofthe tradition? So I’m not saying whether thisis good or bad, but I don’t care. I considermyself a Muslim, I don’t care if others do ordon’t, I’ll raise my kids as Muslim, but thatauthority, I’m a little bit past that.

In saying that she cannot agree with “stuff in theKoran,” she is breaking with the fundamental tradi-tion of identifying Muslimness with complete accept-ance of the holy book. She is taking an individualistposition that is not very commonly heard, although itdoes exist among Muslims (for example, see Arkoun2002; Berktay 1998). It certainly stood out among thestatements made in the focus group discussions andinterviews. Whereas AHU was the most outspoken onthis issue, it is noteworthy that the other participantsdid not challenge her on the vehemence of her state-ments. A number of interlocutors also expressed theneed to do their own reading and interpreting.

Partipants expressed a range of opinions on howto approach Islamic scriptures. For SN in theManchester session, the Koran provides the principlesof Islam and the Prophet Muhammad performed therituals for Muslims to follow. He said the hadith indi-cates how the prayers are to be carried out and thetraditions of the Prophet are core to the religion. Hedistinguished between the fatwas of scholars and theProphet’s traditions: “you can challenge fatwas, butyou cannot challenge hadith.”

SMF in Ottawa, in contrast, was not certain aboutveracity of the texts containing the hadith and thesunnah (the Prophet’s practice); he felt that signifi-cant weight should not be given to these sources indetermining contemporary Muslims’ lives, especiallythose living in the West. He also emphasized theKoran’s allegorical language, which, according tohim, has led Muslims to adhere selectively to its guid-ance: “the Koran already has given us all the loop-holes, or all the freedom, that is reflected…accordingto circumstances. Definitely, everything that hap-pened during Muhammad’s time is not final.”29 Heseemed to be suggesting that Muslims have a signifi-

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societies will unfold, because these perceptions pro-vide insight into the mechanisms Muslims are using toresolve issues regarding their Islamic and Westernidentities. Several of the focus group members indi-cated that their regard for those who had traditionallybeen held as religious authorities had declined, if ithad not vanished altogether. They were still willing tolisten to certain figures, but not with blind faith. Thefocus group participants expected imams, in additionto having a substantial knowledge of Islamic sources,to be cognizant of the Western conditions in whichMuslim communities live. They also want them todemonstrate a certain practicality based on theirIslamic beliefs and to engage with the real-world con-ditions of contemporary society. Increasingly, believ-ers appear to be insisting on thinking for themselvesand utilizing their rationality when approaching per-sonal matters of faith. Now ordinary Muslims areexposed to the Western critical approach to religioustexts, an approach that existed in Islam until the four-teenth century but that had all but disappeared in thelast few centuries. The well-read faithful are begin-ning to examine for themselves the theological statusof scripture and religious law and their relevance tothe regulation of their religious and social lives.

The issues under debate extend into the broadersocio-political discussions of the societies in whichthey live. Muslim individuals are examining theirroles as good citizens of Western countries and asgood Muslims. Such reflection has significant impli-cations at present when the followers of Islam arefacing a range of social options that include assimila-tion into secularism, at one end, and embracing reli-gious extremism, at the other. A number ofinterlocutors mentioned the importance that theygave to living balanced lives. The particular solutionsthat Muslims in the West will choose will differbetween communities and individuals; however, thediscoursive journeys towards these ends and theiroutcomes will necessarily have implications for socie-ty at large. Muslim public sphericules invariablyintersect and interact with dominant public spheres,nationally and transnationally. Therefore, policy-makers will benefit from a better understanding ofMuslims.

International and domestic events involvingMuslims have made evident the case for knowledgeableand coherent engagement with issues affecting theadherents of Islam. One of the ways in which this canbe attained is through increased interaction betweenMuslims and others in society. Indeed, the Quebec gov-

Implications for PolicyDevelopment

T he research reported in this study has revealedsome of the intellectual ferment occurringamong Muslims in Western countries. This will

hopefully serve to uncover for policy-makers theexistence of important tendencies that have previous-ly not been given sufficient attention. The focusgroup discussions have helped to show some of thecomplexities of Muslim soul-searching, which hasoften simplistically been portrayed in popular dis-courses as a contest between “moderates” and “fun-damentalists.” The research has provided insight intoMuslim views on immigrant integration by examin-ing how perceptions of religious authority shapeengagements with the public sphere. It is particularlyimportant to understand the expectations thatMuslims have of their leadership because of the inte-gral connection that Islamic beliefs make betweenfaith (deen) and world (dunya). They strive to main-tain a seamless spiritual and material existence. Theethics guiding their citizenship are drawn from theirreligious beliefs, as is often also the case for the fol-lowers of other religions.

Current sociological conditions for Muslims in theWest are historically unique. Not only do they haveunprecedented physical access to literary sources inprinted and electronic forms, they have also acquiredEuropean languages, in which a significant amountof material on Islam in now published. In previoustimes, a lack of knowledge of the major Muslim lan-guages, especially Arabic, hampered participation inIslamic discourses by non-Arabic speakers, who makeup the majority of Muslims. A number of the focusgroup interlocutors mentioned that certain Englishtranslations of Islamic scripture were the most impor-tant literature in their understanding of Islam. Theyconfidently participated in the discussions, quotingchapter and verse in English. Topics that had previ-ously been the purview of intellectual elites havebecome part of the religious debates among a largernumber of Muslims. The overlapping of discussionthreads between the six locations of the focus groupsdemonstrates the translocal nature of this process inthe three countries. This may be evidence of whatsome have called the emergence of a Western Islam(see, for example, Ramadan 2004).

Muslims’ perceptions of Islamic authority are cru-cial in understanding how their integration in Western

cated the fostering of mutual knowledge among vari-ous groups in society through education and participa-tory activities. In addition, this study has pointedtoward issues that the media could explore to promotea richer understanding of Muslims and hopefully a pro-ductive engagement with them.

Promoting intercommunal interactionThe findings of the focus groups indicate a strongwillingness among Muslims to participate in interac-tion with people of other backgrounds. It is vital thatunderstanding between individuals of various reli-gions and ethnicities develop on a broad basis inorder to ensure social stability and harmony in socie-ty (Bouchard and Taylor 2008, 270). Governmentsshould consider supporting religious and civil societyorganizations that seek to promote such interaction(Stone 2004, 78-79). Such activities will serve toreduce intercommunal tensions and enable individu-als of different backgrounds to work towards com-mon purposes. They will also help to diminishstereotypes.

Engagement with Muslim organizationsA number of organizations seek to promote greaterparticipation of Muslims in the larger society. Suchcivil society bodies are natural allies for governmentsand NGOs seeking to promote the integration ofimmigrant communities (Stone 2004, 82). However,this study has shown that Muslims have diverse viewsabout the kinds of engagement they wish to pursue. Astandardized approach for all will therefore be coun-terproductive in working with a variety of organiza-tions and individuals. That said, Muslims who havefirst-hand knowledge about complex communal issuesas well as of the specific challenges that Muslims faceregarding integration into the larger society couldcontribute significantly to the development of appro-priate policies. Beyond this, governments may alsoconsider wider community consultations on major ini-tiatives; such an approach would assist in overcomingsuspicions of the authorities’ intentions and gaincommunity support.

Promoting better understanding of Muslims inpublic institutionsThis paper has demonstrated the importance of a soundunderstanding of immigrant Muslim communities.Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs andInternational Trade and the Canadian InternationalDevelopment Agency have been organizing annual

ernment’s Bouchard-Taylor Commission recommendeda number of policies and programs to promote betterinteraction and understanding between immigrants andthe larger society (Bouchard and Taylor 2008); theprovincial government appears to be supportive of thisproposal, as is evident in its “law to promote action bythe Administration with respect to cultural diversity.”30

The report of the Commission on British Muslims andIslamophobia presented the case “for seeingIslamophobia as a form of racism” and observed that“most race equality organisations have not yet ade-quately responded to the challenges of Islamophobia”(Stone 2004, 15). It is possible for authorities in Canadaand other Western countries to consider initiatives thatwork towards a more harmonious integration ofMuslims into their societies, and the issues itemizedbelow should be considered in the process.

Addressing Islamophobia Following the stereotyping that has resulted from theterrorist acts conducted by people claiming to act inthe name of Islam, Muslims have become wary ofprejudicial attitudes. They are concerned about whatthey see as systemic discrimination against them; forexample, there are wide discrepancies between educa-tional qualifications among Muslims and theiremployment (Adams, 2007). This situation appears tobe having a significant impact on the integration ofMuslims into Western societies. The report of theBouchard-Taylor Commission and the Stone report inthe United Kingdom identified negative or exaggerat-ed media depictions of Muslims as a source that tend-ed to foster Islamophobia. The Bouchard-Taylor reportspoke of the media’s role in the following terms:

The media must…learn to discipline them-selves. Media exploitation of Imam Jaziri, amarginal figure in the Muslim community,was pernicious inasmuch as it reinforced theworst stereotypes. The repeated displays ofthe same photos of Muslims wearing theburka or the niqab, of Muslims bowing downin prayer, produce the same effect. It willalways be useful to remind ourselves that thestigmatization of Muslims helps to create intheir communities solidarities that riskrebelling against Québec society. (Bouchardand Taylor 2008, 235)31

The Quebec commissioners raise here the possibili-ty that social alienation will foster militancy. Muslimalienation could be alleviated by the developmentand implementation of nuanced anti-racism and anti-discrimination policies that deal specifically withproblems of Islamophobia (Bouchard and Taylor2008, 271; Stone 2004, 78). Both commissions advo-

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workshops on this topic for small numbers of publicservants. This is an example other public-sectororganizations, education systems and the media couldfollow (Stone 2004, 82, 86). Politicians may also ben-efit from a better knowledge of Muslim as well asother religious communities; this would contribute toa more informed response to intercommunal tensionsand those resulting from the intersection of civic andreligious identities (Karim and Hirji 2008).

Academics, policy-makers and immigrant servingagencies should expect intense debate among WesternMuslims on issues of settlement. These discussionswill most likely ebb and flow and the pendulum mayswing in favour of integration, on the one hand, orisolationism, on the other. Apart from the few whoencourage militancy, the vast majority appear to beengaged with exploring different modalities ofremaining true to their faith and achieving success intheir material lives. Addressing the contexts ofWestern societies, of practising what one preaches,and of an individual being able to conduct her own(critical) inquiries into spiritual and worldly mattersemerged as important issues for the focus group mem-bers. Even though the voices of converts were over-represented in the discourses quoted in the analysissection, they seem to indicate a possibility of playinga bridging role in enabling their immigrant co-reli-gionists to pursue productive engagements withWestern modernity. Whereas the converts tended to bemore outspoken in their views, this forthrightnessappeared to underline the tensions felt by the others.

The conversations carried out in the focus groupshave echoes in the writings of many Muslim academ-ics working in the West and in majority Muslimcountries. The higher access to education and free-dom of expression that Western Muslims enjoy seemsto be encouraging the open articulation of widely feltsentiments. This may be indicating future trends inthe global Muslim ummah. However, it is importantnot to overplay the findings of this research, whosesubjects are not positioned as being “representative”either of transnational Islam nor even of communitiesin Canada, the United States and the UnitedKingdom. Nevertheless, the opportunity to conductin-depth discussions on the issue of Islamic authorityhas elicited information that is useful in comprehend-ing some of the critical issues pertaining to Muslimengagements with modernity. It is hoped that thispaper will prompt more extensive research into theattitudes of Muslims living in the West.

Appendix 1

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Table 1Selected Characteristics of Focus Group Participants, by City of Domicile

Ottawa Montreal London Manchester Leicester Washington1

Gender

Female 5 6 5 6 3 7Male 8 7 5 0 4 0

Age

18-29 4 7 4 2 230-39 4 3 5 3 140-49 3 2 0 0 150-59 1 1 1 1 260+ 1 0 0 0 1

Highest level of education completed

Elementary/primary school 0 0 0 0 1

High school/CEGEP 3 3 2 0 0

Undergraduate 3 5 2 1 3Postgraduate 7 5 6 5 2Other 0 0 0 0 1

Religious affiliation

Sunni 10 12 6 4 5Shia 3 1 4 2 2

1 Age, education and religious affiliation were not collected for the Washington participants.

Appendix 2

Criteria for Selecting Focus Group Participants

Focus groups should consist of• A mix of males and females• Varying age groups (18+)• Different ethnicities and countries of origin• Varying sectarian backgrounds (including Sufis)• Different social classes

Participants should not be closely acquainted

There should be no leaders of organizations or opinion leaders on the discussion topics (such people might be more appropriate as interview subjects)

There should be no one who might dominate discussions

Participants should have knowledge of contemporary intellectual discussions relating to Islam and demonstrate this by• Having read articles and books/attended seminars or lectures• Being able to cite the names of Muslim scholars/opinion leaders

Participants should • Have lived in the West for 10 years (if it proves difficult to find participants who meet this criterion, then we can stipulate a minimum of 5 years)• Be available on the day of the session• Be able to participate well in English• Not have participated in another focus group in the previous six months

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may belong to but as presenting your own, indi-vidual viewpoints.

There may be disagreements among various partic-ipants about specific issues — and that is to be expect-ed in a diverse group. But the purpose of this focusgroup is not to resolve any disagreements among dif-ferent viewpoints — it is merely to learn about therange of opinions among the participants. Perhapsthere will be very few or no disagreements – that initself will be a very interesting result. The researchteam comes here with few preconceptions about whatyou are going to say — we have an open mind on this.

IntellectualsWhether Muslims are born in Canada or in the Westor in a traditional Muslim homeland, we may befaced with challenges about the practice of Islam —whatever our Islamic beliefs may be.

I would like to open the discussion by asking: who isa Muslim intellectual who has been most helpful to youin dealing with life in Canada in a constructive manner?

Appendix 3Focus Group Questionnnaire

I n this discussion, we are taking the position thatthe views on Islam of all the people around thetable are valid. The research project is interested in

hearing from people who describe themselves asMuslims. The people in this group have deliberatelybeen chosen from a variety of backgrounds so that wecan get a wide range of views. Our intention here is notto discuss the correctness of any branch or interpreta-tion of Islam, but to bring forth various views on theissues at hand. There are no right or wrong answers —all your responses will contribute to the better under-standing of how various individual Muslims think.

Do not be concerned that the viewpoints thatyou discuss or the names of intellectuals whichyou mention will not be recognized by anyone else— we also want to hear about the issues and peopleoften overlooked by others. However, you are notseen as representing the particular groups that you

Table 2Participants’ Place of Birth and Ethnicity

Place of birth1 Ethnicity2

Afghanistan 1 Afghan 1Algeria 1 African 1Bangladesh/East Pakistan 3 Arab 10Canada 4 Asian (common term forEgypt 2 South Asian in the UK) 4India 3 Berber 1Iran 1 Bangladeshi 1Italy 1 British 1Kenya 1 British Asian 3Lebanon 3 British Bangladeshi 1Malaysia 1 Burmese 1Mauritania 2 Canadian 1Burma/Myanmar 1 East African Asian 1Malawi 1 Egyptian 1Morocco 1 Egyptian-Canadian 1Pakistan 1 English 2Somalia 1 European 1Switzerland 1 Gujarati 1Syria 2 Hungarian 1Tanzania 2 Indian 5Turkey 1 Indian-Canadian 1Uganda 1 Indo-Pakistani 1United Kingdom 9 Iranian 1

Irish 2Lebanese 4Malay 1Pakistani 5Scots 1Somali 1Somali British 1South Asian 2Syrian 1Turkish 2White European 1Yugoslavian 1

1 Excluding Washington participants.2 Self-described categories; multiple responses were permitted; data for Washington are not available.

Media10. Do you receive any information on Islam and

Muslims from the mainstream media that you finduseful in being a Muslim in Canada?

11. Are there any Muslims working in the mainstreammedia who have been able to provide useful infor-mation on Islam and Muslims?

12. Are there any non-Muslims working in the main-stream media who have been able to provide usefulinformation on Islam and Muslims?

13. Today, there are several media available in Canadathat address issues of Islam to Muslims living in thiscountry. Which Muslim media are you most familiarwith?

14. Which Muslim media (print, TV, radio, Internet) arethe most useful for your life in Canada?

15. How much information on Islam and Muslims doyou receive through the Internet?

16. In what form do you receive this information (e-mail attachments; listservs; Web sites)?

17. Are you aware of any Muslim organizations inCanada or in other Western countries that use theInternet effectively to put across Muslim points ofview for the public?

Future18. What do you expect will be the status of Muslims in

Canada in the next 10-20 years?19. What do you expect will be the status of Muslims in

Canada in the next 50 years?

This person may have written books, articles orgiven lectures, khutbas, wa’iz, etc., on your beliefs. Itmay be someone who is an academic scholar, a jour-nalist, or a person with traditional religious training –someone who is known beyond his or her own circle.

The intellectual I am asking about is not necessari-ly one who provides all the answers — it is someonewho may provide a way to think within an Islamicframework and enables you to deal with variousissues from a thoughtful perspective that agrees withyour religious world view.

Perhaps such a person who has helped you in thismanner may not live in Canada or even identify her-self or himself as a Muslim.

So, who is the one intellectual whose work hashelped you to cope with life in Canada within anIslamic framework?

[Who would like to begin?]

Contemporary issues1. In your experience, how do Muslims deal with

contemporary concepts such as modernity, secularsociety, universal human rights, individualism, anddemocracy?

2. Where do Muslims look for answers to contempo-rary issues such as bio-ethical questions?

3. Are Muslim intellectuals who have been trained intraditional Islamic manners able to address suc-cessfully the challenges of living as a Muslim inthe West?

4. Are Muslim intellectuals who have been trained indepartments of Islamic studies in Western univer-sities able to successfully address the challenges ofliving as a Muslim in the West?

5. What does Western knowledge have to offer you inbetter coping with life in the twenty-first century?

6. What does traditional Islamic knowledge have tooffer the West in better coping with life in thetwenty-first century?

Interpretations7. Does the individual Muslim have the capability or

the authority to interpret the teachings of Islam todeal with modern life?

8. Who has the capability or the authority to interpretthe teachings of Islam to deal with modern life?

9. Are you aware of the issuing of fatwas through theInternet? If so, what are your views on this?

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9 For a discussion of the failure of the traditionallytrained religious Muslim leadership to comprehendcontemporary conditions, see Zaman (2002, 181-91).

10 This view was expressed several times by variousMuslims in other conversations that the authorengaged in while conducting his research in theUK.

11 Omid Safi noted in an interview that he found thelargely adult male congregation of a mosque thathe had previously attended to be intolerant ofchildren (personal interview, October 28, 2004,Colgate, NY).

12 Personal interview, September 26, 2004,Washington, DC. Jane Smith notes that “SomeAnglo converts have formed support groups tohelp one another in the transition to a new faithand identity” in the United States (1999, 66).

13 Personal interview with Omar Abdurrahman,November 18, 2004, Cambridge, MA. The comfortthat African-American Muslims have withmosques run by religious leaders of their own cul-tural backgrounds is apparent in the clear distinc-tion between indigenous and immigrant groupingsof Muslims in the USA, the latter dominated byleaders and communities of Arab and South Asianbackgrounds. See Ansari (2004), Jackson (2005),McCloud (1995), and Smith (1999).

14 Personal interview with Zaki Badawi, June 16,2005, London, UK.

15 Personal interview with Siddiqui Attaaullah, June13, 2005, Markfield, UK.

16 Personal interview with Azim Nanji, May 24,2005, London, UK.

17 Yvonne Ridley, a journalist for the Islam Channelin London and a convert, criticized “armchairjihadis” (personal interview, May 26, 2005,London, UK).

18 Sufis are usually given to the mystical and con-templative dimensions of spirituality; however,they do not shun the worldly aspects of Life.

19 Personal interview, March 14, 2004, Ottawa, ON.20 Yusuf and Shakir are attached to the Zaytuna

Institute in California.21 “The engagement of the Imamat in development

is guided by the ethics of Islam that bridge faithand society, a premise on which I established theAga Khan Development Network” (Aga Khan IV2008: 58).

22 This was also expressed by Ali Asani in an inter-view on March 7, 2004, in Cambridge, MA.

23 “The hip hop cultural movement needs to beexamined with a seriousness of purpose and amethodology that considers the networked natureof Islam in order to reveal the hidden aspects ofthis highly misunderstood transglobal phenome-non, a cultural movement whose practitionersrepresent, arguably, some of the most cutting-edge conveyors of contemporary Islam” (Alim2005, 272).

24 Many academics have also been active as imamsor in other ways in the religious education oradministration of their community organizations.

25 There has been a preponderance of individualswith engineering or other forms of technical

NotesThis paper is based on the findings of a projectentitled “Islamic Reform in Diaspora: A Study ofthe Responses to the Emergence of MuslimScholarship in Canada, the US and the UK.” Itwas primarily funded by a grant from the SocialSciences and Humanities Research Council. Theproject also received support from HarvardUniversity’s Divinity School, Department of NearEastern Languages and Civilizations, and Centerfor the Study of World Religions, and theInstitute of Ismaili Studies in London. While theproject’s scope extended to broad developmentsin Islamic reform in the three countries, the cur-rent paper deals only with issues related to reli-gious authority. The author would like toacknowledge the assistance of Denise Helly,Marie Gillespie and Peter Mandaville in identify-ing research assistants in Canada, the UnitedKingdom and the United States, respectively.

1 The term “integration” is contentious. It is usedwidely in Canada to distinguish the process ofengagement with mainstream society that enablesimmigrants to maintain their own cultures withinthe context of multiculturalism, and to a certainextent, Québec’s policy of interculturalism. It is inthis sense that “integration” is used in this study.The term is contrasted with the American prefer-ence for “assimilation,” which has traditionallydescribed absorption into a “melting pot.” Somediscourses in the UK appear to equate “integra-tion” with a melting pot “assmiliation.”

2 A number of the converts in the focus groupsreferred to themselves as “reverts,” suggestingthat they had returned to their original or essen-tial spiritual orientation.

3 For a discussion on Muslim engagements withtradition, modernity and postmodernity, seeKarim (forthcoming).

4 Shia communities tend to have more centralizedstructures of authority than Sunnis. The Ismailishave a well-defined transnational network ofinstitutions, which are also present in Canada, theUS and the UK (Aga Khan IV circa 1998).However, it would be incorrect to suggest that theShia are not challenged by changing conditions.

5 The locations and dates of the focus group dis-cussions were: Ottawa, March 14, 2004;Montreal, July 24, 2004; London, May 21, 2005;Manchester, June 11, 2005; Leicester, June 12,2005; Washington, DC, July 9, 2005.

6 Sixty-two in-depth interviews were conductedfor the larger project in the period during whichthe focus group discussions were conducted(2004-2005).

7 Purposive selection ensures that the participants areable to address the issues under study from a basisof knowledge. In identifying the potential focusgroup members, he says that “If you want to knowabout Sioux (Native American) culture, you simplycannot ask a group of Quakers” (Berg 2001, 123).

8 “Intellectual” was broadly defined as includingacademics, religious leaders, journalists, novel-ists, painters, and musicians.

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26 Fiqh constitutes regulations based on Islamicsources governing religious ritual and the socialdomain; initial bodies of fiqh were produced byclassical scholars in the early history of Islamfollowing Muhammad.

27 Personal interview, September 24, 2004,Washington, DC.

28 Five acts considered in dominant Islamic discours-es to be obligatory for Muslims: bearing witness(shahadah) to the oneness of God and the prophet-hood of Muhammad, prescribed daily prayers(salat), almsgiving (zakah), fasting (sawm) duringthe month of Ramadan and performance of thepilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca once in a lifetime.

29 This reflects Arkoun’s ideas about the Islamicscriptures not being a “closed corpus” (2005).

30 Government of Québec. “Bill 106 An Act toPromote Action by the Administration withRespect to Cultural Diversity.” http://www.ass-nat.qc.ca/eng/38legislature1/Projets-loi/publics/08-a106.pdf

31 See also Karim (2003a).

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Peach, Ceri. 2005. “Muslims in the UK.” In MuslimBritain: Communities Under Pressure, edited byTahir Abbas. London, UK: Zed Books.

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ment les autorités religieuses avait diminué. Ils se disaienttoujours disposés à écouter les conseils de certains leadersreligieux, mais non pas de façon aveugle. Ils s’attendaientà ce que les imams reconnaissent les conditions danslesquelles vivent les communautés musulmanes implan-tées dans les pays occidentaux. Ils souhaitaient égalementque les imams fassent preuve d’un certain sens pratiqueinspiré de leurs croyances musulmanes et reconnaissent lanécessité de composer avec la réalité du monde contempo-rain. Les croyants au sein des groupes de consultationinsistaient sur la nécessité de penser par eux-mêmes etd’adopter une approche rationnelle en matière religieuse.Certains participants remettaient même en question la per-tinence, dans le monde d’aujourd’hui, de certains élémentsscripturaux fondamentaux de l’islam.

L’auteur espère que son étude contribuera, dansl’Occident, à une appréhension plus éclairée de la façondont l’islam encadre les aspirations des musulmansdésireux de s’intégrer dans la société occidentale. Unemeilleure compréhension du monde musulman permettraaux gouvernements d’élaborer des politiques aptes à pro-mouvoir une intégration plus harmonieuse. À cette fin,l’auteur propose quelques avenues : • La politique d’intégration doit s’employer à atténuer le

sentiment d’aliénation des musulmans en veillant à ceque les programmes de lutte contre le racisme et ladiscrimination prennent en compte l’islamophobie.

• Les mesures destinées à accroître le soutien accordéaux organisations sociales qui s’emploient à promou-voir davantage la connaissance mutuelle et les initia-tives intercommunautaires auront de nombreux effetsbénéfiques.

• Les consultations menées par les gouvernements et lesactivités de programmation des ONG doivent prévoir laparticipation des organisations musulmanes.

• La participation accrue des musulmans à la formula-tion des politiques publiques aidera à mieux compren-dre les enjeux complexes qui caractérisent leurscommunautés.

• Il importe que les dirigeants politiques, les fonction-naires et les médias acquièrent une connaissance plusapprofondie des débats qui animent la société musul-mane contemporaine.

Q uelle perception les musulmans qui vivent auCanada, aux États-Unis et au Royaume-Uni ont-ils de l’autorité rattachée à l’islam ? C’est cette

question que Karim Karim entend éclaircir dans cetteétude. Pour comprendre de quelle façon les musulmanss’intègrent dans la société occidentale, il importe desavoir où, à leurs yeux, se trouve la véritable autoritéislamique, car cela a aussi une incidence sur les questionssociopolitiques plus générales dans ces trois pays et dansle reste du monde occidental. Les adeptes de l’islam ré-examinent aujourd’hui leurs rôles en tant que citoyens eten tant que croyants. Ce processus est important de nosjours, où les musulmans résidant dans les pays occiden-taux font face à un éventail de choix qui s’étend depuisle sécularisme jusqu’à l’extrémisme religieux.

Les conclusions de l’auteur émanent principalementd’une série de groupes de consultation auxquels prenaientpart des musulmans « laïcs ». Elles révèlent en partie lecaractère complexe de cette interrogation des musulmans,dont le discours populaire a souvent tendance à donnerune image réductrice en la caractérisant comme unaffrontement entre « modérés » et « intégristes ». L’étudeoffre un aperçu nuancé des vues des musulmans sur l’in-tégration des immigrants en montrant comment les per-ceptions qu’ont les participants de l’autorité religieuseinfluent sur leur engagement dans la société d’accueil. Ilimporte tout particulièrement que les responsables despolitiques publiques comprennent les attentes qu’ont lesmusulmans envers leurs dirigeants, car, dans la vieislamique, les convictions religieuses et le monde matérielsont intimement liés. En d’autres termes, ce sont les croy-ances religieuses des musulmans qui inspirent et façon-nent leur sens de l’éthique civique. Plusieurs participantsont fait valoir à quel point il importe de vivre une vieéquilibrée. Ils s’attendent à ce que les autorités religieusesleur fournissent un cadre propre à faciliter la poursuite decet objectif tout en tenant compte du nouveau contextedans lequel ils se trouvent.

Les résultats indiquent également que les musulmansqui vivent dans les pays occidentaux évaluent à la lumièrede leurs objectifs actuels non seulement le statut de leursleaders religieux mais aussi celui des textes juridiques etscripturaux islamiques de base. Plusieurs participants ontsouligné que le respect que leur inspiraient traditionnelle-

RésuméChanging Perceptions of Islamic Authority

among Muslims in Canada, the United Statesand the United Kingdom

Karim H. Karim

30

mary legal and scriptural texts of Islam. Several focusgroup participants indicated that their regard for thosethey traditionally perceived as religious authorities haddeclined. They were still willing to listen to certain fig-ures, but not blindly. They expected imams to be cog-nizant of the conditions in which Western Muslimcommunities live. They also wanted them to demonstratea certain practicality based on their Islamic beliefs and toengage with real-world conditions. The believers in thegroups insisted on thinking for themselves and taking arational approach in matters of faith. Some of the partici-pants even challenged the relevance of the primary scrip-tural elements of Islam in current times.

With this study, Karim hopes to improve the West’sunderstanding of how Islam frames the aspirations ofMuslims for their successful integration into Westernsocieties. This improved understanding would enhancethe formulation of policies for more harmonious integra-tion. In this regard the author suggests the following spe-cific avenues be pursued:• Policies should work toward alleviating Muslim alien-

ation by ensuring that anti-racism and anti-discrimi-nation programs deal with Islamophobia.

• Providing more support to social organizations thatwork to increase mutual knowledge and enhancingintergroup initiatives will have multiple benefits.

• Government consultations and NGO programmingshould be inclusive of Muslim organizations.

• Enabling more Muslims to participate in the policy-making process would provide first-hand knowledgeabout complex community issues.

• Government leaders, the public service and the medianeed to gain a better understanding of the contempo-rary debates among Muslims.

H ow do Muslims in Canada, the United States andthe United Kingdom view Islamic authority? Inthis study, Karim Karim aims to shed light on this

question. What sources Muslims regard as valid Islamicauthorities is important to understanding their integra-tion into Western societies. The topic also has implica-tions for broader socio-political issues in these threecountries and the rest of the Western world. Followers ofIslam are re-examining their roles as good citizens and asgood Muslims. This is an important process in contempo-rary times, when Muslims in Western countries face arange of options from secularism to religious extremism.

The findings are primarily drawn from a series offocus group discussions with “lay” Muslims. They revealsome of the complexities of this Muslim soul-searching,which is often portrayed simplistically in popular dis-course as a contest between “moderates” and “fundamen-talists.” The study provides insight into Muslims’ viewson immigrant integration by revealing how the partici-pants’ perceptions of religious authority shape theirengagement in the broader society. It is particularlyimportant for public policy-makers to understandMuslims’ expectations of their leadership because inIslam, faith and the material world are integrally con-nected. In other words, Muslims draw civic ethics fromtheir religious beliefs. A number of the participants men-tioned how important it is to live a balanced life. Theyexpect their leaders to provide an enabling frameworkthat takes into account the new circumstances they areencountering.

The research shows that Muslims in the West are eval-uating in the context of their own present-day goals notonly the status of their religious leaders, but also the pri-

SummaryChanging Perceptions of Islamic Authority

among Muslims in Canada, the United Statesand the United Kingdom

Karim H. Karim