1

NETWORKING AND TRANSNATIONAL IDENTITY

SPACE IN THE MUSLIM DIASPORA IN THE

WEST.

One of the unsung features of the

extensively hashed current Globalization

process is the speed in which it

develops - in both reality and academic

research. I say ‘current’ to both

acknowledge and set apart former

historical manifestations of

Globalization that are significantly

different. Looking back at the not so

far budding diagnosis of the current

globalization, McLuhan’s “global

village” comes to mind. At the time it

connoted – and to some minds still does

2

– a one-way process of homogenization

worldwide by a hegemonic

Western/American civilization. It meant

the Lexus overpowering the Olive Tree,

McWorld antiquating Jihad, CNN towering

over local or state sponsored diffusion

of events and opinions.

No sooner, however, following actual

developments, research has been quick to

recognize this initial process as

triggering reactive responses of

assertive localism by both national and

sub-national groups. In realization of

this counter-process the binary model

came into use of local/particular vs.

universal/homogenized. But no sooner it

3

too proved insufficient in view of the

unfolding hybrid quality of the newly

forming entities and identities. Homi

Bahbah, for example, [in reference to a

recent UNESCO report of the World

Commission on Culture and Development

that the last two or three decades have

seen more people living across or

between national borders than ever

before – about 88 million people,]

suggested that globalization should be

conceived of along with minorization in

a dynamic, even dialectical relation

that goes beyond the polarizations of

the global and the local.

4

Another most important manifestation

of new spaces that eludes the binary

model is the revolutionary phenomenon of

trans-national identities. Trans-

nationalism, product of the new

connectivity afforded by the rapid

growth of Information and Communications

Technologies (ICTs) and the new

permeability of borders and massive

emigration of people, was conceptualized

as a hybrid ‘third space’, best known

under Roland Robertson’s coinage of

‘glocalism’. It denoted, among other

understandings, the emergence of an

intermediate social space - global de-

territorialized networks, often

5

connecting on the basis of culture,

rather than the historically familiar

ethnicity or nationalism. It consists in

separating the national “identity space”

from the state, and in allowing for a

“long-distance nationalism”. It involves

such notions developed in the literature

as the “death of geography” – the

disengagement of social forms from

geographical borders, Manuel

Castells’(2002)1 the hegemony of the

(non-bordered) “space of flows” over the

“space of place” (which is territorially

1 Lubeck, P., “The Challenge of Islamic Networks and Citizenship Claims: Europe’s Painful Adjustment to Globalization,” Alsayyad N. and M. Castells (eds.), Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam, New York and Oxford: Lexington Books, 2002.

6

defined and controlled) or Jonathan

Friedman’s (1994) “identity space”2.

My case study is the story of an

ideal model of such new trans-national

“identity space” – a universalized

Muslim common identity and belonging

based on culture; a private, intense

case, of particular or sub-globalism in-

becoming through two prominent strands

of globalization - diasporization and

communication.

It consists of an increasingly

noticeable cluster of novel diaspora

communities that have strong ties with

countries of origin as well as inter- 2 Friedman, J., Cultural Identity and Global Process, London: Sage, 1994.

7

diasporic extensive networking. Even

though diverse in their ethnic origins,

previous nationality, leadership,

customs and schools, Muslim diasporas

have come to be united on the basis of

several basic commonalties - a set of

firmly anchored common values and

singular cohesive traits which makes

them a community of essence, rather than

a mere physical cluster. This common

essence is mostly attitudinal and

mobilizational but it does have some

concrete organizational aspects. While

semi-secular nation-states have become

and still are the prevalent

institutional model in the Muslim world,

8

cross-national organizations, political

and Islamic, have been in operation,

even though in a nebulous rather than a

structured manner. Such are the OIC –

the Organization of Islamic Conference,

which boasts 53 member states, The

European Fatwa Council, and the Muslim

Brotherhood that originated in Egypt,

has proliferated in a variety of other

locales, and is publishing materials and

interacting with other Islamist

movements worldwide. Institutions of

international Islamic scholarship are

established in the Diaspora, such as the

International Institute of Islamic

Thought in Herndon Virginia, the Wisdom

9

Fund, and the Muslim Students

Association in the USA, which lists

several sub-organizations. New

international institutions of learning

are recognized as qualifying graduates

for authority in Islamic sciences and

pastoral services, such as School of

Islamic and Social Sciences in Herndon,

VA, and the International Islamic

University of Malaysia, which is co-

sponsored by the Organization of the

Islamic Conference. Transnational

movements such as the Mouridiyya and

Naqshabandiyya brotherhood, and

missionary associations such as the

Tablighi Jama’at maintain the notion and

10

practice of global Islamic identity,

creating what Eickleman and Piscatori

(1996) call a horizental network.3

Islamist activist organizations

worldwide share commonalities in

doctrine and agenda, in terminology and

temperament. Some of these organizations

have branched out globally, such as al-

Muhajiroun/Hizb al-Tahrir with its

origins in Jordan, at this time based

mainly in Britain, and operating also

in France, New York City, California,

Pakistan and Indonesia. It works in

close cooperation with London-based

Saudi Islamist opposition group known as

3 Eickelman D. and J. Piscatori, Muslim Politics, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996.

11

the Committee for the Defense of

(Shar’i) Legal Rights, and with the

independent activist Usama Bin Laden.

A Need for a New Identity Formulation

Immigration to the West and the

formation of minority communities as a

result is a long-time recorded

historical phenomenon in general, and in

my case study regarding Muslims

specifically. The newly forming

contemporary entities, however, are

different in context and in quantity

that touches on substance. The growing

numbers of new immigrants to the West,

whether in pursuit of livelihood,

12

education, or political asylum, not only

swelled the existing diaspora

communities but also transfigured them,

and created new additional ones. By the

turn of the millennium Muslim

communities in the West have been

already breeding their second or third

generation, and taking on the shape of

organized established communities.

While the first generation of Muslim

immigrants, as is usually the case in

immigrant communities, were striving to

earn a livelihood, get an education for

their children, and mostly trying to

integrate into the host society, by the

second and third generations, they were

13

looking to discover and re-connect with

their roots, to preserve the intactness

of their customs and beliefs, and were

laying a successful claim for public

space within their host societies.

Reshaped by this development Muslim

erstwhile communities have naturally

become in need of attaining expression

by way of a self-declared identity.

Fortuitously, civic conditions in place

in the West provided them with the

license to do so.

Freedom of expression and guaranteed

human rights were already in place in

the West, much unlike the situation in

immigrants’ countries of origin. This

14

newly found freedom afforded even

greater space for self-assertion with

the advent of Multiculturalism - not

mainly as a fact of life, but rather as

a view, a perspective become norm. That

and the related notion of cultural

relativism granted minorities an equal

cultural standing, with no patronage or

regimentation by any one culture.

Re-thinking identities in any pattern

have gained substance and legitimization

by the recent tendency in intellectual

discourse to allow for unconventional

and flexible patterns of political

definition. Such is Benedict Anderson’s

notion of the Imagined Communities,

15

which suggests that communities are to

be distinguished not by their

falsity/genuineness, but by the style in

which they are imagined; or Turner’s

notion that unlike the 19th century

nation state which had a strong policy

of unification, now, with the

entrenchment of cultural diversity and

multiculturalism, nations are forced to

accept the variety of cultures and

ethnic communities as part of their

national self-definition. Within these

expanded boundaries, Muslims, like other

minority groups, gained unprecedented

self-confidence and a voice to claim the

16

status of a distinct group in their own

right.

Factors Affecting the New Identity

formulation

The universal character that the re-

configured identity assumed was affected

by globalization’s general connectivity

and diasporization, conflated with some

private Islamic baggage. The

permeability of borders to audio-visual

and electronic communication - as well

as to human traffic, sparked the

awareness of cultural kin communities

and facilitated contacts with them, as

well as provided an ambiance of super-

17

territoriality. For Muslims specifically

the growth of a global system of

transportation facilitated the

performance of pilgrimage to Mecca,

thereby enforcing the concept of Islam

as a global system. At the same time,

these institutions of global

communications also spread the message

of pan-Islamic unity.4 Their claim and

success in constructing public spaces in

their host countries, further

contributed to the sense - and in fact

the reality - of a global community of

Islam. A Muslim can find in most

European and American cities quarters

4 Turner, B., Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalism, London: Routledge, 1994, p. 90.

18

that use the same language and symbols,

shops, mosques and dress.

The easy traffic of people and goods

made as well for a common consumption of

the self-same or similar Islamic

cultural products - books, periodicals,

magazines, audiocassettes and

videotapes, sold in Maktabas (Islamic

shops) all over the world. Publications

and sermons by spiritual and activist

leaders produced in the Middle East,

North Africa, Pakistan, Europe and the

USA are household items all over the

world. Even more so, electronic

communication vehicles stand out as a

cultural and mobilizing unification

19

agent, revolutionary in its reach,

formulation and impact. The Internet,

overflowing with Islamic webs (mostly

interactive) is a significant vehicle of

trans-border connectivity that breeds

cohesion. While this means of

transnational networking is still

limited in its accessibility and

diffusion, satellite TV actually does

reach almost every home, in real time,

crossing political and geographical

borders, distances and time limits, the

epitome of Harvey’s “time and space

compression”. Its virtual reality

visibility has a more profound and

visceral impact on audiences than the

20

printed word that only imparts meaning

but does not actually show it, and only

to the literate.

A case in point is the popular Qatar

based al—Jazeera satellite TV. With an

audience of between 35-50 million

Arab/Muslims all over the world, about

70 percent of Arabs with satellite

reception, it diffuses intensively and

extensively the message of Pan-Arabism

with special deference to Pan-Islamism;

put otherwise, it actively mobilizes for

transnational Arabism with transnational

Islamism in its heart.

21

Cultural Capital

Other factors in promoting

cohesiveness derive from the specificity

of Islamic history and immigrants’

cultural capital. In their diasporic

situation all Muslims share the

existential challenge of their

unprecedented predicament in the annals

of Islam - that of voluntary, permanent

stay under superior infidel rule.

Islam’s political theory, the

foundational myth of the community and

its self-definition as an imperial power

and a benchmark for civilizational

standards, does not provide for the

egalitarian outlook on other

22

civilizations required in the current

state of affairs, let alone their own

status as a subaltern culture.

Another factor animating Muslim

universalistic proclivity is Western

modern philosophical notions. As

sociologist Bryan Turner points out,

that increased trans-state cohesiveness

is affected as well by post-modernism,

which poses challenges to Islam: it

relativizes its absolute truths, and

deconstructs its ideas to the status of

fairy tales rather than direct

impressions of a truth. Contemporary

Islam responded in an “attempt to create

at the global level a new Gemeinschaft,

23

a new version of the traditional

household which would close off the

threat of post-modernity by re-

establishing a communal ideology”.5

On a more mundane level Muslims share

the everyday acculturation problems that

trigger the ambivalent desire to

preserve their unique way of life, based

on their singular value-system and

culture, while claiming a place away

from the margins of society. Most Muslim

immigrants to the West share a body of

basic articles of faith, ethics and

sensibilities that are traditional and

imbued with religiosity. Modernity and

5 Turner, op. cit., p.93.

24

secularism grates the most tender nerve

in matters such as the central status of

religion in their life, sexual morals,

space allotted to women, and children

socialization. Even as they aspire, and

indeed do integrate in some aspects with

the hosting societies, such issues

present them with shared difficult

choices and are constantly and

predominantly on the minds of both

opinion leaders and the rank and file.

Most Diaspora Muslims share as well a

political loyalty, if not an involvement

with their countries of origin and all

other Muslim states, groups and causes.

It bears the mark of “Pan”ism, that is,

25

the inherent inclination to supra-

national unification - whether Arab

and/or Islamic.

Yet another unifying factor is that

the emergent diasporic re-constructed

identity is a re-actualization and

development of sanctioned classic

Islamic precepts, engendered by the

novel state of affairs, as well as by

the inner dynamics of that process.

These precepts are marked by the

primordial claim for universal

applicability and the politicization of

the collective.

26

Islam’s initial conception was as a

religion framed in a political

community. It sought its expression

through all aspects of life of an

organized community, regulated by a

legal code. It was led by a prophet who

transmitted the voice of the divine, but

whose message was mostly mundane.

In classical theological terms there

is an idealistic construct of the Ummah

(nation) as an integration of politico-

religious authority, a terrain or

household in which Islamic practice is

uniformly followed, and an outward

religious thrust of Jihad involving a

struggle against unbelief. The Message

27

was sent down for all of humanity, and

expected, initially through military

conquest, than through missionary work,

to keep expanding. Therefore no

boundaries were ever set for the domain

of Islam that thus remained a-

territorial.

Through the pre-modern centuries that

followed, due to the splits between

competing dynasties, difficulties in

communication and transportation, and in

modern times the adoption of the nation-

state, the universalistic agenda faded

into a distant grand design. The notion

of a-territoriality, though, persisted.

Islam, hence, was never anchored in a

28

particular holy space – [even though

holy places do exist, both historic and

recent -] but rather in a common

culture, common modes of conduct and

understandings based on the shari’ah,

the legal code. Unlike Muslim states,

where the Islamists consider the state

as a framework for a primary application

of the Islamic order, the center in the

diasporas is the universal man whose

geography is labile, and evolves into a

global sacralized geography with sacred

centers in both countries of origin and

in the West.6

6 Roy, Olivier, “Le neo-fundamentalisme islamique ou L’imaginaire de L’oummah”, Esprit, no. 220, 1996, p. 88.

29

Matching its a-territoriality, Islam

at conception was supra-ethnic as well.

Anybody, regardless of their ethnic

origin, race or color could become a

Muslim on subscribing to the main

dictates of Islam. All through its

annals Islam was opposed in principle to

ethno-national splits in its aggregate

community and labored to maintain that

principle. In modern times, at the

heyday of nationalism in the Middle

East, it scorned and rejected the notion

of the nation-state - as did doctrinaire

Pan-Arabism - as inimical and

destructive to Islam. Islam was thus

marked since its erstwhile identity and

30

later history by a political strain, a-

territoriality, supra-ethnicism, and

universalism.

However, despite the truism that

Islam requires the unity of religion and

politics, this was historically rarely

realized. The military conquest, even

though most impressive at the early

stages, was held back in Europe, and the

thrust had to adapt to co-existence with

the other resistant, and eventually more

powerful, Abrahamic religions.

All of that was reactivated by recent

globalization developments and

31

translated into a modern political

idiom.

The recent availability of effective

global communication systems and the

diasporic growth has made possible for

the first time the pursuit of the claim

for a universalistic status as a

political entity.7

Universalism, dormant for centuries

of regression and deterioration, is back

and alive on the agenda, supported by a-

territoriality past and present. As an

immediate goal it does not connote

military conquest, but rather missionary

work, a revived sense of community based

32

on common language, sentiments and

education, and trans-national contacts

and activity.

Supra-ethnicity persisted as well as

a matter of fact - no matter to what

sub-division Muslims belong, their

spontaneous overriding identification is

Muslim8; but it is now taking on an

activist drive.

New comers to a foreign environment

tend naturally to cluster along the line

of ethnic origins, language, and

customs. To counter this, activists in

western diasporas are taking on the role

7 Turner, op. cit., pp.48-86; 89. 8 Metcalf, Barbara, Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe, 1996, Introduction.

33

of agents of de-communalism and de-

culturalism through the establishment of

a new community on an Islamic basis.

Both on the cognitive and technical

level that means the de-construction of

communal organization and disengagement

from local traditions that are not

essentially or necessarily Islamic.

Instead, an Ummah will be formed that is

based on unmediated drawing from the

canonical sources and the tradition of

the prophet.9 “[There must be no]

British Muslims, African Muslims, Arab

Muslims, etc...” Says a speaker for a

transnational Islamist organization, “so

9 Roy, op. cit.

34

that we preserve the uniqueness of our

Islamic identity...the very idea of a

mosque for Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and

Arabs is completely Haram (religiously

forbidden).10

This educational effort is upheld -

both spontaneously and deliberately by

compatible developments in the field:

various sects - Isma’ilis, Senegalese

Mourids and the Ahmadiyyah are prone to

shed singular customs and adopt common

norms. The younger generations have in

any case abandoned their language of

origin and traditional wear;

Professionals are finding jobs and 10 Sheikh Omar Bakri, al-Muhajiroun organization, U.K., broadcast over

35

moving out of the ethnic neighborhoods,

mosques are in the process of getting a

mixed following, new social

institutions, after the pattern of

western community centers for example,

are conducive to obliterating ethnic

particularity, as do the new converts.11

The idea of a political Muslim

entity, dormant through the centuries of

the Muslim political slump, has been

prepped for revival during the 30 last

decades of the past millennium through

the impressive resurgence of Islam in

all its territories.

MSANews, msnews@msnews.mynet.net, May 6 1998 11 Metcalf, op. cit.

36

During those decades Islam has been

emerging out of it's mostly doctrinaire

and ritual cocoon of recent centuries,

into an increasingly political and

ideological involvement. In theory too,

Islamist thinkers in the first half of

the 20th century such as Muhammad Iqbal,

Mawdudi and Sayyid Qutb bequeathed the

heritage of advocacy for Islamic

political integration through the global

Ummah. [These thinkers distinguish

between resistance to imperialism and

the notion of nationalism, which is

conceived as both divisive and an alien

import, a slavish imitation of the

West.]

37

Transnational Islam in its

contemporary re-constructed self-defined

identity is thus an adopted nationality

and an imagined polity as much as it is

a religion and a way of life. It is a

quasi-novel phenomenon, a national

political identity that is not based on

ethnicity or defined by demarcated

territorial borders. In fact, it creates

a neo-ethnicity - Muslim ethnicity,

turned a neo-nationalism - Muslim

nationalism. Even though its territory

is unlimited, as befits a universalistic

religion, the new politicized Islam does

aspire to a state, political and legal

rule, and a set of moral and

38

philosophical values. “....although

there is no monolithic ‘Islamintern’ per

se”, says an Islamist speaker, “that is

working in unison for the re-

establishment of a world-wide Islamic

state, yet the very precepts of Islam

point in this direction.12 Therefore,

the universalism that derives from a-

territoriality is becoming a

universalism that lays a claim to global

territorialism, and the Ummah as a

political space.

Seyyed Hossein Nasr, university

professor in George Washington 12 Kamran Bokhar, graduate student, speaker for al-Muhajiroun USA,

39

University, a long time Iranian

immigrant and widely acknowledged

authority in the West, observes that

“the increase in awareness of the

Islamic world as a single entity is

itself one of the important trends to be

observed in that world, a trend which is

bound to continue...the rise of greater

awareness of the Islamic ethos and

reactions to the onslaught of the West

have made in fact the unity of the

Islamic world a motto for political and

religious forces of nearly every color

and persuasion...”13

Politicizing the Ummah

MSANews, 2 October, 1998

40

The crowning of the shifting Islamic

identity was the politicization of the

Ummah; The revived erstwhile identity of

political Islam, the insistence on the

unity of religion and state combined

with to the supra-ethnicity and a-

territoriality of Islam, makes for the

agenda of creating the Ummah -

traditionally the community of believers

- as a political space; It involves an

affiliation and loyalty to the ideal

construct of the Ummah as nation,

bridging over the diversity of tribal,

ethnic, sectarian etc. divisions.

13 Nasr, Ibid, p. 311

41

A veritable illustration is a

communiquי published in Germany by “The

European Muslim Summit of the Indigenous

European Muslims from Albania, Basque

Country, Belgium, Bosnia, Bulgaria,

Denmark, England, France, Galicia,

Germany........[and more]”. The

signatories declare that “we are one

people, part of the greater nation which

is the Ummah of Islam. Our sole purpose

is the establishment of a sovereign

state in Europe for all Muslims that

will be Dar al-Islam [the domain of

Islam], where the five pillars of Islam

can be established...we call upon the

non-Muslims of Europe to accept the Deen

42

of Islam [Deen is literally religion,

but western Muslims use the Arabic term,

in different language contexts, to

indicate that it is more than mere

religion]”14

An Alternate Agenda

Even though Transnational Islam was

born in the bosom of multiculturalism,

and in its capacity of a supra-ethnic

entity incorporates a sense of tolerance

for pluralism, this does not extend to

other religious cultures. It is

unequivocally exclusive of other

religions, nor expecting in the long

range to co-exist with them. Non-Muslims 14 Islamiche Zeitung, Germany, December 21 1997

43

are bound to see the ultimate truth

eventually, one way or another. It must

be exclusive by force of its absolutism

- Islam is the word of God, the ultimate

truth.

This exclusiveness holds for all other

faiths, but first on the list of Others

is the West. There are certainly

residues of political resentments -

anti-Colonialist sentiments, both past

and present, as well as specific issues

of western policy vis-א-vis various

Muslim states or organizations, or

acculturation problems which may be

subsumed under the revulsion from the

libertine McDonald culture. On the main,

44

however, the rage is philosophical, and

ensuing to no minor degree from the new

reconfigured identity. Whatever the

roots may be, on the emergent Islamic

agenda this sense of polarization and

embattlement has crystallized and been

adopted as a principle that has to do

with the essence, not circumstantial

conditions. “Any ideological state has

a worldview of its own, which in turn

renders it incompatible with the already

existing international status quo.

...both Islam and democratic capitalism

are in opposition to each other,

therefore the possibility that both can

co-exist peacefully at the same time on

45

this planet is highly unlikely....”15

This self-perception is affirmed by an

outsider’s analysis. Turner observes

that it is difficult to see how

fundamentalist religious movements could

tolerate an ecumenism of ideas. It holds

even more so, perhaps, for Islam which

has adopted as a primary mission the

spreading of its message universally,

and has formulated the concept of ‘lands

of war’ as the negation of acceptance of

alternative global households within the

same world cultural order.16

The West is not only The Other, but

The Enemy as well. It is the successor 15 Bokhari, Ibid.

46

of the rivaling religions of yore, now

incarnated in the deadly threat of

secularism. The launch pad and rationale

for the total challenge posed by Islam

is the re-endorsement of the Islamic

universalization of the sacred, that is,

its application to all walks of life;

and it is done in conscious

contradiction and rejection of the

western humanist ethos which “dethrones

God and enthrones man” as put

disapprovingly by Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

An increasing trend calls into question

the prevalent universal, i.e. western

definition of reform, progress, right

16 Turner, Ibid, pp.93,94

47

and wrong. That new trend challenges the

equation of ‘western’ and ‘universal’,

heretofore taken for granted, and

insists on reducing the West to ethnic

territorial boundaries, and a specific

singular history. It propounds a Muslim

independent definition of right and

wrong, of progress and backwardness,

specifically in governance, society,

economics, the sciences, and indeed

epistemology on the whole. All currently

universally prevalent definitions are

said to be the product of a specific

western historical development, such as

the enlightenment with its resultant

liberal maxims of individualism,

48

rationalism, equality and materialism.

That does not necessarily apply to other

cultures, specifically Islam. To the

contrary, it mutilates and oppresses It.

Islam starts off with the assumption of

spiritual advancement and the unicity of

God, and arrives on the institutional

level at a corporatist society which

subjects the individual to the

community, and in politics prefers

spontaneous affirmation of government to

conflictual elections and

factiousness.17

The challenge to the West is the more

substantial one in terms of ideational 17 Cantori, Louis, “Islam’s Potential for Development”, The World and I,

49

contents. As Seyyed Hossein Nasr

observes, recently Islamic thinkers have

begun to come to terms not only with the

social, but also the intellectual and

cultural challenges of the West.

Numerous authorities throughout the

Islamic world have come to realize the

importance of the re-Islamization of

knowledge. He further predicts that this

trend will continue to grow and not lose

its momentum. He believes that efforts

will “continue to be expanded to try to

‘Islamize’ the various sciences ranging

September 1st, 1997

50

from the humanities to the social and

even the natural sciences.”18

Prof. Choudhury of the University

College at Cape Breton, Canada,

specifies the ways to go about it:

establishing independent exclusive

Islamic economic and political

institutions which will phase out any

western imports, as well as a Grand

Knowledge Institute for the Islamic

world.19

This philosophical challenge is

translated in Islamic discourse,

inspired by the intensification of the

18 Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, Traditional Islam in the Modern World, 1987, p.311 19 broadcast over MSANews, 30 Dec. 1998

51

political aspect of the Ummah, to terms

of power politics. The right to

epistemological and value definitions is

diagnosed as resting with the might of

power hegemony, which is currently

occupied by the West, But not

irreversibly so. “Islam does not have a

state that represents it, whereas the US

has existed as a nation for over two

centuries”, says an Islamist speaker.

“But we are definitely living in

fluctuating political circumstances,

where Islamic revivalism is growing

stronger and stronger as the days

unfold”.20

20 Bokhari, Ibid

52

It would seem that the vision of an

Islamic superpower polity can hardly be

considered an operational agenda, and

certainly Muslim thinkers as well as

Islamist leaders are not unaware of the

actualities of power balances. It is

present though, as a mindset, or a meta-

strategy. “One day”, says a mainstream

American Islamic opinion leader, “the

gloom will be lifted from the Nile

Valley, the Indus Valley, and far beyond

and [there will be] men and women who

call themselves Muslims, citizens of the

only remaining superpower in the

world.....Tomorrow, with them, will be

the children of the Old World. Together

53

they will say....verily I am one of the

Muslims. The voices will echo from the

four corners of the continent and

resonate in corridors of power”.21

What that syndrome of new self-identity

adds up to is a first attempt in global

public discourse to challenge the

heretofore universalized agenda of the

West. Values and norms that grew in the

west and came to be considered as the

epitome of humanity’s progress - and

more so after the collapse of communism

- are now being hurled from their place

of honor and authority. It is a first

attempt in the third millennium to put 21 Robert D. Crain, formerly a foreign policy advisor to Richard Nixon

54

forth an alternate agenda to the western

one, an identity that is not offered to

Muslims only, but competes with the West

for a global standing.

and now a convert to Islam, speaking at a sermon at the American Muslim

55

Council; The AMC Report, Feb. 1994, p. 8