How do you think O’Connor’s article attempts to dispel a Western bias towards Islam? Cite specific context from the article to support your response.
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Answer:
Islam’s relationship with the West, though it goes far into antiquity, has been overburdened with rivalries and marred by conflicts. From the Christian crusades of the Middle Ages to the fatwa on Salman Rushdie at the close of the millennium, the predominately Christian societies of Western Europe and North America have been suspicious and fearful of Muslims. Conversely, Muslim adherents of Islam find much in Western social values and practices antithetical to their tradition.
The arena of conflict between these communities is changing rapidly, primarily due to the technological innovations of the information age and the confrontation of cultures. No longer are geographical boundaries adequate to separate these cultures. Western values are propagated by TV programs via satellite into the Islamic nations of the Middle East, Asia, and North Africa. At the same time, Muslims of the diaspora are creating religious and cultural enclaves using Arabsat and the Internet, as well as traditional channels.
Yet, recent Islamic migrants to Western nations face the dilemma of finding their authentic voice in popular Western culture, balanced against their fears of cultural assimilation and loss of identity. Muslims as a group have had less success compared to other religious or ethnic minorities, like the Jews or African Americans, in opening “a window on the multidimensionality of what can be called cultural ecology” (Mowlana, 1996, p. 178). They seek to know how is it possible to move toward the center of Western culture without compromising deeply-held religious beliefs and traditions.
Navigating the cultural conflicts between Islam and the West is not a trivial challenge given sharply contrasting worldviews; the two domains of knowledge are poorly matched. Islam offers a totalized worldview encompassing all spheres of community intercourse: political, economic, social, etc. The West isolates the spheres of knowledge and action and enshrines the individual. Despite overtones of “civic religion” in Western societies, they are extrinsically secular; traditional Muslims are overtly committed to the sacred as the cornerstone of community and family life.
The clash that arises from conflicting worldviews leaves emotional and psychological scars. Among recent migrants to Europe and North America, many Muslims agree with American Islam scholar Yvonne Haddad (1991) in their “frustration and dismay as they continue to experience prejudice, intimidation, discrimination, misunderstanding, and even hatred” (p. 3). Yet, in the midst of these uncertain encounters, Islam and Western society are finding ways to adapt, if incompletely, to each other’s worldviews and values.
ISLAM’S STRUGGLE FOR ACCEPTANCE IN THE WEST
Islam and Western Culture 02 with BorderMuslims’ compatibility with Western cultural values taps into the broader question of how they have adapted to conditions historically in all their respective host nations. The Islamic world consists of diverse ethnic, cultural, and geographic populations, and faces the challenge of uniting diverse national cultures.
There are thirty countries, mainly in Asia and Africa, with a total population of about 900 million, in which Muslims have an overall majority; many more countries have sizable Muslim minorities. The total Muslim world population is close to 1.5 billion, one-quarter of the total world population (Hoogvelt, 1997).