ISLAM SHEDS ITS IMAGE AS PURELY EASTERN RELIGION MUSLIMS IN THE WEST

Islam is winning converts in the industrial world because of its ability to adapt to Western life and shed its outdated image as a purely Eastern religion. That is the conclusion of academics studying the rise of Islam in the West.

Dr Graham Speake, of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, says Islam is not an East-West issue. "That suggests an `us and them' attitude, which in these days of integrated society is no longer really applicable. Islam with Judaism and Christianity, is one of the great monotheistic faiths. They all share a great deal and have a lot to offer each other.

"Those of us who believe in any one of the three have come to realise that they are all equally valid and equally to be valued. So many of us have members of another faith living next door."

Asaf Hussein, tutor in race education at the Open University, says Islam gives westerners a rare voice about the problems in their own society: "If they want a faith which gives them a participatory and active role, the choice is Islam. It places a very strong emphasis on social justice and empowers westerners to say: `This is not correct'." Converts highlight the applicability of Islam. Nouria, 36 who converted in 1974, says: "It is always considered to be a religion of the Third World, of brown people, of Arabs. But Islam encourages the races to unite by allowing for the differences in culture: the food, the customs, the different ways of wearing Islamic dress. Malaysians are very quiet and delicate in their movements; Nigerians can be very loud and relaxed."

Islam's adaptability is most obvious in the varieties of Muslim dress. At a recent British conference for new Muslims there was only one chador in sight. A woman from rural Ireland wore a long sweater and a wool hat, the English had kept their Laura Ashley skirts and silk scarves Scots appeared in kilts and baggy tartan trousers. There was a range of accents to match.

"The idea now is for new Muslims to realise that they don't have to renounce their Englishness, or whatever they are," Maimuna, 39, a Londoner who converted in the early seventies, says.

She contrasts the new emphasis on the flexibility of Islam with the fever-pitch conformity of the previous generation. "I have never met any born Muslim women who have said, `I want to be downtrodden.' But some of the very early converts did, they wanted to be martyrs.

"Some other groups were very rigid and sincere with a strict rule book. They didn't believe in medicine or registration of marriage or putting the heating on in winter. They have mellowed now; none of them kept that pace of freneticness."

Many westerners are initially attracted by aspects of Islamic culture; they cite the design of the mosques, the call to prayer and the beauty of the Arabic languages.

"Arabic is very musical, a wonderful language for expressing spiritual things," Emira Topham says. "Saying `Praise be to God' is much nicer in Arabic than English. I don't think you can Anglicise everything." But new Muslims are selective. As far as possible they incorporate Islam into their own cultural identities, protecting the faith against the non-islamic features of established Muslim communities.

"At first for a lot of British people there is a great temptation to be pseudo-Arab or pseudo-Pakistani because the ethnic presence is so strong," Rose Kendrick, a religious education teacher and author, says. "But there's a big danger that they will interpret their culture as being Islamic." Most converts are politically non-confrontational.

"In England you get side-tracked by it all, race relations, Hezbollah, Khomeini," Maimuna says. "I used to wear my scarf in the Arab way and my colleagues found it frightening. They thought it meant hijacking and fundamentalism and `death to Rushdie'."

Article from "The Times"

From "The Times", London. November 10, 1993.

Lucy Berrington discovers that three faiths share a great deal and have
much to offer each other

source: http://www.jannah.org/sisters/england.html