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Muslims in the West

A very good summary by an athropologist:

What is the way forward for Muslims living in the West? I do not think there is a single answer to that question because Muslims in the West are not a single homogeneous group, sociologically or theologically. Nevertheless they are seen, and will continue to be seen, as a minority within the Western nation state. And given the widespread violence perpetrated by heavily armed Western states and lightly armed jihadists (a symbiotic relationship if ever there was one) Muslim minorities in the West will continue to be the object of suspicion and discrimination. Our concern in this matter should not be to find someone to blame but to try to understand the limits of action facing Muslim minorities. The very common suggestion that Muslims should undertake a reform of their own religious tradition to help prevent “Islamic extremist violence” assumes that Muslims constitute a single political subject, that they are entirely self-contained, and that reform has not in fact been continuously undertaken in Islamic history. Those who urge theological reform to enable the effective condemnation of jihadism (especially after the Paris murders at Charlie Hebdo and the Jewish supermarket) should first inquire into the recency of this phenomenon: the Islamic tradition in all its variety has been around for centuries, and mainstream Muslim authorities have condemned such killing for ages. Why has the phenomenon of jihadism appeared–and proliferated–only now?

—Tala Asad, Do Muslims Belong in the West?

An important aspect of this belonging should be added. Most Muslims in the West are immigrants and working class people doing essential work. The pandemic has exposed to what extent working class  immigrants, Muslims and non-Muslims, are a crucial labour in the frontlines and in casual jobs alike. A Bangladeshi in London or an Algerian in Paris are producing surplus value for the capitalists. In some European countries Muslims find it harder to get their job applications accepted than in others. Exclusion and discrimination differs from one Western country to another, but it is palpable and even institutionalised.

Many Muslims in the West are liberals and adhere to the Western way of life, including defending the “Western liberal values.” They even defend imposed ‘secularism’ and the Western foreign policies (imperialist policies).

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