Pluralism within European Islam: Secularizing Theology, Sacralizing Modernity

This paper sheds light on the pluralism that characterizes the emerging European Islamic Thought. It argues that the reformed Islam that this thought advances challenges both the classical and conservative interpretations of especially Islamic law, and the irreligious feel and fear of some radical interpretations of secularism in Europe. This two-fold argument will be addressed only minimally (briefly). The contention here is more reflective. This reflection on the subject will be traced as follows. First, the paper puts European Islam in context. It argues that the latter is part of a long process of encounter with modernity, and is thus a version or interpretation of the idea of Islamic Renaissance (revival and innovation in Islamic diction). Second, the paper summarizes four scholarly versions of the idea of European Islam. While it does not claim to be exhaustive and representative of the whole debate, it particularly presents the major ideas four Muslim intellectuals hold over what they consider the way both for Muslims to accommodate modern values and for the modern states to accommodate religious values. The scholars to be referred to are Bassam Tibi and his idea of “Euro-Islam,” Tariq Ramadan and his project of “radical reform,” Tareq Oubrou and his proposal of “sharia of the minority,” and Abdennour Bidar and his consideration of modernity as an “unprecedented event of the sacred.” Third, the paper follows a triadic framework composed of three axes that grasp the comprehensiveness of a world religion like Islam in an attempt to conceptualize the idea of European Islam, based on the studied texts: world-society-individual axes. Following this comprehensive framework, I will be succinctly arguing that “this” European Islam humanizes revelation at the world axis, historicizes it at the social axis, and rationalizes it at the individual axis. It is at this stage that European Islam, as I read it, tries to establish itself on theological-political grounds. Finally, the paper concludes by raising three prominent challenges that this version of European Islam has to face.