New minority developed

Today, one third of the world’s Muslim population lives in countries where they constitute a minority. This situation in itself is not new. Muslims have experienced minority life since the early years of Islam.

Muslim immigration in the second half of the 20th century to the Western world pre­sented a new phenomenon in the history of Muslim minority communities. During this time, Muslims immigrated in unprecedented numbers to Western Europe and North America. Although this immigration was of different modes, involving different types of immigrants and representing different forms of relationships with host societies, in general it represented a new reality where Muslims did not migrate from non-Muslim polities to Muslim lands, but instead there was a reverse hijra where Muslims immigrated from the land of Islam to non-Muslim territories.

These immigrant Muslims (between the 1950s and the late 1970s) had a mentality of tem­poral settlement and isolation, and were often waiting to achieve a specific task — to improve their economic situation, escape political persecution, receive an education, etc. — before returning to their home country. They rationalized their isolation by referring to traditional legal doctrines that view with suspicion any interaction with non-Muslims in non-Muslim lands. These doctrines caused immigrants to reject their place of residence due to the belief that they would be subject to non-Muslim rule, add to the strength of a non-Muslim state, and betray the Umma. The assumption was that the best they could do until they rectified their sit­uation was to work to keep their Islamic identity intact and their community protected from assimilation into the non-Muslim culture. This was the function of early Islamic institutions such as mosques and centres that were built in the West in the 1970s and the 1980s.

Within a few decades, however, Muslim immigrants realized that the new land had be­come their new home, and they were the ones who needed to rethink their tradition in light of the changing realities.

It is noted that Islamic law is blended with the culture of its people. With time, it becomes hard to distinguish between the two, i.e. Islam and culture, until one encounters an opposing culture. At this moment the question of the Islamicity of certain acts is raised and strongly de­bated. In order to resolve such dilemmas vis-à-vis Islam, 20th-century Muslims immigrants often resorted to the advice of imams or muftis. They sought answers to questions about almost every detail of their lives. They questioned their immigration and their acquisition of new citizenship. They asked about food, drink and clothing, and they inquired about work, social interaction and mingling with their non-Muslim fellow citizens. A new genre offiqh called fiqh al-aqalliyyat’, i.e. fiqh of minorities, started to pave its way to scholarship as a new attempt to revisit immigrants’ questions and reconsider them in light of the new space and time.

The experience of Muslim minorities of the second half of the 20th century was also different from the earlier presence of Muslims in non-Muslim polities due to a number of significant shifts in the structure of both the host society and the Muslim communities themselves.

Conscious affirmation of one’s Islamic identity in response to discrimination and vic­timization was empowered by an external travelling factor, i.e. the spread of the influence of Islamic Awakening in the Muslim world. Two competitive forces of the Awakening, the Muslim Brothers and the Wahhabi-oriented organizations, exerted huge efforts to reach Muslim minorities. A significant number of Muslim Brothers immigrated to the West to escape political persecution. They brought with them their ideologies and established insti­tutions and organized work among the ranks of the Muslim minorities. Wahhabi-oriented organizations dedicated huge funds for Dawa purposes in the West. They funded the estab­lishment of many Islamic centres, donated large numbers of Islamic books and materials in foreign languages and provided scholarships to European and American Muslims to study Islam in Mecca or Medina. Both forces made an impact in the early formation of Muslim minority identity in the West. Also in the late 1980s, Muslim communities witnessed the rise of the second and third generations of young Muslims who knew no home other than the Western world. These young Muslims had aspirations and the power to persuade parents dreaming of returning to their home country to stay permanently in the non-Muslim land. Next to these internal changes in the structure of Muslim minority communities, the secular liberal western democracy provided a reasonable space for Muslims to express themselves both as Muslims and as citizens.

Given this process of identity construction, threat of Islamophobia, community aware­ness, the rise of the second and third generations, and the liberal western democratic environ­ment, the traditional answer for minority questions which would basically require immigration to the land of Islam was questioned. Moreover, many Muslim scholars argued for the need of an intellectual juristic renewal and a new methodology to deal with Muslim minority questions.

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