Islam in Europe: a space of opportunity or a Colonizing trap

This paper delves into some recent conversations among Muslims in the Francophone intellectual milieu on the desirability of a European Islam and its relationship to the process of secularization. Comparing Tariq Ramadan’s seminal “Être Musulman Européen” (1999) with a recent publication by Aissam Ait-Yahya “De L’Ideologie Islamique Française” (2013), it seeks to examine how structural contradictions that are internal to Europe’s modernity (universal vs. particular) play out in the contemporary engagement of Muslims with the Islamic tradition and the European public sphere. Ramadan’s work gained prominence through its attempt to synthesize the Islamic Reformist intellectual legacy and cultivate ethical and theological spaces that would enable Muslims to inscribe themselves as citizens in the European society. In so doing, he does not only rely on a redefinition of a number of key theological concepts (cf. most notably the deconstruction of the opposition between “dar-al-harb” and “dar-al-islam”), but equally conceives Europe as an ontologically neutral terrain in which Islamic practices and beliefs can gain ground. Ait-Yahya’s work, on the other hand, centers on a deconstruction of the narrative of “modernity” (on the basis of some recent contributions by Western (postmodern) thinkers) by demonstrating its Christian roots and pointing at the incommensurability of between Christianity/Secularity and Islam, which he constitutes as two distinct ontological domains. While these two works can be read as contradictory, I will argue that they both hold a commitment to Europe (as universal and/or as distinctively Christian) on the basis of which their understanding of the Muslim tradition comes to be articulated.status: publishe