Kory Kantenga on Islam in the West vs. Islam and the West

By: Kory Kantenga

October 14, 2008

What is the first site you expect to see when landing in a Western country? McDonalds? Pizza Hut? Or for you risk takers… Pizza Express? Of course, all of these Western markers came in due time, but my first sight on British soil was a friendly Pakistani woman stamping passports, wearing hijab. It is hardly surprising to see a Muslim woman of South Asian decent in the United Kingdom considering migration and history. However, it does prompt some intrigue when it is the first sight you see. Much academic dialogue centers on relations between “Islam and the West.” From this language, it appears a firm break exists between the two. I found this gapping rift often portrayed by Western media to be about the size of an ant bed. Venturing into London, I found little ado about Islam and several places to go for the iftar. The sentiment I found in London remained so in Oxford, especially when the clerk asked me if I wanted to open a sharia bank account. After a mere ten days, I shrugged my shoulders when I read the archbishop statements about the "inevitability of sharia law." And in a moment of clarity, I asked: what is it about the West that makes such social cohesion possible? And does this relaxed sentiment exist partly because people consider Islam to be Western? We frame the issue theoretically as if we find such a vast distinctions in practice. Evidently, these distinctions mean less on the ground. Maybe, it is time to dialogue more about Islam in the West than Islam and the West in our public sphere.
UnIronically, I feel deprived of traditional English culture. I found one traditional English ‘fish and chips’ pub during five days in London (conceding that London seems to lack an English character). I found many places I called Western but less places I called English. Since I remained comfortable to call nearly everything in sight Western, I must have possessed a good argument on it means for something to be Western. Of course! It was McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Burger King, and their peers. It was finding the same brand of facial scrub in the store (but with a German label and packaged in Ireland). I found that the geographical West had ceased to define what is Western in many ways. We can call anything Western with a globally recognized brand name. Parts of Westernization are the equivalent of commodication and, dare I say it,… deterritorialization (see works from Vincent Miller). The West appears less defined by borders and can be transplanted in several cultural contexts. Contrary to the view that the West ‘swallows’ cultures and traditions, I found a West that glocalized Islamic practice (see Harry Potter and International Relations). Oxford Postal Service advertisements saying ‘"Going to Mecca?’" serve as fine examples in addition to the shar’ia bank account.

Indeed Westernization appears to invade all aspects of our life-world. Almost nothing remains off limits and little stands in the way of the Western adaptation of anything local or traditional. Furthermore, if we consider the religion of Islam to fall in this category of the local or the traditional, then it seems obvious why the Post Office advertises the hajj like a holiday in Greece. Often we find Westernization to be indistinguishable from secularization; however Westernization adapts to the traditional (i.e. religion) in this case. Whether the West (now somewhat distinct from Western countries) commodifies Islam or preserves it via making it more accessible remains an open question. In fact, these two arguments need not be mutually exclusive.

Most importantly, the burning questions remain: does Westernization (in the McDonalds, Burger King sense) provide an integrating function that saves traditions and religions from being ‘swallowed?’ And if so, how does this insight complicate our understanding of Islam and the West and push us to think of Islam in the West? On one hand, it becomes more difficult to demonize a process that potentially preserves your tradition in an increasingly secular life-world. And on the other, it is hard to for the West to argue that it preserves the traditional and the local well when it converts them into commodities. Either way, I discovered a sense of inevitability permeating the arguments, which perhaps should be much more concerning to us all.
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