“[Western governments] should avoid any sort of religious engineering … the management of Islam should be delinked from the issue of immigration and multiculturalism. Islam should be treated merely as a religion, and not as the expression of ethnic minority groups.”
Olivier Roy, in Globalised Islam (emphasis added)
I couldn’t agree more!
Filed under: Britain
Agree with the emphasised part, but not the part about Islam “should be treated merely as a religion”, even from the viewpoint of Western governments. It’s a cliché worth recapitulating that Islam is not merely a religion but a way of life and all governments, Western or not, should always keep that in mind.
I think that is mainly semantic. The real issue is the gradual movement towards seeing Muslim as an ethnic group. Worse still, is the gradual move towards seeing Muslim as a homogenous ethnic group.
Islam is indeed a way of life. It is a way of life because it is suited for life anywhere. The problem is when people of certain ethnicity brings their ethnic culture into play, and then claim that they are practicing “Islam”, when the reaility is they are merely practicing their culture.
Neither, I would add, as an expression of ethnic *majority* groups.
don’t u want to write something about the liberal forum in dublin? might be worthed