Seeking a European Islam

The recent birth in Britain of the Quilliam Foundation (QF), an anti-terrorism think tank, is wrapped in controversy. Launched in mid-April as a struggle against al-Qaida inspired terrorism, the organisation is accused of being just a front for continuing terrorism by Western countries against weaker economies, particularly in the Muslim world.
QF has come under attack from the powerful Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) that may look upon it as a rival in its comfortable relationship with the government. The arrival of QF may mean less money, influence and even less invitations to tea to the corridors of power for the MCB.

The foundation is named after William Quilliam, a nineteenth-century English convert to Islam, and is involved in evolving a practice of Islam that is compatible to Europe and is free from the ghost of religious politics of the Indian subcontinent and the Arab world.
Some left wing politicians accuse the QF of being another face of the neo-conservatives who refuse to take the blame for the war in Iraq.

Ed Husain and Maajid Nawaz, QF founders, tirelessly explain that their objective remains to encourage British Muslims to publicly denounce terrorism and not to use Islam to justify terrorist acts. Both Husain and Nawaz are from British Muslim families formerly from the Indian subcontinent. As teenagers, they joined Hizb ut-Tahrir, a radical organisation, but now both denounce terrorism even as they remain practicing Muslims. Today they would like to invite the world to engage in a constructive dialogue about Islam. They are reaching out to a broad coalition of philosophers, community leaders, feminists and theologians to debate religious extremism. In The Islamist, a memoir written by Husain after he publicly disengaged from Hizb ut-Tahrir, the author explains that as a teenager he found radical Islam more attractive in comparison to the loud, boisterous liberalism of British society and the politically silent Islam practiced by his parents.

Husain told Hardnews on his last visit to Vienna that the war in Iraq has only added to problems within the Muslim community, but he hesitates to put all the blame on the war in Iraq. If the war was to end tomorrow, Husain argues, it may not necessarily end the continuing radicalising of young Muslims, a destructive exercise that has intensified since the turn of the century. As a British Muslim, he does not feel the need to always take an absolute stand on issues like the Iraq war, Danish cartoons or teddy bears that are named Muhammad.

What preoccupies Husain more is the radical view within the Muslim community that all non-Muslims do not matter and are the enemy. The demand for the domination of a global community of Muslims and the use of Koranic texts to justify suicide bombings and the killing of other human beings is something Husain disagrees with. Husain regrets that moderate, thinking Muslims have not done enough to speak out against terrorism or to distance themselves from acts of terrorism committed in the name of Islam. He is in search of an Islam that will make Muslims like himself feel at home, and not at war with Europe.

The intellectual exercise of QF is to revive Western Islam and to unite against extremism in the spirit of the way Islam was practiced in southern Spain half a millennium ago.
To do that, the QF will need to embrace the whole world into its arms - from secular liberals, governments, religious leaders to community activists and get them to believe in the simple idea that it is possible to be religious and to be respectable at the same time.