Abdool Magid A. Karim Vakil
Islamic Community of Lisbon, Portugal
  

Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim (in the name of God the most gracious the most merciful).

In the name of God, the one God, the Creator of the Universe, the God of Abraham, the God of Ishmail, the God of Isaac, the God of Moses and Aaron, the God of David and Solomon, the God of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ and the God of Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon all these noble Prophets and Messengers.

Dear Brothers and Sisters

Assalamo Aleikum (May the Peace of God be upon you)

It is for me a great honour to have been invited to attend this Meeting and to address this panel. The Islamic Community in Portugal has a great respect for the Comunit� di Sant�Egidio and for the effort developed towards a better world where coexistence and peace are a reality for all and not just the privilege of a few. More personally, I was particularly moved by their involvement and vital contribution in re-establishing peace in Mozambique, my birth place and the land which welcomed my father back in 1900.

I have been invited to share in the discussion of the question "What Islam for Europe?". My perspective is that of a Portuguese Muslim. As such, it is perhaps a little too much grounded in the specificities of the situation of Muslims in Portugal, where Muslims are a relatively recent, small and well integrated community; where most Muslims, originating from the former Portuguese colonies in Africa, were already conversant with Portuguese language and culture, and where the majority are Portuguese nationals. The fact that the settlement of Muslims in Portugal following decolonization coincided with a process of democratization after the revolution of 1974; with the rapid transformation of Portuguese society and economy, further accelerated by the accession to the Common Market and to the European Union; and with a period of cultural openness, in which the Portuguese were themselves searching for new senses of collective identity with which to assume a new post-imperial place in Europe and the world, at the very time when globalization was redefining the meanings of national cultures and identities, all this made for what was perhaps, in the European context, a rather particular experience for the first generation of Muslims in Portugal. Today though, and as Portugal rapidly becomes a country of immigration, the Muslim community is not only growing and expanding with the second generation of Portuguese born Muslims but also diversifying with the arrival of Muslim immigrants from many parts of the world, and the Portuguese experience mirrors that of other European countries.

Muslims represent today a significant religious minority of approximately 15 to 20 million citizens in Europe, mainly in France, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain where in some cases Islam is already the second largest religious community. We tend to speak of the first generation of Muslims in Europe as immigrants, usually men, searching for temporary work as a chance to improve their social and economic status, whose stay somewhat unexpectedly turned permanent as the world economic context and migration policies changed, and that it was with family regrouping and the birth of the new generation of Muslims with national citizenship in the European countries that Islam religious education and Islamic identity became a presence in Europe.

And this is true, of course for Western Europe. But as the frontiers of Europe expand eastwards and we are reminded of the shifting meanings of Europe, we should not forget the longer presence of Muslims in central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans and, of course, Turkey.

We, Muslims in Europe as well as non Muslim commentators and especially researchers on Muslim communities in Europe, also often speak of the novelty of the Muslim minority situation in Europe, and enthuse about the new challenges and opportunities this creates for Muslims and Islam. But again, we should not forget that there are longer histories of Muslim communities� experience as religious minorities, stretching back to longer or shorter periods of time, with rich and interesting historical experiences of their own, for example in South Africa, in India, in China, in the former Soviet Union, and in the United States too.

Having said that, I do think that we Muslims in Europe today, are facing a new situation, new challenges and opportunities. The older generation, carried with them the cultural baggage of their local Islams, where they did not often recognise, let alone distinguish ethnic and culturally based traditions and practices from Islamic practices. They carried their attachments to their mother countries, mother tongues, and the religious authorities and religious currents from back home. In unprecedented forms they came together to practice Islam and were confronted with the enormous variety of our ways of being Muslims, some of which they found strange, some of which they found challenging. They had to learn a deeper truth about Islam which in fact was no more than to recover what Islam had taught all along: that Islam is a universal religion, for all times and places, and which is practiced by human beings in cultural contexts where it becomes acculturated. In other words, they learned not only to live as a religious or ethnic minority, which some of them had already been born into or experienced, more importantly they learned to live with and to learn from their encounter with other culturally diverse Muslims, in situations where they were all minorities and all had to live together, pray together, build the future of their children together.

Their children and grandchildren were born and grew up in Europe, and in most countries that means that they grew up as nationals, with full citizenship rights. They grew up Portuguese, French, British, and European, and Muslim. Many have never been to what we call our countries of origin or ancestry. My generation grew up with the anxieties of assimilation, the fears of dissolution, of loss of our culture, of our traditions, of our religion. Many continue to speak of the challenge that the next generation faces of adapting. Some speak of a generation caught between cultures. I think the challenge is actually for the next generation. As we strive to bring up our sons and our daughters as Muslims, the challenge is in allowing them to find their own ways, their own negotiations of cultural and religious heritage as Muslims and Europeans. Because for them, the issue is not one of assimilation, of adaptation, but of the way that they as Europeans forge ways of being Muslims. With them, Islam is a feature of the European religious landscape, it is native to Europe. For them, Islam is not and should not have to be thought of as foreign to Europe, it is not exotic, transplanted. That means that, unlike the way some of us saw it, they do not have to think in terms of surrendering to be accepted or assimilating. To be an integral part of Europe, to be integrally Europeans and Muslims, is to recognise and understand that in fact there is no contradiction between the two. To be fully citizens is to understand and value that we are fully members of the communities, cultures and countries we live in, that we can enjoy all that is good that it has to offer, to learn all that it has to teach us, but that to be fully members, to participate fully, is also to contribute, to bring our values, our ethical principles, our religiosity to enrich the cultures and communities we make together.

Meanwhile, history continues. Other Muslims continue to arrive carrying other traditions and cultures which challenge anew. The older experience of immigration is transformed by new experiences of transnationalism, in which migrant families and attachments span different countries and migrants fully participate and articulate in their lives the cultures of different countries and contexts. Nation-states are being transformed by processes of economic globalization, national cultures and communities by cultural forms of globalization. Transnationalism is perceived by some to break up national loyalties which some see as a threat. Post 11 September, Muslims come under unprecedented scrutiny and suspicion.

The truth is that it has not in fact been that long since Islam was even accepted as a true religion in the eyes of many Europeans. The II Vatican Council was a watershed in Christian Muslim relations, and we must remember how recent that historic event still is. The experience of Muslims as fellow national citizens is for the majority of Europeans even more recent still. For some European countries immigration and multiculturalism too are recent experiences, recent conquests let us call it, of civilization. These values that so many think of as European, are in fact still being learnt in many parts of Europe. Discrimination, racism, socioeconomic marginalization are still only too real situations facing Muslim men and women in European countries.

It is true that we Muslims in Europe too, and not only in Europe, are still learning, sometimes even still only beginning to learn to be tolerant of different ways of being Muslim, let alone of other religions. But we Muslims in Europe, and especially the new generation of European Muslims have as the very condition of being Muslim, the realities of diversity, freedom of religion, and minority religious status. As the new generations grow up, and are educated, they will explore the religious traditions of Islam in the light of their situation. Islam, we believe, is a way of life Divinely revealed to the Prophet Muhammad in seventh century Arabia, but as an orientation that is universally valid, and must speak to us in each historical time and geographical context. We read the Qur�an and it speaks meaningfully to us for our time when we read it as Muslims, guided by our faith, by our traditions, evolving our methodologies, faithful to our sources but open to the questions posed by our times and contexts. This is what Muslims have done all along, as they created a world civilization and a world religion. This is what we must continue to do today. To date we have mostly sought solutions to problems of an immediate and practical nature: halal meat, prayer rooms, Islamic cemeteries, recognition of Islamic Holidays, Muslim names and marriages. An European Islamic culture will evolve with the formulation of new answers, but to questions that we are only still beginning even to formulate. When they come, there will be answers generated here, in answer to questions which have arisen here; and as we learn and draw analogies from the situations and histories and experiences of Muslim communities in the Islamic heartlands and around the world, so we hope they in turn will draw from our situation, experience and answers in facing their challenges in an ever changing world.

But as we Muslims in Europe create and develop this sense of being European Muslims, establishing our institutions of religious education for the training of Imams, developing a culture of Qur�an commentary and an Islamic literature of theological discussion and philosophical reflection in the European vernaculars, consolidating a range of informed and consensual opinions about ways of living life as Muslims in the specific conditions of Europe, while remaining faithful to the unity, brotherhood and universality of the Islamic message; as we increasingly enroot Islam as European, our futures depend too, of the ways that Europe and non-Muslim Europeans open up to and recognise our presence, the legitimacy of our sense of belonging, and our contributions past and present. Christian, or as some would say, post-Christian Europe, has managed to overcome earlier prejudices and we routinely speak of Judeo-Christian civilization when talking of European culture and heritage. We must take the next step through to the recognition of the historical Muslim contribution to the making of European culture, and to the contemporary recognition of a Judeo-Islamo-Christian civilization. The soul of Europe, of which we hear so much, is Abrahamic.

In the context of this meeting, among brothers and sisters of faith, religious or not, I would like to close by returning to some fundamentals of Islam which are the fundamentals of our shared religious culture.

It is always worth remembering that Muslims worship the same God as the Jews and the Christians � Elohim, Alaha or Allah are the names of the same God. That Muslims respect the same prophets as Judaism and Christianity, from Abraham to Moses and Jesus not forgetting Noah, Job, or Isaiah. That the Virgin Mary, mother of Prophet Jesus is also much respected in Islam, to whom the Qur�an dedicates a whole chapter under the name of �Mariam�. That Islam establishes its genealogy firmly in the religious tradition of Judaism and Christianity, whose holy books it mentions.

Islam simply means �Submission to the will of God�, and in this sense, all the believers of the Abrahamic religions are Muslims (those who voluntarily submit to His will) and form part of the Umma, the Abrahamic Umma. Here I would like to quote two passages of the Qur�an:

�God will give [due] rewards to those who believe in Him and His messengers and make no distinction between any of them. God is most forgiving and merciful.� (Q.4: 152).

�The [Muslim] believers, the Jews, the Sabians, and the Christians � those who believe in God and the Last Day and do good deeds � they will have nothing to fear or to regret.� (Q.5: 69).

Islam has a history of respecting other religions and encourages religious freedom. Under the rule of Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him) Jews and Christians in Madina, the City of the Prophet, lived in perfect harmony under the Constitution which protected all fellow citizens without any discrimination. Later when Islam began to expand towards India and China, it accepted Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and Buddhism as legitimate religions. And as many of us well know during the Middle Ages, Europe, and the Iberian Peninsula in particular, were an example of tolerance and multiculturalism. This is the well-known Andaluzian experience of the Conviv�ncia.

Some argue that that historical record is less rosy than the mythical memory, which we now like to imagine. But even were it so, so have the historical records of all the religions proved a little short of their teachings. Let us see it rather as the inspiration of what we can make come true as we create an European Islam, an European Christianity, an European Judaism, or for that matter, a true European humanism which is respectful of difference and spirituality. A Europe, which is home to the religions.

Thank you once again for the invitation to address this panel and to share in your reflections on this theme.

Please allow me to end as I began, by invoking the name of God, with a short prayer from the Qur�an which is the Opening Chapter of our Holy Book:

In the name of God, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy!

Praise belongs to God, Lord of the Worlds, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy, Master of the Day of Judgement.

It is You we worship; it is You we ask for help. Guide us to the straight path: the path of those You have blessed, those who incur no anger and who have not gone astray.

May God give us all the strength to resist against what may divide us and to learn the way of harmony and peace between all men and women as members of the Human Family and children of Adam. Ameen.

Waleikum Assalam - May Peace and Blessings of God be with you all.

Thank you.