In a Western world suddenly acutely interested in Islam, one
question has been repeatedly heard above the din: where are the
Muslim reformers? With this ambitious volume, Tariq Ramadan firmly
establishes himself as one of Europe's leading thinkers and one
of Islam's most innovative and important voices.
As the number of Muslims living in the West grows, the question of
what it means to be a Western Muslim becomes increasingly important
to the futures of both Islam and the West. While the media are
focused on radical Islam, Ramadan claims, a silent revolution is
sweeping Islamic communities in the West, as Muslims actively seek
ways to live in harmony with their faith within a Western context.
French, English, German, and American Muslims--women as well as
men--are reshaping their religion
into one that is faithful to the principles of Islam, dressed in
European and American cultures, and definitively rooted in Western
societies.
Ramadan's goal is to create an independent Western Islam,
anchored not in the traditions of Islamic countries but in the
cultural reality of the West. He begins by offering a fresh reading
of Islamic sources, interpreting them for a Western context and
demonstrating how a new understanding of universal Islamic
principles can open the door to integration into Western societies.
He then shows how these principles can be put to practical use.
Ramadan contends that Muslims can-indeed must-be
faithful to their principles while participating fully in the civic
life of Western secular societies. Grounded in scholarship and bold
in its aims, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam offers a
striking vision of a new Muslim Identity, one which rejects once
and for all the idea that Islam must be
defined in opposition to the West.
Ramadan has started to pave out the road to reform and changes in the understanding of Islam in Muslim communities in the West...his pioneer work might be a catalyst for further reform in its brave demystification of the common notion of sharia as divine and of the classical scholars of Islam as more or less inerrant human beings, rather than individuals subjected to cultural and individual influences like all the rest of us. Anne Sofie Roald, Contemporary Islam
Tariq Ramadan, Jahrgang 1962, ist ein Schweizer Philosoph und Islamwissenschaftler ägyptischer Herkunft. Derzeit lehrt er am St. Antony's College in Oxford.
