Western Muslims and the Future of Islam

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 religioninto 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-befaithful 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 bedefined 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., This text is wise and revelatory. Ramadan seeks to liberate Muslims so that they understand their faith not as a rigid rule book, but as an inseparable companion with whom you constantly converse.

Tariq Ramadan is Professor of Philosophy at the College of Geneva and Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. He is the author of numerous books, including To Be a European Muslim. In 2000 he was named one of Time's 100 most important innovators for the 21st century.