Muslims in the West: Identity crisis

Rasha Almaqaleh

 I saw recently an interesting TV program on a Tunisian channel on teaching Tunisian children who live in France the Arabic language. The presenter interviewed on one of Paris streets an Arabic teacher along with a group of Tunisian children, aged between 6 and 10 years old. They talked about how the Arabic community in France is keen to teach the children Arabic. At the end of the interview, the presenter asked one of the children this question: “what did you learn today in the Arabic lesson?” the child answered: “we learned to say in Arabic I’m Tunisian and I reside in Paris.”

As a Yemeni residing in the West with a child who is also a resident, and as I am keen to teach my son his native language, I was impressed and I thought to myself how beautiful and important that these children learn their mother tongue despite their "residence" in a western country. However, when the presenter said at the end of the program that those children represent “ the fourth generation of Tunisians in France”, I was shocked to the core!

The reason behind my shock is that those children are beyond being just "residents" in France as they were born in France to parents who were also born in France to grandparents born also in France! After all that, they just consider, or taught to consider, themselves "residents" in Paris while in fact they are French citizens of Tunisian descent!

Generally speaking, Arab communities in the Western countries suffer from a real ‘identity crisis’. On one hand, they want to prosper in Western countries and benefit from their welfare, human rights and justice. On the other hand, they spare their feelings of belonging for their countries of origin, generation after generation and not for the countries they chose to settle in.

They feel scared so they often live in isolated communities where they maintain their customs and traditions and avoid integration into their new societies. This crisis is clearly reflected on their children; many of them are confused and they are not sure where to place their true affiliation. That is why sometimes it is possible to recruit some of them by radicals.

The problem is that Arabs never imagine a reverse scenario; what if many Western citizens migrated to our countries and settled there for a couple of generations, but they refused to mix with us though we are the original inhabitants of the land and they had the citizenship of our country and spoke our language. How would we feel about them being afraid of our culture?  We would reject their existence because we feel they rejected ours even though they live in our country, and this is the argument used by the far right in European countries. They always scream that Muslims can never be integrated and that they always have a ‘culture of fear of the other’ and this is right to a large extent.

Mohammad Shahrur

In general, the reasons behind that fear are religious. We, Muslims, are afraid of freedom and our fear is to some extent understandable. Generation after generation, Muslims were born and raised under the pressure of authoritarian regimes and unfair social rules. Under that pressure, many of the so-called ‘Islamic’ concepts haven been formed.
 I strongly believe that Muslims will not be able to get rid of that continuous feeling of fear unless they make real religious reforms, such as those advocated by many contemporary Islamic thinkers, such as  Dr.Muhammad Shahrur.

Overall, I am all for teaching immigrants’ children their native languages. I see that as a right and as a duty. However, it shouldn’t come at the expense of their sense of belonging to the land they were born and raised in. It’s important that immigrants everywhere around the world know that immigration should build a bridge to connect different cultures instead of placing barriers between them.