Islam meets with the West

Islam is a beautiful religion full of love and compassion for humans but is often

viewed negatively in the West. As Imran Ahmad mentions in his book, The Perfect

Gentleman, “True Islam is culture neutral. It really doesn’t matter that the Prophet was an

Arab; he could have been a Native American, or a Chinese man. What matters is the core

message of Islam, which is universal brother (and sister) hood, peace, tolerance, forgiveness,

justice, human rights, compassion, charity, humility, and care of the environment”.(Ahmad

32) Since the core values of Islam have often been ignored due to factors, including but not

limited to flawed interpretation of the religious texts by the Ulema, certain sectarian groups

promoting their own interpretations, and the rise of terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda,

this dilution has negatively affected the religion’s image in the Western world. This writing,

seeks to explore the process of growing up as a Muslim in the West, while searching for

answers to whether the Western society is generally accepting towards other religious groups

and ethnicities or not. Furthermore, using the “book “The Perfect Gentleman” by Imran

Ahmad as a primary source, also will be analysing whether Said’s concept of orientalism is

still relevant in the contemporary world or not and how it affects the Muslim community.

The book Perfect Gentleman is a memoir about a Pakistani man who is the first-

generation immigrant in England. He moved at a very tender age along with his family to

Europe where he had to encounter various situations due to the label of a Pakistani-Muslim.

He talks about how living in a new country especially a supreme country than yours lead to

discrimination in many paths of life. He shared an incident in the book when he was very

young and his family was looking for a place to live but they could not find a place to live not

because they could not afford to pay the rent but, because of the reason that at that time

racism was on its peak and wherever they tried to go people refused to let them stay by

making various excuses such as they do not allow babies at home. However, the main reason
behind the refusal was based on their country of origin and religion. It can be seen proved

from this incident that since the past two decades, the western media has started to show a

great amount of news related to Islam. Events such as 9/11 attacks, Rushdie Affair,

controversy related to scarfs had led to the spotlight of media on the people following Islam.

Most of the stories shown on the mass media show the western audience about the

stereotypes related to the Muslims, from the terrorism to the religious obsessions Muslims

have. The main factor which influences the views of the Westerners about Islam is the role

played by the mass media. As a result, it is very significant to comprehended that the

technique and the way the media uses to portray Islam leads to the shared stereotypes

westerners have related to the religion and how they apply them in their daily lives. In this

case, they applied it by not giving Ahmad’s family a place to stay even though at that time

Ahmad was too young, but the people were too insensitive due to the influence of the media.

Here, the question arises that why is media so insensitive about Islam and why it portrays

Islam in a negative way? The answer is very simple and that is “Islamophobia”. Islamophobia

is outlined as “unfounded hostility towards Islam” (Trust 4) and it is also “a form of racism as

well as unfounded fear of Islam” (Marranci105). There is no consensus yet about what

Islamophobia is yet a debate about it is still going on. According to Zaki, the debate is quite

understandable and can be said that Islamophobia is “endemic in the European psyche” (Zaki

4). Apparently, it can be understood that Zaki sees Europe as a contributing factor for the rise

of Islamophobia. He further asserts that Islam has been given a particular treatment as Islam

“poses a challenge to the West in a way that no other belief system in the world does” (ibid

5). This concept of Islamophobia lays the basis for the hostility towards the Muslims and

shows why Muslims are usually disregarded by the western media and why western media

shows a pessimistic side of Islam. Imran Ahmad further talks about the racism based on the

religion. He says, that how could the Christians be so ruthless towards the Muslims when it is
so clear that both the religions are so similar to each other in many ways and even the Islamic

Holy book says “Oh, we do believe in Jesus and Moses, Noah, Abraham and the other Bible

characters.” (Ahmad 40) This shows that Islam teaches Muslims to respect other religions

and believe in other Prophets as well. When the sacred book says to believe in Christianity

then how could the Muslims be against the Westerners in any way? Or how could the

Muslims attack them? This believe is further strengthened by the renowned western scholars

Shadid and Van Koningsveld (1995) who have argued that “there is no such thing as a

Muslims threat because Muslims carrying out any sort of violent activities in the West is

totally a myth.” The word myth shows that Muslims are neither involved in any suspicious

activities or have ever been involved in any act of negativity towards the West. However, the

answer towards the racism is simple and that is based on the linkage of Edward Said’s

concept of Orientalism with Islam. Orientalism has an unavoidable link to Colonialism. The

post-colonial states are continually seen as the 'other’ so, even if the people from the

developing nations do an exclusive work, still those nations work is exposed to negligence

and discrimination. Moreover, in some instances the developing nations (in this case

Pakistan) are blamed as well for example, sub-continent- theft of inventions and ideas . There

must be a renaissance of the world where the so named 'developing' states need to declare

themselves to better summits and start more strongly the decolonization process. No doubt

that the East is richer in history, literature and culture but by observing at where the East is

led in this century with being a marketplace for cheap labor, raw materials and natural

resources, I am very sure that if the process of decolonization happens then it will be very

successful. Imran Ahmad in his book also supports this claim and says that this concept of

Orientalism does exist considering the Western supremacy even if a Pakistani-Muslim wants

to blend in the western society and fully embrace it.

 Ahmad shares one incident where he started to question his beliefs about Islam and

found it too restrictive after living in the West for many years but then he shares that living in

a western world provided him with an open mind and freedom to question is beliefs. He

shares that at that moment he started to question everything and started to study the religion

in depth and that was the time when he found the answers to many of the questions he had at

that time. He says, “I study Islam some more. So many Islamic rules are clearly for our own

good. The prohibition against alcohol is an obvious one and is also adopted by some

Christian churches. Alcohol is an addictive drug-I have seen the harm it does.” (Ahmad 20)

At this point Imran is explaining how adopting the sayings of Holy book will help us and the

reason why we have been stopped from several things such as alcohol and cigarette is mainly

due because “Qur’an prohibits you from doing anything that you know to be harmful to your

body, so that clearly includes smoking.” (Ahmad 21) Moreover, at this point Imran again lays

a similarity between Islam and Christianity as by saying that some churches have also

prohibited alcohol. This shows that the main point of the writer is to make the audience

understand that all religions preach a similar belief. Thus, the author clears out that it does

not make sense to link orientalism exist with Islam when we know that both the religions are

similar in different ways and follow the same prophet, Jesus.

Islam is quite often associated with “Jihad” “terrorism”, but the people do not explore

the religion in depth and just pick up the literal meaning instead of finding out in what

capacity is Jihad allowed in Islam. Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, talks about how strictly the

violence is prohibited in the religion, Islam.“Not all Muslims become involved in acts of

violence. Yet all might be held culpable. This is because that section of Muslim--in fact, the

majority--who are not personally involved, neither disown those members of their

community who are engaged in violence, nor even condemn them. In such a case, according

to the Islamic Shariah itself, if the involved Muslims are directly responsible, the uninvolved
Muslims are also indirectly responsible. (Wahiduddin 91)” Even though, violence is

condemned by the Muslims it is still thought by the western world that Muslims are involved

in it. Imran Ahmad also shared an incident where he faced racism based on the linkage of

Islam with negative words such “breeding ground for terrorism”. He says that he was offered

a great job, so he thought to gift his mother a car by taking loan from the bank as he had the

job letter in hand and would not be denied for the loan. However, he says that he got a call

from the bank and they called him for a meeting where the bank officer denied him for the

loan without any clear argument/reasoning and says that “The job doesn’t start until

September” even though Imran says that “ I demonstrate that I’ve got the money to make the

payments easily until then”. (Ahmad 30) This shows that living in a western world brings

benefits but with no doubt, it has got lots of challenges for the Muslim immigrants. As we

can see from the incident that although Islam thoroughly and strictly condemns any kind of

violence and does not consider the Muslims who spread violence as a part of themselves but

still, westerns make assumptions based on Islamophobia and punishes Muslims in different

paths of life. Imran Ahmad says he heard many times how backward Muslims are and how

Islam was born in Saudi Arabia however, Islam was born in 610 AD and Saudi Arabia was

born in 932 AD then we can clearly say that those ignorant people were only 1322 years off.

This shows that there is wide misinterpretation and misquotation in the West regarding Islam

since they do not even know when Islam was born and from where it started. This clearly

signifies that it does gets hard for the Muslims to survive in the western world who do not get

into the depth of the religion Islam and see that if there was no Islam then there would be no

renaissance and no development without the role played by the greatest Muslim scholars such

as Ibn-e- Sina.

Imran Ahmad further talks about how it was so challenging to grow up as Muslim in

the western world. He says that once you step into a world foreign to you then you need to
understand and blend into their customs and culture. He shares that even though at times he

felt like he was an outsider to the new world he was in but then he started to have more

understanding of the culture which led him to have a sense of ownership for the foreign soil.

However, he says that even though he had the sense of ownership for the new country and he

started to take pride in, but the people still did not stop to judge on the basis of religion. Many

westerners have an image that the Muslims are narrow minded ,strict people and for sure

some do put this blame on to the religion. But, this image of Islam has been told by the

western media and people have started to believe this one side of the story as Esposito (1992)

talks about the danger of single story concept and how telling one side of the story leads to a

negative image of Islam in the Western World. Therefore, here the media plays the role of

telling just one side of the story. Imran Ahmad condemns this narrow-minded claim by the

western media and shares a time where his family promoted dialogues and debates and it was

not due to the fact that they are vital for the human nature but in fact, these are the

instructions laid by Islam. This shows that the myths about Islam such as being narrow

minded, no freedom of speech etc can be completely overruled after seeing an example of

normal family life of a Muslim family who always paid great focus on dialogues and freedom

of their children.

Moreover, some western media and especially the family of Imran Ahmad’s lover

questioned him about the rights of women in Islam as it was always portrayed that women

cover up their bodies, they had to listen to their husband etc. However, this is not what true

Islam is as Western media is just looking up a few generic examples and not going into the

depth of the religion. Here we can see what the prophet (p.b.h) has to say about the rights of

the women, “It is true that you have certain rights with regard to your women, but they too

have rights over you.” (Muhammad, 610AD). This shows how important is it to consider

women as your partner as men and women both have equal rights over each other. Moreover,
before Islam was spread a man could do as many marriages as he would like and could

divorce any of his wife whenever he wanted to. However, after the spread of Islam women as

wives have been entitled to respect, love, devotion from a man who can go up to only four

marriage thus, bringing security on the end of women. This shows that it would be unfair to

consider that the rights of women are deemed by the Muslims.

Furthermore, Tjan Tjoe,speaks about the fact that there are no differences between

men and all humans are same and they all should live in peace and love. However, when it

comes to concept of East and West everything changes and the basic idea of equality of men

completely alters. She then tries to explore the reason for this hostility and then tries to make

a statement that these differences are because of “two traditional, conventional and

pigeonholes from either of which the one tries to misunderstand the other”. (Tjoe 142) Thus,

this clearly indicates that the differences are because of a few people who try to promote the

constrained relations and further create misunderstandings. This can be corroborated with the

example laid by Imran Ahmad who says that Christianity and Islam are similar as both of

them believe and respect Jesus as their Prophet, but the differences are laid by the people

which are built over many years. It is a mere difference of color and the fact that most

Muslims are brown thus not a part of white supremacy which is the main reason for the

Westerners to no not accept Muslims as an equal part of their community. This again answers

the questions that why are the Muslims dominated by the west and what makes them

misrepresent the Muslims. The answer is simple and that is the lust for power.

Furthermore, Islam is also misunderstood by the West due to the concept of

fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is connected with extremism however, when the Islamic

teachings are studied in depth then it can be cleared out that Islam does believe in

fundamentalists but also, we get to know what kind of fundamentals that are. The basic

fundamental of Islam is peace as it based on the word “Islam” which also means peace.
However, the people who are seen as fundamentalists cannot be classified as Muslims as they

have deviated from the religion and they are also quite away from being called as Muslims

since they do not follow the principles of Islam. Therefore, it is quite unfair to associate this

group with the name “Muslims” as it is usually done by the western media in order to create

fear amongst the general public. It is worth noting that Islam is a religion which once ruled

the world not only in terms of the size of its territory but also in terms of technology,

innovation, since and trade. For a period of eight hundred years the Arab Muslims ruled the

biggest empire until the 15 century however, like other empires Muslim empire had a decline
th

as well. However, throughout this time in history the biggest rival of the Muslims were the

Europeans who had embraced Christianity and from the very start they always plotted to

distort the teachings of Islam. Therefore, this incident from the history can be seen as the

basis for the anti-Muslims practices by the West and the stance of media and people against

the believers of Islam.

Adding to this 9/11, 2001 changed the world in numerous ways. One country where

the impact of 9/11 was felt promptly and most rigorously was Pakistan. The attacks in

Manhattan, New York, got the Pakistani madrasahs under the limelight because of their

unproven associations to the global militant Muslim groups. The United States authorized

commission report for 9/11 labelled Madrasas in Pakistan as the “incubators for violent

extremism” (9/11 Commission Report 2004). A significant number of authors both Western

(Singer 2001) and Pakistani (Haqqani 2002), associated madrasas with violence. Some

accused them as “factories of jihad” (Sareen 2005) and others called them as “weapons of

mass instruction” (Bell 2007) condemning Pakistani madrasas of generating activist forces

like Talibans (Terrorist groups). Reforms in Madrassa thus became United States nationwide

concern regarding security. Voices of allegations and protests were elevated against the

Pakistani madaris from the Western groups calling upon the government of Pakistan to
control and regulate the activities of these institutes. However, there was still great ignorance

by the west even in this incident who were not able to answer these questions. were there

enough evidences to name Pakistan as the breeding ground for terrorism? were madrassas

actually promoting violence around the world? Were the reforms in Islamic Education in

Pakistan successful enough? This shows that the western media always portrays Muslims as

the agent of terrorism but lacks evidences to prove itself which leads to the misrepresentation

of Muslims overall. Also, it can be seen from the perspective and experiences of Imran

Ahmad who talks about how he was sometimes called as a “terrorist” after the 9/11 attacks

due to his physical appearance as a Muslim. This shows that without any proof the Muslims

were ridiculed on the basis of religion or even if any Muslim was involved then why would

be the entire community ridiculed due to the do’s of just a group of people?

It can be finally concluded that it is sometimes quite difficulty for the Muslims to live in the
western world and adopt it properly because of a group of people who never consider
Muslims as a part of themselves and always consider them as “other”. It can also be seen that
orientalism does exist in connection with Islam because Westerners always consider
themselves superior and would never consider another religion to take their position which
also lays foundation for “Islamophobia”. Islam is seen as negative in the eyes of the
westerners due to the negative image portrayed by media and of course, without any doubt
we can say that media does have a very strong impact on the lives of the viewers which
therefore, has a direct impact on the lives of the Muslim immigrants in the western world.
Finally, it can be said: “there are two groups of people around the world- millions of
peaceful, non-violent, law-abiding Muslims both in the US, UK, Europe, Asia, Africa and
beyond, who see Islam as the source of their identity as a source of spiritual fulfilment of
hope, solace and then there are haters and bigots out there who want to push the clash of
civilizations further, divide all of us into them, us, ours and theirs. Therefore, let’s not
legitimize their divisions and hate. It is important to trust those Muslims who you know, who
you've met and who want you to hear the peaceful message of Islam as they believe it to be
taught to the majority of Muslims. The Islam of peace, compassion, and mercy. The Islam of
the Quran not of al-Qaeda. The Islam of 1.6 billion people across the world”.(Mehdi Hasan)
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