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The practice of Islam, like the practice of other religions, responds to the cultural context of the countries where it takes root. Scholars discussed the many faces of Islam and addressed Islam’s intersection with democracy in a day-long conference, “Democracy and Global Islam,” at UC Berkeley on Friday.  

“In a world where people travel and immigrate, we have a marketplace not only of goods but of ideas,” said panelist Oliver Roy, research associate at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris. In many countries, especially where Islam is a minority religion as in China, India and Western Europe, there is a disconnect between the dominant culture and Islam. However, where Islam dominates, as in Afghanistan, “people don’t differentiate between religion and culture,” Roy said.  

So in France, where they account for just 5 to 10 percent of the population, Muslims may have difficulty finding halal meat; they may change their dietary practice accordingly. Second generation Muslims may further modify the way they practice Islam.  

The issue of whether women wear the veil is a cultural one, one panelist said. It is actually a question of what is considered dressing with modesty in a particular cultural setting.  

In France, the government banned students from wearing religious symbols to school, purportedly to encourage secularism in education. This impacted young women who wear the veil and inadvertently resulted in the establishment of private Muslim schools. “Rather than helping integration, people view the state antipathetically,” Roy said.  

Abdoulaye Kane, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Florida spoke to the question of the “Africanization of Islam,” which, he said, is not unlike the Africanization of Christianity. Modifications take place in the setting to which a religion is transported. One reason Islam transforms in Sub-Saharan Africa is because “They don’t speak Arabic (and) Koranic study is low,” Kane said.  

Discrimination plays a role as well in keeping mainstream and African practices separate. In France, Middle Eastern Muslims “don’t want to be guided by African Imams,” Kane said.  

The Senegalese form of Sufism is so distanced from that practiced in America that when Senegalese Muslims living in New York have a question on spiritual practice, they won’t go to a neighboring mosque for the answer, but call or e-mail home to Senegal. African forms of Islam, as well as African forms of Christianity, are contested outside of Africa, Kane said.  

Americans understand little about their Muslim neighbors; they don’t separate the Middle East and Islam, Roy said, noting, “There are new trends that have nothing to do with the Middle East. To understand Islam, one needs to look outside the Middle East.”  

Hatem Bazian, lecturer in Near Eastern and ethnic studies at UC Berkeley and adjunct professor of religion at St. Mary’s College, Moraga agreed: “There’s an overemphasis on the Middle East because of U.S. geopolitical interests; we are addicted to oil.”  

Many Americans would be surprised to learn that African American Muslim converts make up the largest percentage of Muslims in the United States, 35 to 40 percent, Bazian said. Indo-Pakistanis make up the second-largest group, with Muslim of Middle East origin as the third largest.  

Islam is growing in the Bay Area. In 1985, there were three mosques in the area and now there are 50. “They’re not sleeping cells for Al Qaeda. They’ve sprung up for Silicon Valley engineers,” Bazian said.  

While many Silicon Valley Muslims are living the American dream with million-dollar homes, others, particularly Iraqis and Yemenis, may have achieved a lower level of economic success, Bazian said, underscoring the need to understand the diverse nature of American Muslims.  

Globalism also means that the influences of the outside world flood into the nations where Islam dominates. In Amman, Jordan, for example, Mark LaVine, history professor at UC Irvine, found ads for cable TV’s “Sex in the City” in the Mecca Mall. And in Iraq, Syria and Morocco, LaVine found a number of “religiously inspired” Islamic heavy metal bands.  

LaVine told another story about globalization: sitting in an Egyptian hotel room, he was watching an Islamic preacher on TV talk about why adultery is bad; there were stock quotes running at the bottom of the screen. Tongue in cheek, LaVine summed up the process of Islamic globalization: “People go back and forth to Europe and their home countries, not just to bomb buildings, but to bring back heavy metal music.”  

When it came to discussing Islam and democracy, participants agreed that democracy has little to do with the religion of Islam. Democracy is more closely related to the culture of a particular nation.  

Should western-style democracy be transplanted to the Islamic Middle East? “The idea is not to impose democracy,” Roy said. Rather, nations such as the United States can promote democracy by withdrawing support for authoritarian regimes, he said.  

Forcing people to hold elections can bring the opposite of a desired outcome. “Mr. Bush is the best recruiter (for extremist movements) and Bin Laden is his sergeant,” said Nadia Yassine, spokesperson for the al-Adi wal-Ihsan (Justice and Charity) Islamist Movement in Morocco. Yassine said the best way to bring democracy is for developed nations to assist in providing education and eradicating poverty. The United States’ way is adopting “democracy Nescafe—quickly made. We have to have real democracy,” she said.  

Defining democracy in terms of elections is oversimplifying the concept. Elections as imposed in Iraq, where a large segment of the population refused to participate, is not democracy, said Saba Mahmood, professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Anthropology. On the other hand developing women’s mosques in Egypt, grounded in traditional Islam, empower women and therefore should be seen as institutions that promote democracy.  

Islam should not be viewed as a political problem, something to watch and to fix. “The main problem is that America follows its geo-political interests,” said Gunter Mulack, ambassador at the German Foreign Office in Berlin and the Minister’s Commissioner for Germany’s Dialogue with the Islamic World. “America is responsible for the negative outfall of its policies. You cannot impose democracy. You cannot export American democracy to the Middle east.”  

Conference sponsors included the Institute of Governmental Studies, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, French Department, Graduate Theological Union, Institute of European Studies, International and Area Studies, The Townsend Center for the Humanities, French Studies Program and Insitut d’Etudes de Sécurité de l’Union Européene.