“Scholarly Islam” and “Everyday Islam”: Reflections on the Debate over Integration of the Muslim Minority in India and Western Europe1

Abstract

The debate on the integration of a Muslim minority community in a non-Muslim majoritarian-national context has often been conducted, from an Islamic point of view, in terms of a single discourse of compatibility, or non-compatibility of Islam, with the given majoritarian-national ethos. This paper rejects such a discourse and reflects on the role of Islam(s) in the construction of “self” and “other” and its attended consequences in terms of integration, both in India and in Western Europe. It does so by underlying the plural character of Islam in its two broad dimensions: Scholarly Islam and Everyday Islam. Within the limitation of structure of nation state that burdens the minority community with the idea of proving loyalty, the paper shows that politics of Islamic representation of “self” and “other” primarily belong to the domain of Scholarly Islam. It then goes on to demonstrate the variation in the (Scholarly) Islamic representation of “other” depending upon the context, while asserting the superiority of “Islamic self” in any given situation. By taking examples from contemporary Indian and West European history, the paper concludes how the bi-polarity, totalizing and homogenizing features of Scholarly Islam, including its liberal facet, hamper the prospect of integration, while the multiple, fuzzy, non-ideological character of Everyday Islam promotes the prospect of social and political integration in the society.