I recently read with interest an article in The Sydney Morning Herald Good Weekend Magazine, entitled ‘Through Islamic Eyes’ (1 Dec 2001). It was a very enlightening article, but not in the way intended by the author. In fact, it shed little light on the nature of Islam but spoke volumes about life in today’s Australia.
One thing I found striking was the massive impact of modern secular philosophy on the younger members of the group of six people interviewed. Time and again they expressed opinions which reflected, not traditional Muslim values or ways of thinking, but habits of thought popular in the West. The impact of the Australian education system—and our culture at large—has obviously been profound.
Perhaps that in itself is not surprising, but what I found particularly significant is that these same young people still call themselves Muslims. Despite not practising the religion nor subscribing to its tenets—one guy called himself a ‘secular Muslim’—they still want to give themselves the name. Sheikh Khalil Chami from the Islamic Welfare Centre in Lakemba was not very impressed with this approach, but his opinion was rather lost in the enthusiasm not to see Islam in terms of a commitment to specific beliefs about God and the world.
Why do these young people not label themselves as something other than Muslim? It seems to me that at least part of the reason is that modern thought, as a specific ideological commitment, is barely detectable to members of Australian society. It somehow doesn’t cause a big enough blip on our radar screens. Or, like an almost invisible elephant in the room with us, it impinges on our lives in highly significant ways, yet we can barely see it, even when we try.
After all, this approach to life hardly even has a name! What do you call it? Modernism? Enlightenment thought? Western liberalism? Secular humanism? All of these labels may be technically correct, but they don’t really pin down the meaning. Most Australians wouldn’t even have heard of them. And without a clear label, it is hard to be aware of something’s existence. Thus, young Muslims growing up in Australia can fail to perceive that they may have changed ideological allegiances. After all, if you’re not a Christian and you’re not a Buddhist or a member of some other religious group, then you must still be a Muslim. What else is there? The elephant remains invisible.
I suspect the interviewer herself may have been oblivious to the elephant. On the one hand, she was clearly trying to give a voice to an often-neglected part of the Australian community. But almost every question she asked had the effect of pushing Islam into the box created by modern liberal ideology—all religions are basically the same; fundamentalism (whatever that is) is bad; everyone subscribes to ‘international human rights’; and a few other dogmas. The elephant was squashing the interviewees into a corner without the interviewer realising it was happening.
The problem seems to be that this secular view of the world has become ‘normal’ to the point of not being noteworthy. It is in fact a very particular view of the world, but this is never brought to the surface. When anything abnormal happens—such as on September 11—the finger is pointed at the ‘not so normal’ phenomena, such as the religious worldview. It just isn’t acceptable to suggest that the ‘normal’ view, the cultural consensus, may not be so innocent.
Christians will need to point out the invisible elephant—make it visible! Our first challenge, however, is not to be swept along into ‘normal’ secularism ourselves. We need to see the flaws in what most people accept as reality.
Other articles of related interest
Kategoria #22—‘Of truth, tolerance and tyranny’ by Philip Miles
