The Red House Center for Culture and Debate and the French Institute in Bulgaria have organized these days a discussion on the challenges that Muslims face within secular European societies and the differences between Islam in Europe and its Balkan versions. Prominent political analyst and historian of the Islam Rachid Benzine’s report was among the major ones at the event. It was entitled: Islam in Europe: Singular or Plural?

In an interview for RB we asked Mr. Benzine what his stance was and why media defined him as a researcher of liberal Islam:

“I don’t see myself as a thinker of liberal Islam, media like to put labels like conservative, integrational or liberal Islam. In my opinion many people think the liberal Islam means Islam that adapts towards the culture and society it develops within. That is Islam of freedom to me. Otherwise I am a historian and an anthropologist, who studies the Koran’s texts from the 7^th c.”

A sort of a market of Islam has been forming over the past few years in the context of interaction between local and global Islam. Everyone is called on to make a choice in this market, Rachid Benzine underlines. In France this interaction reveals the crisis of postcolonial thinking that treats religions with political tools and security measures. A feature of France is that it does have a problem with religion, rooted in its specific history. The society is traditionally secular and the usage of other religions’ accessories in everyday public life is irritating.

“It is essential to research thorough the historical stages of Islam’s development ever since the period of its creation. We see many wrong ideas on the core of this religion across Europe today and we have to open people’s eyes into reality. Islam is a product of certain context: time, place and a society where it develops.”

Young people turning fanatic, terror and victims over the past years have resulted in the even more dangerous politicization of religions and many Muslims must find excuses now, as if their religion turns them into potential terrorists. How did we end up there?

“It is true that a sort of a fear of Islam and the Islamization of Europe is occurring right now, also seen as a threat to the so-called values of the West. This fear causes blindness and many fail to see that the majority of Muslims show an attitude which is more like secular, regarding their religious practice and that they themselves are trapped in all that is happening internationally.”

Political talks on Islam across Europe come as a result from the colonial and postcolonial experience of the West. Then what is the place of the Balkans with their centuries-old history of coexistence between different religions, including Islam?

“It is time this postcolonial Europe to learn something from the Balkans, where Islam has existed for many centuries with coexistence practices established. Unfortunately we have been witnessing the emerging of new fears across the Balkans lately and in my opinion those come from the difficult implementation of the united Europe project. The Islam scarecrow is the mirror reflection of the difficulties in the political building of Europe and the constant crises that it has been facing. It is much easier to defend who we are NOT when we don’t know exactly who we are…”

According to Rachid Benzine Europe has to have the key role in the solving of the Islam’s global crisis. “Europe holds the key, it has to be that dream, hope and utopia that must replace the negative one, offered by Daesh.” The European-Mediterranean space is the future of another Islam, where young people would find the pathos of self-determination in life, not in death.

In conclusion, Benzine quotes Abbe Pierre, a catholic priest, thinker and humanist who said: “A civilization is assessed by the quality of the anger’s subject which it can offer to its youth.” Daesh offers one product in the anger market and now it is our turn to offer something else, a type of anger, leading to creation and not to destruction.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev