23 Aug European ‘No-Go’ Zones for Non-Muslims Proliferating “Occupation Without Tanks or Soldiers”
In a lecture presented to a young Muslim audience at the University of Western Sydney on Friday 30 March 2001, the prominent Australian Muslim leader Dr Zachariah Matthews was discussing the role of ‘migration’ (Hijrah) in the ‘phases’ of dawah (i.e. the stages involved in proclaiming and establishing Islam). One of the aspects of establishing Islam through migration, he argued, is to secure local sovereignty, as modeled by the Muslim community when they migrated from Mecca to Medina. Matthews taught:
“The Hijrah [‘migration’] to Madinah provided the Islamic Dawah with one very important thing, land, or a territory over which Muslims could have political sovereignty. The Hijrah made the Muslims Masters of their own internal affairs, external relations and matters relating to war and peace.” (The Hijrah: a necessary phase in the Dawah)
What does it mean in practice when migrant communities establish local territory in which Muslims are masters of their own internal affairs? Is the theological principle of establishing local sovereignty the ideological wedge which is so successfully subverting multiculturalism throughout the lands of migration?
This article by Soeren Kern suggests that the answer to this question may well be ‘Yes’.
Mark Durie is the founding director of the Institute for Spiritual Awareness, a Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and a Senior Research Fellow of the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology.
No Comments