The More Islam and Muslims Were Reviled, The More They Turned to Their Religion
By Haroon Siddiqui
May/Jun 25
If God grants you a long life and the gift of seeing much of the world as a journalist – in my case, at the Toronto Star, Canada’s biggest newspaper – you don’t panic easily. You’ve seen worse. That’s what I pass on to Muslims in my memoir, My Name is Not Harry, which was recently released in the United States. Therefore, I say this to Muslim Americans despairing at the unfolding of a second Trump administration:
During tough times through the ages, Muslims have been sustained by a resiliency born of sabr, patience/perseverance, enjoined by the Quran and Prophet Muhammad (salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallam). Indeed, there’s an argument that victimhood is un-Islamic. As bad as Muslims may have had it here, they are blessed compared with the plight of many Muslims and non-Muslims around the world.
Despite the rampant Islamophobia, or because of it, Muslims have emerged with their identity intact and, at times, strengthened. This is one of the most significant yet least appreciated developments in the Muslim diaspora.
Immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, some Muslims became defensive saying things such as, “I am a Muslim but not a fundamentalist Muslim,” or, “Not a bin Laden Muslim, not a Wahhabi Muslim. . . I’m a moderate or Sufi Muslim,” even if they did not know who or what a Sufi was, or what, exactly, was meant by “moderate.”
But the more Islam and Muslims were reviled, the more they turned to their religion. This followed a historic pattern. Whenever European colonizers tried to make Muslims less Muslim, they ended up making them more so: In India, in Algeria, in Sudan, and across West Africa.
Muslims in the West are defying history in another respect. In the past, demonized minorities – such as people of Japanese, Germanic, and Italian origin – hid or downplayed their identities during tough times. For example, Mennonites in Canada disappeared from the Canadian census during and immediately after the Second World War. But today’s Muslims have remained defiantly Muslim. Muhammad is still the most popular name for male babies in North America and Europe. In Canada, unlike in the U.S. and much of Europe, the religion question is asked by the national census every 10 years, and there was no evidence of Muslims ducking the question in either 2011 or 2021.
Mosques and mosque-based institutions have become stronger with increasing membership. Politicians were the first to sniff that out and troll there for votes.
On Jumah, most mosques are overflowing, holding two or three salahs. During Ramadan, taraweeh congregations are spilling over into corridors, classrooms, gyms. Mosques no longer need to import huffaz from overseas. There are plenty of graduates of American, Canadian, British, and other European academies. So many that the 20 rakats are divided up among three or four huffaz at some mosques.
Such a rise in faith-based activity spooks some non-Muslims, especially those who consider religion as incompatible with a secular society. On the contrary, secularism guarantees freedom of religion. Any violation of that fundamental principle, especially against non-Christians, is discrimination, as has been the case in France.
So long as a religious activity is within the law, there’s no reason to panic. Indeed, it should be welcome if it leads to ethical behavior and a more humane society. Masajid are serving as food banks for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Sikh gurdwaras, for example, serve Sikhs and non-Sikhs alike at their langar, free mass feeding, including from mobile kitchens, as they did during Covid.
Muslims have also been engaging in outreach to peoples of other faiths. They raise funds for their neighborhood schools and hospitals. Their food banks serve people of all faiths and no faith.
The Rise of the Hijab
An unprecedented number of women the U.S., Canada, Britain, and parts of Europe have taken to the hijab as a marker of identity. Most of them have been born or raised in the West, and have been the first in their families to do so, often defying their parents. By proudly and fearlessly wearing their religion on their heads, they put themselves in the front lines of confronting both religious and gender discrimination. In my books, they are the real heroes of the post-9/11 world.
As Islamophobia intensified, Muslims closed ranks. Their varied theological, ethnic, linguistic, racial, cultural, and nationalist affiliations took a back seat to their pan-Islamic identity.
In Canada, where the national census-taking agency, Statistics Canada, asks citizens how they identify themselves, only 48% of Canadian Muslims cited their ethnic or cultural identity as very important, but 84% cited being Muslim and 81% cited being Canadian as their primary identity, according to the 2021 census. More Muslim, more Canadian.
Muslims have strengthened institutions that amplify their voices within the democratic framework. That has also disabused them of the notion that influential Muslim states abroad, or the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the 57-member umbrella organization of the world’s Muslims, would come to their rescue.
Greater independence has led to a greater awareness of the differing interpretations of Islam. What is permissible in India, or Pakistan, or Malaysia, isn’t in Saudi Arabia. Everything is permissible in the U.S. and especially in multicultural Canada, as long as it’s not against the law. That speaks, first, to the range of Islamic thought within the broad framework of the faith. But it also points to a greater truth, one that was enunciated in 1930’s British colonial India, not by some secular liberal but rather the rector of the orthodox madrasah Darul Uloom in Deoband, north of Delhi.
Maulana Husain Ahmed Madani opposed the 1947 division of India into a majority-Muslim Pakistan and Hindu-majority India. He argued that given the racial, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and crucially, doctrinal diversity of Muslims, there was unlikely to be consensus on the nature of a new Islamic polity. Which Islam would Pakistan have? Only an authoritarian state could define and enforce the Islamic conformity it opted for. Therefore, the best protection for peoples of faith was a democratic state that stayed neutral between faiths and advanced mutual respect. His prescience is proving itself in the West. This is good news for both Muslims and the democracies that treat all faiths equally.
Muslims have traditionally divided the world in Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb, the dominion of Islam and the dominion that didn’t permit the free practice of Islam. Muslims in the West speak, broadly, of living in Dar al-Amn, an abode of peace, compared to zones of conflict and persecution in several Muslim lands.
Muslim Americans despairing at the unfolding of a second Trump administration need to take a long-term perspective. They are doing well in the West.
“There is an astonishing disconnect between the reality of Muslims making successful inroads in the media as writers and as elected representatives and businesspeople all over Europe and North America, and the continuation of a media narrative of Muslim unwillingness to ‘integrate,’” said Jytte Klausen, a Brandeis University professor and the author of “The Cartoons That Shook the World” (Yale University Press, 2009), about the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Muslim advocacy groups have gotten stronger, learned the lingo of effective intervention in the democratic process, and have helped increase Muslim participation in elections as both voters and candidates.
Muslim American voters who sat out the presidential election in November to protest “Genocide Joe” Biden’s support of Israel over Gaza, or even voted for Donald Trump, made their voices heard. Some may now regret having voted for Trump, but that does not take away from the impact of the democratic power of their assertiveness in letting the Democratic Party know of their displeasure. The party now knows not to take the Muslim/Arab vote for granted.
It was also important that Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Andre Carson held onto their seats despite the anti-Democratic trend.
In the 2021 Canadian federal election, 28 Muslim candidates ran and 12 won. Two have held senior cabinet portfolios: Omar Alghabra and Ahmed Hussen.
In Britain, 25 Muslims were elected in last year’s election. Five pro-Palestinian independents were elected in protest against Britain’s support of Israel’s massacre in Gaza.
The mayor of London since 2016 has been Sadiq Khan. Earlier, he headed the legal-affairs committee of the Muslim Council of Britain. As a Labor Member of Parliament, he voted against Tony Blair’s draconian anti-terrorism legislation in 2005. In 2009, he was sworn in as a member of the Privy Council at Buckingham Palace on the Quran. Upon discovering that the palace had none, he left his copy there. And now, he has been knighted too.
In Scotland, Humza Yousaf became first minister in 2023, the first Muslim to lead a major U.K. party, and at 37, the youngest. In fact, he was the first Muslim to lead a democratic Western European nation. His wife, Nadia El Nakla, is a councilor in the City of Dundee, the first member of any minority elected there.
When Yousaf first entered the Scottish Parliament in 2011, he, too, took his oath on the Quran. When he was sworn in as first minister, he wore the traditional Pakistani outfit of long shirt and pantaloons. Watching him were his proud parents, including his hijab-wearing mother, Shaaista Bhutta.
In the U.S., the hotbed of Islamophobia, we are familiar with Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the House of Representatives. He took his oath of office in 2007 on a copy of the Quran owned by President Thomas Jefferson who, unlike contemporary American politicians, had bought an English translation of the Quran out of a “desire to understand Islam on its own terms, looking directly to its most sacred source.”
Less known is that Muslim Americans are a highly educated and successful minority. They are disproportionately represented in professions such as medicine, pharmacy, and engineering.
Contrast all the above with Europe where governments have tried to curb religious expression through discriminatory laws and practices while doing little to tackle entrenched discrimination.
Unfortunately, this is the path the French-speaking province of Quebec in Canada is following. It has banned the hijab, the Sikh turban, and the Jewish kippah, from the government and publicly funded institutions. But the law is now being challenged before the Supreme Court of Canada, and on January 25, the court signaled that it would grant leave to appeal against the 2019 law.
As Martin Luther King, Jr., used to say, the battle for quality never ends. You have to be at it all the time.
Democracy belongs to those who participate in it.
Haroon Siddiqui is the Editorial Page Editor Emeritus and former columnist of Toronto Star, Canada’s largest newspaper. His memoir, My Name is Not Harry, is available on Amazon and Barnes &Noble. Siddiqui.canada@gmail.com.