Humanities & Social ScienceI have a new sublog over at Talk Islam. My first post, A wrong track for Western Islam?:
Thabet mentioned the spread of Salafism among British Muslims. Of course most of you know that North Indian Islam has an indigenous form 'reformist' Islam, Deobandism, which is not in intents all that different from Salafism. But the majority of North Indians are 'traditionalist' Barelvis, a variant of Hanafism. Despite these historical precedents there is a tendency among non-Arab Western Muslims to 'Arabicize' their Islam, or at least reform it so as to expunge local accretions & interpretations (e.g., the veneration of Sufis and the recourse toward folk religious practices such as amulets). This is natural, when age old customs & traditions are extracted out of their original social and cultural context they lose their power & relevance for generations raised in totally different circumstances. The reconstruction and evolutionary process of a 'traditional' religious identity can be probably be illustrated by analogy with American Judaism; contrast shtetl rabbinical Judaism with suburban reform Judaism. It is not surprising that Hasidism in the United States only persists in a strongly communitarian environment which attempts to reconstruct most of the Eastern European elements which made it such a vital force in the first place. For example, Hasidic Jews are segregated from mainstream society and continue to speak in Yiddish dialects.
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