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Adapted from Houria Bouteldja’s presentation at the Summer School for Islamic Critical Thought: “Decolonial Struggles and Liberation Theologies” (Granada, June 18, 2014).

One of God’s names is “a l-‘Adl,” which means “The Just.” The idea that my father, Allah yrahmou, transmitted to me is that Islam is fundamentally an ideal of justice. So, to the question “Can one be Muslim in the West?” his answer (as well as mine) would have been a provocative “No.” The presentation I will make here is not that of an Islamic scholar, as I have neither the qualification for it nor the pretension to it. Instead, I would like to offer an analytical framework for understanding the interactions between the fact of being and calling oneself Muslim and the fact of being involved in politics. Wal-‘Ilmou lillâh.

If Islam is really this ideal of radical justice, then our presence as Muslims in the heart of the imperial city, in the heart of injustice, is problematic. In this context, perhaps we would have more humility if we saw ourselves as becoming Muslims.

Some of you may dismiss that statement since, at the individual level, you respect the teachings of the sacred book, the five pillars of Islam, the Sunnah and the great principles. These are indeed the bases of Islamic practice and they are fundamental to whomever aspires to belong to the Ummah el Islamiya. But I contend that there is a profound contradiction between the ideal of justice advocated by Islam and the material gains that we have achieved by living, to a great extent, off of spoliation of the South (in the form of wages, social redistribution or political rights). We are certainly not the main beneficiaries of North/South domination (the bourgeoisie is), and we are not even secondary beneficiaries (the white working classes are). We are the unwanted and collateral beneficiaries of this system but we still benefit, even while remaining in the margins.