Last update: 2022-04-22 09:50:17
In my Arabian cultural world I am unable to translate the term métissage. I just cannot find any suitable words. I can see the concept but words cannot contain it, except in the negative: tahjin (hybrid) or khalt (mixture). The idea expressed by the French métissage could be imagined as the place where two identities together give birth to a third one. Here, though, lurks the risk that, by coming together, the two identities may lose part of themselves. But I think that intercultural and interreligious dialogue should not allow one to lose even one part of one's own identity and faith. This view changes completely when we look at the theme of métissage in the West, with few Muslims within an ocean of Christians, or in the countries with a Muslim majority.
I do not believe that Islam is interested in such métissage, especially in the countries with a Muslim majority, eg., Jordan, Palestine,Tunisia.
Islam is a confident and serene culture which does not feel the need to be enriched by further contributions. This is why, paradoxically, perhaps the solution could come from Europe, where Islam is, for the first time, stimulated by the continual contrast with a non-Islamic majority and is forced to create for itself a pluralistic, open and inter-cultural world. In Europe, in contact with a pluralistic society, Islam can get rid of quite a lot of junk. Here, in secular Europe, another question to be asked is about the training and selection of the imams. The fact that the imams come from the fundamentalist colleges of Pakistan, Algeria or Indonesia cannot find us unaware or uninterested.
