Muslims have always been great travellers. The fact that the pilgrimage to Mecca is one of the pillars of religion may have a role in this. But Muslims also travelled for politcial and business reasons as well as in search of knowledge. It helped a lot that, within the area were Islamic influence dominated, Arabic as the language of the Qur'an was widely known for religious purposes and a traveller, while he encountered a great variety of languages and cultures even among Muslims, never had to feel really a stranger, for apart from self-evident hospitality the essence of everyday religious practice, e.g. congregational prayer, fasting during the month of Ramadan etc. was the same everywhere, and the Arabic language could bridge many a difficulty in communication. As we can see from the accounts of famous travellers (e.g. Ibn Battûta in the 14th century who left his home in Morocco to visit Northern Africa, the Arab countries, East Africa, Asia Minor, the Caucasus, parts of Central Asia, India, the Malaiian archipelago and parts of China), culture shocks still did accur but were relatively easy to overcome. On the whole, this was not only true for Muslim countries but for all areas where there were Muslim minorities. In spite of all nationalist tendencies, traces of this sense of familiarity are left even today. Whatever was and is written about "Muslims as Strangers" or "Muslims in a Minority Situation" is frequently written on the background of this experience.

Traditionally we find that the world was grossly seen as consisting of three realms, the Dârul-Islâm, "Realm of Islam where Islamic norms and values are valid so that a Muslim can feel safe and at home even though he is not yet familiar with the language and culture; Dârul-Harb, the "Realm of War" where a hostile attitude against Muslims is to be expected; and Dârus-Sulh, the "Realm of a Legal Order" where a public order is prevalent in which Muslims can find a safe place. We can clearly see that this differentiation was made from the position of a community where Muslims were the majority or at least in a political situation where they could guarantee their own security, that is, from Dârul-Islam. Hovever, these terms need a careful general revision both on the background of the principles proposed in Qur'an and Sunnah and considering the modern world. Nevertheless, I would like to use them to structure my paper, hoping that my questioing becomes obvious as well.

Dârul-Harb was in most cases associated with something called enemy country in English, an area outside the territory of a country ruled by Muslims, not necessarily in a state of actual war with the latter but without an agreement for peace or for the safety of Muslims either. The matter was dealt with in a rather simple way: it was recommended not to stay there unnecessarily but to emigrate or come back to Muslim territory. The people in view were obviously individuals or small groups who had settled there for business or other reasons or individual converts. In these cases, the suggestion sounds perfectly reasonable because it is no Islamic virtue to risk one's safety to no avail.

Meanwhile there have been other experiences as well that are not covered by those suggestions, that is war in one's own country (e.g. Bosnia), occupation by a foreign power (e.g. Afghanistan by the Russians), religious persecution in one's original home country (e.g. the former Soviet Union or China) and so on. The result is mass emigration. And then it is not only a question of the readiness of neighbouring Muslim countries to receive the refugees: there are more political refugees in Pakistan than in all Europe and North America together; the situation is no different in Iran, and this is far from being all. Rather it is a question of the possibilities for return or integration - certainly an economical and socio-political question, but the questions of emigration and expulsion must also be tackled on the psychological and spiritual level, and this needs more than pointing to "God's will".

Another consquence is the suffering of those who had to stay, especially when people under occupation are prevented to have outside contacts and when scholars are imprisoned and their life threatened. Faithful people will certainly find ways somehow to deal with this situation and to preserve their identity and part of their values, if necessary by going underground, but this is not the point. Rather, it is a waste if their experiences are never included into general ethical and theological thought but just forgotten, if even the people themselves are "written off" in the course of the generations (or who was, back in the 60s, informed about the situation of religious communities e.g. in the Eastern Block? and this is not only true for Muslims!).

The focus seems to have shifted away from the fact that the experience of being a persecuted minority in one's own home or to be compelled to emigratd does have a place in the Islamic sources. When the Meccan establishment became aware that the Prophet (s) and his companions were seriously interested in ethics and its consequences, they feared for the continuation of certain privileges of theirs and took measures against that movement ranging from ridicule and attempts to bribe the Prophet (s) through blackmail and boycott to physical attacks especially against weaker members of society (e.g. slaves) that sometimes led to the death of the victim. Every now and then there is a reference to this in the Qur'anic texts that were revealed in Mecca, comforting and encouraging the faithful, remembering of God's promise and calling for patience and steadfastness. The Muslims were then politically weak and not interesting for all those who, in their historical research, have only eyes for highlights of power, but they showed an extraordinary strength of character that not only enabled them to survive but also convinced others. Whereever this strength and fundamental trust exists, people can go about their situation in a reasonable manner, not making a fuss about their convictions but patiently and diligently, without any paranoia, learning, exchanging experiences and practicing whatever is possible - especially in the field of human relations. This part of the Sunnah has been widely neglected although it takes more space than the Medinan phase. It would shed a new light on the relevant Qur'anic texts and pose a number of unusual and perhaps uncomfortable questions.

A different weight has been given to the experience of emigration, at least where the actions and events are concerned. However, details that could be interesting today, e.g. the relationship between the emigrants to Abyssinia and their Christians hosts and neighbours, still wait to be reconstructed. And when it comes to the emigration to Medina, only few Muslims are nowadays conscious of the fact that not all were able to leave Mecca at that time: among those who had to stay were both those who lacked the strength and means and volunteers who stayed in order to support them morally and spiritually.

It must have been the Meccan experience that caused the Prophet (s) to say, "Islam has started strange and will become strange again. Blessed, therefore, are the strangers."

Dârus-Sulh was understood to be a country that, while it did not have a Muslim government, had a contract with the Muslims or with a neighbouring Muslim country to the effect that there was neither a danger of war nor of actions against the safety of Muslims living there. It is remarkable how many authors just give a black-and-white description of the world consisting of a "Realm of Islam" and a "Realm of War", ignoring Dârus-Sulh and everything that was taught in this context.

Among other things, an important aspect is that the law of that country is binding on the Muslims living there (unless it permits an action that is forbidden in Islam, like drinking Alcohol). A Muslim living in that country does so on the foundation of a contractual agreement, and it is a Qur'anic injunction to keep contracts, apart from the fact that it is a rational requirement if a minimum of trust is to be preserved in society.

In this context, the idea has often been that this is about Muslims who more or less temporarily live in a "host country", not about a regular part of the population. Even today, the idea of "Muslims" is still associated with an image of Arabs and maybe Iranians and Turks, ignoring the fact that here are at least as many Muslims in other parts of the world, sometimes as small minorities, sometimes as a large religious community together with others. For them, it is a normal everyday experience to live together with non-Muslim neighbours constructively on a foundation of contracts, agreements and unwritten codes of behaviour. Except for cases of conflict and crisis that find a wide echo in the world press, their experiences of normality and the conclusions of their scholars are never really heeded.

An example in this context are Muslims in Europe. Only one generation ago, the image of workers, business people and students who stayed here temporarily seemed to be still realistic, apart from a couple of exotic converts, too few to be counted as sociologically relevant. In the meantime, the numbers have considerably increased, both of those of whom nobody knows (often enough not even they themselves) for how long they are going to stay, and of those who have settled and acquired the corresponding nationality. Islam is presently the second largest religious community after Christianity. For more than twenty years there have been increasing facilities for encounter and dialogue. However, the majority still considers us (even "native" Muslims) strangers, and there is a surprising ignorance about Islam and the Muslims which is made even worse by the image often given in the media so that everybody feels permanently challenged.

For insiders, our situation looks even more complex. We are no monloithic block but individuals and families from all Muslim countries with all imaginable languages and cultures, from all traditions and schools of thought. Apart from the fact that most of us have immigrated at some point, we had to come to know each other in the first place, and this process is still going on after the local language has become a bridge fir the ever-present language gaps. Thus, we are not only in interreligious dialogue but also in a very intensive iner-Islamic dialogue where informations and views are exchanged, and there is a permanent struggle for solutions for various problems ranging from space in a cemetery to fundamental questions of doubt, thought and faith. For immigrant Muslims there is often a mental polarity between problems of their coutries of origin with which they are linked through ties of family and friendship and issues relevant to their future in Europe. Some of the "native" Muslims are in a similar situation although they sometimes combine being a Muslim with a certain portion of patriotism. They sometimes look for orientation in the country or person that brought them closer to Islam, often in combination with highly idealistic expectations and/or a strong aversion against the religious community or social group they are coming from. I already pointed out that they are seen as strangers in majority society, especially when they identify strongly with the group they are affiliated with now. Young Muslims growing up here are in a difficult situation. Whether they come from immigrant families, from culturally mixed families, or from families with European origin, they grow up - often without support - in a field of tension between religions and cultures, an ordinary generation conflict sometimes becoming a clash of cultures. The ways through that field of tension vary between either, or, both, and none. Where religion is concerned, both is equivalent with syncretism and does not meet with sympathy from either side while otherwise a person who can move in two cultures without difficulties might be able to build bridges and to contribute to new forms of coexistence. Neither-nor is a hard individualistic path that can crush a person unless he has mystical abilities.

I am sometimes asked if there can be a "European Islam". I am not always sure what the idea behind this question is. However, the dynamics of all those aforementioned different factors will eventually bring about a Muslim community in Europe that develops its own culture just like in other countries where Muslims are a minority. It cannot be predicted what exactly that culture will look like. But an essential ingredient will be the ability for exchange with other religious and ideological groups.

In my opinion, it is necessary for our education and self-education not only to absorb the ideas of unity that are taught in the Qur'an and that were practiced in the community at the time of the Prophjet (s) and later on developed in theology, philosophy and mysticism but also to formulate and imlement the ethical and practical conclusions for our own context.

Occasionally the question turns up if the "foreign" Muslims will eventually "go back home". Some of them will. Many members of the first generation still dream of a return, but there are three main obstacles. One is that their children have grown up here and sometimes even grandchildren were already born here; they are familiar with the local context, and it would not make sense to leave it in order to emigrate to an unknown former home country. Secondly, after a long stay abroad, a return to ones old home country is another immigration anyway because many things have changed there, and the re-migrant himself has changed in the meantime even though he might not have been aware of it. And finally, many thinking and practicing Muslims are exposed to political difficulties in their Muslim countries of origin; that is exactly why some have chosen exile.

Sometimes I am asked if I would not prefer to live in a Muslim country myself. This is a legitimate question because there is many a Muslim country where I feel just as much at home as here, and I am quite familiar with the **** Spagat zwischen den Kulturen *****. I would be able to lead a satisfactory professional life in nearly any Muslim coutry. Perhaps I would have to learn another language and to get used to habits and customs. The local human problems might be more linked with questions of economic survival. But the questions of Islamic identity with which I am dealing here would be of the same burning actuality over there.

Where, then, is Dârul-Islam?

If it is the purely personal level that counts, being able to pray and fast together, to meet for festivals or to find people to talk with about the beautiful things of faith, then Dârul-Islam is anywhere where a group of Muslims can get together. Of course this is also true for an area where Muslims are a majority and where religious life might be easier insofar as I am part of that majority, just being carried with the stream. I would not need a noisy alarm clock and a lot of self control but would be awakened on time by the call to morning prayer and just had to do what others did. To give such a feeling of Dârul-Islam is exactly one of the functions of a mosque in the diaspora even if it is only an improvised backyard prayer room. The stranger the community in question feels in its environment, the more important it finds this place as a retreat, and the more at home it feels, the more open the mosque is for visitors and encounters.

We have seen, however, that Islam comprises other parts of life as well that concern not only the relationship between the individual and God but also his specific responsibility for fellow human beings and fellow creatures in this world. Presently, if we disregard small alternative communities, the values connected with that responsibility are not implemented anywhere in the world including those states that have based their constitution on Islamic aims. On the contrary, most Muslims are not even aware of ethics in society and economy any longer, and in certain countries anyone who discusses it with others or thinks of criticism and alternatives will be prosecuted. Therefore, if Dârul-Islam is defined as a country with a just society based on Islamic ethics, we have got a problem here.

It is a fact that an alienation from the religious (both spiritual and ethical) roots has taken place in the Muslim world.

One factor is certainly the Muslim rulers' moves for power - they were under permanent pressure for self-justification because already their very existence contradicted the egalitarian concept given in the source texts, and consequently they tried to influence law and theology as far as possible. They were opposed by conscienteous scholars whose influence is not to be neglected. In fact, nearly all scholars whose names are well-known even today had their tensions with the contemporary rulers no matter what school they belonged to or how their names were appropriated and instrumentalized later on.

Another factor must be seen in fossilized traditions, both popular traditions that have moved away from Islamic values and survived the context where they might have made sense, and the *** erstarrten *** structures of thought in law and theology. During the past centuries there were repeatedly voices that demanded a rivival of Ijtihâd (development of law from Islamic sources and methods) but that were marginalized by the ruling system and conservative forces - and the same is true for theology and philosophy.

Colonial age was a radical cut, often linked with a restructuring of economy, education and the social system even when a country was not under direct colonial rule. A university system was build up after the European pattern as well as a school system that prepared students for it, both with an imported curriculum and in the language of the colonila power. Now the assimilation and processing of foreign ideas was originally nothing new in the Muslim world, nor was a multilingual environment. This kind of restructuring, however, caused a big gap within the population between the uneducated (a vast majority that can easily be manipulated), those educated in the traditional system (who were often marginalized), and those educated in the "Western" system (internationally recognized). Thus, a graduate of a modern university in such a country speaks English or French since his primary school days; he became familiar with thought structures in that language but without a bridge to his mother tongue where he often lacks the very vocabulary that would give him access to advanced literature or to a dialogue with graduates from the traditional education system. History was certainly part of the curriculum in his school, but it was European history, and consequently he is familiar with it but not with the history of his own region and culture. Islam was not part of the curriculum, or at best it was presented from the perspective of Western orientalists - besides, many schools were and still are run by Christian missions and accordingly offered an intensive introduction to Christianity. This happened in my generation, and many things may have changed in the meantime but the gap is still there, and so is alienation. I already said that the questions of Islamic identity with which I am dealing here would be of the same burning actuality over there. Besides, there are the problems caused by the global post-colonial structures in economy and political power (Muslims from Muslim countries living in Europe often feel doubly alienated).

Among the pheonomena of post-colonial age, the question of Islamic identity has a special weight, and there are attempts at reconstruction with various approaches and conclusions. Conservative reactions to Western ideas had obviously been unable to prevent alienation. "Modernist" attempts to assimilate new ideas and to modify some Muslim habits and even principles accordingly brought some improvement for the people concerned but no solutions for the basid problems of economic and political dependence and alienation, and they did not get the recognition they had hoped for from the side of the "Western world". Today there are various further approaches that are summarized with the term "re-islamization".

One approach aims at a liberation from economic and political dependence in order to create a space in which the ideals of justice can be realized and where there is time for spiritual and cultural activieties. Whether "the West" is considered the main adversary or the local regime, this resistance against economic dependence and structural violence and the alternative concepts is not seen in a favourable light by those in power. They react mainly by oppressing those ideas and their representatives who in turn defend themselves. This is what led to the revolution in Iran. Elswhere the tension continues to exist and escalates. The oppressed ones become more radical and use methods that might be understandable on a mere human level but cannot be reconciled with Islamic principles.

Another approach is the revival of the spiritual and ethical sphere in order to train people through education and self-education who would be able to contribute to social changes and to the realization of values without falling for the temptations of power. Since this approach normally does not show spectacular external results, it does not seem to be attractive for impatient young people, and for those who suffer from acute needs it might seem irrelevant.

However, both the spiritual revival and changes in the economic and political structures are necessary. This does not only apply to Muslim countries. Many peoples in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia have suffered greater damage than the Muslims during colonial age, both where human lives and cultural and religious roots are concerned, and they still suffer from the global *** Machtgefälle ***. Threrefore people who know of values other than material advantages and positions of power should not remain strangers to each other but learn to handle their natural differences and come to an understanding of how they can all contribute to a more human, just and peaceful world.

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