Muslim Cosmopolitanism Recovering a Forgotten Stream in the history of Islam

Abstract

On November 8, 2013, Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied (National University
of Singapore; Fulbright Fellow, Columbia University) addressed the topic of
“Muslim Cosmopolitanism.” The event was held at the IIIT headquarters in
Herndon, Virginia.
He began his talk with a personal example: He is the child of an Arab father
and an Indian mother, his culture is Malay, he prefers to talk in either
Malay or English, and he understands Chinese. Thus, he is a living example
of his assertion that “being Muslim is part and parcel of being able to appreciate many cultures … We are all hybrids,” and therefore it is only natural for
Muslims to embrace diversity. While this was true for the first millennium of
Islamic civilization, it is, unfortunately, “not the case today.”
Aljunied cited several examples of how contemporary Muslims have put
this reality aside. For example, he raised the question of why, when a Muslim
engages in something that is clearly wrong, do Muslims apologize by saying
that he/she is a “bad Muslim,” instead of a “bad person,” or become offensive
by saying that the action was somehow justified. He noted that this is “an unhealthy
development in the world in general, and especially in the United
States” – one that Muslims should abandon. Instead, Muslims need to study
their history and understand exactly who they are. With this goal in mind, he
praised AbdulHamid AbuSulayman’s Crisis in the Muslim Mind (IIIT: 1993)
for its analysis of such concerns ...