No Clash

Someone asked me a pretty shocking question today. I thought I'd share my gut response:

Q: I don't understand. How could a Muslim community have anything other than an anti-Western mentality?

A: Perhaps you should ask that question to the large number of Muslims living in the U.S. and Europe, enjoying the freedoms in these countries after having escaped the stifling atmospheres of their own. Or the communities of African-American Muslims that live in the U.S. who simultaneougly have strong dual western and muslim identities. Or the Muslims in westernized Muslim states like Turkey, which in its secularization sought to emulate European advancements and itself be termed a Western" country. Or the scores of Bosnian Muslims who were rescued from genocide after Western intervention in Kosovo.

This question signals to me a conflation of the image of a few radical terrorists with all Muslim communities. There are many kinds of Muslims, with all sorts of cultural sensibilities, all over the world-- not all of them are Arab-centric, Wahhabi, anti-American wackos. Certainly some, but not all.