The identity struggle within Islam: Discussion of “Thoughts on the inner conflict within Islamic culture: Their existential anxieties and ours,” by Malcolm Owen Slavin, PhD

Abstract

There is nothing more fitting, the author believes, than for psychoanalysts to help our nations better understand the identity struggle that he believes underlies the radicalization process of radical Islamists. This identity struggle is a very deep one. At its core, it concerns what an individual Muslim feels about his or her bonds to the nation-state and what single cause in their life they are willing to die for. In this article, this struggle is characterized as theo-political and Islamo-national. In order to understand this better as psychoanalysts, the importance of the personal narrative – this sense of how an individual’s identity fits and meshes with the world around them – is stressed. To that end, this article will first given an introduction to the author and his family, and then bring readers to the Arab Awakening, which began in 2011. Dr. Slavin’s paper on Tunisia has highlighted so many of the elements of the changes that transformed Tunisia and some of the substrate that led to that evolution; this article provides the context both regionally and, more importantly, within the Muslim consciousness. The author describes the lens through which he was raised in Wisconsin as a devout Muslim and the son of Syrian political refugees. This then overlays an understanding of what was really happening across the revolutions of the Arab Awakening against tyranny and in the global consciousness of individual Muslims.

Key words:

• Jihad, Sharia
• Islamism
• Islam
• Muslims
• Modernity

Notes

1 The full two page declaration can be signed online by fellow Muslims and our supporting neighbors at Change.org. Help us grow on Facebook. The declaration is a full-throated defense of freedom, free speech, critical thinking, gender equality, minority rights, secular governance, democracy, and the separation of mosque and state. We also declare an unequivocal condemnation of all Islamic states, Caliphism, violent jihad, institutionalized sharia, blasphemy laws, and apostasy laws. Three defining declaratives contained are worth noting here: “Muslims don't have an exclusive right to heaven," “We believe ideas do not have rights. Human beings do,” and “Our ummah – our community – is not just Muslims, but all humanity.” Watch the press conference and get to know these courageous bipartisan leaders who I am proud to call friends and colleagues: Tahir Gora, Tawfik Hamid, Usama Hasan, Arif Humayun, Farahnaz Ispahani, Naser Khader, Hasan Mahmud, Courtney Lonergan, Asra Nomani, Raheel Raza, Sohail Raza, and Salma Siddiqui. Other Muslims will choose their sides, and we pray that thought leaders and policy-makers will choose the side of religious liberty against Islamists, a battle known all too well by our founding fathers.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

M. Zuhdi Jasser

M. Zuhdi Jasser, MD, is President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and author of A battle for the soul of Islam: An American Muslim patriot’s fight to save his faith. He is a co-founder of the Muslim Reform Movement and a former Lieutenant Commander in the US Navy. He is currently a physician in private practice in Phoenix, AZ, USA.