A French speaker argues you don't need to abandon Islam to integrate into Western countries, which protect religious freedom as a private matter. He contrasts this with Arab-Muslim nations where worship is legally enforced and culturally mandated, framing migration as a chance to practice faith freely without state or social coercion.
Hello, everyone. Someone wrote to me today to ask me a question. He said, do I have to leave my religion? Do I have to become an atheist, for example, to be able to integrate into the west, to be considered integrated? In other words, does this mean that a person has to leave Islam to integrate into the West? So that's a very, very interesting question. He asked it to me in good faith, so I'll give him the same answer. Actually, no one told anyone to leave their religion when they arrived in the West. What you have to realize is that there is a fundamental difference between the countries we come from and the countries we are arriving in. The difference is in Arab Islamic countries there is an obligation to worship, whereas in Western countries there is freedom of worship. So, for example, I can give you a random example. If in an Arab Muslim country, someone, for reasons, let's say spiritual reasons, judges that they don't want to do Ramadan, that they're not ready to make that sacrifice, well, they're still forced to do it because the police or the courts may decide otherwise and then put them in prison. So they don't really have a choice. They're forced to obey the laws of their country. In reality, we even wonder what part of what people do is spiritual and what part is fear of the cop. There's fear of the cop, but also fear of society. Because it's important to know that in Arab Muslim societies, practicing a religion is something public. Religion is practiced in society, and it is society that sets itself up as the controller that controls, that watches over one another to see who practices and how they practice. So this means that we arrive at extreme cases where in Arab Muslim societies God does not see us, but society does. This means that in fact, our true God is society, the cop, the court. I wonder what kind of spirituality we can build in such a situation. But that is not the question. I am really sticking to the question. Whereas in the west, religion is in the private sphere, even intimate, because it is considered a search. Religion is not considered an end in itself. It is considered a search for the divine, a search for something beyond. And generally it is accepted that this is something that takes a lifetime without really arriving at answers that can be written in stone. There is also another point when one practices a religion. In an Arab Muslim country, religion and culture are intimately linked. It is not uncommon to see, for example, someone in an Arab Muslim country who dresses in, let's say, jeans and a T shirt, who one day wants to affirm his faith or wants to go on a spiritual quest and what does he start with? He starts by changing his clothes. He dresses as he perceives he dressed a long time ago. In fact, it is this cultural and religious side that are very mixed in Arab Muslim countries, which in the west are extremely separate. So we have to learn to separate them. In fact, what happens when you move from an Arab Muslim country to the west is an opportunity. It is actually an extraordinary opportunity to search and rebuild your faith in a place where you are not afraid of the police and the fear of society. That completely distorts this search. So it is an absolutely extraordinary opportunity to discover a true faith. But it is also an opportunity and also an obligation to separate the absolutely religious and spiritual side from the cultural side. You don't need to, okay? When you live in the west, you don't need to stand out with visible cultural symbols from your country and under the guise of religion. That's not how it works. I'll give you an example. I know that some people won't be happy, but we are in a completely open environment. So let's take this idea to its conclusion. Ah, if you leave the Maghreb, for example, and you go to the west, if you are sick, you want medicine, but you don't want them to import your Maghreb hospital, because you know that the Maghreb hospital will. There are ups and downs, of course, but in general it will kill you more than it will treat you. We have all suffered in our lives, in our families, from the poverty of the medical system in our countries. In the same way, if one day you have a problem with the law, you would prefer to deal with the Western justice system and you wouldn't want them to import your Maghreb court. So you want justice, but you want to go through a Maghreb court because you wouldn't want the cops to give you a beating, you wouldn't want to be judged quickly and thrown in prison without letting you talk or anything like that. So you don't want justice, but you don't want us to import the courts of your country. So explain to me why, if you want spirituality, you would want to import the mosque of your country? Because we have to see one thing as much as we have failed in our countries, on the side of a lot of technological, social, economic and other aspects, we have also failed on the spiritual side. That's clear. We have failed on the spiritual side, but totally, if we had succeeded on the spiritual side, if the spiritual side in our country had been perfect, it would still be extraordinary. If it were the only Thing that would work well for us. Okay, we really have to come back down to Earth. So what is happening? To answer your questions, no one, neither people on the left, nor people on the right, nor atheists, nor Buddhists, nor Christians, has said, we tell Muslims when you arrive in the west to abandon your religion or become Christians or become a Thai or become something else. No one has said that. We have societies that in their legal system, but also in their social system, are completely open to freedom of worship. What has been said, and the next thing it has been said, is that we will have to move from a collective practice of religion to a personal, intimate, private practice of religion. So religion leaves the social circle where it is exposed, where everyone must show the other controllers around them that they practice. And then they must also monitor others to see what their level of practice is. Okay? So here, when we are in the west, we have this freedom. That means that God is not someone else, but rather something that transcends us all. So you can see that you gain in this regard. And also the second request is to separate the religious aspect from the cultural aspect. This means that your religion is a private matter that you can take with you from one place to another. No one is telling you to separate yourself from it. On the other hand, the cultural aspects of your country, especially the aspects that may contradict the values of the country where you live, well, you have to separate those cultural aspects. You have to learn to separate them from your religion and leave them behind. Because, after all, no one forced you to come. After all, you are the one who made the choice to take the plane, fill out complicated forms and all that. You are not here by mistake, okay? And come. So at that point, that still involves a certain number of sacrifices. But as you can see, these sacrifices are not even on the spiritual side. They are just on the cultural side. Well, yes, you have changed countries. I am sorry to inform you, but you have changed countries. You are thousands of kilometers from home, so things work differently. It is up to you to learn to integrate into this new system. Good luck.
