A Heart turned East - Among the Muslims of Europe and America
It began in Bosnia, where Islamic nationalism was reborn as Serb shells rained down on Europe's ancient Muslim heartland. It was the start of a quest, a three-year odyssey into the heart of Muslim Europe and America. Adam LeBor set out to discover what it means to be Muslim in the 1990s, living in the west but with a heart turned east. He met Muslim soldiers on the frontlines of Bosnia who, betrayed by Europe, rediscovered Islam. He travelled across Britain, meeting exiled Islamic dissidents in London, now the intellectual capital of the Arab world, and to Bradford where Muslim activists are galvanising their co-religionists. He spoke to Turkish rappers in Berlin, and young French-Algerian artists in Marseilles, both in the vanguard of a new hybrid European Muslim culture that straddles two worlds. He witnessed Turkey's Islamic revival from the backstreets of Istanbul where modern Muslim women, their heads covered, are news readers and city officials and where worried brothel keepers wonder how long they can stay in business. And in the United States he met a new generation of Muslim lobbyists who are demanding a voice in Washington's corridors of power while a wave of Black Americans are turning to Islam in their rage against the white establishment.
East and West, Christianity and Islam, are at a crossroads, argues LeBor, but a global media, a global economy and a new mix of cultures mean that instead of a clash of beliefs, a symbiosis of the best of both worlds is emerging.