You don't think that Western Muslim trends affect Muslim countries?
I don't. Their numbers are a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the world. For example, American Muslims, like all good Americans, tend to think that their shit is so important, and that all the Muslims in the rest of the world look to them for leadership, and then you talk to people overseas and they're like "They have Muslims in America?" Seriously, I've met a lot of people who didn't know that there are really any communities in the US, Canada, etc. People I would think of as fairly well educated or had access to the world -internet, tv, etc - not like a sheep herder in a tent in the desert or something.
It was arguably Western Muslims that started the whole Scientific Miracles in the Qur'an thing. (Harun Yahya jumped on the band-wagon and even his audience was western and then it took off in Muslim countries.)
Didn't his cult movement start off as a solely Turkish enterprise and then expand to Europe and North America as his resources grew? That was my understanding of it. My impression of this need to make the Quran scientific is that it sprung from the ikhwani movement, and that Harun Yahya just happened to come along at the right time with his glossy materials. But, and this could just be me, I never met anyone overseas or even anyone here who who immigrated from overseas that was interested in 'science and the Quran!' unless they were trying to convince someone from western culture to convert to Islam. I used to see lots of books more centered on miracles, love of mo, and the fiery, eternal flames of hell that people will suffer for any number of transgressions from sex outside of marriage to wearing their pants too long, all of which are expounded upon in indvidual books. Also, about how evil the Jews were. But not a lot about science -- that was something I noticed... there wasn't a lot of interest in scientific research or stem cells or anything else.
It was arguably Western Muslims that started the whole Hizbi/Muhajiroun thing. (I know their shiekh came from the East but it was western Muslims that made it take off - and he was undoubtedly influenced by western ideas)
Didn't a lot of those earlier Arab Hizbis get sucked into al ikhwan or into Maktab which then became al Qaida - back in the 80s / 90s? I don't think they needed the one armed shaykh for that. Hizb was virtually nothing by the time I was through university - it fizzled out and became another movement (a western one). That was about 12 yrs ago. Also, I am really not sure there is any evidence that the antics of some Hizbis and their offshoots in London have had any influence on Hizbis in Uzbekistan. Tho it does seem like a lot of hullabaloo from our perspective, one could even point out that the Muhajiroun and Hizb aren't even widely known in the US - especially by people who weren't accosted with Khalifate! fliers every Friday in the 90s by pushy, eager college students who all went on to graduate into pushy, eager zaytunis and maghribis.
Even Wahhabism/Salafism was given a huge boost by western Muslims eager for a version of Islam free from cultural influence (coz they were in the west).
Salafism / Wahabism came to the West from petro dollars. Just like it goes into Bosnia or Chechnya or Indonesia. Seriously, they don't need us in order to spread their shit. They brought it to us, not the other way around. I don't think they even needed western Muslims to buy into it for it to be what it is today - it appealed to people in other countries for reasons that had nothing to do with the west. They got to us b/c of our having little to no access to Islamic source materials and then hungrily gobbling up everything the petro-wahabis were sending our way because 'it's ilm brother!'
The cartoon outrage was started by western Muslims.
Are you counting as western people who are from the west or also people who immigrate to the west? The guys who started that weren't Danish, I wouldn't call them westerners at all. I personally wouldn't say that they embraced any semblance of western values - they just happened to be living here. And the bullshit dossier that they took to Arab countries to stir up shit - probably because they knew they couldn't get people in the streets burning up churches and embassies in London or Vienna - that was a move straight out of an ikhwani playbook.
Go to any Muslim country and they look up to Western Muslims - i.e ppl like Yusuf Islam - they hold the West in high regard and so if Muslims from the West are doing such and such they copy.
I have met plenty of people who don't even know who Yusuf Islam is even after I played his cassette tapes and stuff for them. After 2003, I met people who knew Hamza Yusuf - from his MBC show. They hold the west in high regard, and the fact that anyone in the west is Muslim is proof of the superiority of Islam over the west. It's not the Islam of the west they're chasing. Other movements or ideas that made splashes in the western Muslim milieu have done nothing over there - progressive Islam, for example, or this abdul hakim murad / yusuf islam 'traditional sufism' stuff. The movement to put women back in the masjid, even if it is in segregated areas -- they make documentaries and write books about it in the west and it doesn't mean anything in the Muslim countries. Or this idea of examining racism among Muslims which was all you heard for a while from some people. Shit, most of this stuff doesn't even make it past some lame anthology of Muslim navel gazing or Islamic magazine in the west.
Topic: Muslims in the West Influence Muslims "Back Home"