We live in a multi-polar world;
not a bipolar world with two superpowers, nor a unipolar world with one remaining superpower. How many poles, and which, can be disputed.
But the following six may serve to map the present world: USA, EU, Russia, China, India and the OIC, the Organization for Islamic Cooperation, less crystallized than the others. We are talking about 0.31, 0.50, 0.14, 1.34, 1.21 and 1.63 billion human beings respectively, altogether 5.13 billion or 73% of the world population. Left out of this “hexagon” approach are Latin America, most of Africa, some of Asia, Japan and the Pacific.
By far the tallest diaspora in the world is Muslim: about 300 million, of them 177 in India [1], 19 in EU, 23 in China, 16 in Russia, 2.6 in USA.
This essay is about the Muslim social situation in two of the six poles: Europe and the USA. What do we mean by “social situation”? Attitude and behavior, Muslim and the host society. Attitudes vary from hatred-disdain via indifference to admiration and love; and behavior from violence via its absence ─ negative peace ─ to the positive peace of cooperation and harmony. The words “prejudice” and “discrimination” are often used for negative attitude and behavior, but they can also be positive. The basic point is the particle “pre”, a priori; a judgment made in advance, independent of direct experience. And the discrimination is built into the structure, working automatically.
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