Muslim leaders and intellectuals should on the one hand demand and require the just and equitable application of the law with respect to all citizens and all religions. And on the other, they should face up to their responsibilities by using the broad freedom they enjoy in the West and trying to provide Muslim communities, through courses, study circles, and all kinds of institutions and organizations whose essential aims are to keep Islamic faith and spirituality alive, to spread a better understanding both of Islam and of the environment, to educate and pass on the message of Islam, and, finally, to see to it that Muslims get really involved in the society in which they live.

There is nothing to stop them from doing so and although many initiatives have been taken in this direction over the past several years, the teaching given has often remained traditional. We shall return later to these forms of Islamic education, which have been provided without much thought to the context in which Muslims live.

This proposal means, above all, that we must develop, as we have said, a new and more confident attitude, based on a clear awareness of the essential features of our “being Western.” This understanding should lead Muslims to evaluate their environment objectively and fairly. While respecting the requirements of their religion, they must not neglect the important potential for adaptation that is the distinctive characteristic of Islam. This is what has allowed Muslims to establish themselves in the Middle East and in Africa and Asia and, in the name of one and the same Islam, to give their identity concrete reality in specific and diverse shapes and forms.

Again, Islam as a point of reference, is one, but its realization assumes recognition of the history and the social and cultural context in which it exists. In this sense, as we have said, there should be an Islam that is rooted in the Western cultural universe, just as there is an Islam rooted in the African or Asian tradition.

Islam, with its Islamic sources, is one and unique; the methodologies for its legal application are several, and its concretization in a given time and place is by nature plural. From the Islamic point of view, adapting, for the new generations, does not mean making concessions on the essentials but, rather, building, working out, seeking to remain faithful while allowing for evolution.

With this aim, Muslims should take advantage of the most effective methods (e.g., of teaching, management) and scientific and technological discoveries (which are not in themselves in conflict with Islam, as we have seen) in order to face their environment appropriately equipped. These developments belong to the human heritage and are part of Western society, and Muslims, especially those who live in the West, cannot ignore them or simply reject them because they are not “Islamic.”

On the contrary, the teaching of Islam is very explicit and comes into its own here: in the area of social affairs (al-mu`amalat) all the ways and means—the traditions, arts, clothes—that do not, either in themselves or in the use to which they are put, conflict with Islamic precepts become not only acceptable but Islamic by definition.

Consequently, Muslims should move toward exercising a choice from within the Western context in order to make their own what is in harmony with their identity and at the same time to develop and fashion the image of their Western identity for the present and the future.