When we talk about Islam, especially in the West, the conversation almost inevitably turns to terrorism, fundamentalism, immigration, and the so-called clash of civilizations. But this way of looking at the issue can make us lose sight of something deeper: the relationship between Islam and modernity.
Because perhaps the most interesting question is not simply whether Islam is compatible with the West. It is this:
What happens to a religion when the society in which it exists gradually becomes secular?
And this is where the comparison with European Christianity becomes unavoidable.
A Christianity That Had a Church to Rebel Against
European secularization followed a particular path partly because Christianity had a very specific institution at its center: the Church.
There was a clergy. There was a hierarchy. There was the papacy. There were religious institutions with enormous political, economic, and cultural power.
For centuries, European society could therefore identify religion with concrete institutions against which, sooner or later, a reaction would emerge.
The Enlightenment, liberalism, anticlericalism, socialism, and modernity could fight a very tangible battle: a battle against ecclesiastical power.
The situation within Sunni Islam is different.
An imam is not a Catholic priest. He does not possess an equivalent sacramental authority, nor does he belong to a universal hierarchy. In many respects, he is closer to a Protestant pastor: he leads prayers, teaches, interprets religious tradition, and performs religious functions, but he is not part of a universal Church governed by a centralized hierarchy.
There are, of course, major institutions of Sunni scholarship, with al-Azhar in Cairo being perhaps the best-known example. But there is no single Sunni authority comparable to the Catholic Church.
And that changes things considerably.
In Europe, secularization could take the form of a rebellion against organized religion.
Within Sunni Islam, it can happen in a much quieter way.
Secularization Without a Revolution
A person can continue to identify as Muslim because their parents are Muslim, because their family is Muslim, because their country is Muslim, because that is the identity they inherited.
They may continue to pray, fast during Ramadan, observe certain religious rules, and participate in religious celebrations.
But that does not necessarily mean that faith still has the same inner force.
We know this perfectly well in Europe. How many Italians still describe themselves as Catholic simply because they always have, while rarely going to church? How many celebrate Christmas, Easter, religious weddings, and funerals without faith actually occupying a central place in their lives?
Religion can survive as an identity even after losing part of its spiritual power.
In Muslim societies, this process may be harder to see precisely because it does not necessarily involve an explicit declaration of rupture.
It is not necessarily apostasy.
It is more like silent secularization, in which religion remains present but can gradually become a social habit.
Of course, it would be absurd to generalize and suggest that Muslims are somehow less sincere in their faith than Christians. Millions of Muslims live their religion with profound spiritual conviction.
But the sociological phenomenon is worth considering: a society can remain formally religious while becoming progressively more secular in its behavior, desires, and mindset.
Islam Is Certainly Not Devoid of the Supernatural
There is another distinction worth making.
Islam is not a religion without the supernatural. Quite the opposite. Angels, jinn, prophets, revelation, the Last Judgment, Paradise, and Hell are fundamental elements of its worldview.
The difference lies more in how the supernatural is expressed in everyday religious life.
Catholic Christianity developed an extraordinary culture of miracles: saints, relics, apparitions, healings, stigmata, pilgrimages, and sacred images.
In orthodox Sunni Islam, the relationship with God is less mediated by a priestly class and by a vast network of saints and sacraments.
This does not mean that the supernatural is absent.
It means that it takes a different religious form.
Wahhabism and the Fear of Religious Decline
From this perspective, Wahhabism can be understood as a response to the fear of religious decline.
The idea was simple and radical: return to the Islam of the earliest generations, eliminate religious innovations, purify the faith, and bring religious life back to the Qur'an and the Prophetic tradition.
Then modernity arrived.
European colonialism arrived. The Ottoman Empire collapsed. Nation-states emerged. Capitalism, urbanization, technology, Western culture, and eventually globalization transformed Muslim societies.
And the Muslim world found itself facing the same question that had already tormented Europe:
How can a society become modern without ceasing to be religious?
The answers have been numerous, and often deeply incompatible with one another.
Fundamentalism is only one of them.
But Fundamentalists May Be Underestimating Something
For decades, parts of the radical Islamist worldview have imagined the West as a civilization destined to decline.
Conquest was supposed to come through demographics, immigration, conversion, and the gradual replacement of Western laws with Islamic law.
But this vision may have underestimated the real power of the West.
Because the West is not simply parliament, constitutions, democracy, or a legal system.
It is also a vast cultural system built around desire.
And the real competitor of Islamic radicalism may be precisely that.
Not Christianity.
The shopping mall.
The Devil of the Shopping Mall
It may sound provocative, but think about it.
A young man raised in a madrasa in a poor country may be told that the West is corrupt, decadent, and morally bankrupt.
Then he picks up a smartphone.
And through that smartphone, he sees the world.
He sees cars, universities, hospitals, skyscrapers, restaurants, travel, video games, music, fashion, technology.
He sees an enormous range of possibilities.
And above all, he sees something incredibly simple:
the possibility of desire.
Consumer culture does not ask him to convert.
It does not ask him to read a philosophy book.
It does not even ask him to believe in anything.
It simply tells him:
you can have more.
You can choose.
You can buy.
You can travel.
You can have fun.
You can change.
You can become whoever you want to be.
That is an extraordinarily powerful promise.
And it is very difficult to fight it simply by saying that it is sinful.
Paradise After Death Versus Paradise Now
Here we encounter a curious paradox.
Fundamentalism promises Paradise after death.
Consumer society, by contrast, tries to construct a small version of paradise before death.
It does not necessarily offer salvation.
It offers something more immediate: pleasure, comfort, entertainment, choice.
But consumerism has a huge weakness of its own.
It can satisfy many desires, but it has no answer to death.
It can sell you a car, a house, a holiday, a computer, and increasingly sophisticated virtual experiences.
But it still cannot sell you immortality.
And that may be its greatest weakness.
Because Eventually, the Same Question Always Returns
We can become wealthy.
We can live longer.
We can modify our bodies.
We can use technology to overcome limitations that, only a few decades ago, seemed impossible to overcome.
We can desire almost anything.
But sooner or later, death arrives.
And in the face of death, the shopping mall suddenly becomes silent.
Consumption is no longer enough.
Technology is no longer enough.
Success is no longer enough.
And the question humanity has asked since the beginning returns:
What comes after?
Perhaps this is precisely where fundamentalism continues to find its strength. Not necessarily because it is stronger than modernity, but because it addresses a question that modernity, by itself, has never been able to answer.
That is also why I do not believe the future can simply be described as a victory of the West over Islam.
The real struggle may be much deeper.
On one side is a religion that promises meaning, belonging, and eternal life.
On the other is a secular civilization offering freedom, wealth, technology, and an unprecedented range of individual possibilities.
And in the middle, there are all of us.
Human beings who want to live well, be free, have everything they can possibly desire and, if possible, never die.
We can desire everything.
We can buy almost everything.
We can conquer almost everything.
But we still cannot buy immortality.
And perhaps, if God really exists, it is precisely there — in the face of death, when every other promise comes to an end — that He may yet have the last word.
