Robert Barker/University Photography

Oxford University's Tariq Ramadan delivers the Messenger lecture in "Muslims in the West," April 11.

"The problem that western Muslims have is a lack of confidence -- and of understanding their own history," said Tariq Ramadan of Oxford University delivering a Messenger Lecture on campus April 11.

Although many perceive Muslims as a "new presence" in the West -- Ramadan quoted the pope's recent statement that the "roots of Europe were Greek and Christian" -- Islamic philosophers were influential in shaping European culture, he said.

"This selective approach to the past is revealing how much we are scared of the present," said Ramadan, professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford, a visiting professor at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Qatar, Mundiapolis University in Morocco and a senior research fellow at Doshisha University in Japan.

In the decades after World War II, Ramadan said, many Muslim immigrants moved to western countries to work. As they stayed in those new countries and had children, rather than returning home, a problem arose: Members of the new generation did not understand how to balance being a Muslim with being a European citizen.

According to Ramadan, these two identities can be reconciled. "A European Muslim" can follow "Muslim principles" but be "European by culture," he said. "Confidence means you know who you are, and you have the right to be where you are."

Yet many who fear Muslims, Ramadan said, perceive this simple statement as radical and "dangerous."

Those who say Islam is an outsider religion, he said, "think Islam should play the role of 'the other.'"

In France, Ramadan said, the "new visibility of Muslims" has been perceived as "a challenge to the homogeneity of French culture." But for Ramadan, the presence of Muslims in mainstream society indicates their desire to be part of French culture, rather than to threaten it. While the immigrant generation who originally came to France was deliberately invisible -- they only wanted to work and return home -- their children are more present in mainstream culture because they are integrated into society.

Within the Muslim community itself, Ramadan said, failure to understand what is Islamic and what is cultural also causes conflict.

"The way we dress, behave, women's rights -- all this has to do with the confusion about what are religious versus cultural principles," he said. Many Muslims, Ramadan said, read scriptural sources in a reductive way, without putting it into context. Reformists like Ramadan, on the other hand, "take into account the culture in which they live.

"There is no culture without religion," Ramadan said. "But there is no religion without culture. Religion is always rooted in culture, but the religion is not the culture."

Ramadan's talk was part of the campus celebration of Islam Awareness Week, during which various speakers -- academics, travelers, authors -- visited campus to share their experiences of contemporary Muslim culture. Ramadan also gave two other talks on campus -- one on Arab revolutions and the other titled "What Would Muhammad Do?"

Messenger lectures were established in 1924 by a gift from Hiram Messenger, Class of 1880.

Elisabeth Rosen '12 is a writer intern for the Cornell Chronicle.