“Haram alayki” – Westernization, Islam, and the battle of Old and New

My wife Dania, who was born, raised, and educated in Saudi Arabia, was told repeatedly as a little girl that listening to Western music was haram/forbidden. On one occasion, she and her friends were in a public park, listening to music on a radio, when an older woman approached them, turned off the radio, and said “haram alayki/shame on you.”

What is haram? The opposite of halal. Islamic things are halal. Un-Islamic things are haram. But who decides which is which?

The West (and I speak personally of the United States) is secular. Secularism is not the absence of religion, but the separation of religion from unrelated areas of activity, like government. This is our worldview.

Mitt Romney, the challenger to President Barack Obama, was a Mormon. This is a tiny sect within American Christianity that holds many unique beliefs and traditions. The Mormon religion is less than 200 years old, and before the 1970s it did not allow for Black Americans to be members. I cannot recall a single instance where Mitt Romney’s belief in the Mormon religion was ever formally addressed during the presidential election. Why? Because he was running for a government position, and religion plays no role in government, according to secularism.

The Middle East, as one example, is not secular. The basis for Islam is that it is not only a belief, but a way of living. Therefore, Islam permeates all aspects of society, including politics. Does this mean that everything political is also religious? Of course not. Any person from Saudi Arabia who claims that restricting women from driving cars is part of Islam embarrasses both themselves and their culture. Show me where in the Qur’an this is written, and I will eat my words.

So, if we accept the premise that the Middle East is not secular, and that all political matters are not simultaneously religious, how may we pursue an evaluation of Westernization? Because of advances like the internet, the entire world is digitally connected. This site is one example of that. Facebook is another. What about online gaming. Ever played an online game against opponents from another country?

This interconnectedness is likewise demonstrated vis a vis economics. Have you ever wore blue jeans, watched a gameshow or sitcom in your native language, eaten french fries, or “liked” something on Facebook? Chances are that you have. This represents a global paradigm shift toward surface-cultural unification. We are looking more and more like each other everyday, in several ways.

But, what about below the surface?

Though we are embracing the phenomenon of global interconnectedness, this is not necessarily true of our parents’ or grandparents’ generations. Chances are they still hold on to their traditions. The Middle East is a very old place. Unlike the United States, the Middle East has undergone thousands of continuous years of civilizational growth. Those traditions there are deeply embedded, and changing them takes more than the introduction of fast food or blue jeans.

So, when we hear that something Western is “haram,” is this because it really is haram/forbidden according to Islam as a religion, or is this simply because it is something unfamiliar to Islam as a society. My money is on the second choice.

Whether or not traditional aspects of the Middle East need to change and allow for Westernization to flourish is not for me to decide. The people in the Middle East, or any other region of the world facing similar conditions with respect to traditions and Westernization, need to address that matter on their own. Surely, women cannot continue to be forbidden from driving in Saudi Arabia. That is just embarrassing. Plain and simple. But surely, also, the beautiful wedding cerimonies, handicrafts, food, and clothing from the Middle East should not be so quickly replaced with cheap alternatives from the West (but made in China).

So what is the conclusion to all of this?

For starters, not everything addressed using religious language is actually a religious issue. With regard to Westernization, opposition to this stems from certain people in a society who value their traditions, and would not wish to have everything around them change in an instant.

Westerners and inhabitants of the Islamic world both need to understand that just because something is described religiously does not mean that the issue actually pertains to religion. Mostly, the cause is an absence of secularism. Whether it be the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, the struggle for gender equality in Saudi Arabia, or music, the problem is not between religions, but between the Old and the New.

About the author

Ethan Lazuk

Born in Montana in 1989, I attended high school in Phoenix, Arizona, and college at The University of Montana, from which I recently earned a Bachelor's degree in Central and Southwest Asian Studies. I currently live in Washington D.C.
Although American English is my first language, I also have an intermediate/advanced knowledge of Modern Standard Arabic, with some Lebanese and Gulf vocabulary, as well as a basic knowledge of Farsi-Persian. My academic areas of interest include Cultural Anthropology, Islamic Studies, and Environmental and Human Geography. In 2010, I was a summer intern with the Department of Defense, working on Ft. McNair Army Base in the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies. Additionally, I have traveled in Istanbul, Turkey, and lived in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia.


I am a third-generation American of Polish descent. My great-grandparents fled Eastern Europe during the Bolshevik Revolution and entered the United States through Ellis Island. Today, my parents and sister live in Colorado, where they are surrounded by the beautiful Rocky Mountains. I am also happily married to the love of my life named Dania. Originally from al-Madinah, Saudi Arabia, she came to the United States two years ago as an exchange student. She is a practicing Muslim. But I am a searcher who finds beauty in all religions, and therefore I do not belong to any one religion in particular. But her and I having different religious beliefs has not negatively affected our marriage. In fact, it has brought us closer together. We respectfully embrace our differences, while cherishing our infinite similarities. If being in an inter-faith marriage has taught me one thing, it is that religious differences are not a cause for division, but for collaboration.

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