Other Muslim thinkers have found the West responsible for the moral and material decline of the Muslim World. They blame Western imperialism and the era of colonial domination for the present backwardness and lack of self government in the Ummah. They imagine it as the embodiment of the Satan and have postulated Islamization as complete rejection of all that they see as Western, including democracy and freedom of speech. Needless to say, both discourses have an element of truth in them but both suffer from a lack of balance. While the former suffers from a lack of self esteem and exaggerates the virtues of the West, the latter confuses polemics and diatribe against the west for Islam. Both elements are to some extent valid and even necessary but only as supplements to a dominant discourse which is both balanced and constructive.

The West is essentially like a Centaur – half human and half beast. The human face of the beast allows the West to appreciate the virtues of democracy, freedom, equality and freedoms of speech and religion. It provides it with the moral basis for protecting and treating its own citizens with utmost respect and dignity while also striving hard to advance their interests – understood in terms of political and material development. The bestial dimension of the West has led it to commit huge crimes against humanity. The World wars, the holocaust, colonialism, imperialism, slavery and racism are just a few of the institutionalized crimes of the worst kind that the West has and to a much lesser extent continues to commit outside its borders. These elements of the West are puzzling. How can a society that has so much respect for the human life at home be so determined to allow the steady elimination of innocent Iraqis? How can a society that stands for equality and democracy allow so little freedom to other societies to disagree with it?

Understanding the puzzle that is the modern West is essential because its enormous power, both material as well as cultural has attained hegemonic proportions. There is very little resistance, except from some Islamists and some Asianists, to the growing influence on the West on the cultural and moral fabric of this planet.

Today in an era of globalization all civilizations are forced to live in intimacy. Today millions of Muslims live in the West and many others live in a close embrace of the Western ways of life. It is essential that we develop a positive and constructive understanding of the "other". Only through such a positive and creative act will we be able to reconstruct a vibrant and meaningful self.

We not only have to understand the modern West in a more balanced way but also develop a discourse for the reconstruction of Islamic identity neither weakened nor distracted by the enormous shadow of the West. Until we as Muslim can go beyond blind imitation of the West or outright rejection of its values, we will not be able to construct an Islamic self independent of Western influence.

It is therefore double important that Muslims in the West develop a "first hand" understanding of what the West really is. It is rather ridiculous that Muslims who have been living in the US through the seventies and eighties and the nineties put aside their own experiences and in order to understand the West turn to some Muslim intellectuals of the sixties who has never even seen the contemporary West.

Only those who have had a sustained experience of the West and have witnessed both its human and its bestial dimension can develop a meaningful understanding of it. Others will continue to rely on caricatures, one way or the other.

What does it mean to have a balanced view? It means that we do not throw out the baby with the bath water. Because Muslims are upset that the US has chosen to be friends with Israel and not with the Arabs, just because the US has committed crimes against Iraqis we must not reject democracy, human rights, respect for freedom and the rule of law because some polemic Muslims intellectuals associate them with the West.

A balanced view of the West should recognize the material impulses that shapes many of the Western foreign policy choices and resist as well as condemn them. But in an endeavor to demonize the West we must not foolishly reject the laudable results of their moral impulses manifest so elegantly in their self governing, rights respecting societies.

A balanced view of the West will be far above simple associations. Because democracy is found in the West it should not be labeled Western. Now we can find Islam in the West too, does that mean Islam too is Western? A balanced view of the West will seek to understood the sources of Western values and also their implications of social welfare before passing judgement upon them. A balanced view of the West is essentially a considered and enlightened opinion of Western institutions and practices that does not allow negative emotions to cloud one’s rational faculties.

Only when such an attempt to understand the West is made by Muslim intellectuals as well as general public will the basis of a healthy Islamic identity emerge. Until then reactions to the West will continue to subvert the construction of Islamic identity.