As Mohamed Abdul Bari tells Britain that Muslim integration should go both ways, here’s an excellent article at the Middle East Quarterly with insight into the Islamic reasoning behind such statements: Should Muslims Integrate into the West?

If Muslim jurists insist Muslim immigrants avoid assimilation and reserve loyalty to the Islamic nation, should Western governments regard Muslim immigrants as disloyal? Not according to the jurists. Both Fadlallah and Qaradawi, for example, emphasize obedience to laws of the receiving states and urge new immigrants to avoid acts that harm the security of those states.

This is not a case of doublespeak. Islamist jurists do not view the Muslim nation and the West as equivalent structures. They interpret the secular, liberal nature of Western states as mere social mechanisms enabling Muslims to practice Islam to its fullness. ‘Umrani, for example, argues that if Muslims know how to hold on to their civilian and legal rights in societies that raise the “slogans of freedoms and rights for all people,” then they should have no problem in adhering to the Islamic law.

Yet, there is another, deeper aspect of Western society that allows Islamist jurists to regard immigrants’ loyalty to Western nations as not damaging: They believe Western civilization to be marked by a moral and spiritual void and believe that Westerners will, therefore, gravitate toward Islam. ‘Umrani, for example, has no doubt that Westerners will sooner or later embrace Islam. He sees the Western nation-state as a temporary entity while the Muslim nation is both eternal and universal.

However, dualism is only allowed because theologians do not consider it harmful to Islam. Islam and not the interests of the European nation-state remains the benchmark for any political action. Fadlallah, for example, argues that Muslims might serve in Western parliaments but only so long as they guard the interests of Muslims. The European Council for Fatwa and Research evokes the same principle in response to a query about Muslims contending in municipal elections. The role of the Muslim immigrant is to do his best to promote the interests of his nation—that is, the Muslim nation. Because Islam is blind to boundaries, jurists argue that promoting its cause is not limited to a specific community or country but to Muslims everywhere. Thus, Qaradawi argues, it is necessary to “adopt and champion the rights of the umma” be it in “Palestine, Kosovo, Chechnya,” or any other place where Muslims fight for autonomy and statehood.