ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the comparative science of cultures as pioneered by S. N. Balagangadhara and tests it in the diasporic Western Muslim context. It preserves the transmission of the worldviews of both Western and Muslim cultures. The Western and Islamic cultures are both religious cultures that treat each other as rivals, a certain level of mutual resistance between them is inevitable. It then provides some evidence of how the West assumes the role of an 'instruction culture'. Many continental European countries institutionalise shari'a as a matter of foreign law that is applied through rules of private international law. The chapter indicates the tendencies occurring in the contact between Islamic and Western law in the context of Muslim diasporas in the West. While the formal mechanisms of its reception in Western countries constitute one structural dimension of how Muslim law is framed, another significant dimension is the background and activities of Muslims, and their attitudes to Islam.
