“Islam and the West: 'Bitter Truths'”

Le Monde, February 28, 2006

By Jean-Pierre Langellier

(translated by Shaanti Kapila)

Beyond the noise and furor that it sparked, the affair of the caricatures of the prophet Mohammed has launched an enduring challenge to Islamic and Western elites to re-conquer a space for dialogue and mutual understanding. How can we bridge the gap of ignorance, open eyes, and lessen rancor at a time when each of the two worlds sees only the worst side of the other? A gathering of 50 political leaders, analysts, diplomats, NGO heads, and journalists convened recently to attempt to answer these questions at a conference in Kuala Lumpur co-sponsored by, among others, the host government of Malaysia, the governments of the United Kingdom and France, and New York University.

One word arose repeatedly in these debates: education. Only education can disentangle facts from myths and realities from fantasies. The Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi believes in the virtue of “a vigorous search for knowledge” to heal the rupture between Islam and the West. Leader of a multi-ethnic, Muslim-majority democracy, he holds this quest for knowledge as one of the keys to a much-needed renewal within Islam.

Well-ordered education begins on its own, emphasized Usman Bugaje, Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in the Nigerian Parliament. This academic deplores that Muslims know less and less about their own religion, not to mention other religions: “It is pointless to hark back to Arab Andalusia to observe that education is increasingly narrowing,” he underscored. “We should revitalize syllabi and renew our great intellectual tradition!”

Mohammed Arkoun, a historian of Islamic thought, holds the same opinion: “We need above all,” he remarked, “real policies for education and ambitious scientific research. The work of experts only feeds the debates of elites without echoes in the media or among the general public.” For Mohamed Charfi, former Tunisian Minister of Education (1989-1994), education represents, along with liberty, equality of men and women, and good governance, one of the four areas where the Muslim world needs significant progress.

Charfi, who also presided over the Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights, knows his subject well. He was charged with halting the process of Islamization, which, at the end of the regime of Habib Bourguiba, had contaminated the educational system through its intervention in the content of textbooks. “Education must be modernized,” Charfi summarized. “It must open minds, teach reflection, awaken the critical sense. Knowledge of others and of systems of thought is an essential means for enriching oneself.”

The Pakistani professor Imran Ali paints an “alarming” picture of science and technology on Muslim campuses. Only in Malaysia and Turkey can universities claim to rank among the top 500 in the world. The others vegetate, according to him, on the “dark side” of globalization. And yet transfers of knowledge and technology are happening between West and East. “But this directly benefits East Asia and passes right under the nose of the Muslim world,” observes Timothy Garton Ash, professor at St. Antony’s College, Oxford.

To open its eyes on itself and on the West presumes that the Muslim world ceases to pose as perpetual victim. “It’s always the fault of the other,” notes Mohamed Charfi, “the colonizer, imperialism, the international financial system, the IMF, the World Bank. When will we begin a self-critique that will permit a lucid diagnosis of our failures?” Mohammed Arkoun regrets that since the Crusades Islam has retained only painful memories of its contacts with the West and has not been able to turn to its advantage the lessons of the Enlightenment.

Unfamiliar self-critique

The Grand Mufti of Bosnia, Mustafa Ceric, acknowledges this “bitter truth”: “Muslims have used and abused Islam to conceal their errors, instead of placing themselves at its service and setting the right example.” He exhorts European Muslims to unequivocally stand up for the rule of law, democracy, tolerance, and non-violence. But, he tempers, “It is more difficult to be broadminded when one feels himself weak, rightly or wrongly.” For Iqbal Sacranie, Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, the believers must behave above all as citizens mindful of their rights and responsibilities.

Self-criticism remains unfamiliar among political leaders. “As long as one camp (the West) maintains its hegemony over another (the Muslim world) and seeks to control her fortune,” the Malaysian prime minister predicts, “animosity will continue between these two civilizations. Mutual respect must replace hegemony.” Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami prefers to expel both Al Qaeda and the American neoconservatives, “whose logic is identical.”

Can the Islamic world submit her sacred texts to intellectual scrutiny? Renounce the absolutism of their convictions? “The text is divine,” answers Usman Bugaje, “but its interpretation is the work of men, with their share of errors. The text should be submitted to ijtihad, the effort of individual reflection.” Mohammad Khatami judges that no group of commentators, Muslim or not, can, by themselves, “speak in the name of Islam.”

Modernity, according to him, poses questions to Muslims that could not have been imagined fourteen hundred years ago and to which “we must find new responses.” This is precisely why Islam and the West should, above all, tackle common tasks together, councils Stephen Heintz, President of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, in the face of poverty, pandemics, and global climate change.

The “political biodiversity” conducive to a fruitful dialogue between the two worlds, deems Timothy Garton Ash, requires that we agree on a minimum of values linked to human rights and that rely on the meaning of the word democracy, freed from any adjective: the “Islamic democracy” of today is no more acceptable than the “people’s democracy” of yesterday. One thing is certain, he adds: reciprocal appeasement should not lead, by complaisance, simply to “mutual respect of taboos” established by extremists.

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