The Whole World Needs the Whole
World:
Establishing a Framework for a Dialogue of
Civilizations
Introduction: Unity, Diversity and Hope
We are living in a world where borders have collapsed,
as has our traditional conceptions of space, time and distance. Cultures and
communities are exposed to and interact with one another in unprecedented ways
as a result of revolutions in information. We are discovering that our fates and
futures increasingly depend on one another, making mutual understanding, respect
and cooperation essential to realizing the positive aspects of our growing
interdependency. Our greater capacity for learning and our broadening
familiarity with the foreign represents a powerful growth in knowledge and marks
a turning point in human civilization.
This information revolution has set in motion two
contradictory trends in the world: increasing localization, which leads to
self-assurance and the strengthening of each culture’s own traditions, and
globalization, which spans the sheer diversity of the human expression.
This context defines the nature of our contact in a
broader sense: in this growing awareness of our diversity lies our unmistakable
unity: our humanity and our common values and needs. It is up to us, at this
crucial time in our shared history, to ask three vital questions: How will we
know and relate with each other? How will we define and benefit from our
relationship? How will we cope together with the teeming diversity of our global
community? Dialogue, as a new paradigm in global relations, is based on sharing
knowledge to achieve new knowledge, to see each other with open and empathetic
eyes under a different light, and to look together toward a shared future in a
global community will make our world safe for diversity.
Why
a Dialogue of Civilizations?
The need for a
dialogue of civilizations is based on the recognition that our changing reality
requires a new global ethic and a new perception of one another. Two of the
world’s most powerful civilizations have known each other as deeply
competitive rivals and adversaries reaching back through the historical memory
and imagination of both.
The shared cultural roots joining Islam with the West are forgotten far too
often. Although recently voiced (and frequently ill-conceived) opinions
regarding a ‘clash of civilizations’ posit that Islam falls outside the
Judeo-Christian and Hellenic cultural continuum, the reverse is in fact the
case. Classical Islamic civilization was constructed out of Arab, Biblicist and
Hellenic cultures, but cast a wider net by integrating Persian, Central Asian,
as well as Indian components within its cultural synthesis. Historically, Islam
is the true bridge between West and East.
Yet as each civilization pursued their own historical trajectories and
encountered one another as rivals in competitive power politics, each retreated
from the other to struggle with internal conflicts and questions, reducing the
other to static images of threatening, unrelated, rival ‘others.’
Psychopathy operates at the level of symbols in order to generate a new system
of meaning, divorced from larger material or spiritual understandings, and feeds
on the need to address despair through fear. These simplified images allowed for
a new relationship to be established based on power and control. A retreat to a
cultural ghetto by any group, be it Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, or
Hindu, not only denies the rich diversity of the modern cultural experience, but
also a rejection of responsibility for future generations. Retreat is one of two
faces of fundamentalism, or as a pathology of culture that arises when a group
takes a subset of basic tenets of a tradition, and either under pressure of
insecurity (as in the case of today’s Muslims), or in the pursuit of hegemony
or total security (in the case of the West), uses them either to seal off
others, or to maintain dominance.
Today, such relationships and the images they were built upon are no longer
sustainable. Instead, as each struggles to find their place and identity in a
globalized world, we are discovering that each has held many of solutions to the
questions the other has long been asking. Dialogue is key to surfacing these
‘hidden treasures’; once we are able to unlock the secrets of effective
communication and pierce through the walls of misperception and mistrust we can
gather these valuable insights, lessons and opportunities and enrich us both.
Islam
and the West today are dangerously out of touch with one another and
misperceptions and mistrust have led to an ever-deepening estrangement. This
relationship has only deteriorated since President Khatami called in 1998 for a
dialogue of civilizations, primarily because we still have not yet learned how
to dialogue with one another or what we hope to achieve in the process. The year
2001 was proclaimed by the United Nations as the Year of Civilizational Dialogue
and the ongoing, worsening tragedies, experienced by both communities, only
underscore the urgency of conceptualizing the means of effective inter-cultural
and inter-religious communication.
The
Old Paradigm
In
all conflict situations, people under stress react by reducing their own beliefs
to a small, workable subset in order to fight and protect themselves, assuming a
rigidity and defensiveness that implicitly closes off the ability to hear and
communicate with others. If sought, however, conflicts can open up the space for
understanding, cooperation, or at the very least, mutual respect. Most
importantly, the West and Islam must move beyond reactive posturing and
strategic maneuvering with one another, and this can only begin once a
commitment to meaningful, sustained dialogue is engaged.
Islam
is Not the Enemy of the West
Islam is not the
enemy of the West. There is a lingering, pervasive belief in the West that
Islamic values are inherently incompatible with Western ideals and goals. The
West hears only the voices that are the loudest and these are the ones who
reject and openly despise them. They see only the anger from the Muslim and Arab
world, which causes them to retreat into defensiveness and ignore the reasons
which drive these passions. It becomes easier to believe that beliefs are
irreconcilable and irrational, reinforced by these images of outrage that are
propagated by a sensationalist media which thrives on such imagery. American
media has often tended to portray the Islamic world (and various groups within
it) solely through the prism of extremism and terrorism—so often, indeed, that
some of those who attempt to debunk the notion of an “Islamic threat”
inadvertently perpetuate the simplistic “good (or secular, moderate,
pro-Western) Muslim”/“bad (or militant) Muslim” dichotomy. Instead of
taking seriously the criticisms of Western attitudes toward the Middle East
written by Arab and Muslim scholars, many Western writers have preferred to
isolate threads of hatred, irrationality and fear articulated through religious
discourse, reinforcing notions of otherness, inferiority, and the need for
aggressive control. Even the governments of many Muslim countries play into this
dichotomy, particularly when soliciting economic or military support from the
United States.
The Muslim world is reduced to a form, an image—and an image that appears to
be in its essence antithetical to the West. The West thus recoils from ‘all
things Islamic,’ and projects an image of invulnerability and superiority,
conflates its material strength with moral authority. Dialogue becomes a means
by which to mollify an aggravated ‘other,’ to ‘manage’ conflict rather
than resolve it, and to convince the ‘other’ of the rightness of their
existing positions. These, however, are subversive contests to de-legitimize
others, not dialogues aimed at mutual understanding and respect.
Instead, a framework for a dynamic and mutually rewarding dialogue is one where
we bring to the table the best that our civilizations have to offer the world
and how these contributions can help one another to achieve a greater
flourishing of our respective communities, who look upon one another as moral
equals and partners in creating a global community. It is then that we may
compete with one another in good works, and in our service to humanity. It is
here that we show our truth, our essence, our beauty and our greatness, and it
is in so doing that we find our place in God’s greater plan for humanity.
The West is Not the Enemy of Islam
Nor
is the West the enemy of Islam. While the West may suffer from a sense of
cultural triumphalism at home and abroad, it is a civilization whose hard-won
achievements are not only compatible with Muslim values but which can broadly
support and strengthen the Islamic community. The Western regard for
individualism and political freedom and its commitment to political
accountability and democratic pluralism characterize some of the best of what
the West offers the world. Muslims must not be so insecure as to believe that
they can only reflect or reject the West or that the accomplishments of one
civilization serve only to underscore the failures of others. Genuine curiosity
about the Western experience and serious reflection on the sources of Western
strength may be necessary to move the Islamic community from its painful
introspection and isolation into a new period of confident and inclusive
building of a just and peaceful social order.
The experiences of religious wars and colonialism have engendered a profound
distrust of Western motives and goals, while the images Muslims receive of the
West, through television and movies, as well as from images depicting the deep
suffering of Arabs and Muslims at the hands of non-Muslims, have generated a
complex reaction of defensiveness and moral outrage. The inability to
successfully challenge unjust policies and the fear that foreign values will
induce Muslims to deviate from their faith have effectively closed off the
ability to hear what the West may also be communicating.
What
can we get from dialogue?
Instead, each has
much to gain from moving away from images, symbols and postures. Attachment and
commitment to these forms undermine the purpose of dialogue, keeping us
estranged and unknown to one another.
Developing a process of communication is key to transcending this deep
subjectivity, one that involves active listening and a commitment to sustained
dialogue, not rushing to achieve immediate rewards, transformation or
understanding, but rather learning to understand how each communicates their
shared concerns. In this way we can discover, as well as create, shared meanings
and find our common ground, while better understanding our values and ideals as
we are challenged to share them in a new way.
Particularly where different faith traditions are concerned, there is a strong
tendency to compare the ideals of one religion with the realities of the other.
And yet this can be an important point of illumination, clarification and new
meaning. While Christianity believes quite strongly in the virtues and
importance of peace, for example, Islam has conceptualized peace in a different
manner: in Islam, we define peace as ‘presence of’—presence of justice,
well-being, and social integration and harmony, while the West has come to
understand peace as ‘absence of’: the absence of gross violations of human
rights, violence, or militancy. In understanding the meanings we attach to our
values we can then broaden them to encompass our own wisdom in ways that add and
develop the other in positive directions. We can then begin to understand
together that peace cannot be separated from justice and a vibrant, healthy
society. Through sensitivity and trust in the intentions and moral equality of
the other, we can transform our relationships and perception of one another, in
a gradual and respectful manner, and in the process reestablish the linkage
between our most cherished ideals. Defensiveness, which insists that one is
wrong and the other is right, only entrenches our distance and difference.
Rather we can soon begin to see that our values and ideals complement and enrich
one another, and can move each of us forward. This is why we have difference: so
that we may know one another, and better ourselves in the process.
Dialogue thus involves shifting our assumptions that allows us to recognize that
the achievements of one civilization does not imply or reflect that another is
inferior, but rather, that we are challenged to adapt these lessons to our own
circumstances. In particular, the West offers much to the Islamic world in terms
of institutionalizing democracy, education and development. Islam can offer in
exchange with the West its own considerable achievements and insights into
community, spirituality, and diversity.
Democracy
The West emerged
after years of deep introspection, existential anxiety and conflict over its
faith system with hard-won lessons and achievements in the realm of political
coexistence. In closing our ears to this achievement we are losing an
opportunity to meet one of modernity’s greatest challenges on our own terms.
Muslims are not required to reach the same conclusions that Christians adopted
with regard to their faith and do not need to in order to develop an
authentically Islamic response to political empowerment. There is a great need
in the Muslim and Arab world to deliberately integrate the person, the citizen
and the Muslim. This involves a search for truth within Islamic traditions and
contexts that begins at the level of the individual. Christianity has emerged
with a close linking of personal behavior with citizenship and social values,
while Muslims today are on the threshold of discovering the obligations and
meaning of Muslim citizenship.
Islam and democracy are not incompatible. Islamic social institutions are more
dynamic and variegated than is widely recognized, and provide the basis for
genuine participation at the social and political level. It is the Muslim
community itself that must discover how this integration can apply to modern
living, and in the process discover original ways of implementing Islamic
precepts in changing social conditions. Muslims have the right to participate in
the unfolding and direction of their community, while creating their own values
and terms within the enduring context of Islam. Democracy is not built upon a
particular variety of electoral institutions, but upon genuine participation. In
this regard there are democratic precepts in Islam, as there are in other
religions, to include both the preservation and development of the community,
and social justice and consultative mechanisms. Democracy is not a Western
product, it is rather a universal process of organizing political needs on an
equal basis, and is at the same time an indigenous and delicate flower that only
flourishes when deeply rooted in the dreams and hopes of the great majority of a
nation.
For example, Muslims need to ask, what kind of citizens can Islam create,
animated by Islamic values and contexts? What kind of solutions can Islam bring
to affect participatory decision-making in the absence of authoritative guidance
in social matters? What Islamic values and social mechanisms can be brought to
bear for ameliorating the conditions of modern, urban living? The flowering of
the individual as citizen within Islamic community can inspire new avenues of
meaning and institutions that testify to—and fortify—what is enduring in
Islam.
A dialogue can move us away from rigid adherence to form, to defensive
posturing, and toward promoting an exchange of ideas on how to incorporate the
lessons learned from one civilization appropriately to another. In so doing,
improvements can be made where creativity is allowed to flourish in dynamic
interaction. The West, meanwhile, has developed a greater thirst for
spirituality and ultimate meaning and has turned to such Muslim and Arab
humanists as Muhyi-d-Dīn
Ibn ‘Arabī, Jalalu-d-Din Rūmi,
Kahlil Gibran and Ameen Rihani, who have become some of America’s best-selling
figures. As Americans in particular wrestle with cultural diversity, there are
opportunities to learn from the life-affirming side of Islamic precepts and
considerable experience with cultural coexistence. There is room to rediscover
the extensive Islamic contributions to Western philosophy and science and the
spiritual content and interconnectedness that has been consistently devalued in
their quest for material progress.
There is here a real opportunity for leadership to emerge from dialogue.
Today’s challenge for the West is to live up to its liberal tradition, which
requires continual openness to new revelations of truth. Today’s challenge for
Muslims lies in the expansion of the original ideas of Islam and a willingness
to demonstrate curiosity about historical experiences and achievements of the
West. Where are the Muslim ‘Lawrence of Arabias’ who seek to discover and
know the Western Christian worldview? Why has there been so little research
among Muslim scholars on the Christian perspective of the Western experience, or
the encyclicals of the Catholic Church, or the Christian struggle to find
religious meaning in politics? Much may be gained in insight from the historical
political trials of Christianity for Muslims at this time, as it emerged at a
time of profound oppression, injustice and during occupation. How did this path
cope with such circumstances, organize their community and move beyond them?
Education
“Education” is
increasingly coming to be understood as a communitarian and dialogical exercise
in ‘praxiology’—the art (science) of living in the tension between
reflection and practice. In such an exercise, everyone’s experience and
reflection is tested, through dialogue, and everyone is considered a learner and
a person who is still ‘developing.’ Such a concept of education removes the
false authority from the ‘teacher,’ but restores his or her humanity.
The kind of education that the contemporary world needs is one that is
constantly inventing and creating new solutions to the world’s increasingly
massive problems. This can only be done by expanding the educational process,
which must become more dialogical and open-ended, and less paternalistic and
past-oriented. The caste system of education must be overcome if there is to be
any real dialogue, if a dialectic based on equal dignity of all people is to be
achieved. Humility must not be allowed to perish with years and accumulated
experience. As in the Sufi tradition, it is necessary to remind ourselves, and
each other, constantly, that life is a path of learning, that we are constantly
called upon to awaken ourselves and each other for the search for freedom, for
truth, for beauty, for creativity.
Development
Like the meaning of
the word ‘education,’ the meaning of ‘development’ has evolved in
response to the rising consciousness of the Global South, but has not yet kept
pace with the yearnings and consciousness of the majority of humanity. Also as
with ‘education,’ the word ‘development’ still is constantly
appropriated by the establishment (in this sense, the managers of the Western
system) in an attempt to “make the revolution before the people do,” in the
famous phrase of a Brazilian politician of the last generation.
Development has increasingly expanded its definition to include more than just
economic growth. Indeed, it is now generally recognized that instead of a
neutral, invisible process, development is understood as the result of conscious
choices in favor of humanization. From a narrow focus on economic growth,
‘development’ has come to include political, cultural, and social
components, which have more recently been incorporated into an interrelated
series of basic human rights, such as those defined by the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights. The United Nations has recently begun to talk about the
“Right to Development,” which includes political, social, and cultural
rights.
Conclusion
Most important for
both communities at this time is the need for active engagement. As cultural
symbols assume greater significance within the Western-Islamic relationship,
active engagement with one another, through sustained dialogue, permits each to
understand the deeper meanings, associations, and implications of this emerging
‘clash of symbols.’ This is essential if these symbols are not to be used to
dehumanize one another.
Historically, both the West and Islam have relied overmuch on the self-evident
testimonies of their beliefs and accomplishments over genuine interpersonal or
inter-civilizational dialogue and bridge building. A new and mutually rewarding
relationship has the potential to emerge between Islam and the West, where
accumulated wisdom and insights for necessary progress provide the basis of a
valued coexistence. Such a relationship would be premised not on ideas of
cultural superiority, but on mutual respect and openness to cultural
eclecticism. Muslims and Westerners can learn from each other and cooperate in
the pursuit of humane values. Ultimately, in getting back in touch with our
highest values and expanding our understanding of truth, we transform what has
been a long-standing and violently competitive relationship to a new form of
competition: we can compete with one another in good works, serving humanity,
and demonstrating to the world the soundness of our values and our contribution
to civilization.
This future depends on a meeting of the best of East and West, North and South,
and the emergence of a new transnational conscience. This transnational
conscience is not molded by the media, nor is it the creation of the elites and
intellectuals: it is the cry for human dignity. It is an innate human
expression. The West and Islam are not destined to meet as rivals; in knowing
each other through sustained dialogue, the West can give Islam the best that it
has in exchange for the best of Islam. The events of September 11 remind us
conclusively that the whole world needs the whole world.
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