Islam and the West

Abstract

Ladies and gentlemen, it was suggested to me when I first began to consider the subject of this lecture that I should take comfort from the Arab proverb: "In every head there is some wisdom." I confess that I have few qualifications as a scholar to justify my presence here in this theatre, where so many people much more learned than I have preached and generally advanced the sum of human knowledge. I might feel more prepared if I were an offspring of your distinguished university, rather than a product of that "Technical College of the Fens," though I hope you will bear in mind that a chair of Arabic was established in seven-teenth-century Cambridge a full four years before your first chair of Arabic at Oxford. Unlike many of you, I am not an expert on Islam, though I am delighted, for reasons that I hope will become clear, to be a vice patron of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. The Centre has the potential to be an important and exciting vehicle for promoting and improving understanding of the Islamic world in Britain, and one which I hope will earn its place alongside other centres of Islamic study in Oxford, like the Oriental Institute and the Middle East Centre, as an institution of which the university, and scholars more widely, will become justly proud. Given all the reservations I have about venturing into a complex and controversial field, you may well ask why I am here in this marvelous Wren building talking to you on the subject of Islam and the West. The reason is, ladies and gentlemen, that I believe wholeheartedly that the links between these two worlds matter more today than ever before, because the degree of misunderstanding between the Islamic and the west ...