Islam and the West

Abstract

When discussing this most important and timely issue, before anything else and beyond all current passions and prejudices, one must pause and ask what we mean by the two terms Islam and the West. Which Islam and which West are we considering? Is it traditional Islam as practiced by the majority of Muslims, the Islam of pious men and women who seek to live in the light of God‘s teachings as revealed in the Qur’an and in surrender to His will? Or is it modernist interpretations that seek to interpret the Islamic tradition in view of currently prevalent Western ideas and fashions of thought? Or yet, is it the extreme forms of politically active Islam that, in exasperation, before dominance by non-Islamic forces both outside and inside the borders of most Islamic countries, takes recourse in ideas and methods of certain strands of recent Western political history, including, in some cases, terrorism, which is against Islamic law and which was not invented by them? Nor is the reality of the West in any way homogeneous. In fact, practically the only political unity observed in the West these days appears in its hatred of Islam, as shown in the case of Bosnia and Chechnya, where one has observed, with very few exceptions, the uniformity of silence, indifference, and inaction by various voices in the West in the face of the worst kind of human atrocities. Otherwise, the opposition of forces and diversity of what is usually called the West is so blatant as to hardly need mention. But since it is ignored in many quarters that speak of global order based on what they call Western values, it must be asked if the West is characterized by Trappist and Carthusian monks or European and American agnostic or atheistic “intellectuals” on university campuses or in the media. One wonders if the Westerners are those who still make pilgrimage to hurdes in the thousands, or those who journey, also in the thousands, to Las Vegas or the birthplace of Elvis Presley. This diversity and even confrontation within the West is of the greatest importance not only for those in Europe and the United States who speak of confrontation with the Islamic world on the basis of the idea that there is an at least relatively unified West, but also for the Muslims, at least some of whom are in general fully aware of deep divisions not likely to be integrated into unity soon but which are in fact on the verge of creating disorder and chaos within the very fabric of Western societies ...