CAIRO: Today’s international headlines are choked with references to so-called Islamic terrorism, fundamentalism, and extremism. Images of gunwielding Palestinians and suicide bombers etch negative impressions of the Muslim world to Western audiences. Since the onset of the U.S. and allied invasion of Iraq, disturbing images of Westerners being executed by groups avowing Islamic ideals have incited general antagonism and hostility against what is perceived as the Muslim world, whether justified or not. As a result, much talk has emerged about the ‘clash of civilizations’.With the modern Western ideals infiltrating the depths of the Muslim societies around the world; and, in turn, Muslim communities flourishing throughout Europe and North America, are we really two separate, conflicting civilizations?
In July, the United Nations Secretary-General announced the launch of an initiative for an “Alliance of Civilizations. The initiative, as explained by a UN statement, is intended to respond to “the need for a committed effort by the international community to bridge schisms, overcome prejudice, misperceptions, and polarization which potentially threaten world peace. The statement goes on to specifically refer to the “widening gap and lack of mutual understanding between Islamic andWestern societies creating an environment that has given rise to extremism in all societies.” The Alliance of Civilizations is intended as a coalition against such forces, as a movement to advance mutual respect for religious beliefs and traditions and as a reaffirmation of humankind’s increasing interdependence in all areas.
Following the collapse of the Cold War,where the world was clearly divided into two distinct blocs and it was easy to distinguish your allies from your foes, the world seems to be scrambling to define ‘us’ vs. ‘them’. On the surface, though, we all generally aspire to the same ideals: to live in a society with greater political freedom and representation, economic liberalization, and social equality. The difference remains in how we envision these.
Among the high-level group of eminent persons recruited by the Secretary-General to guide the Alliance initiative is religious historian Karen Armstrong. Lecturing at the American University in Cairo last week,Armstrong discusses the need to create new narratives.
“On September 11 [2001], we moved into a new world, things are not the same. The world has changed forever. We need a new concept of civilization, the clash of civilizations is a powerful discourse which people want desperately to hang on to, takes for granted that there are these big, discrete, separable bodies called civilizations that are separate and distinct from one another. We are now in one world, economically and electronically pulled together, explained Armstrong.
And just as Western values and ideals have had a great influence on the Muslim world; it is not a one-way street. Similarly, Muslims are over there with us in Europe, they’re in the United States. They’re going to change the way we think and we have to be open about that, said Armstrong.
Ironically, the initiative was spurred by a proposal by the Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero who said, at a UN General Assembly meeting last year, that “an alliance of cultures was necessary in a world facing conflict because of poverty and Islamic radicalization. Because it was, according to Armstrong, in the Iberian Peninsula during the Crusades that the ‘clash’ between Islam and what was to become the modern West began.
“At the time of the Crusades, Western scholars began to create an image of Islam that has become one of the perceived ideas of the West. Jews and Muslims alike were two victims of the Crusades. And it is always difficult to forgive the people who harmed you, explained Armstrong, who is a strong believer in looking to the past to gain an understanding of the present.
She went on to elaborate some of the historical incidences and beliefs that have led to the misconceptions about Islam that are still entrenched in Western beliefs. “The scholar monks began looking at the Quran for the first time, they knew very little about it, and they had some garbled version about who Mohamed was,what the Prophet had been. But what they were really concerned about was their own behavior, Armstrong elaborates. “The phobia about Jews and Muslims reflected anxieties, buried anxieties, about the way Western people were behaving. Jesus, for example, had told his followers to love his enemies. When the first Crusaders arrived in Jerusalem in 1099, they fell on Jewish and Muslim inhabitants and massacred 30,000 to 40,000 people.
“It was about this time that [the idea that] Islam was the religion of the sword, that it imposed itself only warfare and by force, came into currency – at the time when it was actually the West that was fighting a gratuitous holy war against Islam. And so it’s a kind of projection of worries about their own behavior on to Islam, Armstrong pointed out.
Another example Armstrong put forth is the popes imposing celibacy on a reluctant clergy,which gave impetus to scholar monks who – “with a good deal of ill-concealed envy , she adds – described the Prophet Mohamed as a lecher and a sexual pervert who encouraged his followers to indulge in their most base instincts. Again, it had more to do with the West’s perceptions of their own behavior than the realities of Islam.
“The West was beginning to create an entirely new Western, Christian identity . So the Muslim became the shadow self of Europe . Everything we feared we might be, and hoped we were not, explained Armstrong.
As history progresses, these beliefs have become the foundation of modern ethos of the Muslim world. Any recent, or even current, events are colored by those perceptions.
“This fantasy has persisted, it’s in the subculture. You find it popping up all the time in newspapers as though it was a self-evident fact that Islam was a violent faith that established itself only by the sword. We have a great deal of effort and hard work to do to un-think this perceived idea, stated Armstrong.
In order for us to bridge the growing divide between Islam and the West, we need to do more than complain about the injustice of Western media prorogating the misconceptions about Islam, or conceiving elaborate – and often completely unfounded – conspiracy theories undermining the Middle East. Yes,Western foreign policy has wreaked havoc in the region. Colonialism was no walk in the park either.
Consequently, we’ve developed a love-hate relationship with the modern West.
On the one hand we emulate them; on the other hand we resent their policies and are frustrated by their domination of the international arena.
But how well do we understand the West?
We, too, have developed an understanding of the West based on our past experiences, and in reaction to our circumstances. Modern Islamic movements, for instance, first emerged as a reaction to Western colonization and, possibly even as a reaction to in the imposition and infiltration of Western ideals into our society and culture. Today’s Egypt was established as a counter-revolution to British and Ottoman colonization, while declaring modern Western values such as independence.
In order for the Alliance of Civilizations to have a chance of bringing us closer together in mutual understanding and respect, then we have to take it upon ourselves to eliminate our misperceptions of the West. Just as Americans descended on bookstores after 911 bombings in order to understand more about Islam and why there was so much antagonism towards the West, we too, have to open to strive to understand the West. Just as Americans have to face the realities of the impact their foreign policy has had on the Muslim world, we, too, have to take responsibility for the events that have lead to the misperceptions of Islam as a violent religion.
It takes two to forge an alliance, and we have to play our part.
