Islam-Occident
The Aims of Dialogue
By
Mustapha Cherif
“Why the dialogue of cultures and religions?”, a fundamental and topical question. The content of opinions of “Muslims” shows that confusions and difficulties loom over this complex and sensitive theme. It is crucial to clarify the problematic. First of all, two types of approaches overlap and miss the essence.
The first is that of attraction vis-à-vis the West. Bringing nothing new, it recites a lesson to please it, stipulating that “the Islamic world have participated through a glorious past in Western civilisation”, by advancing the contributions of Arab sciences and language to the European cultures and specifying that “there is no problem between the West and Islam”. Certainly, convergence and the common Abrahmic and Greco-Arab ground are important, yet none can deny individualities and divergences and the fact that the Westernisation of the world poses a problem.
This position of “passage to the West”, naïve and depersonalised as it is, overshadows the reality and challenges of our times. It bypasses the difficulty. It presents itself in a position of weakness, which help in nothing the understanding of the subject. In fact, in the West, discourses consider this recall as an inoperative nostalgia of a bygone age and refute the idea of the Arab contribution to civilisation.
Concerning the assertion that “there is no problem between the West and Islam”, it is perceived as an acknowledgement that the West of today is a dominant role model. It is in fact an escape from the core of the question, a sort of alignment with the Western model. Putting the stress on ancient greatness and on the idea of compatibility with modernity can seduce for a while, yet the stage effects do not last.
In the context of globalisation, since the concepts of the West and the Orient are surpassed, about which Wests and which modernities are we speaking? Those of the human rights values, or xenophobia and the marchandisation of life? Those of the state of law or of discriminations? Those of the multicultural or the uniformization? Islam is not only compatible with reason, secularity and democracy, but also demands and constitutes them in its own manner. Peoples should be able to assert themselves the way they feel and want, peoples of Islam are no exception to the others.
The second position is that of the proponents of conservatism, who, surpassed by the events, marked by introversion, assert themselves in the repulsion and speak without nuance about being against the dialogue of religions. They multiply accusations towards the West in a polemical language. They imagine themselves perhaps to be better Muslims when they are against the West. The West should neither be diabolized nor idealised. As it is legitimate to refuse the diabolization or the idealisation of the Muslim. Dialogue is unavoidable, we can therefore, judge its pleading for its necessity as superfluous. However, this necessity is not acknowledged everywhere, neither by the Western side nor by the side of the Arabo-Islamic world. Its entities have a tendency to resist.
It is necessary to have a thought of discernment. When there are bad practices by Muslims or Westerners, it is crucial to criticise them. To be able to do it in an objective manner and to mould a responsible and open society is to rise to the challenge of education and culture. Islam is a religion that is little known by foreigners misunderstood by a number of its own adherents.
These conservatives of the second position, those characterised by introversion, boast about the mission of preserving tradition and of defending arabo-islamism, and act rigorously in front of the media! Even the “Arabs” of djahiliya did have a code of honour, appealing to the respect of oratorical jousts with the other. If the first position is naïve, the second is unworthy of the civilised values of Islam. Of which Islamic world are we speaking? The one with the majority of the values of hospitability or the one stipulating closure? The one which is ancestral to the culture of ijtihad, of the common sense of wisdom, or the one of extremism?
The two positions, that of traction and that of repulsion, lack scientific credibility. The West disconcerts. It is like “Janus”, ambivalent, double-faced, at once author of an extraordinary progress founded on technoscience and manifestor of a threatening behaviour that might put humanity at risk, notably the content of the ruptures between the essential dimensions of existence and the fact of imposing by all means its unilateral, religiophobe and consumerist version, which is related mainly to savage liberalism. The arrogance behind its appropriation, in an unjustified manner, of values such as democracy, secularity and reason, together with its policy of double measures and its law of the strongest, aggravate the situation.
The Islamic world, embodying the vision of the juste milieu, of the median line and of a balanced and adept version of the humane, resists. As long as it is a tree that bears fruits, Islam is assaulted by ignorant persons and conspirers. Sometimes the resistance of Muslims is irrational and obscurantist. It harms what it imagines it is defending; consequently the attacks redouble in ferocity. This is how the answers to the questions asked to the Islamic world are sketched out: “Why the dialogue of cultures and religions?” I can list at least ten causes:
1- The Islamic world has dialogued ever since the time of its greatness and accommodated the discoveries and values of other cultures. Today approximately 80% of the Muslims of the world live under despotisms, pauperisation and frailty, and 40% are illiterate. Regarding the gap between theory and practice, in a time of decadence, under development and dependence, it should start its self-criticism, open itself and dialogue more than ever.
2- All the problems, at the internal level, arise simultaneously: political, economic and cultural. At the international level, the crisis is multidimensional. The dialogue of cultures and religions is consequently vital. None can stand against the challenges of our time alone. Nowhere, the work of one civilization is irreversible, or perfect enough to protect itself from decline.
3- The world is a planetary village. The “Western” and “Oriental” worlds are imbricated and tied; their limits and frontiers are artificial in spite of the fortress policies.
4- There is no other alternative to dialogue than confrontation and war, which are harmful to everyone. Isolation, introversion and ignorance are doomed to fail.
5- The reality of Islam and the Muslims is distorted. They are taken as a target and as a new enemy. Disinformation, anti Islamic propaganda and islamophobia are involved in a hegemonic strategy. They produce terror, manipulate, magnify our internal weaknesses and the extremist’s faults to create the scarecrow effect. It is a multiform war which practices stigmatization, amalgams and scapegaoting to create diversions to the deadlocks and inequity of the dominant system and control wealth. As a riposte, dialoguing, communicating and instructing is unavoidable when it comes to the enlightenment of the international public opinion.
6- Our founding spiritual references: Qur’an, Sinna and the Islamic, cultural and scientific legacy compel us to dialogue in the best possible way, between ourselves and the others. This is not a luxury, but a basic principle of fact, of reason and of common sense to cope the challenges of existence.
7- These same references do not only appeal to tolerance, they acknowledge the right for difference as well as the right for religious and cultural pluralism. No one has the monopoly of truth, even if Islam is the final religion of right and that each one believes to hold the perfect dimension.
8- The Qur’an and the prophetic Sunna offer a clear method for dialogue: the obligation to open the self, to welcome the other, and at the same time they appeal to caution and vigilance in order not to become a hostage of the other.
9- As Algerians, our contemporary historical references, from Emir Abdelkader to the Call of November, to the different congresses, from the Soummam till the post independence texts, all guarantee and acknowledge the virtues of diversity for the unity of the nation. No culture is monolithic, closed and without debt to others. A culture becomes part of civilisation through its respect for plurality, dialogue, sharing, exchange and synthesis, to reach the universal and thrive in its proper trajectory. No one can progress without dialogue, exchange and confrontation of ideas in a context of freedom and responsible conduct. It remains to translate this into facts.
10- Without dialogue, it is impossible to change the power relationships and to avoid pitfalls, instrumentalisations and manipulations of those in the world who seek to justify situations of dominations and to limit themselves to change the form and not the essence of reality. As the modern world failed to create a civilization, cultures succumbed to the dominant mercantile and dehumanising model, and the Muslim world, paralysed as it is, lost its ancient position. Humanity lives with uncertainty. Dialogue is impossible to circumvent in our quest for a world which has meaning, logic and right. These are the three conditions leading not only to the reinvention of a universal civilization, but also to its protection from the threats caused by the propaganda of the “clash of civilizations”, as it is reported.
If this happens, that would mean that humanity tests the extreme limits of its tendency to live together, that the vulgarization of hatred becomes commonplace and that the diabolisation of others reached its apogee, that the life instinct and the need for sharing which push men to be unified are exhausted and abdicated vis-à-vis the death instinct and isolation. It is easier to cause mistrust, hatred and the rejection of others than mutual respect. This is an additional reason to dialogue and not to abandon ourselves to lassitude.
We refuse to imagine, from one side, the world of the other as liberal-fascist, obscurantist and totalitarian, where nothing is exchanged, nothing human circulates, nothing wise is being said, except what supports conflict relations. All Europeans do not confuse Islam and fanaticism. All the Muslims do not confuse aggressors and Westerners. Through the dialogue of cultures and religions, the expansion of our feeling of belonging to humanity must overcome. If we break the yokes of the international authorities in charge of this question and if we really dialogue to reach mutual understanding, which contributes to discernment, to reconciliation and to living together, there remains a future.
Mustapha Cherif