Cross-cultural and inter-faith dimensions of education and the inter-cultural and inter-faith sensitivity they promote are of the greatest importance at this time. Despite all the talk about globalization, there is evidence in many quarters of entrenched parochialism, increasing xenophobia, racial and cultural intolerance and prejudice, isolationism, cross-cultural communication failure, profound misconceptions of other cultures (fed by flagrant misrepresentation in the media), and outright ignorance and bigotry.

This situation is only exacerbated by allegiance to the poisonous doctrine of the Clash of Civilizations, which is easily exploited, either by mediocre minds or by those pursuing an agenda of political, economic, military or evangelical domination, to give credence to an infantile us-and-them, either-you’re-with-us-or-against-us, black-and-white, axis-of-evil, good-and-bad-guys, mentality.

We must take every opportunity to enhance cross-cultural and inter-faith understanding and respect for diversity. This is not something only done in personal and social education or religious education lessons and school assemblies but in every subject area and in every aspect of school life, as set out in the new Citizenship component of the British National Curriculum. Art and music are fertile areas for cross-cultural work. It can be promoted in every subject area, including mathematics and science, and no teachers should be allowed to get away with the idea that their subjects are only concerned with a set of prescribed skills or a narrow band of content which has to be “taught” so as to “cover” the syllabus in time for the examinations.

Faith schools must also demonstrate their respect for religious and cultural diversity and true pluralism, in the sense that openness to other faiths and traditions does not necessitate any loss of commitment to a particular faith community. Parochial limitation, narrow affiliation to a single community, and exclusion by faith will not build the bridges that need to be built with the wider community of communities. At the same time, we need to understand why many parents prefer to send their children to single-faith schools, not least because of the cohesive ethos and coherent system of values they provide.

The best curriculum should aim to encompass a global dimension and extend the horizons of students in all areas of the curriculum, so that, while having pride in their own culture, they will have respect for cultural diversity in all its forms and understand the contribution of all civilizations to the development of mankind.

The curriculum should therefore provide opportunities for the study of world history; world geography, including human geography and anthropology to promote understanding and respect for human and cultural diversity; world civilizations and their contribution to the transmission of sacred knowledge, including the thematic study of comparative mythology and symbolism and their significance for the psychological and spiritual development of the student.

As Mona Abu-Fadl has explained, this is not the Aristotelian “mean” based on the idea of “a middle ground arrived at by the elimination of extremes or an aggregate amounting to a moderate stance” which would, by its very nature, be “shifting and defined, moreover, in terms of other positions, not of any intrinsic characteristics.” A middle way rooted in tawheed and “deriving its elements from transcendental sources, provides a stable integral core which serves in itself as a point of departure and a referent for defining and qualifying other positions, and not the reverse. In this way, it constitutes an intrinsic core and provides a vertical axis, or a spinal component, round which the diverse elements and modes of knowledge in the circle of consciousness cohere.”

The best Islamic education will renew that essentially Islamic capacity to integrate and accommodate diverse traditions in a spirit of pluralism, as embodied in the historical legacy of intellectual giants such as Al-Biruni, Ibn Al-Haytham, Al-Ghazali, Ibn Rushd, Razi, and Suhrawardi.

Pluralism is itself an ideal environment in which to project not narrow formalisms but core Islamic values, including the genuinely Islamic concept of human dignity. These core Islamic values are the same universal values that promote unity in the secular world—values such as seeking knowledge, equality, freedom, human rights, justice, and altruism. The principles of a new world order are embedded in the pluralistic vision of Islam and were embodied in the prototype of an Islamic society existing during the time of the Prophet (peace and blessings upon him) and in Al-Andalus—a vision capable of reconciling the demands of diversity and unity in a humane framework.

But let us be clear that such a vision encompasses not only the openness that characterizes living traditions, but also a strong commitment to a particular tradition and community. Diana Eck, Director of the Pluralism Project, argues that there is no such thing as a generic pluralist. There are pluralists from different faith communities, and even humanist pluralists, committed to their own tradition, but at the same time willing to encounter one another and respect each other’s particularities. The task of a pluralist society, she says, is “to create the space and the means for the encounter of commitments, not to neutralize all commitment,” for “unless all of us can encounter one another’s conceptual, cultural, religious and spiritual expressions and understand them through dialogue, both critically and self-critically, we cannot begin to live with maturity and integrity in the world house.”

A view of pluralism which entails commitment as well as openness and respect for diversity seeks synthesis in relation to a stable, integral core of knowledge, but this is not the same as a syncretic view which tries to fuse or cobble together different traditions—including incompatible principles or beliefs—into a new system. It is not “a global shopping mall where each individual puts together a basket of appealing religious ideas,” flattening out differences and reducing every tradition to “the bland unity of the lowest common denominator” or “the nicest platitudes.”

In the wake of September 11, 2001, and all the dangers which accompany a polarized us-and-them outlook on the world, the West should never forget one of the founding principles of its civilization in the affirmation by Plato that philosophical dialectic, the testing process of critical enquiry through discussion and dialogue, is utterly distinct from and immeasurably superior to rhetoric, and this legacy has ultimately ensured that in the contemporary usage of all modern European languages, the word rhetorical almost invariably has negative connotations, implying the abuse of language for self-serving ends.

At the same time, Muslims need to recall that one of the founding principles of Islamic civilization was a dynamic spirit of open-minded enquiry, which Muslim scholars communicated to the Christian, Greek, and Jewish communities in their midst. As Muhammad Asad has so eloquently written: “[The Qur’an], through its insistence on consciousness and knowledge … engendered among its followers a spirit of intellectual curiosity and independent inquiry, ultimately resulting in that splendid era of learning and scientific research which distinguished the world of Islam at the height of its vigor; and the culture thus fostered by the Qur’an penetrated in countless ways and by-ways into the mind of medieval Europe and gave rise to that revival of Western culture which we call the Renaissance, and thus became in the course of time largely responsible for the birth of what is described as the ‘age of science’: the age in which we are now living.”

And for Muslims, the Qur’an is, par excellence, that transcendental source which provides the qiblah or orienting point of reference, the vertical axis and integral core around which all modes of knowledge and all diverse traditions revolve and cohere.

The best cross-cultural and inter-faith education therefore goes far beyond a bland and diffuse medley or recipe of selected traditions and beliefs of different cultures, traditions, and faith communities, even though this in itself can help to cultivate the attitude of tolerance which can be a useful starting point. We need to teach our young people more than mere facts about the festivals held by different religious communities, or their religious artefacts, or their rituals and practices, as if they are items of anthropological interest.