Simplicity
is a rarity. The world is a complicated place. All ideas in the
space of meaning, which makes the world we live in, bear many
built-in subtexts and ties with many other related ideas and states
of affairs. The world is more than self-constructed discursive
formations.
Simply,
in the “us and them” world, not only should the classification
of the East and the West be renegotiated, but the makeup of the
actual construct between the two camps should follow. “Clash” or
“dialogue”—is the world big enough to accommodate both the
East and the West? Is it big enough to accommodate both a clash and
a dialogue? Is the end of “clash” a termination of one side? Is
the end of “dialogue” the complete conversion of the Other? Who
proposes the necessity of either prospect? Is there interest
involved or purely universal principles? And when? Are things
between the two poles, churches, civilizations—you name
it—simple? Are the two camps absolute, solid, and sealed off
entities? That is, is everything black
and white? And even if we agree on the existence of parochial,
polarized space, and that there is either a clash or a dialogue,
then on what ground will the clash come to blows or the dialogue be
held? Theological—which will mean that it’s between more or less
fixed components? Cultural or anthropological—which will mean that
the two sides are relativities? Civilizational—and how to define a
civilization? The world is now complicated.
In
our effort to disengage the question from the ideological weight it
carries on its shoulders, we represent to you our special folder,
“The Clash of Deviations: How to Ridicule the World.” In it, we
bring to the forefront sensible arguments that challenge the
pretentious thesis of the “Clash of Civilizations,” offering an
analysis of the different schools of thought in relation to the ties
between Islam and the West.
First,
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the vanguard Muslim scholar, takes the question
back home in his insightful “Civilizational
Dialogue and the Islamic World” through an extraordinary,
meticulous argument. The theology of civilization existence, the
presiding idea of both sides, is dismantled and then rearranged
again. The actual meaning of dialogue and the factors that
necessitate it are revisited, along with the difference between a
civilization, a faith, and an empire. Also a new look toward the
extreme forms on the two sides is offered. Religion seems to still
be alive, but, he argues, maybe this is what is missing from the
equation.
In
the second piece, Parvez Manzoor challenges Samuel Huntington’s
polemicist hypothesis of the clash of
civilizations. In “Anti-Islamic
Polemics: Secularist, Orientalist and Christian” Manzoor
shows in historical and intellectual contexts where this view comes
from and what we, as Muslims, should bear in mind in dealing with
our life and dealing with the “clash of civilizations.” After
reading this essay, it will be easier to see why the secularists,
Orientalists, and Christian scholars see Islam the way they do.
Huntington’s one-dimensional argument is put in the proper
perspective. This is truly an exceptional piece.
Samir
Morcos, an Egyptian Coptic researcher and writer, in his precious
“The Dialogue of Civilizations:
Three Western Visions,” the third work in the folder,
rearranges the whole argument. He shows the ideological preferences,
dualities, centralities, and ultimate philosophies of the three
different visions of the three schools of thought (institutionalized
or intellectualized) in relation to the question at hand. Even more
importantly, he offers an accomplished account on an alternative
chain of thought and actors that have broken away safely from all
the tricky problems of triumphalism and centralism and that strive
for a new world.
Fourth,
as our concern is to achieve a better world—one that reads what we
all are in the context of the human condition; one that sees us as
people, not as ideological robots; one that feels we are all parts
of a life that is made of us all, not made to follow what we are
assumed to be—we see that there is more. “Islam
and the West in a Transmodern World”
by Ziauddin Sardar radiantly offers that.
Fifth,
on the levels of epistemology and consciousness, Amr Thabet presents
a future of the relation between the ummah and the liberal democracy
in “Clash
of Civilizations and the Democratic Discourse: The Islamic Challenge.”
Many
thinkers have proposed that the whole is idea—whether a
“clash” or “dialogue”—is a Westen-Western affair. After
all, even on the Muslim side, extremist groups that advocate
conflict against the West are themselves plague-ridden Western
ideas: anarchy, pragmatism, instrumental use of technology,
revolution, and exclusion of traditional Islamic scholarship. Shaykh
Abdal Hakim Murad with all eloquence, wit, and intellectual bravery,
dismisses the hard-driven and bombastic “clash of civilizations”
and turns it into a “clash of caricatures” as an internal
Western affair. We see that the clash is nothing but mere balance of
power, and then all its theological, ideological, strategic, and
many other manifestations are tailored to fit, from both sides, the
East and the West. If we oppose, we do not do so just on sheer
ideological grounds. We have to stand high and see the ground we
stand on in history and the world around us. The world is not a
world of ideological formations; there is more to it. To think that
it is nothing but the totality of ideological formations ridicules
the whole world, not just that of Muslims, not just that of
Westerners.
Works
represented in the folder are:
