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Civilizational Dialogue and the Islamic World*
When
discussing civilizational dialogue, it is necessary first of all to
ask what we mean by civilization. For several centuries in the West,
the power and glitter of the world dominated by modern civilization
had made the very term civilization synonymous with modern Western
civilization, and all the other civilizations were considered as
stages in the development of this particular civilization, which the
Encyclopedists called la civilisation. For a long time
intellectual discourse in the West had reduced the use of the term
civilization to the singular, and since the 19th century many a
modernized Asian and African also surrendered to this Western view.
It
is therefore necessary to turn to the traditional
understanding of the very concept of civilization, an
understanding which enjoyed a remarkable universality among
various traditional human collectivities |
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But
despite the overwhelming power of Western civilization, which itself
came into being as a result of rebellion against the Christian
civilization of the European Middle Ages, the other civilizations,
although weakened in many ways, did not die out. And now, at the
beginning of a new Christian century and millennium, there is again
talk of civilizations in the plural, despite the aggressive spread
to the farthest corners of the earth of global consumerism and with
it some of the shallowest aspects of Western popular culture. No,
the other civilizations have not died out, and some, especially the
Islamic, are in fact seeking to revive themselves. It is therefore
necessary to turn to the traditional understanding of the very
concept of civilization, an understanding which enjoyed a remarkable
universality among various traditional human collectivities that
have occupied the world over the millennia, before dealing with the
contemporary situation.
The
term civilization is related to the word civitas or city in
the Latin language, civitas itself being derived from the
Greek root kei, which means to lie outstretched. “A city is
thus a ‘lair,’ in which the citizen ‘makes his bed’ on which
he must lie.”[1] The question
then arises as to who occupies this city. The Sanskrit word for
city, pur, reveals the answer, for it is also the root of the
word purusa or Universal Man (al-insan al-kamil) of
Islamic metaphysics. The dweller of the ideal city is purusa
who is, according to the Upanishads “the citizen in every city,”[2]
or as Philo has said, going even further, “As for lordship (kyrios),
God is the only citizen.”[3]
This city, which is at once cosmic, social, and microcosmic, is the
origin of the traditional understanding of civilization. This city
at once transcends the human order and penetrates into the
traditional civilizations but in different forms and according to
the religious norms which are the foundations of all those
civilizations. All the realities that comprise the life of a
tradition are contained in the particular “City of God” whose
manifestation on earth has created the particular civilization in
question. Moreover, each human being contains this “City” within
himself or herself and is able to realize it if he or she is able to
perfect himself or herself spiritually. Traditionally speaking, the
truly civilized man is one who has realized this civitas Dei
within himself and gained the inner vision with which he is able to
realize that the only master of this city is the Immortal Spirit
within and not his rebellious ego. Without this realization, man
lives in barbarism even if he invents the fanciest of gadgets.
From
another point of view, it might be said that every traditional
civilization is dominated by a “Presiding Idea,”[4]
or a heavenly given dispensation whose spirit guides that
civilization and whose form determines its particular formal
structure in conjunction with the ethnic genius of the people
destined to create and be members of that civilization. That
“Presiding Idea” may also be identified with religion in its
most universal sense (ad-deen in Arabic). A traditional
civilization remains always aware of this at once transcendent and
immanent reality. The people of such a civilization have always
lived in a space which is like the space of a circle with an
immutable Supreme Center and have experienced time always in
relation to the Origin, which is also their End, that is, the alpha
and omega of their existence.[5]
Traditional civilizations never lost site of either the Center or
the Origin.[6] This common vision
does not, of course, mean that the “Presiding Idea” is the same
in every traditional civilization, despite the inner unity that
binds them together. As Marco Pallis writes,
Traditional
civilizations never lost site of either the Center or the
Origin. |
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The
fact is that every civilization that can be called authentic is
endowed with a principle of unity peculiar to itself, which is
reflected in varying degrees, in all the institutions of the
civilization in question. By a principle of unity is meant a
predominant idea, corresponding to a given aspect of the truth,
which has been recipient of particular emphasis and for the
expression of which, if one may so put it, that civilization shows a
peculiar “genius.”[7]
The
inner or transcendent unity to which we have referred does not in
any way annul the reality of the principle of unity peculiar to each
traditional civilization. Consequently, as traditionally understood,
there are multiple civilizations each with its own particular formal
order and “mandate from Heaven” yet with remarkably similar
perspectives on the nature of reality resulting from the universal
truths which through different forms have created, presided over,
and sustained traditional civilizations over the ages.[8]
In
contrast to all that has been said, modern civilization, which was
created in the West on the basis of and also in opposition to many
of the basic tenets of Latin Christian civilization but which has
now spread to all the four corners of the globe, is based on the
absolutization of terrestrial man, on a Promethean individualism,
rationalism, and humanism. For the most part it has substituted the
kingdom of man for the Kingdom of God.[9]
It no longer possesses a transcendent “Presiding Idea” as did
all traditional civilizations, and the ethical and spiritual values
that are present in it are the heritage of the Christian
civilization which it has sought to supplant. In fact, strictly
speaking, one cannot speak of modern Western civilization as a new
civilization. Rather, it is both a continuation of and reaction
against and deviation from Western Christian civilization.
From
the traditional point of view, in the present day situation all
civilizations have decayed and fallen from their ideal except that
the Oriental civilizations began to decay in a passive way during
the past few centuries and Western civilization in an active way
since the Renaissance.[10] More
recently, a certain type of decadence associated with Asia and
Africa in modern times is now beginning to appear in the West, and
that active decay in the form of deviation from traditional norms is
now beginning to manifest itself in non-Western civilizations. This
reality must be considered in any serious civilizational dialogue.
Today,
we see on the globe several major and a few smaller civilizations,
including the Western, the Eastern European and Russian, the
Islamic, the Indian, the Chinese and Japanese, the black African and
the various remnants of indigenous civilizations and cultures. Some
like Samuel Huntington would count South America as a civilization
separate from the Western, and the Japanese as a civilization
distinct from the Chinese.[11]
There are also many sub-sets within each of these civilizations
distinguished by ethnicity, nationalism, various religious
interpretations, languages, and other factors. Nevertheless, the
reality of these civilizations can hardly be denied.
There
are today no intact traditional civilizations. Nevertheless, there
is a major difference between modern Western civilization and the
others in that it is this civilization which represents most of all
modernism and is still powerful enough to project its worldview and
values upon other civilizations; whereas the reverse is not true. If
there had been a movement to carry out civilizational dialogue six
centuries ago, the situation would have been very different. Each
civilization would have then been based on that “Presiding Idea”
which offered remarkable similarities with the “Presiding Idea”
of another civilization despite obvious differences. If members of
these civilizations were to discuss the nature and goal of human
life, there would be remarkable resemblances. When one reads the
list of basic virtues in Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism, it is as
if one were reading an Islamic text on ethics. And most important of
all, they would all agree that the reality of the cosmos and of man
is derived from and based upon an Ultimate Reality, which is both
beyond and within all things. They would have little difficulty
understanding each other on the metaphysical level, whether they
were speaking of Brahman, Atman, the One, Ahura Mazda, Deus, Allah,
or for that matter, nirvana.[12]
Such, of course, is not the case of modern Western civilization in
which there are still Christian and Jewish elements but in which a
secularist and scientistic discourse dominates much of public life
as well as philosophy, science, and the arts. Today civilizational
dialogue means, on the one hand, dialogue between traditional
civilizations weakened and modernized to various degrees and, on the
other hand, between each of those civilizations and the modern and
postmodern Western civilization, in which there still exist
important religious and spiritual elements but which is also the
driving force behind all the ideas and ideals which seek to destroy
the very foundations of the still existing albeit weakened
traditional civilizations.
To
carry out serious dialogue under these difficult conditions,
one must first of all remember that all the civilizations of
which we have knowledge, those still living and those which
have perished, have been created by a religion or the
“Presiding Idea” |
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To
carry out serious dialogue under these difficult conditions, one
must first of all remember that all the civilizations of which we
have knowledge, those still living and those which have perished,
have been created by a religion or the “Presiding Idea” already
mentioned. Chinese civilization is based on Confucianism and Taoism,
Western civilization on Christianity, Islamic civilization on Islam,
as Roman civilization was based on the Roman religion and Egyptian
civilization on the Egyptian religion. This does not mean that a
civilization does not borrow from what came before it, but a new
dispensation from Heaven integrates various elements of what went
before into a new unity reflecting its own spiritual genius. The
Christian civilization of Europe certainly owes much to Greece and
Rome but is not simply their continuation. There is nothing more
different from a Roman temple than a Romanesque church or from a
Greek temple, a Byzantine church. It is the new spirit infused by a
new religion into the “material” and “earthly” elements to
which it is sent that creates a civilization with its own distinct
social structure, ethical norms, sciences, and the arts.
Because
of this centrality of religion in the creation of each civilization,
understanding between religions—which are the sources of values
and ideals of these civilizations—and accord between religions lie
at the heart of civilizational dialogue if this dialogue is also to
lead to mutual respect and understanding. It is here that the
traditional perspective of perennial philosophy, which sees an inner
truth that unites the religions on the supra-formal and universal
level without in any way violating the sanctity of their particular
formal structures, becomes so important in the current discussion
about civilizational dialogue. If this dialogue is to result in
understanding, one must first of all accept what Frithjof Schuon has
called “the transcendent unity of religions”[13]
and realize that despite differences of a formal order all authentic
spiritual paths “lead to the same summit.”[14]
Nothing is more important for civilizational dialogue than a common
understanding of first principles even between non-Western
civilizations and the West where many of these principles have been
discarded by the dominating paradigm but nevertheless survive not
only among Jews and Christians, but even to a large extent among
those who have turned their back consciously or unconsciously on the
religion of their ancestors.
*
* *
It
is not accidental that at the dawn of this new millennium
the call for civilizational dialogue, rather than clash,
should come from the Islamic world. |
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It
is not accidental that at the dawn of this new millennium the call
for civilizational dialogue, rather than clash, should come from the
Islamic world, more specifically from Sayyid Muhammad Khatami, the
president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, a land which has been one
of the major foci of Islamic civilization during the past 13
centuries and before that period the heart of a major empire and
civilization. The Islamic world has always been aware of itself as a
unified civilization bound together by Islam as both religion, in
the ordinary sense of the term, and a complete way of life. The
Islamic world stretched from the very first century of its existence
from the heart of France to the borders of China. It created a
civilizationally unified world with two distinct zones, the Arabic
and the Iranian or Persian, to which later zones were added. It
contained within itself such diverse ethnic groups as Arab, Iranian,
Turkic, Indian, Malay, Black African, European, and even Chinese. It
was witness to not only much greater geographical and climatic
differences than what one finds in Western European civilization,
but also a greater diversity of ethnicities and languages. The main
language of Western Christendom was Latin, and all the European
languages save for very small linguistic groups belong to a single
family; whereas the three main languages of the Islamic world,
namely, Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, belong to three totally
different language families. Yet, very early in its history, Islam
had a powerful awareness of itself as a distinct civilization while
it integrated many elements of previous civilizations, especially in
the domain of the arts and sciences, into its universe.
Classical
Islamic historians even wrote about the religious and philosophical,
as well as historical, significance of other civilizations, as we
see in the works of At-Tabari, Al-Mas`udi, and the like. One of
them, Ibn Khaldun, was the father of what one might call
civilizational studies and wrote with exceptional depth about the
rise, continuity, and decline of civilizations.[15]
Another major Islamic historian, Rashid Ad-Din Fadl-Allah, was the
author of the first universal history ever written, a work which
dealt with the Franks and the Chinese and nearly everyone in
between.[16] In fact Islamic
civilization was the only one before modern times to have had
experience of nearly every other major civilization of the world. It
inherited much of the learning, the sciences, the philosophy, and
the technology of ancient Egypt, the Mesopotamian civilizations,
ancient Greece, ancient Persia, and to some extent Rome, India, and
even China; on the basis of what it had inherited, it created the
vast traditions of Islamic science and philosophy which also
influenced the West deeply.[17]
It also learned many ancient artistic and architectural techniques
into which it breathed the spirit of the Islamic revelation, thereby
creating a very distinct art whose influence is to be seen to this
day in South and Central America in the form of mudéjar art.
And once it came into existence, Islamic civilization had direct
contact with and experience of the Chinese and Indian civilizations
in the east, the Byzantine and Western Christian worlds in the west,
and the Black African world to the south, not to speak of
Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Persia, which became part of the Islamic
world.
In
fact Islamic civilization was the only one before modern
times to have had experience of nearly every other major
civilization of the world. |
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In
contrast to the West, where experience of other civilizations,
except for the Islamic, was combined with the advent of modernism,
Islam had full awareness of many other civilizations and also
religions before modern times. For a thousand years it saw itself as
both the central and the most powerful of all civilizations, hence
the extreme shock of the realization of its weakness before the
modern West brought home to the heartland of the Islamic world with
the Napoleonic conquest of Egypt in 1798, combined with the sudden
weakness and strings of defeat of the Ottomans in Europe and the
destruction of Muslim power in India by the British.
From
the 18th century Islamic civilization began to weaken to various
degrees in different areas. Much of the Islamic world became
colonized by various European powers, chief among them the British,
the French, the Dutch, and the Russians. From the 19th century
onward, modernized Muslims, seeking to emulate the West with the
hope of gaining power and therefore making themselves independent,
began to weaken Islamic civilization in the name of trying to save
it; this process continued to accelerate up to the end of the first
half of the 20th century. At first there was much resistance, but
governmental authorities, controlled by either colonial powers or
modernized Muslims who did their bidding, usually won the day.
Islamic dress began to change in favor of Western dress, as did art,
architecture, and city planning. Western style educational systems
were established everywhere to introduce Western science and
learning at the expense of Islamic ones. Even laws, which had been
that of the Shari`ah or Divine Law based on the Qur’an and the
traditions (Hadith) of the Prophet of Islam, were changed in many
lands in favor of Western legal codes. Many thought that soon
nothing would be left of Islamic civilization.
Yet,
despite the unbelievable havoc brought about in nearly every domain,
Islamic civilization did not die out completely because the religion
of Islam which had created it was still very strong. From the 1950s
onward, along with the revival of Islamic thought and the rejection
by many newly educated Muslims of the complete and blind imitation
of the West—which itself was beginning to experience a major
crisis in the domain of values—gradually some aspects of Islamic
civilization began to be renewed. This process is still very much
going on, and, because it seeks to re-assert the Islamic identity of
the Islamic world rather than simply to emulate a West no longer
completely certain of where it is going itself, it is often
construed as being anti-Western.
Because
the West has “interests” in various Islamic countries
which it wants to protect and it is still more powerful and
dominant than all non-Western civilizations, some of these
attempts at self-assertion by Muslims take extreme forms,
often using Western ideologies to combat the West. |
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For
obvious political reasons, opposition to Western “interests” in
the Islamic world is often interpreted as opposition to the West
itself, whereas the current revival of things Islamic makes no claim
whatsoever about the West’s right to do what it wants in its own
world. But because the West has “interests” in various Islamic
countries which it wants to protect and because it is still more
powerful and dominant than all non-Western civilizations, some of
these attempts at self-assertion by Muslims take extreme forms,
often using Western ideologies to combat the West. In many places
some Muslims find no other channel for the achievement of their
goals, which should normally be through peaceful means. But these
extremist actions, no matter how much aggrandized in the Western
media, are secondary factors compared to the larger reality of the
desire of Islamic civilization to re-assert its own identity and
preserve its own religious and cultural ethos even under the
unprecedented pressures that it faces. The vast majority of Muslims
have no desire to have clashes with other civilizations nor wish to
have “interests” in the Gulf of Mexico or the English Channel,
which would then need to be protected through clashes. In fact where
there are clashes in the Islamic world today, such as in Palestine,
Kashmir, or Chechnya, it is always the question of Muslims seeking
to protect their own rights, freedoms, or land that have either been
taken away or are being threatened, and not to conquer others and
then try by force to rule over them.
***
If
an accord could be created between the religions including
those in the West where secularism has become victorious in
so many domains, civilizational dialogue leading to
understanding would be facilitated. |
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There
are numerous factors today which oppose dialogue and understanding
between civilizations and even within civilizations. There are
economic interests, ethnic and nationalistic assertions, and even
the missionary zeal of imposing one’s views on others by
political, ideological, or economic means. But there are also forces
which seek to heal rifts both within each civilization and among
civilizations, for we realize that without accord with other men and
with God’s creation, there is no future for human life on earth.
Man’s future seems to waver between clash or dialogue of
civilizations. Men and women of good will—whether Jewish,
Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist or even some outwardly
agnostic— now realize that there is no way for the human species
to survive save through dialogue and accord, even with those with
whom we disagree on principles. In the present context there must
first of all be a civilizational dialogue between members of what
remains of the traditional civilizations on the basis of the unity
of that transcendent Truth which binds them together. Then there
must be an accord on the basis of mutual respect and the acceptance
of the thesis of agreeing to disagree even with those who do not
accept the traditional principles. If an accord could be created
between the religions including those in the West where secularism
has become victorious in so many domains, civilizational dialogue
leading to understanding would be facilitated. And then on the basis
of that mutual understanding, a greater accord could be created at
least on the level of action between those who accept a transcendent
Principle and an ultimate goal of human life beyond the purely
mundane and earthly, and those who do not.
Every
civilization today, each in its own way, is faced with an
unprecedented crisis. There are wars, the breakdown of social order,
the weakening of ethical norms, and, most ominously, the destruction
of the natural environment, for which all the civilizations are to
blame. Each civilization should be given the freedom based on mutual
respect to turn its attention to its own spiritual, intellectual,
and social problems. And on the basis of mutual respect, various
civilizations must be able to join hands in facing global problems
such as the environmental crisis or the spread of new
bio-technologies without consideration of their ethical
consequences. These problems recognize no national or civilizational
boundaries; only dialogue and accord, not clash or brutal military
or economic force, can hope to confront and solve these problems.
In
this complicated process upon whose success depends the future of
humanity, Islam and Islamic civilization are destined to play a
central role. Islam is the last major religion of this cycle of
human history, and the Qur’an speaks explicitly of the veracity of
religions sent to mankind before Islam. As for Islamic civilization
occupying the middle belt of the world, by geography as well as by
its historical experience, it is suited in every way to carry out
civilizational dialogue with various civilizations and to be itself
a bridge between East and West, reflecting the light of that blessed
olive tree to which the Qur’an refers as being neither of the East
nor of the West, as it is also the message of surrender to the Lord
Who is the Lord of all the Easts and all the Wests.
*
This work is published with the permission of Encounters: Journal of
Inter-Cultural Perspectives and the Islamic Foundation.
**
Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr is the University Professor of
Islamic Studies at the George Washington University in Washington
DC. He has authored over 40 books and 500 articles. The author has
dedicated this article to the memory of Dr. Syed Ali Ashraf, pioneer
in educational philosophy in the context of civilizational dialogue.
[1]
A. K. Coomaraswamy, What is Civilization? (Ipswich:
Golgonooza Press, 1989). In Islamic languages, the terms for
civilization are also related to the city as traditionally
understood. In Arabic the word civilization, al-hadarah, is
derived from the root hdr meaning a place of settlement or
town or city. In Persian and many other Islamic languages such as
Urdu and Turkish, the terms tamaddun or madaniyyat
usually used for civilization are also related to the word madan,
which likewise means town or city.
[2]
Coomaraswamy, ibid., p. 2.
[3]
Coomaraswamy, ibid., p. 2.
[4]
See M. Pallis, Peaks and Lamas (London: The Woburn Press,
1974) chapter 22, pp. 299–332.
[5]
As we have had occasion to mention elsewhere, there are numerous
treatises on traditional metaphysics and philosophy in the Islamic
world with precisely the title Al-Mabda’ wal-Ma`aad in
Arabic or Ághaaz wa Anjaam in Persian, both
terms meaning “origin” or “beginning and end.”
[6]
“The whole existence of the peoples of antiquity, and of
traditional peoples, in general, is dominated by two presiding
ideas, the idea of Center and the idea of Origin.” F. Schuon, Light
on the Ancient World, trans. Lord Northbourne, (Bloomington,
Indiana: World Wisdom Books, 1984) p. 7.
[7]
M. Pallis, The Way and the Mountain (London: Peter Owen,
1991) p. 178.
[8]
See R. Guénon, “Principles of Unity of the Oriental
Civilizations,” in his Introduction to the Study of Hindu
Doctrines, trans. M. Pallis (London: Luzac & Co., 1945)
pp. 19 ff.
[9]
See T. Lindbom, The Tares and the Good Grain, trans. A.
Moore (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1983).
[10]
“All civilizations are in decline, but in different ways; the
decline of the East is passive and that of the West is active. The
fault of the East in decline is that it no longer thinks; that of
the West is that it thinks too much and thinks wrongly. The East
is sleeping over truths; the West is living in error.” F.
Schuon, Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts. (P.
Townsend, Pates Manor, Middlesex: Perennial Books, 1987) pp.
22–23.
[11]
S. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of
World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996) pp. 40 ff.
[12]
On how the Buddhist perspective can be integrated into the
understanding of this wisdom or philosophia perennis, see
S. H. Nasr’s response to Sally King in E. Hahn et al. (eds.), The
Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Library of Living
Philosophers, Vol. 28 (Chicago: Open Court, 2001) pp. 22 ff.
[13]
See F. Schuon, The Transcendent Unity of Religions
(Wheaton, Illinois: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1993). See
also S. H. Nasr, Knowledge and Sacred, (Albany, New York:
The State University Press of New York, 1989) Chapter 9, pp.
280–308; and S. H. Nasr, Religion and the Order of Nature
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) Chapter 1, pp. 3–38.
[14]
See A. K. Coomaraswamy, “Paths That Lead to the Same Summit,”
in his The Bugbear of Literacy (Pates Manor, Bedfont,
Middlesex: 1979) pp. 50 ff 15.
[15]
See his Muqaddimah, trans. F. Rosenthal, 3 Vols.
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967); also M. Mahdi, Ibn
Khaldun’s Philosophy of History (London: George Allen &
Unwin, 1957).
[16]
See his Kitaab Jam` At-Tawarikh, ed. E. Blochet, 2 Vols.,
(Leiden: Brill, 1911).
[17]
On the transmission of the ancient sciences and the rise of
Islamic science and learning, see S. H. Nasr, Islamic Science:
An Illustrated Study (Chicago: Kazi Publications, 1995) pp. 3
ff.
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