Islam: The Victim of the East and the West

Mustafa Ceric, Grand Mufti of Bosnia

For a long time now, Islam is in focus both in the east and in the West. In the East, Islam is a center of attraction and in the West it is a center of attention. The East believes that Islam is the solution whereas the West thinks that Islam is the problem. In the East people claim to defend Islam against its enemies whereas in the West people believe that Islam is threatening their way of life. Hence, Islam has become a magic word of the East in the face of the West; and it has become a big puzzle of the West in the face of the East. It is – indeed – one of the biggest challenges of our time to comprehend the magic word of the East and to appreciate the puzzled faced by the West.

It is not for the first time in history that the West does not comprehend the mystique of the East and vice versa that the East does not appreciate the perplexity of the West. For instance, Alexander the Great could have become the future ruler of Asia in the East provided he had been able to untie the Gordian knot by his patience, not by his sword. And the King of Granada in Spain, Hassan bin Ismail, could have built more Alhambras in Europe provided he had appreciated the diversity of European religious and cultural life as his great predecessors had been doing for centuries before him.

Furthermore, it took a long time for Europe to accept the mind of the great philosopher Ibn Rushd, known as Averroes, while the book De l’Esprit des Lois (The Spirit of the Law) of Montesquieu took a long time to be seriously studied in the East. These historical instances clearly illustrate the fact that the East and the West have always been in a process of dialectical interaction which often helped them to change the path of history towards better conditions for humanity.

The first historic interaction between East and West happened in Baghdad and the second in Andalusia. In Baghdad the Muslim Caliph al Ma’mum brought the minds of East and West to work out translation of human wisdom at the time. In Andalusia the western intellectuals had been visiting the Muslim universities to study humanities the result of which was European humanism and renaissance. I believe that we are now at the threshold of the third historic interaction between the East and the West which again has to do with the phenomenon of Baghdad.

Of course, it has not been always easy for the West to understand the spirit of the East. Nor the East to accept the mind of the West, but in the end the West has no choice but adopt the faith of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad (peace upon all of them) that came from the east. In addition, the East could not avoid the path from Might to Right, from Mythology to Science, from Slavery to Freedom, and from the Theory of State to the Legitimacy of State that came from the West.

However, the dialectical tensions between the East and the West nowadays are quite different from previous historical instances. Now the West is not what it used to be: the noncomunist countries of Europe and America, and the East is no longer the communist countries of the Soviet Union. Now the West tends to perceive itself as the non-Islamic countries of Europe and America and the East is somehow defined as the Muslim countries of the Middle East or as non-Christian countries of the non-Western values. The best example to that effect is the case of Turkey, which is a non-Christian country, and therefore, it is part of the West.

In addition, there is a perception in the minds of many western inttellectual that Islam is today what communism was yesterday to the West: the big obstacle, nay, the real threat to the way of western life and civilization. Some people in the West believe that dialogue between Islam and the West is a waste of time and, therefore, the only way for the West to deal with Islam and Muslims is the argument of force, not the force of argument.

On the other hand, there are people in the East who believe that the West is and old enemy of Islam and so the Muslims should fight the West. They believe that there cannot be any dialogue between Islam and the West. According to their logic, there can be only the dialectical opposition between the two. Our difficulty in facing the above views lies in the fact that those who promote the idea of religious and cultural conflict take Islam as their starting point for the idea of the Clashes of Civilizations. They forget, however, that Islam is not Communism and that the Muslim World is not like the former Soviet Union.

Islam is the way of life that is compatible with the way of common reason and human decency both in the West and in the East. In addition, the Muslim World is a great diversity of nations and cultures, which is united by the idea of human goodwill in both the East and West.

Based on what has been said so far, one tends to believe that Islam is a victim both of the East and the West. Why is it so?

Firstly, because the East is too weak to live up to Islamic ideals such as freedom, democracy and human rights; and the West is too arrogant to recognize the Islamic sincerity in morality. Secondly, Islam is a victim both of the East and West because the East is too narrow-minded to allow the universal spirit of Islam to prevail over the tribal mentality; and the West is too xenophobic to recognize the fact that Islam is its neighbor to stay.

Unfortunately, the extreme views of some people, both in the East and West, reduce Islam to their likening and thus suffocating both Islam as faith of freedom of good choice (ikhtijar) as opposed to freedom of evil choice and Muslims as freedom loving people. They forget, however that Islam is not reducible to any particular race, color or nationality and that the Muslims are eligible to have God given freedom, decent democracy and legitimate human rights. The Muslim people should not be treated as immature children who cannot bear the responsibility of freedom, the challenge of democracy and the legitimacy of human rights.

No, it is not true. Islam has never been the reason for the suspension of freedom. On the contrary, Islam has taught the humanity that there shall be no compulsion in religion. There shall be freedom in religion because the lie cannot be imposed and the truth needs not the force. So the question is now: Who is imposing the lie and who needs the force for the truth? Obviously, those who believe that Might makes Right tend to impose the lie and those who think that they have the right to play the role of God tend to enforce only their Truth.

Once again, Islam is used and misused both by the East and by the West. Why, firstly, because the East claim to defend Islam, but in fact, the East uses (or misuses) Islam to cover up its own shortcomings. Thus, the bitter truth is that Islam is used to defend Muslims rather that the Muslims being in service to defend Islam by their good examples. As to the West, it is also using (or misusing) Islam to show to the western audience that the enemy has been found and that the world should trust western heroes who are in search of weapons of mass destruction. And, secondly, Islam is used and misused by the East and the West in order to demonstrate that Islam, as a way of life of more than one billion Muslims around the world, is the obstacle on the way to a better relationship between the East and the West. The people in the East who believe that there should be no dialogue with the West say that the West is a devil, therefore, those who live in West doomed to go to hell. And to prove that they use – indeed – they misuse the name of Islam.

Similarly, some people in the West believe that Islam, as an idea that came from the Orient, is not acceptable to the Occident simply because it is an oriental idea. They do not want to know; however, that thanks to the very idea of Islam their own cultural heritage from Greece had been saved as well as their own religion had been strengthened by the Islamic conformation of the validity of the divinely inspired books such as the Tawrat and the Injil. So, the people in the West who have hard time to cure themselves from the disease of xenophobia use – indeed – misuse Islam to promote Islamophobia in the West.

We are – indeed – in desperate need like never before to say that Islam is beyond the East and West. Why, firstly, because is Islam is both faith and religion; culture and politics; people and land; East and West. This dual meaning is inseparable from the full meaning of Islam because Islam is a deep faith of the individual heart and a recognizable religion of the collective conscience; it is a unique culture of the world and a real politics of the globe; it is a large number of people around the world and a vast land in the heart of the Planet; Islam is an inerasable sample of the East and an inevitable presence in the West.

Secondly, Islam is beyond the East and West because the Qur’anic verse that says: You should know by now that it is not the Right Way only to face your faces towards East and West. But the Right Way is for you to have trust in God, and in the Day of accountability, and in angels, and in the Book, and in the God’s Messengers.