Clash of civilizations? A caricature of The Prophet, a trigger effect possibly for more social upheaval.

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Paulos 12, 2006

Islam and Christianity share a common heritage. They both share Jewish revelation and prophecy and Greek philosophy and science as well. Islam however, had an advanced leverage in science and philosophy ahead of the West, when the West was still in a morass of rigid dogmatism mired in the dark ages.

The great majority Arabs who profess Islam, at the zenith and culmination of their military and political power came into contact with the Byzantine world and saved many of the works of Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek thinkers for later transmission to the West. In short, the Arab conquests brought Muslims into contact with the philosophical ideas of the Hellenistic world.

At the height of their power, the Umayyads, the first succession of Caliphs during the 7th century centered in Damascus, expanded their power to Northern Africa and to the Iberian peninsula with far more cultural and linguistic influence as well. And the Abbasids who replaced the Umayyads in the following century moved their political and military center to Bagdad with further leverage in cultural assimilation and military innovations in the Arab world and other non-believers. With the advent of the Ottoman empire in the Byzantine world, the power base of Islam stretched to India through the Mogul dynasty which lasted for about two hundred years.

The intellectual foundation of Islam however, contributed to the non-Arab world a far more indelible cornerstone which gave the West a "triumphalistic" niche in science and technology as we know it today. As Bernard Lewis put it in his book "History of the Middle-East", the encyclopaedic writings of Aristotle, translated by Syrian Christians into Arabic, inspired such Muslim thinkers as al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). And later, this new thinking in scope underpinned the idea of Rationalism and Humanism in the West which had been hitherto in the box of Scholasticism.

The striking departure of Islam from the West is centered in the veracity of theological and political streaks compounded with the intense need to define the meta-physical aspects of life in general and the political realm of a society in particular. When Islam focuses on the dictation of human life or its adherents according to the tenets of the Umma (community) based on the exaltation of Islam, the West in a sharp contrast emphasises on "give to Caesar which belongs to Caesar and give to God what belongs to God" dictum. The glaring difference does not end there. In the West’s political discourse, when the Nation-State is the highest political entity, in Islam, the concept of the Nation-State is perceived as the creation of the West and contravenes with the role of God in human life and the nation as well.

If Samuel P. Huntington dubs the apparent schism in thought a "Clash of Civilizations", the decline of political influence of Islam started with the rise of West’s mastery of navigation and military innovation as well. Later on, this new development was greatly augmented with the rise of Industrial Revolution which gave the West unprecedented military and scientific leverage with an imperialistic ambition with far more dire consequences to the non-Western world.

The political and military influence of the West on the Arab world started to take its toll when a young and ambitions French General invaded Egypt in 1798. Napoleon Bonaparte under the guise of scientific expedition tested his ego-maniac ambition of reinventing himself in the image of Alexander the Great "assured" the Egyptians that, his intention was not to impose his culture on them but to help them share his newly found "Jacobin" progressive push. The intense resentment which was felt by the Arabs did not end there, it became more acute, when it needed another Westerner in the person of Horatio Nelson to evict Napoleon from the heart-land of Islamic civilization (Egypt).

This unfortunate historical water-shed called for a serious soul searching in a bid to find a lasting solution to restore the glory of the Arab world and to protect the great faith of Islam from further challenges not from with in but from without. The race for remedy however, was superceded by the fast growing technological, scientific, military innovation and the expansion of commerce in the West. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, when the Empire was reduced to Anatolia, Kamal Ataturk, the new leader of Turkey called for the secularization of the country in a complete historical departure from the norm. "Kamalization" as it was later known, founded its own school of thought and other Arab nations adopted the Nation-State which had been outright rejected as the invention of the West.

The new adaptation however became more problematic when it became extremely blurred to distinguish between Westernization and Modernization. When the need for modernization is irresistible, the idea of Westernization which is equally synonymous with modernization became extremely hard to put it in isolation. Simply because, modernization is attributed to the creation of the West exclusively.

When America stood as the new emerging world power after the Great War, her dependence on Middle-East oil, created a new deal. A deal for the exchange of oil for modernization and security to the very cradle of the Islamic faith (the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia). This new juncture of course was exacerbated by the emergence of the State of Israel at the heart of the Middle-East. The Arab world in general and the Islamic faith in particular felt threatened by the West and by the establishment of the State of Israel.

The need for the rejection of Westernization and modernization became more indispensable and eminent more than ever. And the "White Revolution" in Iran in the late 1970s and the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan became a paragon par excellence to that effect. When the West, in particular America sets out to democratise the world in the "End of History" allusion, those who see the West’s Universalism as the new imperialism are responding with an equal resolve compounded in non-conventional activities.

The recent outrage of the adherents of the Islam faith over the caricature of The Prophet by the West can not be seen in isolation. It needs to be conceptualized with the said historical context. When the West sees it as a mere exercise of freedom of speech, for those who confess the great faith of Islam, it is an outright disrespect, a disrespect with far more dark historical underpinnings. Hence, in order the West to understand the resentment, it needs to revise its dark history including the grim legacy of colonialism and imperialism as well. So that, the West would be obliged to rescind its uncalled for characterization.
Comments:- asimov107@yahoo.ca

Paulos Yrgaw
Ottawa, Canada.

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