Who Speaks For Islam-Report

WHO SPEAKS FOR ISLAM?

WHO SPEAKS FOR THE WEST?

A program of New York University, Dialogues: Islamic

World-U.S.-The West emerged from the tragedy ofSeptember 11th, 2001, which highlighted the need forgreater communication among and about the UnitedStates, Europe, and the Muslim world. The programwas founded as a forum for constructive debate betweenthe various religious, intellectual, economic, andpolitical sectors of American, European, and Islamicsocieties. Dialogues brings contentious issues betweenthe Islamic world and the West into a more rationalplane and promotes this approach to a wide audiencethat includes the important constituencies of policyand decision makers, policy analysts, the media, andeducational institutions.

Dialogues is committed to a number of academic,policy, and outreach activities, including conferenceson a variety of topics of critical importance today—theclash of perceptions, elections, the nature ofauthority in the Islamic world and in the West,Muslims in the West, the role of the media, andeducation, among others—that result in the develop-ment of policy recommendations. Our conferencesare based on solid scholarly background material andbring together policy analysts, policy makers,scholars, religious leaders, business and nongovern-mental organization leaders, and media decisionmakers, with the goal of altering public perceptionsand effecting policy change. In addition, findingsfrom the program are published as policy papers aswell as in book form and are disseminated to educa-tional institutions worldwide for use by students,faculty, and researchers. Moreover, Dialogues iscreating a network of leaders who will continue tocommunicate with and consult one another formallyand informally for years to come—a valuable networkfor negotiating peace in times of crisis. Ultimately,dialogue should extend to the general population,thus allowing the widest possible scope of participa-tion and expression.

AB

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IALO

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Cover: Arches at Tin Mal mosque,Morocco (c. 1156) Photo: Kim Zumwalt

WHO SPEAKS FOR ISLAM?

WHO SPEAKS FOR THE WEST?

Report of the Conference organized by

Dialogues: Islamic World-U.S.-The West

in cooperation with

the Institute of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations Malaysia

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, February 10-11, 2006

Funded by the governments of Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and France; the

MacArthur Foundation; and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund

R E M A R QU E I N ST I T U T E — N E W YO R K UN I V E R S I T Y

ii

W H O S P E A K S FO R I S L A M ?

W H O S P E A K S FO R T H E W E ST ?

Copyright © 2006 by Dialogues:

Islamic World-U.S.-The West. All rights

reserved. No part of this publication

may be used or reproduced in any manner

whatsoever without written permission

except in the case of brief quotations

embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For more information, address

Dialogues: Islamic World-U.S.-The West

Remarque Institute

Faculty of Arts and Science

New York University

194 Mercer Street, 4th Floor

New York, NY, 10012-1502

iii

CONTENTS

Director’s Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv

Message from Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General . . . . . . . . . x

Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii

Opening Session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Session I—Improving Mutual Perception Through the Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Session II—The Impact of Globalization on the Muslim World. . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Session III—The Challenges Posed by Science and

Technology to the Muslim-Western Relationship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Session IV—What Is the Future Framework for the

Muslim-Western Relationship? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Closing Session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Notes to Sessions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Appendix I: Conference Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Appendix II: List of Participants. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Appendix III: Mustapha Tlili’s Opening Statement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Appendix IV: Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s Keynote Address . . . 52

Appendix V: Background Paper—“Who Speaks for Islam?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Appendix VI: Background Paper—“Who Speaks for the West?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

The conference “Who Speaks for Islam?

Who Speaks for the West?” represented

more than two-and-a-half years of sub-

stantive and administrative preparations,

during which time Dialogues’ staff refined

the core intellectual concepts behind the

conference, drafted and translated back-

ground materials, liaised with the

government of host country Malaysia,

and continued to raise funds.

Evolution of the Conference Theme

The original idea for the conference

emerged from a recommendation at

Dialogues’ first international conference,

“Clash of Civilizations or Clash of

Perceptions?” in Granada, Spain, in

October 2002. Most participants felt

that questions central to “defining Islam”

required further discussion.1 Many

participants felt strongly that the intra-

Islamic debate should take precedence

over the cross-cultural debate. It was thus

suggested that a conference be held that

would invite Muslims of conservative,

modernist, Islamist, and secular thought

to sit together to discuss their views on the

nature of religious authority. This task

was considered especially important at a

time when the official ulama (religious

scholars) appear to be under attack, in

part from youth and women, and when

radical fundamentalists are attempting to

establish their own religious monopolies.

The Granada participants believed that

iv

DIRECTOR’S PREFACE

v

this debate could well help foster a valu-

able exchange of opinions within the

Muslim world, which was regarded, in

turn, as an integral step toward achieving

wider dialogue with the West. But it soon

became clear that the question of who

speaks for Islam begs its counterpart:

who speaks for the West? This new

dimension of the debate reflected the

confusion in the West that mirrors the

confusion in the Muslim world with

regard to the sources of authority. Dia-

logues thus adopted a two-pronged

conference theme, questioning both

Muslim and Western systems of legiti-

macy, not only for the sake of taking a

balanced approach, but also with an eye

toward advancing the quest for under-

standing between Islam and the West.

Over the course of the two-and-a-half

years of planning, the conceptual prem-

ise of the conference was continually

refined through exchanges with various

thinkers and policy makers in the United

States, Europe, and the Muslim world,

including at a preparatory committee

convened in Amman, Jordan, on

December 6-7, 2004, and hosted and

chaired by His Royal Highness Prince El

Hassan bin Talal. Our most sincere grat-

itude goes to His Royal Highness for his

generosity and his steadfastness on behalf

of the cause of peace and understanding

between the Muslim world and the West.

Background Material

In keeping with Dialogues’ tradition of

grounding its conferences in solid schol-

arly research, its staff assembled two

working groups to draft background

papers—one on “Who Speaks for Islam?”

and the other on “Who Speaks for the

West?” The papers are meant to offer

analytical, politically neutral surveys of

those who claim to speak with authority

in either world and thereby offer a foun-

dation for debate among the conference

participants in Kuala Lumpur. Over a

two-year period, the papers were drafted

and revised with the objective of produc-

ing the most accurate, comprehensive,

and informative documents that the pro-

gram could produce with its resources.

The papers were translated from English

into Arabic, and both versions were made

available to the participants prior to the

conference. In addition to Mustapha

Tlili; Shaanti Kapila, Dialogues’ special

assistant; and Shara Kay, Dialogues’

editorial consultant, the “Islam” working

group was also composed of Hassan

Abedin of the Oxford Centre for Islamic

Studies and Mohammed Ayoob, Uni-

versity Distinguished Professor of

International Relations at James Madi-

son College, Michigan State University.

The “West” team included Lisa Ander-

son, dean of Columbia University’s

School of International and Public

vi

Affairs; Tony Judt, Erich Maria Remar-

que Professor in European Studies and

director of the Remarque Institute

at New York University; and Scott Mal-

comson, journalist and author. Our

thanks go to all of them for their unspar-

ing efforts in pursuit of accurate

knowledge, clarity of expression, and

elegance of style.

Liaising with the

Malaysian Government

We came to an early decision that the

conference should be held in a non-

Arab, majority-Muslim country, and in

September 2003, I met with the then-

prime minister of Malaysia, Dr.

Mahathir Mohammed, and proposed

that the Malaysian government serve as

host and cosponsor. As a centrist, plu-

ralist, multicultural democratic country

with a majority-Muslim population,

Malaysia seemed a fitting choice.

Although Dr. Mahathir strongly sup-

ported the idea and agreed in principle

to host the conference, Abdullah Ahmad

Badawi replaced him as prime minister

on October 31, 2003, and the govern-

ment’s decision was thus not formally

delivered until January 2005. Although

the Institute Kefahaman Islam Malaysia

(IKIM) was initially designated by the

Malaysian government as the cosponsor

organization in 2004, in September

2005, the Malaysian government turned

over local responsibility for the confer-

ence to the Institute of Diplomacy and

Foreign Relations Malaysia (IDFR), an

agency within the Malaysian Ministry of

Foreign Affairs that provides formal

training to Malaysian foreign service

officers. IKIM Chairman Tan Sri Dato

Ahmad Sarji bin Abdul Hamid and IDFR

Director Fauziah Mohd Taib, as well as

her colleagues, deserve our most sincere

thanks.

Fund-Raising

Fund-raising is always essential to suc-

cessful conference planning. Generous

annual contributions from the Rocke-

feller Brothers Fund in 2004 and 2005

enabled Dialogues to undertake initial

steps, including the drafting of back-

ground papers, the convening of the

preparatory committee, and planning

missions to Kuala Lumpur. With the

formal approval of the Malaysian govern-

ment to host the conference secured in

January 2005, Dialogues stepped up

fund-raising efforts. In addition to

Malaysia’s important financial support,

significant contributions from the For-

eign and Commonwealth Office of the

United Kingdom, the MacArthur Foun-

dation, and the Ministry of Foreign

Affairs of France enabled Dialogues to

convene the conference in February 2006.

vii

To all of these supporters we say thank

you, and we hope that this report shows

the importance and far-reaching effects

of your contributions.

Context of the Conference

Two weeks before the conference was

convened, the world witnessed the erup-

tion of an international crisis prompted

by a Danish newspaper’s publication of

satirical cartoons depicting the Prophet

Muhammad.

On September 30, 2005, Denmark’s

largest circulation and historically right-

wing newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, printed

12 drawings of the Prophet Muhammad,

including one showing him wearing a

turban shaped like a bomb and another

showing him with devil horns. On Octo-

ber 19, a delegation of ambassadors from

Muslim countries posted in Denmark

attempted to meet with Danish Prime

Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to dis-

cuss the issue. The prime minister rejected

the request on the grounds that the gov-

ernment could not interfere in a free

speech issue. Frustrated by the lack of

response, a delegation of Danish Muslim

leaders traveled to Cairo to present the

matter to the scholars of Al Azhar

University, a theological institution

renowned throughout the Muslim world

as an authority on Islamic faith and prac-

tice. Meanwhile, as the controversy was

building, a Norwegian publication, Mag-

azinet, reprinted some of the images on

January 10, 2006.

The cartoons offended millions of Mus-

lims around the world who perceived a

willful violation of the proscription on

visual depictions of the Prophet, exacer-

bated by the linking of Islam with

terrorism. With further reprintings, the

controversy became a crisis. On February

1, newspapers in Belgium, France, Ger-

many, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland,

including France-Soir, Die Welt, and

Courrier International, reprinted the car-

toons on their front pages as a sign of

solidarity with the Danish paper. On

February 8, the French satirical weekly,

Charlie-Hebdo, published a special issue

with the full set of cartoons, adding new

ones in the same vein.

Numerous demonstrations took place in

early February, with the largest and most

dramatic occurring in Palestine, Syria,

and Lebanon. Subsequently, thousands

of protesters took to the streets in

Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt,

France, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Malaysia,

Mauritania, Morocco, New Zealand,

Pakistan, Qatar, the Sudan, the United

Kingdom, and Yemen. While some

protests were peaceful, others were

violent; 13 people died in total in

viii

Lebanon and Afghanistan. Danish

embassies were stormed by angry mobs in

Beirut, Tehran, and Damascus. In Saudi

Arabia, Bahrain, and much of the Gulf,

Danish products were boycotted and two

Danish factories were temporarily closed.

The intense reaction around the Muslim

world, coupled with equally intense reac-

tions among European populations,

made the issue a top international news

item, with politicians and heads of state

called on to weigh in with their opinions.

Several Western leaders expressed their

strong commitment to freedom of the

press while noting the need to exercise such

liberty with care. U.S. President George

W. Bush, for instance, stated that “with

freedom comes the responsibility to be

thoughtful about others.” 2 In France,

President Jacques Chirac denounced “all

manifest provocations that might dan-

gerously fan passions.”3 In Vienna, the

then-president of the European Union,

Chancellor Wolfgang Schussel of Austria,

condemned the “spiral of reciprocal

provocations and insults that fuels the

flames of intolerance.”4

The conference took place in the midst

of this controversy—immediately after

the embassy burnings in the Levant and

before the major demonstrations in

Afghanistan and Pakistan. The cartoons

affair, which pushed the Muslim and

Western worlds to confront familiar

issues of respect, freedom, and tolerance

in new, concrete circumstances, thus

informed panel debates and lent an added

sense of urgency to the conference.

This report offers the findings of both

our preparatory efforts and the confer-

ence itself. My gratitude goes to

Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohame-

dou, associate director of the Program

on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict

Research at Harvard University; Shaanti

Kapila, Yale University graduate and spe-

cial assistant at Dialogues; Shara Kay, a

graduate of Harvard University and Dia-

logues’ editorial consultant; Marisa

Menna, a New York University graduate

and Dialogues’ intern; and Andrea Stan-

ton, a doctoral student at Columbia

University, all of whom worked tirelessly

under my supervision to make this report

worthy of your time and consideration.

At this critical moment in the Muslim-

Western encounter, we hope to have

made an informative, provocative, and

useful contribution to the dialogue.

Mustapha Tlili

Founder and Director

Dialogues: Islamic World-U.S.-The West

Remarque Institute

New York University

x

I am delighted to send my warmest wishes

to this international conference on Islam

and the West.

We all are aware that this is a time of

sharply increasing intolerance, extrem-

ism, and violence, which have strained

relations alarmingly between the Western

and the Muslim worlds. They have exac-

erbated misconceptions about each other

among peoples of Islamic and Judeo-

Christian or secular traditions. There is a

danger that the essential dialogue between

cultures and societies is being reduced to

an angry exchange between the fringes,

with each side assuming that extremists

speak for the other side as a whole and in

turn—allowing its own extremists to

frame its own hostile response.

The extremist tendency to divide

humanity into mutually exclusive groups

or categories, and to treat anyone who

tries to cross the dividing lines as a trai-

tor, is one of the greatest threats that we

face in the world today. Muslims have

perhaps suffered most from this ten-

dency, but they have not suffered alone.

Extremist slogans have gained ground in

East and West, inciting misperceptions

and threatening peace and security all

over the world.

The truth is that no one voice can claim

to represent an entire faith or a whole

civilization. Nor can any one individual,

MESSAGE FROM KOFI ANNAN, UNITED NATIONS SECRETARY-GENERAL5

xi

any single organization, or any particu-

lar government claim to speak for either

the Muslim world or the Western world.

Instead, it is up to each of us to speak for

ourselves and for our values.

That is why the question your conference

asks is so timely and so pertinent. It is

time for the voices of understanding and

acceptance of diversity to show their

strength. It is time for every one of us to

speak up, rather than let others speak for

us or to assume that the menacing voices

of extremists are empowered or man-

dated to speak for their societies.

And yet the question of who speaks for

each of us in this dialogue begs another,

equally important, question: to whom do

we choose to listen? Surely the hallmark

of any genuine dialogue is not only the

respectful and constructive tone of the

discourse but also the manner in which

that discourse is received by others.

We cannot insist on the civility of dis-

course unless we give serious attention

to what is said. History teaches us that

grievances expressed peacefully, and yet

ignored, will eventually manifest them-

selves in ever-more forceful and violent

ways.

And so, as we ask who speaks for Islam

and who speaks for the West, we must also

ask whether we are listening. A more civil

discourse that fails to resolve long-stand-

ing grievances will ultimately lose the

support of the most aggrieved among us

and cause many to call into question the

usefulness of civility in itself. This is a

sure path to increased rancor and

renewed violence.

Our shared challenge is therefore twofold.

First, we must embolden the voices of

tolerance and understanding engaged in

this dialogue. Second, we must foster a

greater receptivity and will to give atten-

tion to what those voices say to us.

Your gathering seems well-qualified to

embark on such a dialogue. Your diverse

backgrounds and experiences should

enable you to make an important contri-

bution to the Alliance of Civilizations,

which I launched last year at the initiative

of the Spanish and Turkish prime min-

isters. This initiative is intended to

respond to the need for a committed

effort by the international community—

in both its intergovernmental and its civil

society forms—to bridge divides and

overcome prejudices, misconceptions,

and polarizations that potentially

threaten world peace. Meetings such as

yours will be essential for its ultimate

success, a goal made all the more urgent

by recent alarming events.

xii

Are the Muslim and Western worlds

monoliths? How can we improve percep-

tions of one civilization by the other?

These and other critical issues were

addressed at “Who Speaks for Islam?

Who Speaks for the West?”—a conference

convened in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, by

New York University’s Dialogues: Islamic

World-U.S.-The West and the Institute

of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations

Malaysia on February 10-11, 2006.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi

of Malaysia opened the conference,

which brought together 50 eminent per-

sons—policy makers, religious leaders,

scientists, economists, news media pro-

fessionals, and other opinion makers—

from 17 Western, Muslim-majority, and

other countries. Those attending included

former president of Iran Mohammad

Khatami, Grand Mufti of Bosnia-

Herzegovina Mustafa Ceric, Oxford

University historian Timothy Garton

Ash, president of the Rockefeller Broth-

ers Fund Stephen Heintz, and director

of the Lawrence Livermore National

Laboratory’s Center for Global Security

Research Ronald Lehman. Participants

engaged in lively debates aimed at con-

veying the diversity within each tradition,

dispelling misperceptions that can cloud

members of each tradition’s understanding

of the other, and developing strategies to

promote a better relationship between

the Muslim and Western worlds.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

xiii

Participants tackled such timely issues as

the impact of globalization on the Mus-

lim world and the challenges that science

and technology pose for the Muslim-

Western encounter. The conference

concluded with a policy-oriented session

devoted to laying the ground for new

frameworks for a better relationship

between Islam and the West.

The conference reached the

following conclusions:

Freedom of speech is a universal value.

It is the oxygen of liberty, and, as such, it

should be encouraged rather than stifled.

The “collision of opinion” is a healthy, if

uncomfortable, process, resulting over

time in improved intercommunal

understanding. Yet free speech should be

exercised in a manner that is balanced,

fair, nuanced, and contextualized. Free

speech cannot be unlimited. Every soci-

ety sets certain legal limits defined by

knowledge of and respect for local cus-

toms. The boundaries placed on free

speech should be minimal, however, and

should mostly serve to prevent libel, pro-

mote respect for individuals, and avert

violence. In keeping with this approach,

individuals’ and institutions’ responsible

self-restraint in the exercise of free

speech is of paramount importance.

Ultimately, there are legitimate and ille-

gitimate ways to address the relationship

between free speech and mutual respect.

The illegitimate option is through vio-

lence. Legitimate options include the

precise application of judicious law,

responsible journalism, and promotion of

the visibility of minorities’ and others’

views.

The media play a key role in transmitting

socioeconomic and political informa-

tion, which impact both societies’ and

individuals’ perceptions. That role, a

form of power, can be used positively to

encourage civilized debate. It can be used

negatively when dissemination of such

information is unbalanced or skewed to

allow the few to speak for the many.

Today the Western and Muslim worlds

diverge in their expectations of the role

of government regarding media account-

ability. Western media coverage of

Muslim affairs has historically focused on

sensational issues. In so doing, it has

often failed to portray the full reality of

“normal” life in the Muslim world. Con-

versely, the media in Muslim countries

have often presented the policies of some

Western countries as driven by animus

toward Islam, oil interest, and the ideo-

logical designs of conservative and

neo-conservative political groups. These

skewed portrayals foster both Islamopho-

bia and fear of the West, two genuine

threats to open communication between

the Western and Muslim worlds.

xiv

Globalization is a complex phenomenon.

It encompasses the internationalization

of capital and new information tech-

nologies, as well as the transformation of

culture and, in particular, the massive

“transfer of taste.” Globalization is

shaped by the economic and political life

of individuals and communities around

the world, but it is also determined by the

different social environments in which

people live and operate. That variety

creates tensions and opportunities.

Globalization puts the same challenges to

Muslim and non-Muslim countries,

although capital, industrialization, and

technology have tended for the past 200

years to aggregate in the West. Given this

historical reality, the Muslim world,

which in previous eras led the world in

scientific learning, needs a new push

toward science and technology to level

the global playing field and reap the ben-

efits that globalization can offer. It also

needs to reconcile its rich tradition with

the demands of the modern world. The

impact of 21st-century globalization on

the Muslim world has thus far varied by

nation. Generally, however, gender equal-

ity, participatory governance, education,

and peace are necessary requirements for

successful globalization in the Muslim

world. The importance of such reforms is

acknowledged in most Muslim countries,

but carrying them out has proven a dif-

ficult and often politically sensitive task.

The injustice characterizing the inter-

national economic and financial system

remains problematic. Fundamentally,

this challenge concerns the process of

international governance. Globalization

is not a one-way street. It is a process of

sharing power, information, knowledge,

and rewards. Without a genuine share of

the rewards, excluded nations will give

rise to greater trouble and violence. The

coming years will see a pressing need to

focus on energy efficiency and restructure

the world’s energy usage in terms of

renewable resources rather than fossil

fuels. Only by easing competition over

increasingly scarce fossil fuels can the

world avoid major economic and politi-

cal crises between nation-states and

global blocs.

Technology has become a driving force

behind the world economy. Moreover,

science as a discipline offers possibilities

for building bridges and improving lives

around the globe. Applying scientific

research to practical human problems

produces challenges as well as opportu-

nities, for which open societies are better

equipped. There is no contradiction

between Islam as a religion and the sci-

entific pursuit of knowledge. The ethical

issues that do arise, such as cloning,

relate to specific technological applica-

tions of scientific knowledge, and are

issues with which other faiths wrestle as

xv

well. Sadly, despite the importance of

science and technology in today’s world,

the Muslim world has few loci of scien-

tific research or technology production,

whether university, public, or private

sector. This dearth hurts the Muslim

world economically and creatively, by

spurring the brain drain of scientists who

find training and employment in the

West. The proud tradition of the Islamic

golden age of scientific enlightenment is

not borne out today. Instead, the widen-

ing technology gap makes it imperative to

place renewed emphasis on technology in

the Muslim world.

Genuine intercivilizational dialogue is

of paramount importance in a world that

feels smaller by the day. The debates

about culture and identity that take place

within each world and tradition—Western

and Muslim—need to be recognized as

part of a global conversation; the visibil-

ity of these internal dialogues may matter

as much as their content. True dialogue

brings out uncomfortable truths, which

cultures must be ready to address con-

structively. Specifically, Muslims should

consider reopening the interpretation of

religious texts; stressing critical thinking

and openness to remedy the narrowing of

public education that has impoverished

so many nations’ schools; and fostering a

healthy civil society able to challenge

official authorities. The West, for its

part, should address the double stan-

dards that have informed Western

nations’ assumptions and policies; rec-

ognize the contribution of other

civilizations to science and technology;

and work cooperatively to define com-

mon, cross-cultural principles.

Critical societal introspection and

self-criticism are the sine qua non of

internal and collective progress. Muslims

tend to approach this issue in two ways:

through criticism and self-criticism.

Criticism, although a natural first

response, results in feelings of self-vic-

timization and blaming outside forces

for all that goes wrong in the Muslim

world. Self-criticism, while a more dif-

ficult process, invites Muslims to cast a

critical but forgiving eye on domestic

problems, which may result in pragmatic

reforms. At its most effective, self-

criticism relies on freedom, equality,

incisiveness, and tolerance. The West is

also faced with two options: turning a

deaf ear to honest grievances or listening

with an open mind to the Muslim point

of view. Both the Muslim and Western

worlds should endeavor to unequivocally

protect individuals and groups from acts

of intolerance and discrimination; pro-

tect societies against the actions of

extremists; and intensify dialogue to

address misunderstandings on the basis

of improved, shared knowledge.

1

The conference opened with the hosts

welcoming participants and outlining the

purpose and aims of the event. Mustapha

Tlili, founder and director of Dialogues:

Islamic World-U.S.-The West at New York

University, thanked the government of

Malaysia for cohosting the event and the

governments of the United Kingdom

and France, as well as the MacArthur

Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers

Fund, for their generous financial

support.

Given the simultaneous international

developments and renewed global discus-

sion of the relationship between Islam

and the West, Mr. Tlili stressed the time-

liness of the gathering. He noted that

forces of irresponsibility, insensitivity,

and intolerance have been combining to

endanger that relationship, infusing it

with misperceptions and mistrust. This

tension is underscored by cruel realities of

economic and military inequality, social

dislocation, and political repression.

Yet, Mr. Tlili noted, the very combina-

tion of these formidable challenges and

the volatility of the current political cli-

mate creates a window of opportunity for

positive action. The conference, he said,

should capitalize on this opportunity to

launch a new dynamic of constructive

engagement between the two cultures.

That engagement relies on critical self-

reflection and investigation of which

OPENING SESSION

2

individuals and institutions, if any, can

claim the authority to speak on behalf of a

civilization. Mr. Tlili urged participants

to consider these issues and suggest prac-

tical ways to remedy misunderstandings,

chart new channels of communication,

and, ultimately, deepen mutual under-

standing.

Fauziah Mohd Taib, director general of

the Institute of Diplomacy and Foreign

Relations Malaysia, which cosponsored

the conference, spoke next. Echoing Mr.

Tlili’s appeal for a conference that engages

substantively with today’s critical issues,

she stressed the importance of a forum

for intercivilizational dialogue, remarking

that unity can be found in multiplicity.

Mr. Tlili and Ms. Taib then welcomed

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah

Ahmad Badawi, who was introduced by

Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid

Albar.

In his remarks, Mr. Albar noted that the

primary challenge facing the assembled

scholars and practitioners is to remedy

the lack of tolerance. This task is partic-

ularly arduous, he commented, in the

midst of sobering moments of intoler-

ance such as the current one.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi

opened his address by returning to the

two questions asked in the conference’s

title—“Who Speaks for Islam? Who

Speaks for the West?”—and noting their

pertinence at a time when the Muslim

and Western worlds combined comprise

51 percent of the world’s population.

Attempting to address these consequen-

tial questions in a fresh but productive

way, he said, would mean working from

three postulates: (1) blame cannot be

assigned to any one side, (2) neither civ-

ilization is monolithic, and (3) a loud

but small number of extremist voices do

not represent the silent majority of the

Muslim world or the West.

According to the prime minister, those

who can legitimately claim to speak for

each side are those honest individuals

who strive to live by universal principles

of tolerance, upholding justice and

dignity, fighting tyranny, rejecting

oppression, equalizing opportunities,

redistributing wealth, and being inclusive

in word and deed.

But as the prime minister pointed out,

what is most visible to each side today is

the perceived hostility each side has of

the other. Large numbers of Muslims

look to the West and see only subjuga-

tion, domination, selective persecution,

and hegemony. Similarly, many West-

erners look at Islam and find only

violence, terrorism, and intolerance.

3

Such misperceptions have serious conse-

quences, he insisted, and redressing

them is the challenge facing this gather-

ing of bridge builders. Animosity and

antagonism between the Muslim and the

Western worlds must come to an end.

Reciprocity and equality should become

the rule, heralding a harmonious rela-

tionship ultimately characterized by

Muslims speaking for the West and West-

erners speaking for the Muslim world.

Among the first session’s central objec-

tives were conveying the diversity within

each tradition and dispelling mispercep-

tions. Since the media in both the

Muslim world and the West exercise

enormous influence in disseminating

information that shapes mass percep-

tions of “the other,” participants aimed

to develop a strategy to promote better

understanding between the Muslim and

Western worlds through the media.

Session chair Iqbal Riza, special adviser

to the secretary-general of the United

Nations on the Alliance of Civilizations,

opened the session by reading a state-

ment from UN Secretary-General

Kofi Annan to the conference. In his

statement, the secretary-general acknowl-

edged that we are at a critical moment in

the Muslim-Western encounter. Extrem-

ists on both sides threaten to overwhelm

the dialogue between cultures, which is

why this gathering of tolerant voices is so

timely. He urged participants to bear in

mind that how we receive and act on the

discourse of the other is as important as

what is said; respectfully put, grievances

that are not addressed will eventually

spark violence. The conference is well-

equipped to make a real contribution to

the UN’s new Alliance of Civilizations

initiative, which was established to over-

come prejudices and misunderstandings

that potentially threaten world peace.

5

SESSION I—IMPROVING MUTUAL PERCEPTION

THROUGH THE MEDIA

6

Mr. Riza then turned to the theme of the

first session, stressing the media’s

important role in strategic communica-

tion of information. Whereas educated

elites can turn to other sources to cor-

roborate, clarify, or dispute information

found in the local press and televised

media, the average person relies solely on

this information, believing it to be the

“full story” on any issue. The ability to

convey or withhold information repre-

sents the media’s greatest power.

Freedom of expression is critical to the

media, but it is also vital to societies in

general as a means of fostering progress,

limiting the power of the state, and pro-

tecting the rights of citizens. However,

this freedom can be dangerous, particu-

larly at a time of troubled relations

between the Muslim and Western worlds.

This is especially salient with regard to

the media, whose power can be used neg-

atively—particularly when unbalanced,

misleading, or inaccurate information

promotes stereotypes. Such abuses pro-

duce a situation where the few—those

whose voices are taken up by the media as

sources—speak for the unheard many.

The key question regarding the promo-

tion of accurate information and

informed dialogue is how to balance the

need to limit the power of the media to

shape opinions while protecting the free-

dom of expression that allows for a

healthy exchange.

The first speaker, Timothy Garton Ash,

director of the European Studies Centre

at St. Antony’s College, Oxford Univer-

sity, started by identifying the current

moment as a time of opportunity, thanks

to the many fast-paced transformations

that define and redefine the world today.

Whereas in earlier times different com-

munities could express local customs and

views in a relatively isolated manner, cul-

tural globalization has ushered in a

constant awareness of other places, other

cultures, and other eyes, which has been

reinforced by accelerated migration. For

the majority of the world, a purely local

existence and a mostly local awareness are

thus no longer possible. This evolution

from local to global is reinforced by the

proliferation of round-the-clock, “24/7”

mass media.

Given the global context of today’s world,

how can the media’s role as a protector of

human freedom be understood and sup-

ported, Mr. Garton Ash asked? Perhaps

the best approach, he suggested, is to

start from the expression that freedom

of speech is the “oxygen of liberty.” This

is a universal value that is not attached to

a specific culture. Just as modernization

is not synonymous with Westernization,

the right to speak freely—though prac-

ticed more consistently in that part of the

world—is not a value confined to the

Western world. Freedom of speech is that

7

healthy “collision of opinion” of which

John Stuart Mill wrote the following:

I do not pretend that the mostunlimited use of the freedom ofenunciating all possible opinionswould put an end to the evils of reli-gious or philosophical sectarianism.Every truth which men of narrowcapacity are in earnest about, is sureto be asserted, inculcated, and inmany ways even acted on, as if noother truth existed in the world, or atall events none that could limit orqualify the first. I acknowledge thatthe tendency of all opinions tobecome sectarian is not cured by thefreest discussion, but is often height-ened and exacerbated thereby; thetruth which ought to have been, butwas not, seen, being rejected all themore violently because proclaimed bypersons regarded as opponents. Butit is not on the impassioned partisan,it is on the calmer and more disin-terested bystander, that this collisionof opinions works its salutary effect.Not the violent conflict between partsof the truth, but the quiet suppres-sion of half of it, is the formidableevil: there is always hope when peo-ple are forced to listen to both sides;it is when they attend only to one thaterrors harden into prejudices, andtruth itself ceases to have the effect oftruth, by being exaggerated intofalsehood.6

The difficulty comes in translating free

speech from the abstract into its concrete

application, including its limits in any

particular society. Which subjects are

taboo, for what reasons, and with what

consequences should they be raised

regardless? As much as the answers vary

across cultures, all societies must avoid

leaving the definition of forbidden sub-

jects to those espousing extremist

positions. The limits of free speech must

be defined by those who wish to keep such

limits to a minimum. Tolerance, which

makes free speech palatable as well as pos-

sible, likewise requires patience with views

that initially appear divisive. The “colli-

sion of opinions” may seem at the outset

to inflame passions, but in the long run it

informs and enriches debate. Providing

civilized dialogue based on the open

exchange of views is one of the free media’s

most important functions—and it is for

this reason that restrictions upon it must

be applied cautiously.

The second speaker, Max Boot, senior

fellow for national security studies at the

Council on Foreign Relations, echoed

Mr. Garton Ash’s comments regarding

the timeliness of the topic. He stated that

what the West and Islam are experiencing

today is not so much a clash of civilizations

as a divergence of assumptions. For exam-

ple, many in the Muslim world assume

that governments can and should be held

8

accountable for the actions of their

national media, while in the West these

are assumed to be two separate spheres.

Referring to the cartoons controversy,

Mr. Boot noted that some media had cho-

sen to contribute to the problem rather

than work for its resolution and increased

intercommunal understanding. He noted,

however, that generally speaking, the

Western media have made efforts to avoid

offending Muslims. For instance, both the

news agency Reuters and the BBC eschew

the phrase “Muslim terrorist” when

reporting the use of force by militants or

insurgents. These efforts notwithstand-

ing, ignorance of Muslim sensitivities,

coupled with sensationalist tendencies in

the popular Western media, has enabled

negative reporting. Portrayal of the rich

reality of the Muslim world and coverage

of the “normal” are sorely missing.

The danger of simplistic narratives of

“Muslim terrorists” and other stereotyp-

ical views is that, when promulgated

through the media, they can become the

dominant prism through which people

perceive Islamic civilization. The news

media, in particular, should work to

provide a more accurate depiction of

each civilization so that the debate within

and among civilizations can be based on

solid facts.

For their part, Mr. Boot continued, the

media in Muslim countries have tended

to filter news reporting through the

point of view that American foreign pol-

icy is motivated by animus toward the

Arab and Muslim world, the pursuit of

oil and other commercial interests, and

Zionist and neoconservative lobbies. Mr.

Boot attributed this in part to the diver-

sity of opinions that is prevalent in the

West, which can create a situation

wherein a view that is considered mar-

ginal within the West is picked up by

foreign media and gains greater currency

outside the West.

The third speaker, Boutheina Cheriet,

professor of sociology at the University of

Algiers and former minister of women’s

affairs, spoke from the desire to ground

policy discussions in a theoretical under-

standing of the history behind the

current situation. She suggested that an

adequate response to the cartoons crisis

required investigation of the meaning

that the Western and Muslim worlds have

each attached to free speech. Mill’s “col-

lision of opinions” is also a “collision of

thought.” Further examination reveals,

for instance, that a number of great

Western thinkers carried and promoted a

negative image of Islam and Muslims.

Although not explicitly cited in contem-

porary media coverage, their opinions

often inform a “common sense” subtext

9

of understanding. As an example, Ms.

Cheriet mentioned Max Weber, the emi-

nent German sociologist, who wrote in

The Sociology of Religion that Islam is

a “warrior religion” that displays a

feudal spirit, champions the subjugation

of women, and simplifies ethical

requirements.

Western thinkers have also often exhib-

ited “Manichaean thinking” vis-à-vis the

Muslim world. Ms. Cheriet referred to

sociologist Ernest Gellner’s work, which

pointed out Western historians’ tendency

to represent human conflicts in a binary

way: two opposites in confrontation with

one another.7 This way of viewing the

world has certain negative conse-

quences—as may the very formulation

who speaks for Islam and who speaks for

the West. Rethinking the universal legacy

that history, as the chronicle of human

events, has to offer humanity will enable

more objective representations of the

other, which will in turn produce better

journalistic accounts of conflicts and

civilizations.

Former Iranian President Mohammad

Khatami spoke next, stressing the time-

liness and overall importance of

reexamining civilizations, which he

explained is as difficult to accomplish

globally as within the Islamic tradition.

The importance of dialogue among

cultures is paramount. Today there are

great opportunities for this dialogue,

although it is jeopardized by various

threats. For example, true dialogue can-

not tolerate that the prophet of one of

the world’s great religions be insulted.

Islamophobia is also a danger, and steps

must be taken to eradicate it. Mr.

Khatami cautioned that the signs of

growing Islamophobia ought not to be

taken lightly by the West.

By the same token, the urgent need for

self-examination and intercultural dia-

logue should encourage Muslims to

consider how their identity fits—and is

perceived by others—in a globalized

world. The “social” dimension of iden-

tity is what matters most when it comes to

communication. However, identity is

neither predetermined nor preexisting;

it is created and shaped by time and

space—today, possibly, more than ever.

In other words, Muslims’ willingness to

take an impartial, critical, but respectful

view of their own tradition can foster the

development of a creative and flexible

identity in a democratic paradigm.

Absent such a dynamic, frivolity and vio-

lence will continue to proliferate.

Mr. Khatami also pointed out the diver-

sity that characterizes Islam, which

is evident from Arab, Asian, African,

Persian, and Turkic influences on

10

religious teachings, practices, and cul-

tural expressions. This multiplicity of

Muslim voices must be reflected in the

media. The panel’s discussant, Feisal

Abdul Rauf, chairman of the Cordoba

Initiative, concurred, noting also that the

current boundaries of the Muslim world

are not the product of its own history but

have been imposed by the West. Simi-

larly, recent Muslim thought has been

shaped by and expressed in Western

modalities. In classical Islam, the ques-

tion, who speaks for Islam? would not

arise. God speaks for Islam, and man

interprets God’s words. A nuanced pic-

ture of the historical development of

Muslim ideas is therefore necessary to

understand the heterogeneity of Islamic

thought. Mr. Abdul Rauf maintained

that Islam does not have to be defined by

a binary relationship that sets it against a

presumed universal secularism. Since

religion and identity are largely matters

of perception, the media must play a

leading role in finding solutions to the

problems of misperceptions of other

cultures and traditions.

Following these remarks, the floor was

opened to general discussion including

conference participants and observers.

Kamar Oniah Kamaruzaman, associate

professor at the International Islamic

University in Malaysia, asked for a defi-

nition of “freedom of expression” and

wondered what kind of professional

ethics guided the media in the cartoons

controversy. Mr. Boot responded that

freedom of speech is often defined as the

right to express any views that one wishes,

adding that although there should be

limits to that right, they should be min-

imal and concerned mostly with

preventing libel and the espousal of vio-

lence. He went on to say that although

offensive speech should be limited, gov-

ernmental policing of the press ought

always to be kept to a strict minimum. As

is often stated, the best remedy for speech

deemed offensive is more speech. Pro-

fessional ethics do exist, and they are

recognized by the media and the general

public, with the exclusion of radical

groups. Media lacking such ethics ulti-

mately lose credibility and thereby their

audiences.

Richard Bulliet, professor of history at

Columbia University, added that the

work of the media is often informed by a

number of “common sense” cultural

myths. One of the most powerful in

recent years has been the theory of the

“clash of civilizations,” which, he noted,

is not grounded in empirical facts. Mr.

Boot agreed, indicating that the clash is

within Islam, rather than between Islam

and the West.

11

If free speech is a universal value, argued

A. Riawan Amin, president director of

Bank Muamalat Indonesia, so too is

respect. Given the interrelated nature of

the two, what is the ultimate criterion by

which they should be prioritized? The

cartoons controversy, which drew in

various media outlets, government agen-

cies and officials, and ordinary citizens,

raises the question of the degree to which

the nation in toto and the government in

particular are responsible for regu-

lating free speech. What is painted as a

dismissible myth (in this case, the repre-

sentation of the Prophet Muhammad) by

some members of the European media,

governments, and citizenry is an urgent

reality to practicing Muslims.

Jean-Pierre Langellier, Le Monde corre-

spondent in the United Kingdom and

Ireland, took exception to Mr. Amin’s

characterization of the current situation.

He reiterated that freedom of speech is

the oxygen of democracy, and thus its

expression is nonnegotiable except in

relation to the law and the respect of

individuals. To be deprived of that free-

dom is to be metaphorically asphyxiated,

to feel the painful privation of an essen-

tial component of democratic life. The

critic’s right of irony extends even to

blasphemy, which has been confirmed by

the European Court of Justice. Though

Mr. Langellier admitted that there is

a thin line between a right and how it is

perceived by others, republicanism and

the French constitution regulate this

matter by providing for legal recourse.

Furthermore, from a French republican

perspective, religions are mere beliefs

that can be criticized and deconstructed.

It is indeed a form of progress to do so.

Given that the Arab press habitually pub-

lishes anti-Semitic materials to no public

protest, Mr. Langellier said, and that

some Muslim countries are open to revi-

sionism about the Holocaust, what is

worse for the reputation of Islam, he

asked—a caricature in poor taste or a sui-

cide bomber at a wedding in Amman?

Returning to Max Weber’s derogatory

remarks about Islam, a participant com-

mented that there is a long list of such

assaults on the part of some of the great-

est Western minds. These respected

philosophers and scientists have articu-

lated all manner of demeaning thoughts

on Islam (as well as Hinduism and Bud-

dhism, for that matter). Yet one seldom

finds similar attacks on the West

expressed by leading Muslim scholars and

intellectuals. In Islam, one does not

defame another religion. Though free-

dom of expression is absolute, such a

right cannot in and of itself condition

our morality. If one is legally free to blas-

pheme, what is key is the moral question

of whether to blaspheme.

12

Expanding on Mr. Garton Ash’s discus-

sion of cultural globalization, Farhan

Nizami, director of the Oxford Centre

for Islamic Studies, noted that the reason

communities can no longer live with

their local prejudices is that they are

readily visible to others, primarily

through the globalized media, raising

new questions of responsibility for media

organizations. There must also be con-

sistency in the dynamic between free

expression and restraint. Western soci-

eties and their media cannot be strict

regarding some issues and lax on others.

In the context of the relationship

between Islam and the West, this also

brings to the fore the persistent question

of individual rights versus communal

rights.

Craig Charney, president of Charney

Research, remarked that globalization in

effect ends up creating a “dilemma of

transparency” whereby the more people

are exposed to other cultures, the more

they have to object to.

Responding to Mr. Langellier’s com-

ment on the republican principles,

Mohammed Arkoun, professor emeritus

of Islamic thought at the Sorbonne,

noted that while the French constitution

states that religious commands do not

supersede French law, many constitu-

tions around the Muslim world stipulate

the exact opposite, namely, that civil law

cannot contradict the shari‘a (Islamic

law). Both sides hold their “truths to be

self-evident,” and their media merely

reflect that logic. It is precisely in such

polarized conflicts—the Danish cartoons

incident being merely the most recent

episode in a long list of controversies that

included the Salman Rushdie matter, the

affair of Talisma Nasreen8, and the ques-

tion of the veil—that we have to inquire

about the nature (and usefulness) of the

intellectual tools that are available to us.

Mr. Arkoun argued that scientists have

long demonstrated that reality and our

perceptions of it are socially “con-

structed”; it is fundamental differences

in our social realities, rather than partic-

ular events, which underlie the debate.

On a separate note, he continued, we

must place newfound investment into

scientific research, which in turn would

be transmitted through a reinvigorated

educational system in which hard knowl-

edge, an open perspective, and a

commitment to literacy could vastly

improve the relationship between Islam

and the West.

The session closed with Mr. Garton Ash

highlighting the alleged clash of civiliza-

tions as a doctrine that has already done

serious damage to relations between

Islam and the West. Mr. Garton Ash

insisted that it is therefore key to portray

13

the conflict properly, as a clash of values

rather than civilizations. He suggested

that an efficient means of fighting partial

or distorted knowledge is increasing vis-

ibility of the other. In that sense, the

West must redouble its efforts to portray

the richness of the debate within the

Muslim world.

The second session, moderated by

Chandra Muzaffar, president of the

International Movement for a Just

World in Malaysia, addressed various

aspects of globalization and the changes

globalization has engendered in recent

years. Participants discussed the impact

these changes have had on Muslim

countries and societies.

Mr. Muzaffar opened the session by not-

ing the complexity of globalization as

a phenomenon that goes beyond the

internationalization of capital and infor-

mation technologies. Globalization also

involves cultural and moral values and

has had particular impact on taste.

Though revolutionary in significant

ways, the current globalization is not sui

generis. History has seen previous waves of

globalization, with the most recent one

taking place during the colonial era.

Similar to today’s movement but on a

smaller scale and at a slower pace, the

Muslim world itself was a major source of

one such wave of globalization, which

rippled out from the Mediterranean

basin several centuries ago, bringing

about transfers of goods, people, infor-

mation, and technology.

The impact of the current globalization

on the Muslim world has been varied,

with positive and negative outcomes for

different nations. Whereas Malaysia, for

15

SESSION II—THE IMPACT OF GLOBALIZATION

ON THE MUSLIM WORLD

16

instance, has benefited enormously from

one particular aspect of globalization,

namely, trade, the interwoven interna-

tional financial networks proved

disastrous to the Indonesian economy

during the 1997-1998 Asian financial

crisis. The globalization of communica-

tion technologies, for its part, is exerting

tremendous impact across the Muslim

world, particularly on youth.

The first panelist, Ralf Fücks, member of

the executive board of the Heinrich Böll

Foundation, also stressed the complexity

of globalization, which, he concurred,

was not concerned solely with financial

matters. The societal dimension of glob-

alization has been essential in shaping the

economic and political life of citizens

around the world. By the same token,

globalization itself is shaped in turn by

different sociopolitical and cultural

environments. While some would argue

that the phenomenon is a U.S.-driven

“equalizer” that diminishes local speci-

ficities, Mr. Fücks pointed to its capacity

to promote diversity. One of the vehicles

of that variety, he remarked, is brought

on by global migration and the accompa-

nying visibility of a plethora of cultural

mores (articulated through food, music,

films, and religious practice). Conse-

quently, as goods are transported and sold

all over the world, companies are also

assembling multicultural workforces. Yet

such variety can also create tension,

which can lead to additional gaps between

nations and civilizations, as in the case of

Islam and the West.

The Muslim world is reacting in manifold

ways to recent global transformations,

with some countries and populations

appearing to be able to engage with

the new realities more successfully than

others. What is certain is that key com-

ponents of that successful engagement—

human liberties, rule of law, equal

opportunity, independent media—are

universal rather than merely Western val-

ues, and that, as the 2004 Arab Human

Development Report indicated, these

elements are often lacking in Muslim

societies.9 Mr. Fücks expressed hope that

the next wave of globalization would offer

avenues to lastingly remedy these short-

comings, allow a fair say to the global

South, and multiply ways to avoid civi-

lizational conflict.

The next speaker, Kurt Seinitz, foreign

editor of Die Kronenzeitung, commented

that for all the talk of globalization bring-

ing increased diversity, most Westerners

continue to demonstrate a widespread

lack of basic knowledge about Islam. That

lack is compounded in the West by social

secularization and the accompanying

death of religious taboos, which decreases

interest in and empathy with non-Western

17

religions. Similarly, many Westerners

view Islam as a monolith, and indeed the

demonstrations that took place in the

wake of the cartoons controversy were

regarded as confirmation of this.

Mr. Seinitz added that, to the contrary,

Islam is a globalized world in and of

itself. It is an international community

that includes some of the richest and

poorest countries in the world. Global-

ization presents both these winners and

losers with challenges, much as it does

non-Muslim countries. By and large,

however, few Muslim countries appear to

have made notable contributions to the

current field of information technology.

One reason is because the basic compo-

nents of a viable and fertile economy—a

good investment climate, inexpensive

manufacturing, and market availability—

are often missing in the Muslim world.

To compete economically, it is hoped

that the Muslim world will renew its

golden age of scientific progress and

enlightenment (during which women

were educated and joined the workforce).

Using China as the prime example, Mr.

Seinitz posited that democracy is not a

precondition for modernization. Glob-

alization itself has no moral values.

(On this point, several participants

remarked that there is a basic tendency

for globalization to strengthen democracy.

Hence, in the late 1980s and early 1990s

we witnessed a so-called “third wave” of

democratization that accompanied grow-

ing interdependence.) Mr. Seinitz

pointed to examples of effective models

of modernization and development in

the Muslim world, such as Malaysia and

Turkey. What is needed within the Muslim

world, as these examples demonstrate, is

better governance that encourages mod-

ernization and enables Muslim nations

to prosper from globalization, rather

than suffer its losses.

The panel’s discussant, Mr. Amin, noted

the importance of the Qur’an as the

source of ultimate authority among Mus-

lims. This model of discourse, he

remarked, is characterized by tolerance

with the rewards going to those who do

good. Currently, the United States dom-

inates the rest of the world in terms of its

wealth, military power, and educational

infrastructure. As long as 20 percent of

the world’s population consumes 80

percent of its resources, there will be

trouble and rebellion among those left

out. To address this imbalance, argued

Mr. Amin, there must be reform of the

world economic system.

The subsequent discussion focused

on the costs of globalization for the

Muslim world. Mohamed Jawhar Hassan,

director-general of the Institute of

18

Strategic and International Studies

(Malaysia), pointed out that since global-

ization inherently favors the powerful and

tech-savvy, its costs are highest for those

cultures that can least afford them.

Whereas globalization is generally uncon-

cerned with religion, the Muslim world is

primarily characterized by a common,

vibrant religious heritage. Mr. Jawhar

Hassan indicated that Muslim countries

have four institutional challenges to

surmount (1) an uneven and often insuf-

ficient knowledge base, (2) a lack of

empowerment of the female population,

(3) an absence of participatory gover-

nance, and (4) the prevalence of ethnic

conflicts. Imran Ali, professor at Lahore

University of Management Sciences, added

that the distribution of oil revenues must

be addressed before the Muslim world

can better engage with globalization.

Those internal challenges play out in the

context of global problems that are equally

daunting, noted Mr. Fücks, who cau-

tioned against a relapse into economic

and military imperialism. That trend is

materializing not merely in economic

means but also in military terms. At the

other end of the spectrum, we see the

rise of a novel form of terrorism—the

nonstate, transnational armed group.

These ideologically motivated com-

batants aim to redress injustices by

empowering people rather than states.

Mr. Fücks went on to say that the archi-

tecture of international institutions such

as the United Nations helps maintain

the current global power structure.

Apart from a few cosmetic changes in the

dynamic of institutional engagement

between the World Bank and particular

governments in the South, there has

been no genuine reform of the interna-

tional system. In particular, reform of the

United Nations remains a gnawing, elu-

sive issue. The renewed violence and

anger that the world has witnessed in the

first years of this century is evidence of a

severe institutional imbalance. Mr. Fücks

added that if the world is not able to

transition from reliance on fossil

resources to renewable forms of energy,

future generations may be condemned to

further conflicts over dwindling supplies.

Mr. Amin concurred that the inter-

national economic system must be

reconstructed to accommodate for the

effects of globalization. Previous recon-

figurations of the world economy were

brought about by increased migration,

free exchange of goods, and the advent of

common commodities markets. The

challenge, hence, is not one of capacity

but of rearrangement. Is the West willing

to make another such vast adjustment

today?

19

Mr. Muzaffar offered Malaysia as an

example of a country that has had success

with modernization despite the pressures

of globalization. This, he feels, is due to

five major reasons: (1) a lasting balance

of power among national ethnic groups;

(2) a socially responsible and relatively

honest political leadership since the late

1950s; (3) a sustained economic growth

accompanied by redistribution to bridge

the gap between indigenous and non-

indigenous peoples; (4) an emphasis on

education, irrespective of gender; and

(5) an ever-more ingrained cultural

sense of tolerance at the societal level.

Mr. Langellier expressed that the main

difficulties the Muslim world is facing are

self-imposed. He argued that the rela-

tionship between faith and ideology in

Muslim countries needs to be overhauled

to enable modernization.

Mr. Bulliet, however, noted that these

challenges must be considered from a

historical perspective. The globalization

that occurred between 1000 and 1500

was dominated by the Muslim world and

witnessed a massive movement of knowl-

edge, science, art, and philosophy from

Islam to the West. The West’s leadership

at the time—like some in the Muslim

world today—resorted to violence,

notably the Crusades, to regain power.

Returning to the notion of dialogue, Mr.

Nizami suggested that language itself can

become a barrier. Therefore, the chal-

lenge is to find ways to deploy language in

ways that achieve progress rather than

create more problems. To do so, our dis-

course must be pragmatic, honest, and

dispassionate. An examination of the

assumptions that surround notions of

governance, accountability, and democ-

racy, for instance, could potentially

unearth a wealth of insights into policy

reform.

Mr. Boot interjected that the post-1500s

rise of the West was linked to sophisti-

cated currency practice (interest, bonds,

and stocks) and that adoption of those

practices by the Muslim world would have

huge socioeconomic benefit. Israel, he

argued, achieved its own good fortune by

installing a free market and promoting

education for women. Unlike many Arab

countries, he insisted, Israel does not

blame its problems on others.

Mr. Muzaffar remarked that the impor-

tance of domestic reform is widely

acknowledged throughout the Muslim

world. It is the global dimensions of

these political questions that need fur-

ther examination. In particular, he

differed with the assumption that good

governance necessarily brings progress.

Prior to the Gulf War, Iraq enjoyed a

20

first-rate heath care system, high levels of

education (including among women),

and a vast public infrastructure, yet the

country’s leadership made the wrong

geopolitical choices. Mr. Muzaffar stated

that the Middle East’s problems come

from oil and Israel’s predatory stance,

and it is high time that these be addressed.

Both Joshua Muravchik, resident scholar

at the American Enterprise Institute, and

Mr. Charney took strong exception to

Mr. Muzaffar’s statement on Israel.

At the session’s close, Mr. Ali stated that

the global transfer of resources must

indeed be put in historical context and

the arrogance that plagues the Western

discourse must likewise be examined.

Mr. Amin concurred, stressing that

Westernization is not necessarily mod-

ernization, nor is democracy a panacea.

Recent decades have brought extraordi-

nary transformations in information

technology and in biotechnology, the

collective impact of which has been felt

worldwide. These transformations often

reinforce feelings of powerlessness

among those who have not benefited.

This session explored the challenges that

these developments pose for govern-

ments, societies, and traditional moral

authorities, as well as for ordinary citizens.

The session’s chair, Ronald Lehman,

director of the Center for Global Secu-

rity Research at the Lawrence Livermore

National Laboratory in the United

States, opened by identifying the role of

science in facilitating intercivilizational

engagement and its ability to build

bridges that transcend differences and

to offer shared opportunities to improve

lives around the world. However,

particular scientific discoveries and

applications of technology can create

tensions when they conflict with cultural

practices and religious beliefs.

Mr. Lehman raised four questions to

lead the discussion. First, noting that

participation in the global high-tech sec-

tor is made possible by education that is

not equally accessible to all, he asked how

science and technology can reach out to

the different strata within communities.

Second, he inquired whether faith and

science advance together in the Muslim

21

SESSION III—THE CHALLENGES POSED BY SCI-ENCE AND TECHNOLOGY TO THE

MUSLIM-WESTERN RELATIONSHIP

22

world and beyond, or whether they are

adversaries. Third, Mr. Lehman won-

dered whether the Muslim world was

transitioning from consumer to pro-

ducer of technology at home and abroad

and the implications of such evolution

for the Muslim-Western relationship.

Fourth, he asked how scientific coopera-

tion between Muslims and Westerners

could contribute to international peace

and security and could mitigate the dan-

ger of “dual use” technology, such as

nuclear energy.

The first speaker, Imran Ali, prefaced his

remarks by making three underlying

statements about the issue of technology.

He noted, first, that there is no contra-

diction between Islam as a religion and

the scientific pursuit of knowledge. Like

all religions, however, Islam places cer-

tain moral limits on the application of

science, proscribing, for example, the

use of ultrasound technology in the serv-

ice of fetal sex selection. Second, during

the past five centuries, the Muslim world

has been beset by a downturn in scientific

production, while the Renaissance and

the Industrial Revolution led to dramatic

advances in Western technology. Third,

the technology gap was reinforced by the

subjugation of most Muslim countries

during the colonial era. As global tech-

nological transformations continue to

accelerate, will the gap widen, or will

there be a breakthrough in the Muslim

production of high-quality, scientific

advancement?

Mr. Ali noted that in quantitative terms

there are many centers of technological

research in the Muslim world, but the

limited quality of their contributions

hinders the Muslim world’s competitive-

ness. While there are many top-notch

individuals in the sciences, they rarely

aggregate into first-rate schools or

departments. With the notable exception

of Turkey, and, to a lesser extent,

Indonesia and Iran, the Muslim world

lacks industrial clusters that produce and

patent technology. Excluding only the

resource-based sectors (oil and gas),

there are few, if any, companies based in

the Muslim world that could be included

in the top 500 worldwide. These defi-

ciencies urgently need to be addressed.

Mr. Ali felt that current prospects for a

scientific and technological revolution in

the Muslim world are dim. On the eco-

nomic front, where there are advances,

such as in the large and dynamic “grey-

market” sector, they tend to undermine

the structural profitability of bona fide

activities. Additionally, the removal of

subsidies in many countries, com-

pounded by rising production costs, has

further diminished competitiveness.

Apart from oil-driven activities, Muslim

23

economies score low in innovation-

based production. The private sector is

still factory based and has not moved to a

more agile, digital platform. This tech-

nological frailty also has military

consequences: most Muslim countries

have no significant technologically

advanced weaponry. The economic,

geopolitical, and strategic implications of

globalization are, hence, linked.

The second speaker, Mustafa Ceric,

grand mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina,

began by examining the relationship

between faith and science. He noted that

science is a tool used for achieving

human goals, but it is not a goal in and

of itself. This relationship has always

underscored the interaction between

theologians and scientists. Intellectual

tolerance has been a distinctive feature of

Islam for centuries, including lengthy

periods during which other civilizations

were stuck in their dark ages. The dra-

matic decline of the high scientific

profile of the Islamic world challenges a

staging of a “comeback,” while avoiding

both assimilation through secularization

and the isolation that would result from

a rejection of globalization.

The next speaker, Rainer Wessel, presi-

dent of Ganymed Pharmaceuticals,

began by highlighting that technology

poses great challenges to us all, regardless

of location or faith. Mr. Wessel stressed

that the current era is witnessing a

momentous technological revolution

fueled by three areas of innovation:

information technology, biotechnology,

and nanotechnology. The publication of

the human genome in 2001 constituted

a landmark event encapsulating this

recent history. While scientists them-

selves have placed ethical limits on their

own research, the overarching challenge

today is closing the gap between fast-

developing technology and legislation

that is not keeping pace. He suggested

that there is a role for nongovernmental

organizations, such as the recently

launched International Council for the

Life Sciences, to provide independent,

field-based regulation.

Mr. Wessel explained that the United

States has led the way in recent scientific

progress—particularly in biotechnology—

with Europe and Asia closely following.

As technology has become the principal

driving force behind these economies,

potential abuses of its products also

increase. Technology is inherently nei-

ther good nor bad: what matters is the

use to which it is put. Pressing ethical

questions regarding the application of

technology have been posed across dif-

ferent cultures, polities, and religions,

with the debate constantly shifting along

with scientific innovation.

24

Mr. Wessel concluded by stating that sci-

ences seem to flourish better in open

societies. With science now a major driv-

ing force behind successful economies,

he pointed to the need for economic and

political liberalization in Muslim coun-

tries to stir scientific development.

The panel’s discussant, Mark Smolinski,

director of the Global Health and Secu-

rity Initiative and vice president for

Biological Programs at the Nuclear

Threat Initiative (NTI) based in Wash-

ington, D.C., discussed the work of his

organization to improve global capacity

for prevention of and preparedness to

biological threats through enhanced dis-

ease surveillance, early detection, and

response. A consequence of globalization

is that diseases spread quickly and over

great distances, as demonstrated by

recent severe acute respiratory system

(SARS) and Asian bird flu epidemics.

The NTI is working to establish regional

organizations to monitor and respond to

infectious diseases and has launched one

such pilot program in the Middle East

involving Israel, the Palestinian Author-

ity, Egypt, and Jordan—demonstrating

that regional cooperation in the arena of

science and technology is possible even in

a volatile area.

Mr. Bulliet launched this portion of the

discussion by questioning the relationship

between Western-trained Muslim scien-

tists and scientific development in their

home countries. Just as the repatriation

of U.S.-based Chinese and Indian scien-

tists has contributed in no small measure

to these countries’ recent economic suc-

cesses, could the same not be true for the

Muslim world? Mr. Ali responded that,

at this point, many Muslim scientists

return to their countries of origin only

to find that they cannot make a signifi-

cant contribution in the absence of a

professional environment conducive to

sustained scientific creation. With scarce

research possibilities and a culture of

bureaucratic and institutional impedi-

ments—and with no apparent leadership

invested in resolving these problems—

Muslim scientists often find it impossible

to live and work in their home countries.

The Islamic world must culturally reinvest

in the sciences to stem this brain drain.

Mr. Bulliet also pointed out that major

scientific contributions during the Mus-

lim golden age took advantage of that

civilization’s permeability and lack of

national boundaries. Today, technolog-

ical pursuit is centered nationally,

whereas Muslim scientists might fare best

by creating regional networks.

Hussein Solomon, director of the Cen-

ter for International Political Studies at

the University of Pretoria, endorsed Mr.

25

Wessel’s statement about the link between

technology and open societies and added

that changes in educational systems—

shifting away from rote learning to critical

inquiry—are necessary to foster a revival

of technological progress in the Muslim

world. This must also be supported by

active recruitment of and competitive

salaries for promising scientists. Abdel-

majid Charfi, professor emeritus of

humanities and Islamic studies at the

University of Tunis, concurred, adding

that dogmatic training and memory-based

education, as opposed to open-minded

engagement, are conducive neither to

proper education nor scientific produc-

tion. Mina Al-Oraibi, a journalist for

Asharq Al-Awsat, noted that these chal-

lenges are compounded by an urgent

sense among Arab youth of having to catch

up with fast-paced global transformations.

Mr. Fücks questioned the existence of

such a discipline as “Islamic science.”

Religion could be a source for ethical

guidance in science, he offered, but reli-

gion should not interfere with science.

This concern is not unique to Islam, but

one that is relevant to Christianity as

well, with regard to the teaching of evo-

lution, for example. Several participants

agreed that Muslims should avoid adding

the qualifier “Islamic” to science or other

fields, as this demonstrates cultural inse-

curity and does not offer a constructive

solution to the problems faced by

Muslim countries.

Vitaly Naumkin, president of the Inter-

national Center for Strategic Studies in

Moscow, wondered whether it might be

useful to develop a Muslim scientific

strategy or a joint Muslim vision of sci-

ence. He also raised the question of

whether measures adopted in the West

for security reasons, such as the increased

difficulty encountered by Muslims apply-

ing for visas to work or study in the

United States, were preventing Muslims

from gaining access to the information

and education necessary for technological

advancement. Mr. Wessel acknowledged

that restrictions on the flow of knowl-

edge are indeed a problem, not only

between the Islamic and Western worlds,

but within the West as well. Although

such restrictions do not impair science

itself and are mostly limited to regulating

sensitive matters, certain people are

excluded from information that could

serve them better. For example, it is

important that scientists in the Muslim

world know about virulent viruses in

order to make antibodies to fight them.

The threat that such knowledge could fall

into the hands of terrorists seeking bio-

logical weapons is offset by the benefits

this knowledge would bring in the battle

against infectious diseases.

26

The discussion then turned toward

sources of funding for research and

development in the Muslim world with

Mr. Wessel remarking that although there

is significant funding available from

Muslim individuals—particularly in the

Gulf countries—such support is not

always effectively distributed across the

Muslim world.

Mr. Nizami raised the problem of the

widespread assumption of the West’s cen-

trality in scientific matters, specifically

the idea that progress demands the mir-

roring of Western history. Although the

Enlightenment made future scientific

advances possible, these, in turn,

depended on Muslim philosophical and

scientific contributions of an earlier era.

Furthermore, Mr. Nizami added, much of

Europe’s success rested on the institu-

tionalized monopoly of patent protections

and secured markets. Given that today’s

Muslim societies have neither of these

capabilities, can they do the same?

Mr. Ali suggested that while the Euro-

pean system cannot be replicated in the

Muslim world, there are other models

for industrialization that could be

instructive. To create climates conducive

to scientific development, governments

across the Muslim world must establish

and institutionalize private property

rights, which would stimulate a virtuous

cycle of investment and returns. Ulti-

mately, Muslim countries must “set their

own shops right,” and this begins with

elites who all too often enrich themselves

with little regard to the welfare of their

less fortunate countrymen.

The session closed with Mr. Ceric noting

that Islam and the West have the oppor-

tunity to build trust around the interplay

between science, politics, and theology by

cementing technological interdepend-

ence and enabling strong international

regulatory systems.

The last session of the conference sought

to draw on the panel discussions in order

to make recommendations for American

and Western policy in general toward the

Muslim world and vice versa, including

the establishment of formal mechanisms

for dialogue.

The session chair, Stephen Heintz, pres-

ident of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund,

opened the discussion by noting that the

logic behind such a conference is to

advance policies that reflect a broadly

shared vision of constructive, coopera-

tive, far-sighted, and principled global

engagement. An effort of this type seeks

to amplify a wider range of voices than

would otherwise be heard. In doing so, it

strengthens the relationship between

Muslim and Western societies. Inasmuch

as U.S. foreign policy, in particular, will

continue to have a profound influence

on the world’s ability to cope with com-

plex global challenges, it is essential to try

to reduce the current destabilizing ten-

sions by promoting mutual respect and

understanding and by encouraging col-

laboration among Muslim and Western

societies in managing global challenges.

This endeavor recognizes, too, that both

the Muslim and Western civilizations are

engaged in parallel internal debates

about their respective identities, futures,

and places in a rapidly changing, increas-

ingly interconnected world.

27

28

Mr. Heintz noted that, in addition to the

media, our policies and actions speak for

us. Each side must therefore constantly

inquire whether its policies, both domes-

tic and foreign, correspond to informed

attitudes about the other. Mr. Heintz

expressed concern that the mutual per-

ceptions of the Muslim world by the

Western world and vice versa seem ever-

more distrustful, hence the importance of

dialogue in devising a lasting framework

for the Muslim-Western relationship.

Such a framework, offered Mr. Heintz,

could feature the following five compo-

nents: (1) measures to restore and

increase trust; (2) the use of accurate and

impartial language to describe relation-

ships and shared aspirations; (3) the

application of professional norms that will

ensure media responsibility; (4) reform

of international institutions to render

globalization more inclusive, equitable,

and sustainable; and (5) greater exchange

in the realms of education and science.

The first speaker, Usman Bugaje, chair-

man of the House Committee on Foreign

Affairs in Nigeria, started by noting that

dialogue between Islam and the West is

not just desirable, it also offers the only

route out of the current situation of ten-

sion and mistrust. Although the search

for understanding may bring to light

uncomfortable truths, both cultures

need to educate themselves about the

other. Two such “uncomfortable truths”

to note at the outset of this process are

that (1) any dialogue will inevitably

involve a discussion on power as the cur-

rency of achievement and on current

power structures and (2) the acceptance

of difference is a sine qua non of progress.

It bears reminding, stressed Mr. Bugaje,

that what applies to one religion does not

necessarily apply to another, and that

unity is not synonymous with uniformity.

The Muslim and Western worlds face dif-

ferent challenges. For Muslims, the

present challenge is threefold. First, it

concerns democratization of the inter-

pretation of religious texts. The “gates of

ijtihad” must be reopened, Mr. Bugaje

maintained; the text is divine but its

interpretation is human, a principle of

Muslim scriptures themselves. Second,

Muslims must tackle the challenge of

education more directly and efficiently,

particularly by rekindling their intellec-

tual curiosity instead of proscribing

fields of study. Third, in the face of per-

sistent dysfunction, the need for Muslim

countries to embrace “good governance”

has become imperative; the first step is

the empowerment of civil societies to

challenge their governments to live up to

the standards of Islam.

29

According to Mr. Bugaje, the challenge is

similarly threefold for the West. First, the

question of double standards toward the

Muslim world must be addressed with a

view of correcting misconceptions and

ensuring equal treatment for Muslims.

Second, the Western world must relin-

quish its claims to ownership of

“civilization” in general and science and

technology in particular. Too often,

Westerners ignore or minimize others’

contributions toward global progress.

The degree of dominance that the West

currently enjoys gives it all the more rea-

son to create space for participation by

the rest of the world and Muslims in par-

ticular. Third, while no values are

absolute, the West might benefit from

stating a broadly shared set of values.

These respective challenges, concluded

Mr. Bugaje, are underscored by the

urgent need for both sides to work on

communication with one another.

The next speaker, Mohamed Charfi,

professor emeritus of law at the Univer-

sity of Tunis and former minister of

education (Tunisia), opened by taking

stock of the historically rocky relation-

ship between the Muslim and Western

worlds, which has ranged from hostile to

cooperative. For the past 100 years, the

relationship has been framed around the

question of colonization and its after-

math. Three geographical areas continue

to fuel conflict and misunderstanding:

Palestine, Chechnya, and Iraq. The

sooner just and lasting solutions to these

gnawing rivalries can be found, the bet-

ter the prospects for good relations

between Muslims and Westerners.

Since positive developments often escape

the world’s notice, Mr. Charfi pointed

out that many Muslim countries have, by

and large, taken control of their political

and economic destinies. Efforts have

been particularly effective in Malaysia

and Turkey. The dichotomy between suc-

cess and frustration may come down to

which parts of the Muslim community

focus on criticism as opposed to self-

criticism. The former group indulges in

a blame game, entertaining notions of a

Western conspiracy; such a negative

approach, argued Mr. Charfi, leads to

self-victimization and is ultimately a dead

end. The alternative is to respond to the

challenges facing the Muslim world by

engaging in self-examination, diagnosis

of concrete problems, and ultimately

long-term domestic transformation.

Echoing Mr. Bugaje’s analysis, Mr.

Charfi identified four realms that repre-

sent challenges for the Muslim world

today: freedom, equality, good gover-

nance, and education. He placed

emphasis, in particular, on freedom,

which he indicated should be thought of

30

not merely as a “buzz word” but in its

full implications, notably, tolerance of

dissent, both internal and external.

Equality, for its part, must be under-

stood especially in relation to gender

issues; Islam cannot be used to justify

limitations on women’s rights when the

religion’s very ethos is of humanity and

empowerment. As for good governance,

it first and foremost requires trans-

parency, separation of powers, and

respect for the rule of law. Regarding

education, Mr. Charfi stressed the need

for modernization and more critical

thinking in the Muslim world. A proper

educational system is one that not only

teaches its students how to use their

minds but is also open to foreign contri-

butions. As several participants pointed

out throughout the conference, knowl-

edge of other cultures is essential for

survival in a global world.

The next speaker, Wilhelm Höynck, for-

mer secretary-general of the Organization

for Security and Co-operation in Europe

(OSCE), argued that future interactions

between the Muslim and Western worlds

depend on tolerance but also on the very

real challenge of its implementation. One

such meaningful and practical step, he

suggested, is support for the Alliance of

Civilizations, the UN initiative launched

in July 2005, which seeks to bridge

civilizational divides and overcome

prejudice, misperceptions, and polariza-

tion among cultures. It is equally

important to develop adequate and

innovative institutional responses for

proactive management of rapidly escalating

crises. Admittedly, noted Mr. Höynck,

this is a monumental task that calls for a

balanced and cooperative effort.

He raised three principal objectives for

those concerned with improving the

relationship between Islam and the West:

(1) protecting individuals and groups

from acts of intolerance and discrimina-

tion; (2) safeguarding societies against

the actions of religious extremists; and

(3) intensifying knowledge-based dia-

logue to address disagreements. Beyond

such institutions as the Organization for

Security and Co-operation in Europe

and the League of Arab States, the

untapped potential of a larger set of

regional actors is an additional asset

toward accomplishing these goals.

Mr. Höynck cautioned that one must be

realistic in assessing the very real chal-

lenges facing Muslim-Western relations.

The more attempts at dialogue fail, the

more people will lose heart, and the

more frustrations will build. He closed

on an optimistic note, however, suggest-

ing that the experience in building a

unified Europe from among once antag-

onistic states should offer hope for

31

a lasting, peaceful solution to conflicts

between the Muslim world and the West.

The discussant, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, sec-

retary-general of the Muslim Council of

Britain, outlined two options for moving

forward. The negative option is to dwell

on what has not been done and continue

to lament the status quo. A positive

approach is to assess the challenges and

forge ahead by listening (to the other)

with an open mind. Specifically, it is

unhelpful to construe a view of Islam that

does away with the religion’s intrinsic

variety. A positive approach offers greater

prospects for building mutual respect,

anticipating or defusing crises, breaking

down monolithic preconceptions, and

working together on the challenges that

unite Muslims and Westerners.

Sir Iqbal agreed with Mr. Bugaje’s analy-

sis that the interaction between Muslims

and Westerners has a long history shaped

by ideas and science but primarily by

power—its presence, absence, uses, and

impact. The two civilizations are now in

a postcolonization phase, dealing with

the fallout from decolonization and, in

some quarters, a dangerous yearning for

imperial power. The outcome of this

phase of the relationship depends on the

Muslim world to implement equitable,

democratic, and well-governed systems

recognizing the rights of women.

According to Sir Iqbal, the West must in

turn (1) widen the definition of citizen-

ship to confer rights and societal

responsibilities not merely legally, but

communally, in acceptance of people of

different cultural backgrounds; (2) inte-

grate this citizenry—and especially the

youth—in a dynamic way without impos-

ing a sterile and alienating uniformity;

and (3) foster an inclusive society intol-

erant of prejudice.

In the general discussion that ensued,

participants concurred on the impor-

tance of self-criticism and introspection

within both the Western and Islamic

worlds. Mr. Muravchik remarked that the

West has a system of permanent soul-

searching built on the cornerstones of

freedom and democracy, which includes

opposition parties, a free press, and an

active intelligentsia that is at liberty to

criticize those in power. By contrast, he

pointed to the current situation in the

Islamic world where several newspapers

in different countries, including in

Malaysia, had been shut down, and edi-

tors fired, for reprinting the Danish

cartoons.

Mr. Muravchik added that a positive out-

come to the conference and a validation

for the process of dialogue would be for

the delegates to issue a far-reaching,

intercommunal statement that would

32

condemn, in all forms, defamation that

offends religious sensibilities across faiths.

Ramón Pérez-Maura, vice-editor of

Diario ABC, agreed with the importance

of institutional vehicles, such as the newly

formed Alliance of Civilizations, to fur-

ther mutual recognition. Such efforts

require strong leadership in order to

fairly and comprehensively represent the

idiosyncrasies and traditions of each side.

For example, he remarked, the Christian

lineage of the West (once referred to as

Christendom) must be acknowledged as a

lasting influence on large segments of the

Western population.

In that respect, Mr. Fücks posited that

while the West tends to be defined (and

defines itself) as a set of institutions and

values, roughly circumscribed geograph-

ically, Islam is understood and paints

itself as a religious community spread

over a number of specific countries but

global in its presence. This configura-

tion, he remarked, raises the issue of

difference between the provinces of faith

(a set of personal beliefs grounded in the

absolute truth of divine power) and pol-

itics (in which there is no absolute truth).

Participants further addressed the ques-

tion of power and the notion of its

limitations, primarily the requirements

of justice. Mr. Riza noted that when

the politically and socioeconomically

aggrieved do not find justice, they often

turn to use of force. He reiterated the call

for reform of international institutions,

such as the UN Security Council, to give a

greater stake to less powerful states. Hoda

Badran, chairperson of the Alliance for

Arab Women, remarked that the persist-

ence of double standards perpetuates

injustices and, therefore, the sometimes

violent acts undertaken to right them.

While noting that the conference had been

useful from his perspective, Mr. Solomon

urged that the discussion on how to

improve Muslim-Western relations should

move beyond elite circles to encompass

grassroots activists in communities and

the faithful in churches, mosques, and

synagogues. Truly effective dialogue must

embrace all strata of societies.

The session closed with Mr. Heintz high-

lighting three main areas of insight that

emerged during the discussion that could

be further developed as follows: (1)

reorienting the framing of the current

relationship away from the religion/

region dyad; (2) reforming global insti-

tutions such as the United Nations, the

International Monetary Fund, and the

World Bank to ensure greater justice in

their operations; and (3) empowering

transnational civil society to play a larger

role in intercivilizational dialogue.

At the close of the conference, Mustapha

Tlili, founder and director of Dialogues

and coconvener of the event, noted the

positive tone that had characterized the

debates. These had not been easy discus-

sions especially in the context of divisive

international events, but the group man-

aged to strike the proper balance between

honest, no holds-barred exchange and

joint construction of a positive vision of

the future.

A major challenge facing both this gath-

ering and the Muslim and Western

civilizations at large is that of finding

lasting ways to work and live together.

Meanwhile, each culture is undergoing

massive and rapid transformations and

thereby altering perceptions of itself

and of others. The resulting opportunity

to improve relationships demands a role

for those able to speak “better” for Islam

and the West. This forum, it is hoped,

will be reconvened annually to facilitate

that process.

The conference was formally brought to

a close by Mohammad Najib Abdul

Razak, deputy prime minister of

Malaysia, who also applauded the spirit of

cooperation and understanding that

characterized its proceedings. Mr. Abdul

Razak noted that the early-21st century

has been a troubled period characterized

by fracture, confusion, violence, and a

Muslim-Western relationship fraught

33

CLOSING SESSION

34

with tension and mistrust. This unfortu-

nate state of affairs has contributed to a

rise in intolerance, brought into sharp

focus by the Danish cartoons crisis.

By rationally and dispassionately tackling

the issues of who speaks for Islam and

who speaks for the West, this conference

has managed to distance itself produc-

tively from the currents of anger and

hatred that underlie civilizational mis-

trust. It has also attempted to allow the

reasoned and cultured voices of the many

tolerant Muslims and Westerners to

come to the forefront of the dialogue.

To be certain, Muslims and Westerners

will always hold different worldviews

grounded in their own philosophical tra-

ditions as well as their distinct historical

experiences. Yet the process pursued

here can contribute to mutual under-

standing. Although solutions will not

immediately materialize, the exercise

itself and the wide dissemination of its

results—beyond academe and expert

groups—will sow seeds of greater under-

standing between Islam and the West.

The conference “Who Speaks for Islam?

Who Speaks for the West?” was anchored

in three moments: (1) a historical

outlook on the long-standing issues

characterizing the difficult relationship

between Islam and the West; (2) the dra-

matic events and global changes of the

post-September 11, 2001, era; and (3)

the immediate escalation of that dynamic

in the context of the Danish cartoons

crisis that erupted shortly before the

conference. Against this multilayered

context, conference discussions aimed at

three objectives: (1) reining in the forces

of irresponsibility, insensitivity, and

intolerance; (2) engaging constructively

in critical self-reflection; and (3)

considering creatively the practical policy

implications of these outcomes.

An immediate and widely shared conclu-

sion was the rejection of the inevitability

of the clash of civilizations, indeed, of

the notion of clash itself. Participants

preferred to frame the current situation

as a “difficult moment” of disagreement

and differing perceptions and interpre-

tations, echoing the consensus reached

by participants in Dialogues’ first interna-

tional conference, “Clash of Civilizations

or Clash of Perceptions?” held in

Granada, Spain, in October 2002.

35

CONCLUSIONS

36

To be certain, profound differences exist

and were acknowledged by participants,

notably the interesting paradox that, in

the view of some participants, resides at

the heart of the relationship between

Islam and the West. These participants

argued that from a religion devoid of a

clergy and intercessionary corps, Islam

evolved historically toward more institu-

tionalized forms of practice and,

especially, discourse. This is particularly

true in modern times, as demonstrated

in regional and international policy pro-

nouncements in crisis situations. The

West, however, has moved from central-

ized and highly organized religious

structures, embodied for centuries in the

power of the Catholic Church, toward

multifaceted practice and no particular

cohesion in its public discourse.

The second major aspect of the discus-

sions was the identification of the

contradictory tendencies and percep-

tions, including illegitimate ones, which

increasingly characterize the exchange

between Islam and the West. Specifically,

the “hijacking of discourse” by radicals

on both sides was understood as a signif-

icant impediment to progress and

genuine dialogue. Strengthened educa-

tional structures, more responsible

media, and improved societal tolerance

were identified as conditions for estab-

lishing proper trust and understanding.

Third, the discussions demonstrated

strong existing incentives for overcoming

misperceptions. Among these, the apo-

litical role of technology (and of a global

community of scientists) is an asset that

can be made to work, in particular, to the

benefit of the Muslim world.

The debates also showcased a variety of

perspectives in relation to both the locus

of the problem between Islam and the

West and the type and extent of prescrip-

tions necessary to address it. Whereas

some argued that something “went

wrong” in the Muslim world causing

socioeconomic and technological

decline, others regarded politics as the

crux of the conflict.

Disagreements also emerged concerning

the core values of each civilization and

how these could be affected by an effort

to ameliorate the relationship with “the

other.” With the Danish cartoons crisis

weighing on participants’ minds, some

were adamant that free speech, though

not absolute, is preeminent and could

suffer no relativisms. Others considered

mutual respect a value equal with free

speech and argued that, for all its sanc-

tity, freedom of expression could not

excuse disrespect of “the other.”

As for prescriptions for improving

the Muslim-Western relationship, the

37

conference raised more questions than it

could hope to answer. Are urgent changes

needed domestically, regionally, or glob-

ally? Is the breaking of some long-held

practices a factor ushering positive change

and modernization, or is it merely dis-

ruptive and counterproductive?

Finally, consensus was achieved where it

most matters: participants unanimously

reaffirmed the principles of coexistence

and civilized alliance, which are essential

to an informed reappraisal and recali-

bration of the relationship between Islam

and the West. The conference’s proceed-

ings constitute a flexible platform upon

which such recalibration can begin.

38

1. See the report “Clash of Civiliza-

tions or Clash of Perceptions?”

online at www.islamuswest.org.

2. See the White House press release,

“President Bush Welcomes King

Abdullah of Jordan to the White

House,” issued February 8, 2006,

and online at www.whitehouse.gov/

news/releases/2006/02/20060208

-1.html.

3. As quoted in Dan Bilefsky, “Muslim

Protesters Ignore Appeals for

Calm,” International Herald Tribune,

February 9, 2006.

4. See “Around the World, Leaders

Weigh in on Cartoons, Riots,” Daily

Star, February 9, 2006.

5. This “Message to the Conference on

‘Who Speaks for Islam? Who Speaks

for the West?’ Kuala Lumpur, Feb-

ruary 10-11, 2006,” was delivered

by Iqbal Riza, special adviser to the

secretary-general on the Alliance of

Civilizations, as part of the opening

session.

6. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Kitch-

ener, Ontario: Batoche Books,

2001 [1859]), p. 49.

7. Ernest Gellner, Postmodernism,

Reason, and Religion (New York:

Routledge, 1992).

8. Talisma Nasreen is an outspoken

Bangladeshi feminist writer who was

charged with blasphemy by the

Bangladeshi government for her

1992 novel Lajja (Shame), which

depicted the tragedy that befell a

Hindu family in Bangladesh follow-

ing the destruction of a mosque by

Hindu fundamentalists in India.

She was forced to flee Bangladesh in

1994 after a fatwa calling for her

death was issued by the militant

group the Council of the Soldiers of

Islam. She now lives in exile in

India.

9. Arab Human Development Report

2004: Towards Freedom in the Arab

World (New York: United Nations

Publications, 2004).

NOTES TO SESSIONS

40

FEBRUARY 10, 2006

OPENING SESSION

9:00–9:30 A.M.

Opening Ceremony

Introductory Remarks by

Mustapha Tlili, Founder and Director,

Dialogues: Islamic World-U.S.-The West,

New York University

Fauziah Mohd Taib, Director

General, Institute of Diplomacy and

Foreign Relations Malaysia

Welcome by

Syed Hamid Albar, Foreign

Minister of Malaysia

9:30-10:00 A.M.

Opening address by

Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Prime

Minister of Malaysia

10:00-10:30 A.M.

Break

SESSION I—IMPROVING MUTUAL

PERCEPTION THROUGH THE MEDIA

10:30 A.M.-12:30 P.M.

Moderator

Iqbal Riza, Special Adviser to

the UN Secretary-General on the

Alliance of Civilizations and his

representative at the conference

Speakers

Timothy Garton Ash, Director,

European Studies Centre, St. Antony’s

College, Oxford University (United

Kingdom)

Max Boot, Senior Fellow, National

Security Studies, Council on Foreign

Relations (United States)

Boutheina Cheriet, Professor at

the University of Algiers and former

Minister of Women’s Affairs

(Algeria)

Mohammad Khatami, former

President of Iran

Discussant

Feisal Abdul Rauf, Chairman,

Cordoba Initiative (United States)

12:30-2:30 P.M.

Friday prayers/lunch

SESSION II—THE IMPACT

OF GLOBALIZATION ON THE

MUSLIM WORLD

2:30-4:30 P.M.

Moderator

Chandra Muzaffar, President,

International Movement

for a Just World (Malaysia)

APPENDIX I: CONFERENCE PROGRAM

41

Speakers

Ralf Fücks, Executive Board,

Heinrich Böll Foundation (Germany)

Kurt Seinitz, Foreign Editor,

Die Kronenzeitung (Austria)

Discussant

A. Riawan Amin, President Director,

Bank Muamalat (Indonesia)

4:30 P.M.

Break

8:00-10:00 P.M.

Group dinner with keynote address

by Mohammad Khatami, former

President of Iran

FEBRUARY 11

SESSION III—THE CHALLENGES

POSED BY SCIENCE AND

TECHNOLOGY TO THE

MUSLIM-WESTERN RELATIONSHIP

8:30-10:30 A.M.

Moderator

Ronald Lehman, Director, Center

for Global Security Research, Lawrence

Livermore National Laboratory

(United States)

Speakers

Imran Ali, Professor, Lahore University

of Management Sciences (Pakistan)

Raisu-l-Ulama Mustafa Ceric,

Grand Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina

Rainer Wessel, President and CEO,

Ganymed Pharmaceuticals (Germany)

Discussant

Mark Smolinski, Director, Global

Health and Security Initiative and Vice

President for Biological Programs,

Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI)

(United States)

10:30-11:00 A.M.

Break

SESSION IV—WHAT IS THE

FUTURE FRAMEWORK FOR THE

MUSLIM–WESTERN RELATIONSHIP?

11:00 A.M.-1:00 P.M.

Moderator

Stephen Heintz, President of

the Rockefeller Brothers Fund

(United States)

Speakers

Usman Bugaje, Chairman, House

Committee on Foreign Affairs,

Nigerian Parliament (Nigeria)

Mohamed Charfi, Professor Emeritus

of Law, University of Tunis, and former

Minister of Education (Tunisia)

42

Wilhelm Höynck, former Secretary

General of the Organization for

Security and Co-operation in Europe

(OSCE) and personal representative

of the current OSCE Secretary

General

Discussant

Sir Iqbal Sacranie, Secretary General

of the Muslim Council of Britain

(United Kingdom)

1:00-3:00 P.M.

Group lunch with keynote address by

Timothy Garton Ash,

Director, European Studies Centre,

St. Antony’s College, Oxford

University (United Kingdom)

CLOSING SESSION

3:30-4:00 P.M.

Closing address by

Mohammad Najib Abdul Razak,

Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia

44

Feisal Abdul Rauf

Chairman, Cordoba Initiative

(United States)

Ajmal M. Razak Al-Aidrus

Deputy Dean for Academic Affairs,

International Institute of Islamic

Thought and Civilization, International

Islamic University (Malaysia)

Imran Ali

Professor, Lahore University of

Management Sciences (Pakistan)

Mockbul Ali

Islamic Issues Adviser, Foreign

and Commonwealth Office

(United Kingdom)

Mina Al-Oraibi

Journalist, Asharq Al-Awsat

(United Kingdom)

A. Riawan Amin

President Director, Bank Muamalat

(Indonesia)

Mohammed Arkoun

Professor Emeritus of Islamic Thought

at the Sorbonne (Algeria/France)

Danuta Garton Ash

Open University (United Kingdom)

Timothy Garton Ash

Director, European Studies Centre,

St. Antony’s College, Oxford University

(United Kingdom)

Hoda Badran

Chairperson, Alliance for Arab

Women (Egypt)

Max Boot

Senior Fellow, National Security

Studies, Council on Foreign Relations

(United States)

Usman Bugaje

Chairman, House Committee on

Foreign Affairs, Nigerian Parliament

Richard Bulliet

Professor of History, Middle East

Institute, Columbia University

(United States)

Raisu-l-Ulama Mustafa Ceric

Grand Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina

Abdelmajid Charfi

Professor Emeritus of Humanities and

Islamic Studies, University of Tunis

(Tunisia)

APPENDIX II: LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

45

Mohamed Charfi

Professor Emeritus of Law, University

of Tunis, and former Minister of

Education (Tunisia)

Craig Charney

President, Charney Research

(United States)

Boutheina Cheriet

Professor of Sociology, University of

Algiers, and former Minister of

Women’s Affairs (Algeria)

Ralf Fücks

Executive Board, Heinrich Böll

Foundation (Germany)

Nicolas Galey

Special Adviser to the Foreign Minister

(France)

Karl von Habsburg

President, Pan-European Movement

of Austria and former member of the

European Parliament (Austria)

Mohamed Jawhar Hassan

Director-General, Institute of Strategic

and International Studies (Malaysia)

Stephen Heintz

President, Rockefeller Brothers Fund

(United States)

Karen Brooks Hopkins

President, Brooklyn Academy of Music

(United States)

Wilhelm Höynck

former Secretary General of the Orga-

nization for Security and Co-operation

in Europe (Germany)

Rastam Mohd Isa

Secretary General, Ministry of Foreign

Affairs (Malaysia)

Kamar Oniah Kamaruzaman

Associate Professor, International

Islamic University (Malaysia)

Shahran Kasim

President, Malaysian Islamic Youth

Movement (ABIM) (Malaysia)

Mohammad Khatami

former President of Iran

Jean-Pierre Langellier

Le Monde Correspondent in the

United Kingdom and Ireland (France)

Ronald Lehman

Director, Center for Global Security

Research, Lawrence Livermore

National Laboratory (United States)

46

Joshua Muravchik

Resident Scholar, American Enterprise

Institute (United States)

Chandra Muzaffar

President of the International

Movement for a Just World (JUST)

(Malaysia)

Vitaly Naumkin

President, International Centre for

Strategic and Political Studies (Russia)

Farhan Nizami

Prince of Wales Fellow in the Study of

the Islamic World and Director of the

Oxford Center for Islamic Studies

(United Kingdom)

Ramon Pérez-Maura

Vice Editor, Diario ABC (Spain)

Jane Perlez

Southeast Asia Correspondent,

The New York Times

Iqbal Riza

Special Adviser and representative

of the secretary-general of the

United Nations

Sir Iqbal Sacranie

Secretary-General, Muslim Council

of Britain (United Kingdom)

Kurt Seinitz

Foreign Editor, Die Kronenzeitung

(Austria)

Kole Shettima

Director of the Africa Office,

MacArthur Foundation (Nigeria)

Mark Smolinski

Director, Global Health and Security

Initiative and Vice President for

Biological Programs, Nuclear Threat

Initiative (United States)

Hussein Solomon

Professor and Director, Centre for

International Political Studies,

University of Pretoria (South Africa)

Rainer Wessel

President and CEO, Ganymed

Pharmaceuticals (Germany)

48

Your Excellencies, Distinguished Guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen:

On behalf of New York University’s Dia-

logues: Islamic World-U.S.-The West, I wish

to welcome you and thank you for join-

ing us at this important moment.

I extend my deepest gratitude to the gov-

ernment of Malaysia, our host. There

could be no better venue for this gath-

ering than Malaysia—a flourishing,

multicultural democracy where differ-

ences are respected and tolerance prevails.

My most sincere thanks go as well to the

other funding institutions, first among

them the government of the United

Kingdom, whose financial support

makes this conference possible. I also

thank the government of France. Two

forward-thinking American founda-

tions—the MacArthur Foundation and

the Rockefeller Brothers Fund—have also

supported Dialogues since the program’s

inception. They deserve our profound

gratitude. In particular, I would like to

recognize Stephen Heintz, president of

the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, who is

here with us, for his unflagging encour-

agement and guidance and his conviction

in our mission.

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, we

could not meet at a more critical time in

the long history of the Muslim-Western

encounter. In 14 centuries of interaction

between the Islamic world and the Western

world, this relationship has clearly seen

some ups and downs. There is no doubt

in my mind that the present moment is

fraught with danger and may be one of

those “down” moments, if we are not wise

enough to check the forces of irrespon-

sibility, insensitivity, and intolerance.

Tragic events in history have almost

always resulted from misunderstandings,

leaving future historians to bitterly ques-

tion, what might have happened if? In

this case, we still have the time to summon

the voices of reason and dialogue, to halt

this race toward further violence—both

the violence of insensitivity and the vio-

lence of mobs burning down embassies.

When we began to plan this conference

more than two-and-a-half years ago, we

already understood that deep feelings of

humiliation, resentment, and anger arise

from asymmetry of power, economic

dependence, social dislocation, political

repression, and other sad realities. We

knew that these feelings—however real or

imaginary their causes—could ignite

in unpredictable explosions.

Misperceptions and misunderstandings,

such as the “cartoons affair” of the last

several weeks, perfectly illustrate the

APPENDIX III: MUSTAPHA TLILI’S OPENING STATEMENT

49

combustible combination of alienation

with arrogance and ignorance. I think it

is realistic to say that what has happened

since the beginning of this affair will

happen over and over as long as mutual

understanding and respect are not the

operating paradigm of the Muslim-West-

ern relationship.

The misunderstanding is indeed mutual.

Freedom of expression is a hard-won and

fundamental value in the West. Like the

separation of state and religion, this

Western value is not necessarily shared or

understood by the Muslim world. There

was very little the Danish or the Norwe-

gian government could have done to stop

the publication of the inflammatory

material, except, maybe, to put the mat-

ter before the courts. No other Western

government would have handled the

matter differently—freedom of expres-

sion is the law of land. Yet many Muslims

wonder, for the sake of peace and har-

mony between the Muslim world and the

West, whether there might be a way of

balancing legal freedoms with civic

responsibility, as is practiced when it

comes to material denying the Holocaust.

To be sure, there were not one but many

“Western” reactions to events surround-

ing the publication of the cartoons. The

United States, the United Kingdom, and

Europe naturally approached the situation

from their own particular perspectives

and experiences regarding the role of

religion in pubic life.

On the Muslim side, protesters who

burned Western embassies must not be

misinterpreted as speaking for the nearly

1.3 billion Muslims who, although they

may have been personally offended by the

drawings, went about their daily lives,

many of them appalled by the violence

exercised in the name of their religion.

As U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza

Rice stated recently, “There is a huge

transition going on in the Middle East, as

a whole and in its parts” [Steven R. Weis-

man, “Rice Acknowledges Surprise Over

Hamas,” New York Times, January 30,

2006]. I wholeheartedly agree. I submit

that her assessment is valid for the Mus-

lim world as a whole. At a moment when

its traditional moorings are being

uprooted by modernity, isn’t the time

ripe for all Muslims—and in particular

Muslim thinkers—to embark on a new

ijtihad, on a process of critical self-

reflection, to examine the meaning of

their Islamic identity and values, to

reflect on the question, who speaks for

Islam? and how to reconcile Islam and

modernity?

The twin questions, Who speaks for

Islam? Who speaks for the West? are the

50

theme of this conference. We have gath-

ered you here—political, religious, civil

society, and business leaders, scholars,

editors, and journalists—not only to

ponder these questions, but to seize

the opportunity to suggest practical ways

and means to chart new channels of

communication; to deepen mutual

understanding; to help youth, women,

and other vectors of social change reach

a better understanding of each side’s val-

ues, history, problems, and hopes.

As Dialogues’ motto proclaims, the need

has never been as urgent as it is today to

knock down the walls of misunderstand-

ing and build bridges of knowledge and

reason. Educational programs, media

campaigns, concerted integration of

Muslim communities in the West, more

debates like ours today—all these paths

should lead, we hope, to the triumph of

reason and tolerance, assuming that fun-

damental policy differences and related

grievances are simultaneously taken into

consideration.

There is nothing inevitable about the

clash of civilizations. Human affairs, as

Machiavelli writes in the concluding

pages of The Prince, are partly under our

control and only partly governed by the

violent forces of history. It depends on

the prince—in this case, all of us, leaders

and constituents, who affect the course of

the state and the destiny of mankind. It

rests in our hands to uphold reason and

resist the trend toward a violent clash.

I would like here to recognize Mr. Iqbal

Riza, special adviser to the secretary-gen-

eral of the United Nations on the

Alliance of Civilizations, the initiative

launched last summer by Secretary-Gen-

eral Kofi Annan. We hope that this

initiative will lead to concrete collective

policies that will—to paraphrase the

prime ministers of Spain and Turkey in

their recent op-ed in the International

Herald Tribune—cultivate peaceful coexis-

tence by taking an interest in the other

side’s point of view and respecting that

which it holds most sacred [Recep Tayyip

Erdogan and José Luis Rodríguez Zapa-

tero, “A Call for Respect and Calm,”

International Herald Tribune, February 5,

2006].

The agenda that you have before you

reflects the concerns that I have just

broached. Discussions of the globalization

of the media and business and constant

innovations in science and technology

will occupy much of our time over the

next two days; many in the Muslim world

feel left behind by the transformative

effects of these forces. The final session

will be devoted to offering rational and

tolerant policy proposals to overcome

this resulting alienation.

51

As put forth in the two background

papers developed by Dialogues for this

conference, the cacophony of voices

speaking for the West is matched by the

cacophony of voices in the Muslim world.

On both sides there is a crisis of identity.

The simultaneous trends toward secular-

ism in Europe and greater religious faith

in America are just one example of the

growing differences within the West. As

for the Islamic world, its members range

from violent extremists to tolerant,

peace-loving citizens and organizations.

We hope the two background papers will

provide further historical and contem-

porary context for our debate.

In conclusion, I would like to read a pas-

sage from the background paper on

“Who Speaks for Islam?” which I’ll ask

you to keep in mind throughout the

course of our discussions:

The relationship between Islam andthe West has a long and perhaps cycli-cal history. The crisis within theMuslim world today might be said tomirror the situation of the West dur-ing the Middle Ages, when the Muslimempire was the center of knowledgeand civilization. To end its stagna-tion, the West entered a period ofself-reflection and embarked uponthe Renaissance, in part by appro-priating Islam’s scientific and culturaladvances. The renowned 13th-centuryItalian theologian and philosopher

Thomas Aquinas, for example, soughtinspiration in the works of Muslimphilosopher Ibn Rushd, the mostrevered philosopher of the time atthe Sorbonne. Perhaps the Muslimworld today, by examining its situa-tion through the lens of modernity,will embark upon a contemporaryIslamic Renaissance. We can onlyguess at how this might change the rela-tionship between Islam and the West.What is certain at this point is thatgreater communication, improvedunderstanding, and identification ofthe multiple–and sometimes con-flicting–sources of authority withineach civilization can only hasten ourentry into a new phase of the historyof the Islamic-Western encounter.

52

Excellencies, Distinguished Guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi

waberakatuh and good morning.

It is a real delight for me to see so many

renowned scholars and thinkers assem-

bled in Kuala Lumpur to discuss such a

pertinent issue as who speaks for Islam

and who speaks for the West. It is auspi-

cious that this dialogue begins on a

Friday, which is observed by Muslims

everywhere, every week, as a special day.

To those of you who have come from

afar, I bid you a very warm welcome. I do

hope that your stay in Malaysia will be

both pleasant and rewarding.

The two questions, Who speaks for

Islam? Who speaks for the West? are

among the most fundamental issues in the

interface between two great civilizations—

the Islamic world and the Christian West.

Their answers are not only important in

determining the relationship between

Islam and the West but are also vital in

shaping the future of humankind because

Christians and Muslims make up at least

half of the world’s people. There are

2,039 million Christians accounting for

32 percent of the world’s population,

and there are 1,226 million Muslims

making up 19 percent of the total.

When we ask you to search for the answers

to the two questions, it is our intention

neither to point fingers at any religion

nor to apportion blame on anyone

regarding the state of affairs that now

exists between the Islamic world and the

West. What we seek is the truth, which

can serve the best interests of all

humankind, and help bring peace to this

troubled world of ours. Let us pray to

God the Almighty, so that He gives us

wisdom, courage, and determination to

discover the answers.

I do not suggest for a moment that

“Islam” or the “West” is a monolithic

entity. There is tremendous heterogene-

ity in both civilizations. Both manifest

diverse and sometimes contradictory

trends and tendencies. Having made that

clarification, allow me to continue to

speak of Islam and the West in the way

they are normally understood.

Let me say at the outset that while there

are a multitude of voices that speak on

behalf of Islam on the one hand and the

West on the other, there are certain

voices that I feel do not do justice to

either Islam or the West.

I hold the strong view that, in the case of

Islam, those who deliberately kill non-

combatants and the innocent, those who

APPENDIX IV: PRIME MINISTER ABDULLAH AHMADBADAWI’S KEYNOTE ADDRESS

53

oppress and exploit others, those who are

corrupt and greedy, and those who are

chauvinistic and communal do not speak

on behalf of Islam.

In the case of the West, I do not regard as

defenders of Western civilization those

who invade and occupy someone else’s

land; those who systematically cause

innocent children, women, and men to be

killed; those who oppress other people

and exploit their resources for their own

selfish ends; or those who are racist in

outlook and bigoted in their religious

beliefs. Anyone who seeks to dominate

and control, who attempts to establish

global hegemony, cannot claim to be

spreading freedom and equality at the

same time.

Who then speaks for Islam? Who then

speaks for the West? The noble Qur’an

speaks for Islam. At its core is an eternal

message of justice and compassion, of

equality and humanity, of peace and sol-

idarity. There is also the Prophet’s

exemplary life and mission, which reflect

the quintessence of Islam. Through their

struggles and sacrifices, the illustrious

caliphs from Abu Bakr to Salahuddin Al-

Ayubi (Saladin) also succeeded in

bringing to the fore the authentic face of

the religion.

In a sense, the great accomplishments of

Muslim civilization—in science and med-

icine as in agriculture and architecture—

served to enhance the image of Islam.

The scholars who were responsible for

these accomplishments such as Al-

Khwarizmi and Ibn Sina should be

counted among the true voices of the

religion.

It follows from this that in the contem-

porary world, those who uphold justice,

who fight tyranny, who seek liberation

from oppression, who are honest and

upright, who are universal and inclusive

in word and deed, are the ones who rep-

resent the real message of Islam.

One should also add that those who pro-

tect the rights of the human being, those

who treasure the dignity of women and

the welfare of children, those who pre-

serve the integrity of the family, those

who help the poor and feed the hungry,

those who live in harmony with the envi-

ronment, are also speaking on behalf of

Islam.

In a nutshell, all Muslims anywhere who

sincerely endeavor to live according to

the universal values and principles of the

Qur’an are the true spokespersons of

Islam. What this means is that the over-

whelming majority of Muslims, who by

54

and large lead decent lives, are already

speaking for the religion.

To express the principles of life that are

important to ordinary Muslims as

demonstrated in Islamic civilization, I

have personally sought to promote an

approach that I call “Islam Hadhari,”

which we have defined as “a comprehen-

sive approach to the development of

mankind, society, and country based on

the perspective of Islamic civilization.”

The 10 principles of Islam Hadhari

embody universal values that have

endowed the religion with strength and

character through the ages. The 10 prin-

ciples are, namely

(1) Faith and piety in Allah

(2) A just and trustworthy government

(3) A free and independent people

(4) A vigorous pursuit and mastery of

knowledge

(5) Balanced and comprehensive

economic development

(6) A good quality of life for the

people

(7) Protection of the rights of

minority groups and women

(8) Cultural and moral integrity

(9) The safeguarding of natural

resources and the environment

(10) Strong defense capabilities

I consider this fresh approach as a neces-

sary part of the reform and renewal that

is needed in Islamic countries and in

Muslim society as a whole. Malaysia feels

that it is well-placed to begin this jour-

ney of reform and renewal because it is a

multiracial and multireligious country in

which we treat our diversity as an asset to

be nurtured. In fact, we are merely build-

ing on the tolerance we have observed

and the interfaith coexistence that we have

practiced in the country for decades. We

wish to show by example that a Muslim

country can be modern, economically

competitive, democratic, and fair to all

its citizens irrespective of their religion.

Islam Hadhari is not a new religion or

madhab [school of Islamic jurispru-

dence]. It is not a new ideology. It is not

meant to pacify the West. It is neither

intended to apologize for the perceived

Islamic threat nor to seek approval for a

more friendly and gentle image of Islam.

It is the way for practicing the religion in

these modern times but firmly rooted in

the noble values and injunctions of Islam.

The principles of Islam Hadhari are what

Muslims should emphasize in the contem-

porary world, the pursuit of knowledge

being one of the most fundamental. In

other words, there are certain civiliza-

tional principles in the religion whose

realization will bring greatness and glory

to the Muslim community, the ummah,

today, just as they propelled the Islamic

55

civilization to such splendor and mag-

nificence in the past.

Western civilization, too, has its share of

greatness and majestic accomplishments.

We must acknowledge that in the West,

principles such as freedom and equality

have found concrete expression in the

rule of law, public accountability, accept-

ance of political dissent, and respect for

popular participation. We must also

acknowledge that many great statesmen

and reformers of the past made sterling

efforts to redistribute wealth, to equalize

opportunities, and to achieve equity and

social justice. They may be regarded as

the true spokespersons of the West.

Admittedly, the West is also the civiliza-

tion that has given birth to a whole host of

scientists and researchers, from Newton

to Einstein on the one hand, and from

Marie Curie to Alexander Fleming, on the

other, who have contributed immensely

to the well-being of humankind.

However, for a lot of Muslims today, this

is not the face of the West that they see. It

is the hegemony of the centers of power in

the West that is most visible to them. They

see the subjugation of Palestine as an indi-

rect concretization of this hegemony. They

see hegemony manifested directly in the

attack on Afghanistan and in the occupa-

tion of Iraq. These are some of the realities

that confront the Muslim masses today.

Of course, there are other manifestations

of hegemonic power that have also made

a deep impression on the Muslim mind.

These include foreign military bases in

Muslim countries; the dominant presence

of huge Western corporations; the perva-

sive impact of currency markets; the

ever-expanding security tentacles of the

superpower; plus certain negative traits

and influence of Western culture and

ideas.

At the popular level, the West is perceived

as “biased” against Islam and Muslims.

Muslims feel, rightly or wrongly, that

they have become victims of double stan-

dards and selective persecution. More

specifically, Muslims see those responsi-

ble for the devastation of Jenin and

Fallujah, and the humiliations of Abu

Ghraib and Guantanamo, as the ugly face

that speaks for the West.

Similarly, many in the West see Islam as

synonymous with violence. The Muslim

is viewed as a congenital terrorist. They

[Westerners] think Osama bin Laden

speaks for the religion and its followers.

Islam and Muslims are linked to all that

is negative and backward. For example,

Muslim men, it is alleged, oppress their

wives. Women, it is said, have no rights in

Islam. Some so-called Western “experts”

on Islam argue that Muslims invariably

discriminate against non-Muslims. They

56

say Muslims are intolerant. They say

Islam is incompatible with democracy

and modernity. The demonization of

Islam and the vilification of Muslims,

there is no denying, is widespread and

within mainstream Western society.

It is the duty of all people of goodwill to

work hard to change these negative per-

ceptions on both sides of the divide.

Undoubtedly, the task is not going to be

easy, for these perceptions have deep

roots. Since the advent of Islam at the

beginning of the seventh century, Chris-

tian, and to a lesser degree, Jewish

antipathy toward the religion and its

Prophet, Muhammad, has grown into

active antagonism. The Crusades, West-

ern colonialism, the imposition of Israel

on the Arab world, postcolonial hege-

mony, and the Western desire to control

oil and gas, especially those supplies com-

ing from the Muslim countries, have all

contributed in one way or another to the

huge chasm that has emerged between the

West and Islam. The targeting of so-called

“Islamic terrorists” in the global fight

against terrorism aggravated the situation,

and the senseless violence of the terror-

ists themselves has made things worse.

Quite clearly, we will not be able to

change the situation by mere talk, dia-

logue, and being nice to one another.

We must be brave enough, and we must

be honest enough, to admit that as long

as there is hegemony, as long as one side

attempts to control and dominate the

other, the animosity and antagonism

between the two civilizations will con-

tinue. This is why hegemony must end.

Mutual respect for one another should

replace hegemony. Reciprocity should

become the ethical principle that condi-

tions relations between the West and

Islam. The West should treat Islam the

way it wants Islam to treat the West and

vice versa. They should accept one another

as equals. Respect, reciprocity, and equal-

ity: these are the essential prerequisites

for a happy and harmonious relationship

between the two civilizations.

It is significant that in both civilizations

there exist men and women today who

are working toward a genuine transfor-

mation in relations, which will bring to

an end the animosity and antagonism of

the past and the present.

There are many in the West, for instance,

who realize that the exercise of hege-

monic power and the demonization of

Islam are not conducive for interciviliza-

tional peace. It is these voices that the

world should listen to. Likewise, there

are numerous groups and individuals in

the Muslim world who are deeply dis-

tressed by the violence and terror

perpetrated by certain fringe groups

57

within the ummah, just as they are equally

uncomfortable with the sweeping denun-

ciations of Christians, Jews, and the

West. They, too, oppose hegemony and

occupation, but their words are authen-

tic voices of Islam.

Certain voices, both in the West and in

the Muslim world, are not given the

prominence they deserve. The main-

stream media should give much more

attention to them. It is only too apparent

that these two groups—one in the West

and the other in the Muslim world—share

a common perspective on some of the

critical challenges facing both civiliza-

tions and the world at large. Both are

opposed to hegemony. Both reject vio-

lence and terror. Both yearn for a just

and peaceful world. Both are united by a

common bond. It is this common bond

that makes them bridge builders.

It is such fine men and women who are

capable of reaching out to one another,

who are willing to transcend the civiliza-

tional divide, which we need badly at this

juncture in history. It is a pity that there

are not enough of them. One of our

most urgent tasks is to multiply the

bridge builders. We must develop

through the family, education, and the

media tens of thousands of men and

women who can be critical of the weak-

nesses and wrongdoings of one’s

civilization and, at the same time, be

empathetic toward “the other” civiliza-

tion. When the bridge builders reach a

critical mass, their collective power

would become so overwhelming that it

would destroy the walls erected by those

who are hell-bent on keeping Islam and

the West apart.

At that point, when the bridge builders

reign supreme, the people of the West

will speak for Islam and the Muslims will

speak for the West.

Ladies and Gentlemen, let us start now

by curbing the extremists in our midst.

We must put a stop to the mockery of any

religion or the sacrilege of any symbol

held sacred by the faithful. Let us not

underestimate the power of religion as

an imperative for people to act. In the

face of fanaticism and hysteria, we must

take action to counsel moderation and

rationality.

On that note, let me conclude by con-

gratulating the Malaysian Institute of

Diplomacy and Foreign Relations and

Dialogues: Islamic World-U.S.-The West

for organizing this very important con-

ference and for bringing together in

Malaysia a prominent group of people

who are serious about the subject of dia-

logue between civilizations. For those

who have come from abroad, I invite you

58

to take this opportunity to look around

you and witness for yourself the Malaysia

that you might have heard of. I hope you

will be able to bear witness to our efforts

at nation building in which interfaith

and interethnic harmony lies at the core

of our national development program.

Thank you.

60

Introduction

Since the events of September 11, 2001,

many in the West have come to view the

Islamic world with a mixture of fear and

hostility. Violent attacks against civilian

populations, supposedly sanctioned by

Islamic religious doctrine, seem to vali-

date Samuel Huntington’s theory of a

“clash of civilizations.”1 In the West,

Islamic principles, theology, and above

all, political activity in the name of Islam,

have become suspect, while traditional

schools of learning and the Islamic sem-

inaries, or madaris, have come under

special scrutiny. There is widespread

debate in the West over the training of

Islamic clerics and religious leaders, the

authority they hold in their societies, and

whether they use this authority to pro-

mote violence against Western targets.

More and more Westerners, influenced

by what they see, hear, and read in the

media, have come to believe that it is the

most extremist among the Islamists who

represent, and speak for, Islam. Lacking

an understanding of the intricacies of

Muslim societies and the debates and

cleavages within them, many Westerners

confuse the terms Islamist and funda-

mentalist with the term ulama, the

traditional scholars and jurists of Islam.

The confusion about who speaks for

Islam is also related to the fact that there

is no single locus of religious authority

within Islam. There are currently multi-

ple groups in a variety of states that

simultaneously claim to speak on Islam’s

behalf. A major purpose of this paper is

to identify these groups, including the

ulama—the scholars of religion who were

traditionally considered to be the

authentic interpreters of Islamic faith

and law. The ulama are themselves

divided both by the schools of jurispru-

dence to which they belong and by their

political orientations. Beyond the ulama,

those who claim to speak for Islam

include leaders of various Muslim states,

many of which are products of the twin

processes of colonization and decolo-

nization. Several of these leaders claim to

speak on behalf of the Muslim world but

often use Islamic discourse to advance

the agenda of their state or regime.

Other claims to speak for Islam have

been made by a number of Islamist

groups that emerged in the second half of

the 20th century. Although these groups

represent a relatively recent phenome-

non, their ideas are rooted in salafi

thought that goes back to the latter half of

the 19th century.2 Another cluster that

claims to speak for Islam is made up of

extremist groups that have deviated

APPENDIX V: BACKGROUND PAPER—“WHO SPEAKS FOR ISLAM?”

61

significantly from the strategies pursued

by most Islamist political formations.

These extremists include transnational

networks that undertake violent terrorist

activities in the name of Islam, whereas

mainstream Islamists are primarily

engaged in advocating social transforma-

tion and/or regime change through

peaceful means within individual Muslim

countries. Finally, more recently, schol-

ars and proponents of what may be called

the New Ijtihad have begun, however hes-

itatingly, to assert themselves if not as

spokespersons for Islam then as signifi-

cant voices advocating change in the

Muslim world. This paper will analyze

each of these claimants in turn.

The UUllaammaa

The question of who speaks for Islam

dates to its classical age, from the death of

the Prophet in AD 632 to the end of

the Abbasid Caliphate in 1258. Tradi-

tionally, the ulama and the fuquha,

the scholars of jurisprudence, were

guardians of the Islamic faith and the

leading authorities in religious matters.

Their legitimacy rested largely on their

partial independence from the state and

their dual role of “representing the

interests of the state to the laity and the

interests of the laity to the state.”3 But,

even in the classical age, there was no

single source of religious authority for

the entire Muslim world or even for the

territories under the control of the

caliphs of Islam. This was in stark contrast

to the situation in Western Christendom

where religious authority was concen-

trated in the Papacy until the time of the

Reformation in the 16th century. The

decentralization of religious authority in

Islam emerged from the absence of a

hierarchically organized clergy capable of

acting as the fount of religious authority

and scriptural interpretation. Conse-

quently, religious authority in Islam has

never been able to project itself as a rival

to temporal authority in the way the

Papacy has in Western civilization.

There was little attempt during the early

centuries of Islam to impose a single

body of interpretation, especially in mat-

ters of Islamic law. This is also suggested

by the fact that there were hardly any wars

of religion within the Muslim commu-

nity, as opposed to the many conflicts

within Western Christendom. Tolerance

of both diversity within Islam and of

other faiths was the rule rather than the

exception in the classical period of Islam.

Five madhahib, or schools of Islamic

jurisprudence (four Sunni, one Shia),

were established within the first three

centuries of the Islamic era.4 They were

62

named after the outstanding jurists who

were the founders of these schools – the

Hanafi, the Shafii, the Maliki, the Han-

bali, and the Jaafri. Traditionally, the

followers of the four Sunni schools con-

sidered all the Sunni schools and their

interpretations equally legitimate and

valid for their respective followers. There

was some tension—inspired more by pol-

itics than by religion – between them and

the followers of the Jaafri school, to

which the overwhelming majority of

Shias belonged. It was not until 1959 that

the head of Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s old-

est and most renowned theological

institution, issued a fatwa accepting the

Jaafri madhab as the fifth school of

Islamic jurisprudence on par with the

four established Sunni schools.

This tradition of decentralization of reli-

gious authority and lack of significant

tension among the various schools of

jurisprudence helped the ulama retain a

considerable degree of autonomy from

the state, which they were thus less likely

to confront or threaten. Simultaneously,

the lack of centralized authority or hier-

archy among the scholars of religion

made it very difficult for temporal

authorities to exercise control over them.

Consequently, in practice, religious

and temporal spheres came to be quite

separate, with the leader in each realm

following a policy of “live and let

live.” Furthermore, the ulama normally

exhorted their followers to accept estab-

lished authority lest dissension lead to

anarchy and the fragmentation of the

ummah, the community of believers. As

noted Near Eastern scholar L. Carl

Brown writes, “Rather than a divine right

of rule, Islam came to recognize a

divinely sanctioned need for rule.”5

This did not mean that the state in clas-

sical Islam desisted from using religion to

buttress its political legitimacy; still, the

state was never very successful in intrud-

ing into the religious sphere. For their

part, the ulama accepted the temporal

rulers’ right to rule as long as the latter

protected the lands of Islam, did not

interfere with their Muslim subjects’

practice of the faith, and promoted, at

least by word if not always by deed,

Islamic law (shari‘a). It was only in the

17th century, when the Ottoman Empire

was at its zenith, that a concerted attempt

was made by the state to incorporate the

senior religious functionaries into the

imperial bureaucracy.

The balance between the religious and

political spheres shifted radically in

modern times as Muslim states became

powerful vis-à-vis the ulama in ways

that were inconceivable two centuries

ago. In most Muslim countries, the state

now controls the private religious

63

endowments, or awqaf, that formerly

provided for the ulama. This is particu-

larly the case in the Sunni Muslim

countries, including Egypt, Malaysia,

Saudi Arabia, and others. Such financial

control by the state has greatly eroded the

autonomy of those learned in religion. It

has turned many ulama, from the most

learned, the muftis— those with the right

to pronounce religious edicts (fatwa)—to

common prayer leaders in mosques, into

state functionaries. The expansion of the

state’s control can also be attributed to

the reluctance of sovereign nation-states

to function with the minimal religious

control characteristic of the classical

Muslim empires. As the “people” came to

be seen as the source of political legiti-

macy in modern times, the state sought

to control the people, including their

religious leaders, in order to prevent

challenges emerging from civil society.

The establishment ulama, those

employed and supported financially by

the state, face severe disincentives from

expressing dissent, let alone actively

opposing the regimes that pay their

salaries. In the current era of mass

political awareness, even in the least

democratic countries, this relationship

between the official clergy and unrepre-

sentative regimes has severely diminished

the popular authority of the state-

appointed ulama and has proved

conducive to the emergence of alterna-

tive groups seeking to speak on behalf of

Islam.

Even Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s most

esteemed institution of theological

learning, has seen its authority ques-

tioned in recent years owing to its close

ties to the Egyptian government. The

world’s oldest university, Al-Azhar (“The

Brilliant”) was founded in Cairo by the

Shia Fatimid dynasty in 972 for the pur-

pose of propagating the Fatimid’s brand

of Ismaili Shiism. Over time, however,

Al-Azhar came to be identified primarily

with Sunni Islam, due to the subsequent

influence of Sunni practice in Egypt.

Since its founding, Al-Azhar has been

renowned as a center of academic debate,

discussion, and learning. Although the

university’s ulama have generally followed

a religious mandate, Al-Azhar has at

times been at the forefront of political

struggle, such as during the anticolonial-

ist movements against Napoleon’s French

armies at the turn of the 19th century as

well as against the British in 1919.

Despite occasional forays into the polit-

ical sphere, Al-Azhar was able to

maintain a large degree of independence

from the state, as it drew its financial

resources from awqaf. This changed,

however, when Egyptian President Gamal

Abdel Nasser nationalized Al-Azhar in

64

1961. The state assumed the authority to

appoint Al Azhar’s Grand Sheikh and

created civil servants out of its ulama.

Since Nasser, Egyptian presidents

including Anwar Sadat and Hosni

Mubarak have increasingly relied on Al-

Azhar to garner public approval for

policy decisions, most notably for the

Camp David Accords in 1987 and the

Persian Gulf War in 1990.

By the same token, Al-Azhar has been

able to substantially expand its role in

public life. In recent years, Al-Azhar

officials have become involved in regu-

lating many spheres of Egyptian life,

from the content of books, television,

and other media, to policy issues such as

whether or not sexual education should

be taught in schools.

Al-Azhar’s moral authority, however,

has been questioned by an increasingly

skeptical populace that views the state-

employed ulama as tools in the

government’s battle against Islamists and

extremists.6 Contradictory fatwas have

further diminished Al-Azhar’s credibil-

ity. In August 2003, for example, Azhari

Sheikh Nabawi El-Esh banned recogni-

tion of the Iraqi Governing Council;

several days later, following a well-publi-

cized meeting with the American

Ambassador in Cairo, Grand Sheikh

Mohammed Sayed Tantawi then reversed

this judgment. In his rejection of El-

Esh’s fatwa, Tantawi declared that “no

Egyptian cleric has the right to pass ver-

dicts on the affairs of another country.” 7

Not only did Tantawi’s reversal incite

outrage among those who viewed his

decision as a direct result of American

intervention, but he also brought into

question Al-Azhar’s jurisdiction by pro-

claiming that Azheri ulama had no right

to rule on Iraqi affairs.

In light of Tantawi’s assertion, it is ironic

that Al-Azhar may enjoy its greatest

influence beyond Egypt’s borders. Al-

Azhar remains a preeminent voice in the

Muslim world, particularly through its

education of students and future clerics

from more than 50 countries. As Bar-

bara Rosewicz wrote in the Wall Street

Journal, “Poor Islamic countries beg for

its missionaries and rich Arab ones hire

its sheikhs to run their own Islamic uni-

versities. Al-Azhar graduates fill the

clergy, courts, and government min-

istries all over the Middle East—with the

exception of Shiite Iran.”8

While state-sponsored ulama like those

of Al-Azhar may increasingly be seen as

“puppets,” especially by frustrated and

politically aware youth, a growing distinc-

tion is apparent between establishment

and nonestablishment ulama. Nonestab-

lishment ulama, i.e., those not affiliated

65

with the state, such as the Al-Azhar-edu-

cated Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, have

recently achieved unprecedented levels of

popularity. Al-Qaradawi has become a

household name across the Arab world

through his weekly appearance on the

religious show Al Shari‘a wa Al Hayat

(Islamic Law and Life), broadcast on the

Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera, as well

as through his Web site (qaradawi.net).

Although the decline of the establish-

ment ulama’s authority intensified after

the end of colonialism, the process actu-

ally began in the middle of the 19th

century when the print revolution

sparked a dramatic increase in literacy

rates in many Muslim countries. As the

scholar of Islamic studies Carl Ernst has

argued, a situation had been created in

the Muslim world by the middle of the

20th century that was analogous to the

Reformation period in Christian Europe.

Lay literate Muslims, not trained in the

religious sciences (and, therefore, largely

unfamiliar with the accumulated traditions

of Islamic theology and jurisprudence

and the tools required to interpret

them), now had direct access to the sacred

texts of Islam and the principal sources

of Islamic law, the Qur’an and the

Hadith, the sayings of the Prophet.

Access to these texts both in the original

Arabic and in translation had a revolu-

tionary impact across the Muslim world.

Thus began a process of scripturalism,

or literal interpretation of the sacred

texts, among certain groups of literate

Muslims, paving the way for (what has

been called in the context of the Refor-

mation in Western Christianity) “the

priesthood of the individual.” Literal

interpretation of sacred texts without

adequate reference to context created a

situation where “fundamentalism” could

thrive among some Muslim thinkers and

activists.9

Multiple Sovereignties

and Nation-States

The crisis of religious authority in the

Muslim world was intensified by the col-

onization of Muslim countries by

European powers, which began in the

17th century but was accelerated in the

18th and 19th centuries. This process

culminated in the dismemberment of the

Ottoman Empire following its defeat in

World War I and the establishment of

British and French control over its Arab

regions under the Mandate system.10 The

Muslim world had fragmented into sev-

eral autonomous polities in the very first

centuries of Islam—the breakaway

Umayyad Caliphate of Spain in the

eighth century providing the earliest

major example. However, the fiction of

the unity of the ummah, at least among

the demographically predominant Sunnis,

66

had been maintained until the advent of

European colonialism through the insti-

tution of the caliph as titular head of the

Muslim world.

The caliph’s power was, for long periods,

marginal, such as during the latter part

of Abbasid reign from the middle of the

10th to the middle of the 13th century

(when the caliph reigned by permission

of Turkic dynasties that controlled Bagh-

dad). The Ottoman emperor took the

title of caliph in 1517 when his armies

captured Egypt, where Mamluk rulers

had kept the institution nominally alive

by installing scions of the Abbasid

dynasty after the Mongol sack of Baghdad

in 1258. The Ottoman appropriation of

the title demonstrated decisively that the

caliphate had become tied to force and

conquest and therefore had little reli-

gious sanction or significance.

In reality, the religious significance of

the caliphate had always been in some

doubt. The institution evolved from the

Prophet’s tradition of nominating a

prayer leader when he himself was

unable—for health or other reasons—

to lead prayers. Muhammad elected not

to nominate a political successor, pre-

ferring that the community of believers

choose its own leader after his death.

This process was problematic from the

beginning, as the selection of the very

first caliph was challenged by those who

wanted succession to be restricted to the

House of the Prophet. Three of the first

four caliphs were, in fact, assassinated,

demonstrating the extent to which the

legitimacy of the institution was contested.

The religious sanction for the caliphate

was further weakened when Muawiya

transformed it into a hereditary monar-

chy, establishing Umayyad dynastic rule.

Despite its shortcomings, the existence

of the caliphate offered most Muslims a

feeling of continuity and at least a formal

locus of political authority, however geo-

graphically distant. Consequently, a great

sense of loss was felt when the caliphate

was abolished after the defeat of the

Ottoman Empire in World War I, when

the Republic of Turkey was established.

The concept of the ummah was deprived

of political significance, although it con-

tinued to have emotional appeal for

many Muslims. Some Islamists, for

example, the Hizb-ut-Tahrir and Al

Qaeda, express nostalgia for the institu-

tion of the caliphate and are committed

to its revival.

The restoration of the caliphate, how-

ever, is not widely supported. Most

Muslims, including most Islamists, are at

ease working within the parameters of the

nation-state, despite the fact that the

importation of the European concepts of

67

the “sovereign state” and “nationalism”

compounded the problem of decentral-

ized and multiple authority structures in

Islam. As established by the Westphalian

European system, sovereignty resides in

the nation, embodied politically and ter-

ritorially in the state.11

The importation of the nation-state

model also bolstered the already existing

anticolonial movements in Muslim-

majority countries. Such movements

often combined elements of territorial

and ethnic nationalism with such

ingredients as resistance to foreign dom-

ination, all the while drawing on Islamic

heritage. Thus the concept of jihad reen-

tered Muslim popular imagination in the

19th century as a religious doctrine

enjoining resistance to foreign rule.12

During the colonial period, such

resistance in the name of Islam was ter-

ritorially limited to liberating particular

colonial possessions. For example, in the

latter part of the 19th century, the

Mahdi’s jihad focused specifically on the

Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, just as the jihad

of the Indian “Wahabis” was directed only

against the British in India.

The nationalist political project, even

where it employed Islamic vocabulary,

called above all for the construction of a

modern, quasi-secular, independent

state on the basis of the European model.

This agenda promised an end to the

humiliation of European colonialism,

the implementation of a state-driven

economic development program, and

the assertion of a modern national iden-

tity based on watan, or homeland.

The Muslim world’s emergence from

colonial rule brought both general edu-

cation and religious teaching largely

under the control of the postcolonial,

nationalist state. The increase in state

power at the expense of the authority and

autonomy of the ulama had major impli-

cations for the interpretation and

enforcement of Islamic law. As the

Islamic legal scholar Khaled Abou El Fadl

has pointed out, “The disintegration of

the role of the ulama and their co-

optation by the modern praetorian state,

with its hybrid practices of secularism,

have opened the door for the state to

become the maker and enforcer of the

divine law; in so doing the state has

acquired formidable power that has

further ingrained the practice of author-

itarianism in various Islamic states.”13

Accordingly, many who desire to make

societies more Islamic believe that this

can be achieved only by using the state as

an agent for Islamization through legal

decree and coercive enforcement.

68

The primacy of the territorial state has

also been both acknowledged and legit-

imized in the Muslim world by the

creation of numerous interstate organi-

zations that deem themselves “Islamic” or

“Muslim.” The leading example is the

Organization of the Islamic Conference

(OIC), whose members are sovereign,

territorial states with majority Muslim

populations. These interstate organiza-

tions explicitly acknowledge the doctrine

of noninterference in the internal mat-

ters of their members. They operate

largely on the basis of realpolitik with their

members pursuing individual political,

military, and economic goals, while

sometimes using Islamic vocabulary to

justify their policies.14

Self-Proclaimed Islamic States

Some states in the Islamic world are

theocracies and identify themselves as

such based on their adherence in matters

of governance to Islamic scripture and

theology. Saudi Arabia and Iran in par-

ticular proclaim themselves Islamic and

have intentionally used their Islamic cre-

dentials to further both their domestic

legitimacy and their foreign policy goals.

Both, on occasion, have also used their

Islamic credentials to claim the authority

to speak for Islam.

In the case of Saudi Arabia, the legiti-

macy of the hereditary monarchy that

gives its name to the country rests on the

alliance between the House of Saud and

the Wahabi religious establishment. The

Saudi state has used its Islamic identity to

promote its interests abroad both by set-

ting up international governmental and

nongovernmental Muslim organizations

and funding religious groups, educa-

tional institutions, and the construction

of mosques in foreign countries. This

dimension of its foreign policy became

especially salient in the 1980s and 1990s

following the Iranian Revolution in 1979

that challenged the Saudi hereditary

order by terming it un-Islamic. The

Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the same

year, however, provided the Saudis the

opportunity to buttress their Islamic

legitimacy by supporting the (American-

backed) mujahedin engaged in fighting

Soviet occupation.

In the meantime, the Saudi regime came

face-to-face with a new, serious challenge

at home: the emergence of a radical Wahabi

movement, influenced by the extremist

thought of the Egyptian Islamist Sayid

Qutb. The Wahabi radicals broke ranks

with the religious establishment allied to

the House of Saud, denounced the

regime as un-Islamic, and staged the

1979 takeover of the Ka’aba, the holiest

Muslim shrine. Osama Bin Laden and

69

his followers are ideological descendants

of the neo-Wahabis and their leader,

Juhaiman al-Utaibi.15

The neo-Wahabis turned violently

against the Saudi regime for a number of

reasons, including their perception that

the regime had deviated from the austere

Islamic principles of the Wahabi theolo-

gians. The Saudi monarchy’s dependence

on the United States for its security and

economic well-being sparked further

hostility among Islamists. Consequently,

Saudi Arabia, the “kingdom in the mid-

dle,” as the political scientist Gregory

Gause has called it, has seen rising ten-

sions between two different Islamist

tendencies.16 This situation hamstrings

the Saudi regime’s capacity to speak on

behalf of Islam.

A similar situation exists in Iran. The

shah’s repression of all forms of political

opposition in the 1970s created the vac-

uum filled by Islamist forces, in this case

a faction of the Shia ulama. Ayatollah

Khomeini’s rise as the primary vehicle

for Islamists in Iran is explained in part

by the fact that the Shia ulama maintained

financial independence from the Iranian

state, in contrast to Sunni clerics’

dependence on state patronage. Shia

clerics’ independence was achieved to a

large extent through the payment of

khums, or one-fifth of a person’s income,

by the religious laity to their marja, or

preferred senior cleric.

The robust Shia tradition of ijtihad17

enabled the politically activist faction of

the Iranian clergy inspired by Khomeini

to adapt its strategy to the concerns of the

1960s and 1970s. The same Shia predilec-

tion for innovation provided Khomeini

the opportunity to advocate his theory of

Islamic government as guided by the

Supreme Jurist, with the Shia ulama the

ultimate repositories of both moral and

political rectitude.

Lay Islamist radicals were not, however,

absent from the Iranian scene. The writ-

ings and speeches of activists such as Ali

Shariati contributed significantly to the

shah’s downfall. Nevertheless, noncler-

ical forces could not compete with the

ulama for control of postrevolution Iran.

The ulama were better organized, had

much greater financial resources, and

were more united than their nonclerical

counterparts.18

Despite the pan-Islamic rhetoric of the

early years of the revolution, the postrev-

olution Iranian political elite, still led by

Khomeini, came to view the defense of

Iranian interests as their primary

(Islamic) duty. The Iraqi invasion of Iran

in September 1980 reinforced Iran’s

position that the defense of Iran was an

70

essential prerequisite for the defense of

Islam. In January 1988, Khomeini went

even further by declaring that the state’s

actions based on expediency could take

precedence even over the requirements

of the shari‘a.19

Raison d’état continues to be the driving

force as far as Iranian foreign policy

is concerned. This was demonstrated

most recently by Tehran’s neutral pos-

ture during the American invasions of

Afghanistan and Iraq, and the regime’s

covert collaboration with the United

States during the war against the Taliban,

as widely reported by the media.20 These

policies reflected the Iranian regime’s

antipathy toward both Saddam Hussein

and the Iraqi Baathists, as well as the

Sunni fundamentalist Taliban. All in all,

Iran’s focus on national interest, just like

Saudi Arabia’s, compromises its capacity

to speak either on behalf of Islam or the

Muslim world at large.

Another instance of national interest

superseding pan-Islamic rhetoric is the

“Sulawesi Sea Crisis” that nearly brought

Southeast Asian neighbors Malaysia and

Indonesia to blows in February of 2005.

The Malaysian state oil company

Petronas sparked an international row by

awarding oil exploration rights in a dis-

puted, resource-rich region of the

Sulawesi Sea that is claimed by both

Indonesia and Malaysia. First Indonesia,

then Malaysia, responded with a show of

gunboat diplomacy, sending fighter jets

and warships to the contested area.

Although both countries’ leaders eventu-

ally resolved the dispute through

diplomatic means, harsh words were

exchanged, such as Indonesian House

Speaker Agung Laksono’s statement that

“the government should take stern action

without hesitation, including military

force if necessary.”21 The dispute engen-

dered strong nationalist feelings,

particularly in Indonesia, where protest-

ers across the country burned Malaysian

flags and hackers vandalized Malaysian

government Web sites with defiant slo-

gans and symbols.

Despite this confrontation, both nations

insisted that their relationship remained

strong, echoed by the statement of

Indonesian Foreign Ministry Spokesman

Yuri Thamrin that “we are both after all

countries, which not only have good

bilateral ties but are Muslim nations.”22

The Islamists

The dilemma over who speaks for Islam

has been compounded by the emergence

during the 20th century of several

political movements within predomi-

nantly Muslim countries that call for the

establishment of governance systems

71

based on what they consider the golden

age of early Islam. Although their stra-

tegies and styles may differ, these

movements are loosely united in their

common belief that contemporary social,

economic, and political problems facing

Muslim societies cannot be resolved

except by a return to the purity of the

early Islamic polity. These groups and

movements can be broadly termed

“Islamist” in order to distinguish them

from “Islamic,” for their primary focus is

political rather than theological.

The process of reappropriating and

reinventing the distant past—and the

accompanying rejection of intervening

tradition, including the right to inter-

pret religion—is rooted in the colonial

experience, in the sense that colonialism

reopened the issue of how Muslim soci-

eties ought to be governed and by whom.

In other words, colonialism provided a

motivation first to rebel against non-

Muslim rule, and later to reconsider the

rules and mechanisms governing Muslim

societies after the expulsion of European

powers.

Many Muslims, especially the Islamists,

came to consider the ulama incapable of

providing a political vision for the future.

The ulama seemed preoccupied with the

finer points of theological interpretation

and with legal precedents that did not

apply to the contemporary situation.

Furthermore, the ulama were accused (by

reformers and revivalists alike) of

detracting from the religion’s innate

dynamism by closing the gates of ijtihad.

Such criticism of the ulama is epitomized

in the writings of Muhammad Iqbal, the

colonial era Islamic reformer and Indian

poet-philosopher, who argued that their

“false reverence for past history and its

artificial resurrection constitute no rem-

edy for a people’s decay.”23

Significant segments of the Muslim

intelligentsia came to believe that the

ulama were as responsible for Muslim

decline as the temporal rulers who suc-

cumbed to Western power. A new group

of lay thinkers, drawn largely from mod-

ern professions such as science,

medicine, journalism, and secular edu-

cation, along with a few activist ulama,

began to offer a new vision of the found-

ing texts of the golden age of Islam. The

Egyptian Hasan al-Banna, who founded

the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, con-

trasted the ulama of early Islam, who

challenged their caliphs, rulers, and gov-

ernors without fear, to the weakened

ulama of his time, who he found busy

ingratiating themselves with govern-

ment authorities.24 On the Indian

subcontinent, Abul Ala Mawdudi, who

founded the Jamaat-i-Islami in 1941,

also held negative views of contemporary

72

religious leaders. Of Mawdudi’s views on

the ulama, political scientist Seyyed Vali

Reza Nasr writes, “His discourse on the

Islamic state deliberately sidestepped the

ulama, depicting them as an anachronis-

tic institution that has no place in a

reformed and rationalized Islamic order

. . . Mawdudi derided the ulama for their

moribund scholastic style, servile political

attitudes, and ignorance of the modern

world.”25 Sayyid Qutb, the chief

ideologue of the Egyptian Muslim

Brotherhood in the 1950s and 1960s,

was even more critical of the ulama. He

denounced the very idea of “men of

religion, who take from religion a pro-

fession” as a corruption of the Qur’anic

message.26

These three thinkers-cum-activists were

among the most important Islamist fig-

ures of the 20th century. All of them

attended universities as opposed to

Islamic religious seminaries.27 Abul Ala

Mawdudi began as a journalist, while

Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb started

their careers in secular education. The

writings of Sayyid Qutb, executed by

Nasser’s regime in 1966, provided much

of the basic motivation for Islamist

activism. After his death, Qutb’s ideas

were used to preach the violent overthrow

of the Egyptian government, considered

by Islamists to be a legitimate target for

jihad because it had deviated from Islam.

Qutb’s ideas about jihad against nomi-

nally Muslim regimes provided a major

departure from traditional Islamic

political thought in which jihad was per-

mitted only for defensive reasons and

only against non-Muslim opponents.28

While these reformers shared an Islamic

vocabulary common to their visions, each

of them was influenced by the political

trajectory of his nation. Because they

operate in different settings and con-

texts, no two branches of Islamism are

identical. Thus the Muslim Brother-

hoods in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and the

occupied Palestinian territories have

adopted radically different political

strategies in response to specific chal-

lenges that they face within their

respective national boundaries. Indeed,

the parent organization, the Egyptian

Brotherhood, has itself mutated over

time; its leadership in the early 1980s

unequivocally rejected the more radical

and militant ideas associated with Sayyid

Qutb, the organization’s ideological

guru of the 1960s. As French scholar

Olivier Roy has pointed out, “[I]t is

intellectually imprudent and historically

misguided to discuss the relationships

between Islam and politics as if there

were one Islam, timeless and eternal.”29

Yet there are characteristics shared

by Islamic societies that relate to the

73

widespread appeal of Islamism in the

postcolonial era. First, the secular,

nationalist project has been generally

unable to provide dignity, freedom,

power, or wealth to most Muslim com-

munities.30 Second, these regimes have

often turned to authoritarian and

repressive methods, stifling political and

intellectual debate and eliminating

almost all secular opposition, thus creat-

ing political space that has been filled by

Islamists. However, unlike secular groups

that can be prevented from speaking in

public or through the media, Islamist

political activity can never be fully

suppressed since Muslim religious insti-

tutions are, to a significant extent,

immune from governmental retribution.

Publishing houses that print religious lit-

erature as well as mosques and affiliated

organizations continue to transmit polit-

ical messages disguised as religious

ones.31 Third, Islamist groups have set

up social service organizations in the

fields of health, education, and welfare—

areas in which corrupt and inefficient

governments in most Muslim countries

have failed. Such social services cultivate

important constituencies: the under-

privileged and the youth. Thus Islamist

charitable networks from Turkey to Egypt

to Pakistan have come to provide Islamist

groups with great staying power in the

face of state repression.32 The much-

reviled madaris, for example, often

provide the only source of education,

food, and shelter to the children of the

Pakistani poor.33

While these three factors unite Islamist

movements in postcolonial Muslim-

majority states, Islamism has also

flourished in Muslim-minority nations

for a different set of reasons. In regions

where Muslim groups are discriminated

against, or where their aspirations for

political participation, autonomy, or

independence are thwarted, secular lead-

ership has frequently failed to achieve the

groups’ objectives, and they have thus

turned toward the more radical ideology

of violent Islamism. Such ideological

shifts have recently taken place among the

adherents of ethnic secessionism, such as

the Chechens and the Kashmiris, as well

as among Palestinians. Such struggles,

even when undertaken in the name of

Islam, aim at creating new states or

achieving national liberation. Although

they draw on the religious sympathies of

Muslims elsewhere, they could well be

considered “national” rather than “reli-

gious” movements.34 Hamas in the

occupied Palestinian territories and

Hezbollah in Lebanon illustrate this

phenomenon.35

Nevertheless, Islamism reinforces the

belief among many in the West that Islam

is a monolith, that the most extreme

74

voices are its authentic spokespersons,

and that Islamist groups, even if they

operate under different names, are part

of a grand global project. The truth is

that in most areas—Pakistan, Egypt, and

Turkey among them—there are usually

several Islamist movements competing

for authority within the confines of the

same state. Certain networks, such as Al

Qaeda, do attempt to work beyond and

across national boundaries. However,

these are fringe groups, which, although

they attract the world’s attention with acts

of terror, are marginal to mainstream

Islamist movements and to daily political

struggles within most Muslim countries.

The major Islamist political formations,

such as the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in

Egypt, the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) and the

Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) in Pak-

istan, the Nahdat al-Ulama (NU) in

Indonesia, and the Justice and Develop-

ment Party (AKP) and its precursors in

Turkey, have all acted according to the

rules of regimes unsympathetic to their

causes.36 Several of these groups have

even performed credibly in elections.

Others have learned to lie low when sup-

pressed and bounce back organizationally

and politically when autocracies liberal-

ize under domestic or international

pressure. Some, such as the Pakistani JI,

have even collaborated with military dic-

tatorships to advance their agendas.

Turkey’s Justice and Development Party,

however, has become a so-called post-

Islamist party. As the Turkish academic

Ihsan D. Dagi explains

Realizing that the rise of politicalIslam was detrimental to Islam’ssocial and economic influence inTurkey, [the party] defined itself as“conservative-democrat” in anattempt to escape from the self-defeating success of political Islam. . . Their demands are no longergrounded in Islam, Islamic civiliza-tion and values, and the uniquenessof Muslim society but on the univer-sality of political modernity, i.e.,human rights, democracy, and therule of law.37

The Egyptian political formation known

as Wasat, or Center, which is supported

largely by former members of the Mus-

lim Brotherhood, seems to be following

the same path despite the fact that Presi-

dent Hosni Mubarak’s government has

repeatedly refused it license to operate as

a normal political party.38

Transnational Islamist Networks

Transnational Islamist groups, particu-

larly militant ones, have come to the

forefront of global concerns through

terrorist activities over the last several

years with the emergence of Al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda itself is not a centralized or

75

structured movement, but rather a label

applied by Western governments and the

media to what is a broad and diverse

“network of networks.”39 While this

makes it very difficult to counter Al

Qaeda by conventional military action, it

also means that Al Qaeda’s political

impact is likely to be limited; the network

offers no realistic political agenda that

appeals to a territorially defined political

and social base.

Furthermore, Al Qaeda, like mainstream

Islamist movements, is the product of a

specific context: the failures of the Tal-

iban regime enabled Islamist radicals—

who had initially gathered in Afghanistan

to fight the Soviet Union—to entrench

themselves in the country. The United

States, in conjunction with Pakistan and

Saudi Arabia, played a significant role in

facilitating, financing, and arming the

so-called mujahedin to fight Soviet Com-

munism in the 1980s. Consequently, not

only did thousands of Islamist radicals

gather in Afghanistan, but Afghan and

Pakistani youth were widely radicalized

and today provide much of the man-

power to Al Qaeda, according to

Columbia University Professor Mah-

mood Mamdani.40 From the American

perspective, the “good Muslims” of the

1980s have thus morphed into the “bad

Muslims” of today. The mujahedin of the

1980s are now called jihadis; while the

former term has positive connotations

because it is borrowed directly from

Islamic vocabulary, the latter is an inven-

tion of Western commentators and thus

pejorative.

Mamdani locates the Al Qaeda phenom-

enon within the American policy of the

post-Vietnam era beginning in 1975.

This policy aimed at creating terrorist

groups and turning them into political

movements, first in Angola and Mozam-

bique and then in Nicaragua and

Afghanistan, in order to destabilize left-

ist or revolutionary regimes considered

to be Soviet proxies. According to Mam-

dani, this policy emerged out of the

lesson that direct American intervention,

such as in Vietnam, was likely to be both

costly and ineffective. UNITA and REN-

AMO in southern Africa, the contras in

Central America, and the various radical

Islamist groups in Afghanistan were all

funded and trained by the CIA to under-

take terrorist activities.41 In some ways,

Islamist terrorists have roots more

related to American cold war policies

than to Islamic scripture.

While Al Qaeda has succeeded in making

itself known through spectacular acts

of terrorism and a thirst for publicity,

Tablighi Jama’at—the largest transna-

tional Islamic movement—is unknown to

most Westerners. Tablighi Jama’at

76

(“group that propagates the faith”) is a

missionary organization that traces its

roots to colonial India. It consists pre-

dominantly of lay Muslims who preach to

fellow Muslims and focuses on internal

faith renewal, rather than conversion of

non-Muslims. The group emphasizes a

return to Islam as practiced during the

time of the Prophet. According to its

leaders in America, the Tablighi’s goals

are “devotion to God and promoting

change in each individual, not society.”42

Although the Tablighi renounces politics

and violence, it has come under intense

scrutiny from Western governments for

being a breeding ground for Islamic

extremists. Both American and Euro-

pean intelligence agencies cite its

vulnerability to infiltration as well as its

tendency to promote religious awakening

among disaffected youth as cause for

concern.43

Voices of a New IIjjttiihhaadd

In contrast to the Islamists, a new group

of Muslim thinkers, which has emerged

during the past several decades, seeks to

apply contemporary intellectual methods

to the task of reforming Islam. These

thinkers, whom we might loosely term

the proponents of a New Ijtihad, are both

a response to and a product of the mod-

ernization of Muslim societies. They

belong to a reformist tradition stretching

back to the mid-19th century, initiated

by Muslim intellectuals including Sir

Sayyid Ahmed Khan in India, Syed

Jamaluddin Al-Afghani across the Mid-

dle East and Central and South Asia,

and Muhammad Abduh in Egypt, who,

influenced by the European Enlighten-

ment, applied positivist and rationalist

thought to reconcile Islamic turath (tra-

dition) with the challenges of modernity.

Although Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan relied

almost exclusively on the Qur’an for his

interpretation of Islam, he was not a

scriptural literalist. As political scientist

Carl Brown has pointed out, Sir Sayyid

insisted that Islam was “completely com-

patible with reason and with ‘nature.’

This meant that any supernatural events in

religion, even the Qu’ran, could properly

be interpreted allegorically or psycholog-

ically. In short, he was very much a 19th-

century advocate of science and posi-

tivism.”44 Sir Sayyid’s ideas ran afoul of

the traditional ulama, but he made a

foundational contribution to the spread

of modern education and rationalist

thought among the Muslim elite in India,

especially by setting up the modern educa-

tional institution that eventually became

the Aligarh Muslim University.45

Considered to be one of the founders of

Islamic modernism, Syed Jamaluddin

Al-Afghani was a vocal critic of Western

77

imperialism who called for a revival of

Islamic civilization to counteract Euro-

pean domination. Afghani traveled widely

throughout Muslim lands in the Middle

East and Central and South Asia, attempt-

ing to mobilize the masses in a

pan-Islamic movement against the impe-

rial threat. Afghani was deeply concerned

about the intellectual decay within the

Muslim world, and he attributed the

decline of Islamic civilization to neglect

of the basic sciences and a lack of inter-

est in the pursuit of knowledge. Afghani

believed that the only way to restore

Islamic civilization to its former grandeur

was to return to the “true core” of Islam.

In his famous refutation of French

philosopher Ernest Renan’s denuncia-

tion of Islam as an obstacle to philosophy

and science, Afghani concluded

If the Islamic world is as you say, thenwhy are the Muslims in such a sadcondition? I will answer: When theywere [truly] Muslims, they were whatthey were and the world bears witnessto their excellence. As for the pres-ent, I will content myself with thisholy text: “Verily, God does notchange the state of a people until theychange themselves inwardly.”46

Like his mentor Afghani, the Egyptian

thinker Muhammad Abduh advocated the

reform of Islam by returning to the reli-

gion’s “pure state” and casting off what he

viewed as its contemporary decadence

and divisions. For Abduh, revelation and

reason in Islam were complementary and

not antithetical. Islam, therefore, had

the innate capacity to reform and adapt

to changing circumstances by the exercise

of reason or ijtihad. Abduh’s ideas influ-

enced not only much of the modernist

thinking in the Arab world, they also

inspired what came to be known as the

salafi (purist) movements in the early

decades of the 20th century. Exponents

of salafi thought borrowed from Abduh’s

ideas about jettisoning much of the accu-

mulated “baggage” that they held

responsible for Islam’s decline. How-

ever, rather than looking to Islam’s early

period for a model of compatibility of

faith with reason, the salafis prescribed a

more literal return to the golden age

of early Islam, in that way prefiguring

Islamist movements of the second half of

the 20th century.47

Across the Muslim world as well as in

Muslim communities in the West, recent

decades have witnessed renewed calls for

ijtihad based on rationalist interpreta-

tions of Islam. As the scholar of

contemporary Muslim thought Suha

Taji-Farouki points out, while present-day

proponents of ijtihad share a motivation

with the “modernist” reformers of the

late 19th century, they differ in the scope

of their intellectual horizons.48 Whereas

78

the early modernists worked exclusively

within an Islamic frame of reference,

today’s thinkers avail themselves of

multiple critical and interpretive frame-

works. Most of these thinkers combine

knowledge of Islamic learning and

scripture with secular training (often

undertaken in the West) in the

social sciences, including anthropology,

sociology, philology, philosophy, and

hermeneutics. Their roots in Islamic and

Western intellectual processes offer them

a unique critical perspective on Islamic

scripture and heritage.

The postmodernist discourse of “contex-

tuality” has proven especially influential,

as many of these thinkers hold that the

Qur’an is situated in a specific time and

place—namely, the community of the

Prophet in the Hijaz. They believe that

the message—the Qur’an’s core ethical

principles—can and must be separated

from its history, both at the time of rev-

elation and over the nearly 14 centuries

since. Diverse thinkers such as the late

Pakistani reformer Fazlur Rahman; his

student, the late Indonesian public intel-

lectual Nurcholish Madjid; the Tunisian

scholars Mohamed Talbi, Abdelmajid

Charfi, and Mohamed Charfi; the

Algerian Mohammed Arkoun; the

Sudanese Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim;

and the American Amina Wadud have

all emphasized the importance of the

sociohistorical context of the Qur’anic

revelation and the necessity to differen-

tiate between the Qur’anic message and

intervening history.49 Their critical

rereadings of the Qur’an have admitted

interpretations and innovations that

prize reason, pluralism, universal human

rights, gender equality, and other “het-

erodox” positions.

The Egyptian-born and Switzerland-

based scholar Tariq Ramadan applies

similar methods in his work on the place

of Islam in modern Europe—an issue of

growing importance as the Muslim pop-

ulation in the West continues to expand.

Ramadan suggests that the only way to

arrive at a European Islamic identity is to

separate Islam from the cultures of the

countries of origin. Recently denied

entry to the United States by American

authorities and prohibited from taking

up his chair at the University of Notre

Dame, Ramadan has pointed out that

“when you are trying to create bridges

you are in the middle. . . you are too

Western for the Muslims, and too Mus-

lim for the Westerners. Controversy is

natural.”50 Other proponents of a New

Ijtihad often face similar dilemmas.

Although the ideas represented by these

progressive voices have yet to find wide-

spread resonance among ordinary

Muslims, they do offer an alternative to

more radical and revivalist interpretations

79

of Islam and a source of hope to those

who support greater dialogue between

Islam and the West.

Conclusion

In answer to the question of who speaks

for Islam, it is clear that there is no sin-

gle locus of authority in the Muslim

world today. While the traditional ulama

have lost much of their popular credibil-

ity as interpreters of religion, neither the

ruling elites in Muslim states nor the

Islamists, the militant fringe, or the

practitioners of the New Ijtihad have yet

been able to fill this role.

The cacophony of voices attempting to

speak for Islam has been amplified by the

constant flow of unvetted expression

through the Internet. As Gary Bunt, an

academic who writes frequently on Islam

and the Internet, establishes in Islam in

the Digital Age, the proliferation of

“Islamic” Web sites has vastly increased

the amount of debate in the Muslim

world.51 The Internet also offers believ-

ers an anonymous forum in which to

address their religious concerns. Coun-

seling sites and online fatwas are widely

accessible and increasingly popular,

while the development of online sermons

and Friday khutbahs has extended the

audiences of numerous preachers. The

authority of online religious officials,

however, is open to question. Unlike the

state-sponsored ulama, the “Internet

Imams” are beyond the control of gov-

ernment agencies; at the same time,

many of them have not gone through tra-

ditional training. As one would imagine,

this arena of free expression is now home

to a wide range of political opinions and

is often used to mobilize opposition to

those in power. The Internet has also been

employed by extremist groups to pro-

mote their own agendas; however, it is

almost impossible to verify whether spe-

cific sites speak for the groups that they

claim to represent, including Al Qaeda.

It might also be said that Islamism’s cur-

rent popularity is in significant part

due to the slow pace of reform in many

Muslim—particularly, Arab—states, as

well as to what is perceived by a large

majority of people in the Muslim world

as lack of serious commitment by major

international powers, especially the

United States, to address the grievances

harbored by most Muslims.52 Current

events in Palestine and Iraq, which lie

in Islam’s historical and political—if

not demographic—heartland, resonate

deeply with Muslims, accentuating the

feeling of impotence across much of the

Muslim world and increasing receptivity

to Islamist arguments. Post-September

11 American policies have contributed to

this pattern, demonstrating Washington’s

insensitivity in the eyes of many Muslims.

80

The cacophony of voices claiming to

speak for Islam is also an expression of a

more fundamental crisis in the Muslim

world–a century-long crisis of poor gov-

ernance, particularly in the Arab

world.53 Since decolonization, Arab

states have turned to a variety of political

remedies—including nationalism, pan-

Arabism, pan-Islamism, communism,

and socialism—yet, with a few exceptions,

all have failed to deliver widespread pros-

perity and good governance.

The tragedy of September 11, 2001,

played a major role in bringing the crisis

within dar-el-Islam to the attention of

the West. At home, “9/11” and the events

of subsequent years have made Muslims

more concerned about their current sit-

uation and about finding ways to resolve

it. Progressive Muslim thinkers are grow-

ing bolder and are taking risks to

challenge the ulama as well as the

Islamists. This surge of intellectual effort

has resulted in a soar in the number of

books published over the last few years by

the proponents of a New Ijtihad.

Finally, it should be kept in mind that the

relationship between Islam and the West

has a long and perhaps cyclical history.

The crisis within the Muslim world today

might be said to mirror the situation of

the West during the Middle Ages, when

the Muslim empire was the center of

knowledge and civilization. To end its

stagnation, the West entered a period of

self-reflection and embarked on the

Renaissance, in part by appropriating

Islam’s scientific and cultural advances.

The renowned 13th-century Italian

theologian and philosopher Thomas

Aquinas, for example, sought inspiration

in the works of Muslim philosopher Ibn

Rushd, the most revered philosopher of

the time at the Sorbonne. Perhaps the

Muslim world today, by examining its sit-

uation through the lens of modernity,

will embark on a contemporary Islamic

renaissance. We can only guess at how this

might change the relationship between

Islam and the West. What is certain at this

point is that greater communication,

improved understanding, and identifi-

cation of the multiple—and sometimes

conflicting—sources of authority within

each civilization can only hasten our

entry into a new phase of the history of

the Islamic-Western encounter.

82

1. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of

Civilizations and the Remaking of the

World Order (New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1996).

2. The term salaf can be translated as

the “revered ancestors.” The main

thrust of salafi thought is its advocacy

for the return to the pristine form

of Islam practiced by the first gener-

ation of Muslims. This is seen as the

ideal from which later generations

of Muslims have deviated, leading to

Islam’s and Muslims’ decline.

3. Khaled Abou El Fadl, “The Place of

Tolerance in Islam,” Boston Review,

December 2001/January 2002,

online at http://bostonreview.net/

BR26.6/elfadl. html.

4. The schism within Islam that

resulted in the two grand families of

Islamic faith (the majority Sunni

and the minority Shia) came about

in the early years following the

Prophet Muhammad’s death. In 657

the notables of Medina selected Ali

ibn Abu Talib, cousin and son-in-

law of the Prophet, as the fourth

caliph. However, Muawiya, the

Umayyad governor of Syria who had

been appointed by Uthman, Ali’s

predecessor as caliph, refused to

recognize Ali’s authority. Those

who sided with Ali became known as

the Shia (partisans of Ali). The

majority who accepted Muawiya’s

rule as legitimate became known as

the Sunni. For a detailed rendering

of the intricate set of events that led

up to the Sunni-Shia division, see

Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture

of Islam, Volume 1: The Classical Age of

Islam, reprint edition (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1977),

pp. 276-79.

5. L. Carl Brown, Religion and State:

The Muslim Approach to Politics (New

York: Columbia University Press,

2000), p. 54.

6. Barbara Rosewicz, “Prestigious Al

Azhar is Force of Moderation,” Wall

Street Journal, August 10, 1987.

7. Mona El-Nahhas, “A confusing

fatwa,” Al-Ahram Weekly, September

4-10, 2003, online at http://weekly.

ahram.org.eg/2003/654/eg6.htm.

8. Rosewicz, “Prestigious Al Azhar Is

Force of Moderation.”

9. The Oxford English Dictionary

Online (www.oed.com) defines

fundamentalism as “strict adherence

to ancient or fundamental doc-

trines, with no concessions to

modern developments in thought or

customs.” For an argument that a

reformation has already taken place

in Islam with the emergence of

scriptural fundamentalism and

“priesthood of the individual,”

two fundamental features of the

Christian Reformation, see Carl W.

NOTES TO APPENDIX V

83

Ernst, Following Muhammad: Rethink-

ing Islam in the Contemporary World

(Chapel Hill: University of North

Carolina Press, 2003), pp. 66-67.

10. The Mandate system was established

by the League of Nations following

World War I to provide for the

administration of former Ottoman

territories and German colonies in

the Middle East, Africa, and the

Pacific. The Ottoman territories

were divided among the European

Allies, who were granted supervision

over these lands as a precursor to

eventual independence. In the Mid-

dle East, five new Mandates were

created from the former Ottoman

territories: Iraq, Transjordan, and

Palestine were British Mandates,

while Syria and Lebanon were

administered by France.

11. The Peace of Westphalia, embodied

in a series of treaties signed in 1648,

marked the end of Europe’s bloody

30 Years War and the birth of the

modern state system. The Peace of

Westphalia abolished the unity of the

Holy Roman Empire and enshrined

into treaty law the doctrine that the

religion of the ruler is the religion

of the state and no state could force

another to change its religion. Sub-

sequently, national interests began

to trump religion as the basis for

disputes among European states.

12. Rudolph Peters, Islam and Colonial-

ism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern

History (The Hague: Mouton,

1979).

13. Khaled Abou El Fadl, “Islam and

the Challenge of Democracy,”

Boston Review, April/May 2003,

online at http://bostonreview.

net/BR28.2/abou.html.

14. For details about the working of the

OIC and other international Mus-

lim organizations, see Saad S.

Khan, Reasserting International Islam

(New York: Oxford University

Press, 2001).

15. According to Sadik Al-Azm, “Bin

Laden may be seen as a more dan-

gerous, advanced, and global

version of Juhaiman al-‘Utaibi.

While Juhaiman directed his des-

perate, spectacular intervention

against the most important local

legitimizing symbol of the Saudi sys-

tem, bin Laden attacked the

American core without which the

local system could not possibly sur-

vive.” Sadik J. Al-Azm, “Time Out

of Joint,” Boston Review, Octo-

ber/November 2004, online at

www.bostonreview.net/BR29.5/alaz

m.html.

16. See Gregory Gause, “Kingdom in

the Middle: Saudi Arabia’s Double

Game,” in James F. Hoge, Jr., and

Gideon Rose, eds., How Did This

84

Happen? Terrorism and the New War

(New York: Public Affairs, 2001),

pp. 109-122; and Eric Rouleau,

“Trouble in the Kingdom,” Foreign

Affairs, 81(4), July-August 2002,

pp. 75-89.

17. Ijtihad can be defined as the exercise

of independent reasoning by jurists

to apply the shari‘a to legal questions

arising from circumstances that are

not covered by the Qur’an, sunnah,

established precedent, or direct

analogy.

18. Nikki Keddie, Modern Iran: Roots

and Results of Revolution (New Haven:

Yale University Press, 2003), chap-

ters 9 and 10.

19. Daniel Brumberg, Reinventing

Khomeini: The Struggle for Reform in Iran

(Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 2001), pp. 135-36.

20. See, inter alia, Jean-Michel Cadiot,

“Tehran and Washington a Step

Closer Through Afghanistan,”

Agence France Presse, October 7,

2001; Nazila Fathi, “On the Sly,

Iran Weighs Closer Ties With U.S.,”

New York Times, November 9, 2001;

Thomas L. Friedman, “The View

from Tehran,” New York Times, June

26, 2002; Seymour M. Hersh,

“The Iran Game: How Will Tehran’s

Nuclear Ambitions Affect Our

Budding Partnership?” New Yorker,

December 3, 2001.

21. “Government Urged to Get Tough

in Territory Dispute,” Jakarta Post,

March 7, 2005, online at www.the-

jakartapost.com/detaillatestnews.asp

?fileid=20050307181600&irec=2.

22. Quoted in Farrah Naz Karrim,

“Resolve Issue Through Talks,” New

Straits Times, March 9, 2005.

23. Quoted in John L. Esposito,

“Muhammad Iqbal and the Islamic

State,” in John L. Esposito, ed.,

Voices of Resurgent Islam (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1983), p.

187.

24. Saeed Abdullah, “The Official

Ulama and the Religious Legitimacy

of the Modern Nation State,” in S.

Akbarzadeh and A. Saeed, eds.,

Islam and Political Legitimacy (New

York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 14-15.

25. Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, “Mawdudi

and the Jamat-i-Islami,” in Ali

Rahnema, ed., Pioneers of Islamic

Revival (London: Zed Books, 1994),

p. 105.

26. Charles Tripp, “Sayyid Qutb: The

Political Vision,” in Ali Rahnema,

ed., Pioneers of Islamic Revival, p.

178.

27. Incidentally, the same is true of

Osama bin Laden, who was trained

as an engineer, and his deputy,

Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was trained

as a physician.

85

28. For analyses of Sayyid Qutb’s ideas,

see Yvonne Haddad, “Sayyid Qutb:

Ideologue of Islamic Revival,” in

John L. Esposito, ed., Voices of

Resurgent Islam and Charles Tripp,

“Sayyid Qutb: The Political Vision,”

in Ali Rahnema, ed., Pioneers of

Islamic Revival.

29. Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political

Islam (Cambridge: Harvard Univer-

sity Press, 1996), p. vii.

30. For a discussion of the model of the

“strangers” and the model of the

“ancestors,” see Fouad Ajami, The

Arab Predicament, second edition

(New York: Cambridge University

Press, 1992), p. 242.

31. For details of this argument, see

Mohammed Ayoob, “Political

Islam: Image and Reality,” World

Policy Journal, Fall 2004, p. 3.

32. For Egypt, see Carrie Rosefsky

Wickham, Mobilizing Islam: Religion,

Activism, and Political Change in Egypt

(New York: Columbia University

Press, 2002); for Turkey, see Jenny

White, Islamist Mobilization in Turkey

(Seattle: University of Washington

Press, 2003).

33. Husain Haqqani, “Islam’s Medieval

Outposts,” Foreign Policy, Novem-

ber-December 2002, pp. 58-64.

34. For the Chechen case that bears out

this thesis, see C. J. Chivers and

Steven Lee Myers, “Chechen Rebels

Mainly Driven by Nationalism,”

New York Times, September 12,

2004.

35. For Hamas and Hezbollah, see

respectively Shaul Mishal and Avra-

ham Sela, The Palestinian Hamas

(New York: Columbia University

Press, 2000), and Judith Palmer

Harik, Hezbollah: The Changing Face

of Terrorism (New York: I. B. Tauris,

2004).

36. See Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, Mobi-

lizing Islam: Religion, Activism, and

Political Change in Egypt; Jenny

White, Islamist Mobilization in Turkey;

Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, The Vanguard

of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama’at-

I-Islami of Pakistan (Berkeley:

University of California Press,

1994); and Robert W. Heffner, Civil

Islam (Princeton: Princeton Uni-

versity Press, 2000).

37. Ihsan D. Dagi, “Rethinking Human

Rights, Democracy, and the West:

Post-Islamist Intellectuals in

Turkey,” Critique: Critical Middle

Eastern Studies, 13(2), Summer

2004, p. 140. See also Mohammed

Ayoob, “Turkey’s Multiple Para-

doxes,” Orbis, Summer 2004, pp.

451-463.

38. Joshua A. Stacher, “Post-Islamist

Rumblings in Egypt: The Emer-

gence of the Wasat Party,” Middle

86

East Journal, 56(3), Summer 2002,

pp. 415-432.

39. The term “network of networks” is

borrowed from Jason Burke, Al

Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror

(New York: I. B. Tauris, 2003), p.

16.

40. Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim,

Bad Muslim (New York: Pantheon,

2004).

41. Ibid.

42. Susan Sachs, “A Muslim Missionary

Group Draws New Scrutiny in

U.S.,” New York Times, July 14,

2003.

43. Sachs, “A Muslim Missionary

Group Draws New Scrutiny in

U.S.,” and Craig S. Smith, “French

Islamic Group Offers Rich Soil for

Militancy,” International Herald Tri-

bune, April 29, 2005.

44. L. Carl Brown, Religion and State:

The Muslim Approach to Politics (New

York: Columbia University Press,

2000), p. 95.

45. For Sir Sayyid’s ideas, see Christian

W. Troll, Sayyid Ahmad Khan: A

Reinterpretation of Muslim Theology

(New Delhi: Vikas, 1978).

46. Nikki R. Keddie, An Islamic Response

to Imperialism: Political and Religious

Writings of Sayyid Jamal al-Din

“al-Afghani” (Berkeley: University

of California Press, 1983), p. 173.

47. L. Carl Brown, Religion and State,

pp. 93-98.

48. Suha Taji-Farouki, ed., Modern

Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur’an

(New York: Oxford University

Press, 2004).

49. For a more in-depth exploration of

these thinkers, see, inter alia, Suha

Taji-Farouki, ed., Modern Muslim

Intellectuals and the Qur’an; Rachid

Benzine, Les nouveaux penseurs de

l’Islam (Paris: Albin Michel, 2004);

Fazlur Rahman and Ebrahim

Moosa, eds., Revival and Reform in

Islam (Oxford: Oneworld, 1999);

Ronald Nettler, “Mohamed Talbi’s

Ideas on Islam and Politics: A Con-

ception of Islam for the Modern

World,” in J. Cooper, R. Nettler,

and M. Mahmoud, eds., Islam and

Modernity (New York: I. B. Tauris,

2000), p. 131; Abdelmajid Charfi,

Islam entre le Message et l’Histoire

(Paris: Albin Michel, 2004);

Mohammed Arkoun, Rethinking

Islam: Common Questions, Uncommon

Answers, trans. Robert D. Lee

(Boulder: Perseus, 1994), The

Unthought in Contemporary Islamic

Thought (London: Saqi Books,

2002); Abdullahi An-Naim, Toward

an Islamic Reformation (Syracuse:

Syracuse University Press, 1990);

and Amina Wadud, Qur’an and

Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from

87

a Woman’s Perspective (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1999).

50. Deborah Sontag, “Mystery of the

Islamic Scholar Who Was Barred by

the U.S.,” New York Times, October

6, 2004.

51. Gary Bunt, Islam in the Digital Age

(London: Pluto Press, 2003),

p. 141.

52. See Jean Lacouture, Ghassan Tuéni,

and Gérard D. Khoury, Un siècle

pour rien: Le Moyen-Orient arabe de

l’Empire ottoman à l’Empire américain

(Paris: Albin Michel, 2002).

53. See, for example, the Arab Human

Development Reports, published by

the United Nations Development

Programme.

54. See Maria Rosa Menocal, The Orna-

ment of the World: How Muslims, Jews

and Christians Created a Culture of

Tolerance in Medieval Spain (New

York: Little, Brown, 2002).

88

Introduction

The West is a vexed and elusive notion.

From the outside, it seems to be a coher-

ent, perhaps even monolithic, whole—a

single pole, both attractive and repellent,

but somewhat identifiable. The crosses

that adorn church steeples, the fine wines

of Bordeaux, television shows like Cheers

and Friends, women’s rights advocates

like Mary Robinson, multinational

corporations like ExxonMobil, the

American president, pop star Michael

Jackson—from the outside, these are all

emblems of the West and yet from within,

the West hardly exists. Americans and

Europeans do not call themselves “West-

erners”; they may see themselves as

members of the communities that others

perceive as the “West,” but rarely do they

feel loyalty to or affection for that all-

inclusive identity.

Were we examining some of the con-

stituent communities—the Roman

Catholic Church, France, Hollywood,

human rights groups, Wal-Mart, the

Bush administration, the German Social

Democrats—we would be better able to

identify spokesmen, exemplary figures,

and representatives whose pronounce-

ments summarize consensus or convey

authority. As this list suggests, however,

the “West” is a complex, fractious, and

conflicted group of societies. The

Catholic Church and women’s rights

groups differ over abortion; the Ameri-

cans and French differ over the meaning

of secularism and the merits of the war

on Iraq; Europeans differ among them-

selves about the historical significance of

Christianity in defining and shaping

modern Europe. Indeed, one of the most

striking features of the West is its frequent

embrace of difference, its willingness—

not to say, eagerness—to encounter,

adopt, and adapt new ideas, peoples, and

institutions. This enthusiasm can be

delightfully invigorating: from the adop-

tion of Arabic numerals to the

development of “Asian fusion” cuisine,

the West has borrowed, changed, and

used elements of cultures from around

the world. This voracious appetite can

sometimes also appear threatening, how-

ever, as the West seems to appropriate for

itself what is good and valuable from

around the world. But then haven’t all

civilizations, including Islamic civiliza-

tion, done just that?

Although the importance and influence

of the West are undeniable, it is still dif-

ficult to know how we can determine the

real nature of Western opinion today.

How are we to know whether a prominent

Westerner’s statement—for example, the

then-Italian Prime Minister Silvio

APPENDIX VI: BACKGROUND PAPER—“WHO SPEAKS FOR THE WEST?”

89

Berlusconi’s remark late in 2001 that

Western civilization is “bound to Occi-

dentalize and conquer” Islam—represents

a popular or idiosyncratic belief? How

significant were the Christian echoes of

U. S. President George W. Bush’s refer-

ence that year to a “crusade” against

terrorism?1 How, if the Muslim world

seems to be faced with a determined and

dangerous adversary called the West, do

we account for the fact that Islam is the

fastest growing religion in Europe and

the United States?

Today, the West has immense economic,

political, and military power—and some-

times expresses imperial or quasi-

imperial ambitions—but it is also riven by

significant discord. Its two main political

components—Western Europe and the

United States—are frequently at odds on

policy questions. The United States and

France, for example, faced with Muslim

girls wearing headscarves in state schools,

started from the same premise of reli-

gious liberty and state agnosticism–and

yet reached entirely different conclu-

sions. The decision by France to ban the

wearing of scarves by Muslim girls in

French public schools was made in

defense of secularism (laïcité). It was also,

to many Americans, an infringement of

personal choice in a matter of religious

expression. The decision by a Bush

administration official to publicly criti-

cize France in the matter may be taken as

an illustration of how differently Amer-

icans and Europeans think of religion

and of how different their fears are.2

When we examine the question, who

speaks for the West? we therefore need to

acknowledge at the outset that any claim to

represent the West must be partial at best.

A second caution is in order: the admin-

istration of U.S. President George W.

Bush reflects a relatively new “neoconser-

vative” worldview. This view tends to see

treaties and conventions as constraints

on American power rather than part of a

durable global order. It is largely unin-

terested in the “soft power” of culture,

the slow improvements achievable by

aid, development, and human rights

programs, or the conservation of envi-

ronmental, cultural, or other resources.

It takes only passing interest in trading

systems or international commerce. It

commonly disdains the accumulated wis-

dom of the foreign policy establishment

in particular, though neoconservatives

also have little regard for military or

other traditions.3 Yet we should not

assume that any American administra-

tion, even one with the ideological vigor

and forcefulness of the administration of

George W. Bush, can speak even for the

American policy-making establishment,

90

much less the American people, and very

much less the West.

Looking beyond the present moment,

this paper will consider popular beliefs,

political movements, and currents of

analysis that have defined the West and

in part have affected its relationship with

the Muslim world. These themes are (1)

the distinctive liberalism of the West as a

product of constant struggle with (and

accommodation of) the power of reli-

gious institutions and beliefs; (2) the

“export” of the West through economic,

military, political, cultural, and institu-

tional expansion; and (3) the institutional

complexity of large, economically

advanced Western democracies.

Christianity and the

Western Liberal Tradition

Liberalism represents an effort to man-

age conflict; it is a method for resolving

disputes but is not, in itself, a resolu-

tion. President George W. Bush’s call for

a “crusade,” for example, echoed Dwight

Eisenhower’s call for a “Great Crusade”

against European Fascism, yet was

accompanied by strong expressions of

respect for religion and, in particular, for

Islam. For the president, and within

liberalism, these statements were not

contradictory. Outward-looking and

altruistic idealism—crusading with a small

“c”—and tolerance have always coexisted

in the liberal tradition.

This tradition developed in the after-

math of the 17th century struggles among

Western European states that ended in

the Peace of Westphalia of 1648. The

treaties determined that political tolera-

tion for the three great European

religious communities of the time—

Roman Catholic, Lutheran Christian,

and Calvinist Christian—would hence-

forth be the norm. Indeed, toleration of

religious difference—among Christians

and even for other religious faiths—was

said to be itself a Christian idea. This

view was famously expressed by the Eng-

lish philosopher John Locke in his

“Letter on Toleration” of 1689:

I esteem that toleration to be thechief characteristic mark of the trueChurch. For whatsoever some peopleboast of the antiquity of places andnames, or of the pomp of their out-ward worship; others, of thereformation of their discipline; all,of the orthodoxy of their faith—foreveryone is orthodox to himself—these things, and all others of thisnature, are much rather marks ofmen striving for power and empireover one another than of the Churchof Christ. Let anyone have never sotrue a claim to all these things, yet ifhe be destitute of charity, meek-ness, and good-will in general

91

towards all mankind, even to thosethat are not Christians, he is certainlyyet short of being a true Christianhimself.4

Whether Locke was right about the “true

Church,” the idea of toleration, “even to

those that are not Christians,” became a

basic component of Western liberalism.

The Peace of Westphalia, from which

Westerners date the birth of the modern

state and the international state system,

was an acknowledgment that living

together in peace required a formal dis-

interest on the part of the authorities in

what would soon be defined as private

matters—notably, religious faith. It also

required noninterference in how other

rulers ran their own states. From this set

of protocols, the formally secular state,

the rights of citizens to civil and political

freedoms, and other elements of Western

liberalism have developed.

These liberal principles have not been

fully honored. Persecution of religious

minorities never fully ended in Europe,

and today there are signs of increased

anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic activity in

Europe as well as institutionalized suspi-

cion of Muslims in Europe and the

United States. Nonetheless, the necessity

of accommodation between church and

state, of common toleration, and of

preserving a bias toward individual free-

dom has remained characteristic of

Western life.

The modern West, then, is both Christ-

ian and deliberately, carefully not

Christian. This distinct balance came

only after ages of religious conflict both

between Christian Europe and outsiders

and, much more importantly, among

Christians themselves. Ever since, West-

erners have debated how to balance

religious affiliation and state liberalism

in public life, as the differing approaches

to headscarves in schools in France and

the United States suggest.

As an immigrant society, the United

States has generally respected private

belief more than Europe and insisted less

on public conformity. By contrast,

European Christianity’s experience of

other faiths, Islam in particular, is col-

ored by a history in which conflict played

a significant part, leaving in European

collective memory a distinct sense of

threat. Unlike American religion, Euro-

pean churches have a strong sense of

rootedness in place, culture, and local

history. This explains why the question of

the place of Christianity in the creation

of Europe and particularly the suprana-

tional European Union is much more

“loaded” than comparable debates in the

United States. Vaclav Havel argued in

92

1994 that the “European Union is based

on a large set of values, with roots in

antiquity and in Christianity.”5 This

European sense of a Christian tradition

reappeared over the next decade both in

the politics of immigration and assimila-

tion and in debates over the nature of the

European Union. Former French Presi-

dent Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s assertion

that admitting Turkey would be “the end

of the European Union” reflected this

conviction, as did the remark of Silvio

Berlusconi regarding the West and Islam.

The debate over whether God or Chris-

tian heritage should be mentioned in the

European Union’s new constitution is

another example of how the West strug-

gles with the appropriate expression of

religious affiliation in public life.6 For

many Europeans, the exclusion of Chris-

tianity from the constitution seemed to

deny the importance of the faith in

bringing Europeans to where they are

today and, perhaps, where they are

headed in the future. For others, to

acknowledge a particular religion in a

document like a constitution would be to

introduce a force that has always proved

divisive into a process that aims at unity.

These debates make the European

response to the Islamic world very differ-

ent from the American, which focuses

largely on issues of geopolitics and for-

eign policy, with special reference to the

Middle East. While the Middle East is

still vital from the European point of

view, many European politicians now

consider Islam a domestic issue, played

out in the suburbs of Antwerp and Paris,

or the underground of London, while by

and large Americans have just started

to confront the significance of their

own indigenous Muslim communities.

Indeed, from the era of Malcolm X until

September 11, most Americans associated

American Islam with the struggle for civil

rights for African Americans rather than

with the growing immigrant community.

The situation in the United States is dif-

ferent in another sense, as well.

American respect for the religious

impulse—of whatever type—has always

been high. Unlike that of Europe, Amer-

ican popular culture has generated

religious sects and enthusiasms with

unmatched fecundity, from Jehovah’s

Witnesses to new forms of Buddhism to

Scientology and the heterodox Nation of

Islam.7 What is incomprehensible to

American believers is not other beliefs

but unbelief, which was the charge against

“atheistic” or “Godless” Communism

during the cold war. The United States’

enlistment of religious Muslim allies

against atheist Communist parties in the

Muslim world sprang, in part, from this

moral vision of the anti-Communist

struggle.

93

The administration of George W. Bush

came into office advocating a greater

presence for religion in public life. This

was not necessarily intolerant; the “faith-

based charities” that the administration

sought to support, for example, included

Muslim charities, not least because Islam

is the fastest-growing religion in Amer-

ica and is especially strong among the

black urban poor.8 However, the admin-

istration was itself unusually Christian in

its outlook and willing to use Christian

faith as a political tool in advancing cer-

tain social policies, such as promoting

the traditional family and discouraging

abortion.

Yet since September 11, the avowedly

Christian element in the Bush adminis-

tration has gone some distance to make it

clear that Christianity as such—of any

type—is not the basis of Americanism.9

This is true as well for American public

opinion; a poll conducted by the

respected Pew Research Center following

the September 11 attacks captures the

ambiguities of the situation:

Favorable views of Muslim-Amer-cans have risen from 45% in Marchto 59% today, even though 40% ofthe public think the terrorists weremotivated at least in part by religionwhen they carried out the Sept. 11attacks. The survey finds clear evi-dence that Americans are heeding

President Bush’s call for tolerancetoward Muslims, and the President’sown core constituents—conservativeRepublicans—have shown by far thebiggest turnaround. Nearly two-thirds of conservative Republicans(64%) feel favorably toward Muslimsin this country, up 29 percentagepoints since March.10

The Export of the West:

From Empire to Security Alliance

Out of efforts to manage this divisiveness

grew the modern secular state. Soon after

it arose in Europe, it began to spread.

The export of Western models of state

organization took place mainly through

the imperial expansion of Western pow-

ers, principally Britain, France, Spain,

the Netherlands, and Portugal, begin-

ning in the 15th century and accelerating

as the notion of the modern state took

shape in the 18th and 19th centuries.

As a source of identity and as an exten-

sion of national territory, formal empire

remained important—particularly for the

Dutch, the British, and the French—until

well after World War II. Indeed, partly

because of the disasters of that war, the

initial postwar response was to turn to

empire as a kind of consolation, with

the recovered territories in East Asia

or the Middle East as a source of

renewed standing and confidence for the

94

European homeland. The final loss of

empire was in turn felt very strongly in

the Netherlands, rather less so in France

and Britain, for reasons having to do

with scale, but also with the alternative

resources and stronger historical identity

available to France and Britain. In Por-

tugal and Spain, imperial decline worked

very differently—it occurred over a longer

period and, since these were not stable

democracies, there was much less debate

over the implications of decolonization.11

The American attitude toward imperial-

ism has been quite distinct from that of

its European precursors. By and large,

Americans today do not see their coun-

try’s expansionist past in North America

as imperial. In part because much of the

expansion was associated with commercial

projects—from the Louisiana Purchase to

the Gold Rush, the transcontinental rail-

road and the sale by the state of land for

agriculture—most Americans think of

their nation’s push westward from the 13

original colonies as driven by material

growth and justified by moral progress.

They do not think of it as official, for-

mal, political conquest, nor is it taught

that way in American schools. The brief

period of undiluted American imperialism

in the Caribbean and the Philippines—at

the turn of the 20th century—is seen as

exceptional.

Moreover, today much of what people else-

where may see as American imperialism—

the nation’s dominant corporations, its

ubiquitous cultural products, the out-

sized importance of its consumer market

(and therefore of its tariff, tax, and trade

policies)—is seen by most Americans as

mere commerce or culture–not, in other

words, as matters of power.12

In fact, this distinction between the role

of the government, formal political

institutions, and the rest of society—the

private sector and civil society—is a cru-

cial one in understanding how the West

operates more generally. The govern-

ment of the United States, or of any

Western country, is but one of many

voices seeming—and claiming—to speak

for the West. Western societies are

cacophonous, perhaps none more so

than the United States itself. Western life

in the post-World War II period has

become thick with political and social

opinion and the institutional structures

to lend those opinions substance.

Institutionally, the contemporary West

took shape during and immediately after

World War II. Europe had exploded in

violence twice in 30 years, at a cost of

many millions dead. The world system

had demonstrated its inability to prevent

escalating destruction. Continental Fas-

cism had additionally proved that the

95

elimination of an entire people—Euro-

pean Jews—was technologically and

politically feasible to a degree almost

impossible to imagine. Similar levels of

destruction, based on political leaning

and class rather than racial or religious

grounds, had occurred in the Soviet

Union.

The West that grew out of this context

had several new features. After 1945,

state systems and borders in the major

theatres of war were essentially frozen,

regardless of whether the peoples affected

found such a status quo desirable. The

vanquished powers were thoroughly dis-

armed—permanently, as was generally

expected in the cases of Germany and

Japan. The victorious powers, above all

the United States and the Soviet Union,

emerged as the guarantors or enforcers

of the new stability.

A second new feature of the West imme-

diately after World War II was the

dominance of a single state. As we have

seen, the West had always been an arena

of competitive states, and its most

distinctive ideas—liberal pluralism and

the indefinite management of conflict

through balancing of powers—developed

against that backdrop.13 Single-state

dominance drastically altered the context

of Western liberalism because it threatened

the pluralism of Western state power.

A third new feature was that the domi-

nant state was the United States, whereas

the heart of Western civilization had been

firmly in Western Europe until 1945.

The war, and the decisive intervention

by America, changed that dynamic.

America’s goal, however, was not domi-

nance in an imperial sense (or in a fascist

sense). Rather, the United States

believed its interventions in the world

wars were unavoidable, the alternative

being a German-dominated world.

A fourth development was that this new

West faced a new East—the Eastern Bloc—

one that had no significant connection

with Islam and very little to do with the

traditional East, in the sense of “Ori-

ent.” The wholesale takeover of the term

“the East” by China, the Soviet Union,

and the eastern tranche of Europe was

entirely unprecedented.

The idealistic side of European imperi-

alism was dismissed—even by most

Westerners—over the course of the anti-

imperialist independence struggles of the

20th century, in particular those of the

period from 1945-1970 and as the cold

war came to dominate international con-

sciousness. The reappearance of a more

or less “pro-imperial” position among

influential Western commentators—

European and American—after the end

of the cold war and more so after

96

September 11 was thus particularly strik-

ing. However, there is no popular

pro-imperial movement in the United

States or Britain or anywhere else in the

West—unless strong belief in a forceful

“international community” led by Western

countries is itself Western imperialism.

With the end of the cold war, the values

represented by the West were now per-

ceived to be universal. This was the

contention of the American political

thinker Francis Fukuyama in his famous

1989 essay, “The End of History?”14

With the collapse of the Soviet Union

and the rejection of state socialism by

popular movements in the Communist

world, Fukuyama argued, the Western

system had won and there was no longer

any alternative or competitive model.

Fukuyama’s analysis received consider-

able support at the time, even in Europe.

The German sociologist and philosopher

Ralf Dahrendorf, for example, argued in

his 1990 article, “Reflections on the Rev-

olution in Europe” that “the First and

Second Worlds are being reunited into

something which has no name yet, nor a

number; perhaps it will just be the

World.”15 Insofar as liberalism assumes

pluralism, however, the notion of a

single “world” with no future “history”

revealed that a profoundly illiberal strain

remained alive in the varied fabric of

Western intellectual life.

Soon, however, it seemed entirely possi-

ble that, far from embracing liberal

democracy, much of the world would be

consumed in conflicts of ethnicity,

nationality, and religion. From 1989 to

1992, religion played an important role

in conflicts across the Balkans and in

the former Eastern Bloc (as in the

impending division of Czechoslovakia,

widespread persecution of Gypsies, and

the threatening isolation of Russian

communities in the Baltic States). Reli-

gion was becoming an increasingly

divisive force around the world, whether

connected to mainstream traditions

(Christian terrorism in the United

States, Muslim and Hindu conflicts over

Kashmir, Sunni-Shi’a clashes in Pak-

istan, Muslim-Christian conflict in

Nigeria and Sudan, and Jewish-Muslim

battles in the Middle East) or local

enthusiasms (the Lord’s Resistance Army

in Uganda, God’s Army of the Holy

Mountain in Burma).

Looking back on this period, Oxford

historian Timothy Garton Ash has writ-

ten, “Even at one minute past midnight

on 1 January 1990 we already knew that

this would be a formative decade in

Europe. A 40-year-old European order

had just collapsed with the Berlin Wall.

Everything seemed possible. Everyone

was hailing a ‘new Europe.’ But no one

knew what it would look like.”16

97

After 1989, both the United States and

Europe drifted away from “the West” as a

security concept. Americans debated the

purpose of foreign policy, oscillating

between relatively modest and conserva-

tive definitions of U.S. national interests

during the administration of George

H.W. Bush to the more ambitious, if very

different, idealisms of Bill Clinton and

George W. Bush. “The United States

recognizes that we have a special respon-

sibility that goes along with being a great

power,” the Clinton administration

declared.

Our global interests and our historicideals impel us to oppose those whowould endanger the survival or wellbeing of their peaceful neighbors . . .At the same time, this does not meanthat we or the international commu-nity must tolerate gross violations ofhuman rights within those borders . . .We will act with others when we can,but alone when we must.17

To what extent was this a “Western” for-

eign policy? There is no simple answer.

The Clinton administration, particularly

in its second term, was clearly at the head

of what is called the “international com-

munity.” It had a sympathetic partner in

the secretary-general of the United

Nations, Kofi Annan; a broad acceptance

among Europeans; and a sense for inter-

national structure, whether in managing

globalization or advancing human rights,

which marked it as enthusiastically

cosmopolitan. The international commu-

nity, however, is not avowedly Western,

and to some degree marked itself off

from the “West,” which for many in

Clinton’s camp is tarred by association

with imperialism, racism, and the

enforcement of uneven economic devel-

opment.18 At the same time, Clinton’s

actual security policies allowed ample

scope for unilateral American action.

In the last years of the Clinton adminis-

tration, there emerged two additional

schools of thought about American secu-

rity policy: the core/periphery model and

the imperial model. Both of these

reflected a sort of geographical reorgan-

ization of the political-conceptual map

of the world. The primary challenge to

the West was no longer from the East but

from the South, a region seen as less

prosperous, less law-abiding, and more

dangerous. The core/periphery model

distinguished a core of nations—overlap-

ping, to a great extent, with the old West—

in which laws, free trade, and human

rights formed something like a common

patrimony. Within the core, there were

no noneconomic rivalries and thus no

serious security concerns. Outside this

core was a world of conflict and even

chaos, from which security threats

emanated. The Harvard political scientist

98

Samuel Huntington’s famous 1993 essay,

“The Clash of Civilizations,” advanced

this model by arguing that the West–

which he saw as Europe and the United

States—was destined to clash with other

“civilizations.” He argued that “Western

concepts differ fundamentally from those

prevalent in other civilizations,” listing

those concepts as “individualism, liberal-

ism, constitutionalism, human rights,

equality, liberty, the rule of law, democ-

racy, free markets, the separation of

church and state.”19 According to Hunt-

ington, these concepts “often have little

resonance” outside the West and he advo-

cated a Western security strategy aiming at

“westernizing” Latin America; drawing a

firm line between Western Europe and

the Eastern Orthodox lands of the Slavs;

maintaining overwhelming technological

and military superiority; and forgoing

futile interventions elsewhere. The belief

in an enlightened Western cultural core

facing a benighted periphery became

more widespread over the course of the

1990s; it was used to justify inaction in

the Balkans, for example.20

The imperial model was similar to the

core/periphery theory in that it saw impe-

rial rule as emanating from a Western, or

formerly Western, core. The new impe-

rialists, however, believed in action

rather than isolation and took much

of their energy from a view that the

imposition of imperial rule was virtuous,

that it ensured stability and development.

The writer and former State Department

policy planner Robert Kagan, together

with William Kristol, editor of the con-

servative Weekly Standard, argued in 1996

for an American “benevolent hege-

mony”; by 1998, Kagan was maintaining

that American dominance of the world

constituted a “benevolent empire.”21 The

term “imperial” had long been used to

describe the United States by its critics;

its use as a positive term was new. Its cur-

rency reflected the demise of a perhaps

alien but predictable East and the rise of

the often chaotic-seeming developing

South as a security focus of the West.

U.S. President George W. Bush’s initial

instincts as leader of the most powerful

country in the world were isolationist.

Although he shared a sense of the perils

that the United States faced from the

South, he spoke of a new “humility” in

the use of American power and a retreat

from the expansive engagement of the

Clinton administration, in particular, its

attempts at nation building. As presi-

dent, Bush repudiated the Clinton

administration’s commitment to the

International Criminal Court, declared

the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty out-

dated, and withdrew from the Kyoto

Protocol on global warming. The Bush

administration’s reaction to the attacks

99

of September 11, 2001, was dramatically

more ambitious than its previous poli-

cies, and it reflected embrace of an

assertive policy toward the South, partic-

ularly the Islamic South. That said, it did

little to strengthen American ties to

Western allies. As President Bush told

Congress on September 20, “Great harm

has been done to us. We have suffered

great loss. And in our grief and anger we

have found our mission and our

moment.”22 The grief and anger were

international, as Bush noted in his

speech, and the citizens of some 80

nations other than the United States were

killed in the attacks. However, in security

terms the counterattack (except for

police and intelligence work, which

proved critical) would be administered

by the United States.

Was the United States, then, ending its

security link to what had been the West?

The idea of the West as a security concept

certainly did appear to have been gravely

weakened. To many observers the Bush

administration seemed to be construct-

ing an American empire, and that

empire did not, on the whole, seem to

connect America to the West as such.23

Institutional Complexity of the West

The institutional structure of Western

societies was projected on the world scale

in the design and development of inter-

national institutions after World War II.

In fact, the war’s conflicts were not yet

over when a majority of the world’s inde-

pendent states (at least those who were

explicitly anti-Fascist) assembled in San

Francisco to form the United Nations.

The institution closely reflected the new

West: it was dominated by a single state—

the United States; placed great emphasis

on ensuring the stability of existing

states, not least by enshrining the 1945

balance of power with the establishment

of the Security Council’s “permanent

five” members (United States, China, the

Soviet Union, France, and Britain);

accepted the de facto division of West and

East; and most important, accepted and

strengthened the idea that the victorious

Western powers had a responsibility and

a right to mold the global system.24 The

same perspective was applied by the

International Monetary Fund and the

World Bank, and indeed, all major

international institutions. In other

words, all “global” institutions—political,

economic, social, and cultural—would be

Western-dominated, with a subservient

yet substantial role usually reserved for

the large Eastern powers (the Soviet

Union and China).

Several trends have since undermined

this structure: the economic recoveries

of Germany and Japan; the shrinking

100

percentage of the world’s population

living in the West; the West’s dispropor-

tionate use of, and dependence on,

petroleum; and the breakup of European

empires, including the Soviet Union.

The international architecture of the late

1940s has not always adjusted well to these

trends. Nonetheless, the “international

community” in its varied institutional

expressions is still largely Western-dom-

inated, due in part to Western leadership

of international intergovernmental and

nongovernmental organizations.

The institutional West is not, however, as

monolithic as it sometimes appears to be.

As discussed, there are many significant

differences between the United States

and the rest of the West; between the

English-speaking countries and conti-

nental Europe; and between Eastern and

Western Europe. One can speak, for

example, of a European social model that

is increasingly distinct from the American.

The European model—with its emphasis

on the mutual obligations of citizens and

the state, and the attendant right of the

state to make fiscal and other claims on

its subjects—is quite unlike the American

model, where the emphasis is on freedom

from governmental interference.

Likewise, differences exist between Euro-

pean and American beliefs on the rule of

law. In the course of unification, Europe

has developed an extensive set of regula-

tions and laws, “right down to beer and

sausages,” as Robert Cooper—a British

Foreign Office senior civil servant and a

chief security-policy planner for the

European Union—notes in his reflec-

tions on “postmodern states”:

No one compels [European] states toobey the rules of the CFE Treaty orto pay fines imposed on them by theEuropean Court of Justice. They doso because of their interest as indi-vidual states in making the collectivesystem work and, within the Euro-pean Union, because all have aninterest in maintaining the rule ofEU law . . . [Europe], perhaps forthe first time in 300 years, is nolonger a zone of competing truths.The end of the Cold War has broughtwith it something like a common setof values. 25

Americans tend to place their arrival at a

common set of values much earlier than

the end of the cold war—rather, at the

moment when the Constitution was writ-

ten. The Constitution and the Bill of

Rights are seen by most Americans as the

basis for the legal order and, in many ways,

the social order. The law rests on a con-

ception of individual freedom that focuses

on limiting the powers of the state, not on

defining the activities of the individual.26

European and American attitudes toward

secular values and human rights are also

101

different in some aspects. Europeans

remain much more positive than Amer-

icans about legislating and enforcing a

rather complex set of human rights norms

(the core human rights treaties and their

annexes run to hundreds of pages).

Expansive European thinking about the

future has begun to take the form of a

growing European community of values.

This is no longer commonly seen as a

Western project, or even a Euro-Ameri-

can one, but more as a European effort

to lead an “international community”

different from, and in some ways against,

the American-led contingent.

The Western media similarly reflect both

Western dominance and significant dif-

ferences within the West. To the degree

that a “global culture” exists, it is trans-

mitted by Western-dominated means

and reflects Western values. Yet until

approximately 30 years ago, European

newspapers tended to be affiliated with

one or another political party, while

radio and television were primarily gov-

ernment-run. Over the past 30 years,

however, European governments have

either privatized media interests or

allowed private companies increasing

control of the airwaves.

The American media present a more

complex picture. In the postwar period,

American newspapers, radio, and television

were privately owned, and, by contrast,

strove on the whole for nonpartisan

objectivity. The general trend is still

toward consolidation of ownership—

though somewhat in contrast to

European ownership, U.S. companies

have consolidated across media as well as

within a particular medium, especially

since the Internet boom of the late ’90s.

For instance, CNN is not just the domi-

nant global news network; it is part of a

still larger company, Time Warner,

which owns print media, film, Internet,

and television production companies.

The result, in terms of who speaks for the

West, is that a few companies dominate

the debate, offering a glut of news and

cultural information, some of it bal-

anced and comprehensive, and some of it

myopic and poorly informed. Since Sep-

tember 11, in particular, some of the

more “patriotic” popular media have

presented foreign news as a contest of

Friends versus Enemies.

The intensity of the Western engagement

with radical Islam after September 11 has

also led to the amplification of some

extremist voices and a willingness among

the public to listen to extreme statements

about Islam and the Muslim world

in both Europe and the United States.

Oriana Fallaci in Italy, Brigitte Bardot

and Michel Houllebecq in France,

Melanie Phillips in Britain, Bill O’Reilly

102

and Ann Coulter in the United States,

and many others have exacerbated, in

popular language, the idea of a clash of

civilizations, with Islam on one side and

the West on the other.27 Such exploita-

tion of an alleged Islamic-Western

cultural divide has had its counterpart in

occasional remarks by Christian leaders

like Pat Robertson and Franklin Gra-

ham.28 It has also received some

intellectual validation in works by such

scholars as Bernard Lewis and Samuel

Huntington.29

Beyond the media and popular culture,

the role of scholars and intellectuals in

speaking for the West varies greatly. On

the European continent, particularly in

France and most of the Eastern/Central

European countries, the influence of

public intellectuals is considerable,

whether as commentators or policy advis-

ers. By contrast, in Britain, and still

more so in the United States, even the

most influential and visible intellectuals

are largely excluded from policy making.

In addition, the American practice of

rotating hundreds of positions with each

new presidential administration means

that a wholly different team regularly

replaces not only politicians but policy

advisers, academic experts, and mid-level

State Department and other planners.

This practice contrasts quite sharply with

the European pattern, whereby public

intellectuals and accredited experts often

retain their connections to policy mak-

ing, and to the fashioning of the nation’s

image, for decades at a time.

In the United States there is, however,

also an intellectual community poised

between the traditional academy and the

media, namely the various councils and

institutions grouped under the term

“think tanks.” The policy intellectuals in

this arena can have considerable influ-

ence over government.30 Think tanks

cover the entire political spectrum and

often provide a home for government

policymakers when their party is out of

power or their point of view has fallen

from favor. These institutions overlap

with influential magazines like the Weekly

Standard and the New Republic; they also

provide many of the “experts” called on

by television producers and opinion-

page editors to offer commentary on

current events.

Conclusion

The meaning of the West is today, more

than ever, flexible and contested, and any

effort to speak to the West must recognize

the complexity and diversity of those

who speak for the West. For peoples or

individuals who believe strongly in cul-

tural essences, the elusiveness of the West

can be maddening; however, to react to

103

this elusiveness by denying it, or by

imposing an order that isn’t there, would

be to move from confusion to error.

The nature of the West has always been

changing, and it is clear that the post-

cold war period is one of particular flux

and unpredictability. The breakdown in

transatlantic relations since late 2001

caught most Western decision makers by

surprise, and it is not at all clear how

profound and long-lived this rift will

prove to be. Certainly it is more than

merely a momentary disagreement about

policy toward Iraq or terrorism. It

reflects the different military and eco-

nomic capabilities of the two constituent

parts of the “West,” but it also reflects

very different post-World War II histo-

ries. In the second half of the 20th

century, Europe and the United States

absorbed and assimilated immigrants

from around the world in very different

ways, and those differences are reflected

in divergences in both domestic and for-

eign policy.

Similarly, the increasing importance of

religious observance and “faith-based”

policy and politics in the United States

(and perhaps with the new Pope Benedict

XVI in Europe as well) represents a

challenge to conventional interpreta-

tions of the modern Western political

landscape. Despite assertions that the rise

in public religious commitment in the

United States is tolerant and ecumeni-

cal—that is, that Americans continue to

prefer faith of any kind to atheist or irre-

ligious principles—most religiously

observant Americans are Christians, a

fact that seemed to prove very important

in the 2004 presidential election. In an

essay published by the New York Times

Book Review on September 18, 2005,

American historian Arthur Schlesinger,

Jr., articulated this phenomenon:

The recent outburst of popular reli-giosity in the United States is a mostdramatic and unforeseen develop-ment in American life. As Europegrows more secular, America growsmore devout. George W. Bush is themost aggressively religious presidentAmericans have ever had. Americanconservatives applaud his “faith-based” presidency, an officeheretofore regarded as secular. Thereligious right has become a potentforce in national politics. Evangeli-cals now outnumber mainlineProtestants and crowd megachurches.Billy Graham attracts supplicants by the thousand in Sodom andGomorrah, a k a New York City. TheSupreme Court broods over theplacement of the Ten Command-ments. Evangelicals take over the Air Force Academy, a governmentinstitution maintained by taxpayers’dollars; the academy’s former super-intendent says it will be six yearsbefore religious tolerance is restored.

104

Mel Gibson’s movie “Passion of theChrist” draws nearly $400 million atthe domestic box office.31

Whether this rise in religious sentiment

will turn out to be inclusive and embrace

American Jews, Muslims, and others, or

divisive, pitting the American Christians

against Americans of other faiths, let

alone the rest of the world, may be

among the most important issues in U.S.

domestic politics in the coming years.

On the global scale, the extent to which

international institutions born in 17th-

century Western traditions of sovereignty

and statehood, and designed by Western

powers during the 20th century, can

nevertheless manage to serve a genuinely

international community is a matter of

profound debate, as the heated negotia-

tions of the United Nations 2005 World

Summit demonstrated. Although they

reflect Western interests and values both

in their structural design and in the pre-

dominant roles assigned to Western

powers, particularly the United States,

these institutions are still seen by many as

indispensable to peaceful resolution of

conflict.

Finally, one cannot fail to note the self-

questioning described earlier here that

reverberates through the multiple layers

and interstices of what is generally called

the “West.” In many ways, this introspec-

tion echoes the search for a new identity

and a new anchoring that is at work in

another tradition—that which is generally

called “Islam” by the West. Will these twin

identity crises be exacerbated by the words

and deeds of extremists in both camps

and lead to a “clash of civilizations”? Or

rather, will this reflection be channeled

into more productive and peaceful

endeavors and serve as the springboard

for an “alliance of civilizations”?32 These

will be major questions for the future not

only of the Western and Muslim worlds,

but for the entire world in these times

of nuclear, biological, and chemical arms

proliferation.

106

1. Apparently unaware of the strong

negative connotations of the term

“crusade” for many Muslims, Pres-

ident Bush touched off a firestorm

within Muslim public opinion when

he remarked in a speech in the days

after the attacks of September 11,

2001, that “this crusade, this war on

terrorism is going to take a while.”

The term “crusade” can have multi-

ple interpretations in English

beyond the religious meaning con-

tained in the term’s Latin root of

(Christian) cross; the Oxford Eng-

lish Dictionary lists as the second

definition of crusade, “An aggres-

sive movement or enterprise against

some public evil, or some institu-

tion or class of persons considered

as evil.” In Arabic, however, the lit-

eral translation of “crusade” is a

“Christian campaign,” which con-

jures for many Muslims the

medieval Christian wars against

Islam in the Holy Lands. President

Bush’s unfortunate choice of lan-

guage was roundly condemned by

Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

For an analysis of the cultural impli-

cations of the term “crusade,” see

Anne E. Kornblut and Charles

Radin, “Bush Image of Crusade

Upsets Some Potential Allies,”

Boston Globe, September 18, 2001.

2. John Hanford, the Bush adminis-

tration’s ambassador at large, made

the criticism of France for interna-

tional religious freedom. Hanford

noted that items like headscarves are

worn “as a heartfelt manifestation”

of faith, and “this is, we believe, a

basic right that should be pro-

tected.” Hanford spoke in the

course of releasing an official report

on religious freedom that also crit-

icized Turkey for its ban on

headscarves. See Christopher Mar-

quis, “U.S. Chides France on Effort

to Bar Religious Garb in Schools,”

New York Times, December 19,

2003. Contrasting European and

American perceptions of Turkey’s

application to join the European

Union are another intriguing

instance of how the two Western cul-

tures perceive the “religious

identity” question differently, in

this case when looking at a political

question. See David L. Phillips,

“Turkey’s Dreams of Accession,”

Foreign Affairs, September/October

2004, for a characterization of the

mainstream American view; for

some European reaction to Turkish

admission and the American inter-

est in it, see the remarks by Frits

Bolkestein, the EU competition

commissioner, in Tobias Buck and

Daniel Dombey, “Fischler Criticises

NOTES TO APPENDIX VI

107

EU plans for Turkey,” Financial

Times, September 10, 2004, p. 1,

and the discussion in “Turkish

Tales,” The Economist, September 11,

2004.

3. For a survey of neoconservative

thought, see William Kristol, ed.,

The Weekly Standard, A Reader: 1995-

2005 (New York: HarperCollins,

2005).

4. John Locke, A Letter Concerning Tol-

eration (Indianapolis: Bobbs-

Merrill, 1955), p. 13.

5. Havel’s speech is online at

http://www.europa-web.de/europa/

02wwswww/203chart/chart_gb.htm.

It inspired the Charta of European

Identity (1995), which is available at

the same electronic address.

6. Elaine Sciolino, “God’s Place in

Charter Is Dividing Europeans,”

New York Times, May 26, 2004.

7. One example is the career of Ruben

Habito, a native of the Philippines

who, although a Catholic, under-

went Zen training, received a

doctorate in Buddhist philosophy

from Tokyo University, then made

his home in the United States,

where he teaches at Southern

Methodist University and directs the

Maria Kannon Zen Center, both in

Dallas, Texas. See www.innerexplo-

rations.com/catew/13.htm.

8. The association of Islam with

African Americans, and to a lesser

degree with the prison population,

is one of many instances where race

and social class are closely associated

with a particular religious belief.

9. The then-Attorney General John

Ashcroft, who was perhaps the most

avowedly Christian member of the

Bush cabinet, made positive state-

ments about Islam following the

attacks, in tune with the line of the

administration as a whole. As early

as his first address to Congress, on

September 20, 2001, President

Bush said: “I also want to speak

tonight directly to Muslims

throughout the world. We respect

your faith. It’s practiced freely by

many millions of Americans and by

millions more in countries that

America counts as friends. Its teach-

ings are good and peaceful, and

those who commit evil in the name

of Allah blaspheme the name of

Allah. The terrorists are traitors to

their faith, trying, in effect, to

hijack Islam itself.” Bush, Our Mis-

sion and Our Moment: Speeches Since

the Attacks of September 11, Washing-

ton, D.C.: private printing, p. 15.

President Bush’s speeches are avail-

able at www.whitehouse.gov. One

treatment of the Bush White

House’s Christianity can be found

108

in David Frum, The Right Man: An

Inside Account of the Bush White House

(New York: Random House,

2003). Frum was Bush’s speech-

writer and, before his resignation,

one of the very few Jews in the

administration.

10. The Pew Research Center for the

People and the Press report on

“Post-September 11 Attitudes,”

released December 6, 2001, online

at http://peoplepress.org/reports/

display.php3?ReportID=144.

11. See Tony Judt, Post War: A History of

Europe Since 1945 (New York: Pen-

guin Press, 2005).

12. For a completely opposite view of

American imperialism, see Neil

Smith, American Empire: Roosevelt’s

Geographer and the Prelude to Global-

ization (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 2003). Within the

academy, the general view of Amer-

ican expansion is much less rosy

than is the case in high school and

undergraduate classrooms.

13. An interesting, very pluralist

approach to this question is pre-

sented by Joao Carlos Espada, Adam

Wolfson, and Marc F. Plattner, eds.,

Pluralism Without Relativism: Remem-

bering Sir Isaiah Berlin (Lanham:

Lexington Books, 2003).

14. Originally published in the summer

1989 issue of the National Inter-

est; subsequently expanded and

published in book form as The End of

History and the Last Man (New York:

Free Press, 1992).

15. Ralf Dahrendorf, Reflections on the

Revolution in Europe: In a Letter

Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentle-

man in Warsaw (London: Chatto and

Windus, 1990), p. 23.

16. Timothy Garton Ash, History of the

Present: Essays, Sketches and Dispatches

from Europe in the 1990s (New York:

Vintage, 2001).

17. The passage is in the preface; the

text of the 1996 National Security

Strategy (NSS) can be found at

www.fas.org/spp/military/docops/

national/1996stra.htm.

18. See, for example, the feverish battles

over Stanford University’s decision

to modify its traditional “Western

civilization” core curriculum to

include more nonwhite, nonmale

voices, as chronicled in Nathan

Glazer, “Canon Fodder,” New

Republic, August 22, 1988, and

James Atlas, “The Battle of the

Books,” New York Times Magazine,

June 5, 1988. The strong genera-

tional abandonment of “the West” as

a tainted idea is examined in

Matthew Connelly and Paul

Kennedy, “Must It Be the West

Against the Rest?” Atlantic Monthly,

December 1994.

109

19. Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of

Civilizations,” Foreign Affairs, sum-

mer 1993. Huntington added

“cultural freedom” when he

expanded his argument to book

length: The Clash of Civilizations and

the Remaking of the World Order (New

York: Simon and Schuster, 1996),

p. 310.

20. President Clinton was said to have

decided that Balkan cultures were

too deeply affected by ancient ethnic

hatreds for U.S. intervention to

make any difference based on his

reading of Robert Kaplan’s Balkan

Ghosts: A Journey Through History,

(New York: St. Martin’s Press,

1993). See Nader Mousavizadeh,

ed., The Black Book of Bosnia: The

Consequences of Appeasement (New

York: Basic, 1996), p. 54; also

Misha Glenny, The Balkans: Nation-

alism, War and the Great Powers,

1804-1999 (New York: Viking

Penguin, 2000), pp. xxiv-xxv.

21. Robert Kagan and William Kristol,

“Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign

Policy,” Foreign Affairs, July/August

1996; Robert Kagan, “The Benevo-

lent Empire,” Foreign Policy, summer

1998. In spring of 2000, these ideas

were further developed, alongside

contributions from several noted

architects of George W. Bush’s secu-

rity policies, in Kristol and Kagan’s

book Present Dangers: Crisis and

Opportunity in America’s Foreign

and Defense Policies (Washington:

Encounter Books, 2000). The

book identified the present danger

as U.S. hesitancy in maintaining

global hegemony.

22. George W. Bush, Our Mission and

Our Moment: Speeches Since the Attacks

of September 11.

23. Max Boot gave this argument on

October 15, 2001, in his Weekly

Standard article “The Case for

American Empire.” “Rome has

been attacked, and Rome is fighting

to re-establish its security and its

hegemony,” Michael Ignatieff wrote

in the New York Times on February 5,

2002, introducing the imperial

figure of speech into a broader dis-

course. Washington Post columnist

Sebastian Mallaby’s article “The

Reluctant Imperialist: Terrorism,

Failed States, and the Case for

American Empire” appeared in For-

eign Affairs the following month.

Since then there have been numer-

ous articles and, by now, a number

of books, including Max Boot, The

Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and

the Rise of American Power (New York:

Basic, 2002); Niall Ferguson,

Empire: The Rise and Demise of the

British World Order and the Lessons for

Global Power (New York: Basic,

110

2003) and Colossus: The Price of

American Power (New York: Penguin,

2004), by a British historian and

frequent advocate of empire, par-

ticularly in the pages of the New York

Times; Andrew J. Bacevich, American

Empire: The Realities and Consequences

of US Diplomacy (Cambridge: Har-

vard University Press, 2003); Clyde

Prestowitz, Rogue Nation: American

Unilateralism and the Failure of Good

Intentions (New York: Basic, 2003);

Ellen Meiksins Wood, Empire of

Capital (London: Verso, 2003);

and Michael Ignatieff, Empire Lite:

Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and

Afghanistan (New York: Vintage,

2003). See the omnibus reviews by

Brian Urquhart, “World Order and

Mr. Bush,” New York Review of Books,

October 9, 2003; Martin Jacques,

“The Interregnum,” London Review

of Books, February 5, 2004; and

Ronald Steel, “Totem and Taboo,”

Nation, September 20, 2004. An

argument that America’s imperial

moment is more a mood swing than

a permanent shift is made in Ben-

jamin Wallace-Wells, “Right Man’s

Burden: Why Empire Enthusiast

Niall Ferguson Won’t Change His

mind,” Washington Monthly, June

2004.

24. On the birth of the United Nations,

see Stephen C. Schlesinger, Act of

Creation: The Founding of the United

Nations (Boulder: Westview, 2003);

a recent meditation on the West,

including an argument that “uni-

versalization” of the West would

mark its demise, is David Gress,

From Plato to NATO: The Idea of the

West and Its Opponents (New York:

Free Press, 1998).

25. Robert Cooper, The Breaking of

Nations: Order and Chaos in the

Twenty-First Century (New York:

Atlantic Monthly Press, 2004), pp.

30, 60-61.

26. Robert Cooper writes, “The United

States is a state founded on ideas and

its vocation is the spread of those

ideas. European countries are based

on nation and history. For Ameri-

cans history is bunk. They aim, as

the Mexican author Octavio Paz

says, at the colonization not of space

but of time: that is, of the future.”

The Breaking of Nations, pp. 47-48.

27. See Oriana Fallaci, The Rage and the

Pride (New York: Rizzoli Interna-

tional, 2002); on how Michel

Houellebecq created a scandal by

saying Islam was a “stupid” religion,

see Phillip Delves Broughton,

“Writer Defends Right to Call Islam

‘Stupid,’ ” Daily Telegraph, Septem-

ber 18, 2002; Brigitte Bardot, Un

Cri dans le silence (Paris: Editions

du Rocher, 2003); Ann Coulter,

111

Treason: Liberal Treachery from the

Cold War to the War on Terrorism (New

York: Crown, 2003); Melanie

Phillips’s columns appear in the

London Daily Mail and are online at

www.melaniephillips.com. Phillips’s

column “You Say Phobe, I Say

Phooey” from June 11, 2004, gives

her perspective on being called an

Islamophobe. Bill O’Reilly hosts The

O’Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel

and transcripts from his show are

online at www.foxnews.com.

28. Considerable controversy attended

the publication of Franklin Graham

and Bruce Nygren, The Name

(Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2002)

and Graham’s comments on Islam

made at the time, some of which can

be found in an interview at www.pbs.

org; for Robertson (and others), see

“Muhammad a Terrorist to Falwell,”

New York Times, October 4, 2002,

and “Islam Is Violent In Nature,

Robertson Says,” New York Times,

February 23, 2002.

29. See Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of

Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror

(New York: Modern Library,

2003); and From Babel to Dragomans

(New York: Oxford, 2004), as well

as Ian Buruma’s review of the latter

book in the New Yorker, June 14,

2004. For Samuel Huntington,

see note 19, supra, and his recent

argument for defending what he

calls the “Anglo-Protestant” nature

of the United States in Who Are We?:

The Challenges to America’s National

Identity (New York: Simon and

Schuster, 2004).

30. A glimpse of how one public intel-

lectual might influence policy can

be found in David Frum’s descrip-

tion of a visit by Bernard Lewis to

the White House, in Frum, The Right

Man: The Surprise Presidency of George

W. Bush (New York: Random

House, 2003), pp. 170-171.

31. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “Forgetting

Reinhold Niebuhr,” New York Times,

September 18, 2005.

32. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan

announced the formation of an

initiative toward an Alliance of Civ-

ilizations in a statement on July 14,

2005. Based at the United Nations

and cosponsored by the prime min-

isters of Spain and Turkey, the

alliance will work to bridge divides

between societies that are being

exploited by extremists.

Sorbonne-educated Mustapha Tlili is the founderand director of Dialogues and a research scholar at theRemarque Institute of New York University. He is aformer senior United Nations official, having servedthe organization in various capacities over a longcareer. In particular, he was the director of the UNinformation center for France, located in Paris; chiefof the Anti-Apartheid, Namibia, Palestine, andDecolonization programs section in the Departmentof Public Information at UN Headquarters in NewYork; and principal officer/director in charge ofcommunications policy in the same department. Anestablished novelist, Mustapha Tlili is a knight of theFrench Order of Arts and Letters and a member ofHuman Rights Watch’s Advisory Committee for theMiddle East and North Africa.

Dialogues has received financial support from theCarnegie Corporation, the MacArthur Foundation,the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the governments ofFrance, Malaysia, the State of Qatar, and the UnitedKingdom, the Spanish foundation El LegadoAndalusí, Majlis El Hassan, the nongovernmentalorganization of His Royal Highness Prince El Hassanbin Talal of Jordan, and Mortimer B. Zuckerman.

In these difficult times, when anger, extremism, andmisunderstanding appear to have gained the upperhand, Dialogues’ work is crucial to world peace andsecurity. Through dialogue based on mutual respect,Muslim and Western community leaders can dispelthe current climate of anger, check extremist trends,and lay the foundations for a more comprehensiveand lasting peace.

New York University is one of the world’s largest pri-vate universities. NYU’s president, Dr. John Sexton,is passionately committed to the goal of making NYUthe first truly global university. As the Universityachieves its core mission—the production of knowl-edge and the education of students for lives of leader-ship and service–it also seeks to foster a culture ofinformed dialogue and debate. The Universityencourages the exchange of ideas, knowledge, prac-tice, and beliefs inside, and outside, the classroom.

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