The West, Mediterranean Islam, and the Search for a New Beginning

Antony T. Sullivan

Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies

The University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, Michigan

(Read to the Annual Meeting of The Philadelphia Society, April, 1999)

"The levanter increased in intensity...the wind that had brought the Moors, the smell of the desert...and the dreams of men who had left to search for the unknown..."

Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

These are not propitious times to attempt to comment objectively on Islam. (1) Currently, there is so very much that gets in the way. In the West, Islam has come to be widely identified with terrorism, and frequently is assumed to constitute a surrogate, perhaps in tandem with Confucian China, for the late USSR as a geostrategic threat to the United States. In the Muslim world, a small minority of extremists disfigure the third and perhaps most historically tolerant of the three monotheistic revelations by invoking putative religious sanctions for actions which are neither more nor less than baldly criminal. Terrorism by individuals who call themselves Muslims, it must be clearly understood, constitutes first and foremost a direct attack on the tolerance, compassion and mercy that historically have characterized Islam both as creed and practice. (2) Indeed, one might argue that an important source of the Western rediscovery during the Renaissance of the dignity and rights of man was through an Arab Muslim as uncovered and promulgated by the Italian humanist Pico della Mirandola in his "Oration on the Dignity of Man." (3) Unfortunately, the hard reality now is that in both the West and in Islamdom (to use Marshall Hodgson's phrase), religions and civilizations have become increasingly reified. Today, precious little effort is being given anywhere to acquiring understanding of supposedly homogeneous and inimical "Others." (4) I submit that unless Christians and Muslims begin to hear each other when they whisper prayers to their common God, they indeed are likely to meet on obscure battlefields around the world. (5) Surely, any war of civilizations or religions is not one that either side will win. As a new century impends, I suggest that Christians and Muslims alike need to attempt a new beginning.(6)

It may be especially important for Westerners to understand that the Quran specifically forbids any imposition of Islam on non-Muslims by force. On the subject of religious toleration, the Quran is categorical: "There shall be no compulsion," it states, "in matters of faith" (2:256). The Quran endorses free will as represented by the freedom it accords each individual to choose whether to believe or not to believe. "The truth is from your Lord," the Quran states, "so let him who pleases believe; and let him who pleases disbelieve" (18:29). And the Quran states elsewhere: "Say: O Mankind! Indeed there has come to you the truth from your Lord. Whosoever, therefore, chooses to follow the Right Path, follows it but for his own good, and whosoever chooses to go astray, goes astray but to his own hurt" (10: 108). To the degree to which Muslims or self-proclaimed Islamic regimes have in fact violated such injunctions prescribing toleration and religious pluralism, they have grossly transgressed against the most fundamental tenets of Islam itself. (7)

In these remarks, I propose (1) to suggest new paradigms for Westerners and Christians to start to think about Islam, (2) to note key aspects of Muslim belief and practice, and (3) to demonstrate how the Islamic concept of Jihad should and should not be understood. Inter alia, I shall place emphasis on commonalities between Christianity and Islam, and suggest how Western and Muslim conservatives may assist the Abrahamic traditions to move into the new century as companions rather than as enemies.

Note that I use the word "Abrahamic." Muslims understand their faith as pure and unadulterated Abrahamic monotheism, purged of the textual deformations and/or theological misunderstandings which they believe have compromised Judaism and Christianity. One should note that for some years after he began his mission in 610 A. D., Muhammad had no idea that he would in fact establish a new and separate Abrahamic monotheism. Rather, he understood his charge to be only the same as that given to the many prophets whom he emphasized had come before him. His mission, Muhammad believed, was simply that very ancient, semitic one of calling upon a fallen humankind to repent of sin and discover the love and mercy of what in Arabic is al-Lah, the one and only God. (8) Revelations to Muhammad included important portions of both the Jewish and Christian scriptures which were duly incorporated into the Qur'an. Only in early 624 did Muhammad direct that the direction of prayer be turned away from Jerusalem, toward which all Muslims had previously prayed, in favor of the Arabian commercial capital of Mecca. By this dramatic gesture of replacing Jerusalem with Mecca as the direction of prayer, Muhammad denominated Islam as a monotheism separate and distinct from the two Abrahamic revelations which preceded it and to which it owes so much.

Concerning Abrahamic faiths and civilization, let me go further. I would suggest that the civilization of the contemporary West might more accurately be designated as "Abrahamic" than as "Judaeo-Christian." Clearly, Judaeo-Christian is a rubric that excludes Islam from the congeries of values which Jews and Christians are presumed to share. In that sense, Judaeo-Christian is not only inaccurate but may in fact contribute to the apparent polarization in recent years between the West and a stereotypical, alien Muslim enemy. Rarely understood in the West (and today occasionally denied in the Islamic world) is the fact that Islam shares with Judaism and Christianity a long, common history, and many of the same religious beliefs and cultural orientations. In the words of Imam Muhammad Abd al-Raouf, Muslims believe in the "Christian Gospel, the Christian Prophet [Jesus Christ], his twelve Apostles, his mother's purity, and his miraculous birth...Above all, we share a belief in...our common God." (9) Most bluntly put, without Judaism and Christianity having preceded it, Islam as revealed and practiced would simply be inconceivable. (10)

In passing, one might note that "Judaeo-Christian" is a category invented and widely disseminated only during the past four decades. As late as the l950's, the operative term for describing the heritage of the West was "Graeco-Roman." Precisely how and why "Judaeo-Christian" came to replace "Graeco-Roman" is a story awaiting an author. (11) With some 6 million Muslims now in the United States as against 5.6 million Jews, and major immigrant Muslim communities in Western Europe, the time may be ripe to rethink how we may most accurately describe civilizations and categorize the monotheistic faiths. What is most important to keep clearly in mind is that especially today, Islam is fully in and of the West, just as the West has become in and of Islam.

One should always remember that Islam was revealed and first adopted within exactly the same semitic ethos and general geographic location as were Judaism and Christianity.

Like them, Islam was born not far from the Mediterranean, and like the prior Abrahamic revelations has been profoundly shaped over 1400 years by its interactions with the other monotheistic faiths which ring the Mediterranean. In other words, Islam should be understood religiously, and Arab Islam culturally, as part of that same Mediterranean civilization which has also so profoundly shaped Judaism and Christianity. As one illustration of what I have in mind when I say this, I strongly recommend the two magnificent volumes first published in 1949 by the great French historian Charles Braudel, La Mediterranee et le monde mediterraneen a l'epoque de Philippe II. (12) Why a strong argument can be made that the "West" (despite current headlines) does not stop at the Bosporous, (13) but at the Indus, is amply demonstrated by Braudel's massive volumes.

The location of the eastern terminus of the West is a point worth pondering. On this score, the views of Confucian and Hindu civilization as to where the West ends (or begins) are apposite. Both China and India consider the West to constitute one civilizational block derived from three constituent parts: Byzantium, Europe, and the world of Mediterranean Islam. In other words, for the very different civilizations located to its east, Western civilization is most emphatically not made up only of Europe and North America but consists also of both Arab Christianity and the Arab Muslim world. Concerning this other, more capacious definition of the West, our distinguished colleague Leonard Liggio recently commented to me: "That [also] is my view."

And Liggio aptly continued: "When Islam arose it adopted (especially in Syria) the Hellenistic culture which Byzantium and Europe were rejecting. Islam carried logic, philosophy and science beyond the Hellenistic legacy. Eventually Islam passed on the classical intellectual tradition to Europe....Europe built on the shoulders of the Islamic part of that tradition. Similarly, Islam built on the capitalism and commerce of Hellenistic tradition and for centuries was far ahead of Byzantium and Europe. Later, Islam was burdened by the domination of Ottoman rule. In a sense, Islam became like Byzantium--one large empire rather than the European continuity of the Islamic tradition of many different political centers...." (14) In all of this, Liggio's fundamental point is that the "Abrahamic faiths" have each been shaped by and may be considered the "successors" to Hellenistic civilization, and that the cultures shaped or spawned by Judaism, Christianity and Arab Islam must each be regarded as part of that larger civilizational ecumene which I have metaphorically suggested has its frontier on the Indus rather than on the Bosporous.

At the same time, note should be taken of the fact that less than one in five of the world's more than one billion Muslims are Arabs. The vast majority of Muslims are concentrated in south and southeast Asia. For example, there are more Muslims in Malaysia (185 million) than there are in all of the Arab world. Certainly, Muslims in India, and the Muslims in China, Malaysia and Indonesia, have helped to develop and/or have participated historically in cultures radically different from those that ring the Mediterranean and extend into northern Europe and North America.

Nevertheless, when individuals such as Professor Samuel P. Huntington speak of an impending "clash of civilizations" (15) pitting Islam against the West, it is not the vast majority of the world's Muslims located in south Asia that they primarily have in mind. Rather, their concern centers on the minority of Arab Muslims who, with their Christian Arab brothers, inhabit the southern and eastern Mediterranean basin. Why 250 million Arab Muslims, living in weak and largely undemocratic states frequently suffering from bankrupt economies and collapsing infrastructures, should be in a position to mount any civilizational conflict with anyone Huntington himself never makes clear. (16) In his book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Simon and Schuster, 1996), Professor Huntington repeated in modified form his hypothesis first advanced in Foreign Affairs in 1993 (17) predicting a clash between Islamic and Confucian civilizations on the one hand and the West on the other. (18) But what is perhaps most interesting, and apparently not widely understood, is that in 1997 Huntington repudiated his earlier identification of Islam and China as the new enemies of America: "[T]he United States lacks any single country or threat against which it can convincingly counterpose itself," Huntington wrote two years ago. "Islamic fundamentalism is too diffuse and too remote geographically." (19) He added that it may have been the very absence of any foreign threat, Muslim or otherwise, that created the psychological space for American extremists to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City. (20) Unfortunately, this is very much like closing the barn door after the horses have been stolen. Perceptions of a substantial portion of the American establishment seem to have been formed based on the inaccurate prognostications of a menacing Islamic "Other" which Professor Huntington originally made in 1993. (21)

Now allow me to comment briefly on what Islam is and what it is not.

First, a few linguistic explanations. In Arabic, the verbal noun "Islam" means "submission," in the broadest and most profound sense. A "Muslim" is one who submits to the One who created him and to whom he knows he must return. The name "Muhammad" means "he who is highly praised." The Western term commonly used in the early decades of this century to denominate Islam, "Muhammadanism," is radically misleading since it may imply either that Muhammad simply invented what soon became a world religion without benefit of any divine revelation, or that Muslims somehow believe that Muhammad was divine in a fashion similar to the Christian understanding of the nature of Christ. In other words, the proper word to use in reference to the faith of those who call themselves Muslims is "Islam," not "Muhammadanism" or (worse) "Mahound," the latter being the pejorative term characteristic of medieval Christian polemics against the third Abrahamic revelation.

Here, I can do no more than summarize very briefly the principal pillars of Muslim belief, and suggest how profoundly Christianity shaped the nature of the Quranic revelation.

The principal articles of Islamic faith are (1) that "There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his Prophet; (2) prayer (performed either individually or communally) five times daily and beginning with the first hint of morning light; (3) total abstinence from food and physical pleasures during daylight hours of the holy month of Ramadan; (4) annual payment of the religious tax of zakat, generally understood to be equivalent to 2.5 percent of one's net worth; and (5) making of the hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, at least once in a believer's lifetime. On these five fundamental pillars of Islam all Muslims, everywhere, agree, and hold that without subscribing to and observance of these principles one cannot consider oneself to be a Muslim.

Much of what characterizes Islamic culture and which shapes the lives of individual Muslims, is the attempt to emulate the practices of the Prophet Muhammad as reported in the six medieval Sunni collections of hadith of what the Prophet is supposed to have said and did when confronted by the most various of human situations. Shi'a Muslims have their own collections of hadith but the principle is the same. For all Muslims, the attempt to imitate the sunna, or words and deeds of the Prophet, is fundamental to a life of virtue and one pleasing to almighty God.

Time will permit only a hint of the vast reservoir of faith that Christianity and Islam share.

The specific vehicle for the revelation to Muhammad of what Muslims believe to be the literal word of God was the Archangel Gabriel. In the hadith, or tradition, Gabriel is spoken of as al-Namus al-akbar, of "the greatest spirit," and to be the same spirit who once appeared to Moses. Gabriel is described as the messenger (al-rasul) through whom God spoke to all of His prophets from Abraham to Jesus Christ. And the Virgin Mary is a major figure in the Quran.

Thus: "And when the angels said, O Mary, surely Allah has chosen thee and purified thee" (3:41). Or again: "When the angels said, O Mary, surely Allah gives thee good news with a word from Him of one whose name is the Messiah" (3:44). And once more: "Surely I [Mary] have vowed a fast to the Beneficent God, so I shall not speak to any man today" (19:26). Muslims hold Mary in the highest regard as the God-touched mother of Him whom they consider to be one of the greatest prophets, and who Himself is a subject of substantial Quranic reference.

Jesus, the Quran states, is "worthy of regard in this world and the hereafter, and is one of those drawn nigh to God" (3:44). In reference to the mission of Jesus, the Quran quotes Jesus as saying, "I said to them naught save what as Thou did command me: Serve Allah, my Lord and your Lord; and I was a witness of them as long as I was among them, but when Thou didst cause me to die, Thou was the watcher over them, and Thou art witness of all things" (5: 116,117). And concerning the crucifixion of Jesus, the Quran states: "O Jesus! I will cause thee to die and exalt thee in My presence and clear thee of those who disbelieve and make those who follow thee above those who disbelieve to the Day of Resurrection" (3:54). In relation to Jesus Christ, Muslims believe that the Christ depicted in the Quran was the last and greatest in the long line of prophets who preceded Muhammad, and whose work Muhammad definitely completed as the final prophet, or "seal" of all the prophets, that God has sent to mankind.

All of this may be suggestive of new ways in which Christians and Jews in the West might begin to think about Islam, but it fails spiritually to penetrate the nature of Islamic religiosity. For such spiritual penetration, one can perhaps most usefully turn to the marvelous book by Professor Peter Kreeft of Boston College, Ecumenical Jihad (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996). Here, Kreeft offers an imaginary dialogue between himself in the role of a contemporary non-Muslim and misinformed Westerner and the Prophet Muhammad. The exchange which Kreeft presents is of considerable rhetorical power, and suggests that at least some Western Christians are beginning to penetrate to the spiritual core of Islam. (22)

The exchange with Muhammad begins when a departing Buddha, with whom Kreeft had just completed a discussion, says, "This [next] man will teach you more about religion than Confucius or [I]...He will teach you the heart and soul of all true religion." Kreeft confesses to being "shocked" by this, since the man who now appeared before him was clearly Muhammad. "So I asked [Muhammad]," Kreeft writes, "What is the heart and soul of all true religion?" And the answer "came from [him] in a single word: "Islam-surrender-and the peace that comes from surrender, the peace that the world cannot give, that comes only from total surrender to the will of God. This is the heart and soul of all true religion...The only true first step is adoration, the bent knee and the bent spirit, surrender, Islam."

Muhammad goes on to utter a warning: "You [Westerners] are not winning your world, you are not winning your jihad, your spiritual warfare; your world is sliding down the road to Hell. Why? Why have you lost a century to the devil? [It is] because you prattle about yourselves and your freedoms and your rights and your self-fulfillment rather than forgetting yourself and adoring and obeying the Lord...the child you must become again if you are to enter His Kingdom. The saying is His, not mine. I am only his prophet. He is the One than whom there is no other. La ilaha ill-Allah." And Muhammad then fell to his knees, Kreeft writes, "and bowed his back and prayed." And Kreeft continues:

Kreeft: "The comfortably condescending cultural chauvinism with which I had always unconsciously viewed those holy Arabic words and that holy Arabic deed seemed to have suddenly died in me...I wondered...whether my world could ever be saved in any other way...I suspected then that the explosive growth of Islam in our time might be due to a simpler cause than any sociologist had yet discovered: that God blesses obedience and faithfulness, especially when surrounded by unfaithful and disobedient cultures." Meanwhile, Muhammad had more to say.

Muhammad: "The religion I taught my people was the simplest one in the world. There are times that call for complexity, and there are times that call for simplicity. Today is a time when 'simplistic' is the favorite sneer word of a decadent, arrogant, corrupt, and aggressively anti-God establishment. So what time do you think it is today?"

Kreeft: "I had nothing to say, so Muhammad answered his own question."

Muhammad: "It is time for a jihad, a holy war, a spiritual war. Rather, it is time to wake up to the fact that, whether you like it or not, you are in the middle of one."

Kreeft: "But we are commanded to love our enemies, not to make war."

Muhammad: "We love our human enemies, we war against our spirit enemies."

Kreeft: "Aren't Muslims famous for confusing the two and fighting literal holy wars?"

Muhammad: "Some. About three percent of Muslims in the world believe that jihad means physical war, killing infidels. But the Quran make it quite clear that this war is first within oneself and against one's own sins and infidelities."

Kreeft: "But your people, the Arabs, are world-famous for violence."

Muhammad: "Unlike your people in Northern Ireland, I suppose."

Kreeft: But your whole history is full of--"

Muhammad: "Crusades and inquisitions and forced conversions and anti-Semitism and religious wars?"

Kreeft: "I quickly realized that my 'argument' was going nowhere except to blow up in my face." Thereupon, Kreeft writes, Muhammad continued more gently.

Muhammad: "Let me try to explain. Islam and jihad are intrinsically connected. For Islam means not only 'submission' but also 'peace,' the peace that the world cannot give, the peace that only God can give, when we submit to Him. And this submission requires the inner jihad, a war on our war against God. So we get the paradoxical result that peace (Islam) is attained only through war (jihad). And this peace also leads to war, because the submission that is this peace requires us to obey God's will, and God's will for us is to become spiritual warriors against evil." (23)

Especially in recent decades, no term has perhaps been more misunderstood by Muslims and non-Muslims alike than the word jihad. Among both Muslim extremists on the one hand and the general public in the West on the other, jihad has come to be associated with military conflict, the use of force, and compulsion and intolerance generally. All conceptions of jihad which place primary emphasis on violence are radically anti-Quranic, and themselves now constitute major impediments to any new beginning in Muslim-Western relations. (24)

In the West, far too many commentators expostulate about Islam who have no knowledge of Arabic. In fact, it is a useful exercise to analyze the various meanings of jihad as offered in the two best Arabic-English dictionaries available, as I recently did at some length in another paper. The dictionaries to which I refer are Hans Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 3rd edition, 1980), and William Edward Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon (Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 3rd edition, 1980). Here, let me simply note that the Arabic root of the word jihad-- --means variously to try, to endeavor, to strive, to exert effort, and/or to put oneself out. In the four classes of verbs in which the root appears, only one (verb class three) incorporates any notion whatsoever of military activity. Even here, warfare is only a tertiary meaning. Both Wehr and Lane agree that the principal meaning of (the class three verb) is to "endeavor" or to "strive" in primarily moral or spiritual ways.

The fact of the matter is that jihad has been historically understood by Muslims as of two different sorts, one far more important than the other. The "greater" jihad, or most important jihad, is simply the eternal struggle of each individual human soul against temptation and the wiles of Satan. The "lesser" jihad, now much emphasized but downplayed in Islamic history, is the conduct of defensive war to protect the Islamic community. On the permissibility of defensive war only, the Quran is explicit: "And fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you," the Quran states, "and be not aggressive; for surely Allah loves not the aggressors" (2:19). Fighting, the Quran explains, is permitted by Muslims only against people "who broke their oaths and aimed at the expulsion of the Prophet and they attacked you first" (9:13). And when defensive religious war is unavoidable, the Quran makes clear that no advantage should be taken of the situation to amass booty. "Let those fight in the way of Allah," it observes, "who sell this world's life for the Hereafter" (4:74). Above all, the Quran emphasizes that peace is much to be preferred to military conflict: "If [one's enemies} incline to peace, incline thou also to it and trust in Allah...And if they intend to deceive thee--then surely Allah is sufficient for thee" (8:61, 62). In fact, the Quranic understanding of jihad has much in common with the Christian notion of "just war." (25)

If it is difficult to discuss Islam objectively today, it may be more difficult yet to persuade many that the contemporary Islamic revival--so glibly represented by much of the Western media as constituting medieval fanaticism and political extremism--is in fact something radically different. The truth is that at least in the Arab world, "Islamic fundamentalism" is now primarily a politically moderate phenomenon which is supportive of traditional values and morality, endorses limited and responsive government, and emphasizes the importance to economic development of private property and entrepreneurship. (26) The Islamic revival has been considerably more successful than were the secular Arab nationalists of yore in bringing women out of the home and into both politics and civil society. Most important for American conservatives to understand is that the vast majority of individuals and groups involved in the contemporary Islamic revival articulate a conservative agenda which accords priority to the "permanent things," to the "wisdom of the ancestors," and to cultural orientations profoundly inimical to precisely the secularist radicalism which Kreeft deplores. To date, only the Vatican among major Western institutions has recognized this truth. Here, I refer to Pope John Paul 11's recent cooperation with major Muslim countries (Libya and Iran being two) at both the Cairo Conference on Population and the Beijing Conference on Women. (27)

Let me state the matter bluntly. Much of the return to an activist religious faith by Muslims worldwide should be understood by American conservatives to be very good news indeed. The Islamic revival has largely purged Muslim countries (with the notable exceptions of Syria and Iraq) of the socialist nationalism once symbolized by Gamal Abdul Nasir of Egypt. Islamic movements have everywhere taken the initiative in reactivating that civil society, or "Third Sector," which Nasirist statism had done so much to destroy. Today, Islamist Arab intellectuals are spearheading discussion concerning limitation of the power of the state, and how an appropriate equilibrium between liberty and community may be established. Everywhere, Islamist intellectuals are articulating notions of culture, tradition and society strikingly congruent with the world view of the late Russell Kirk and Robert Nisbet, and the scholarship of the distinguished American student of Third World societies, Professor Grace Goodell of The Johns Hopkins University. The reassertion of conservatism in the Islamic world should be understood by American conservatives to constitute an opportunity to recruit new allies among moderate Islamists in order more effectively to confront the radical secularism of late modernity which is now so prevalent everywhere. (28)

In this regard, let me report the establishment in 1997 of a unique international association of distinguished Christian and Muslim scholars of conservative and/or culturally traditionalist inclination committed to common investigation of the permanent things. The association of which I speak is the Circle of Tradition and Progress, which is currently organizing an international conference to be held in London. Christian members of the Circle's Steering Committee include such individuals as Charles Butterworth, David Burrell, Louis Cantori, John Esposito, Leonard Liggio, and Antony T. Sullivan. Muslim members of the Steering Committee are predominantly Egyptian and include such eminent Arab intellectuals as Kamal Abu al Magd, Muhammad Amara, Tariq al Bishri, Adel Hussein, Fahmi Huweidi and Yusuf Qaradawi. Most fundamentally, the objective of the research, conferences and publications which the Circle projects is to reintegrate Mediterranean and Arab Islam within that ancient Western ecumene of which it long constituted an important part. Specifically, the Circle's goal is to do so precisely within the parameters of cultural conservatism, democratic governance and individual liberty to which members of the Philadelphia Society subscribe. I invite you to interest yourselves in our work.

To provide a more substantive notion of what the Circle is about, it may be useful to quote from its founding statement. Thus: "Implicit in the modernist project derived substantially from the European Enlightenment is an arrogant and naive insistence that human fulfillment can be achieved solely on materialistic bases, and a belief in the absolute autonomy of human reason and in man's presumed ability to transcend his moral and cultural systems in isolation from any belief in transcendence. The Circle [proposes to focus] on the preservation of religious and traditional values and [to work for] progress in the Muslim world, the West, and elsewhere. Among much else, the Circle [will seek to encourage] a societal holism [which] will incorporate accountable and democratic government, basic individual liberty and human rights, and an economic system that is both free and humane. What [the Circle] proposes is to reestablish an equilibrium between the spiritual and the material, and reclaim for our time what have been called the 'permanent things.' Most broadly, the intention of the Circle is to foster intellectual activities designed to rectify the modern rupture between economics and ethics, reason and religion, and man and God. Above all, [the Circle] hope[s] to encourage greater understanding between religions and to contribute to reconciliation of peoples and to international cooperation." (29) This founding statement of the Circle of Tradition and Progress specifically cites such individuals as Edmund Burke, Eric Voegelin, Russell Kirk and Gerhart Niemeyer as providing much of its inspiration.

On the threshold of a new century, it seems especially appropriate that all of the children of Abraham endeavor to reject religious, cultural or geostrategic polarization. Rather, it now seems imperative that each of the monotheistic faiths seek to create the conditions that may facilitate the undertaking of common campaigns to address the problems of late modernity that currently confront them all. On this score as on so much else, Imam Abd al-Raouf offers good counsel. "We earnestly urge [our friends in the West]," he writes, "to go back to God, to turn their face to Him...What was morally right for Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad must be the same for us--whether we live in America, Europe, Asia, or Africa. We all should remember that we are brothers, members of the [same] human family. [Therefore] let us live together in peace..." (30) The activities of the Circle of Tradition and Progress are merely one (conservative) attempt to foster realization of exactly those objectives.

Footnotes

(1) For their counsel or comments on aspects of this paper, I am grateful to Leonard J. Hochberg, Robert L. Houbeck, Jr., Leonard P. Liggio, and Stephen J. Tonsor.
(2) For one judicious recent essay on terrorism, see Bernard Lewis, "License to Kill: Usama bin Ladin's Declaration of Jihad," Foreign Affairs, November/December 1998. Lewis observes that "At no point do the basic texts of Islam enjoin terrorism and murder. At no point do they even consider the random slaughter of uninvolved bystanders." Lewis also takes note of Islam's generally excellent record of toleration of non-Muslim religious communities, especially when that record is contrasted with that of medieval Christianity where, as Lewis notes, "evictions of Jews and...Muslims [by Christians] were normal and frequent" (p.19). It is unfortunate that this dispassionate essay was accorded so lurid a title.
(3) See Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller and John Herman Randall, Jr., eds., Renaissance Philosophy of Man: Selections in Translation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956, p.223. Pico stated: "I have read in the records of the Arabians, reverend Fathers, that Abdala [Abd Allah] the Saracen, when questioned as to what on this stage of the world, as it were, could be seen most worthy of wonder, replied: 'There is nothing to be seen more wonderful than man'." Speculation as to the identity of this Abd Allah has ranged from a blood relative of the Prophet Muhammad to the Abbasid era humanist Ibn Qutaiba, author of Khalq al Insan, or The Creation of Man. Given the arguments that I make below in this paper, it may be of interest to know that Pico had planned his "Oration" as the introductory speech at a public disputation he had hoped to have in Rome on a set of 900 theses that he had published. This speech was never delivered because Pope Innocent V111 suspended the proposed disputation and appointed a commission to examine the orthodoxy of Pico's theses. Some were condemned as heretical, quite possibly because they were considered "syncretist" (or tending to find a common body of truth that unites all of the Abrahamic belief systems). Evidently, resistance to recognition of and dialogue with a putatively religious "Other" is not a phenomenon unique to the late 20th century.
(4) In the West as far as Islam is concerned, demonization has recently seemed to be the order of the day. For example, Conor Cruise O'Brien writes that Muslim society "looks profoundly repulsive...It looks repulsive because it is repulsive...Arab society is sick...A Westerner who claims to admire Muslim society, while still adhering to Western values, is either a hypocrite or an ignoramus or a bit of both." (See O'Brien, The Times [London], 11 May 1989). Probably, O'Brien would consider the arguments advanced in this paper as silly, and the author a cultural defector.
(5) Such confrontation is exactly what some propagandists in the West seem to desire. For one particularly misinformed opinion of Islam which can only enhance the likelihood of religious or civilizational conflict, see the special section on "Islam and the West" in Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, February 1999, pp. 10-23. This section of Chronicles contains essays by Thomas Fleming, Editor of the magazine, and James George Jatras (described as a "policy analyst" in the U.S. Senate), Harold O.J. Brown, and Srdja Trifkovic. For many years, Chronicles and its Editor have been staunch partisans of Serbia and defenders of the Serbian military campaign against Muslims in the Balkans.
(6) For a summary of the stereotypes and the legacy of policy blunders which impede the United States from encouraging such a new beginning, see Augustus Richard Norton, "Rethinking United States Policy Toward the Muslim World," Current History, February 1999, pp. 51-58.
(7) Concerning violations by imperfect mortals of divine prescriptions, it may be useful to recall an observation by the Muslim Imam Muhammad Abd al-Raouf. Just as in Christianity where "injustice, corruption and bloodletting have been committed in the name of a faith that teaches love, tenderness, and sympathy," so in Islam, Abd al-Raouf noted, the commandments of the faith and the practice of individual Muslims have often been at variance. "One must make a distinction between the ideal and the reality, and between Muslims in the ideal and Muslims as they actually behave," Abd al-Raouf argued. "There is often a gap between the ideal and its application...there is and has almost always been a gap between Islam and the Muslims." (See al-Raouf, A Muslim's Reflections on Democratic Capitalism, Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1984, p. 21).
(8) Immediately after Muhammad's receipt of the very first of God's revelations, a learned Christian friend, one Waraqa ibn Naufal, told Muhammad's wife Khadija to assure her deeply worried husband that he was not in fact insane but had indeed received a message from on high. "Holy! Holy!," Waraqa exclaimed. "If you have spoken the truth to me, O khadija, there has come to him the greatest namus [the Greek nomos] who came to Moses aforetime, and lo, he is the prophet of his people" (Ibn Ishaq, Sira 153, in Alfred Guillaume (trans. and ed.), The Life of Muhammad, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1955, p. 107). Waraqa hurried over to the new prophet and kissed him on the forehead. However, Waraqa warned Muhammad that his people were likely to reject his message and to send him into exile. In that regard, Waraqa expressed regret that, given his age, he was unlikely to be alive to assist Muhammad when his time of troubles came. Christians--and Muslims--in the late 20th century might do well to recall this story of Christian-Muslim collaboration at the birth of the third Abrahamic revelation. Might what once was become again a reality?
(9) Ibid., p. 69.
(10) Concerning the use of "Abrahamic" rather than "Judaeo-Christian" to describe the monotheistic traditions, there is good news to report. The traditionalist Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society (Rockford, Illinois) now emphasizes that its international conference program places emphasis on bringing together "all" of the "scattered children of Abraham: Jews, Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Evangelicals, and Mormons."
(11) Concerning the idea of Graeco-Roman civilization, see David Gress, From Plato to Nato: The Idea of the West and its Opponents, New York: Free Press, 1998. Certainly, Gress would prefer the designation of the West as Judaeo-Christian rather than Graeco-Roman, despite his ascription to Roman law of a major role in the shaping of Western society. Gress's discomfort with the category of Graeco-Roman is due to the fact that he associates the putative ideals of classical Greece (which the Roman Empire helped to disseminate) with the "radical" (Voltaire) rather than "sceptical" (Montesquieu, David Hume) Enlightenment, and with 20th century American liberalism. In particular, Gress identifies the formation of the West more with Christian ethics and Germanic ideas of limited power than he does with such "abstract" notions as democracy and tolerance whose source he believes a traditional but flawed Grand Narrative located in classical Greece. Above all, Gress maintains that since the Enlightenment the West has erred because it has used the myth of ancient Greece as a "replacement for Christianity" (p. 60). There is no significant appreciation in Gress's book of the major role that Islam and the Arabs have played in the establishment and development of Western civilization. On the contrary, Gress follows Samuel P. Huntington in treating Islam as an alien and potentially enemy Other (see especially pp.527-534). For one insightful critique of Gress's argument which echoes criticisms made earlier by James Kurth of Samuel Huntington's hypothesis of a looming "conflict of civilizations," see Morton A. Kaplan, "What is the West?", The World and I, Vol. 13, No. 12, December 1998, pp.14-15. Kaplan points out that classical Greek science was derived from North Africa and the Middle East, and that Christianity is hardly a Western invention. Kaplan implicitly argues for retention of the category of "Graeco-Roman" as a proper designation of the essence of the West. Echoing Kurth, Kaplan maintains that today the most dangerous enemies of the West are not outside it but "within its very bowels" in the form or irrationalism, relativism, and the collapse of faith.
(12) This book was originally published in Paris by librairie Armand Colin. One recent English translation was published by the University of California Press in 1995.
(13) For a recent analysis of how problematic the traditional notion is of a peninsular European continent and culture terminating neatly at the Bosporous, see J.G.A. Pocock, "What Do We Mean By Europe?", The Wilson Quarterly, Winter 1997.
(14) Liggio to Sullivan, electronic mail, 1 November 1998.
(15) The very concept of "civilization" is of course a highly problematic one. In commenting on the seminal work of the sociologist and philosopher of history Pitirim Sorokin, Bruce G. Brander observes: "Sorokin...does not focus on 'civilizations.' That term proved too vague and varied for scientific use....[There is] no way to pin down the term for precise investigation...every civilization contains a multitude of factors...from imported religions to contradictory philosophies and alien modes of dress...to toys and tools and food also common in other cultures, and work occupations pursued universally. So a 'civilization,' to [Sorokin], far from making up a cultural unity, is only a vast and complex dump of related and unrelated factors...[he] dispensed with the concept altogether" (See Brander, Staring Into Chaos: Explorations in the Decline of Western Civilization, Dallas: Spence Publishing Company, 1998, p. 254.) Instead of the idea of "civilization," Sorokin offered the hypothesis of perpetually recurring "cultural supersystems" which he denominated as "ideational," "sensate," and "integral" and which, he maintained, were common to Arabic and Confucian cultures as well as to the West. What Sorokin did was to explicate the historical laws which he believed determined the destinies of all cultures, and thereby made a case for a scholarly focus on the similarities among "civilizations" rather than on the differences that divide them. Especially given Huntington's original thesis of an impending "conflict of civilizations," Sorokin's work (expressed in greatest detail in his four-volume Social and Cultural Dynamics, New York: American Book, 1937-1941) deserves renewed attention.
(16) For one insightful critique of Huntington which emphasizes that nationalities and ethnicities, not civilizations, will prove the major strategic and military contenders in the future, see John Gray, "Global Utopias and Clashing Civilizations: Misunderstanding the Present," International Affairs, January 1998.
(17) See "The Clash of Civilizations?," Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993.
(18) One major error obvious in Huntington's book is that in his discussion of the Muslim world, the author constantly uses the terms "Islam" and "Muslims" in both a descriptive and causative sense, with no apparent effort to separate the two or make any delineation between one and the other. For example, it is certainly accurate to apply the word "Islamic" to countries such as Saudi Arabia or Egypt where the overwhelming majority of the population is Muslim. Such is an example of an appropriate descriptive usage. But Huntington also employs "Muslim" and "Islamic" as causative categories, specifically alloting to "Muslims" or "Islam" the responsibility for producing acts of violence and warfare. "Muslims are engaged in more intergroup violence than non-Muslims," he writes. "Islam's borders are bloody, and so are its innards" (Clash, pp. 257-58). The fact is that such reified categories as "Islam" or "Muslims," used to denote agency, simply do not hold water. As suggested above, violence, terrorism or aggressive warfare have little or nothing to do with Islam as a religion or as a social system, or with the practice of their faith by individual Muslims. Rather, such behavior, to the extent that it exists, relates to a congeries of economic, demographic and social causes that have nothing to do with religion. The irony is that the very evidence that Huntington himself presents suggests that the turbulence in Middle Eastern and South Asian societies relates directly to rapid demographic increase, feeble or negative economic growth, and a variety of real or imagined societal blockages that have radicalized some of the recent immigrants to the large cities in the region who are convinced that they have no future. The primacy of social, economic and political factors in fostering terrorism remains the case despite the proclamations by some terrorists that they have acted in the name of Islam. Professor Huntington has done a disservice to objective understanding in the West of the Middle East and South Asia by ascribing to Islam a role that in fact is contradictory to it. In particular, it is disturbing that Professor Huntington has seen fit to repeat the old canard that "Islam has from the start been a religion of the sword and [has glorified] military virtues" (Clash, p.263). The truth is quite the opposite.
(19) See Huntington, "The Erosion of American National Interests," Foreign Affairs, September/October 1997, p.32.
(20) loc. cit., p. 31.
(21) For a more balanced discussion of this entire subject and a gentle explanation of why many Muslims today are critical of the West, see Kurshid Ahmad, "Islam and the West: Confrontation or Cooperation?", The Muslim World, January-April 1995.
(22) Kreeft's observations illustrate well Karen Armstrong's argument that "For the first time, people all over the world are beginning to find inspiration in more than one religion...The barriers of geographical distance, hostility and fear, which once kept the religions in separate, watertight compartments, are beginning to fall...this is a hopeful development." (See Armstrong, Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet, San Francisco: Harper, 1992, pp. 9-10). Armstrong's book constitutes a stunning intellectual achievement marked by enormous spiritual penetration. It is simply the best study available for anyone new to the subject who desires a basic understanding of Muhammad and Islam.
(23) Pp. 98-102. For one echo of what Kreeft has to say by a prominent Muslim, see Kurshid Ahmad, "The Nature of Islamic Resurgence," in John L. Esposito, ed., Voices of Resurgent Islam, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Ahmad states: "Had Western culture been based on Christianity, on morality, on faith...contact and conflict [between the West and the Muslim world] would have been different. But this [has not been] the case [with the West]. The choice is between the Divine Principle and a secular materialist culture...In fact those human beings who are concerned over the spiritual and moral crisis of our times should heave a sigh or relief over Islamic resurgence, and not be put off or scared by it" (p.228).
(24) For the best scholarly study of jihad available in English, see Rudolph Peters, Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam, Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1966.
(25) For one excellent recent study of the idea of just war in Christianity and Islam, see James Turner Johnson, The Holy War Idea in Western and Islamic Traditions, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997.
(26) The Qur'an emphatically endorses the individual's right to hold private property, as long as all property owners understand that their "ownership" is in fact a trusteeship held from God to which all things ultimately belong. The Qur'an and hadith also prescribe free trade and oppose price fixing. According to Islamic law, entrepreneurship is obligatory, both to satisfy immediate economic needs and to create capital. Indeed, to accumulate capital is considered to be of greater value than engaging in "extra" acts of worship. On this last point, see especially Abd al-Hayy al-Kattani, Kitab Nizam al-Hukuma al-Nabawiyya, also known as Al-Taratib al-Idariyya [The System of Prophetic Government], (Beirut, A.H. 1347), Vol. 2, especially pp. 3 and 24.
(27) As related to the general argument of this paper as well as well as to these last points, I cannot recommend too highly an essay by Hadley Arkes, "Life Watch: Report from an Exotic Place," Crisis, March 1999. Arkes writes: "...[T]he president of the United Nations Association of New York was apparently surprised when she was told by a young [Muslim] that the [Q]ur'an, as a source of Islamic law, prohibits homosexuality. According to the young delegate, [the president] simply suggested to him, with a wink, 'that moderate Muslims should interpret [their teachings] in a way that respects every human being's right to enjoy his or her own body without interference or discrimination." Arkes adds that "cultural relativism" was a doctrine formed in the West and "projected into the so-called backward countries, most of whom did not see anything the least 'relative' or uncertain about their own way of life...Yet, wonder to behold, it [is] the countries of the East [who are]...now learning to speak their resistance in the language of natural rights, a language that the elites in the West no longer take seriously. In the final turnabout, these countries now offer their remonstrance and manifesto in the name of that God who endowed us with certain 'unalienable rights,' anchored in the proposition that 'all men are created equal'."
(28) Concerning the possibility of forming an international ecumenical alliance to combat radical secularism, some recent comments by Allan Carlson, President of the Howard Center, are suggestive. In a speech entitled "The Family of Faith Today: Shaping the Global Future" which he delivered in the Philippines on 27-28 March 1999, Mr. Carlson reported: "During the 1997 United Nations Habitat conference in Nairobi, [a]...coalition of conservative Christians and Orthodox Muslims took form, much to the consternation of the conference leaders. As a report by NGO Family Voice, a group affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, related: "The interest of [Muslim] nations [in our work] was often quite pointed. For example, during an informal 'hallway' discussion..., the Iranian Ambassador noted...that 'your group is different from the others' and inquired whether our position on the family was merely 'political posturing' or was 'based on a deeper spiritual foundation.' He suggested that his people would benefit immensely from meeting with Americans who believed in the importance of both the family and spirituality."
(29) See the MESA Newsletter, August 1997, p.11.
(30) Abd al-Raouf, op. cit., p. 67.