How
to Defeat the Clash of Extremisms:
Civilisational Hybridity and Trust Building in the Multicultural West
In my talk, I would like
to highlight how the concept of civilisational hybridity and efforts aiming at
building of trust along religious lines
as exemplified by the event we are
commemorating this evening can help
counter the harmful effects of the two
most prevalent and arguably most pernicious, but unfortunately not only, forms of extremism today namely ethno-nationalism associated with white supremacist groups and religious associated with violent Islamic
radicalism. I will do so from a historically informed perspective of examining
the historical nature of the civilisational interactions between the
Arabo-Islamic civilisation and that of the Latin Christian West.
1.
The Clash of Extremisms:
In the 1990s in the the aftermath of the Cold War the concept of the Clash of Civilisations gained traction
among some political scientists and historians of international relations in
the West that among others postulated that one of the likely future forms of civilisational conflict will be between the
civilisation associated with the concept of liberal, democratic West and the Islamic Civilisation. While this
idea was dismissed by many academics and policymakers as too simplistic and
not reflective of the internal diversity and fragmentation of both of
civilisational spheres events such as 9/11 and the subsequent so-called War on
Terror seemed to have given legitimacy to this idea of the Clash of
Civilisations. My position in this regard is that we are currently experiencing
what could be called the Clash of Extremist ideologies based on strong ethno-nationalist
and religiously supremacist sentiments whose views of the Other are premised
on strongly essentialist and
totalitarian perspectives.
For example, on the one
hand, as evident in their manifestos, white supremacist groups want us to
believe that:
1.Islam is an inherently violent political ideology bent on world domination;
2.that Muslims in the West
all subscribe to this ideology
either overtly or covertly;
3.that Muslim immigrants,
many of whom (like me) are refugees and have fled horrific conflicts in their own
countries of origin, are single-mindedly focused, not on rebuilding their lives and living in peace
with their fellow citizens, but on transforming the West into an ISIS utopia.
Furthermore, white
supremacist groups use major episodes from premodern history of Islam-West relations ― such as the conquering
of Constantinople by the Ottomans ― as evidence of the perpetual threat all Muslims pose to the Western civilisation.
Moreover, an important
element in the master narrative underpinning the ideology of these groups is their
disdain for multiculturalism and pluralism which they view as avenues of Trojan
Horse-like Islamic takeover of Europe.
One the other hand some
of the master narratives of the Islamists terrorist organisations such as ISIS are
that :
1.there is only one true Islam;
2. that their interpretation of Shari’a―
including their understanding of the institution of the caliphate, ― is the
only legitimate understanding of the canonical Islamic texts;
3.that it is the duty of Muslims in the West ― in
peaceful and, in times of war, non-peaceful ways ― to support the establishment
of the universal Caliphate as Islamist militants understand it;
4.that Muslims’ political loyalty to such a Caliphate overrides their rights and
responsibilities as citizens of Western democracies, whose values are
considered as antithetical to those of the "Islamic" principles.
Last year, my colleague
Halim Rane and I published a book in which we tried to provide a comprehensive
overview of the most significant research pertaining to various aspects of
Islam and Muslims in the West over the last three decades or so. The book among
others, documents
1.the complicated history
and the nature of the relationship between Arab-Islamic and Latin Christian
civilisations;
2.the multitude of ways
of being a Muslim in the West and how these different ways of being a Muslim
interpret the Islamic tradition very differently;
3.and the various efforts
of contemporary Muslims in the West to integrate into Western liberal
societies, including the articulation of a conceptually and culturally distinct
form of Western Islam.
The book’s findings show
how the earlier mentioned views of the extremists and their respective ideologies
are significant distortions of the actual reality.
Given the nature of the
today’s occasion I would like to spend a little time to first examine the
history and the nature of the relationship between Arab-Islamic and Latin
Christian civilisations before I offer some thoughts of how to counter this Clash of Extremisms.
There is no denying that
the much of the history of the relationship between the Arab-Islamic and
Latin-Christian civilisation was dominated by two political-military superpowers
which were often engaged in conflict and did so while firmly holding onto their
respective religious dogmas and views of the Religious Truth.
But even during the
darker periods of this conflict there were examples of positive interactions
and attempts at rapprochement and mutual understanding as evident in the event that is being commemorated
this evening. But this is not the only example even within the context of what
the historians has called the Crusades.
A distinguished professor of Middle Easter
medieval History professor Suleiman Mourad has shown that the time period of the Crusades from the perspective of what the medieval Muslim sources tell us is not just a mindless
recounting of countless battles that
marked this two centuries-long period ,
but also of “ innumerable political and
military alliances, systematic sharing of sacred spaces, commercial dealings,
exchange of science and ideas, etc., between Muslims and crusaders”. He
provides an example of a Muslim chronicler and historian Ibn Wasil (d. 1298)
who spent two years in southern Italy on a diplomatic mission in early 1260s. During
his stay there ibn Wasil wrote a book on logic in the honour of emperor Manfred
of Hohenstaufen, the last King of Sicily.
Mourad also tells us of a
story of Emperor Manfred’s father, Frederick II, who regularly wrote to Muslim scientists asking for scientific
information, and that it was precisely under his command of the
Sixth Crusade in 1228-1229, that he negotiated a peace treaty with Sultan al-Kamil that allowed the
Muslims and Crusader Christians to share
Jerusalem. According to this agreement “the Christians had full control of
their religious places while the Muslims maintained control over their sacred
places in the city and the surrounding villages.”
Moving beyond the mere
describing of the historical incidents that demonstrate cooperation and mutual
understanding between Islam and the West there are strong reasons to argue for
the conceptual viability of the idea of
an Islamo-Christian Civilisation as a historical reality as I shall argue
later.
The Case for
Civilisational Hybridity
As noted earlier the
Clash of Extremisms is based, among other things, on the idea of what can be
called the defence of civilisational purity thesis according to which The West
is very different from the Islamic Civilisation and the values defining these
two civilisational entities are mutually exclusive or at least exist in great
tension on many very significant
socio-political, cultural and existential issues. The question that needs to be asked here is
to what extent are these views actually representative of the historical
realities?
Upon closer reflection on
the matter it becomes quickly evident that it is impossible to outline the
contours and characteristics behind the historical and intellectual
relationship between western-European and Arabo-Islamic “intercivilisational
constellations’ in a straightforward and continuous manner.
A contemporary British
scholar of cosmopolitanism Gerard Delanty,
in fact, identifies three “modes” of western-European ways of relating to “Islam”,
namely the mode of fear and xenophobia; the mode of fantasy and moral superiority;
and lastly, the mode of “of borrowing, translation and adaptation.”
Delanty argues further that
each of these “modes” have been co-present at various points in time at varying
levels of prominence and prevalence. The
worldview underpinning contemporary right-wing radical groups centres squarely
onto the first mode, that of fear and xenophobia and completely discards the
third mode which here I will term civilizational hybridity. Importantly, the
first mode of fear is not simply to be conceptualised in terms of western
non-Muslim citizens security concerns from potential terrorist violence perpetrated
by minority (immigrant) Muslims. It is a fear that runs much deeper and
pertains to the question regarding as one scholar puts it “the essential nature
of European culture, and what role the Muslim presence is likely to play in it”
(Hellyer 2010:3). This fear has been elsewhere described as fear of Eurabia
and/or Islamisation of the West/Europe (Bangstad: 2014).
As one way of countering
the narratives and the worldview of both right-Wing and Islamist extremists in
the rest of my talk I would like to highlight the work of but one among many influential scholars who have critiqued the
idea of Western/ European civilizational distinctiveness and have emphasised
the symbiotic links between the formation of Arabo-Islamic and Western “civilizational constellations” ( Delanty
2019).
One of the most systematic proponents of this
approach is Professor Richard Bulliet, a noted historian of the Middle East. His main thesis is that
the Arabo-Islamic civilisation should be considered in many ways constitutive
of that of a Latin/Western Christian civilisation, because of the numerous,
robust, and mutually defining cross-cultural interactions that have been taking
place over a period spanning nearly a millennium and a half. For Bulliet these
linkages are multifaceted and are evident at historical, scientific, cultural,
philosophical, doctrinal, and scriptural levels (Bulliet 2004, 6, 45). As such
Bulliet states that:
The
past and future of the West cannot be fully comprehended without appreciation
of the twinned relationship it has had with Islam over some fourteen centuries.
The same is true of the Islamic world (2006, 45).
Furthermore,
Bulliet provides ample evidence that there are stronger arguments for the conceptual
viability of the idea of an Islamo-Christian civilisation rather than just that of
a Judeo-Christian one. The latter is nowadays taken largely as self-evident and
unproblematic in the West, although for a very long time this was not the case
(Ibid., 5–6). Indeed, the phrase Judeo-Christian civilisation as a marker of a Western
civilisation was coined in the 1930s and
it took several decades for it to become more widely accepted. Bulliet argues
that in addition to having strong scriptural and doctrinal commonalities, the Arabo-Islamic
and Latin Christian civilisations have had a long history of civilisational
cross-pollination without which our present (post-) modern would not have been/
be possible. In Bulliet’s own words:
Common
scriptural roots shared theological concerns, continuous interaction at a societal
level, and mutual contributions to what in modern times has become a common
pool of thought and feeling give the Euro-American Christian and Jewish communities
solid grounds for declaring their civilizational solidarity. Yet the scriptural
and doctrinal linkages between Judaism and Christianity are no closer than those
between Judaism and Islam, or between Christianity and Islam; and historians are
well aware of the enormous contributions of Muslim thinkers to the pool of late
medieval philosophical and scientific thought that European Christians and Jews
later drew upon to create the modern West. (Ibid., 6).
Importantly, Bulliet uses
this shift in consciousness about thinking in terms of Judeo-Christian
civilisation that occurred as I previously
mentioned as recently as 80 years
ago or so to further argue that
historical legacies of long-standing
periods of antagonisms between the Christian West and the Arabo-Islamic
civilisations ( Duderija and Rane,2019), must not be considered as being
tantamount to historical destinies
(Bulliet, 2004: 5-6).
Therefore by affirming the concept of Islamo-Christian civilisation we emphasise the
idea of civilisational hybridity that problematises the worldview and the metanarratives underpinning both forms
of extremism, ethno-nationalist and jihadist.
The Question of Trust and
the Robustness of Multicultural Societies:
However , to adequately
deal with the challenges of the Clash of
Extremisms we need to go beyond theory that
affirms civilisational hybridity and also develop
a practice-based ethic whose foundation is founded on trust as a means
of countering fear and distrust of the perceived
Other and related processes such as Islamophobia or what we could call Occidentalism . Here I
borrow the definition of trust as defined by one of the scholars of British
multiculturalism as “an investment of
belief in reciprocal socially-oriented intentions and actions in another (or
others)” (Morey,2018,3). Such a view of trust is based on principles of mutual
reliance, accountability, and reciprocity (Ibid) and presupposes that the best
interests of others will be compatible with ours”. This approach to trust and specifically
trust in diversity and multiculturalism should be viewed therefore as a form of
lived experience of cultural diversity and not simply just as a political and legislative
policy. This approach to trust is, in fact, essential for the stability and robustness of
multicultural and diverse societies such as those in the ‘West’ . As noted by a scholar of British multiculturalism:
All
successful relationships are built on trust, as all successful societies must also
be. Trust offers an important lens through which one can understand relations
between Muslim and non-Muslim at this fraught moment in history (Morey 2018:
2).
Holding events such as
the one this evening but also those that promote intercultural dialogue respect
and understanding and indeed the civilisational
interconnectedness and interdependence of entire humanity is a perfect opportunity to cultivate
this trust, especially in
multiculturally diverse societies such as Australia.
In conclusion:
In conclusion what we can
we do counter the Clash of Extremisms? I will not pretend that I have definite
answers to the often very complex processes that are relevant in relation to
this Clash but I did offer a few
pointers.
First, as far as
countering Islamicist-based extremism is
concerned, we must dismantle the theology of empire in Islamic fundamentalism
and its scriptural/hermeneutical roots, embedded in the pre-modern Caliphate
model that is alive among some Muslims that views the world through the lens of
subjugation and domination of (certain kinds of) Muslims over non-Muslims and
"heterodox Muslims." That kind of thinking will inevitably exacerbate
ethno-nationalist sentiments as a manifestation of an already existing residual racist/xenophobic worldview among some
non-Muslims that reared its ugliest head
in the genocide of Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica in 1995. Second, we have to
promote the idea of civilisational cross-pollination and hybridity in contrast
to the myth of civilisational purity. We have to understand that no
civilisation can emerge, develop or be the product of its own internal
dynamics. History testifies to this repeatedly, especially in relation to the
civilisational interactions between the Arabo-Islamic and Latin Christian
civilisation. Third, as recent studies in the context of Islamophobia have
shown, regular everyday face-to-face interaction between Muslims and
non-Muslims is a very important way of curbing prejudice. The lack of trust and
confidence in multiculturalism and diversity can be found in both forms of extremism discussed here as
evident in the manifestos written by ethno-nationalist inspired terrorists who repeatedly condemn multiculturalism as the Trojan Horse of
Islamisation of Europe or the willingness of groups like ISIS to exploit
feelings of discrimination and marginalisation present among some Muslims in
the West as a lure to join their totalitarian
cause. Therefore, fostering relationships that strengthen trust based on
principles of mutual reliance and reciprocity between Muslim citizens of the
West and western societies of which they are an integral part of is an
additional, and in my view crucial element in helping resolve the phenomenon of
the clashes of extremism. Moreover, we ought to acknowledge the diversity and
complexity of "the Other" as individual members of their own diverse
communities. Finally, we have to remember that diversity and inherent equality
of all human beings, underpinned by a set of commonly shared values and
principles, is a normal and desirable part of human existence, and then
inculcate these principles among our children and youth.
The meeting of St.
Frances and Sultan Al-Kamil 800 years ago that happened under very trying
circumstances teaches us that at the time when Extremisms are on the rise we
also need to rise to the occasion and do our own part in upholding, embodying
and promoting the values of trust, diversity and hybridity at both individual
and societal levels.
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