Islam and the West

  Ladies and gentlemen, it was suggested to me when I first began to
consider the subject of this lecture, that I should take comfort from the Arab
proverb, 'In every head there is some wisdom'. I confess that I have few
qualifications as a scholar to justify my presence here, in this theatre, where
so many people much more learned than I have preached and generally advanced
the sum of human knowledge.

I might feel more prepared if I were an offspring
of your distinguished University, rather than a product of that 'Technical
College of the Fens' - though I hope you will bear in mind that a chair of Arabic
was established in 17th century Cambridge a full four years before your first
chair of Arabic at Oxford.

 Unlike many of you, I am not an expert on Islam - though I am delighted,
for reasons which I hope will become clear, to be a Patron of the Oxford Centre
for Islamic Studies. The Centre has the potential to be an important and
exciting vehicle for promoting and improving understanding of the Islamic world
in Britain, and one which I hope will earn its place alongside other centers of
Islamic study in Oxford, like the Oriental Institute and the Middle East
Centre, as an institution of which the University, and scholars more widely,
will become justly proud.

Given all the reservations I have about venturing into a complex and
controversial field, you may well ask why I am here in this marvellous Wren
building talking to you on the subject of Islam and the West. The reason is,
ladies and gentlemen, that I believe wholeheartedly that the links between
these two worlds matter more today than ever before, because the degree of
misunderstanding between the Islamic and Western worlds remains dangerously
high, and because the need for the two to live and work together in our
increasingly interdependent world has never been greater. At the same time I am
only too well aware of the minefields which lie across the path of the inexpert
traveller who is bent on exploring this difficult route. Some of what I shall
say will undoubtedly provoke disagreement, criticism, misunderstanding and,
knowing my luck, probably worse. But perhaps, when all is said and done, it is
worth recalling another Arab proverb: 'What comes from the lips reaches the
ears. What comes from the heart reaches the heart.'

The depressing fact is that, despite the advances in technology and mass
communication of the second half of the 20th century, despite mass travel, the
intermingling of races, the ever-growing reduction - or so we believe - of the
mysteries of our world, misunderstandings between Islam and the West continue.
Indeed, they may be growing. As far as the West is concerned, this cannot be
because of ignorance. There are one billion Muslims worldwide. Many millions of
them live in countries of the Commonwealth. Ten million or more of them live in
the West, and around one million here in Britain. Our own Islamic community has
been growing and flourishing for decades. There are nearly 500 mosques in
Brtain. Popular interest in Islamic culture in Britain is growing fast. Many of
you will recall - and I think some of you took part in - the wonderful Festival
of Islam which Her Majesty The Queen opened in 1976. Islam is all around us.
And yet distrust, even fear, persist.

In the post-Cold War world of the 1990s, the prospects for peace should
be greater than at any time this century. In the Middle East, the remarkable
and encouraging events of recent weeks have created new hope for an end to an
issue which has divided the world and been so dramatic a source of violence and
hatred. But the dangers have not disappeared. In the Muslim world, we are seeing
the unique way of life of the Marsh Arabs of Southern Iraq, thousands of years
old, being systematically devastated and destroyed. I confess that for a whole
year I have wanted to find a suitable opportunity to express my despair and
outrage at the unmentionable horrors being perpetrated in Southern Iraq. To me,
the supreme and tragic irony of what has been happening to the Shia population
of Iraq - especially in the ancient city and holy shrine of Kerbala - is that
after the western allies took immense care to avoid bombing such holy places
(and I remember begging General Schwarzkopf when I met him in Riyadh in
December 1990, before the actual war began to liberate Kuwait, to do his best
to protect such shrines during any conflict), it was Saddam Hussein himself,
and his terrifying regime, who caused the destruction of some of Islam's
holiest sites.

And now we have to witness the deliberate draining of the marshes and
the near total destruction of a unique habitat, together with an entire
population that has depended on it since the dawn of human civilisation. The
international community has been told the draining of the marshes is for
agricultural purposes. How many more obscene lies do we have to be told before
action is actually taken? Even at the eleventh hour it is still not too late to
prevent a total cataclysm.I pray that this might at least be a cause in which
Islam and the West could join forces for the sake of our common humanity.

I have highlighted this particular example because it is so avoidable.
Elsewhere, the violence and hatred are more intractable and deep-seated, as we
go on seeing every day to our horror in the wretched suffering of peoples
across the world - in the former Yugoslavia, in Somalia, Angola, Sudan, in so
many of the former Soviet Republics. In Yugoslavia the terrible sufferings of
the Bosnian Muslims, alongside that of other communities in that cruel war,
help keep alive many of the fears and prejudices which our two worlds retain of
each other. Conflict, of course, comes about because of the misuse of power and
the clash of ideals, not to mention the inflammatory activities of unscrupulous
and bigoted leaders. But it also arises, tragically, from an inability to
understand, and from the powerful emotioins which, out of misunderstanding,
lead to distrust and fear. Ladies and gentlemen, we must not slide into a new
era of danger and division because governments and peoples, communities and
religions, cannot live together in peace in a shrinking world.

It is odd, in many ways, that misunderstandings between Islam and the
West should persist. For that which binds our two worlds together is so much
more powerful than that which divides us. Muslims, Christians - and Jews - are
all 'peoples of the Book'. Islam and Christianity share a common monotheistic
vision: a belief in one divine God, in the transience of our earthly life, in
our accountability for our actions, and in the assurance of life to come. We
share many key values in common: respect for knowledge, for justice, compassion
towards the poor and underprivileged, the importance of family life, respect
for parents. 'Honour thy father and thy mother' is a Quranic precept too. Our
history has been closely bound up together.

There, however, is one root of the problem. For much of that history has
been one of conflict; 14 centuries too often marked by mutual hostility. That
has given rise to an enduring tradition of fear and distrust, because our two
worlds have so often seen that past in contradictory ways. To Western
schoolchildren, the 200 years of the Crusades are traditionally seen as a
series of heroic, chivalrous exploits in which the kings, knights, princes -
and children - of Europe tried to wrest Jerusalem from the wicked Muslim
infidel. To Muslims, the Crusades were an episode of great cruelty and terrible
plunder, of Western infidel soldiers of fortune and horrific atrocities,
perhaps exemplified best by the massacres committed by the Crusaders when, in
1099, they took back Jerusalem, the third holiest city in Islam. For us in the
West, 1492 speaks of human endeavour and new horizons, of Columbus and the
discovery of the Americas. To Muslims, 1492 is a year of tragedy - the year
Granada fell to Ferdinand and Isabella, signifying the end of eight centureis
of Muslim civilisation in Europe.

The point, I think, is not that one or other picture is more true, or
has a monopoly of truth. It is that misunderstandings arise when we fail to
appreciate how others look at the world, its history, and our respective roles
in it.

The corollary of how we in the West see our history has so often been to
regard Islam as a threat - in medieval times as a military conqueror, and in
more modern times as a source of intolerance, extremism and terrorism. One can
understand how the taking of Constantinople, when it fell to Sultan Mehmet in
1453, and the close-run defeats of the Turks outside Vienna in 1529 and 1683,
should have sent shivers of fear through Europe's rulers. The history of the
Balkans under Ottoman rule provided examples of cruelty which sank deep into
Western feelings. But the threat has not been one way. With Napoleon's invasion
of Egypt in 1798, followed by the invasions and conquests of the 19th century,
the pendulum swung, and almost all the Arab world became occupied by the Western
powers. With the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Europe's triumph over Islam seemed
complete.

Those days of conquest are over. But even now our common attitude to
Islam suffers because the way we understand it has been hijacked by the extreme
and the superficial. To many of us in the West, Islam is seen in terms of the
tragic civil war in Lebanon, the killings and bombings perpetrated by extremist
groups in the Middle East, and by what is commonly referred to as 'Islamic
fundamentalism'. Our judgement of Islam has been grossly distorted by taking
the extremes to be the norm. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a serious mistake.
It is like judging the quality of life in Britain by the existence of murder
and rape, child abuse and drug addiction. The extremes exist, and they must be
dealt with. But when used as a basis to judge a society, they lead to
distortion and unfairness.

For example, people in this country frequently argue that Sharia law of
the Islamic world is cruel, barbaric and unjust. Our newspapers, above all,
love to peddle those unthinking prejudices. The truth is, of course, different
and always more complex. My own understanding is that extremes are rarely
practised. The guiding principle and spirit of Islamic law, taken straight from
the Qur'an, should be those of equity and compassion. We need to study its
actual application before we make judgements. We must distinguish between
systems of justice administered with integrity, and systems of justice as we
may see them practised which have been deformed for political reasons into
something no longer Islamic. We must bear in mind the sharp debate taking place
in the Islamic world itself about the extent of the universality or
timelessness of Sharia law, and the degree to which the application of that law
is continually changing and evolving.

We should also distinguish Islam from the customs of some Islamic
states. Another obvious Western prejudice is to judge the position of women in
Islamic society by the extreme cases. Yet Islam is not a monolith and the
picture is not simple. Remember, if you will, that Islamic countries like
Turkey, Egypt and Syria gave women the vote as early as Europe did its women -
and much earlier than in Switzerland! In those countries women have long
enjoyed equal pay, and the opportunity to play a full working role in their
societies. The rights of Muslim women to property and inheritance, to some
protection if divorced, and to the conducting of business, were rights
prescribed by the Qur'an 1,400 years ago, even if they were not everywhere
translated into practice. In Britain at least, some of these rights were novel
even to my grandmother's generation! Benazir Bhutto and Begum Khaleda Zia
became prime ministers in their own traditional societies when Britain had for
the first time ever in its history elected a female prime minister. That, I
think, does not necessarily smack of a mediaeval society.

Women are not automatically second-class citizens because they live in
Islamic countries. We cannot judge the position of women in Islam aright if we
take the most conservative Islamic states as representative of the whole. For
example, the veiling of women is not at all universal across the Islamic world.
Indeed, I was intrigued to learn that the custom of wearing the veil owed much to
Byzantine and Sassanian traditions, nothing to the Prophet of Islam. Some
Muslim women never adopted the veil, others have discarded it, others -
particularly the younger generation - have more recently chosen to wear the
veil or the headscarf as a personal statement of their Muslim identity. But we
should not confuse the modesty of dress prescribed by the Qur'an for men as
well as women with the outward forms of secular custom or social status which
have their origins elsewhere.

We in the West need also to understand the Islamic world's view of us.
There is nothing to be gained, and much harm to be done, by refusing to
comprehend the extent to which many people in the Islamic world genuinely fear
our own Western materialism and mass culture as a deadly challenge to their
Islamic culture and way of life. Some of us may think the material trappings of
Western society which we have exported to the Islamic world - television,
fast-food and the electronic gadgets of our everyday lives - are a modernising,
self-evidently good, influence. But we fall into the trap of dreadful arrogance
if we confuse 'modernity' in other countries with their becoming more like us.
The fact is that our form of materialism can be offensive to devout Muslims -
and I do not just mean the extremists among them. We must understand that
reaction, just as the West's attitude to some of the more rigorous aspects of
Islamic life, needs to be understood in the Islamic world.

This, I believe, would help us understand what we have commonly come to
see as the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. We need to be careful of that
emotive label, 'fundamentalism', and distinguish, as Muslims do, between
revivalists, who choose to take the practice of their religion most devoutly,
and fanatics or extremists who use this devotion for their political ends.
Among the many religious, social and political causes of what we might more
accurately call the Islamic revival is a powerful feeling of disenchantment, of
the realisation that Western technology and material things are insufficient,
and that a deeper meaning to life lies elsewhere in the essence of Islamic
belief.

At the same time, we must not be tempted to believe that extremism is in
some way the hallmark and essence of the Muslim. Extremism is no more the monopoly
of Islam than it is the monopoly of other religions, including Christianity.
The vast majority of Muslims, though personally pious, are moderate in their
politics. Theirs is the 'religion of the middle way'. The Prophet himself
always disliked and feared extremism. Perhaps the fear of Islamic revivalism
which coloured the 1980s is now beginning to give way in the West to an
understanding of the genuine spiritual forces behind this groundswell. But if
we are to understand this important movement, we must learn to distinguish
clearly between what the vast majority of Muslims believe and the terrible
violence of a small minority among them - like the men in Cairo yesterday -
which civilised people everywhere must condemn.

Chancellor, ladies and gentlemen, if there is much misunderstanding in
the West about the nature of Islam, there is also much ignorance about the debt
our own culture and civilisation owe to the Islamic world. It is a failure
which stems, I think, from the straitjacket of history which we have inherited.
The medieval Islamic world, from Central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic,
was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished. But because we have
tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society and system
of belief, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own
history.

For example, we have underestimated the importance of 800 years of
Islamic society and culture in Spain between the 8th and 15th centuries. The
contribution of Muslim Spain to the preservation of classical learning during
the Dark Ages, and to the first flowerings of the Renaissance, has long been
recognised. But Islamic Spain was much more than a mere larder where
Hellenistic knowledge was kept for later consumption by the emerging modern
Western world. Not only did Muslim Spain gather and preserve the intellectual
content of ancient Greek and Roman civilisation, it also interpreted and
expanded upon that civilisation, and made a vital contribution of its own in so
many fields of human endeavour - in science, astronomy, mathematics, algebra
(itself an Arabic word), law, history, medicine, pharmacology, optics,
agriculture, architecture, theology, music. Averroes and Avenzoor, like their
counterparts Avicenna and Rhazes in the East, contributed to the study and
practice of medicine in ways from which Europe benefited for centuries
afterwards.

Islam nurtured and preserved the quest for learning. In the words of the
tradition, 'the ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the
martyr'. Cordoba in the 10th century was by far the most civilised city of
Europe. We know of lending libraries in Spain at the time King Alfred was
making terrible blunders with the culinary arts in this country. It is said
that the 400,000 volumes in its ruler's library amounted to more books than all
the libraries of the rest of Europe put together. That was made possible
because the Muslim world acquired from China the skill of making paper more
than 400 years before the rest of non-Muslim Europe. Many of the traits on
which modern Europe prides itself came to it from Muslim Spain. Diplomacy, free
trade, open borders, the techniques of academic research, of anthropology,
etiquette, fashion, various types of medicine, hospitals, all came from this
great city of cities.

Medieval Islam was a religion of remarkable tolerance for its time,
allowing Jews and Christians the right to practise their inherited beliefs, and
setting an example which was not, unfortunately, copied for many centuries in the
West. The surprise, ladies and gentlemen, is the extent to which Islam has been
a part of Europe for so long, first in Spain, then in the Balkans, and the
extent to which it has contributed so much towards the civilisation which we
all too often think of, wrongly, as entirely Western. Islam is part of our past
and our present, in all fields of human endeavour. It has helped to create
modern Europe. It is part of our own inheritance, not a thing apart.

More than this, Islam can teach us today a way of understanding and
living in the world which Christianity itself is the poorer for having lost. At
the heart of Islam is its preservation of an integral view of the Universe.
Islam - like Buddhism and Hinduism - refuses to separate man and nature,
religion and science, mind and matter, and has preserved a metaphysical and
unified view of ourselves and the world aruond us. At the core of Christianity
there still lies an integral view of the sanctity of the world, and a clear
sense of the trusteeship and responsibility given to us for our natural
surroundings. In the words of that marvellous 17th century poet and hymn writer
George Herbert:

'A man that looks on glass,

On it may stay his eye;

Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,

And then the heaven espy.'

But the West gradually lost this integrated vision of the world with
Copernicus and Descartes and the coming of the scientific revolution. A
comprehensive philosophy of nature is no longer part of our everyday beliefs. I
cannot help feeling that, if we could now only rediscover that earlier,
all-embracing approach to the world around us, to see and understand its deeper
meaning, we could begin to get away from the increasing tendency in the West to
live on the surface of our surroundings, where we study our world in order to
manipulate and dominate it, turning harmony and beauty into disequilibrium and
chaos.

It is a sad fact, I believe, that in so many ways the external world we
have created in the last few hundred years has come to reflect our own divided
and confused inner state. Western civilisation has become increasingly
acquisitive and exploitative in defiance of our environmental responsibilities.
This crucial sense of oneness and trusteeship of the vital sacramental and
spiritual character of the world about us is surely something important we can
re-learn from Islam. I am quite sure some will instantly accuse me, as they
usually do, of living in the past, of refusing to come to terms with reality
and modern life. On the contrary, ladies and gentlemen, what I am appealing for
is a wider, deeper, more careful understanding of our world; for a metaphysical
as well as a material dimension to our lives, in order to recover the balance
we have abandoned, the absence of which, I believe, will prove disastrous in the
long term. If the ways of thought found in Islam and other religions can help
us in that search, then there are things for us to learn from this system of
belief which I suggest we ignore at our peril.

Ladies and gentlemen, we live today in one world, forged by instant
communications, by television, by the exchange of information on a scale
undreamed of by our grandparents. The world economy functions as an
inter-dependent entity. Problems of society, the quality of life and the
environment, are global in their causes and effects, and none of us any longer
has the luxury of being able to solve them on our own. The Islamic and Western
worlds share problems common to us all: how we adapt to change in our
societies, how we help young people who feel alienated from their parents or
their society's values, how we deal with Aids, drugs, and the disintegration of
the family. Of course, these problems vary in nature and intensity between
societies. The problems of our own inner cities are not identical to those of Cairo
or Damascus. But the similarity of human experience is considerable. The
international trade in hard drugs is one example; the damage we are
collectively doing to our environment is another.

We have to solve these threats to our communities and lives together.
Simply getting to know each other can achieve wonders. I remember vividly, for
instance, taking a group of Muslims and non-Muslims some years ago to see the
work of the Marylebone Health Centre in London, of which I am Patron. The
enthusiasm and common determination that shared experience generated was
immensely heart-warming. Ladies and gentlemen, somehow we have to learn to
understand each other, and to educate our children - a new generation, whose
attitudes and cultural outlook may be different from ours - so that they
understand too. We have to show trust, mutual respect and tolerance, if we are
to find the common ground between us and work together to find solutions. The
community enterprise approach of my own Trust, and the very successful Volunteers
Scheme it has run for some years, show how much can be achieved by a common
effort which spans classes, cultures and religions.

The Islamic and Western world can no longer afford to stand apart from a
common effort to solve their common problems. One excellent example of our two
cultures working together in common cause is the way in which the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia is working with Oxford Univeristy to set up a research centre into
schizophrenia for an organisation called SANE, of which I am Patron.

Nor can we afford to revive the territorial and political confrontations
of the past. We have to share experiences, to explain ourselves to each other,
to understand and tolerate - and I know how difficult these things are - and to
build on those positive principles which our two cultures have in common. That
trade has to be two-way. Each of us needs to understand the importance of
conciliation, of reflection - TADABBUR is the word, I believe - to open our
minds and unlock our hearts to each other. I am utterly convinced that the
Islamic and the Western worlds have much to learn from each other. Just as the
oil engineer in the Gulf may be European, so the heart transplant surgeon in
Britain may be Egyptian.

If this need for tolerance and exchange is true internationally, it
applies with special force within Britain itself. Britain is a multi-racial and
multi-cultural society. I have already mentioned the size of our own Muslim
communities who live throughout Britain, both in large towns like Bradford and in
tiny communities in places as remote as Stornaway in Western Scotland. These
people, ladies and gentlemen, are an asset to Britain. They contribute to all
parts of our economy - to industry, the public services, the professions and
the private sector. We find them as teachers, as doctors, as engineers and as
scientists. They contribute to our economic well-being as a country, and add to
the cultural richness of our nation. Of course, tolerance and understanding
must be two-way. For those who are not Muslim, that may mean respect for the
daily practice of the Islamic faith and a decent care to avoid actions which
are likely to cause deep offence. For the Muslims in our society, there is the
need to respect the history, culture and way of life of our country, and to
balance their vital liberty to be themselves with an appreciation of the
importance of integration in our society. Where there are failings of
understanding and tolerance, we have a need, on our own doorstep, for greater
reconciliation among our own citizens. I hope we shall all learn to demonstrate
this as understanding between these communities grows.

I can only admire, and applaud, those men and women of so many
denominations who work so tirelessly, in London, South Wales, the Midlands and
elsewhere, to promote good community relations. The Centre for the Study of
Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations in Birmingham is one especially notable
and successful example. We should be grateful, I believe, for the dedication
and example of all those who have devoted themselves to the cause of promoting
understanding.

Ladies and gentlemen, if, in the last half hour, your eyes have wandered
up to the marvellous allegory of Truth descending on the arts and sciences in
Sir Robert Streeter's ceiling above you, I am sure you will have noticed
Ignorance being violently banished from the arena - just there in front of the
organ casing. I feel some sympathy for Ignorance, and hope I may be permitted
to vacate this theatre in a somewhat better condition...

Before I go, I cannot put to you strongly enough the importance of the
two issues which I have tried to touch on so imperfectly this morning. These
two worlds, the Islamic and the Western, are at something of a crossroads in
their relations. We must not let them stand apart. I do not accept the argument
that they are on course to clash in a new era of antagonism. I am utterly
convinced that our two worlds have much to offer each other. We have much to do
together. I am delighted that the dialogue has begun, both in Britain and
elsewhere. But we shall need to work harder to understand each other, to drain
out any poison between us, and to lay the ghost of suspicion and fear. The
further down that road we can travel, the better the world that we shall create
for our children and for future generations.

 

A speech by HRH The Prince of Wales titled 'Islam and the West' at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies , The Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford in 27th October 1993