Feature Article

Can the West and Islam live together?

Islamic fundamentalism cannot be explained as a reaction to American foreign policy or Third World poverty. An American lecturer on international relations at the University of Bath insists that no dialogue between civilisations will work unless it starts from the right base. Religion is the problem ? and the solution.

THERE IS a spectre haunting the world, and it is no longer Communism but the global resurgence of religion and its impact on world politics. It would seem that very few people want to believe that this global cultural shift is taking place; least of all, rather oddly, many Christians, since the most common reason given for the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre is a secular and a materialist one.

Many Christians in Britain, in almost Blairite fashion, have talked about being tough on terrorists, and tough on the causes of terrorism, and by this they seem to mean overcoming the economic, social, and political inequalities which are supposed to cause religious extremism or Islamic fundamentalism. But it was not because of the adverse affects of globalisation or the failure of American foreign policy that the World Trade Centre was destroyed and the Pentagon damaged in attacks which cost the lives of nearly 7,000 people ? roughly 10 per cent of the total number of casualties during the Vietnam War ? in the space of only one hour.

It might be expected that Christians would try to apply theological assumptions and concepts to their understanding of world politics, but by and large this has not happened. Rather, materialist assumptions of social theory have been accepted, used to explain this terrorist attack, and then principles of Christian ethics ? the Sermon on the Mount, or some other biblical passage ? have been attached to the end of what is effectively a secular analysis of world affairs.

Christian theology needs to be applied to the study of international relations in a far more radical way. What is required is a better understanding of how culture and religion should appropriately be examined in international politics, and a better understanding of how Christian ethics can be related to the theories scholars use to interpret international relations.

The economic analysis many Christians have used to explain the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington does not fit the profile of the hijackers, nor the profile of Osama bin Laden. The hijackers were not alienated, or marginalised victims of globalisation, but Arabs who had benefited from globalisation and from their time in the West. What they have in common with the leaders, as well as the followers, of many Islamist movements, such as Sayyid Qutb, the radical Islamicist during Nasser?s regime in Egypt, or Hassan al-Turabi in the Sudan, is that they rejected a Western modernity many of them had experienced because they were educated there.

A copy of the Koran is held up before an image of Osama bin Laden during a rally against the United States Jakarta, Indonesia (CNS, Reuters)

Islamic fundamentalism is not a result of alienation, social exclusion, or globalisation. It is a cultural and religious response to secular materialism. Since colonial occupation, the developing countries have been confronted with a dilemma: should they emulate the West in order to gain equality in power ? spurning their own culture ? or should they affirm their own cultural and religious traditions, but remain materially weak?

The dilemma of identity and development was resolved in the first years after in- dependence by emulating the West. The first generation of Third World elites that came to power in the late 1940s ? Nehru?s India, Nasser?s Egypt, Sukarno?s Indonesia (and, going back to the 1920s, Ataturk?s Turkey) ? espoused a similar modernising mythology inherited from the West. The application of this mythology has failed to produce political participation and a basic level of economic welfare throughout much of the developing world, particularly in the Middle East. This has led to the resurgence of religion, nationalism, and a proliferation of religious and ethno-national conflicts.

What is at issue in the destruction of the World Trade Centre is a battle of ideas and the struggle for cultural authenticity in the Islamic world. More foreign aid and greater economic development, important though this is, will not eliminate the roots of religiously motivated terrorism, nor will it necessarily create the conditions for a more peaceful world. Economic development does not resolve the fundamental religious, cultural, or political differences between states or civilisations. Indeed, it may even exacerbate them once weak states, or non-state groups within them, gain more power to wield in world politics.

The primary issue between the West and the Islamic world is the shift in world power since the sixteenth century. At its root is cultural and political resentment, which cannot be resolved by greater economic development because what is resented is the rise of the West and the gradual fall of Islam. Westerners tend to believe that if economic development takes place, then people in ? or from ? the Islamic world will become like us, and then there will be no more threats to global security. Thus, to some extent, the call for dealing with the alleged root causes of terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism should be acknowledged for what it is ? a new form of liberal imperialism.

More foreign aid and an ? allegedly ? more equitable global economy will not change the opposition which many Arabs and ordinary Muslims have to American foreign policy. The reason that Bin Laden has declared war on the United States and resorted to the most horrific terrorism seen so far in the modern world is not that he is concerned about Palestinians, or Chechens, or Kashmiri separatists fighting Russia and India. He is fighting the United States because it backs moderate Arab governments in the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, but also Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco. This American stance is resented by Islamist groups who want to impose a purer, more demanding form of Islam as part of a global cultural shift. The fact that the United States is no longer allowed to launch an attack against Afghanistan from Saudi Arabia may indicate the growing gap between the moderate elites who govern the Gulf States, and the greater Islamic sensitivity of the ordinary people within them.

How should we understand the impact of ideas, particularly religious ideas, in the social sciences, and how should we understand the relationship between religion and culture in international politics? This is the main theoretical issue. Is religion to be interpreted mainly as a body of ideas or doctrines, which would mean that Islamic fundamentalism should be regarded simply as a type of right-wing ideology?

If this kind of modern understanding is adopted, it is easy to see why religion is often seen as a mere epiphenomenon, a secondary symptom which hides ? allegedly ? more important economic, social, or technological forces in society. The impact of religion and culture in international politics is distorted when religion is invented by social theory as a set of privately held doctrines or beliefs in this way, and is applied to societies which have not yet made, or are struggling to make, or are even struggling not to make ? as part of the clash within civilisations ? this kind of social transition.

Taking religion and culture seriously means recognising that the cosmopolitan values of Western liberalism, rooted in the European Enlightenment, may no longer provide an adequate basis for what is becoming a genuinely multicultural international society for the first time in history. Can the West and Islam live together, and if so, how? This will not be possible if the West simply expects Muslims to exchange the beliefs, practices, and traditions which are constitutive of Islamic communities for those of Western liberalism, which appears to be what many people expect in the West.

Another way forward recognises there may be religious resources for international order. What can be called rooted cosmopolitanism accepts that the vast majority of people in the world do not see themselves as subjects of a global ethic, with international rights and duties; this is a myth of Western liberalism. Rather, their experience of the moral life is rooted in the virtues, social practices, and traditions of their communities grounded in the world?s main religions, however imperfectly they may live this out. This is where a genuine dialogue between civilisations can begin.