Islam and the West

I’ve always enjoyed reading the books of Karen Armstrong. A former Catholic nun, she has been prolific for more than two decades on the history of religion, most impressively with A History of God in 1993.

Armstrong is measured, balanced and open-minded, and one of the few contemporary Western authors of standing who writes sympathetically but expertly about Islam (Islam: A Short History and Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet). Reading her I reflect on the anti-Islamic bigotry that runs deep in the West. In Muhammad: Prophet for Our Time, she says:

“We have a long history of Islamophobia in Western culture that dates back to the time of the Crusades. In the 12th century, Christian monks in Europe insisted that Islam was a violent religion of the sword, and that Muhammad was a charlatan who imposed his religion on a reluctant world by force of arms; they called him a lecher and a sexual pervert.”

Islam, in this early part of the 21st century, is the Western world’s psychological “other”; one of its chief bugbears. An “other” is simply a projection of the dark side of ourselves onto someone else so that we maintain a self-image that is whole, papering over cracks we’d prefer not to face. In the collective Western mind Muslims are associated with intolerance, fanaticism, violence and terrorism, but this hides the West’s very chequered record towards Islam – namely the several centuries of colonialism, imperialism, invasions, racism, and forced economic and cultural modernisation continuing to this day.

Power is the central issue here, as those who are on top seek to maintain and extend their power while keeping the marginalised at bay. It’s an ancient human story but one that throughout history has been moderated by the better side of our nature. In our time, we can ask some pertinent questions: Can the dominant forces of the world, led by the West, allow a broader and fuller expression of what it means to be human to exist? Can cultures that are very different co-exist in mutual respect without any one group asserting overall control? Can power be ceded in some fashion and become much more diffuse, encouraging diversity to flourish? It is the consistent abuse of power that leads to the appearance of extremist groups like ISIS and the Taliban, as those who are the abused aspire to become abusers in an atmosphere of despair.

The moderating force to power is, of course, love. In the hard world of politics and international relations one senses that word is never used, but it is evident in every instance of practical solidarity and humanity. Every conflict and crisis is an invitation to love – to see the face of the “other” as our own face, provoking dialogue and reconciliation. When the boundaries between “us” and “them” break down we see the oneness of life and the value, the necessity of each part in the whole. A realisation of oneness gives us the impetus to cherish all life.

Love is a challenge to the narrowly conceived ego that seeks power for its own sake regardless of the consequences. It is hard to say whether humanity will ever evolve a mature enough collective ego that will enable us to live in harmony with ourselves and the natural world. At times we seem a great distance from that ideal. Yet if we can imagine it perhaps it’s not as far away as we think; what, after all, in the long span of the development of the human species, is 200, 500 or even 1000 years?

I think of the wonderful mystical tradition of Islam called Sufism, timeless in its appeal, that revolves around the idea and experience of love, in its highest expression the love for the Divine that extinguishes the separate ego. In one of his poems, the Sufi master Mohyuddin Ibn ‘Arabi writes:

My heart has become capable of every form: it is a
pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks,

And a temple for idols and the pilgrim’s Kaaba and the
tables of the Torah and the book of the Qur’an.

I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Love’s
camels take, that is my religion and my faith.