Islam and the West: Muslim Voices of Dialogue

Abstract

Throughout the Muslim world, Islamically oriented intellectuals have transformed Muslim political discourse in ways that are highly visible in both domestic politics and in international relations. Islamic activist intellectuals are prominent in determining policies and the ways they are expressed and conceptualised in the Muslim world at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Anwar Ibrahim, the former Islamic student activist, became deputy prime minister of Malaysia, and although he is now in jail, he continues to be a vital political and intellectual force in the country. The president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, is a scholar-politician whose policies reflect the re-articulation of the ideals and goals of the Islamic Revolution in Iran that he and other intellectuals like Abdel Karim Soroush have undertaken in recent years. Abdurrahman Wahid, the intellectual leader of one of the largest Islamic organisations in the world, is president of Indonesia. The thought and political careers of these three Islamic activist intellectuals illustrate the transformations in Islamic visions of international politics.Activist religious intellectuals throughout the world have helped to transform the dynamics of international relations as well as the nature of politics within their own societies. As intellectuals, they are creating the new concepts and vocabulary in which policies and programs are articulated.This paper argues that Muslim activist intellectuals like Anwar, Khatami, and Wahid were especially significant in the final decades of the twentieth century in creating new perceptions of global interactions. In particular, reacting against the Jihadists view of the world, they have been especially important in defining the terms of inter-civilisational dialogue from an Islamic perspective. In differing ways, their ideas and careers reflect the major dynamics of both the clash of civilisations and inter-civilisational dialogue.Like other ideologically committed intellectuals throughout the world, thinkers in explicitly Islamic organisations and movements do not present a monolithic vision of the world. There is much disagreement and debate and the lines of argument parallel the lines of intellectual conflict elsewhere. However, even in their disagreements, they provide an emerging Islamic discourse (not a single This article is based on our longer study,

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“…The fundamental Islamic political doctrine says that religion (din) cannot be divorced from politics (dawla) and that the only true sovereignty and law are those of God. 45 This principle is called din wa dawla or the unity of religion and state. Correspondingly, Muslim intellectuals and scholars perceive it differently, even stand in opposition, regarding the implementation of these doctrines.…”

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“…Esposito and Voll (2000) have isolated two distinct “visions” associated with Islamism: a “conflict” and “dialogue.” The “conflict” vision of Islam refers to the ideology of those militant groups—some of which are affiliated to al‐Qaeda —who espouse an ideology of salafism : a school of thought which advocates a return to the traditions of the salafs (devout ancestors) and looks back on the first three generations of Muslims (the Sahabah , Tabi ‘n and the Taba ‘ at‐Tabi ‘in ) as an Islamic “golden age,” uncorrupted by the materialism and individualism of modern, westernized Islamic societies (Kepel 2004:219–222). Although its origins can be traced to the community founded by the Prophet Muhammad in Medina, modern salafism emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century as an Islamic response to European colonialism and was influenced by the work of reformers such as Jamal al‐Din al‐Afghani (1838–1897) and Muhammed Abduh (1849–1905).…”

“…encompassing varied and conflicting theoretical positions that are meant to have practical, political effects'' (Buck-Morss 2003:43). Esposito and Voll (2000) have isolated two distinct ''visions'' associated with Islamism: a ''conflict'' and ''dialogue.'' The ''conflict'' vision of Islam refers to the ideology of those militant groups-some of which are affiliated to al-Qaeda -who espouse an ideology of salafism: a school of thought which advocates a return to the traditions of the salafs (devout ancestors) and looks back on the first three generations of Muslims (the Sahabah, Tabi 'n and the Taba ' at-Tabi 'in) as an Islamic ''golden age,'' uncorrupted by the materialism and individualism of modern, westernized Islamic societies (Kepel 2004:219-222).…”

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“…It is further possible to point at the constructive role played, instead, by a wide range of normative proposals and initiatives for dialogue advanced by scholars and intellectuals, not simply as a reaction to Huntington, but as a legitimate autonomous alternative intellectual tradition of understanding world politics (Dallmayr 2002;Dallmayr and Manoochehri 2007;Esposito and Voll 2000;Forst and Ahmed 2005;Kayaoğlu 2012;Lynch 2000;Michael and Petito 2009;Petito 2011Petito , 2007. Here, the development of the UNAOC can be considered as "the latest phase in the evolving discussion of 'intercultural dialogue' at the UN-level" (Bloom 2013, 3), most prominently revitalized in the 1990s by former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami (1997Khatami ( , 2000Khatami, van Ess, and Küng 2001) and his proposal to designate 2001 as the year of the Dialog among Civilizations.…”

“…Nor is the paper concerned with civilization in the singular as a process (Elias 1994;Linklater 2010) or a politically expedient discourse (Bowden 2009;Gong 1984;Jackson 2006;Salter 2002;Suzuki 2009) that separates the civilized from the uncivilized. 8 Lastly, the paper also does not seek to provide yet another critique of Huntington's thesis, 9 nor to advance arguments for (Esposito and Voll 2000;Kose 2009;Lynch 2000) or against (Balci 2009;Salt 2008;Tsutsumibayashi 2005) the necessity of inter-civilizational dialogues at the UN or more broadly. The paper's main focus, and thus contribution, is directed towards understanding and explaining why talking about and acting upon the notion that what occurs within and between a plurality of civilizations, generally defined along cultural and religious markers, has become a fixture of world politicsparticularly following the end of the Cold War.…”