New IIS Publication on ‘Muslim Modernities’June 2008

The debate on ‘Islam and modernity’ has gained prominence since the events of September 11, 2001, in the West and the Muslim world alike. Issues of pluralist governance, civil society and human rights – as well as of public ethics – have come to be linked more forcefully than ever with secularism, which in turn is felt to be a hallmark of modernity. ‘Yet there is more than one way of being secular, as indeed there is of being modern, or Muslim’, argues the book’s editor, Dr. Sajoo.
Muslim Modernities is about how heritages of Islam have shaped identity and citizenship, piety and protest, music and modes of dress, not only in Muslim societies but also in the diaspora. Such expressions of the ‘civil imagination’ are not about alternatives to modernity or about a clash of civilisations. Rather, it is the overlapping nature of indigenous modernities, no matter how distinctive they may be, that stands out and is underscored by globalisation.
From pluralist readings of the Holy Qur’an and shari‘a in South Asian social activism, to the rebirth of traditional narratives in ethical makings of identity in Maghreb and Malay settings, the revitalisation of Central Asian cultural values, and the struggle for civic spaces among Muslim migrants in the West, this book challenges easy stereotypes about what it is to be modern and Muslim. The contributors include Nilufer Gole, Bruce Lawrence, Hasna Lebbady, Theodore Levin, Kevin McDonald, Fairouz Nishanova, John Renard, Eva Schubert, Bryan Turner and Amyn Sajoo.
This publication builds on earlier IIS ones on Civil Society in the Muslim World (ed. Amyn B. Sajoo) and Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur’an (ed. Suha Taji-Farouki), in furtherance of the Institute’s mandate to give ‘particular attention to issues of modernity that arise as Muslims seek to relate their heritage to contemporary circumstances’.

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Muslim Education in India-Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan

Muslim Education in India

Presidential Address to the All India Muhammadan Educational Conference
Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan
1902 Delhi, India

My first duty and pleasure is to thank you for the honour you have done me in asking me to preside at the meeting of the Conference. To sit in this chair is a signal honour of which any Muslim may be proud, but you have conferred upon me a very particular distinction in inviting me to be your President in this Imperial city and upon this historic occasion. For this honour, gentlemen, I tender you my deep and sincere thanks.

As, gentlemen, you have given me the right to speak in your name, I will lose no time in giving expression to a sentiment which is, I know, in the hearts of all of us. On behalf of the Mahomedan Educational Conference I welcome the guests and delegates who have come from a distance - I thank them that they have borne the discomfort of so much travel in order to confer by their attendance distinction upon this meeting.

And, in particular, I wish to offer the thanks of this Mahomedan assembly to those distinguished Governors of Provinces and Rulers of great States who have promised to honour this occasion with their presence, the fact that our great statesmen and administrators, amid the burden of public cares, should find time to show their interest in the religious, educational and social problems of a community, not their own, confers upon this assembly a very conspicuous honour, for which our heart-felt thanks and gratitude are due to their patronage.

It is, indeed, a matter of surprise as well as congratulation that any one of all this distinguished company should have entered this modest building at all, when a few paces from here all the pomp and splendour of this glorious Empire is unrolled before our dazzled sight. Never before have the Princes of India shone forth in so superb a pageant, never have we beheld, concentrated with equal magnificence, all the might and splendour of the Empire of India, and never have the antique battlements of this imperial City witnessed the proclamation of so great or just an Emperor.

IThat you have attended this Conference at all, in spite of all these splendid attractions, is due, I believe, to the fact that, though education is our theme, we are deliberating upon something more important than the suitability of this or that textbook, or this or that course of study. We are, if I understand the purpose of this Conference aright, considering what in modern times are the ideals we must hold before our people and the paths by which they attain them; and upon the right answer to these questions depends no trifling matter, but nothing less than the future of Indian Moslems.

We are undertaking a formidable task when we attempt to correct and remodel the ideals of our people. But for the task before us, we Indian Musalmans possess many advantages; we have the advantage of living under a Government which administers justice evenly between rich and poor and between persons of different creeds and classes; in the second place, we enjoy complete freedom to devise plans for the amelioration of our people. We have no reason to fear that our deliberations will be abruptly closed if we propose schemes of education other than those approved by Government. We know that no book and no branch of knowledge will be forbidden to us by official command; and, lastly, we know that, under the protection of British rule, we shall be allowed to work out to the end any plans for social and economic salvation which we may devise. Our wealth will not excite rapacity, nor our advancement in learning awaken the jealousy of our rulers. More than all this, we are members of a polity in which the opportunities for advancement in wealth and learning are greater, perhaps, than in any country in Asia, if only we have the energy and wisdom to make a right use of those opportunities.

These are privileges which our co-religionists in Turkey or Persia, who are not British subjects, do not possess. In those countries the opportunities for growing wealthy in commerce and industries or in the independent liberal professions can hardly be said to exist, and in both of them the pursuit of learning and freedom of thought are fettered by restrictions. We Moslems of India, therefore, enjoy unparalleled advantages, and we occupy among our co-religionists a unique position, and, if we properly utilise them and realise our duties, we ought to lead the way and constitute ourselves the vanguard of Islamic progress throughout the world. Here in India we can develop our own ideals of society, we have freedom in which to deliberate upon them, and we have security from internal and external enemies. We may carry our plans to maturity without fear of internal trouble or external aggression. Our brethren in Turkey and Persia must give their first thoughts and unceasing attention to military preparations and diplomatic arrangements, lest, whilst they are evolving schemes of progress, illiberal and autocratic European States should swallow up their independence, and thus they should at one blow lose for ever all chance of future develop-ment. But we, who live beneath the liberal rule of England, have here all the chances that a people require of developing our own individuality according to our own ideas.

And now, gentlemen, let us direct our attention to a question with which your Conference is intimately concerned, namely, how have the Indian Moslems taken advantage of the chances which Providence has placed in their way? We must all acknow-ledge with shame and regret that so far we have failed. Throughout the whole length and breadth of India how many national schools are there in existence which educate Moslem boys and girls in their faith and at the same time in modern secular science? Is there even one to every hundred that our nation needs and which we should have established had we been like any other healthy people? There are, indeed, a certain number of old-fashioned Maktabs and Madrassahs which con-tinue to give a parrot-like teaching of the Koran, but even in these places no attempt is made either to improve the morals of the boys or to bring before them the eternal truths of the faith. As a rule, prayers are but rarely repeated, and when said, not one per cent. of the boys understand what they say or why.

Let me take another example of our failure to fulfil our obvious duties towards our co-religionists. During the recent famines no national effort was made to save Moslem children or to bring up to [sic] the Moslem orphans of famine-striken parents in some special technical or elementary school. This surely was a public duty which could never have been neglected in a healthy society.

Again, in Mahomedan society, we too often hear futile laments over the loss of political power, but we must remember that in the modern world a monopoly of political power, such as Moslems once held in India, is neither possible nor even desirable. Now that general liberty is given to all, the monopoly, or even a desire for the monopoly, of political power is both immoral and of no benefit. The just man does not even wish to possess privileges to the necessary exclusion of others. On the other hand, a desire for industrial and financial pre-eminence is perfectly legitimate because it is obtained by the free competition of the energies of individuals without which rapid progress is perhaps impossible. But here again our community has signally failed to take advantage of that peace, justice and freedom which we all enjoy under British rule. We have neglected industry and commerce just as we have neglected every other opportunity of progress.

This general apathy which pervades every walk of life is the sign of a moral disease, and what I will ask you to consider with me today are the causes of this terrible disease, and I will especially invite your attention to this point. Are the causes of this disease, to use a medical phrase, congenital and necessary, i.e., are they part of the faith or are they accidental and acquired? That this disease is accidental and no necessary development of the faith, is shown not only by political progress made by Islam during the first twenty-five years of the Hijra, but by the high standard of duty, morality, truthfulness, justice and charity that was general in Arabian society during the glorious reigns of Abu Bakr and Omar, and this high standard prevailed, mind you, amongst men whose early youth had been passed either like the Koraish aristocrats in the lazy and dissolute society of Mecca before the conquest, or like the rank and file, in Bedouin brig-andage, in revengeful murder and in deeds of violence. Islam made heroes of such men, not only in the battlefield but in the more difficult daily sacrifices of [a] healthy and patriotic society. As a body they were law-abiding, just, full of charity, and true to their engagements, so that the conquered Persian peasants looked upon their just Arab conquerors as a godsend, very much as the Indian agriculturists welcomed the English whenever they overthrew a corrupt and cruel native State from 1760 to 1858.

So Islam, as a faith, when it was best understood, did not lead to apathy but to extraordinary devotion and self-sacrifice which it elicited even from such wretched material as the dissolute and immoral Meccan aristocrats of the days of ignorance; for these very men under the purifying influence of Islam distinguished themselves above all the Arabs by their loyalty and devotion. Witness the way in which the great Khalid and Amru, son of Al Ass, conquerors of Syria and Egypt, respectively, accepted the judgment of Omar and Othman in such a remarkably patient and uncomplaining fashion when removed from governments which they had founded and commands of troops whom they had led to glorious victory. Both these men were actuated by profound moral obedience to authority and devotion to duty, and yet both had been in their youth like the usual worthless Meccan aristocrats.

All this shows that Islam does not necessarily lead to apathy and want of devotion to duty. We must, therefore, consider what the real causes are of this supineness which we are compelled to recognise as universal in Moslem society of today, a supineness all the more remarkable under the benign rule of England, where a little self-sacrifice would enable us to achieve greatness; for through greatness in modern times consists in pre-eminence in learning, wealth, and such pre-eminence we might attain with constant effort [sic].

I believe that this disease cannot be assigned to any one single cause, but I will, with your permission, enumerate four causes which, in my judgment, have had a paramount influence in introducing this apathy, this moral torpor, into Moslem society; and you will notice that all the causes of which I speak have been in operation for a very long time.

For the first cause I must go back to the very early days of our faith. The disastrous murder of Omar was an irreparable misfortune. Omar was removed at the most important moment in the history of Islam when vast additions had been made not only to the Empire but to the wealth of every individual Moslem. And he was, above all, the one man whose intense piety and faith and justice made him not only obeyed by all, but made him above everything the model of perfect manhood to the Moslems. The rising generation who had suddenly found themselves pos-sessed not only of Empire but of enormous wealth, when every Arab was richer than he had ever dreamed it possible, lost in Omar in that critical period that example of saintly virtue on a throne which is perhaps amongst every people, modern or ancient, one of the most precious assets of society.

The very absence of Omar at that period was itself a loss which no impartial historian who has studied Moslem society of that period, can possibly doubt, however he may believe that history is influenced by general causes rather than by individual charac-ters. But when his successor was assassinated and again the next head of the Moslem world had to contend against rebellion, a new element forced its way into Islamic society which has curi-ously not often been noticed by even the best historians, although its effects are visible to this day in the apathy which we are discussing. Many of the most intimate friends of the Prophet and the most pious and distinguished of the "companions" doubted which side they should take in the civil wars, and how they should act so as not to be responsible for any harm that might come, and so were led to adopt the most dangerous principle of all. They retired each into his private home and did not use their influence one way or the other, but passed the rest of their lives in prayer and pilgrimage. This example has ever since been unconsciously followed by some of the best and purest in every Moslem society. The most genuine and the most moral of Moslems often tell you, as they have a thousand times told me almost in identical terms at Constantinople or Cairo, at Bombay or Zanzibar, that as long as they spent their energies in prayer and pilgrimage they are certain that though they do not do the best, yet they do no harm, and thus they give up to prayer and pilgrimage the lives which should have been devoted to the well-being of their people.

It is to this class in India that I appeal and desire most earnestly to impress upon them my conviction that, if they continue in their present attitude of aloofness, it means the certain extinction of Islam, at least, as a world-wide religion. We of this Conference appeal to the pious for their cooperation and assistance, and we warn them solemnly and in all earnestness that, if they give all their time to prayer and their money to pilgrimages, the time will come when that piety, which they so highly prize, will pass away from our society, and (for want of timely assistance at this most critical period) not one of our descendants will know how to pray or put any store upon the merit of pilgrimage. It is to this genuine class of pious men that we appeal here; let them come forward and take their legitimate place in the advancement of their co-religionists and in the moral and religious education of their brethren and children. In the strenuous life of modern times, a people that does not get help from its most pious and most moral sections has as little chance of success as a man who tries to swim with his arms tied behind his back.

A great, but silent, crisis has come in the fortunes of Islam and unless this class wake up to the altered conditions of life and to the necessity of superintending and educating the rising generation, the very existence of Islam is at stake. This class of pious Moslems must understand that what Islam now demands of them is that they should surrender to the training of the young a portion of the time hitherto given to prayer and a portion of the money hitherto spent in pilgrimages or celebrations of martyr-doms, long since past, which only help to keep alive those terrible sectarian differences which are one of the misfortunes of Islam. The example of the Prophet and of Abu Bakr and Omar and Ali should convince these pious people that the first duty of a Moslem is to give his time to the service of his nation and not merely to silent prayers.

A second cause of our present apathy is the terrible position of Moslem women . . . There is absolutely nothing in Islam, or the Koran, or the example of the first two centuries, to justify this terrible and cancerous growth that has for nearly a thousand, years eaten into the very vitals of Islamic society. The heathen Arabs in the days of ignorance, especially the wealthy young aristocrats of Mecca, led an extremely dissolute life, and before the conquest of Mecca the fashionable young Koraishites spent most of their leisure in the company of unfortunate women, and often married these same women and, altogether, the scandals of Mecca before the conquest were vile and degrading. The Prophet not only by the strictness of his laws put an end to this open and shameless glorification of vice, but by a few wise restrictions, such as must be practised by any society that hopes to exist, made the former constant and unceremonious com-panionship of men and strange women impossible.

From these necessary and wholesome rules the jealousy of the Abbassides, borrowing from the practice of the later Persian Sassanian kings, developed the present system . . . which means the permanent imprisonment and enslavement of half the nation. How can we expect progress from the children of mothers who have never shared, or even seen, the free social intercourse of modern mankind? This terrible cancer that has grown since the 3rd and 4th century [sic] of the Hijra must either be cut out, or the body of Moslem society will be poisoned to death by the permanent waste of all the women of the nation. But Pardah, as now known, itself did not exist till long after the Prophet's death and is no part of Islam. The part played by Moslem women at Kardesiah and Yarmuk the two most momentous battles of Islam next to Badr and Honein, and their splendid nursing of the wounded after those battles, is of itself a proof to any reasonable person that Pardah, as now understood, has never been con-ceived by the companions of the Prophet. That we Moslems should saddle ourselves with this excretion of Persian custom, borrowed by the Abbassides, is due to that ignorance of early Islam which is one of the most extraordinary of modern con-ditions. As if the two causes already mentioned were not enough to strangle Mahomedan society, the Abbassides set a terrible example of personal ambition which has left a deep impression on Islamic history. These unworthy relatives of the Prophet, ever jealous of the superior merit of the Ommiades, to whom they had sworn allegiance, beaten time after time in the field, made an unholy alliance with the newly-conquered men of Khorasan, led them astray by the so-called traditions in praise of their own family (invented by the thousand to mislead the newly-concerted [sic] and non-Arab Moslems who understood little of the liberal and democratic spirit of Islam), and with the aid of these allies overthrew the house of Ommia. This example of treachery for the sake of self-aggrandisement, coming from a family nearly related to the Prophet, throws great light on the fact that, time after time for the sake of furthering individual or family ambition, Moslems have sacrificed the welfare of their Sovereigns or States or peoples, for it is easy for those who are not naturally pious to forget the welfare of the nation for the sake of their own advancement.

The fourth cause of the general apathy of modern times which we are considering is undoubtedly the doctrine of necessity. No fair or reasonable-minded person who has read the Koran can for a moment doubt that freedom of the will and individual human responsibility is there insisted upon, but Abul Hassan Alashari (a direct descendant of that Abu Musa who was respons-ible for the fiasco at the arbitration at Doomah) - Abul Hassan, whose piety and learning and genius cannot be doubted – has placed the stamp of his unfortunately misapplied but great genius on Islam and given to Moslem thought that fatal fatalism which discourages effort and which has undoubtedly been one of the principal causes of the non-aggressive spirit of modern Islam. It was not till about the year 200 A.H. that the question of Jabr or Taqdeer, i.e., freedom of the will or necessity, began first to agitate Moslem thought. Had the matter come before the world of Islam during the Caliphate of some good and virtuous Caliph who was universally respected, and whose piety and faith were beyond doubt (such, for instance, as the saintly and exemplary Omar-ibn-e Abdul Aziz) an authoritative judgment in favour of freedom of the will would have finally laid this question at rest, but unluckily this true doctrine of Islam found, for its champion, Mamoon. Now, Mamoon's extraordinary ideas and very curious behaviour towards some principles of the Shariat had made the pious suspicious, and the very fact that Mamoon was the champion of the doctrine of the freedom of the will was enough to make the pious prejudiced against all those who held, and rightly held, that this was a fundamental doctrine and that no society that accepted fatalism and carried it to its logical conclusion could possibly succeed. It is the fashion to place all the responsi-bility for the downfall of Islam to Chengiz and the Tartar invasion.

But in my humble opinion - an opinion held also by many of the most learned who have given the matter serious study - it was, first, the bad example and selfishness of the Abbassides; secondly, the fatal system... with its restrictions on the intellec-tual development of the women; thirdly, the constant and silent withdrawal of the most pious and moral Moslems into a life of private prayer and devotion; and, lastly, this doctrine of necessity, that brought about our downfall. I say it was in my opinion these four causes that have brought Moslem society down to its present low and degraded level of intellect and character. How low we have fallen, one can easily find out by comparing Moslem general intelligence of today to that which exists even in the most back-ward of Slavic-European States. If this downward tendency is not arrested, there is danger that the best minds amongst the present- day Moslems in India will be brought up without any knowledge of the purity and beauty of Islam, and this loss will mean the certain estrangement of all the ablest of the community and the consequent loss of character, honesty and devotion amongst the intelligent, and this will mean, further, that our intellectual and social leaders will not possess the moral qualities most necessary for permanent success.

If, then, we are really in earnest in deploring the fallen condition of our people, we must unite in an effort for their redemption, and, first and foremost of all, an effort must now be made for the foundation of a University where Moslem youths can get, in addition to modern sciences, a knowledge of their glorious past and religion and where the whole atmosphere of the place (it being a residential 'Varsity) may, like Oxford, give more attention to character than mere examination.

Moreover, Moslems in India have legitimate interests in the intellectual development of their co-religionists in Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and the best way of helping them is by making Aligarh a Moslem Oxford, where they can all send their best students not only to learn the modern sciences, but that honesty and self-sacrifice which distinguished the Moslems of the first century of the Hijra. Gentlemen, it is not only my opinion, it is the opinion of all the best minds that guide Moslem thought in India, that such a University would restore the faded glories of our people. There is no doubt of the efficacy of the remedy, the element of doubt lies in the preparation of it. Will the Mussalmans of today exert themselves so much as to found such a University? Have we so wholly lost the noble disregard of self, the generous devotion to the good of Islam which character-ised the early Moslems, as not to be able to set aside some of our wealth for this great cause? We are sure that by founding the University we can arrest the decadence of Islam, and if we are not willing to make sacrifices for such an end, must I not con-clude that we do not really care whether the faith of Islam is dead or not?

Gentlemen, I appeal to all of you who hear me today to give not only your money, but your time and your labour to this great end. And especially I would most urgently adjure those who, in obedience to the precepts of our religion, give large sums in the way of God to consider whether it is not more in accordance with the commands and examples of the Prophet to help their Moslem brethren than to undertake pilgrimages and celebrate costly anniversaries.

The sum which we ask for is one crore of rupees, for we propose to establish an institution capable of dealing with the enormous interests involved; we want to be able to give our Moslem youths not merely the finest education that can be given in India, but a training equal to that which can be given in any country in the world. We do not wish that in future our Moslem students should be obliged to go to England or Germany if they wish to attain real eminence in any branch of learning or scholarship, or in the higher branches of industrial and technical learning. Now, we want Aligarh to be such a home of learning as to command the same respect of scholars as Berlin or Oxford, Leipsig or Paris. And we want those branches of Moslem learning,which are too fast passing into decay, to be added by Moslem scholars to the stock of the world's knowledge.

Above all, we want to create for our people an intellectual and moral capital; a city which shall be the hope of elevated ideas and pure ideals; a centre from which light and guidance shall be diffused among the Moslems of India, aye, and out of India too, and which shall hold up to the world a noble standard of the justice and virtue and purity of our beloved faith.

Gentlemen, do you think that the restoration of the glory of Islam would be too dear at one crore of rupees? If you really care for the noble faith which you all profess, you can afford the price. Why, if the Moslems of today did their duty as did the Moslems of the first century, in three months you would collect this money to pay for the ransom of Islam. Bethink you that there are in India 60 million Moslems, and of these at least ten million, or one crore, can afford one rupee a head; from the head of every Moslem family we only ask for one rupee, whereas we all know well that there are people who can pay Rs. 1,000 or Rs. 10,000 with ease.

Gentlemen, these are facts; if our ideal is not realised, it will be because the ape within has swallowed the angel; it will be because, though we profess veneration for the faith and for the Prophet, it is but a lip-loyalty that will not make this small sacrifice to revive in its purity the glorious faith of Islam.

ISLAM AND THE WEST

ISLAM AND THE WEST

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ISLAM AND THE WEST



Speech by HRH The Prince of Wales, at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford on the occasion of his visit to the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies: Wednesday 27 October 1993



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 Vice 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
centres 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 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 communications 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 live in the West, and around one million in Britain. Our own
Islamic community has been growing and flourishing for decades. There are nearly 500 mosques in
Britain. 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 in 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 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 had 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 upon it since the dawn of human civilization. The international
community has been told the draining of the marshes is for agricultural purposes. How many more
obscenities do we have to be told before action is 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 emotions 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: fourteen 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 school children, the two hundred years of
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 centuries 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
mediaeval 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 in1529 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
daysof 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 addition. 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 the 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, like the
cutting off of hands, 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
applicationbefore 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 twelve
hundred 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 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
Sassanain traditions, nothing to the Prophet of Islam. Some Muslim women never adopted the veil,
othershave 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 . 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 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 1980's is now beginning to
give away 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 which civilized
people everywhere must condemn.

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 straightjacket of history which we haveinherited. The mediaeval
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 four
hundred 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, alternative medicine, hospitals, all came from
this great city of cities. Mediaeval 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 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 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 around us. At the core ofChristianity 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 seventeenth 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 tendencyin the West to live on the surface of our surroundings, where we
studyour 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 year has come to reflect our own divided and confused inner state.
Western civilisation has become increasingly acquisitive and exploitive 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 relearn 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 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 in Islam and other religions can help us in that
search, then there are things for us to learn in 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-dependant 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
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.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 our lives
together. Simply getting to know each other can achieve wonders.I remember vividly, for example,
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 gentleman,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 the 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. We cannot 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 build on the positive principles our culture shave in
common. That trade has to be two-way. Each of us needs to understand the importance of
conciliation, of reflection - TADABBUR - to open our minds and unlock our hearts to each other. I
am utterly convinced that the Islamic and Western worlds have much to learn from each other. Justas
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, doctors,engineers and
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 of us 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 a 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 can only admire, and applaud, those men and women of so
many denominations who work 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 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 maybe able to vacate this theatre in somewhat
better condition. Before I go,I cannot put to you strongly enough the importance of the issues which I
have tried to touch on so imperfectly. 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 a 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.