REVIEWS: A bridge too  far

Reviewed by Karamatullah K. Ghori

 
THE 21st  century’s greatest challenge to its contemporaries — spanning the  all-too-evident religious divides, among nations and followers of divine  religions — is becoming increasingly axiomatic in our times. This is the  in-stock trading item with political leaders of all stripes and  persuasions; this is also what has been animating religious sermons and  scholarly discourses from pulpits to conference halls.

And this is  what begs the obvious question — how to square this circle? What should be  the modus operandi to come to grips with an issue as nettlesome and thorny  as religion, with all its in-built and over-suffused sensibilities,  reservations and prejudices?

But there’s no denying the timeliness  of the issue and the urgency to tackle the dilemma posed by it, especially  because in the absence of a genuine attempt to seek a way out of this  labyrinth, our world is in imminent danger of losing its equilibrium  altogether — with much of it gone, already. What could be more alarming,  for instance, than the reigning Pope, Benedict XVI, apparently choosing to  throw his considerable weight behind the neo con alarmism and suggesting  that Islam is “evil” and “uncivilised”, on the basis of his own research  and inference.

Roger Boase, an Honorary Research Fellow at the  Queen Mary College, University of London, is one of those few contemporary  academics and scholars who feel that dialogue and discussion, on an  on-going basis, holds the best promise of averting a clash of religions  and civilisations, in marked preference over George W. Bush’s choice of a  “long war” targeting to eliminate religion-based terrorism.

Boase,  himself a convert to Islam and its universal message of peace and harmony  among nations and religions, is wedded to the Quranic matrix of ecumenism  as an eternally resilient framework to accommodate myriad beliefs,  perceptions and values.

The Quranic ideal of a peaceful and  tranquil world is one based on justice: preaching good and abhorring evil.  However, as Boase cogently elaborates his thesis with quotations from the  Quran, evil should be combated with good, and not with more evil of a  different kind. Bush’s “war on terror”, for example, is continually  unleashing its own spill-down of extremism as it supposedly combats, with  force, terrorism in myriad lands. Boase has aptly quoted a clergyman,  speaking at a memorial service for the victims of 9/11, telling his  audience: “Let us not become the evil we deplore.” That’s something Bush  and his neo con minions ought to understand.

Boase has no doubt in  his mind that there was never a greater urgency and need than today to use  Quran’s categorical injunctions of universalism as the building blocks of  a pluralist world, which alone would guarantee a world devoid of injustice  and exploitations of all kinds. His inference of Islam’s universalism is  exactly what the great mystic and Sufi, Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi had  inferred in the 13th century: “The lamps are many, but the light is the  same. It comes from beyond.”

That’s the kind of soothing perception  of God and religions needed to salve the bleeding wounds of today’s badly  divided world, and not the divisive dictum of George W. Bush, paraphrasing  the dictum: “He that is not with me is against me.”

Boase has taken  the laudable initiative of compiling, in a highly readable book, 21  meticulously researched and compelling essays, from some of the most  recognised, and respected, contemporary scholars and researchers on  revealed religions of the world. The names of contributors to Boase’s book  read like the modern Who’s Who on the esoteric world of religious  scholarship.

These scholars argue, in the perspective of history  and scriptures, that in their pristine concepts and dogmas all divine  religions are universal and preach accommodation with other faiths and  beliefs. They preach love, not hatred. They call for a universal community  of mankind co-existing despite their obvious differences of creed,  cultures and beliefs.

The common thread running through all the  revealed religions is communication: that between God and his creatures,  and that between the creatures in all their diversities. Communication is  the key to understanding and bridge-building, a tool so badly needed to  bring our contemporary fractious and fractured world together on a  platform of co-existence. As Prince Hasan bin Talal of Jordan — one of the  few Arab princes known for their erudition and insight — argues in his  foreword, this kind of humane communication could be the panacea to  staunch the grievous wounds inflicted on our psyche by fears of a  hegemonic process of corporate globalisation.

Akbar S. Ahmed, a  leading voice of moderation in the camp of contemporary Islamic scholars,  aptly argues that if dialogue amongst world religions is shunned, or not  given the priority it so badly deserves, then Huntington’s provocative  Clash of Civilisations could well become a self-fulfilling  prophecy.

To Murad Wilfried Hofmann — who, like Boase is a  neo-Muslim and a renowned European scholar of Islam (and was also this  scribe’s diplomatic colleague in Algiers) — the challenge of the times for  Muslims is to prove that Islam’s pristine pluralism is as dynamically  applicable today as it was ever in the past. Hofmann goes to the heart of  Islamic pluralism and traces its crux to the Quranic injunction so pithily  conveyed in Chapter 109, “Surat al-Kafirun”: ‘To you your religion, and  for me mine.’ (Quran, 109: 06). This paradigm of co-existence is the  answer to our world where followers of different religions, faiths and  ethnicities may compete for space in one civil society, as is the case in  Europe today. The Quran consigns faith to the personal domain and  insulates it against societal fault lines. A society devoid of clashes of  faith would develop into the Islamic model of a just and equitable place  for everyone.

Hofmann has a crystal clear perception of the  challenge of pluralism to Muslims, in both Islamic majority and  Islamic-minority states. In a Muslim majority context, Egypt, he argues,  is a perfect example of pluralism where, after 1,300 years of Muslim  political power there is still a thriving community of 14-million-strong  Copts.

On the other hand, 45 per cent of the Muslim population in  the world is currently living in countries where they’re in a minority.  Muslims in these minority states have the burden on them to prove that  they’re capable of co-existing with the majority population, without  consigning themselves to ghettoes, or exclusivist enclaves. However, the  Islamic message, he cogently insists, is one of integration, not  assimilation. The Muslims don’t have to lose their novel identity into the  western melting pot; they can be equal contributors in the evolution of  functional civil society while still keeping to their great  inheritance.

Hofmann has a word of caution for the so-called  “secular” western societies, some of which pride on their tolerance. He  quotes Wolfgang Goethe, the most luminous of European intellectual  luminaries to buttress his argument that pluralism calls for much more  than mere tolerance. Said Goethe so illustriously: “Tolerance should be a  transitional attitude only. It must lead to acceptance. Mere toleration  amounts to an insult.”

Boase, Hofmann, Akbar Ahmed, and many others  — such as Robert Crane, Fred Halliday, Antony Sullivan et al — who have  brilliantly argued the urgency of bridge-building across the yawning faith  divides of our times, in this most timely compilation of essays, seem  convinced that the essence of the age demands that Muslims across the  globe accept a greater share of the burden. Boase sums up the debate by  appealing to his brethren-in-faith to understand the Quranic injunctions  on pluralism with an open mind. The Quran doesn’t preach its followers to  be narrow-minded or exclusivist; nor did the Holy Prophet of Islam in his  life of a great reformer. The course may be difficult and arduous, with  myriad trap doors ready to devour the pilgrims, but the bridge once  reached would be worth the effort.

Islam And Global Dialogue: Religious Pluralism and the Pursuit of  Peace
Edited by Roger Boase
Ashgate Publishing Ltd. Gower House,  Croft road,
Aldershot, Hampshire, GU11 3HR,  UK
www.ashgate.com
ISBN 0-7546-5307-2
310pp. Price not  listed