This article was downloaded by: [The Aga Khan University]On: 19 December 2014, At: 01:03Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number:1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street,London W1T 3JH, UK

Journal of Muslim MinorityAffairsPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjmm20

Islam, Europe and the West:A View from RomeAbd Al Wahid PallaviciniPublished online: 03 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Abd Al Wahid Pallavicini (2000) Islam, Europe and the West:A View from Rome, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 20:1, 167-169, DOI:10.1080/13602000050008988

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602000050008988

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of allthe information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on ourplatform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensorsmake no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy,completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views ofthe authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis.The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should beindependently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor andFrancis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings,demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, inrelation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private studypurposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution,reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any

form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of accessand use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

Aga

Kha

n U

nive

rsity

] at

01:

03 1

9 D

ecem

ber

2014

Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2000

Islam, Europe and the West: A View from Rome

ABD AL WAHID PALLAVICINI

We ® nd dif® culty in dealing with an issue of increasing importance: the confrontationbetween Islam and Europe, Islam and the West, Islam and the Occident. The dif® cultylies in the fact that Islam is a divine, monotheistic revelation, while Europe is only oneof the ® ve continents, the West one of the four cardinal points, and the Occident ageographical expression usually opposed to an ill-de® ned Orient.

The fact of being occidental and Muslim poses no personal con¯ ict for us, since theEast can certainly not be equated with Islam nor the West with Christianity. Andthough with time Islam has also come to manifest itself in the West, the West iscertainly no more Muslim today, and no more than it can be said to be truly Christianyet.

We should treat rather than confront these two latest revelations as divine, Abra-hamic, monotheistic, as we said, but also both universal, or catholic in the etymologicalsense of the term, since their message is addressed to all peoples and not just to certaingeographical areas, to certain caste systems or to certain peoples, as was the case withprevious revelations. This is done, however, without the pretense at least on the Islamicside, if not the Christian, of invalidating their doctrine or seeking to convert allhumanity to the doctrine contained in one’ s own religion.

At the same time, the Islamic civilization cannot be compared with a presumedWestern civilization, since all the true traditional civilizations, from the Mayans andAztecs, from the Assyro-Babylonians, Hindus and Buddhists, Chinese and Japanese,whether Taoists or Confucianists, to the Egyptians, Greeks or Romans, Orthodox Jewsor medieval Christians, have always been founded on theocentric and theocraticprinciples. Only in the presumed modern Western civilization are these things notcontemplated, so we do not feel it can qualify it as a true and proper civilization.

We should therefore compare these latest two revealed religions not only as universal,Abrahamic and monotheistic (this last term certainly not intended in the sense thateach of them has its own God) but also as different revelations of the same and onlyGod, the God of Abraham, precisely that have originated theocratic civilizations eachcorresponding to at least one billion believers in all the countries of the earth but arealso the only ones that contemplate in their doctrine, though in different forms, the® gure of Jesus Christ, seyyiddina Isa, alayhissalam.

The objective of this confrontation should be mutual recognition of the redeemingtruth of each religion, and particularly of the latest two revelations, accepting theirdifferent theological formulations and respecting their necessarily different ritual forms,not only as expressions of their respective holy texts, that con® rm their earlier origins,the prophesies contained in them regarding successive revelations, but especially asrecognition of the omnipotence of God that is revealed in ever new and different formsto different peoples in places, times and manners that are always providentiallydifferent.

ISSN 1360-2004 print; 1469-9591 online/00/010167-03 Ó 2000 Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

Aga

Kha

n U

nive

rsity

] at

01:

03 1

9 D

ecem

ber

2014

168 Abd Al Wahid Pallavicini

But if such recognition seems more likely by Islam, which is based on the Qur’anicexpressions, which in turn recall those traditional writings of the other holy scripturesin their most Orthodox foundations, Christianity seems unwilling to recognize theprophesies contained in their own holy books, such as announcements of the futureadvent of a Paracletic tradition successive to Christianity.

The other objection usually expressed in this regard is the statement that if aChristian were to recognize the truth contained in Islamic doctrine, s/he would by thisvery deed become Muslim. We feel this concept again derives from the modernWestern, typically Christian, tendency to believe that God gave the world a single truerevelation, which is Christianity and certainly not Islam, even if Islam were intended inits etymological sense of surrender to the will of God.

Islam, on the other hand, is considered today by Christianity as a propedeutica Christi,a preparation for recognition of the Christ ® gure, although already present in anotherform in the most Orthodox Islamic doctrine or as semina verbi, seeds of a divine wordthat will only achieve completion with recognition of the incarnation of Jesus as the Sonof God. This is not contemplated in Islam, where Jesus is regarded, rather, as spirit ofGod, born of the Virgin and annunciation of the hour.

This hinders Christians from recognizing the Holy Qur’an, the Word of God forMuslims, as another manifestation of the Word, to regard it as a holy book on the sameplane as the inspired texts of the Bible and New Testament, in the same way theMuslims place the ® gure of Jesus on the same plane as the other prophets, from Adam,® rst man and ® rst Islamic Prophet, to Noah, Abraham, Moses, down to Muhammad,sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam, seal of the Prophets, and to the expectation of the secondcoming of Jesus on Judgement Day.

Consequently, Christians express the so-called Islamic± Christian dialogue in terms ofalmost exclusive humanitarian equivalency, recognizing the good intentions of theMuslims who, though they believe in a single God and venerate the ® gure of Jesus andthe Virgin Mary, will end up where only such good intentions can lead. Muslims, onthe other hand, insist on the theological incompatibility of the two revelations regardingthe ® gure of Jesus. The fact that Jesus is viewed by Muslims as the Spirit of God, butby Christians as the Son of God and God Himself, places in doubt the very conceptionof the singleness of God of Abrahamic monotheism, which the Christians ascribe onlyto the concepts of incarnation and trinitarianism as antecedent even to His ownmanifestation.

In this way they choose to overlook, on the one side, the metaphysical conception ofan absolute principle, which the Fathers of the Church called the Ocean of Being, andon the other, the Qur’anic phrases that say: `There is no coercion in religion; to youyour religion and to us ours; if God had so wished, He would have made you onecommunity, but He did not, to test you with what he gave you; all of you will returnto God and then everything on which you are discordant today will be clari® ed to you.’

This brings to mind the adage of Orthodox Eastern Christianity that says: if Godbecame man, it was to make man become God. It is precisely this Dei® catio or Theosis,today denied to the Christian West, that would offer the opportunity to recognize in lifethe validity of the other paths, without having to oppose Orthodoxy, this time in thebroad sense, whether Christian or Islamic, but only the false modern conceptions of amonotheism intended in the form of confessional exclusivism: yes, we believe in oneGod, but only in ours.

But the greatest dangers of contact between Islam and the West certainly do notderive just from these conceptions of hegemonic Christian exclusivism toward other

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

Aga

Kha

n U

nive

rsity

] at

01:

03 1

9 D

ecem

ber

2014

Islam, Europe and the West 169

religions, or the leveling of Catholic theology to a mere social doctrine of the Church,but from the secularization and profanation of the West, be it so-called religious, orrather laic, agnostic or more generally atheistic.

The Christians themselves do not attempt to convert Muslims to their religion, whichfor the most part they no longer practice, but only to their way of intending religion onalmost exclusively ethical± social bases. They are therefore resistant to the efforts ofthose on the Islamic side who would attempt to show them the truths contained in theHoly Qur’an, which Christians certainly do not regard as the word of God, just as theyno longer believe in the truths expressed in the holy books of their traditions and noteven, perhaps, in God Himself.

If, in effect, they still believed, this would require a major change in their lives. Theytherefore seek by every means to combat the spirituality that may still be present inIslam, that latest revelation that came, like the others, from the East, equating it, rather,with backward or superstitious conceptions or with the expressions of burgeoningfundamentalism, the real obstacle to the propagation of Islam in the West.

Thus the danger behind the dialogue and confrontation of Islam with the West,intended here in this sense, is certainly not that the West may be engulfed by a worldregarded as foreign but rather that even Islam may humble itself to demand what arecommonly called human rights rather than maintain its original Eastern sacredness,which reminds us of all of our divine duties. Islam today seems to be the last and onlytraditional civilization that can demand those duties.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

Aga

Kha

n U

nive

rsity

] at

01:

03 1

9 D

ecem

ber

2014