Islam and the West: For a Better World

Anwar al-Khatib
Al-Raya (Qatar), daily, 27 May 2006

Under the title “Islam and the West: Towards a Better World”, the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies is holding its first intellectual forum, hosting a group of thinkers and researchers from the Arab and Muslim worlds and from Europe and America, who will discuss over two days the relationship between the Muslim world and the West in all its aspects. Among the main themes the forum will discuss is the relationship between civilisations: is it one of conflict or of communication, and how can we raise this relationship from the level of destructive conflict to that of healthy competition and complementarity? Another theme is globalisation and its worldwide repercussions: the forum will examine whether globalisation is a passing phenomenon or humanity’s new destiny, what its cultural, social and environmental effects are, and whether cultural diversity is a necessity or an obstacle to universality. The forum will also discuss the future of the world and the challenges of the twenty-first century, and at the close of its proceedings will seek to produce a new ethical charter setting out moral rules that guarantee the right to difference and mutual respect, and defining rights and duties in our relationship with the universe, the environment and the human being.

The most prominent participants in the forum include Wilfried Hofmann, the well-known German thinker; Rodrigo de Zayas, thinker and historian; Bruno Guiderdoni, French thinker and astrophysicist; Abdelwahab el-Messiri, the well-known Egyptian thinker; Abu Yaarub al-Marzouki, the Tunisian philosopher; Burhan Ghalioun, the Syrian writer and thinker; Turki al-Hamad, the Saudi thinker and writer; Mounir Shafiq, the well-known Palestinian thinker; and Ataollah Mohajerani, former Iranian Minister of Culture.

Yesterday evening the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies held a private dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel, attended by the thinkers taking part in the forum and by the Director General of the Al Jazeera Network, Wadah Khanfar, who gave a speech welcoming the participants and stressing the importance of holding this forum at this time and the role the Al Jazeera Network plays in this respect.

The forum programme is as follows:

Saturday 27 May 2006

9:00–9:30 Registration

9:30–11:00 First session

Civilisations between communication and conflict

Dr Abdallah al-Nafisi: thinker and academic (Kuwait)

Dr Abu Yaarub al-Marzouki: thinker and university professor (Tunisia)

Dr Andidjar Gilles:

Prof. Claudi Mario Betti:

11:00–11:20 Break

11:20–13:00 Second session

The relationship between the Muslim world

and the West: dimensions and features

Dr Bashir Nafi: writer and academic (based in Britain)

Louis J Cantori:

Dr Abdelhamid Youyou: writer and academic (based in France)

Prof. Hassan Makki: academic and thinker (Sudan)

13:00–15:00 Lunch and break

15:00–16:30 Third session

Globalisation and its worldwide repercussions

Mr Mounir Shafiq: thinker and writer (based in Jordan)

Andreas Reger:

Dr Turki al-Hamad: thinker and academic (Saudi Arabia)

16:30–16:50 Break

16:50–18:30 Fourth session:

The future of the relationship between civilisations

Kenneth White:

Gunther Mulack:

Prof. Abdelwahab el-Messiri: thinker and academic (Egypt)

Rodrigo de Zayas:

19:30 Dinner

Sunday 28 May 2006

9:00–10:30 Fifth session:

The relationship between the Muslim world

and the West: solutions and alternatives

Murad Hofmann: thinker and former diplomat (Germany)

Ataollah Mohajerani: writer and former minister (based in Britain)

Dr Abbas Aroua: writer and researcher (based in Switzerland)

Khalid al-Khater: writer and academic (Qatar)

10:30–10:50 Break

10:50–12:30 Sixth session:

Towards a global ethical charter

Dr Burhan Ghalioun: thinker and academic (based in France)

Bruni Guiderdoni:

12:30–15:00 Lunch and break

15:00–16:30 Closing session: conclusions and proposals

17:00 Press conference

19:30 Dinner.

Close of the first Al Jazeera Forum of the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies… Divided opinions on a clash or a dialogue of civilisations

Akram al-Yousef
Al-Sharq (Qatar), daily
Monday 29 May 2006

The proceedings of the first intellectual forum of the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, attended by a select group of Arab and foreign thinkers and writers from various countries, closed yesterday evening, Sunday, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Doha. The press conference held at the end of the two-day forum summed up most of the views put forward at the forum, held under the title “Islam and the West: For a Better World”. The speakers at the conference concluded that the forum had succeeded in launching dialogue and widening its circle, and in addressing the issues frankly and without affectation, as the researcher Rafik Abdessalem put it – a point all the participants endorsed.

Yesterday saw a series of contributions on the theme “The relationship between the Muslim world and the West: solutions and alternatives”, by Murad Hofmann, the German thinker and former diplomat; the writer and former minister Ataollah Mohajerani; Dr Abbas Aroua; and the Qatari writer and academic Khalid al-Khater. The final theme of the forum was “Towards a global ethical charter”, with Dr Burhan Ghalioun (Syria) and Bruno Guiderdoni (France).

Opinions varied in these sessions. One speaker discussed Huntington’s theory and the world after 11 September, stressing that the essence of all religions calls for peace and love, not conflict.

Dr Sayyed Ataollah Mohajerani spoke about the relationship between true religion and violence. He said: “In his wonderful book, the Masnavi, Rumi tells a unique story about the function of religion. He says there was a dispute between the people of Sheba and their prophets, and I believe that dialogue is still alive. These days we suffer from the problem of particular readings of the religious text.

“The people of Sheba said: ‘If you can bring good fortune upon yourselves, then you are losers and we must resist you, for we are free of you; you have brought us troubles and sorrows. Through your evil omen, the harmony and concord that existed among us have turned into countless divisions. Of old we were like parrots that fed on sugar; now, thanks to you, we have become like birds that contemplate nothing but death, imagining it from an evil omen – what a hateful rumour, what a hideous transformation and painful punishment! These are the things your tale and your message contained; you are a people with an appetite for contriving sorrows.’ The prophets said: ‘Our hateful, evil call would have a good effect on you if, when one of you had fallen asleep in a desolate place and a dragon had come within two bows’ length or nearer, a merciful person made you aware of it, saying: Get up, quickly, or the dragon will get you.

“‘If you say, Do not disturb my sleep with that evil omen, he will answer you: What evil omen? Get up and see in the light of day.’” (Rumi’s Masnavi)

He added: “My view of the emergence of religious thought, and also of the relationship between religion and violence, is based essentially on that story.

“All religions claim that their fundamental aim is love and peace. For example, our religion, Islam, takes its name from the word islam, and so does our name as Muslims – all this is reflected in our belief in peace and love. Our Prophet – the best of blessings and peace be upon him – says that religion is nothing but love, and God Almighty says, love being the axis of religion: ‘Say: If you love God, follow me, and God will love you’ (Al Imran 3:31).”

Dr Abbas Aroua gave a computer presentation on the conflict or clash between civilisations, declaring that he did not believe in the dialogue of civilisations – a point he made clear in his presentation, since those who talk of dialogue ignore the points of clash. His contribution, entitled “The clash of civilisations from the perspective of conflict and peace studies”, stated: “The ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis entered the field of intellectual experimentation internationally when Samuel Huntington promoted it in an article (1) published in 1993 that caused a great stir, followed in 1996 by a more detailed exposition in his book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. The thesis then returned to the intellectual, political and media scene after the events of 11 September 2001.

“This provocative thesis can be summarised as saying that, with the end of the Cold War, what most distinguishes peoples is not ideology, politics or economics, and as predicting that international conflicts will be between nations and groups belonging to different civilisations, and that these conflicts will be more frequent, longer-lasting and more violent than conflicts between groups belonging to the same civilisation. Huntington divided humanity into nine major civilisations: Western, Orthodox, Latin American, African, Islamic, Hindu, Confucian, Buddhist and Japanese.

“Huntington concluded that the boundaries between civilisations would be the fault lines of future battles, and that in the near term the focus would be on conflict between the West and several states belonging to the Islamic and Confucian civilisations, especially Islamic civilisation, which ‘has bloody borders’ with other civilisations. On the basis of his thesis, Huntington also set out a package of recommendations to protect the interests of the West, including:

“a) Promoting greater cooperation and unity within Western civilisation, especially between its European and American components.

“b) Limiting the expansion of the military power of Islamic and Confucian states.

“c) Exploiting differences and conflicts among Islamic and Confucian states.

“d) Supporting groups in other civilisations sympathetic to Western values and interests.

“e) Strengthening international institutions that reflect and legitimise Western interests and values.

“Although this thesis found support among some Western thinkers, many researchers opposed it from different theoretical standpoints. Some criticised Huntington’s view of civilisation and his conception of its relationship to culture; others questioned his classification of civilisations and his treatment of them as rigid entities with no freedom within them and no interaction between them; and some focused on the political background of the thesis, regarding it as a tool for reshaping US foreign policy after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This was pointed out by the late thinker Edward Said, who responded to the ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis with a counter-thesis in his article ‘The Clash of Ignorance’, which he concluded by saying that the clash of civilisations theory, like the science-fiction film The War of the Worlds, is better at reinforcing defensive self-pride than at leading to a critical understanding of the bewildering interdependence of our time.

“The strongest opposition to the ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis, however, came at the empirical level, where many researchers criticised it for relying on ‘anecdotal evidence’ with no solid empirical basis. The Moroccan researcher Mohammed Barrou, for example, considers that ‘the examples given in the thesis are either arbitrarily selected (partial) or inaccurate’. On the contrary, most of the recently published empirical studies in the field of conflict studies (6–11), which have examined international conflicts in recent decades, have produced results that refute the thesis, showing that the frequency of conflicts between groups belonging to different civilisations has not risen relatively since the end of the Cold War.”

Aroua added: “In reality there is not a single conflict between the Muslim world and the Western world as two unified blocs that can be attributed mainly to the cultural factor; there are, rather, separate conflicts between parties belonging to the Muslim world and other parties belonging to the Western world, which can be explained in terms of history and geography.”

The Qatari researcher and academic Khalid al-Khater discussed the theories prevailing in the world today regarding conflict or clash between civilisations, or dialogue between them, and his position on each of them.

Dr Burhan Ghalioun said, under the second theme, “Towards a global ethical charter”: “There is no doubt that human societies are subject to a profound dynamic – of which the technological revolution is perhaps the most important source – driving them to unite and to go beyond the old cultural boundaries. Globalisation, which has become a fashionable topic today, is the latest expression of this dynamic. But the unification of the global space does not necessarily mean the formation of a single culture; rather, it goes hand in hand with the destruction of cultures and the dismantling of traditional bonds of kinship on the way to recomposing them according to the new geopolitical balances. Humankind today does not therefore find itself facing a choice between national culture and global culture, but a harder choice: a universal civilisation or a prolonged barbarism. The formation of a universal civilisation presupposes the emergence of a single universal culture, or at least of a common ethics that brings cultures together and regulates their activity and events in relation to one another – that is, it calls for the emergence of shared norms and value systems through positive communication between individuals beyond their own groups and cultures, and in harmony with them rather than in opposition to them. This requires persistent, deliberate work that accompanies the historical experience of human cultures actually opening up to one another and understands the dynamics of their interaction and their conflict as well.

“Since the 1990s some intellectual currents have begun to sense the need to formulate a universal ethic, embodied in the document issued by the Parliament of the World’s Religions held in Chicago on 28 August 1993, in which representatives of most of the world’s religions took part. Yet this intellectual movement to discern the outlines of a universal ethical charter has not advanced much since then, if it has not actually regressed. After a period of rising hopes came stagnation and then deep frustration. Then came the issues of the clash of civilisations and its discourses, then the global war on terror, and finally the development of violent movements in Muslim regions, which brought this religious horizon for generating a universal ethic to a complete dead end.”

Ghalioun stressed: “Perhaps the main weakness that has hampered work on building a universal ethical charter lies in the very path followed by those concerned. They chose the path of interreligious dialogue and rapprochement, believing that religion is the broadest or most active framework for producing values and educating individuals and groups, and that once understanding had been reached between the representatives of religions, a great step would have been taken towards understanding between societies and human beings.

“But the bet on interreligious dialogue as a driver for the emergence of a universal ethical charter has not proved very successful. In fact, despite the spread of new forms of religiosity and the return to tradition, it seems to me that secular culture and the worldly values it contains are what most influence the lives of individuals today and determine the norms of their thinking and behaviour. Despite its undoubted political importance, interreligious dialogue cannot be a substitute for a genuine, in-depth dialogue between cultures – that is, between active intellectuals and representatives of local and global civil society together, worldwide, and not between men of religion.”

Some of the thinkers and writers taking part in the symposium expressed reservations about the notion of a duality in the conflict between Islam and the West, and others pointed out that some contributions showed an unwarranted interest in detail. But in the end this topical subject remains of the utmost importance today, at a time when politics tends to inflame the clash between civilisations for political and ideological reasons, whereas dialogue should take on a cultural character. This led some speakers to talk of the need for the colonial West of the last century to apologise to Islam for the problems colonialism caused Arabs and Muslims, so that a future dialogue could be discussed without remaining at the surface.

Interreligious dialogue is no substitute for dialogue between cultures

Anwar al-Khatib
Al-Raya (Qatar), daily
Monday 29 May 2006

The thinker and academic Dr Burhan Ghalioun said in the working paper he presented to the first intellectual forum of the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, which yesterday discussed the search for a global ethical charter, that human societies are subject to a profound dynamic – of which the technological revolution is perhaps the most important source – driving them to unite and to go beyond the old cultural boundaries. Globalisation, which has become a fashionable topic today, is the latest expression of this dynamic. But the unification of the global space does not necessarily mean the formation of a single culture. It goes hand in hand, rather, with the destruction of cultures and the dismantling of traditional bonds of kinship on the way to recomposing them according to the new geopolitical balances. Humankind today does not therefore find itself facing a choice between national culture and global culture, but a harder choice: a universal civilisation or a prolonged barbarism. The formation of a universal civilisation presupposes the emergence of a single universal culture, or at least of a common ethics that brings cultures together and regulates the activity of each in relation to the others – that is, it calls for the emergence of shared norms and value systems that allow positive communication between individuals beyond their own groups and cultures, and in harmony with them rather than in opposition to them. This requires persistent, deliberate work that accompanies the historical experience of human cultures actually opening up to one another and understands the dynamics of their interaction and their conflict as well.

Ghalioun added that since the 1990s some intellectual currents have sensed the need to formulate a universal ethic, embodied in the document issued by the Parliament of the World’s Religions held in Chicago on 28 August 1993, in which representatives of most of the world’s religions took part. But this intellectual movement to discern the outlines of a universal ethical charter has not advanced much since then, if it has not actually regressed. After a period of rising hopes came stagnation and then deep frustration. Then came the issues of the clash of civilisations and its discourses, then the global war on terror, and finally the development of violent movements in Muslim regions, which brought this religious horizon for generating a universal ethic to a complete dead end.

He considered, however, that the main weakness that has hampered work on building a universal ethical charter lies in the very path followed by those concerned. They chose the path of interreligious dialogue and rapprochement, believing that religion is the broadest or most active framework for producing values and educating individuals and groups, and that once understanding had been reached between the representatives of religions, a great step would have been taken towards understanding between societies and human beings. But the bet on interreligious dialogue as a driver for the emergence of a universal ethical charter has not proved very successful. “In fact, despite the spread of new forms of religiosity and the return to tradition, it seems to me that secular culture and the worldly values it contains are what most influence the lives of individuals today and determine the norms of their thinking and behaviour. Despite its undoubted political importance, interreligious dialogue cannot be a substitute for a genuine, in-depth dialogue between cultures – that is, between active intellectuals and representatives of local and global civil society, worldwide, and not between men of religion.”

In a session on “The relationship between the Muslim world and the West: solutions and alternatives”, the writer and researcher Dr Abbas Aroua had argued that the Muslim world could contribute to reducing international tensions through the following measures:

a) Addressing the enormous number of conflicts eating away at most of the Muslim world – a space of more than 1,200 million people and one of the regions of the world where violent conflicts between or within states (between groups, or between the authorities and civil society) are most widespread. This requires building local expertise in conflict and peace studies and establishing centres for study and research, so as to deal scientifically with the phenomenon of conflict and with the ways of preventing, resolving and transforming it into an active force and a positive mechanism for the development of society, on the basis of the modern principles and techniques developed in the West, applied to Arab and Muslim society while taking into account its historical characteristics and cultural foundations.

b) Addressing conflicts between parties from the Muslim world and other parties from the Western world on the basis of a set of ethical requirements, the most important being justice and impartiality in dealing with the conflict and in examining the legitimacy of the two sides’ conflicting goals. If the conflict is between a party with legitimate goals and a party with illegitimate goals, resolving the conflict necessarily involves achieving the goals of the first party, especially where they concern basic needs without which life cannot go on; and it is entitled to use all legitimate means to that end, including resistance – for in conflict and peace studies, there is no negotiating basic necessities. If, on the other hand, the conflicting goals of both parties contain a measure of legitimacy, resolving the conflict requires recourse to dialogue between the two parties and calls for a degree of creativity that makes it possible to explore ways of overcoming the contradictions between their goals. In both cases the process of settling the conflict must go through the threefold path (settlement – conflict resolution – reconciliation); only then can a meaningful process of dialogue between Islamic and Western civilisations begin. Otherwise this process will be nothing but political and media clowning, or an academic luxury among elites.

In the same session, Mr Khalid al-Khater of Qatar presented a summary of the symposium on “The Islamic Agenda and the Future of Dialogue”, held in London, which concluded:

The importance of refocusing attention on dialogue as a principle and a strategy, without neglecting the importance of the preparatory work this requires: defining the problem and its nature, developing a strategy for dialogue and finding the right people for this process, as well as setting up a body to monitor and establish mechanisms for dialogues and their practical forms, and the follow-up work of keeping up interest in the matter.

That the level of dialogue and its interim ceiling should revolve around “improving the terms of engagement” and not be confined to sweeping demands.

Taking the problem with the West out of the framework of a clash of civilisations and presenting it as a set of political problems, described precisely.

The importance of working to dismantle the foundations of Israel’s alliances, even to a small degree, so as to create a minimum of understanding in any dialogue process.

The importance of building bridges with the rising powers of the future, such as China, Russia and India, as well as South America.

It also stressed avoiding seeing Europe as a single entity, and likewise not regarding what the Muslim side wishes to achieve as a single thing, but rather as graded goals and demands.

The “Al Jazeera Studies” forum examines the West’s troubled relationship with Islam
Muslim and Western thinkers examined relations between the Muslim world and the West over two days

Mohammed al-Ali
Aljazeera.net
28 May 2006

The first forum of the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies held two sessions on solutions and alternatives for the troubled relationship between Islam and the West, and on a proposal to establish a global ethical charter, before closing its proceedings this evening.

The forum opened yesterday in Doha under the slogan “Islam and the West: For a Better World”, with the participation of thinkers, academics and writers from the United States, Italy and Germany, as well as Muslim and Arab writers and Europeans of Arab origin.

The former German diplomat Murad Hofmann, the former Iranian Minister of Culture Ataollah Mohajerani, the Algerian researcher Abbas Aroua and the Qatari writer Khalid al-Khater gave contributions on the first theme.

Murad Hofmann

Hofmann, a former German diplomat who embraced Islam, said that the mere fact that we discuss Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man and Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations means that we are in a position of reaction, because it is the West that has set our agenda.

He said he had met Huntington a few years ago in Riyadh, when Huntington was setting foot there for the first time, adding that Huntington admitted to him then that Islam and modernity are not necessarily opposed.

He considered that Huntington’s prophecy of a clash of civilisations has become “an established fact”, since Islam is now regarded as a global threat and as a political ideology. He added that this impression is reinforced “when someone does something wrong while shouting Allahu akbar”.

Hofmann said we must acknowledge that we are on the defensive and must plan and think on that basis, adding that Muslims should not appear to be expanding, so that the West can get used to us, and that they must reach a peaceful solution to the Palestinian question, which would have an effect on any dialogue with the West.

Mohajerani gave a contribution entitled “The relationship between true religion and violence”, based on an allegorical story from Rumi’s Masnavi that includes a dispute between the people of Sheba and their prophets.

Khalid al-Khater

For his part, the Qatari writer Khalid al-Khater considered that the West has no real theory of coexistence with Muslims. He explained in his speech that the political side of the clash between the Muslim world and the West will remain, whether or not there is dialogue.

He saw the relationship between America and Israel as one of the main causes of this clash, since Israel was created to serve a function in the Western project before becoming “a leader of the Western project and a key actor in it”.

Dr Abbas Aroua, a physician of Algerian origin living in Geneva, called for “collective wounds that have not healed” to be treated before there is any talk of reconciliation between the West and the Muslim world.

He considered that the Muslim world’s contribution to reducing international tensions depends on two things: first, that the Muslim world deal with its internal conflicts; and second, that “ethical requirements” be met, chief among them justice and impartiality, to facilitate the handling of conflicts between the Muslim world and other world actors.

An ethical charter

The second theme of the forum’s deliberations addressed the call by Dr Burhan Ghalioun, professor in the department of political sociology at the Sorbonne, for a global ethical charter.

He said that since the 1990s intellectual currents have begun to sense the need to formulate a universal ethic, embodied in the document issued by the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in August 1993.

He went on to say that the bet on interreligious dialogue as the basis for a universal ethical charter has failed, and called for an in-depth dialogue between active intellectuals worldwide and representatives of local and global civil society.

Commenting during the evaluation session, Abbassi Madani, former leader of Algeria’s Islamic Salvation Front, urged Muslims not to be carried too far by “the current of events” to the point of thinking that all people in the West share in the tragedies of Muslims.

He gave as an example the intervention of French rescuers when floods struck Algeria, which prompted the Algerian president at the time to call for a treaty of friendship between the two countries.

He said that friendship must replace hostility, noting that Muslims need a relationship based on sincerity and seriousness.

Al Jazeera forum hosts 25 thinkers to discuss Islam and the West

Mohammed al-Ali
Aljazeera.net
27 May 2006

The Al Jazeera Centre for Studies today held the first of its intellectual forums in Doha, attended by more than 25 thinkers and academics from several Arab countries, as well as thinkers and researchers from the United States, Germany, Italy and France.

The forum met under the broad title “Islam and the West: For a Better World”, divided into sub-themes, four of which were dealt with today, the other two to be addressed tomorrow.

The first session of the forum was attended by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Sheikh Abbassi Madani, the former Iranian Minister of Culture Ataollah Mohajerani, the Director General of the Al Jazeera Network Wadah Khanfar, and cultural and media figures.

In the first session, on “Civilisations between communication and conflict”, the Kuwaiti thinker Abdallah al-Nafisi gave a contribution in which he argued that Muslims cannot form a view on their relationship with the West without referring to the Holy Qur’an, which, together with the Sunna, is their reference.

Al-Nafisi’s calls

Al-Nafisi pointed in his contribution to a vision of history and of relations between nations and civilisations in the Holy Qur’an, summed up in three terms found in three verses.

The first speaks of mutual repelling (tadafu‘) between nations and civilisations: “Had God not repelled some people by means of others, monasteries, churches, synagogues and mosques would have been destroyed”; the second of alternation (tadawul): “Such days We alternate among people” – which al-Nafisi regarded as a yardstick for understanding history.

The third term is replacement (istibdal), in Surat al-Tawba: “If you do not go forth, He will punish you with a painful punishment and will replace you with another people” – meaning, according to al-Nafisi, that the Lord of the worlds will wipe you out of existence if you do not mobilise.

Al-Nafisi explains that the relationship of Muslims with the West is bound up with these three terms: “mutual repelling with the West”, “alternation with it” and “replacement if we do not resist it”.

Al-Nafisi stated to Aljazeera.net that some people understood this as an incitement to conflict with the West, pointing out that the matter is in reality one of “divine laws” (sunan) – “a law of God, glory be to Him” – and not of human beings.

He added that this means that coexistence or conflict with the West is not a personal choice but a matter of divine law, which “in fact calls on us to resist the West”.

Professor Claudio Mario Betti, a member of Italy’s Community of Sant’Egidio, considered that the term “clash of civilisations” has been misused, “because conflict has always existed”.

He added that the difference now is that conflict does not seem avoidable, and is sometimes welcomed by both groups in defence of the “purity” within each civilisation.

A dialogue between equals

The thinker Abu Yaarub al-Marzouki argued in his contribution that a dialogue between Muslims and the West as equals depends first on achieving “the fraternity the West has achieved”, and on Muslims making peace with the West on the basis of human brotherhood and cooperation.

He added that the Holy Qur’an “calls for reconciliation between two brothers if they fight each other”, and if that fails, calls for fighting the aggressor party, “which could apply to the world”.

He said that the West believes it has stripped Muslims of their sources of strength and that all that remains before it is their spiritual immunity, adding that British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in his speech at Georgetown University in the United States, did not call for dialogue but for consolidating the ranks of the world’s powerful.

The American researcher and academic Gil Anidjar considered that what is happening in the world is not a clash of civilisations but a conflict within one civilisation.

He said that the West is living through two historical problems which, in his view, are a single problem: “Islam and the West” and “Europe and the Jews”.

Commenting, Sheikh al-Qaradawi said: “We believe that West and East are parts of the kingdom of God Almighty, and that the wars of the Franks (the Crusades) left their mark on the souls of both sides.”

He added that conflict between human beings is natural, because they are not angels: there are good and evil people, but evil must have someone to repel it.

Al-Qaradawi went on to say that the West has power and dominance, and that all Muslims ask of it is that it recognise their right to live in their Islam and recognise that the world has room for more than one religion.

Commenting on the American researcher’s paper, he added that Muslims have no religious problem with Jews, who are People of the Book, stressing that the problem is one of land and must be resolved.