Introduction to the History of the Perception of Islam in the West – 4

Prof. Dr. İbrahim Kalın

Source: DÎVÂN Journal of  Scholarly Studies, Issue 15 (2003/2), pp. 1–51

The Legacy of Orientalism in the American Context: Is Islam America’s “Other”?

In the 20th century, which I mean as the modern period, and in the current century, the relations between the Islamic world and the West continue in a way reflected by the image of Islam and stereotypes inherited by Westerners from their ancestors. The portrayal of Islamic societies as lustful, despotic, backward, undeveloped, tribal, perverse, irrational, and mysterious has found its place in today’s American public opinion. Films such as Navy Seals (1990), Killing Streets (1991), The Human Shield (1992), The Son of the Pink Panther (1993), True Lies (1994), and Executive Decision (1996) are the clearest examples showing that the monotonous and aggressive image of Arabs and Muslims still persists. The uncontrolled use of stereotypes in the entertainment industry has a significant impact on how ordinary people who regularly attend cinemas perceive millions of people of Middle Eastern and Asian descent. Thinking through these stereotypes and fixed identities leads to the obsession that “if you’ve seen one of them, you’ve seen them all.” Misled readers thus identify the brutal images they encounter in the written media with the Islamic world, the Middle East, and Muslims in general. To use Sam Keen’s analogy, if Arabs, who are seen as the only representatives of Islam in the eyes of many Americans, are denigrated—and most Americans don’t know the difference between Arabs and non-Arab Muslims—then portraying the other as criminal and extreme becomes a very natural criticism: “Now you can’t attack a Jew or a Negro. But you can easily attack an Arab; they are the natural criminals and enemies.”[1]

These violent images often play a major role in the emergence of Islamophobic political discourse. The myth of radical, militant, and political Islam constructed by many writers, policymakers, journalists, and speakers is no less destructive than its counterparts in the entertainment world. This narrative reduces the word “Islam” to a political and military term and views the Muslim world as a subcategory of the Middle East problem. Ironically, or rather tragically, many people in Europe and America view Islam as a way to understand the causes of the problems in the Middle East. This approach, sustained on a daily basis in Western media, allows for the formation of the image of Islam as a distant and foreign phenomenon,  a religion inclined toward violence, aggression, and all forms of extremism.[2] According to data from a 1994 study conducted by the National Conference, 42% of 3,000 Americans surveyed believed that “Muslims belong to a religion that tolerates or even supports terrorism,” while 47% thought Muslims were “anti-Western and anti-American.”[3] Until very recently, this view was prevalent even among high school students who had never heard of what really Islam is before, nor had they been presented with a distorted picture of Islam.[4] As we clearly saw after September 11, the political realities of the Islamic world are now viewed through the lens of cultural stereotypes and ugly accumulations of prejudices. This perspective has become part of what the public knows about Islam and Muslims. For instance, when introducing Bernard Lewis’s What Went Wrong, a journalist who agreed with him opened the discussion with the following statement:

“Now the whole world wants to understand a culture that, in a single sudden event on a beautiful day, produced people who killed themselves and 3,000 innocent Americans.”

In fact, Lewis’s derogatory epigraphic words are sufficient to sum up this feeling:

“If the people of the Middle East continue on this path, suicide bombers will become synonymous with the entire region, and there will be no escape from the hatred, anger, rage, poverty, and oppression that are spreading in waves.”[5]

Despite his fame as a Middle Eastern historian, Lewis is once again bringing up the image of Islam as a violent religion, this time in an academic style.

The idea of an Islam–West conflict, reinforced by Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis, gained great momentum following the tragic attacks on New York and Washington. After September 11, two distinct attitudes toward Islam became evident. The first of these is a resurfacing of the medieval portrayal of Islam, in which Islam was perceived as a religion of the sword, its prophet as a violent man, and Muslim societies as monolithic, violent people. The second attitude is the perception of Islam as a stubbornly irrational, anti-modern, perverse, extreme, fanatic and traditional form of behavior and action. As expected, these attitudes and stereotypes about Islam served to calculate how deeply rooted the current confrontation between Islam and the Western world truly is. The fact that Islam is identified with violence and aggression on the one hand, and intolerance and tyranny on the other, is an important element that shows how Islam is perceived and judged in the Western world. A typical example of this can be found in Paul Johnson’s article in National Review, written in response to the September 11 attacks. Paul Johnson’s National Review article in response to the September 11 attacks is a prime example. Johnson, who can’t even claim to be a novice reader of Islam, sees himself as an authority on Islamic history, declaring, “Islam is an imperialist religion.  (…) It has remained a religion of the Dark Ages. It is a parallel to the most extreme form of Biblical fundamentalism. (…) The history of Islam is, in reality, the history of conquests and reconquests.”[6] The militant tone used by Johnson illustrates how the narrative of political Islam and terrorism has contributed to the perception of Islam as the West’s “Other” and as an enemy. Similarly, Francis Fukuyama remarked:

“Islam, unlike other cultures, is the only cultural system that regularly produces people like Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, who reject modernity. This raises questions about how much such people represent the broader Muslim community, and whether this opposition lies within the very nature of Islam itself.”[7]

In the period leading up to September 11, many academicians, policymakers, and so-called “terror experts” persistently depicted Islam as a religion that tolerates, or even generates violence. Suicide attacks, hijackings, assassinations, street demonstrations, and rebellions, which had a significant impact on Europe and America’s perception of Islam, were perceived as elements that provided information about the language of “militant Islam.” The interesting point is that when the reasons for the above-mentioned actions are examined, surprisingly, Islam as a religion or Muslim culture is held responsible, rather than the existence of extraordinary political conditions in the Islamic world that could have led to these actions. In some cases, certain religious elements were brought into discussion to explain anti-Western and anti-American sentiments within the Islamic world. After the 1980 election, President Reagan told Time newspaper, “Muslims are returning to the belief that they can’t get into heaven without killing a Christian or a Jew.”[8] Nearly twenty years later, judging by the statement of Pat Robertson, the most famous leader of the evangelical movement, in which he publicly accused Islam as a “violent religion aspiring to world domination,” and Patrick J. Buchanan’s defense of “America versus Islam,” we can say that the situation has not changed much. In one of his messianic speeches, Robertson opposed President Bush’s claim that Islam was a peaceful religion. According to him; “Islam is not a peaceful religion that wants to coexist with others. Muslims only wish to coexist until they can control others, dominate them, and, if necessary, destroy them.”[9]  Robertson, echoing Reagan’s views, adds, “The Qur’an commands Muslims to kill an infidel when they see one.” The word “infidel” here is assumed to refer to Jews and Christians. A similar view, in a much more militant tone, was expressed by Victor Tadros in an essay titled “Islam Unveiled.” Tadros, who means to understand the “true nature of Islam” by the expression “lifting the veil”, gives everyone a clue about Islam. Tadros, who presents himself as an “Arabic-English translator,” reveals his great wisdom in unveiling Islam on Texas Christian University’s website with these words:

“Most Western nations are unaware that the essence of Islam is hostility, enmity, and jihad against Jews and Christians. There is no other religion besides Islam that so openly commands its followers to kill Jews and Christians and to damage their property.”[10]

It may be argued that the above-mentioned views are exaggerated and fanatical, and that they do not reflect the general perception of Islam. However, they are important indicators of the widespread misconceptions about Islam held by fanatic Christians[11] in America, and they certainly do not appear to be limited to a few extreme examples. For instance, after the events of September 11, the evangelist Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, described Islam as “a demonic and evil religion.” Jerry Vines, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, referred to the Prophet of Islam as “a pedophile possessed by the devil.”[12] The supposed conflict between Islam and Christianity, primarily in religious areas, is perceived as the conflict of the “Cross on the Crescent”, to use the title of Samuel Zwemer’s famous book.[13] On December 7, 2001, Patrick Buchanan spoke about Islam as though it were a contagious disease that needed to be eradicated. Taking Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” a step further into what he called a “war of civilizations,” Buchanan stated:

“(…) Is this a war between civilizations coming? Clearly, there are many in the Islamic world and the West who believe in this and are enthusiastic about it. (…) No matter how devastating the defeat we inflict, we cannot destroy Islam as we destroyed Nazism, Japanese militarism, or Soviet Bolshevism (note the similarities between Islam and the demons of the 20th century). (…) While Islam’s population is growing rapidly, the West is dying. Islamic warriors are prepared to face defeat or death, while the West is too timid about losses. They are full of grievance; we are full of guilt. Wherever Islam rules, it claims the right to impose its dogmas, while the West speaks of equality. Islam is assertive, while the West apologizes for its Crusades, conquests, and empires. Do not underestimate Islam. In Europe, the fastest-growing faith is Islam. As Christianity’s vitality fades in the West, Islam is surpassing Catholicism worldwide.  Mosques are overflowing, while churches stand empty.”[14]

Another essay by Buchanan titled “Why Islam Hates America”[15] provides a good summary of these debates. However, the study that best evaluates the contemporary Islamic world through essentialist categories and stereotypes on the one hand, and the confrontation narrative on the other, and offers the most information in terms of content, is the article titled “The Roots of Muslim Anger” written by Bernard Lewis about ten years before 9/11. In this work, which claims to present an assessment of the contemporary Islamic world, Lewis summarizes the basic characteristics of Muslims with words such as anger, rage, harshness, disgust, hatred, revenge, “jihad against the infidels,” struggle, attack, hostility and resistance. Lewis argues that “the problem of the Islamic world” lies in the extremism and fundamentalism embedded in the religion’s own historical and cultural choices. Thus, he suggests that what he calls “Muslim rage” originates in the cultural and civilizational realities of the Islamic world:

“It is clear that beneath these specific and numerous grievances there lies something deeper. This thing that turns every disagreement into a problem and makes every problem insoluble must be something deeper. (…)

It now appears more clearly that we are dealing with an attitude and a movement that far surpass the level of specific issues, policies, and the governments that pursue them. This is nothing less than a clash of civilizations; an irrational yet historically rooted response of an ancient rival to our Judeo-Christian heritage, our present secular existence, and their global expansion.”[16]

When viewed from this perspective, Lewis sees the history of Islam and the West as “a long sequence of attacks and counterattacks, jihads and Crusades, conquests and reconquests.” It should not be overlooked that a renowned historian like Lewis, by abruptly reducing the 1400-year history of Islam and the West to a simple affair of “attacks and conquests,” has contributed to the monotonous way of thinking that perceives Islam as a threatening force intent on destroying Western civilization. While Lewis evaluates the current reality of the Islamic world in terms of its anger and resentment towards the West, he tries to summarize the issue on this level by making generalizations and distortions that can only be expected from historians who are often ignorant and deliberately misleading. As seen in this essay and his other works, Lewis approaches history with a set of categories and templates that result in portraying the Islamic world and Muslims as people given over to rage, hatred, and a desire for revenge. This attitude not only misunderstands the current state of the Muslim world but also contributes to misinforming the public by propagating the idea that Muslims living in Islamic countries, Europe, and America are part of a larger power aimed at destroying the foundations of Western civilization. Moreover, like many of his followers, Lewis treats all socio-political formations in the Islamic world as militaristic and terrorist structures, using a catch-all term such as “Islamic fundamentalism” to discredit and classify them. This approach becomes even clearer and more troubling when Lewis claims that the modern version of jihad is “holy war against the infidel West”:

“An army is God’s army; an enemy is God’s enemy. The duty of God’s soldiers is to remove God’s enemies as quickly as possible and to send them to the next world, where they will be mercilessly punished by God. According to classical Islamic thought, which many Muslims are beginning to take into account again, the world and all of humanity are divided into two: the Islamic realm (dār al-Islām), where Muslim law and faith prevail, and the non-Muslim, or fighting realm (dār al-harb), which Muslims are ultimately responsible for bringing under Islamic sovereignty [Lewis does not explain where he got this phrase, İ.K.]. Yet most of the world remains outside Islamic rule. Indeed, in the view of Muslim fundamentalists, even lands under Muslim rule have their Islamic faith undermined and Islamic law set aside. The responsibility of holy war (jihad) begins in your own country and continues outward against the same infidel enemy.”[17]

Despite his reputation as a scholar, Lewis does not investigate the historical origins of the terms dar al-Islam and dar al-harb, nor does he mention geo-religious categories like dar al-sulh or dar al-‘ahd (the realm of peace or of treaties). Failing to observe these important distinctions, he presents the concept of dar al-harb as an Islamic missionary idea. But in reality, such spatial divisions were made by the fuqaha (canonists) specifically to provide a framework for international relations and to regulate political relations with non-Muslim countries. Contrary to the orientalist perspective[18] that perceives the concept of dar al-harb as a “land of war”, that is, Muslims being in a constant state of war, the classical sources of Islamic law used this concept in the sense that we understand today as “foreign countries”. There is no obligation to be at war always with these foreign lands. War is permitted only when a Muslim polity is attacked or “when a peace (sulh or ahd) treaty” is unilaterally broken.[19]

Neither Lewis nor those who distort the concepts of jihad and dar al-harb have made a serious effort to place these Islamic concepts in their broader context. Their radicalized and aggressive readings have no counterpart in classical Islamic works written in Arabic, Persian, or Turkish. It is not difficult to see how these distorted interpretations, fed by Western studies written mostly in English, German or Dutch, have demonized and militarized the concept of jihad, and how this has become an irresistible style, especially before and after the September 11 attacks. Consequently, the word jihad began to be used synonymously with aggression and terrorism and was persistently translated as “holy war.” Ironically, the tradition of “holy war” traces more directly to the history of Christianity. The repeated association of jihad with fundamentalism, terrorism, hatred, and revenge has generated a mass paranoia that reinforces stereotypical views of Islam. This view was expressed by the well-known French intellectual Jacques Ellul. Shortly before his death, in a preface he wrote for Bat Ye’or’s The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam, Ellul stated:

“(…) There is a very important point to understand about jihad, and that is that jihad is an institution in itself, that is, it is a part of the Muslim community. (…) As Bat Ye’or very aptly puts it, the world is divided into two regions: dar al-Islam and dar al-harb, that is “the domain of Islam” and “the domain of war.” The world can no longer be divided into nations, peoples, or tribes. Instead, all the elements referred to above are included within the domain of war. Thus in this area war becomes the only possible way to relate to the outside world [emphasis  is mine, İ.K.]. The earth belongs to God and its inhabitants must accept this truth; there is only one method for realizing this aim: war. The Qur’an prescribes times when fighting should not be undertaken and advises temporary truces. But that changes little: war remains an institution that will continue as soon as conditions are favorable.”[20]

Countless examples can be given on this subject. In a book written to “explain” the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, Yusuf Bodansky, former technical editor of the Israeli Air Force magazine, defined jihad as the religious and social foundation of international terrorism: “Islamic terrorism has begun a Holy War – a jihad – against the West and especially America, essentially through international terror.”[21] A similar hysteria, even more sensational and conspicuous, was produced by Amos Perlmutter of American University. While “informing” his readers, Perlmutter claimed that “Islam’s war is a collective war against the West, Christianity, modern capitalism, Zionism, and Communism.”[22] Gathering these different aspects of Western civilization into an essentialist whole, Perlmutter, with incredible imagination, claims that Islam is the “other” of the West and repeats what Ernest Renan said in his opening speech at the Collège de France in 1862: “How deprived the Muslims are of everything that constitutes the European spirit: science and education [emphasis is mine, I.K.].”[23]

The campaign to disparage Islam, and the deliberate divisions it has fostered between Muslims and the West, are not confined to the Islamic world. Today, this campaign is openly directed at Muslim communities in America, with the aim of destroying any potential for Islam to develop a humane image within the United States. Steve Emerson’s 1994 documentary, “Jihad in America: A Study of Islamic Extremism in the United States” is one of the key works that could influence public opinion on jihad, which originally meant internal struggle and war for the well-being of society but is now deliberately equited and identified with terrorism. The documentary reproduced all the usual stereotypes used to describe fundamentalist Islam and political Islam, portraying Islam as a dark religion harboring extremists and terrorists. Emerson’s highly aggressive and combative stance toward Islam was filled with accusations and absolute prejudices that treated all Muslims in America as potential criminals. Famous for predicting that the April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City bombing was a “Muslim-Arab terrorist attack,” Emerson, in an attempt to prove his imaginary scenario, claimed[24] that the group he called “Fundamentalist Islamists” were “using mosques and religious leaders to form the core of their terrorist infrastructure” and expressed his views on “the West’s hatred of Muslims” in a more belligerent tone:

“The West’s hatred for Islamic fundamentalism is not tied to any specific event or behavior. Rather, fundamentalists consider all the values; Western economic, political, and cultural systems​​ that make the West what it is, as a veritable attack on them.”[25]

Similarly, Samuel Huntington argues that the Islamic world’s resistance to secular globalization is tantamount to rejecting the very concepts that so-called Islamists seek to bring to their own countries; that is democracy, human rights, equality, and the rule of law:

“Western ideas of individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, freedom, the rule of law, democracy, free markets, and the separation of church and state have had very little effect on Islam (and other) cultures.”[26]

Huntington confuses the two by interpreting the lack of electoral democracy in Muslim and especially Middle Eastern countries today as the absence of democratic culture in these countries. This misjudgment is largely due to his neglect of political developments and power structures in those countries. According to the research conducted by Noris and Inglehart on 75 countries, 9 of which were Muslim countries, between 1995 and 2001,[27] Huntington’s assumption that there is no idea of ​​democracy in Islamic countries is unrealistic when one considers the perspectives and behaviors of ordinary people in Muslim countries. As John Esposito points out, such assessments suggest not a genuine “clash of civilizations” but rather the existence of a “marketplace of clashes” at the societal and civilizational level.[28]

The accusation that Islam supports and condones violence and terrorism against both Muslims and non-Muslims is a product of the militant-Islam narrative. The proponents of this distortion refuse to acknowledge that violence committed in the name of religion exists everywhere. Even a cursory glance at recent history shows that acts of violence and terror have appeared within all the world’s major religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Hinduism. Examples from Christianity include Pastor Michael Bray and the bombing of abortion clinics, Timothy McVeigh and the bombing of federal buildings in Oklahoma, David Koresh and the Waco events, the ongoing religious-political conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, and the massacre of more than 250,000 Muslims and the rape of many women in Bosnia. Similarly, incidents such as the killing of 38 Palestinians at the al-Halil Mosque in Hebron by the Brooklyn-born psychologist Baruch Goldstein in 1994, the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 by a member of an ultra-religious Jewish organization, Yigal Amir and Meir Kahane’s efforts to justify violence and terror in the name of Judaism are a few examples showing the link between terrorism and Judaism.[29] These examples clearly reveal the violence-based structure of modern culture, which transcends our current national and religious boundaries. It is evident that none of the examples mentioned above represent the majority of Christians or Jews, and, as one might easily expect, no one feels compelled to associate these acts with the essence or the history of Christianity or Judaism. Yet it is noteworthy that such restraint is not exercised when it comes to Islam.

Now, the fact that Islam is being singled out among other religions and religious groups and accused of violence and extremism shows how captive we can be to our own history. Despite the colonial era, the golden age of orientalism, and the extensive knowledge produced about Islam and Muslims in Western institutions of knowledge, Islam is still perceived as an alien element outside the religious and intellectual horizons of the Western world. The lack of understanding that hindered Islamic studies throughout the Middle Ages continues to pose a serious obstacle to appreciating the rich fabric of Islamic culture and history. The average Westerner, being more familiar with the Judeo-Christian tradition, can recognize distinctions within it and appreciate the difference between rule and exception. However, when it comes to Islam, there is rarely any reference to a Judeo-Christian-Muslim tradition that could eliminate historical ignorance about Islam and place it in a more developed framework.

In addition to being accused of aggression and terrorism, the prevailing perception of Islam in Europe and America today has been deeply damaged by two related issues: the lack of democracy and secularism in Muslim countries. As reflected in the views of Lewis and Huntington mentioned earlier, the absence of a civil culture that upholds democracy, freedom, and women’s rights is attributed to traditional Islamic culture, described as cruel, backward, irrational, and patriarchal. Although Lewis concedes that there is no fundamental conflict between Islamic principles and the ideals and methods of democracy, he still blames “fundamentalist Muslims” for “undermining the opportunities that a functioning democratic system could offer them.”[30]

Gilles Kepel, taking an even more radical stance, argues that Islam and democracy are inherently incompatible, stating that “to reject even a caricatured notion of democracy lies within the very nature of Islamic religious teaching.”[31] The fact that Western observers like Kepel offer an extremely narrow and limited reading of a subject like democracy in the Islamic world, which has been debated for the last thirty to forty years, and that they evaluate this alongside the religious ideas and actions of a few extremists against the secular character of Western democracy, is, in fact, a behavior contrary to the ideals of democracy itself. Although such criticisms can be raised, they are, in most cases, reactions to the ways in which democracy has been exploited in many Muslim countries by being used to legitimize corrupt and oppressive regimes.  Moreover, the anti-Western and anti-American sentiments that arise in these societies often result from the open support given by European states and the United States to these very regimes. As Michael Salla points out, “The West appears poised to provide military and economic support to some of the states it considers suspicious, under a diplomatic guise, despite widespread political pressure and human rights violations, in order to defeat Islamic aggression.”[32] The clearest example of the double standard applied to democracy in the Islamic world can be found in Algeria, where, as Robin Wright notes, “Europe and America have preferred a police state to Islamic democracy.”[33]

At this point, it is possible to say that the problem of democracy in the Islamic world has two dimensions: intellectual and political. From the perspective of the intellectual dimension of the democracy debate, it is clear that many Muslim thinkers and leaders, including those labeled Islamists or fundamentalists, engage in a critical and constructive dialogue with issues such as political participation, power-sharing, representation, governance, human rights, religious and cultural pluralism, and minorities. If we look at the course of the debate in recent years, it is possible to say with certainty that the emergence of a non-secular definition of democracy and political governance that preserves the validity of traditional Islamic values ​​is not only a remote possibility but also a practice that has begun to take place in many Muslim countries.[34]

From the political perspective, the presence or absence of democracy in the Islamic world has given rise to serious accusations in the political sphere, while European and American policies have often made the situation even more complex and difficult. In some cases, promoting democracy has come into conflict with withdrawing support from regimes that are “good allies but bad governments.” Because “pressing for political change would not only undermine peace-promoting efforts but also create a situation that is contrary to America’s vital interests: stability in the oil-rich Persian Gulf and strategically important Egypt,” as is well known, are crucial to America’s interests.[35] From this perspective, supporting repressive regimes has become a key rule in foreign policy decisions shaped by the ideological foundation of the myth of fundamentalist and terrorist Islam. What is left, after all, are either the messianic threat of Islamic fundamentalism or the Arabs who are in a state of “political inadequacy and immaturity” and, in the words of Lawrence of Arabia (1962), “a political weakness and in need of tutelage from a wiser Westerner.”[36] The same attitude is evident in the case of the Palestinian issue. The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is often portrayed as being unrelated to “Israeli occupation, settlement expansion, brutality, and aggression,” and instead is attributed to the supposedly undemocratic nature of Arabs. Here again, the issue is framed as Arabs being “unable to live peacefully with those unlike themselves.”[37] Such statements, which do not offend us because Arabs are seen as “free criminals” of the new world, but which are nothing less than racist, deeply penetrate the ongoing debate among the American public about democracy in the Islamic world. Moreover, this situation prevents us from correctly understanding the ongoing political problems of Islamic countries, which are impossible to address independently of the complex structure created by the economic interests of states, international organizations, and transnational corporations.

The debate over the absence of secularism in Muslim countries arises in a way similar to the problem of democracy. The claim of Islam over political authority and the unexpected success of so-called “Islamist” movements in countries such as Türkiye, Malaysia, Iran, and Algeria are generally interpreted as abnormalities resulting from the lack of a secular tradition in the Islamic world. The separation of church and state in the Western sense has no historical foundation in the Islamic tradition. For this reason, many Western observers tend to perceive attempts to bring religion and the public sphere together as efforts of religious extremism and conservatism. Similarly, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Muslim world is attributed both to the absence of secularism and to the failure of secular governments. Türkiye, due to its program of secularization and the Westernization process initiated under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk with the establishment of the modern Turkish Republic in 1923, is regarded as an exception to this rule. In recent years, there have been significant discussions about whether the frequently emphasized values ​​of the so-called “Turkish Model”, due to its secular, modern and pro-Western characteristics, could be exported to other Muslim countries.

This view not only crudely oversimplifies the issue of secularism in the Islamic world but also presents a distorted picture in which attempts to overcome the shortcomings of secularism are interpreted as efforts to turn back the clock or to destroy the fundamental principles of human rights and democracy. As a result, secular regimes in the Islamic world are supported at all costs to prevent the “threat” of “religious fundamentalism” and “conservatism” from becoming reality. However, this assumption does not change the fact that in countries like Türkiye, the secular authority of the state has been used not only to guarantee the rights of different religious groups against each other and the oppressive power of the state but also as a shield against religion itself. As Graham Fuller notes:

“Türkiye deserves special attention not because it is a ‘secular country,’ but because ‘Turkish secularism’ in reality rests heavily on state control and even suppression of religion. Türkiye is becoming a model precisely because it has begun, slowly and reluctantly, to restrain its rigid state ideology and to allow the emergence of Islamic movements and parties that reflect tradition, the views of large segments of society, and the country’s developing democratic spirit.”[38]

The harsh secularism implemented in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, and Türkiye has led to the radicalization of broad segments of society in the Islamic world and to their exclusion from civic life by depriving them of citizenship rights. Using secularism as a tool to suppress Islamic norms and local traditions in the name of modernization allows state-centered power elites to create deep chasms between rulers and ruled, and, more importantly, to widen the gap between modernity and traditional beliefs and practices for the sake of a modernization project imposed by oppressive and corrupt regimes that derive their legitimacy from strategic alliances with Western governments rather than from those who put them in power. It is clear that secularism, which developed out of the European Enlightenment and was formulated as a worldview detached from religion and disrespectful toward the sacred, cannot be reconciled with Islam or any other religious tradition. As a philosophical project, secularism rejects the transcendent and constructs reality as a self-contained and immanent structure. The humanist utopia that humanity will one day transcend religion and leave it behind underscores the more secularist discourse and the criticisms leveled at Islam and its revival in the 20th century, as we read in Lewis’s presentation of “our Judeo-Christian heritage and secular existence,” which he sees as a point of contention between the West and Islam. However, the triumph of secularism is now increasingly met with skepticism. As seen in the works of Peter Berger and others, the desecularization of the world has emerged as an important perspective.[39]

It is true that the secular character of Western civilization is perceived as a source of danger and conflict in the Muslim world, which remains more religious and more traditional than many other parts of the world. The export of modern consumer culture, with its pervasive taboos and accompanying behavioral patterns, has had an erosive effect on the fabric of traditional Muslim societies, leading many to condemn the West as a materialistic culture. But it should be noted here that this view of the West, when we consider sex, drugs, violence, individualism, the destruction of the family, fatalities in schools, or the moral corruption of uncontrolled consumerism, is not very different from the view of a devout Muslim, Jew, or Hindu from that of a devout Christian living in Europe or America. The real difference lies in the deep cultural shock that a non-Westerner experiences when encountering modern culture. Another important point to emphasize is that the primary target of anti-modern and anti-Western discourse is not the position of the West within itself, but rather the West within the Islamic world. In other words, the process that some refer to as the McDonaldization of the world actually poses a threat not only to Muslims but to many local and regional traditions across the globe. When the products and cultural symbols of modern Western culture are exported to a local society in the name of modernization, development and globalization by regimes claiming democracy and secularism, they become a source of conflict. Paradoxically, while criticism of the West made within the West is often perceived as harmless and apolitical, similar criticisms directed at the West from the Islamic world are characteristically viewed as expressions of aggressive fundamentalism and anti-modernism.

Consequently, these criticisms of modernization and Westernization should also be understood as a critique of the foundations of European colonialism and its continuing legacy in the Islamic world. The roots of the anti-Western discourse that has taken root in the Islamic world go back to the 18th and 19th centuries, when the Islamic world encountered Europe and forced to bear the burden of imperialism and colonialism of modern world. The fact that seventy percent of the Islamic world was under European colonial rule in the second half of the nineteenth century has a significant impact on how the contemporary Islamic world comes to perceive the West as a colonial and enslaving power.[40] This is clearly seen in Jabartī, who encountered and witnessed the French invasion of Egypt by Napoleon in 1798: for Jabartī and his fellow Egyptians, modern Europe emerged not so much as a place where a few scientific discoveries were made or ideas of liberty and unity were expressed, but rather as the painful reality of the invasion of the cultural heart of the Islamic world, the Egypt by France, the center of the 1789 French Revolution.[41] Beyond this, during the transition from empire to the modern nation-state, the defense of Muslim lands was taken up by Muslim leaders and intellectuals who viewed their anti-colonial struggles against the occupying European powers and Russia as jihad.[42] Concepts such as ummah, jihad and dar al-harb acquired new geopolitical meanings and became part of the modern Islamic discourse during the colonial period. This fact must be kept in mind when analyzing contemporary reactions within the Islamic world. For many so-called Islamist intellectuals and leaders, overcoming the socio-economic, political and intellectual legacy of the colonial and post-colonial era is still an ongoing struggle for Muslim societies to reassert their identity in this day and age when the secularizing effects of globalization and modernization are felt all over the world.[43]

Despite its global perception as the menacing “other” of a West conceived as a religious or secular civilization, an alternative view also exists that regards Islam and the Islamic world as a neighbor to the West and a sibling in the Abrahamic tradition, which includes Judaism, Christianity, and Islam itself. This perspective, voiced and analyzed by many European and American scholars and intellectuals, and deserving of a study of its own, takes reconciliation, coexistence, and dialogue as its starting point. Those who defend this view strongly oppose the demonization of Islam through constructs such as Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic extremism, and Islamic terrorism. Supporters of this view, such as Edward Said, John Esposito, John Voll, Bruce Lawrence, James Piscatori, Graham Fuller and Richard Bulliet, define the Islamic world as a universe in itself, a dynamism and a multifaceted reality, rather than a monolithic unit. Rather than assessing them through fixed notions of identity and stereotypes, they prefer to evaluate Muslim countries and their issues with the West within the context of Muslims’ own social and political circumstances. Although they acknowledge the existence of certain fundamentalist voices within the Muslim world, they argue that the general Islamic worldview is essentially tolerant and democratic, and that opposition to the West or to America is not an intrinsic part of Islam. Although they acknowledge that there are cultural differences between the Islamic world and the West, they argue that there is no situation that would necessitate an absolute existential conflict between the two. Furthermore, they regard Islam not as a military threat to the West, but as an intellectual and spiritual challenge.[44] They also emphasize the fact that much of the anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world stems from American foreign policy, which is based on double standards on the issue of democracy in Muslim countries, especially in the Middle East, and which provides unilateral and unconditional support to Israel.[45] They also regard the experience of Muslim minorities in Europe and America as a situation that can constitute a valuable chapter in the history of both worlds, in terms of the coexistence and dialogue between Islam and the West. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the sharp contrast between conflictual and peaceful perspectives will open a new page in the history of the West and Islam, both in terms of civilizational coexistence and, especially, in the political decisions made in the post-September 11 period.[46]

In conclusion, although the main subject of this study is the West’s perceptions of Islam, the West’s perception of Islam and the Islamic world is a reflection of its own self-conception, and this is equally valid for the Islamic world. Each civilization perceives the other through the conditions that shape its own identity and through the assumptions it holds about the other.

Muslims’ perception of the West has inevitably manifested itself as an attempt to reinterpret and understand the West through new modes of meaning and understanding, within the evolving values of Islamic history itself. The view of a ninth-century Muslim toward Christianity and Greek philosophy is certainly not the same as that of an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century Muslim toward modern science and technology. When we speak of continuity and change in the histories of Islam and the West, we can do so only by examining the continuity or rupture in each civilization’s self-perception and self-concept. In this context, the Islamic world’s confrontation with modern Western science and technology, military and economic power, and worldview is, at the same time, a confrontation with itself. In other words, the modern self-concept of the Muslim world directly shapes its way of perceiving “the West” as a category. It is not possible to properly discuss crucial points such as tradition and modernity, religion and secularism, the revival of Islamic civilization, economic and political developments in Muslim countries, modern science and technology, and the socio-philosophical challenges of all of these in the contemporary Islamic world without taking into account the role played by the West in this process.

Similarly, the West’s encounter with Islam has also taken place in accordance with the conditions that have shaped its own self-image. Concepts such as ethnocentrism, universalism and, in contrast, particularism, locality, the representation of the “other,” the legacy of colonialism, globalization, human rights, pluralism, and the limits of modernity are among the key elements that define the West in its relationship with the non-Western world. In today’s world, where cultural and national boundaries are being crossed in various ways, it is not possible to discuss any of these concepts without considering what they mean and how they apply to cultures and identities beyond the borders of the Western world. At this point, investigating how Islam is constructed in the Western mind is an important step towards understanding how the West perceives and portrays itself and those outside of itself. Whether approached from a peaceful or a conflictual perspective, it is no longer possible to ignore the place of Islam in the Western mind and imagination. How Western civilization will define itself from now on is directly related to how it perceives Islam as a religion, culture and geography.  The first requirement for us to look to the future with more hope is to transcend the historical legacy that this study modestly attempts to present and to go beyond the anti-Islamic, confrontational and militant discourses.

Endnotes

[1]Sam Keen, Faces of the Enemy, Harper and Row, Cambridge 1986, Quoted from pp. 29-30: J. Shaheen, Arab and Muslim Stereotyping in American Popular Culture, Center for Muslim Christian Understanding, Georgetown University, Washington D.C. 1997, p. 12.

[2] Jack Shaheen, The TV Arab, The Popular Press, Ohio 1984; id., Arab and Muslim Stereotyping. See also Michael Hudson-Ronald G. Wolfe (ed.), The American Media and the Arabs, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, Washington D.C. 1980.

[3]J. Shaheen, ibid, p. 3.

[4]Quoted by Fred R. von der Mehden, “American Perceptions of Islam”, Voices of Resurgent Islam, ed. John L. Esposito, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1983, p. 21, from Michael Suleiman, American Images of Middle East Peoples: Impact of the High Schools, Middle East Studies Association, New York 1977.

[5]Jerusalem Post, 7 April 2002.

[6]P. Johnson, “‘Relentlessly and Thoroughly’: The Only Way to Respond”, National Review, 15 October 2001, p. 20.

[7]F. Fukuyama, “The West Has Won”, The Guardian, 11 October 2002.

[8][8]Quoted by: Fawaz A. Gerges, America and Political Islam: Clash of Cultures or Clash of Interests?, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999, pp. 69-70.

[9]The Washington Post, 22 February 2002, A02. This seems to be taken verbatim from Renan: “When weak, Islam is liberal [tolerant]; when strong, it is vehement”; see L’Islamisme et la science, Paris 1883, p. 18.

[10] http://www.magazine.tcu.edu/forum/display_message.asp?mid=599.

[11]Another powerful myth that seeks to exclude Islam from the Judeo-Christian tradition is the idea that Muslims believe in a god other than the god believed in by Jews and Christians. According to this story, the “Moon God” worshiped by Muslims is a pagan god. This myth is propagated by Dr. Robert Morey through lectures and various publications; see The Moon-god Allah, Islam the Religion of the Moon God, Behind the Veil: Unmasking Islam ve The Islamic Invasion: Confronting the World’s Fastest Growing Religion.

[12]Nicholas D. Kristof, “Bigotry in Islam–And Here”, New York Times, 9 July 2002.

[13]For Zwemer, who founded and edited Muslim World for nearly 40 years, and other missionary views of Islam in the modern period, see Jane I. Smith, “Christian Missionary Views of Islam in the 19th-20th Centuries,” in Muslims and the West: Encounter and Dialogue, ed. Zafar Ishaq Ansari-John L. Esposito, Islamic Research Institute, Islamabad 2001, pp. 146-177.

[14]7 December 2002, “Coming Clash of Civilizations?”,

www.theamericancause.org/patcomingclashprint.htm.

[15] 5 March 2002, www.theamericancause.org/patwhydoesIslam.htm

[16] Bernard Lewis, “The Roots of Muslim Rage”, The Atlantic Monthly (September 1990), pp. 47-60.

[17] Lewis, ibid.;  also see, Lewis, “Islam and Liberal Democracy”, The Atlantic Monthly (February 1993), p. 93.

[18] L. Massignon, La Crise de l’autorite religieuse et le Califat en Islam, Paris 1925, pp. 80-81; Tyan, Institutions du droit public musulman, Paris 1954 v. II, p. 302; Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore 1955, p. 53 and 170; id, “International Law”, Law in the Middle East, ed. M. Khadduri-H.J. Liebesny, Middle East Institute, Washington D.C. 1955, pp. 349-370. Cf. “dar alharb”, The Encyclopedia of Islam ve Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam, ed. H.A.R. Gibb-J.H. Kramers, Cornell University Press, Ithaca ts., pp. 68-69.

[19]For some of the classical sources on the subject, see Ahmed al-Sarakhsi, al-Mabsut, Dâru’d da‘ve, Istanbul 1912, v. XXX, p. 33; İbnü’l-Qayyım al-Jawziyya, Ahkâmü’z-zimme, Damascus 1381, v. I, p. 5; İbn Âbidîn, Raddü’l-mukhtar, Dârü’l-kütübi’l-ilmiyye, Beirut 1415/1994, v. III, pp. 247, 253. For a valuable study of the classical sources, see Ahmet Özel, İslâm Hukukunda Ülke Kavramı: Daru’l-İslâm, Daru’l-harb, Daru’l-sulh, İz Yayıncılık, İstanbul 1998. 

[20]Bat Ye’or’s, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Rutherford 1985 (from the preface).

[21] Quoted by: Paul Findley, Silent No More: Confronting America’s False Images of Islam, Amana Publications, Beltsville, MD 2001, p. 65.

[22] The Wall Street Journal, 4 October 1984.

[23]Ernest Renan, L’Islamisme et la science, p. 3.

[24]The Wall Street Journal, June 25, 1993. After 9/11, Emerson continued his attacks and unjust accusations in his book American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us (Free Press, New York 2002). For a similar approach see, Daniel Pipes, “Fighting Militant Islam, Without Bias”, City Journal (Autumn 2001), http://www.danielpipes.org/article/79.

[25]  Quoted by P. Findley from San Diego Union Tribune, 8 Haziran 1993. Ibid, p. 71.

[26]Quoted by John Esposito, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002, s. 127 from Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Simon & Schuster, New York 1997, p. 258

[27]Pippa Norris ve Ronald Inglehart, “Islam and the West: Testing the Clash of Civilizations Thesis”, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Working Paper, number RWP02-015, 22 April 2002.

[28]Esposito, Unholy War, p. 126.

[29]Mark Juergensmeyer’s work Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (University of California Press, Berkeley-London 2000), contains invaluable data on modern justifications for the use of violence in the name of religion and demonstrates that violence can be used under various names and identities.

[30]Lewis, “Islam and Liberal Democracy”, p. 93.

[31]Gilles Kepel, The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity and Judaism in the Modern World, Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park 1994, p. 194.

[32]Michael E. Salla, “Political Islam and the West: A New Cold War or Convergence?”, Third World Quarterly, XVIII/4 (December 1997), pp. 729-743.

[33]Quoted by Gerges, America and Political Islam, s. 29-30 from Robin Wright, “Islam, Democracy and the West”, Foreign Affairs, LXXI/3 (Summer 1992), pp. 137-138

[34]There is a growing literature on Islam and democracy that points to the vitality of this debate in the Muslim world. For a summary of the debates in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Iran, see, John Esposito, Unholy War, pp. 133-145; J.L. Esposito-John Voll, Islam and Democracy, Oxford University Press, Oxford-New York 1996; A. Soroush, Reason, Freedom&Democracy in Islam: Essential Writings of Abdolkarim Soroush, ed.-trans. Mahmoud Sadri-Ahmad Sadri, Oxford University Press, New York 2000; Azzam S. Tamimi, Rachid Ghannouchi: A Democrat within Islamism, Oxford University Press, New York 2001; Fatima Mernissi, Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World, Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., Reading, Mass. 1992.

[35]Martin Indyk, “Back to the Bazaar”, Foreign Affairs, LXXXI/1 (February 2002), pp. 75-89.

[36] Quoted by: Ralph Braibanti, The Nature and Structure of the Islamic World, International Strategy and Policy Institute, Chicago 1995, p. 6.

[37] Quoted from Columnist Mona Charen by Robert Fisk, “Fear and Learning in America,” Independent, April 17, 2002.

[38]Graham Fuller, “The Future of Political Islam”, Foreign Affairs, LXXXI/2 (May-April 2002), p. 59.

[39]Cf. Peter L. Berger (ed.), The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington D.C. 1999. Also see, Articles of John Keane, P. Berger, Abdelwahab Elmessiri and Ahmet Davutoğlu: Islam and Secularism in the Middle East, ed. J.L. Esposito-A. Tamimi, New York University Press, New York 2000; William E. Connolly, Why I am Not a Secularist, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1999.

[40]For several studies evaluating Islamic movements in the 18th and 19th centuries within the context of European colonialism, see, John Voll, “Foundations for Renewal and Reform”, The Oxford History of Islam, ed. J.L. Esposito, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1999, pp. 509-547. Also see, John L. Esposito, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1992, pp. 168-212.

[41]Cf. Al-Jabarti’s account of the French occupation of Egypt and his cultural response to Napoleon in Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle of the French Occupation 1798: Napoleon in Egypt (trans. Shmuel Moreh, 3rd ed., Markus Wiener Publishers, Princeton 1997).

[42] Cf. S.V.R. Nasr, “European Colonialism and the Emergence of Modern Muslim States”, The Oxford History of Islam, pp. 549-599.

[43] Cf. Bruce B. Lawrence, Shattering the Myth: Islam Beyond Violence, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1998, pp. 40-50; Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, “Islamism: A Designer Ideology for Resistance, Change and Empowerment”, Muslims and the West: Encounter and Dialogue, pp. 274-295.

[44]İbrahim Kalın, “Deconstructing Monolithic Perceptions: A Conversation with Professor John Esposito”, The Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, XXI/1 (April 2001), pp. 155-163.

[45] For an analysis of these scholars within the framework of American foreign policy decisions, see Mohommed A. Muqtedar Khan, “US Foreign Policy and Political Islam: Interests, Ideas, and Ideology,” Security Dialogue, XXIX/4 (1998), pp. 449-462.

[46] For policy recommendations from the conciliatory wing, see Gerges, America and Political Islam, pp. 28-36.