Issue No. 609
Opinion
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24 - 30 October 2002 Issue No. 609 Opinion |
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On a dialogue between civilisations
Is the "dialogue between civilisations" a drive with a momentum of its own or only a reaction to a theory, asks Mohamed Sid-Ahmed
There is no project in the western world that can be described as aimed at promoting a dialogue between civilisations. Quite the contrary, what does exist is a theory advanced a decade ago by an eminent Western scholar, Samuel P Huntington, warning that the world was moving towards an era marked by a clash of civilisations. Writing in the prestigious review, Foreign Affairs, Huntington said that Western civilisation is bound to clash with other civilisations, notably, the Islamic, and that there were many signs that the clash was already underway. His essay, which caused something of an international furore, provoked sharp reactions from many quarters. Critics pointed out that to assume civilisations were set on a collision course was to ignore the fact that they represent a continuum of human endeavour, that they actually complement and interact with one another. In the Arab and Islamic worlds, particularly in Iran, the idea of a "dialogue between civilisations" was raised as an answer to Huntington's "clash of civilisations" theory, in other words, as a reaction to something else, not as a thing in itself.
Significantly, the "clash of civilisations" theory emerged at a time the main contradiction was not between Islam and the capitalist West but between Islam and the communist East, a contradiction that was actually being played out in Afghanistan. The United States was very active in encouraging an Islamic resistance to the Soviet invasion, recruiting Islamic mujahedeen from all over the world, including Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qa'eda organisation. Thus the clash of civilisations appeared, as the Cold War drew to a close, as a result of, not as an antipode to, the confrontation between East and West. It was a war by proxy between the United States and the Soviet Union. At a later stage it encouraged a rapprochement between America and Russia, in the aftermath of the confrontation between Moscow and Chechen separatists and between Washington and bin Laden. We now know that these confrontations were much more bloody than was reported by the news media as events unfolded.
Actually, expressions like "clash of civilisations" and "dialogue of civilisations" are shrouded in ambiguity because the word civilisations has more than one meaning and could even have distinctly different connotations as we move from one language to another. It is precisely this ambiguity that allows dangerous elements like the extreme right-wing forces in America to propound outlandish and unacceptable theories, including, most recently, that the Prophet Mohamed was a terrorist? In this way they seek to justify a collision with Islam, not only as a civilisation but even as a religion. It is therefore imperative to come up with less ambiguous frames of reference, such as a dialogue of religions (which, being based on written scripts, leave little room for ambiguity), over political issues (negotiated documents aimed at reaching settlements are solid frames of reference) or over economic and social issues (also based on unambiguous texts) -- which is not the case when we talk of civilisations.
Since the peace of Westphalia in 1648, Europe went beyond the stage of religious wars, particularly between Catholics and Protestants, and adopted the "nation-state", with its prerogatives of sovereignty, as its basic frame of reference. But it gradually appeared that certain nations were linked by common affinities and values that set them apart from others, a phenomenon that was described as an expression of their adherence to a "common civilisation" beyond the legally regulated level of the "nation-state". This raises the question of what differentiates between a given civilisation and a given culture. Do the two words have different connotations when moving from one civilisation -- or culture -- to another?
The Enlightenment in Europe played an important role in dissipating some of these ambiguities. Thanks to secularism and to the adoption of rational criticism in the eighteenth century, it became possible for thinkers and writers such as France's Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu, each in a specific field, to transcend a provincial outlook to the march of History and to lift themselves to a universalist outlook. But these thinkers proceeded from the premise that abstract rationalism was the driving force of human endeavour and tended to ignore irrational customs. They believed all people were inherently rational beings and therefore much alike. This established an ideal model of civilisation and/or culture that eventually could be seen as superior to all others.
But things changed with the beginning of the nineteenth century in the wake of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era, with the emergence of the Romantic movement and the appearance in Germany of thinkers such as Johan Von Herder and GWF Hegel, who emphasised the profound differences of the minds and works of humans in different culture, thereby laying the foundations for the comparative study of civilisations. According to modern historians it is impossible to write a fully intelligible history of any nation without taking into consideration the type of culture to which it belongs.
Scholars believe the Enlightenment has been the single most important factor in determining the characteristics of modern western civilisation. This does not mean, however, that the West has totally rid itself of superstition, obscurantist thinking, and non-scientific approaches to reality. But what is important in western culture is that traditions have been established which reject all constraints on free thinking in general and on scientific thinking in particular. As a result, no hypothesis is discarded out of hand, even if it runs counter to established beliefs.
This brought the West in our contemporary times to critical situations, affecting the very essence of its convictions. Can everything be subjected to investigation? Ethically speaking, is all research admissible? These are questions that were raised in the opening conference of the Alexandria library this week, in a scientific debate over "Ethics, Science and Technology". Is it acceptable, for instance, to manipulate human genes which, thanks to the Genome project, could improve the conditions of human life on earth, but also bring about fundamental change in human characteristics, detrimental -- and perhaps even deadly -- to the human species?
There are also many questions concerning life itself: when, for instance, does it begin, and when does it end? Does the foetus in its mother's womb have rights? Can a pregnancy be terminated without violating those rights; in other words, when is an abortion lawful and when is it criminal? Indeed, hard-line right-to- lifers oppose abortions even when they are necessary to save the mother's life. Then there is the question of euthanasia, or mercy killing. When should life-support systems be switched off? Is ending the life of a person who is terminally ill or suffering intolerable pain justified? Does a person's life end with brain death or only when his heart stops? Do parents have the right to choose the gender and characteristics of their offspring now that such a choice is becoming technologically possible? More generally, do people have the right to disrupt the natural equilibrium between males and females in society? This takes us to the question of whether attempts to improve the human race by tinkering with humankind's genetic baggage (eugenics) are morally acceptable or merely an updated version of the racist theories propounded by the Nazis to justify their wholescale slaughter of entire ethnic groups. The rapid advances in science and technology are forcing us to see ourselves in an entirely new light, not only as "subjects" who think and feel but also as objects whose destiny can be manipulated -- for better or for worse. The ethical challenge we are facing is to manage the dialectical relationship between these two aspects in a manner that is beneficial to both, not to one at the expense of the other. These highly explosive issues are already polarising people belonging to the same civilisation and are expected to exacerbate tensions between different civilisations, particularly between those that are secular-oriented and those in which religion remains the main frame of reference. At the same time, however, interpenetration between different civilisations has reached unprecedented dimensions thanks to the Information Revolution and to the accomplishments of present-day science and technology, notwithstanding the ethical restrictions. So much so that there is talk of the emergence of one global civilisation based on a multitude of cultures, which are themselves becoming more and more diversified. Which of the two factors will get the upper hand: more globalisation or more diversification, more unity or more diversity? Or will we see both unfolding together in harmony rather than in conflict? This is a question beyond anybody's guess.
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