John Watson, Listening to Islam with Thomas Merton, Sayyid Qutb, Kenneth Cragg and Ziauddin Sardar: Praise, Reason and Reflection (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005).
How is the post-secular pluralist west to make sense of Islam? There has been, of course, ongoing interaction between Christianity and Islam since the 7th century of the Common Era (CE). But, in the last few decades Europe (and even more so North America) has had to deal with the increasing reality of Islam. Europe has been much more at the forefront of engaging Islam than has been North America, but since 9/11 North America has had to face the growing presence of Islam in a much more thoughtful manner.
There is a tendency in the west to both demonize Islam and see the future as a clash of civilizations (the Christian West versus the Islamic Middle East). Needless to say, such a view tends to denigrate Islam and reduce such a religion to that which threatens to destroy Christianity and Western Civilization. The alternate perspective is one that tends to idealize and romanticize Islam as the fount and source of wisdom, insight, tolerant pluralism and much that is good in world civilizations. The Andalusian thesis takes the position that when Islam was the major religion in Spain in the late Middle Age, Muslims were kind, generous and gracious to their Jewish and Christian neighbours. How is the West to view of Islam? — demonize or romanticize? clash of civilizations or Andalusian pluralism?
It is simple foolish and silly to reduce Islam to one homogenous group. There are a variety of forms of Islam just as there are diverse interpretations of Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism.
The form Islam takes in Iran is different than in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait is different from Pakistan, Egypt than Sudan. Islam in North Africa and the Middle East is distinctively different than Islam in Turkey, Indonesia, the Balkans and Russia. So, whose version of Islam should the West attempt to interpret?
Whose version of Christianity should the Muslims accept and why? The answer to such questions will certainly hold and occupy the thoughtful in the 21st century.
Listening to Islam is a fine primer on the fact that the West can no more ignore or caricature Islam. The task in the future will be both to understand and discern the future of Islam and the West—demonization, idealization or reducing Islam is a homogenous group will not do. There is a definite need to transcend such simplistic models. Watson, in Listening to Islam, has done more than yeoman’s duty in turning his attentive ear to the voice of two Muslims and two Christians as they ponder the issue of Islam. Sayyid Qutb was one of the guiding intellectuals in the Muslim Brotherhood (seen as a historic threat to both the West and a more moderate and westernized type of Islam in Egypt), and Ziauddin Sardar has seen through the rhetoric of the west to its imperial and power hungry core. Qutb and Sardar, for different reasons, are eyes through which the west can see itself outside its cultural and political matrix. Both Thomas Merton and Kenneth Cragg offer the reader, from a Christian perspective, sensitive reads of the Islamic Tradition. Watson has certainly dared to go where few have gone before in Listening to Islam, and he has been an attentive midwife in the process. Listening to Islam is a must read missive for those who are interested in trekking into the Western-Islamic future in an informed and mature manner.
Ron Dart