درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

One of the major challenges for a civilization - and a parameter for assessing it - is how it treats those who do not belong to that civilization. The dichotomy between “we” and “them” is made variously across civilizations. In the past, interactions across civilizations are less voluminous and less intense.  But things have changed. The world has become a global village. Yet, it remains very pluralistic in terms of religion, culture, ethnicity, and language. The diversity of the contemporary world is due to the existence of concurrent civilizations on the world, each with its distinct culture, world view and values. Western culture, Islamic culture, oriental culture and African culture are some of the more prominent cultures today. Globalization is not without its problems. For one thing, the world is being pressurized into become a mono-cultural environment patterned after western culture. This position is not because of any inherent superiority of western civilization to the other civilization but because of the cultural invasion of the world by the west.   Information flow is the world has been essentially one way - from the west to the rest. The quest for peace in the modern world must therefore address how the diverse cultures of the world are accommodated, first within specific civilizations and secondly in the world at a global level particularly within the context of the United Nations. The past offers a good lesson for the future. This paper looks at how three civilizations – Islamic, African, and western - in their pristine historical and modern forms - have approached otherness. Islamic civilization emerged from a multi-ethnic and multi-religious environment.  The Islamic approach is one of tolerance and respect for otherness in spite of the full conviction of the rightness of its religious creed and way of life.  Islam recognizes the freedom of religion for non-Muslims and expresses this in a comprehensive and complete manner. It does not impose its laws or culture on them but grants social, cultural and judicial autonomy to these strangers within its borders. This attitude which was in the past is still observable in some modern Islamic countries such as Iran. African culture is a very diverse affair. The common traits amongst Africans include their warm treatment of strangers and their respect for the cultural independence of other peoples.  The attitude of western civilization contrasts with the attitudes of Islamic and African civilizations.  The West has consistently pursued a policy of domination of other peoples based on its perceived superiority over them. This attitude, for which various ideological and intellectual justifications have been advanced in defense of, remains in contemporary times, a constant source of friction and tension. It is suggested that models provided by Islamic and African cultures be used as a basis for modern interaction by persons belonging to different cultures.

An underlying theoretical point of this paper has been that if fundamental commitments and the questions of cultural identity that they bring with them (What is an X?) are understood in terms of functional analyses of the kind I have tried to give in the case of Islamic identity today, then there is scope to see these commitments as susceptible to various criticisms in the particular context of a conflict in which they might figure.  All this seems to me to offer far more scope and interest to moral philosophy than Williams allows it, even after granting to Williams the validity of the central role he gives to the idea of fundamental commitment and the validity of his critique of traditional moral philosophy. <br />  The paper has studied the question "What is a Muslim?" in the dialectic of a conflict arising out of a concern for Islamic Reform.  The conflict is one that arises because of moderate Muslims' fundamental commitment to a doctrine which contains features that are often effectively invoked by the absolutists whom moderate Muslims fundamentally oppose.  If a full analysis of the commitment reveals its defensive function which have disabled Muslims from a creative and powerful opposition to the absolutists, and if, moreover, this function of the commitment is diagnosed as itself based on a deep but common philosophical fallacy, it should be possible then for moderate Muslims to think there way out of this conflict and to transform the nature of their commitment to Islam, so that it is not disabling in that way. <br />The question of identity, "What is a Muslim?", then, will get very different answers before and after this dialectic about reform has played itself out.   The dialectic, thus, preserves the negotiability of the concept of identity and the methodological points I began with, at the same time as it situates and explains the urgency and fascination that such questions hold for us.