Islam is both a religion and a civilization, a historical
reality that spans over fourteen centuries of human history
and a geographical presence in vast areas stretching over the
Asian and African continents and even parts of Europe. It is
also a spiritual and metahistorical reality that has transformed the inner and outer life of numerous human beings
in very different temporal and spatial circumstances. Today
over 1.2 billion people from different racial and cultural
backgrounds are Muslim, and historically Islam has played
a significant role in the development of certain aspects of
other civilizations, especially Western civilization. Not only
is Islam a major presence in today’s world, but its influence
is also evident in the history of the Christian West, not to
mention that of India and other regions of Asia and Africa.
That is why knowledge of Islam is so important for those
concerned with the situation of contemporary humanity and
those interested in Western intellectual and cultural history,
as well as those attracted to the reality of religion and the
world of the Spirit as such.
One would think, therefore, that the study of Islam would
be widespread in the West and especially in America, which
has a notable Muslim minority and which is now able to
project so much power globally—including within the Islamic world. Such, however, is not the case, despite the rise of
interest in Islam since the tragic events of September 11,
- Moreover, much that is presented today in the English
language as the study of Islam by so-called experts is strongly colored by various prejudices and ideological biases,
although there are exceptions. In fact, although Islamic studies have been carried out in the West for over a thousand
years, in each period such studies have been distorted and
tainted by a particular set of errors and deviations.
The study of Islam in the West began in the tenth and
eleventh centuries. Because this was a time in which Europe
was thoroughly Christian, Islam was seen as a Christian
heresy, and its founder as an apostate. Soon the imminent
threat to Western Christendom from Islam led many to call
the Prophet of Islam the Antichrist, and the Quran itself was
translated by order of Peter the Venerable in order to be
refuted and rejected as sacred scripture. The Middle Ages
were marked by strong religious opposition to Islam. Yet it
was at this time that the West showed the greatest interest in
Islamic thought, including philosophy and the sciences, and
Islamic education, arts, and technology were greatly respected. The first translations into Latin of works of Islamic
thought, ranging from philosophy and even theology to
astronomy, mathematics, and medicine, belong to this period. Formal Islamic studies in the West may in fact be
said to have begun during the Middle Ages.
The Renaissance perpetuated religious opposition to
Islam, but also began to show disdain not only for Europe’s
own medieval past, but also for Islamic learning, although
there were some exceptions. Furthermore, the emphasis on
Euro-centrism during the Renaissance and the rise of
humanism caused many European thinkers of that time to
consider people of other civilizations and ethnic groups,
including Muslims, inferior. Although Islamic studies were
still carried on during the Renaissance, and in some places,
such as Bologna, even within the framework of the older
medieval respect for Islamic thought, in many places they
were distorted by a sense of Western superiority and even
hubris, characteristics that were to continue into the modern
period.
The Enlightenment turned against the theological assertions of Christianity and substituted rationalism for a worldview based on faith. Moreover, it further developed the idea
that there was only one civilization, the Western one, and
that other civilizations were significant only to the extent of
their contribution to Western civilization, which the French
Encyclopedists referred to as thecivilization (la civilisation). Obviously in such a situation Islam and its civilization
could only play an inferior and secondary role. Although
some new translations of Islamic sources were made into
European languages at this time and Islamic studies
remained an intellectual and academic discipline, little was
done to understand the teachings of Islam on their own
terms. Many of the leading thinkers of this period, in fact, maintained the older European disdain for Islam, but at the same time tried to make use of
some of its teachings to attack Christianity. Such a dual attitude toward Islam is evident in the works of Voltaire, among
others.
During the nineteenth century, historicism in its absolutist sense took the center of the philosophical stage with
Hegel, who considered all other civilizations stages in the
march of the Geistin time leading to the final stage, which
was supposedly realized in modern Western history. And
yet this was also the period when the Romantic movement
began, when many minds, tired of the rationalism of the
Enlightenment, turned anew to the Middle Ages as well as
to seeking meaning beyond the borders of the West. This
was the period when many of the greatest spiritual masterpieces of Islamic literature, especially many of the Suficlassics, were translated into German, English, and French and
seriously attracted major Western writers and thinkers, such
as Goethe, Rückert, and Emerson. This was also the period
when the exotic image of the Islamic East, with its mysterious casbahs and
. h aramsfull of nude females, developed, as
reflected in nineteenth-century European art associated with
“orientalism.”
Moreover, this period marked the beginning of official oriental studies, including Islamic studies, in various Western
universities, often supported by colonial governments such as
those of Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Russia. Oriental
studies, in fact, developed as an instrument for furthering the
policy of colonial powers, whether they were carried out in
Central Asia for use by the Russian colonial office or in India for the British government. But there were among the orientalists in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth
century also a number of noble scholars who studied Islam
both objectively and with sympathy, such as Thomas Arnold,
Sir Hamilton Gibb, Louis Massignon, and Henry Corbin.
Later Western orientalists who belong to this tradition
include Marshall Hodgson, Annemarie Schimmel, and several other important scholars. But the main product of the
orientalist manner of studying Islam remained heavily
biased not only as a result of the interests of those powers it
was serving, but also through the absolutization of current
Western concepts and methodologies that were applied to
Islam with the sense of superiority and hubris going back to
the Renaissance definition of the “European man.”
The last half of the twentieth century witnessed a major
transformation in Islamic studies in the West, at least in certain circles. First of all, a number of acutely intelligent and
spiritually aware Westerners who realized the spiritual poverty of modernism began to seek wisdom in other worlds.
Some turned to the objective and unbiased study of the
deepest teachings of Islam, which only confirmed for them
the reality of the presence of a perennial sophiaat the heart
of all heavenly inspired religions. This group, which includes
René Guénon, Frithjof Schuon, Titus Burckhardt, Martin
Lings, Gai Eaton, Michel Vâlsan, William Chittick, Michel
Chodkiewicz, James Morris, Vincent Cornell, and many
other notable contemporary Western writers on Islam, has
produced a wholly new type of literature in the West as far
as Islam is concerned. It has created a body of writings rooted in the authentic teachings of Islam,
yet formulated in the intellectual language of the West and
based on the confirmation—not the denial—of the spiritual
teachings on which traditional Western civilization itself
was founded.
Furthermore, during this same period authentic representatives of the Islamic tradition, those who were born and
brought up in that tradition, began to study Western thought
and languages and gradually to produce works in European
languages on Islam that were not simply apologetic (as had
been the earlier works in English of a number of Indian
Muslim writers), but explained clearly and without compromise the teachings of Islam in a manner comprehensible to
Westerners. Needless to say, during this period there also
appeared a large number of completely modernized Muslim
writers who wrote about Islam not from within the Islamic
worldview, but from the point of view of the ever changing
categories of modern and, more recently, postmodern Western thought.
Finally, a younger generation of scholars have appeared
on the scene during the past few years who are both Muslim
and Western. Either they are Muslims born in the West or
Westerners who have openly embraced Islam, have lived in
the Islamic world, and know it well from within. Scholars
belonging to this category are now beginning to occupy a
number of academic positions in Europe and America and
to produce pertinent works of an authentic nature on various
aspects of Islamic studies. (continue)