There is a vast gulf in Arab societies between an elevated self-esteem based on an alleged superiority in religion and civilisation and, on the other hand, the constant denial of this superiority by the grim reality of curtailed liberties, intellectual atrophy and institutionalised corruption.
Islam today, specifically in the Middle East, can be described as being in a state of anomie. The history of the Arab-Islamic civilisation since the ascendancy of the Ottoman Empire has served to bring the Arabs to a state of physical and philosophical distress. Given the present state of the Middle East—the internal and murderous sectarianism now largely centred on Iraq and Syria, though necessarily affecting their neighbours; the peril and harm befalling, in different parts of the Islamic world, non-Muslim peoples; the mass murder being inflicted upon major European centres to cause random deaths and create civil panic; and the political chaos in many Islamic countries causing armies of displaced people to seek refuge in the West—clearly something is seriously amiss. As a consequence, concern in the receiving countries grows at the evident difficulties many of Islam’s refugees experience adjusting, or failing to settle in, to a Western culture which is almost ontologically opposite the faith refugees bring with them. For faithful Muslims, shrouding themselves in their faith is their only way forward; but necessarily a separate forward.
Modernity, now set firmly in the West upon the continued unfoldings of science and technology, has little place in the Muslim doctrine of the complete transcendence of God. Muslims believe “man is neither autonomous nor free and only God has the power to make decisions. God has sovereign control over humans and this control is exercised through Islamic law.” This simple but demanding liturgy describes the different historical trajectories that have been followed by the Western-Christian and the Arab-Islamic civilisations from their beginnings. Though following a similar early trail, their different histories have produced radically different human experiences.
Many events shaped the beginnings of both Christianity and Islam. Without the long and eventful life of the Roman Empire, Western Europe and the nations and peoples surrounding the Mediterranean Sea would have a substantially different shape today. Without Rome, Christianity might have remained as blown sands among the passions and poetry of what is now known as the Middle East. Without Christianity, with its simple liturgy and potent narrative, the peoples of Europe would have fought and died for different gods and kings among their landscapes. The beginnings of Western civilisation emerged as these three historical strands connected. Islam began and remains in the life of its founder, Mohammed (570–632).
The early evolution of both faiths overlapped in time. Following the death of Mohammed, Islam, inspired by religious fervour, the anticipation of booty and the martyrdom rewarded to a death in battle, spread by conquest to Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, North and West Africa, Armenia, Georgia, eastern Khurasan, Sind, much of Transoxiania and most of the Iberian peninsula. The Arab-Islam empire, at its height during the period 700 to 850, absorbed and was influenced by classical literature, Hellenist thought, Byzantine institutions, Roman law, Syriac scholarships and Persian art. In addition, architecture and the sciences were enriched by Muslim research and practice. But Islam in substance was selective and discriminating, excluding all ideas and materials which offended the nature and ends of Islamic society. The early intellectual promise of Islam stuttered and a long decline in Arab power commenced. In the thirteenth century the Ottomans filled this void and established what was to become one of history’s great empires.
The Western world
