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Islam, Other Religions, and the Future of the World
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18965 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
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2 / 1991 |
3,904 Words |
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An Interview With Sheikh M.A. Zaki Badawi
Sheikh M.A. Zaki Badawi, a native of Egypt, is the principal
of the Muslim College in London. |
W&I: What is the possibility within Islam of communicating and cooperating with other religions? Is Islam open to this?
BADAWI: Very much so. Among the major religions, Islam is the one that sanctioned the presence within its domain of other religions. This is important because most other religions have a conception of a world that is entirely homogeneous. Islam, right from the start, admitted the presence within its domain of people who held other views, other religions, yet would be completely free and protected. Further, the Koran says that, although we have a belief that somehow before the day of judgment the whole world will come to Islam, still the Koran declares a prophecy that God did not wish to make everybody follow the same religion. God has decreed that differences will remain. Since these differences remain, we have to deal with them. We should not all worship in the same manner. We have to accept, deal with, and live with this and cooperate together and accept that.
W&I: The noncommunist and communist worlds are now coming together. Yet, for some reason, the Islamic world still seems to be isolated. Do you agree that this is true, and, if so, why?
BADAWI: Well, it's true. I think, for a while, the Western world treated the Islamic world as part of its own camp. The communist world viewed Islam as a backward religion, a capitalist religion, a religion that would cooperate with the capitalists against its own sort of democratic and socialist aims. Now with the collapse of the Cold War and of the barriers between the so-called communist world, the socialist world, and the capitalist world, these two have got to have another enemy, and Islam is a very simple solution to that. Besides, it has the historical image of being a bogeyman for Europe and therefore, in the subconscious of many Westerners, Islam is dangerous and the enemy.
Islam is weak. Historically it has had a bad press in the literature in the West, and, in the subconscious of the people, it is something strange and to be feared. But because the West has a few friends among the Muslims, it has to be not just Islam, but fundamentalist Islam that is objected to. The bogeyman has to be qualified by being fundamentalist. Whom you do not like you call fundamentalist; the ones you like you call nonfundamentalist.
W&I: Could you comment further on the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, which, at least from the Western point of view, seems to cast the West in the role
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