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Muslims, Jews, and the Western World: A Jewish View
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18966 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1991 |
4,829 Words |
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An Interview With Richard Rubenstein
Richard Rubenstein is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor
of Religion at Florida State University. He is also a rabbi. |
W&I: Could you speak on the Jewish-Islamic issue from the point of view of a Jewish scholar?
RUBENSTEIN: I don't think there is a specific Jewish-Islamic issue. First, I believe that Islam regards itself as the original true religion, whose fundamental meaning was revealed by the Prophet Mohammad, and that Islam regards both Judaism and Christianity as distorted views of the original true religion, so that inevitably Islam has an interpretation of both Judaism and Christianity that neither can accept. Second, I believe that in the history of Christendom there have been three possible and two actual challenges to Christendom. One was Judaism. The second was Islam, and the third was atheistic communism. Judaism was not a real challenge to Christendom for the simple reason that the Jews simply were not that culturally influential or numerous for Judaism to be a challenge after Christianity became the religion of the Roman world.
Islam, on the other hand, was the most powerful of all challenges to Christendom. In 711, Islamic forces occupied almost the entire Iberian peninsula. At one time or another, large parts of Christian Europe were occupied by Islamic forces, including Bulgaria, Romania, the Balkans, southern Italy, and large parts of southern Russia, namely, the Ukraine. Historically, going almost right back to the beginning, there has been this challenge to Christendom which Islam constituted.
Now, in the last two centuries, Islam has had a series of cultural shocks. For one thing, Islam was unable to do what the Japanese have done, namely, to meet the challenge of Western modernization. When Islam first entered Europe in the eighth century, it was the superior culture. It had a level of sophistication and culture that was far higher than that of northern Europe. For several centuries, the victories of Islam were such that the victories themselves were taken as signs of the superiority and the truth of the Islamic faith. Therefore, the shock was all the greater when, starting in the eighteenth century, European countries turned out to be quite different. The way the European countries turned out to be quite different was that they had effectively modernized. They had effectively gone through the Renaissance and the Reformation and the Enlightenment, and they had the capacity to develop skills and to advance learning in a way that left the Islamic world behind, at least in the area of power.
What the Islamic world did have, what they have to this day, is the Shari'a, that is, the Islamic way of life as found in the laws
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