The overall intention of
the multi-cultural and multi-religious Commission on British Muslims and
Islamophobia chaired by Prof. Gordon Conway is twofold: (a) to counter Islamophobic
assumptions that Islam is a single monolithic system, without internal
development, diversity and dialogue, and; (b) to draw attention to the
principal dangers which Islamophobia creates or exacerbates for Muslim
communities, and therefore for the well-being of society as a whole.
The committee recommended
the following for practical action against Islamophobia:
ü Islam
seen as diverse and progressive, with internal differences, debates and
development.
ü Islam
seen as interdependent with other faiths and cultures – (a) having certain
shared values and aims (b) affected by them (c) enriching them.
ü Islam
seen as distinctively different, but not deficient, and as equally worthy of
respect.
ü Islam
seen as an actual or potential partner in joint cooperative enterprises and in
the solution of shared problems.
ü Islam
seen as a genuine religious faith, practised sincerely by its adherents.
ü Criticisms
of ‘the West’ and other cultures are considered and debated.
ü Debates
and disagreements with Islam do not diminish efforts to combat discrimination
and exclusion.
ü Critical
views of Islam are themselves subjected to critique, lest they be inaccurate and
unfair.
Case studies of diverse
nature of Islam include:
ü Kenneth
Dike (1965) ‘As a historian myself, I have taken the keenest interest in this
development, for it is through the aid of these Arabic documents and those
written in African languages in Arabic scripts that the scholar will be aided.
It had been a revelation to the whole world of scholarship to realize for the
first time that Africa before the European penetration far from being a “dark
continent” was in fact a continent where the light of scholarship shone
brightly as the Arabic works now being discovered bear testimony….’
ü Glubb
(1969) states ‘the indebtedness of Western Christendom to Arab civilization was
systematically played down, if not completely denied. A tradition was built up, by censorship and propaganda,
that the Muslim imperialists had been mere barbarians and that the rebirth of
learning in the West derived directly from Roman and Greek sources alone,
without any Arab intervention’.
ü Wickens
(1976) said ‘In the broadest sense, the West’s borrowings from Middle East form
practically the whole basic fabric of civilization. Without such fundamental
borrowings from the Middle East’, he
adds, ‘we should lack the following sorts of things among others (unless, of
course, we had been quick and inventive enough to devise them all for
ourselves): agriculture; the domestication of animals, for food, clothing and
transportation; spinning and weaving; building; drainage and irrigation;
road-making and the wheel; metal-working, and standard tools and weapons of all
kinds; sailing ships; astronomical observation and the calendar; writing and
the keeping of records; laws and civic life; coinage; abstract thought and
mathematics; most of our religious ideas and symbols’, And he concluded that,
‘there is virtually no evidence for any of these basic things and processes and
ideas being actually invented in the West’
ü HRH
Prince Charles of Wales said at Oxford in 1993 “If there is much
misunderstanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there is also much
ignorance about the debt our own culture and civilization owe to the Islamic
world. It is a failure, which stems, I think, from the straight-jacket of
history, which we have inherited. The medieval Islamic world, from central
Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of
learning flourished. But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of
the West, as an alien culture, society, and system of belief, we have tended to
ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history”
ü The
British philosopher Robert Flint wrote
the following on Ibn Khaldun, a pioneer muslim polymath of Sociology and
Anthropology: "as a theorist of
history he had no equal in any age or country until Vico appeared,
more than three hundred years later. Plato, Aristotle,
and Augustine were
not his peers, and all others were unworthy of being even mentioned along with
him".
In the end, it was strongly
reiterated by the commission that “We are anxious that our report should be
a spur to timely action, by many people, in many places, of many kinds.
Everyone, we stress, has a relevant and important part to play. Islamophobia is
a challenge to us all.”
SOURCE:
www.runnymedetrust.org/uploads/publications/pdfs/islamophobia.pdf
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