Anne Norton, a distinguished American academic, has deliberately given her book a 19th-century title: she believes that just as the Jewish question was central to the debate relating to the Enlightenment in the 18th- and 19th-century Europe, so is the Muslim question now "the axis where questions of political philosophy and political theology, politics and ethics meet". The West's engagement with Islam, she thinks, will determine "the value of Western civilisation", just as the Jewish question had done earlier.
She reviews the principal areas where Western philosophers and political commentators have painted a negative view of Islam and its adherents, branding them "the other and therefore undesirable" vis-à-vis Western civilisation: women, terror, democracy and secularism.
While discussing freedom of speech, she examines the Muslims' reactions to Salman Rushdie, the Danish cartoons, the writings of Theo van Gogh and the Somali critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She points out that the Muslim agitation against Mr Rushdie in the UK was generally peaceful. She castigates Western commentators for suggesting that their abuse of Islam and Muslims is an assertion of freedom of speech, pointing out that European journalists "preened themselves on their courage in attacking a minority population with little political power, subject to discrimination and continuing slights". Ms Norton notes that in criticising the hijab, Western critics tend to ignore the sexual conservatism of Europeans.
While discussing the issue of democracy, she analyses the writings of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who had asserted that Islam is "the other of democracy" and that only Islam amongst all global cultures "refuses democracy". Ms Norton points out that in Islamic history and the writings of its great thinkers, and recently in the uprisings of the Arab Spring, Muslims have always cherished freedom, the denial of which was principally due to the interventions of the West acting in alliance with local authoritarian figures. She concludes her book by rejecting suggestions of a clash of civilisations, pointing out that in large parts of the Western street, people of different denominations live together in an environment of conviviality, with "numerous projects of hybridity and synthesis" around us.
Many of the points Ms Norton makes are important and need to be emphasised: the collective term "West" ignores the complexity of European heritage, its rich non-Christian legacy and the debt owed by modern Europe to Jewish and Islamic contributions. Her summary of the writings of Arab thinkers such as Al-Farabi, Ibn Khaldun and Sayyid Qutb is most valuable. She also correctly points out that the broad-brush critique of Islam and Muslims is usually born out of ignorance and prejudice.
Some of her observations are truly epigrammatic, such as "As Jews became Americans, Americans became more Jewish"; and again: "Secularists who fear Islam fear not only Islam but the return of religious power." But, more frequently, she is carried away by the exuberance of her rhetoric and makes assertions that are not convincing, such as "Islam calls up [to the secular European] the spectre of the return of religion, the life of the village: the return of the repressed"; or are just too far-fetched: "By hiding the woman's body, veiling challenges capitalism and the commodification of female sexuality."
While Ms Norton's heart is in the right place, she adopts the shrill polemical tone of the pamphleteer, and not that of a sober commentator who seeks to convince through fact and argument rather than the bludgeon of invective. Her presentation would have benefitted from accepting the validity of at least some of the assertions of Islam's critics. In the name of Islam, in large parts of the Muslim world women do suffer serious disabilities that can hardly be equated with the handicaps and the glass ceiling experienced by their Western counterpart. Again, it must be noted that Theo van Gogh, however odious the man and however unlettered his killer, was murdered in the name of Islam.
While terror has been resorted to in many Western countries, there is no denying that the principal acts of terror in contemporary times have been perpetrated in the name of Islam, though the religious sanction may be false and the protagonists misguided. Ms Norton would have been more credible if she had looked at this complex subject with greater balance rather than simply asserting that "the language of martyrdom and tyrannicide is central to Protestant reform, and central too to the liberal revolutions in the West".
At the end, we have to ask: for whom is this hectoring tract intended? Ms Norton does little justice to her cause by picking up on the writings of a few polemical writers (like herself) who carry little authority in contemporary times. Her fulminations will hardly convince those who have a visceral animosity for Islam. At the same time, as the author herself notes, over large areas of public space in the West there is wide acceptance of the values of multiculturalism and of the shared heritage that has emerged from diverse sources. While some pockets of prejudice will endure, the idea of a sweeping clash of civilisations has little resonance today. The book is at least 10 years out of date.
The reviewer is former Indian Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Oman and the UAE
ON THE MUSLIM QUESTION
Anne Norton
Princeton University Press
282 pages; price not stated
