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The Chinese scholar, Liu Binyan, presently Director of the Princeton China Initiative, has asked: “Will the 21st century be an era when, through interaction and consensus, civilizations can merge, thus helping peoples to break old cycles of dehumanization?  This will require using the best of all civilizations, not emphasizing the differences between them.”[1]

1. The merger of civilizations

It is interesting that this Chinese scholar is talking about civilizations merging, not about any presumed clash between them.  What does he mean by civilizations merging in the course of our still-young century?  If I understand him correctly, he is referring to what he sees as the need for the various peoples and civilizations of our planet to come together to provide, from the treasury of their own heritage and successes, the values, ideas, and methods which will contribute to the prosperity and common good of humankind.  In doing so, each civilization acts as the source of some elements of a new, more just, more humane, more respectful way of being human and forming human society.

This understanding of merging civilizations stands in contrast to two less helpful ways of viewing civilizations in relationship.  The first is what we might call that of modern and pre-modern civilizations.  Modernity does not simply mean “new,” and it is not a value-free concept.  It indicates not only new as opposed to old, but implies something better rather than inferior; advanced instead of backward; efficient, not ineffective; mature rather than childish; sophisticated rather than primitive; successful as opposed to failed; and improved in place of outdated.  It is important to recognize that these dichotomies refer not only to material objects such as jeans, household furniture, automobiles, and soap powder, but also to ways of looking at life, the world, human relations, and one’s own self.

Modernity is based on a philosophical outlook that covers every aspect of life, As a comprehensive system of thought and a way of life, it is sometimes called “modernism.”  Stemming from the reflections of the European thinkers of the 18th Century, modernism offers a way of understanding the human person, the universe, and society and proposes a system of values which seeks to replace traditional religious outlooks with a humanistic understanding of the individual, society, and the world.  It thus puts forth a new anthropology and a new ethic. Modernism indicates that set of values promoted and spread globally by the Western - especially American - governments, the communication, entertainment, and advertising industries, and international agencies such as the World Health Organization, World Trade Organization, and many agencies of the United Nations.

During most of the 20th Century, Western or European civilization was identified with modernity.  All other civilizations were deemed “pre-modern,” which means that they are destined to pass away, or be transformed - perhaps gratefully, perhaps kicking and screaming - into the inevitable winner, Western civilization.

2. Clash of Civilizations

There is a second and, in my view, also unhelpful way to regard the relationship between civilizations, that is, the idea popularized by Samuel Huntington in his much-discussed 1993 article, “The Clash of Civilizations?”[2] In its favor, it must be said that the fact that Huntington’s article was able to arouse such rapt attention in academic and political circles and elicit such passionate expressions of both support and criticism indicates that the author put his finger on an issue that scholars and observers of world events find worrisome and even alarming.

So many words have already been spilt dissecting, criticizing, or defending Huntington’s thesis that I will not subject you to yet another analysis, but simply leave you to ponder whether or not you agree with Huntington’s central idea, as expressed by the British scholar Bernard Lewis:

We are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them.  This is no less than a clash of civilizations - the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the world-wide expansion of both.”[3]

Thus we have three incompatible scenarios: that of merging civilizations, which can also be called the dialogue of civilizations; secondly, the transformation and replacement of pre-modern civilizations by the dominant Western civilization; and finally, an inevitable clash of civilizations.  We should not think of this as simply an intellectual game.  We are talking about our own lives.  What is going in the world on right now?  Are we doomed to fight it out, with years of struggle, conflict, and recrimination to come?  Or are the world’s cultures and social systems destined to disappear so that nations become culturally regional branch offices of the one globalized Coca-Cola, Hollywood, and MacDonald’s business chain?  Or is the 21st Century one in which the world’s civilizations will come together to contribute their own values and systems to create something new and better?

3. A personal criticism of “the Clash of Civilizations”

When I study and reflect on questions of the future of civilizations, it is not as a political scientist or a student of international affairs.  My own background is in religious studies, firstly in the Christian theology of my own Catholic faith, secondly in the area of Islamic thought, the field in which I did my doctoral thesis.  Even more influential in shaping my approach to such questions are the almost 30 years in which I have been involved in Muslim-Christian dialogue.

I have spent most of my adult life living in predominantly Muslim settings, in Indonesia where I first came to live in 1969 and taught for many years in a Catholic Faculty of Theology in Yogyakarta, in Lebanon and Egypt where I pursued Arabic and Islamic studies, and in Turkey and Iran where I taught Christian theology in the Theology Faculties in various Turkish and Iranian universities.  As head of the Vatican Office for Islam, my work brought me into frequent contact with individual Muslims and Muslim organizations in most countries of North Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe.

4. Common concerns

My experiences of living and collaborating with Muslims for more than 30 years have profoundly shaped my thinking on the dialogue of civilizations.  I am convinced that an intercultural dialogue between Christians and Muslims is not only possible - I have had personal experience of such dialogue both in intellectual circles and at the grass-roots level - but that such an ethical dialogue on issues of development and governance is a necessity in the modern world. 

What has impressed me most from my many encounters are not the differences between Islamic and Christian civilizations, but rather the broad commonalities.  As two groups of believers who are, at the same time, immersed in life in modern societies, Muslims and Christians share a broad range of common concerns on many very basic human issues.  They face similar challenges as they try to live according to the values of their religion in the modern world, where it is often not easy to live out an active faith in God.  They have similar experiences as they seek to apply values derived from God’s will to the complicated and often frustrating social, political, and economic situations of the societies in which they live and seek to influence for good.

I do not mean to say that Christians and Muslims do not disagree on many issues, both on theological grounds and on practical matters of organizing society.  This disagreement is normal in human affairs and to be expected; they represent two distinct religions, even if the source - the One and only God - is the same.  My point is that, precisely because of this common divine origin, it is not surprising that the two faith communities, both representing a variety of cultural backgrounds, bring to matters of life on this earth remarkably similar attitudes and approaches.

4. Good governance

The biggest weakness of the “clash of civilizations” argument is that it looks at the world from the point of view of conflicts between cultural-political groupings and does not take account of the basic concerns of ordinary people around the world.  Concentrating on cultural attitudes and beliefs that appear to divide civilizations is a narrow and restrictive way of viewing what is actually going on in people’s lives.  The fact is that the most basic reality in today’s world is not conflict and particularity of civilizations, but rather the universality of people’s central concerns.

The concerns of people today, from whatever nation or civilizational region, are, in fact, remarkably similar.  It is on these fundamental areas of human life that the dialogue of civilizations must be founded.  The main concerns facing people from Indonesia to Italy to Brazil to Canada do not revolve around ideology or civilizational attitudes. They are rather the bread-and-butter issues of jobs and wages, personal and familial security, the availability of affordable and adequate education, health care, facilities that can alleviate some of the burdens of aging, and the preservation of a moral climate in which one can confidently raise one’s children.  These are issues that unite men and women, rich and poor, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists, rural and urban inhabitants, people living in civilizational regions as diverse as Latin and North America, East, Southeast, Central and West Asia, Europe, Africa and Oceania.

Both Islam and Christianity teach that human societies should be based on the principles of love, solidarity and mutual assistance, in contrast to so-called “modern” views that see the world as an economic jungle, with each person fighting it out for his or her own advantage, with nations and multinational corporations seeking to subdue and dominate their competitors.  Both Christians and Muslims believe that God has taught us not only those things that pertain to prayer and worship but has also given guidance on the best way for humans to live in this world.  Human philosophies that seek to base civilizational goals on the self-fulfillment of the individual are bound to clash with the God-centered and solidarity-oriented approach that is proposed by the Islamic and Christian religions.

Most people around the world are indifferent to political ideologies, but they want governments that can manage the economy, provide jobs, control inflation, and stabilize prices.  They want crime prevented so that they are safe in their homes, streets, and neighborhoods.  They want defense against territorial incursions, but they do not want to live in fear of those very forces - police, armed forces, constabulary etc. - that are supposed to protect and defend them.  When children and youths go out of the house, parents do not want to worry whether their children will return home safely or become victims of street crime, on the one hand, or of arbitrary arrests or disappearance by shadowy government agencies, as happens in some countries, on the other. These concerns cut across every religion, nation, continent and civilizational region.

Most people, of whatever civilizational group, are not greedy, but seek a basic level of prosperity.  They desire that basic services such as education, health care, and the elementary infrastructure (streets, telecommunications, and sources of power such as electricity, gas, etc.) function effectively, at costs they can afford.  They do not want to live with the insecurity that a major illness of a member could bankrupt the family for years to come.  It does not matter whether we are talking about an Islamic, Confucian, or North American society.  These basic desires are common to all.

They want a measure of representativity in public life. They want their views, as individuals and as special groups to be able to be heard and taken seriously.  They want their communal voice considered, whether it be that of a religious community, a regional or ethnic group, or that of social interest groups such as women, the aged, the youth, or the handicapped.  People want fair opportunities in life and feel outraged and betrayed by corruption, nepotism, favoritism, discrimination or preferential treatment based on caste, color, gender, religion etc.

These basic needs are not only sought after by those who reside in their ancestral regions, but also among those who migrate elsewhere in their own country or who emigrate abroad for economic or social reasons.  One of the features of modern life is that more and more people are leaving their homelands and seeking to start a new life elsewhere.  United Nations statistics put the number of forced and voluntary migrants in the world today in excess of 40 million persons.  Immigrants and migrants are not motivated by civilizational goals, but by the same basic human desires - housing, education, work - as the indigenous inhabitants of the countries to which they travel.  All migrants, from whatever civilizational background they originate from, suffer similarly when they are exposed to forms of discrimination, exploitation, hostility, and mistreatment.  Women migrants, because of their more vulnerable status, often have less possibility of defending themselves against the wrongs perpetrated against them.  

These points could be summed up in the term “good governance.”  This good governance I have been describing does not denote any specific form of government.  It can be achieved in a variety of forms and structures.  As such, “democracy” is not the issue.  If people experience the political and social systems in which they live to be sincerely attempting to carry out and fulfill these basic desires, to the extent possible, they will accept a single party or multiparty system, a form of government that is democratic, republican, or a constitutional monarchy, a federal state or one that is highly centralized.  They will support a system that is Islamic, Christian, or secular, and economic policies that are socialist, capitalist or mixed.  But when they are convinced that the system is not concerned about their fundamental desires or is no longer capable to providing for their basic needs, they begin looking for alternatives.

All this underlines the need for a dialogue on the ethics of development good government.  

5. The need for civilizational dialogue

How to achieve these fundamental but often illusive goals?  How to define and enunciate these desires?  It is here that the need for an ethical dialogue on questions of development and governance lies.

No culture, no political, social or economic system is perfect.  In every part of the world, there are successes, but also defects, abuses, and gaps.  Contrary to the historical optimism popular in the early part of the 20th Century, we must recognize that sometimes things get better, but at other times they get worse.  Societal and political structures can be improved, but they can also be allowed to atrophy and grow ineffective.

It is only through a dialogue among civilizations that people’s basic needs and desires can be restated and new solutions sought.  Islamic civilization, as it has formed and influenced various national and ethnic cultures, has much to teach Christians and others from the West, just as it is true that Christians, having grappled with modernity - sometimes successfully, sometimes less so - since the period of the European Enlightenment, have much to offer people of other cultures from their happy and less happy experiences with modernity

Thus, the type of sharing among religious believers that is needed is not founded on any particular ideology nor does it assume that one civilization or culture has succeeded in responding to basic human needs better than any other.  Each civilization can show great achievements in some areas, but has much to learn in others.  Technological advances and urban accomplishments are often accompanied by a loss of identity and family solidarity.  Particular experiments in social welfare programs can result in dehumanization, loss of dignity and discourage initiative.  It is only in dialogue that we can share our insights and benefit both from the successes and failures of those of other cultures.

6. Muslims and Christians: people with a common mission

As I mentioned earlier in my talk, I am a Catholic.  The highest teaching authority in my church is that of an ecumenical council, the latest of which is the Second Vatican Council that was held between 1962-1965.  In that Council, the Catholic bishops taught clearly that Catholics should “esteem and respect” Muslims, which means that esteeming and respecting the followers of Islam is part of Catholic faith.  The Council decree goes on to note the reasons for this respect - the Islamic practices of prayer, fasting, almsgiving, the desire of Muslims to do God’s will, the honor shown by Muslims to Jesus and his mother, etc. - and concludes, and this is the point I want to emphasize, that “Even though down through the centuries many quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Muslims, this [Council] urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote together, for the benefit of all, social justice and moral values, as well as peace and freedom.”[4]

What this means is that Muslims and Christians have a common mission in our world today, that is to work together for the common good (“for the benefit of all”) in four key areas of modern life, and it spells out what these four key areas are.  The first is social justice, which includes a priority and preferential option given for the poor and for all those who are victims of discrimination and oppression.  It means that Muslims and Christians together should be critical of social systems, practices, and abuses that make life unbearable for innocent millions, and that their dialogue should include seeking alternatives to patterns of injustice and oppression.

The second field for Muslim-Christian dialogue and cooperation is that in the field of moral values.  This is the ethical dimension of human life.  One the one hand, it includes questions of personal morality, ethical family and sexual practices, gender issues, and the whole area of personal and domestic violence.  However, there also has to be dialogue in areas of public morality, in geopolitical relations, on questions of national debt, armaments and arms race, peace, warfare, migration policies, and the like.  Muslims and Christians have much to discuss on the use of violence.  When, if ever, can war be considered an acceptable technique for solving international problems?  If a war is considered just, are there ethical limitations on  the methods which may be used - what about aerial bombing and land mines whose victims are primarily civilians?  What about the destruction of homes and the forced removal of populations?

The third area mentioned where Christians and Muslims must work together is that of peace-building.  The Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church envisions Muslims and Christians as partners in peace-building.  Cooperation between the two communities should include training sessions and workshops in peace-making, seminars in conflict analysis, courses in conflict resolutions and transformation, and the preparation of local grass-roots agents of peace.  As adherents to religions of peace, Muslims and Christians are called to work together to bring about reconciliation and forgiveness once conflict and violence has occurred, just as they must also focus on ways to resolve tensions before they can lead to violence.

Finally, the fourth area for ethical dialogue and cooperation between Muslims and Christians is that of true human freedom.  Freedom is a concept that is dear to the heart of most modern people, and yet it is one where people can easily fool themselves and deceive themselves.  What appears to be freedom to do whatever one feels like, whenever one wants, can lead to a new and deeper type of personal prison.  On the other hand, there is a genuine type of freedom which believers, both Muslim and Christian recognize, when a person gradually becomes more and more released from the obstacles to God’s grace, when a person arrives at an inner freedom to do God’s will.  This spiritual experience, that Muslims discover in al-jihad al-akbar, and is delineated in the Sufi path, Christians refer to as spirituality, an inner growth in the imitation of and intimacy with Jesus, whose disciple every Christian aspires to be.  This fourth dimension of life, the inner struggle, the spiritual path of holiness, is also an area for dialogue and cooperation between Muslims and Christians.

7. The Role of Religion in the Dialogue of Civilizations: Said Nursi

In recent year, I have been reading much in the writings of a 20th Century Turkish Muslim scholar, Said Nursi.  He was one of the first to speak of the need for Muslim-Christian unity.  Nursi was ready to distinguish between what he regarded as the two-sided values of modern civilization that first took root in Europe and were later spread throughout the world by the U.S.A.  He held that Western civilization contained some positive values for humanity which were rooted and preserved in the Christian tradition that is part of European heritage.  However, European civilization also proposed forth negative, destructive values which found their origin in the materialist philosophy that has dominated European thought since the Enlightenment.  To the positive values, Nursi makes no objection; against the second, he feels that Muslims and Christians must together raise their voices.  He states:

Europe is two. One follows the sciences which serve justice and right and the industries beneficial for the life of society through the inspiration it has received from true Christianity; this first Europe I am not addressing. I am rather addressing the second, corrupt Europe which, through the darkness of the philosophy of naturalism, supposing the evils of civilization to be its virtues, has driven mankind to vice and misguidance.[5]

In proposing a dialogue between true Christians, those whom he regards as following faithfully the teaching and way of life of the prophet Jesus, and true Muslims, whose values and way of life derive from the teaching of the Qur’an, Nursi is effectively redrawing the scope of the dialogue of civilizations.  He does not look at the modern world as a clash between “Christian civilization”and “Muslim civilization,” but rather as a conflict between the values of a religiously grounded world-view and that of a secular, irreligious humanism.  In Nursi’s creative redrawing of the civilizational map, true Muslims and Christians find themselves on the same side in confronting the destructive value system offered by Enlightenment philosophies.

This demands a rethinking on the part of both Christians and Muslims.  For Christians, Muslims are not the “enemy,” representatives of an alien and dangerous civilization that threatens their way of life.  For Muslims, Christians are not the “enemy” to be opposed and resisted.  Nursi holds that the real enemies of humankind, which Muslims and Christians must unite to oppose, come down to three: ignorance, poverty, and disunity.[6]

Struggling against ignorance puts the emphasis on education, not merely in the sense of equipping students with the tools and information needed to find good jobs, but education in the sense of building character, moral values, and a God-centered orientation to life.  Struggling against poverty means not only the effort to eliminate the degrading reality of material poverty through practical efforts in human development, but also the poverty of spirit brought about by life in a godless, consumer-oriented society.  This Nursi hoped to achieve by forming Muslims through the study of the Risale-i Nur to arrive at a spiritual regeneration which would spiritually enrich the whole society.  The struggle against disunity means the involvement of Muslims and Christians in efforts to overcome the centuries-old antagonism between the two communities of believers so that they might work together to build peace within and among nations.          

In the context of the clash of civilizations theory proposed by Huntington, Nursi’s critique accepts that modern society’s positivist thrust towards the sensible and the measurable has made possible longer, more comfortable lives for the majority of humans through scientific research.  With Nursi, we rejoice in the benefits to humankind brought by new cancer treatments, organ transplants, and medicines to fight old and new diseases.  New varieties of rice and wheat have greatly helped the human family to avoid famine and reduce malnutrition.  New forms of communication - television, telephone, fax and, most recently, E-mail and Internet - enable people to communicate and obtain information more easily and quickly, both for business and pleasure.  Similarly, the worldwide consensus on the dignity of the individual person, even if this is often violated in situations of war and oppression, has eliminated some of history’s grosser forms of exploitation such as slavery and indentured servitude.

Nevertheless, modern society, left to itself, can produce a closed circle in which the same basic principles - Huntington’s “ten commandments” of Western values, unchecked by reference to other values beyond the sensible and measurable, can cease to liberate, but themselves become self-contradictory and destructive.  Individualism, human rights, free markets, and personal liberty are not absolute values, but can degenerate into selfishness, self-destruction, and societal impasse unless they are viewed in relation to more transcendent values.  This is the “shadow side”of modern civilization against which Nursi was warning.

In the need for transcendent standards by which modern, liberal values can be measured and evaluated we find the importance of religion in modern life.  Religion provides a needed “outside control,” an independent criterion from which these values can be judged and assessed.  Every religion offers criteria that transcend both history and culture.  For Buddhists and Hindus, it is egoistic self-assertion that vitiates every human endeavor and makes societies unlivable.  In the Taoist tradition, there is an eternal rhythm to the universe, a natural “path” which, when violated, leads to chaos and self-destruction.  In religions such as Islam and Christianity, that fundamental transcendent criterion is the Will of God, as known through the revealed Scriptures of each religion.

8. Conclusion

People of the earth’s various religions, particularly Muslims and Christians, need to be in dialogue with each other if we are to be able to apply clearly and effectively the independent judgments that can prevent modern values from degenerating into a self-centered pursuit of “worldly” goals of power, prestige, wealth, and beauty for their own sakes.  Such goals, harmless or even beneficial when viewed in relation to transcendent norms, can become ends in themselves, what the Jewish-Christian-Islamic tradition rightly calls “idols.”  They begin as attractive aspirations but end up as cruel dictators.

Thus, the ethical dialogue that is needed today is one which admits that, while no single civilization has all the answers, every civilization and culture has part of the solution to the problems of modern life.  Every culture, with the religious faith that shapes civilizations and, at the same time, transcends every cultural system, has its own contributions to make to the dialogue.  The dialogue of civilizations seeks a way to discern and support the genuine advances of modern life while, at the same time, maintaining a critical stance towards its destructive values.

We have a long way to go before such a civilizational encounter can be effective.  Feelings of anger and resentment concerning past events can keep peoples apart.  Every people can make a long list of grievances they have suffered at the hands of others.  Moreover, inequalities in today’s world can become obstacles to genuine dialogue.  Exclusivist attitudes, by which groups, societies and cultures convince themselves that they have nothing to learn from others, must be overcome. Trust, a requisite of all true dialogue, is often lacking and must be painfully and slowly built up.

However, in the words of Walter Wink, “the future belongs to those who hope.”  It is “whoever can envision in the manifold of its potentials a new and desirable possibility, which faith then fixes upon as inevitable,” who make the future a reality.[7]  It is those who have a vision of a future, and act as that future were already a present reality, who actually create the future in which they believe.  Once individuals and religious communities give up hope for any real change in the present situation, they no longer influence history.  They become its victims.

For this reason, I am grateful to the organizers of A.M.A.N. assembly for suggesting this topic of an ethical dialogue on development and governance.  The very fact of our exploring the possibilities of civilizational dialogue shows that people have hope that this can be a reality.  It is evidence that there are those who have not despaired of dialogue, and by longing for a world in which each civilization has the opportunity to make its unique and distinctive contributions, we are in the process of bringing about that kind of world.

[1]Liu Binyan, “Civilization Grafting: No Culture is an Island,” Foreign Affairs, (72, 4), p. 21.

[2]Huntington elaborated upon his argument in a book with virtually the same title as the original article, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.

[3]Bernard Lewis, “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” Atlantic Monthly, (September 1990), p. 60.

[4]“Nostra Aetate,” Declaration of the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, The Basic Sixteen Documents of Vatican II, Austin Flannery, Boston: St. Paul, 1992, n. 3.

[5]Risale-i Nur,  Seventeenth Flash, Fifth Note, p. 160.

[6]Said Nursi, Risale-i Nur, Münâzarat, (Ott. ed.), p. 433, cited in Ôükran Vahide, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, Istanbul, 1992, p. 95.

[7]W. Wink, Engaging the Powers. Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1992, p. 299.