Border-Crossing and the Cordoba Paradigm

Ramin Jahanbegloo

The title of our meeting is not simply a topic, but mainly a question: how is an alliance among the Mediterranean cultures possible today? What does it mean to have an alliance of cultures and what is the relation between the past and the present in this process of cultural border-crossing? One of the functions of this gathering is to define these questions more sharply, because in these matters more than half the battle is accomplished by asking the right kinds of questions. From the historical vantage point where we now stand, all the societies that originated from the Mediterranean region appear to share a triple heritage. One is the heritage of a monotheistic faith which believes in revelation inscribed in a scripture. Hence what we can call by the term “cultures of the book”. The second component of the triple heritage is Greek and Roman. The third major heritage of these societies is modern Europe with the rise of the Enlightenment. All these three traditions have come under explicit questioning in the contemporary world. There are many reasons for this. Here, I will confine myself to alluding only to few of them.

First, is the challenge of relativism which says that all doctrines, all ideas and all values can be valid equally in reference to time and place. Two centuries ago, when liberal republicanism was overthrowing the old regime in Europe and America, questions concerning moral and civic foundations of democracy received a rich response. The response was elaborated in grounding treatises of political philosophy written by thinkers who characterized as the bringers of the Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. Nothing characterizes the spiritual climate of the West today so much as the pervasive disbelief in the powerful philosophical pillars of modernity. What is so troubling about the present situation in our world is the philosophic thinness of answers to questions concerning modernity, democracy and struggle for a culture of universal.

Second, is the challenge of economic globalization which is having a crucial and substantial impact on the idea of plurality of civilizations. There was a time when different great civilizations could exist. Their co-existence was not always peaceful, but at the time, each civilization was unique in the sense that it had its specific set of values and a specific idea of its own identity as well as that of other civilizations. The characteristic of each civilization constituted its standard of civilization.  Globalization broke this cyclical theory and it is now progressively blurring characteristics between different civilizations. It is globalization which selects various characteristics of civilizations, making of them a sort of symbiosis. In other words, the standard of civilization is following today the pace of globalization moving more and more towards a degree of homogenization of the world identity.

Third, is the challenge of global political deficit. I mean by that the lack of norms and institutions mediating, or bridging the gap between the emerging globalism and the traditional system of nation-states. Such mediating institutions- today short in supply- could be of a regional type. Regionalism has special advantages because of the closeness of the people in the area and its tendency to curb unilateral political power. I think a promising example of a functioning regional institution today could be the Mediterranean alliance.

This brings me to the fourth and last challenge, which is the danger of Muslim fundamentalism. Islam created a great civilization, but that civilization is no longer alive.  The death of the Islamic civilization has given rise to a culture of death that we see today among the Muslim fundamentalists around the world.  This reminds me of what Muhammad Iqbal used to say. In a letter written in 1917 he says: “To me this self-mystification, this nihilism that is seeking reality where it does not exist, is a physiological symptom giving me a clue to the decadence of the Muslim world”. Since the 19th century, the Muslim dream of a revival of Islam has taken different shapes and proportions. I think that the real struggle is going on between those who believe that a reconstruction of Islamic civilization can only be realized through the experience of modernity and democracy. In contrast to this view, there are those who struggle violently for a project which calls for a reproduction of the original model of Islam. The ideas of modernity and democracy are rejected and some even advocate the creation of an Islamic global world. I believe it is the outcome of the inter-Muslim struggle and not the conflict between Muslim fundamentalism and the West that will ultimately determine the Muslim response to the globalization of modernity. In this internal struggle Muslim countries of the Mediterranean region and elsewhere could take some cues from the Mediterranean alliance, not for aggressive purposes but for the sake of cultivating peaceful regional system of rule and democratic governance. Undoubtedly, within a stable and tolerant Muslim commonwealth, the danger of terrorism could be minimized and could be handled through internal mechanisms.

At the end of a long journey, from the nostalgia of the Enlightenment to post-modern disenchantment, Muslim societies are all facing today these issues. Once again, I think that the main question here is not to see if globalization is the synonym of globalization of Western values, but to ask if “democratic universalism” which suggests rules and institutions to promote democracy could emerge in Muslim cultures and cultures different from those of the West. If democracy is a universal value (however contested its interpretation) and one that is essential to alleviating the plight of the most vulnerable people in the world, then the key issue is not whether democracy should be promoted but rather how could it be promoted. When Mahatma Gandhi argued for the universal value of nonviolence, he was not arguing that people everywhere already acted according to this value, but rather that they had a good reason to see it as valuable.  I think, the same thing could be said about democracy in our world. In Amartya Sen’s memorable phrase: “A country does not have to be deemed fit for democracy; rather it has to become fit through democracy”.  The force of Sen’s claim  that democratic universalism plays an intrinsic importance in human life, an instrumental role in generating political incentives and a constructive function in the formation of values lies ultimately in that strength. The spread of democracy in today’s world needs a strong culture of tolerance; other wise long- term strategies will be of little use to us. If we do not integrate the concept of tolerance into our understanding of culture of democracy, we will be unable to put behind us the era in which culture is associated with expansion of violence. I think one of the examples of the Mediterranean alliance which developed a culture of tolerance as a philosophical and political pillar for dialogue among cultures is the Andalusian experience. That the Andalusian convivencia, which marks a truly remarkable period in the history of Islam and the West, did not play a constructive role in the Christian perceptions of Islam is indicative of the deep-rooted religious misconceptions of Islam and Muslim in the Western memory.

The Andalusian experience accomplished at least two main objectives: First, it created a cosmopolitan forum for different scholars of different disciplines. Second, and actually the result of the first, is the transfer of Hellenistic knowledge to Medieval Europe. This transfer was undoubtedly crucial to the beginning of the Renaissance in Europe. Montesquieu affirms in his book, Considerations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur decadence , that “ There were the Mahometans who transmitted sciences too the Occident, since then, they have never wished to take benefit of what they had give us”. I believe that we should stand for the revival and extension of the Andalusian experience as a paradigm of the Mediterranean alliance. The Andalusian experience was a time and place of cultural complexity, and of unprecedented coexistence between three of the world's major religions. Andalusian society made room for both the UNIVERSAL as well as the PARTICULAR.  Such a society could justly be called symbiotic and pluralistic.  The feature which marked this civilization was Religious Humanism; that philosophical worldview which tried to account for the pieties of traditional faith which were blended with a mix of rationalism and scientific inquiry.

In conclusion, I should like to return the experience of Cordova, the birthplace of Maimonides, a philosopher so dear to the Jewish tradition and of Ibn Rushd (Averroes) , a great Muslim rationalist. Both often unjustly forgotten in European education, European culture owes much of its present knowledge in science and in philosophy to these men. They both defined rules for co-existence, which they called the "right measure". Maimonides sought to propose a theory of moderation and harmony that distanced human existence from the dangerous risk of extremist oppositions. As for Ibn Rushd, he believed that the only way to get to have a sense of reality was through increased rational knowledge. I believe there are three reasons that the Andalusian experience is crucial to the world today:

1.First, the level of civilization that Andalusia achieved. At a time when the rest of Europe was shrouded in the Dark Ages, the Muslim city of Cordoba was the most advanced city on the entire European Continent. In philosophy, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, poetry, theology, and numerous other fields of human endeavor, medieval Islam was the world's most advanced civilization.

2.Second, Andalusia in particular and Islamic civilization in general, served as both the repository of ancient Greek knowledge and science, and the transmission point in its journey to the Christian-dominated West.

3. And third, the culture of Andalusia is now justly celebrated for its religious pluralism and tolerance.

In a contemporary world in which extremisms seem to prevail over reason, the Cordova experience appears in all its lucidity and with a surprising timeliness, not only for ourselves but also for generations to come. The priority of the Mediterranean alliance is to bear witness like Ibn Rushd and Maimonides that each man's life is guided by the search to live his own diversity and that of others  and to avoid the pitfalls of extremism and fanaticism.