A View from the USA EDITED BY MAURIZIO MANISCALCO The evening of George W. Bush’s first address to the nation immediately after the horrifying terrorist attacks, we were eating dinner in a fast food restaurant with a little group of friends. The country was blocked, all eyes were on the President. I remember that a lively discussion about what he said ensued immediately. Along with the discussion came the question, “Who is behind this speech?” Everyone knows that every public figure in America has a fierce band of speech writers, but the writers still had to have had someone telling them what to say, especially concerning the approach to “the Islamic question.” Some days later, we read in The Washington Post: “In the first days after the September 11th attack, the writings of… David F. Forte landed on desk in the White House and throughout the national security apparatus. These words would form the rhetorical and moral basis for the American action.” I logged on to Internet and started looking. I found, “David F. Forte, professor of Law at Cleveland State University…” There was no e-mail address, but university addresses are not hard to come by. So I wrote, “Dear Dr Forte… I would like to interview you for Traces…” And the next morning I found a message: “I would be very pleased to talk with you. Call me at this number…” In this, too, America is truly an easy country. Reading what you’ve recently written, it appears evident that you are stressing the fact that what is happening is about ideology and not religion. However, as we watch TV or listen to interviews with Muslims even here in New York, it sounds like religion is playing, or is beginning to play, a major role. What do you think about that? What we must first do is to talk about the “end state,” which is a political ideology bent on dominating an area of the world. And then we can examine the “beginning state,” which is how that ideology came to power. The ideology that came to power with Lenin and Stalin was an ideology based upon a faulty philosophy of socialism by Karl Marx. They turned bad philosophy into a political ideology, and so whether or not Marx was right or wrong about history, we have to deal with the effects of Bolshevism, its offenses against humanity, its desire for power, and its hatred of any individual freedom whatsoever. Similarly, if we look at the “end state” that is Bin Laden and the institution that supports him–mainly the Taliban regime in Afghanistan–we see a similar ideology which, stripped of its rationalization, is a desire for absolute power to control the future and lives of people around the world. Hitler gained his ideology out of a faulty theory of social Darwinism; whether that theory was right or wrong, we have to contend with the ideology once it is in place. So the first thing we have to realize is that Bin Laden has much more in common with Hitler, Mao Tse Tung, Stalin and Lenin than he does with the tradition of Islam. In the same way, Mao Tse Tung–despite all that was written–has much more in common with Hitler than he does with Confucian China. And Stalin has much more in common with Hitler than he does with the great tradition of Russia. The second thing we have to understand is how this ideology becomes validated. It becomes validated primarily through the use of power. In the end stages, Stalin stayed in power not because people believed in him but because he killed so many of them, as did Lenin, Hitler, and Mao. But, nonetheless, they came to power, they came to respectability through a credible, believable, and rational reason supported by a population. That’s where we try to analyze how Bin Laden derived some respectability out of the fringe theory of Islam. And that’s where we talk about what fundamentalists believe in, which is a legalistic literalism of Islam, and how Bin Laden parlayed that theory into an extremist version of Islam, which in some ways is itself contrary to fundamentalism. Nonetheless, he was able to use some of the fundamentalist movement in Islam, which you now see today on the streets, to validate his version of extremism. In other words, Bin Laden has much in common with ideologies of terrorism and domination around the world, and he gets some legitimacy from being connected to a rigorous theory of Islamic law even though it is a theory that most Muslims themselves do not follow. Most people do not know what the real message of the Koran is all about. There is one thing though that seems to represent a serious threat. Apparently the way the state as such is conceived is derived from the Koran. The fulfillment of this religion would be the establishment of a state where the law is basically the Koran or something that comes directly from the Koran. This sounds, in simple words, scary to those of us who are not Muslim. The answer is that one party in Islam that has become dominant in the eyes of the world represents the legalistic version of the faith. The legalistic party is the element that promotes Shari’a. They believe that the state should follow the Shari’a. The Shari’a is divinely established, it is the law, a derivative of God’s will, and the state should follow it. Now, there are other traditions in Islam that reject that. Furthermore, practically speaking, in terms of the history of Islam, the state authorities always limited the Shair’a jurisdiction, whenever state policy demanded it. According even to the defenders of the Shari’a, that was a legitimate exercise of state power. In terms of Islamic history, the state felt very much influenced by the legal scholars in what it did. Nonetheless, whenever it needed to restrict the limit of the Shari’a to develop state policy differentiated from the Shari’a, it went ahead and did it. So when you hear people today say the state and the Shari’a should be one, they are representing a very extreme opinion of the legalists, a version that even the early legalists did not necessarily follow. Basically, you are saying that this position is just on the edge of what Islam is and what Islam has been proposing. It’s on the edge of what Islam has been, but that’s the next problem. The first problem is to differentiate terror from Islam; the next problem is to validate the varying traditions of Islam, as distinct from legalistic traditions, so that the Islamic dialogue within itself can become validate again and can continue with the vigor that it used to have in centuries past. With such a variety of understandings of what Islam is, what kind of dialogue is possible, and at what level and with what reasonable goal? The reasonable goal is to say that Islam can coexist with non-Islamic systems. Muslims can coexist within a democracy with other religions, as respectably and equally as any other religion. Those who claim that Islam must be dominant and must oppress other religions are not necessarily a valid part of the Islamic tradition. That’s the objective. And do you think it’s possible? I think it’s possible, sure. What George Bush has done has been to continue to draw this bright line between extremism and Islam and to continue to say that Islam is a religion that deserves respect. Muslims themselves in the world and particularly in our country are grateful for this message. In fact, it is beginning to validate those elements of Islam that are non-militant, that are tolerant and peaceful. This will allow for a possible approach in the future to the Muslim world. It’s going to take decades. The Muslim world has been experiencing anti-American propaganda from the radical Muslims for decades. It’s going to take a long time to turn around, but now we have the opportunity by which we can begin that process. You are telling me Islam is divided into many different traditions. But could the “common enemy” see some kind of unity? We being the “common enemy?” Yes, we being the “common enemy.” Well, that’s a danger. Stalin called on the nationalism of Russia to successfully defend against the German invasion, even though his regime was not at all legitimate in the eyes of the Russians. So that is a problem. Hitler called upon the German tradition even though the Germans may not have liked Nazism. So that is a problem. But what we have to do is to continue to treat Islam as separate from the radicals, and stay on that message as much as possible. I don’t see any other way to do it, and hope that that’s perceived. American administration is acting. Some people say we should do more, others are extremely worried about the consequences of this military action. In any case, there is a lot of fear. Do you think that the Bush administration is taking reasonable steps? So far I think what George Bush has done has been one of the most brilliant exercises in diplomacy, war, economics, and rhetoric that I’ve seen in diplomatic history for centuries. It’s an extraordinary tour de force the way he’s integrated and made proportionate every element in his counter-attack to terrorism. America will make some mistakes as we go along because we’re human and faulty, but what has happened so far in the last weeks has been an extraordinary accomplishment rarely seen in the history of the nation. Do you think (and if so to what extent) that what has happened will force, or will help America and Americans to rethink its foreign policy and the attitude that America has had, if any, toward the rest of the world, particularly toward Islam in the past few years? I think it puts to rest any instinct of isolationalism for another twenty years. I think we now realize that we do not have a border that can be sealed, that we must be intimately and pro-actively involved in the rest of the world for the foreseeable future. I think that will dramatically change America’s view; we will no longer be that shy about foreign involvement as long as it’s tied to protecting this country. I know you are a Catholic. Does that bring a particular perspective to your understanding of things, to what you are suggesting? Yes it does. To begin with, the Vatican Council specifically took time to pay homage to those things that were valuable and holy in the tradition of Islam. Secondly, Pope John Paul II has brought ecumenism into the heart of the Church, a solidity that is ecumenism leading from orthodox belief, not an ecumenism which doubts ones own orthodoxy. And so, because of the assurance I have that Christ died for all men, and that His message of grace and salvation affects all people, I think I can approach other religions with a respect and a confidence in my own faith.

And One from Italy EDITED BY GIORGIO PAOLUCCI Ignorance, fear, superficiality, naïve goodwill, ingenuousness. A kaleidoscope of very different terms describes the attitude of Italians toward Islam. And although after September 11th it has become the subject of sometimes heated debates, the Muslim world is perceived as a still unknown reality, far away, difficult to grasp in its real dimensions. And especially in times like these, as something that arouses fear. In an effort to understand it better, we talked with Andrea Pacini, head of the “Islam and Modernity” program of the Agnelli Foundation, Professor of Sociology of Islam in Europe at the Pontifical Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies, and author of numerous essays and extensive research on the topic. What keeps us from understanding Islam in all its complexity? Is it only a question of prejudices to be overcome, or is there also an objective distance between two different worlds? We must certainly take into account a goodly dose of ignorance, as well as an approach that tends to reduce Islam to a spiritualistic experience or an ethic, instead of considering it as an overall project for man and society. We keep hearing it repeated that we must not generalize and that there are many Islams, a declaration that in itself can be shared, but that should not make us lose sight of certain objective facts: among its constitutive elements there are not only the five pillars [see article in this issue], but also a close connection between religion, politics, and law, a legal system that decrees the superiority of men over women and Muslims over non-Muslims, and that is in conflict at various points with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The difficulty in grasping the true nature of Islam derives also from a rose-colored view of the relationships between cultures, which in Italy is particularly widespread. In recent years, numerous and varied attempts have been made to build bridges between different worlds, but the operation has been attempted in an ideological manner. Rather than worrying about the solidity of the pilings on which to build the bridges, they have tried to downplay or erase the differences between the two sides of the river, whereas it is only by having the differences well in mind that a process of clarification or an attempt to know the other can be set in motion. With the naïve goodwill that has characterized certain approaches, cultivated also in Catholic circles, it is not possible to capture the complexity of Islam as an integral way of life, and we end up absolutizing our own expectations or illusions. In the final analysis, it is like constructing an interlocutor in our own image and likeness, which betrays his identity and loses sight of ours. Especially after the outbreak of the conflict in Afghanistan and the climate of suspicion and fear that has arisen, many people maintain that to ward off a clash between civilizations or a war of religion, it is necessary to enter into dialogue with so-called moderate Islam, the component that is more open to modernity and to a rereading of the Koran from the historical viewpoint. In a world encompassing a billion two hundred million people, is moderate Islam a reality or a negligible minority? How can it acquire more weight? It must be recognized that there are currents of thought that have been working for some time on a reinterpretation of the Koran and the Sunna [the collection of Mohammed’s acts and sayings] that takes history into account, that breaks free of a literal and unchangeable approach to the sacred texts, knows how to harmonize faith and reason, and attempts a more secular approach to reality without denying the fundamentals of Islam. I am referring to the writings of some intellectuals, the activities of associations working toward the emancipation of women, the requests of the religious minorities, and also to the strategy followed by certain governments (for example, Tunisia and Egypt), which are beating a path of modernization and a new relationship between religion and State. Realistically, we have to admit that we are talking about a submerged river that can be intercepted only in parts, of small constellations within the galaxy of Islam, in which the universities, the places where religious thought is worked out (like Al Azhar in Cairo, which is the world beacon of Islamic law), and the main political centers cause a traditionalist conception to prevail, one that is unable to read the changes brought by history and thus to face reality in a modern way. Islam needs an authentic cultural revolution, but this is still a distant goal. In fact, there is the risk that with the relaunching of the most radical currents which has taken place in the last twenty years, and the polarization that the current conflict is bringing about, it is the moderates and modernists who are having to yield. What contribution can come from the West to help the more open positions within Islam to grow? I believe it is necessary to work on three levels. First, the West needs to recover its sense of identity, while instead it seems increasingly lost and faceless, and in this sense it is necessary to acknowledge the fundamental contribution made by its Christian roots–too often forgotten–which enabled it to develop a civilization capable of enriching itself with what is “other.” Second, it is urgent to built sturdy banks for partnership with the most enlightened governments of the Islamic world. In this perspective, I would like to mention the agreement signed at the Barcelona Conference in 1995 (but largely left unapplied) for cooperation between Europe and the Mediterranean world; it included processes of modernization of the institutional and economic machinery and incentives for cultural exchange that will enable Moslem nations to know better and to prize the heritage of the West. The third level of intervention concerns the development of strategies for the social and cultural integration of the Islamic minorities living in Europe. The public authorities and the civilian society have to have the courage to choose interlocutors who are up to the task within the variegated Islamic world, isolating those who pursue the goal of constructing an Islamic enclave with laws and rules of its own, and favoring instead a dialogue with those who accept the path of integration, which nonetheless must not erase the specific aspects of their religion. It is a job that must be done in order to construct a new coexistence, even if it is made harder by the climate of mutual mistrust that has been created lately, by the lack of a hierarchy within Islam, and finally by the fact that the Muslim base–in Europe, but above all in Italy–has not yet produced authentic representatives. To achieve this we must not put ourselves in the hands of the group that shouts the loudest or the Imam who appears most often in the newspapers or on television. We must also not forget that only 5% of Muslims attend the mosque regularly, thus we cannot be sure that the mosque is the most meaningful catalyst. There are those who delude themselves that they can have a dialogue with someone who is the equivalent of a “Muslim bishop,” whereas it is necessary to deal with a plurality of positions, all more or less self-legitimating, but among which we must choose, using as the definitive criterion their greater or lesser openness to integration into this society. In the face of the video messages of Bin Laden and the declarations of certain Islamic leaders who quote suras from the Koran to legitimize violence, there are those who denounce the use of Islam as a tool to achieve another purpose, but also those who point out that the Koran, like the Gospel, contains passages with exhortations to peace and others that incite to war, and that, ultimately, all religions, if interpreted wrongly, can lead to fanaticism and violence… On this topic, we cannot accept any ambiguity. The Gospel proclaims that God so loved the world that He became man and accepted to die on the cross, and this is the unmistakable witness rendered by Jesus Christ, who gave up His life for the salvation of all men. The fact that then, in the course of history, there have been betrayals and contradictions among Christians cannot be denied and is part of human nature, but if we speak of the originary texts, there can be no doubts. Instead, reading the Koran, especially the verses that refer to the period of Mohammed’s life spent in Medina, we find invitations to violence and war; we must not forget that Mohammed was a prophet, but also a political leader and commander in numerous wars. We certainly should not underestimate the verses that advocate peace and generosity, but the basic problem is how the texts are interpreted, and it cannot be denied that the prevalent exegesis, the one most tied to orthodoxy and tradition, attributes greater importance to the suras which refer to the prophet’s time in Medina, while the “innovators” try to give greater value to the period in Mecca, marked by mystical and spiritual accents. As we can see, there is a fundamental ambiguity that has lasted for centuries and has to be resolved with a cultural revolution whose starting point is a rereading of the Koran that takes history into account and succeeds in changing the parameters of the relationship between Islam and society. And precisely the dramatic moment we are going through can provide the opportunity to bring about the igtihad, i.e., the effort to make a rational reinterpretation of Islam, which is perceived as necessary by a great many Muslims. It is not true, as is maintained by some also in Italy, that nothing can be done; I am convinced instead that it is a very demanding course, but a viable one, and that there are many Muslims ready to take it. On our part, it is necessary to encourage them along this rocky path, a crucial one for the fate of all mankind, so that they may use the reason and freedom God gave them.