الإسلام والغرب: نحو عالم أفضل

I NTRODUCTION I SLAM AND THE W EST : FOR A B ETTER W ORLD Khalid Hajji Aljazeera Centre for Studies More than twenty researchers were convened to participate in the first forum organized by Aljazeera Centre for Studies under the title: Islam and the West: for a Better World . As the title makes clear, the objective of the forum is two-fold. On the one hand, there is an urgent need to understand the true nature of the relations that bind Islam to the West. It is of fundamental importance that such enlightened researchers address this issue and come up with a clear diagnosis of the state of coexistence between these two entities. On the other hand, despite existing aspects of conflict and disharmony, the forum focuses on the existence of promising prospects of a better future. The underlying assumption is that the two entities – Islam and the West – are not doomed by necessity to conflict and clash. The organizers wished to contribute to the opening of a new field of perception in order to rethink the premises upon which theories of "clash of civilizations" are predicated. Undoubtedly, the opposition of Islam as a world religion to the West as a monolithic civilization is at least curious, if not incongruous. Whereas the former is an entity defined by faith, the latter is an entity defined in spatial terms. This opposition finds more than one justification in our contemporary political scene. The West strikes us as a force capable of technological forays, driven by the impulse to conquer the globe. Islam, contrariwise, appears to be a religion of an unfailing spiritual force capable of fostering resistance against the West. One of the implicit assumptions that underlie this divide is that the West epitomizes—to use an often quoted formula—"readiness to kill," whereas Islam stands for "readiness to die."

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