132 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 16:4 Islam, Mode�nism and the West: Cultural and Political Relations at the End of the Millennium Edited by Gema Martin Munoz, London: J.B. Tauris, 1999, 264pp. The relations between Muslim peoples and the West, and between Muslim peoples and forms of modernity, have become increasingly pressing issues of scholarly and political concern over the past twenty-five years. In part, this is due to the growing power of Islamism in the lives and politics of many Muslim societies and, in part, to the fact that some fonns of Islamism can appear to be profoundly hostile to all that the West represents. The growing presence of Muslim peoples in Western societies and the many assumptions which that presence calls into question has also caused scholars and politicians to focus on these relations. Add to this the fact that some leading members of the Western policy establishment, most notably the US political scientist S. P. Huntington, Book Reviews 133 have come to talk in the post-cold war era of a “clash of civilizations” in which the clash between Islam and the West is the most profound and the most dan- gerous for world p e . This book, which contains sixteen essays by Muslim and non-Muslim schol- ars, mainly from institutions in Europe and the Arab world, sets out to address key issues in the relations between Muslims, modernity, and the West. It is the outcome of a symposium held in Toledo, Spain, in April 1996, which was prompted by the Eleni Nakou Foundation for the promotion of cultural contact and understanding among European peoples, and held under the auspices of the Jose Ortega y Gasset Foundation. &ma Martin Muiioz, professor of Sociology of the Arab and Islamic World at the Autonoma University of Madrid was the intellectual “playmaker” of the occasion. Due to its Islamic past and the fun- damental role it played in transmitting Islamic learning and culture for the development of Christian Europe, Spain was a goad choice of location for the aonference. In the preface, Muiioz states the prime concern of the book, namely, “to pro- vide a f o m for the cultural and political debates taking place in the heart of the Islamic and Western world.” The aim is to get away from the long history of pejorative images that Westerners and Muslims have of each other, to escape from colonial guilt and the resentment of the colonized, and to focus on the dynamic relationship between manifestations of Islam and social, econom- ic, and political change. Indeed, Muiioz is concerned “to work towards inte- gration and mutual concern and against the theory of the clash of civilizations.” She considers the reform of European understanding to be a priority, not only because immigration has made Islam a significant European religion, but also because the presence of Muslim countries along the southern flank of the European Union makes understanding of Islam and these societies a matter of primary concern for European policy. Muiioz then proceeds to introduce the collection of essays by offering an overview of key issues both in relations between Islam and the West and in Western understanding of the Muslim world. It is particularly heartening to find her introducing the ideas of Islamism and Islamist actors as key agents facilitating the development of forms of modernity amongst Muslims. Indeed, although this is by no means a new idea, it deserves regular repetition and investigation. The remaining fifteen essays are divided into four sections. In the first, titled “Relations between Europe and the Muslim World A Reinterpretation,” Mahammed Arkoun, who is professor of Islamic thought at the Sorbonne (Paris), considers the role of history as an ideology of legitimization in Muslim and European contexts. After considering related issues in general, he discuss- es the problem in the particular contexts of Algeria and France. In the remain- 134 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 16:4 ing two essays of the fwst section, Miguel Moratinos (a Spanish diplomat) gives an overview of recent relationships with the Muslim world and suggests ways forward for a more peaceful Euro-Arab future, while Bichara Khader (a scholar of Palestinian origin from the Catholic University of Louvain) brings some policy substance to this vision by illustrating how the European Union’s project for a Euro-Mediterranean Partnership has developed since the early 1990s. Both articles are written in a sermonizing tone. In the second section, “Islam and the West: Concepts of Civilization,” Muhammed Abed a1 Jabri (a Moroccan scholar) asks if the “clash of civiliza- tions” model has to be that of the future. He believes that if the principles of Ibn Rushd (name given to a commission set up in 1996 to improve mutual understanding between Spain and Morocco) can be observed, there is real hope for a relationship of peace and stability. Maurice Borrans (a Christian mission- ary) then demonstrates how the dialogue has moved from being between the European-Christian and Arab-Muslim worlds to being a dialogue among the Muslims themselves. John Esposito (a political scientist) sums up the thrust of his contribution by quoting Anwar Ibrahim (at that time the deputy prime min- ister of Malaysia), “Enduring peace and security of the world must be built not upon religious, cultural, economic, and political hegemonies, but on mutual awareness and concern. For understanding brings respect, respect prepares the way for love. Love like truth, liberates and takes us on to a higher kind of loy- alty.” In the last article of this section, Ann Mayer (a human rights expert from the University of Pennsylvania) examines the problems of citizenship and human rights in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Turkey, and Egypt, and concludes, unsurprisingly, that much more needs to be done in these states, as well as in the West, to accommodate difference. By far the strongest section of the book is devoted to the “Dialectics of Reason and Faith: Secularism and Islamism.” Here, Filali Ansari (a Moroccan scholar) examines the contribution of the Egyptian theologian, Ali Abd a1 Raziq, to Islamic and secular thought. He defines Abd al Raziq’s argument that the political era of Islam only began after the Prophet’s death and then explores its subsequent influence. Tariq Ramadan from the University of Freiburg pro- vides a sketch of the recent relationship between Europe and the Islamists. Gudrun Kramer of the Free University in Berlin, demonstrates how the recent Muslim/Islamist discourse on Islam and democracy has not only adopted key elements of modem democracy - elections, representation, parliamentary rule, and separation of powers-and declared them compatible with Islam, but has also begun to incorporate “at one level at least” key values such as free- dom, equality and individual responsibility. Book Reviews 135 The next two essays are outstanding. The first, by Muhammed Tozy (a Moroccan scholar), examines Islamism and some of its perceptions of the West. Supporting his argument with solid scholarship, he shows how Islamism is an avant-garde activity with a powerful “modemizing” dimension, and how Islamists themselves have a range of attitudes towards Europe. Thus, while the satanization of the West is becoming outdated, some of its basic principles and values are starting to be appreciated. The second essay, by Fariba Adelkhah (an Iranian social anthropologist based in Paris), shows how the process of individualization in Iran “is not occurring against the family or outside the fam- ily, rather it is a key part of it and is contributing to the process of bringing the family into line with the contemporary world.” In the process, “Islam remains overwhelmingly present ... it provides the vocabulary and grammar by which people are shaping their modernity, including the modem family ...” A series of fascinating examples of the role of Islam and Islamic practice in the indi- vidualization of believers are then given. This is a thoughtful, often ironic and wonderfully stimulating piece of work. In the final section, titled “Islam in Europe, the Islam of Europe,” Jocelyn Cesari (a French political scientist) explores the tensions which have developed between the French citizens who have wished to assert their Islamic nature, and the majority of the French population whose collective conscienceness sees Islam as negative. Nielson (a Danish scholar who directs the Centre for Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations in Birmingham, UK) compares the education- al policies of several European states toward Muslims and Muslim education- al institutions. He concludes that, whereas the Dutch have done well by state- funding Muslim schools, the British have not scored so well; thus far they are refusing to accept the idea. On the other hand, the British, the Dutch, and the Scandinavian countries have done much better (by continually negotiating and renegotiating their relationship to Muslim educational demands) than the Germans and the French, who will only be moved to change by an earthquake! Indeed, there is a lot of tension between the anticlerical tradition, which is root- ed at the heart of the French State since the Revolution of 1789, and the demands of the Muslims. Finally, Francois Zabbal (a French scholar) examines problems of multiculturalism within Europe. One weakness in this collection of essays is that it claims to speak for Islam, but only deals with issues relating to the Arab and European world, ignoring the developments and understandings of the other half of the Muslim world - a half which over the past one hundred years has been at least as dynamic as the Arab world. The essays are considerably unevenness in quality; moreover, it would have been helpful, on occasion, to have had stronger scholarly support for the claims made. Filali Ansari, for instance, refers to Abd a1 Raziq’s essay 136 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 16:4 which states that the political era of Islam only began after the Prophet's death, but no date or publication details for this important work are given. Nevertheless, the book is a valuable report of the symposium, and includes several strong contributions, in particular those of Tozy, Adelkhah, Kramer and Munoz on lslamism's powerful modernizing potential. Francis Robinson Department of History Royal Holloway University of London England