The question reflects the concern of a group of Muslim scholars who strongly believe that Islam has always been, and still is, intentionally misunderstood by the West for political and economic reasons. One such scholar is the Egyptian writer Atteya Alwishy, who has surprisingly made a shift in his attitude towards the West.

He moved from an optimistic outlook that stresses the possibility of a dialogue between the West and Islam, in his book Dialogue of Civilizations published in Arabic in 2001, to a pessimistic stand in his recent book, Fearing Islam (Al-Khawfu min Al-Islâm, Cairo, 2006). No doubt, the five years separating the two books were pregnant with violent attacks both in the USA and in Iraq, and most of the attempts to call for a fruitful dialogue between the West and Muslim countries were simply theories in books or officially useless encounters. However, can this be the reason for Alwishy’s pessimism?

By listing the objectives behind writing Fearing Islam, Alwishy aims to prove that his pessimism is well-based. He says in the introduction of the book that his aim is three-fold: first, he will remove what he calls “ideological mines” put in place by the West to rationalize its violent attacks on Muslim countries, so that the greatness of Islam will become crystal clear to Westerners; second, he will alleviate Muslims’ fascination with the West, which with its alleged military power has frightened them; finally, he will try to cure a spreading disease in Islamic societies, which have started to doubt the utility of Islamic civilization altogether.

The three objectives require, therefore, a historical background to explain how the West has not bothered to understand Islam as much as they require a social analysis of the ills befalling Islamic societies. Historically, Alwishy believes that Islamic conquests of Western and Eastern Europe were misinterpreted by Westerners as being a proof that Islam is a frightening danger while in fact Islamic wars were not meant for the sake of violence but they were meant to preach a new faith to people who had the right to decide for themselves which religious belief was more convincing. Similarly, the Crusades were, according to Alwishy, the result of a radical religious consciousness on the part of Europeans and reflected an ignorance of the real values of both parties. This generated a historical enmity that has postponed the possibility of a dialogue to date. Yet, Alwishy does not forget to mention that the Crusades prove that the West is capable of anything when Islam is the target: the Western savage violence against Muslims in those wars was set in sharp contrast to Muslims’ peaceful and civilized treatment of their unarmed enemies. On the other hand, when the social reality of Islamic societies nowadays is taken into account, it will not be difficult to understand why the West still tries to implement its fear strategy. Alwishy thinks that Arab oppressive political systems contribute to the Western fear of Islam because oppression breeds extremism and extremism breeds terror. Add to this the falsifying picture that some Arab secularist thinkers send to the West: they feel more qualified to dissect the ills of their societies while in fact they only kindle Western stereotypes about Islam.

It is not surprising, accordingly, given the two backgrounds cited above, that the West in the New World Order intends to dramatize ‘Islamophobia’. Ironically, though the West understands that violence breeds only violence, it encourages what Alwishy considers pioneers of a ‘school of violence’ against Islam. The aim of the school is to frighten the Western citizen by falsifying information on Islam through schools, media, and public speeches, and to fight Western thinkers who defend, through their writings, Islam and its followers. There remains then after such an aim is successfully established the process of dramatization, which is based, for Alwishy, on two essential ideologies. Firstly, Western societies maintain that Islam is the new green menace that threatens the happiness of the West. Secondly, Western powers use the strategy of re-evaluating the nuclear situations in the world to prevent Islamic societies from ever thinking of attacking the West; but re-evaluation also means forbidding the spread of nuclear weapons to the Islamic world.

Western fear strategy in this sense has bred many negative and positive effects. To begin with, many hate crimes have spread against Arabs and Muslims. Furthermore, Western powers easily find reasons to attack Muslim states and encourage chaos inside them. Finally, violence has become for some extremists in the attacked societies a legal weapon to resist what they think to be injustice against Islam. On the positive effects of Western fear strategy Alwishy cites the following: Muslims have become more and more interested in Islam and conscious of the necessity to defend it. Similarly, Western universities together with a majority of Western citizens in general have opened their doors to the study of Islam and look for some explanations that might allow them to understand the clash between Western and Islamic civilizations. But is there any attempt in this endeavour to understand the true message of Islam?

Clearly, although Alwishy still refers to the possibility of a dialogue of civilizations in Fearing Islam, he does not offer the Muslim reader any glimmer of hope for rescue from the Western fear strategy. And in spite of the fact that Western fear strategy, described in detail by Alwishy, sheds some light on certain political and economic ideologies, it touches only on one aspect of certain Western societies and not on all Western societies. Thus, the sweeping generalizations resorted to by Alwishy weaken more than they strengthen the argument of the book.

There are indeed many Western organizations which do not adopt any fear strategy but encourage instead inter-religious dialogues, even if the religion concerned is Islam. Would Alwishy then think of another study entitled Understanding Islam to offer the Arab reader a more objective outlook of the Western attitude(s) towards Islam?

----

* The essay is a reading of Atteya Alwishy’s New Book, Fearing Islam