A liberal Muslim's letter to the West

Amidst the talk about militant Islam's holy war against the West, Europe's phobia of homegrown Islamism, and academic theorisation of the eminent clash between the liberal West and the fundamentalist Islamic world, the West is slowly but steadily losing its main ally in the Arab and Islamic worlds - liberal Arabs and Muslims.

Most liberal Arabs, like most Arabs of all intellectual standpoints, don't savor the fact that foreign forces - predominantly Western powers - occupy parts of their lands, have significant influence over their economic interests, and preach them about progress and socio-economic development. But the view of the liberal Arab or Muslim differs from that of his/her local cousin in a key respect: the deep belief that the post-renaissance value system of the West - based upon social liberalism and the sanctity of individualism, freedom, and free choice - is inherently superior to the value system propagated by the three socio-political systems currently dominating the Arab and Islamic worlds: dogmatic theocracy, patriarchal absolutism, and tribal traditionalism.

In the West, this would be the equivalent of stating that the sun rises from the east; throughout most of the Arab and Islamic worlds, it is highly debatable; and in some corners, heretical.

A universal inheritance

Liberal Arabs and Muslims have adopted the European mindset of separating the church (and of course, mosque) from the state, and subscribed to a universal value system that is based not on one religion, one heritage, one culture, but is rather the product of different social experiences throughout different ages, and across different cultures. In effect, then, they have aligned their societies with the dominant value system in the West.

Their message to the West thus becomes: we can work together, live together in harmony, and interact smoothly because there is so much in common between us, and because we do appreciate that the social contract that you (the West) has developed over the past 300 years could be the backbone for any modern society today; we (Arabs and Muslims) will never be shades of Europeans or Americans; actually most of us do not want to be so anyway; we will retain our distinct identity, yet adopt the social framework that you (the West) has developed - simply because it is working better than the ones we have, and because it is not actually Western, but inherently universal.

Liberal Arabs' message to their own societies, by the same token, becomes: there is no conflict between democracy, freedom, individualism, free choice on one hand, and the Arabic heritage and Islam on the other. We (Arabs and Muslims) can develop and progress by adopting a system that is certainly working and that we have heavily contributed to its creation - through our (Arabs and Muslims') contributions in philosophy, socio-political thinking and have even created its first historical example: Arab, Muslim Andalucía.

That message is not in any way self-deprecating. It's not like those - prominent in the West post-9/11 - which portray Arabic/Islamic culture as inferior and Western thinking as superior. On the contrary, it is a message based entirely on facts, history and a dose of humility. Facts and history reflect the Arabs' heritage in advancing human thinking and civilization when Europe was still debating whether women have souls or not; it reflects the fact that Arabs and Muslims, throughout history, were not exporting suicide-bombers and wild-eyed fundamentalists, but throughout ages and across vast parts of the world, from Samarkand to Córdoba, were producing scientists, intellectuals, thinkers, artists, enlightened rulers and societies that are exemplary in tolerance and progress. Humility enters in the realization - and admission - that in the past 300 years, we (Arabs and Muslims) have lost our way; and in remembering Sheikh Mohamed Abdu's succinct words on returning from P