As we enter upon the global age our life with others intensifies exponentially. This is not merely a matter of economics, although there was notable truth to the observation of Hegel and Marx—not to mention Aristotle and his whole tradition—that physical exchange is basic for interchange between humans. Today, however, because the social sphere is so intense, political relations have come to supercede, organize and direct economic interchange. The World Bank and the World Trade Organization, while certainly economic entities, were created and are rum today as integral dimensions of the political world order.

But when we ask how the economic and political orders operate we find that not only is this not at random, neither is it according to the formal economic and political principles and goals of profit and power. Beneath (or above) these are the cultural patterns that identify the parts and interrelate them in a truly global whole. The challenges of the economy may be shared, but each people responds in its own term. How peoples understand themselves and manage their homes, communities and nations is specific to each major civilization and defines the many ways of life. Thus, the issues of human cooperation have become civilizational, both in breadth and in depth.

The ability to understand other cultures and to integrate their concerns in determining one’s actions is now crucial. And as truly human relations are mutual, understanding the other entails a corresponding process of self-discovery, while hermeneutics tells us that only in an awareness of self can we interpret the other.

Today the time of orientalism understood as curiosity about the strange and exotic has passed. We now live together through immigration notably from the East into the West and through globalization extensively from the West into the East. Issues of difference are no longer at arms length, but matters of proximate daily interchange. Issues of war and peace are no longer articulated by symmetrical rows of canons along the Marginot line, but by the asymmetry between the massive Pentagon in Washington and the one room madrasa in the mountains through which the Silk Road long since wound its way.

This involution reflects a profound shift in the terms of engagement. Since Plato in the Western tradition all has been basically objective in character. The body of knowledge was given in Greek and Roman literature; its was modelled in alienated adib behavior, and interpreted through the external economic dialectic of formation theory.

As pointed out by Y. Pochta in Chapter I this is now in the process of being substituted through a general shift from objectivity to subjectivity. In these new terms it is possible to take account of the inner consciousness of the person or people with their awareness, evaluation and creative response to their concrete circumstances. As this forms a culture and a civilization; it will be referred to as the civilizational interpretation of Islam in the West. In these terms it now becomes possible to engage Islam not as a theoretical world view or a pawn in economic interaction, but as a people with their concerns and fears, hopes and responses.

This work on Western interpretations of Islam is situated astride the major divide between these two approaches: between the past objectivist, even materialist ideology, on the one hand, and the emergence of new attention to human interiority and its meaning for the evolution of cultures and peoples, on the other. To adapt a classical phrase: this is to stand formation theory on its head. Moreover, if interpretation is the basis of action then this augurs to be a most important book for the relations between peoples in a global age.

The Soviet Union has one of the largest Muslim populations, and hence a unique engagement with Islam and its culture. From this inestimable store of experience in its studies of Islam rich results can be expected. Yet, as heirs to a materialist ideology, the public context has long been in tension with the pervasively religious character of Islam. Thus, this work on Islam faces a unique challenge and constitutes a true hermeneutic laboratory. This is true regarding not only the object to be known, but the subject who seeks to know and understand; it exemplifies a major effort from a secular culture to understand another that is religious. This then is a matter not simply of reporting a set of objective facts or behaviours, but of being able to enter into the mind and heart of another culture in order to empathize with its concerns and live together in true cooperation.

Moreover, though there has been much discussion about the ability of Islam to develop Western patterns of social life in order to live with the West, amazingly little has been written about the ability of a secularized West to live with Islam. As exemplifying an effort at cross cultural understanding this work itself gives witness to the challenges to be faced and the developing avenues along which success can be hoped.

All of this has taken on the greatest urgency in view of the Russian experience in Afghanistan and Chechnia, and the escalation of asymmetrical violence as we enter into the new millennium. As the issue of mutual understanding with Islam has been catapulted into the front rank of human concerns this book has taken on major importance.

Part I, "Islamic Culture in the Contemporary World: Problems of Research," begins this effort by presenting a hermeneutic for the study of Islamic culture.

Chapter I by Yuriy Pochta, "The Image of Islamic Culture in European Consciousness," is particularly instructive. He analyzes how the lens of interpretation is in a continual process of change and its special dynamics with regard to Islamic studies in the West. One is the difficulty of the West in escaping its Eurocentrism resulting in what can be called a missionary approach. This is not to suggest a crusade intentionally to impose one religion over the other, but rather the inability to envisage an alternate to the Western liberal vision of life or civilization. As a result Islam has been continually misinterpreted as a religion, culture and society. Wishing it well has consisted largely in wishing that it would change to become like the West. Only recently have some begun to consider it in its own terms, rather than in those of the Christian West.

A second major difference is between the "civilizational model" in which the role of culture, religion and spirit is seen to predominate and the "formational model" based on material conditions, class and ideology. Soon after the Revolution the limitations of the formational model became manifest in the massive destruction of mosques, while the West has been trapped in a theological fundamentalism of its own since the peace of Augsburg in 1555. This chapter brings all of this to reflective consciousness, thereby pointing to the need to view Islam in terms of its own cultural identity. Hopefully, this could augur the dawn of an authentic pluralism in which Islam can find its respected place. Hence we will keep this distinction of method in mind in reviewing each of the subsequent chapters as it points to the ability of the West to encounter Islam.

Chapter II by Nur Kirabaev, "Islamic Civilization and the West: Problems of Dialogue," continues this theme. By recognizing the complex character of Islam as a civilization he points beyond ideologies to a recognition of the need to see Islam and its place in the world not as a choice between alternatives, but as an integration of values. This has been experienced as a challenge since al-Ghazali pointed out the inability of the great Islamic philosophers wedded to Greek philosophy adequately to account for the Koranic doctrines of human responsibility and resurrection. For lack of a philosophical resolution of this question, the relation between faith and reason remains today an increasingly explosive challenge.

Chapter III by Maitham Al-Janabi, "Islamic Civilization: An Empire of Culture," carries this still further by going deeply to the religious root of Muslim culture in the one God to find there the hermeneutic key to interpreting Islam both from within and in relation to its global partners. On this basis he shows how unity marks all aspects of Islam and the civilization it has generated. Hence, while all aspects of life are included and it can be analyzed from every aspect, what is characteristic is its ability to embrace a diversity of peoples, and the variety of their values and virtues. This has enabled it to recognize that the diversity of cultures is a blessing and to envisage a place for the most diverse cultures within a general human community.

Moreover, in recognizing diversity within itself, Muslim culture supposed diversity outside. It presupposes the possibility of a universal civilization with different cultures. A true culture is capable of viewing others according to criteria of reason and morals. All are integrated, as al-Andalusi wrote many centuries ago, by virtues of theoretical and practical reason, rather than by the force of anger in the animal soul. Though, ants can build their own "political cities and systems," they are not the "civilizations of moral reason which constitute the essence of humankind."

Part II, "Islamic Culture: Its Nature, Major Concepts and Problems," turns to the nature of Islam itself. Here the hermeneutic division noted by Y. Pochta in Chapter I becomes especially determinative. Only Chapter VI proceeds from a "civilizational" rather than a "formationist" perspective, and hence is able to take account of the fundamental character of Islam as a culture and religion.

Chapter IV by Artur Sagadeyev, "Social and Historical Premises of the Origin and Development of Classical Arab-Islamic Culture," in search of non-theistic thinking searches out socio-cultural parallels to Western intellectuals, and falsafa is seen as opposition to Sunni Islam, rather than as an attempt to develop it. In a paradoxical sense this implements the "missionary" approach to Islam by attempting to understand it as a body without a soul.

Chapter V by Taufik Ibrahim K., "Ancient Heritage in Kalam Philosophy," makes an important contribution in showing the extent to which philosophical competencies grew. However, as he supposes religion and mysticism to be contradictory to science he interprets this as supplementing religion by secular concerns, rather than enabling the deeply religious understanding of the nature and work of God which marks Islamic culture.

Chapter VI by Nur Kirabaev, "The Political and Legal Culture of Medieval Islam," achieves greater success though following the civilizational model, i.e., looking at the role of religion in politics, rather than reducing religious patterns of thought to political concerns. He expertly weaves together Shari’a and Caliphate and analyzes the classical theories on the state of al-Mawardi, al-Ghazali and Ibn Taymiyya. All of them were guided by the Qur’anic and Sunnah traditions, the practices of the Islamic community in its golden period, the Umma and Ijma’.

In Chapter VII "Humanistic Ideals of the Islamic Middle Ages," Artur Sagadeyev returns to the formational approach raising the question of whether an Islamic culture can be understood in reductively human terms. The chapter assembles the positive case, educing the role of Greek thought, and the paideia or adib ideal of education. In these terms one can compare Islamic with other cultures incrementally as more or less of the same, e.g., as leading in astrology and mathematics. To see what makes Islamic culture special, however, it is necessary to see how it is inspired and integrated. This calls again for elements found only in a civilizational approach open, e.g., to the mystical terms of an Ibn Arabi beyond those of Ibn Rushd or even Ibn Sina.

In his Munqud al-Ghazali describes how conscious and tense could be this decision to transcend the confines of Greek thought and "take to the road"—which in the circumstances was not only the road to Damascus, but the way of the Sufis. It would be more than a century, however—and then in Paris rather than in Baghdad—that a Aristotelian Christian synthesis, built on the religious sense of existence, would resolve these tensions for the West. For Islam this tension has not dissipated, as would have been the case if the humanism described in this chapter were to have become predominant.

Part III, "Islamic Culture: Classical Paradigm and Modernity," surveys some of the amazing range of forms in which the principles of Islam discussed above are lived in the present day.

In Chapter VIII, "Classical Arab-Islamic Culture in the Context of Dialogue of Civilizations," Taufik Ibrahim K., in a veritable tour de force, provides a major overview of the many dimensions of Islamic civilization in a manner that is clear, comprehensive and balanced.

Chapter IX, "Islamic Culture in Search of a Golden Mean," by Maitham Al-Janabi takes this to the next deeper level by a structuralist analysis of Islamic culture as a consistent effort at moderation. This integrates the great variety of the factors which make up a civilization. It can be also Islamic in reflecting the characteristic unity described in chapters III and VIII. To find its soul and zest for life, however, it would be necessary to ground this in the unity of the One Divine life which brings all to life and guides life along its perilous path—without this inspiration its moderation would have become a bland humanism.

Chapter X by Alexander Rodrigues, "Wahhabism and ‘Peoples’ Islam’ in the Arabian Peninsula," illustrates this exuberance as a recurring theme. It is part of the continuing criticism of the successive states that they are all too human and fail to realize the Islamic ideal. Wahhabism is the latest attempt to renew the initial élan of Islam in Saudi Arabia and illustrates the constant dilemma of Islam: how to be faithful in the human pilgrimage through time. It shows the need of Islam for a more adequate hermeneutic that is broadly and ever more urgently sensed in our times.

Chapter XI by Abdillahi Hassan, "The Ethnoconfessional Situation in the Horn of Africa," describes the complex recent history of this attempt in the geographic region of North East Africa It illustrates how difficult it is for different peoples to live together.

In conclusion, Chapter XII by Nur Kirabaev, "Islam in the Context of Modern Civilization," reviews three forms of this effort to evolve a modern civilization: modernist, fundamentalist and political militant. In tribute to the rich unity of Islam Prof. Kirabaev concludes that "problems concerning the specific features of Islamic civilization should be considered not in a context of the opposition of East or West, old or new, past and present, origin or modernity, traditionalism or rationalism, faith or reason, heritage or renewal, religious or national, but on the basis of their interconnections." In this he rejoins the conclusion of the analysis of the evolution of Western studies of Islam in Chapter I by Yuriy Pochta. Together they underline that real progress in response to the urgent need to understand and engage Islam in our times requires recognizing it as a culture in its own right—a civilizational approach—which is to be understood in terms of its basic values and religious commitments or not at all.