DECONSTRUCTION OF THE WESTERN SCIENTIFIC STORIES ABOUT THE ISLAMIC SOCIETY

                There is a long-standing tradition of radical distortion of the Islamic society in Western culture and science. The main reason for this is the Christian basis of the Western culture. The most complete fulfillment of this influence was in the Christian Providentialism of the Middle Ages. It contained an idea that there could be only one true revelation of religion in the world and, correspondingly, only one true society based on it. From this point of view, Islam, which appeared in the Christian world several centuries later than Christianity itself, had been understood as something anti-Christian, or at least as a providentially created tool to secure the transition of pagans to Christianity. Accordingly, the Muslim society was interpreted as wrong, pagan, an empire of evil. This Christian attitude to the Muslim society then influenced the civilizational analysis which was created in the European philosophy of history in the 18th century. Even the Marxist explanation of the Islamic society based on the socio-economic formation theory contained this influence, though implicitly. It means that in Western society the Christian interpretation of Islamic history became the original story. This religious influence on the scientific mind can be described in postmodern philosophy's terms as contexts within contexts.

                Eurocentrism is one of the important a priori principles of the civilizational analysis. It implies the overwhelming superiority of the European civilization over any other, including the Islamic civilization. This principle develops the traditional Christian attitude towards the Islamic society, but in a transformed, rational form. Eurocentrism represents, in a disguised form, the position of Western thinkers. It implies that the Christian society overrides the Muslim one as much as civilization overrides barbarism. The idea of Christianity's superiority over Islam is usually expressed implicitly. And the idea about the Muslim society's barbaric character is expressed explicitly, with reference to history, to the laws governing the development of a society and to such notions as historicism, progress, freedom and democracy. That is why the Western civilizational meta-narrative of the Muslim society's history contains two contradictory variants: one related to the philosophy of history and another to the philosophy of religion. In most cases the latter (in its pantheistic or deistic form) determines the first. In writings of a concrete Western thinker these variants are often mixed and at the same time lead to opposite evaluations of the Islamic civilization (Leibnitz); only a few thinkers can interconnect them (Hegel).

                During the 18th and the 19th centuries European Romanticists (F. Schlegel, Shatobrian and Carleil) put forward an idea about Christianity's civilizing role in the world. They came to the conclusion that only through Western intrusion could the Muslim world become a real civilization.

                This idea was supported by Positivists (E. Renan and G. Lebon). They were trying to prove an ontological inadequacy and foreignness of the barbaric Muslim East compared to Western society. Here, in connection with Positivism's ideas about the Muslim society, we can discuss the notion of the so-called "Islamic fundamentalism.” Its origin and existence can be explained as a painful, ideological and political response of the Muslim society, being subjugated to forced Westernization. This was a reaction to attempts to make the Muslim narrative subordinate to the stories of Western modernity, to remove the lived experience of the Muslim peoples out of their contemporary, dominant stories. This phenomenon is an example of the ongoing conflict of civilizations in which the Muslim side saw itself as a victim. But is it possible to blame Western scholars for the creation of aggressive, nontolerant stories about the Muslim society?

                At first it is necessary to explain the historical context in which Positivism was formed. At that time the real Western worldwide superiority, supplanted by the active colonization of the Muslim countries, was increasing Eurocentric tendencies in Western Islamology. Former naïve rational-universal, Enlightenment attitudes towards nonEuropean societies had been changed by another extreme: cultural-historical or racial-anthropological plurality, which admitted the European-type of social development as the only form of universalism. The Positivists supposed that, while sociology would bring them reliable knowledge about society, they could reform it. That is why they were interested in the Muslim East as a part of the world in which they could apply their reformatory activities. In the writings of E. Renan and G. Lebon, we find many ideas elaborated by the Enlightenment and by Romanticism, but these are integrated into race inequality theory. The Positivistic sociology aspired to discover race as the true substance of social life and civilization. In the sociological explanation we can discern two different attitudes toward society: its own naturalistic attitude and the rational attitude, inherited from the Enlightenment. As the Positivistic sociology was developing, these two attitudes were transformed into irrational and rational interpretations of the reasons for society's development. Depending on the inclination toward one or the other of these interpretations, scholars, while solving the problem of world unity, chose either an idea of unity or plurality of the historical process. The positivistic philosophy of history, concerned with the fate of Western society and civilization, expresses both an optimistic intention to scientific study and the reformation of society (E. Renan) and a pessimistic apprehension that the far-reaching intentions of the scientific social transformation can undermine its natural foundations (G. Lebon).

                Since only Western society possesses exact knowledge about Muslim society, Western social transformation becomes, inevitably, worldwide. According to the Positivists, Western civilization has potentially worldwide importance, but its mission is endangered by internal and external barbarity, and they have to get rid of this barbarity very actively without waiting for its natural historical disappearance.

                Renan makes the claim that Muslim society fully represents external barbarity and that mankind must get rid of it by cultural and political means. Only when Western society can remove such major components of the Islamic civilization as the Islamic religion and the Arabic language, can it fruitfully use the human and natural resources of Eastern society on behalf of humanity.

                Lebon's irrational and pessimistic apprehension of the world's development is, also, concerned with the fate of Muslim society. But because he doubts the possibility of a scientifically proved transformation of society, he does not look at Muslim society as an object of the European influence. He takes it as an example of inevitable action of the law of natural inequality of races and individuals. According to Lebon, this law has already caused the death of the Muslim civilization and threatens Western civilization.

                It is quite obvious that, in general, Positivism follows Hegel's historicism with its opposition between the European and the Eastern principles of social development. Positivism produces additional reasons for the 18th century's Eurocentric idea that Western civilization will be able to become worldwide only when it subjects Muslim society to theoretical and practical negation.

                I do not want to state that the Positivists, as well as some other Western thinkers, are directly responsible for the creation of Islamic fundamentalism. But, they encouraged the creation of this radical reaction of the Muslim society directed against Western influence in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Western positivist narrative of Islamic history, indeed, has produced these ideological and political consequences.

                The previous material relates predominantly to the linear, one-dimensional understanding of civilizational development, the best-elaborated form of which was represented by Hegel Yet, the same can be said about a pluralistic, cyclical interpretation of civilizational development. According to this interpretation, there are many civilizations in the world that have natural limits for their existence. There is only one exception: the Western civilization can avoid cyclical, natural fatalism because it is based on Christianity (O. Spengler and A. Toynbee).

                In Russia a narrative of the Muslim society's history was created in a different social and cultural context. In Russia during the early Middle Ages, there appeared ideas, based on the Christian universalistic outlook, about Islam as a phenomenon which had no ontological foundation and which could exist only in relation with Christianity as a self-sufficient unity. Explanation of the Islamic society was taking place amidst attempts at cultural self-identification of the Russian society, which had begun in the 17th century. In this story of world history, Russia was placed between the two civilizational entities: the West and the Islamic East. The West was understood as a dynamic society, but moving in the wrong direction of progressive development. It recognized that Muslim society had a glorious medieval past, but at the present, it was not part of the process of historical development. The history of Islamic society was predominantly narrated in Russia in the context of world history, interpreted as the process of the formation of the Christian God-mankind. Russian thinkers (P. Chaadaev, A. Khomiakov and V. Soloviev) believed that the latter would overcome Western civilization, which was the most developed and, hence, had outlived itself.

                The Marxist narrative of Muslim society's history, being a product of the European Christian culture, necessarily implied the idea of the linear direction of historical development and the principle of Eurocentrism. Karl Marx, being confident of the inevitable impending destruction of Western civilization, created his understanding of world history as the latest historical stage of the European society, forming, instead, a post-civilizational, communist society. In this context, Muslim society could be understood as a relic of Eastern pre-capitalist society and the semi-colonial rear of world capitalism. This narrative was easily restoried in Soviet Russia in the 1920s through the 1930s. At that time, the Soviet communists came to the conclusion that, when they came to power in Russia, the revolutionary upheaval in the West was delayed and the Muslim East suddenly became a reserve of the world proletarian revolution. In any case, such an interpretation of Muslim society's story was temporal and provisional. The Russian historical experience in the 20th century shows that the Muslim problem was not solved there. Recent Russian reformers are again confronted with this problem. They ignore it and do not take into consideration the experience of their predecessors. The main question concerning Russia's future is whether Russia will maintain current multinational integrity and will not disintegrate into several pieces with Christian and Muslim populations.

                It is remarkable that the European civilizational and the Marxist socio-economical formation's narratives of Muslim society's history have many common features. As it was said previously, both of them are Eurocentric because they are the products of the European culture. Both of them treat Islamic civilization as some waste of the world history (as Hegel understood it) and comprehend the Western mission in the Muslim East -- either imperial-colonial or Marxist revolutionary-proletarian -- as progressive and liberating. They unanimously reject any possibility of recognizing the uniqueness and ontological equality of Western and Islamic civilizations. Both of these narratives promote a missionary attitude towards Muslim society and an inclination for conducting large-scale experiments upon it.

                Every civilization has its religious foundation. As we have shown, this basis is evident in the stories that European science tells us about Muslim society -- implicitly in the form of the religious Providentialism or explicitly in the rational-philosophical form. This circumstance allows us to state that there are certain limits for the universal, objective and scientific character of the Islamic society's narrative, limits created by the European philosophical imagination. In other words, the truth and meaning of this narrative are context-bound. Essentially, the Christian character of European culture and science does not cancel the necessity and possibility of a dialogue between Western and Islamic societies, based on restorying their narratives about each other.

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE WESTERN SCIENTIFIC STORIES ABOUT

                ISLAMIC SOCIETY

                At present there are two extremes in the Western historical narrative that we should avoid. The first implies that, after the end of the Cold War, the West will see its values expand all over the world. Francis Fukuyama told this story in The End of the History. The second supposes that the end of the Cold War will inevitably cause a "clash of civilizations,” Samuel Huntington's vision. Both of these stories are of Modernist origin, the first is optimistic about the final worldwide victory of Western civilization, and the second is pessimistic about the gradual decline of the West. Neither of these points of view can be accepted. We must give ourselves a chance to restory modern world history and to avoid any fatalistic comprehension of it. We will be able to do it with the help of postmodern philosophy. According to Michael White and David Epston, postmodernism does not devastate all previous languages. Instead, it allows us to understand that none of them are fixed or final. Or, as Efran Lukens says, none of today's constructions, which are only our means of portraying reality, are perfect; and none of them are final. Whatever exists can be reconstructed.

                There are several possible conditions for restorying a positive Western comprehension of Muslim society's history using the narrative methodology of the postmodern philosophy. It is possible to externalize the dominant, negative narratives and to look for alternative positive ones. We can retrieve such stories and follow the example of some Western scholars who have already started this process (M. Hodgson, E. Said, A. Toynbee, B. Turner and A. Hourani). In the contemporary world, the importance of this task cannot be overestimated because, if it is not fulfilled, we will have to acknowledge the main ideas of S. Huntington's book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

                Therefore, it is necessary to do the following:

(a)     overcome Eurocentrism and the linear, one-dimensional understanding of civilizational development, i.e., recognize that there are several centers in the world, each with its own narrative about its role in the history of mankind: such features of the modern Western society as democracy, free-market capitalism and individualism are manifestations of its unique civilizational identity and are based on Western historical experience; hence, they are not universal and appropriate for all peoples. The great narrative of Western modernity that dominated other civilizations' stories for the last three centuries no longer appears adequate. It is necessary to rebuild humanity, to make it more just and free, based on worldwide civic values, as well as on the civic values of each civilization, thereby preserving the identity of both.

(b)     recognize the ontological uniqueness of Islamic civilization as one of several different civilizations existing in the world and respect the real features of its social and cultural history, which are favorable to the creation of civic society in the Muslim countries;

(c)     recognize the equal right of Islam to have its place in human society along with Christianity (according to Kant's ideas about the history of religions);

(d)     avoid any kind of missionary or civilizing attitude towards the Muslim society, i.e., exclude attempts to impose the Western narrative upon the Islamic one;

(e)     avoid a Eurocentric and instrumental attitude towards Islam in internal and foreign Russian policy: one of the preliminary steps for the solution of this problem is to recognize the diverse character of contemporary mankind, which includes, apart from the Western, the Islamic as well as the Russian civilizations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Huntington, Samuel. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Shuster, 1996.

Shayegan, Daryush. Cultural Schizophrenia: Islamic Societies Confronting the West. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997.

Hodgson, Marchall. The Venture of Islam. 3 vols. vol. 3: The Gunpowder Empires and Modern Times. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1974.

Said, Edward W. “Islam, the Philological Vocation and the French Culture: Renan and Massignon,” in Islamic Studies: Tradition and Its Problems, edited by M. H. Kerr. Malibu, CA: Undena Publications, 1980, pp. 53-72.

Gerger Kenneth. “Social Construction, Families and Therapy,” The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families, 1:177-187, 1993.

Bridges, Thomas. Essay 1: The Collapse of Enlightenment, Civic Culture. Http://www.civsoc.com/cltphill.html. 1997.

White, Michael, and Epston, David. Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends. New York and London: W. W. Norton and Co.

Rosenau, P. Marie. Postmodernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and Intrusions. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992.

Meeting report: “The Internet Stimulates Openness and Democracy in Closed Societies.” Http://wwics.si.edu/whatsnew/news/interpol.html.