CHAPTER VIII
FRAMEWORK FOR INTERCULTURAL UNDERSTANDING:
PLAMEN
MAKARIEV
This paper will not attempt to justify the need for intercultural
understanding: an extensive subject which presumes a polemic on "two
fronts" -- against the liberalist thesis that public social life should be
culturally neutral, but also against the radical communitarian position of
antagonism to alien cultural presence. Here we will simply postulate the value
of communication between cultural communities and proceed to examine possible
frameworks for intercultural understanding.
Mutual understanding becomes a problem when there is a clash of cultures
that differ significantly. The level and substance of "cultural
strangeness" vary greatly. There may be tensions in relations between
cultural communities even if there is a low level of cultural difference -- when
the latter serves only as an occasion for the establishment of relations of the
"in-group versus out-group" type. In such cases, there are usually,
also, other factors antagonizing the communities concerned. For example, one can
consider the problems of the Hungarian minorities in Romania and Yugoslavia or
of the Catalan and Basque ethnic groups in Spain.
There is a cultural conflict proper when ethnic confrontation is combined
with religious or "civilizational" differences (Huntington, 96). Cases
of the former type can be found both in modern societies and in societies where
traditional custom prevails. The relations between Irish Catholics and Scottish
Protestants in Northern Ireland are very typical in this respect, as are those
between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, or between Muslims and Hindus in
India.
Interactions between communities, which are on different sides of the
dividing line between modern and traditional types of culture, are even more
problematic. This applies, for instance, to relations between the Western and
the Islamic worlds. The cultural contrast between modern and traditional is a
prime concern of disciplines such as intercultural communication, which deal
mainly with the interaction between business partners from the U.S. or Europe on
the one hand, and from Asia or Latin America on the other.
As regards the substance of the cultural difference examined in this
paper, it may be delineated best against the background of the concept of
culture from which we are proceeding. We will regard culture as a coherent set
of standards of behavior and codes of "deciphering" meanings (see
Carbaugh 90:7). Hence in discussing interactions between cultures, we are not
concerned with relations between organized formations such as states or
political parties, but rather, with situations of harmony or confrontation
between world views, attitudes and stereotypes. The "substance" of
cultural conflict comprises the reactions of nonacceptance of what someone
around you is doing that runs counter to your notions of proper or improper, and
that he -- "He" will be used in this paper as a gender-neutral term --
is doing it not by chance or misunderstanding, but with all the self-confidence
of a person following some unquestionable rules of conduct. We usually share
such reactions with "our like" -- with like-minded people who have
been formed as individuals in the spirit of traditions identical to ours and who
have shared our views. Insofar as one of the main functions of culture is to
ensure the predictability of actions and solidarity within the community (see
Bohannan 95:50), the behavioral discord that emerges in cohabitation with
cultural "otherness" could cause us considerable psychological
discomfort.
Of course, a culture may tolerate a "foreign body" within its
"fabric" painlessly if it has sufficiently powerful mechanisms of
self-reproduction. In that case the "otherness" seems innocuous in any
form whatsoever -- as long as it abides by some universal rules of human
cohabitation. It doesn't matter if someone's dress or diet is peculiar or if the
media, entertainment industry, educational institutions and public
administration are constantly reasserting in countless ways one and the same
invariable ideas of good and evil, of beautiful and ugly, of human dignity, of
honor, of justice, etc. This creates the illusion of unproblematic
multiculturality, which is typical of the self-awareness of modern societies and
fosters the views of the relative insignificance of cultural differences.
The harmonization of interactions between cohabitant cultural communities
presupposes dialogical relationships between them. If we use Habermas's term,
their behavior towards each other ought to be of the communicative-action type,
i.e., to be oriented towards mutual understanding (cf. Habermas, 90). Mutual
recognition of validity claims is an important condition for the establishment
of such a relationship. Particularly important in this regard are what Habermas
defines as normative claims. Without respecting each other's normative claims,
the parties cannot live together in harmony. Yet while those mutual claims can
be harmonized through discourse in a culturally homogeneous environment -- the
methodology of this activity is expounded in detail by the so-called
"discourse ethics" -- interaction between different cultural
communities seems quite problematic in this respect.
How can such a discourse proceed if the participants do not share a
common life-world and if there are contradictions between their background moral
values? To evaluate a validity claim, both the "hearer" and the
"speaker" must have at least minimum intercultural competence with
regard to one another. Otherwise the "speaker" will not know what to
refer to in his argumentation, in order to make it acceptable to the
"hearer.” And how could it be decided, in cases of contradiction between
normative validity claims, who ought to give way, i.e., to make a compromise
with his interests in the name of “understanding" (Verständigung)?
Each party might sincerely claim that its interests are more substantially bound
to the controversial normative matter. How can each of them judge whether the
“other's” claim is right, provided that a judgment by analogy with one's own
attitude to this matter of practical discourse cannot be reliable due to the
cultural difference?
The problem of intercultural understanding may be studied from various
aspects, applying the methods of cultural anthropology, social psychology,
pedagogy, linguistics, literary theory, history, theology, philosophy, etc. A
new, synthetic discipline has also been gaining ground in recent years:
intercultural communication. Here we will confine ourselves to a philosophical
case study: a study on the attempts of Islamic scholars to present the status of
women in typical Muslim societies as morally justified in the eyes of the
nonMuslim and, in particular, of the modern, Western world.
We believe that, notwithstanding the diversity in the treatment of this
issue from an Islamic perspective (it is even difficult to talk of a single
perspective that is exclusively representative of the entire Islamic world),
several common features of the argumentation may be identified. A study of those
features could help clarify the mechanisms of intercultural understanding as an
element of intercultural communication. Here we will consistently evaluate the
positions at a meta-level only, i.e., we are concerned not with the truthfulness
or acceptability of a given thesis, but only with the technique of its
justification. Our critique will not focus on the content of the statements
under consideration, however provocative some of them might sound to the average
European or North American reader. Still, we hope that an elaboration of the
mechanisms of intercultural understanding – at which we are aiming– would be
instrumental against manipulative argumentation of positions, whose content is
unacceptable to the general public.
This particular choice of case study (the attempts to justify -- from an
Islamic position -- as understandable and morally acceptable to the surrounding
world a controversial feature of Islamic culture) is also indicative of the
methodology of our paper, albeit in another respect. We will not be dealing with
the unilateral examination of an alien culture. No matter how well someone comes
to know the respective culture's internal mechanisms of functioning, he would,
at best, attain predictability of the respective community's behavior, which are
levers for its manipulation. Yet this certainly does not mean understanding the
culture as such.
Monological attempts to "understand" an alien culture could be
an expression of an imperialistic, colonialist attitude. Edward Said offers a
classical analysis of this position in "Orientalism" (cf. Said 95:
3-5), showing how in this particular case "understanding" may be
manipulative to the point where reconstruction is substituted for knowledge of
the subject. Monological "understanding" could also take the form of
bona fide misconception -- as the manifestations of the Subject-centered reason
(Habermas 87:294) typical of modernity. Either way, however, the alien culture
is treated as an object that is unilaterally controllable by the subject, even
if this is done with the best of intentions. The "other" is not given
the opportunity to speak of himself alone, to represent his own interests. He is
denied maturity and autonomy that are equal to those of the subject. Apart from
being unfair, such an approach to an alien culture is ineffective in
establishing constructive, intercultural relations. Without truly equal
partnership, harmony in cohabitation is impossible.
In their overwhelming majority, the ideas about intercultural
understanding follow the same pattern: presentation of the external, empirical
differences as an effect of identical fundamental causes. Understanding the
"other" means to recognize "behind" his actions, (which
might be incongruent with your ideas of proper and improper), the same cultural
motives, which you follow yourself, but which are manifested in a different
form.
From a sociopsychological perspective, R. Brislin examines intercultural
understanding on a somewhat different plane. According to Brislin, the main
purpose of this act is to achieve "isomorphism of the attributions"
which the parties make concerning the same action of one of them. "This
term refers to the ability to make the same attributions as the other person in
the interaction" (Brislin 93:41). By "attribution" Brislin means
the explanation attributed to a given action by the doer, insofar as he is aware
of why he is acting in this particular way, as well as by an outside observer
(who might also be a recipient of the action in question). There is
understanding only when those explanations are identical. Since by rule a
particular action is part of a continuous process of interaction, we usually
have two parallel flows of attributions, which influence the real interaction
and which are, even in the easiest intercultural relationship, only partly
isomorphic. Indicatively, this concept of intercultural understanding presents
the latter in its entire complexity.
It is very tempting to apply the pattern of "fundamental
similarities -- different empirical manifestations" to the value
hierarchies that are at the core of moral orientation within different cultures.
Arguably, the ultimate values are identical, or at least similar, across the
world, but are merely interpreted and applied in a different way depending on
the geographical and historical circumstances. In his book on religious
tolerance, Jay Newman, for example, coins the term "trans-cultural
values," citing love, justice, peace, economic prosperity, wisdom,
progress, self-realization, duty, honor (see Newman 82:66-67). Those values may
be regarded as an ideal of what ought to be; cultural differences, as an
expression of different views on the ways of realizing the ideal.
This position may fit into the conceptual background of both cultural
evolutionism and cultural relativism. The author quoted above tends to apply the
former, insofar as he assumes that any society or religious group may be rated
higher or lower by a "scale of civilization," depending on "how
much or how successfully its ideal values have been realized" (Newman
82:68). As the quote shows, Newman assumes that the degrees of realization of
one and the same ideal in different cases can be commensurable. Although two or
more cultural communities may use alternative means towards one and the same
end, it is possible to evaluate their progress at a given moment.
This relation between end and means, however, may also be interpreted in
the spirit of cultural relativism. If one acknowledges the possibility that the
alternative means towards an end might be radically incommensurable, the
attempts to divide cultures into those that are relatively advanced and
relatively backward along the road to civilization would prove unjustified and
even harmful, insofar as they fuel ambitions for the domination of some
societies over others. If, for instance, we take human dignity as a common ideal
in a modern and in a traditional value system, we will see that the actual
behavior that abides by this ideal is entirely different in the two cases.
Respect for the dignity of the modern person is manifested foremost in the
guarantee of his individual autonomy -- inviolability of his private life,
freedom of choice and responsibility in the light of universal norms of
behavior. These norms are in some cases "dressed" in rather
restrictive institutional frameworks. A person's dignity in a traditional
environment is, by contrast, measured mainly in the person's belonging to his
community. Precisely the independence of an individual from particularistic
interests, which is a condition for the realization of his dignity in modernity,
is counter-indicative for human dignity in traditional society. The closer
someone's status is to the ideal of dignity in the one dimension, the further it
is from the same ideal in the other dimension. In that case, how can one compare
the progress made towards the end by either of the two means?
Yet irrespective of whether the scheme of the relation between cultural
differences and similarities is applied in an evolutionist or relativist
context, it works equally well. In both cases it is possible to achieve
validation of normative claims -- as long as the claims to tolerate cultural
practices that contradict our beliefs are justified by means of values which
coincide with some of our own moral regulatives.
If our critique -- that, say, arranged marriages are incompatible with
the human dignity of the young people involved -- is countered by a simple
reference to the respective ethnic community's traditions, this will not
contribute to intercultural understanding. What moral binding power could alien
cultural traditions have for us that would make us accept a situation that runs
counter to our criteria of socially acceptable behavior? Yet if, instead, we are
offered arguments, which show a culture-based difference in the very
understanding of human dignity and justification of the thesis that in
"that" cultural context this virtue is asserted precisely by the
practice of arranged marriages, then it will be a step towards mutual
understanding.
Naturally, we are talking about cogent argumentation, not about
declarative short-circuiting of the facts with the argued thesis. We should have
the freedom to challenge each argument -- in the case discussed above, we might
very well fail to agree with the proffered justification of arranged marriages
and remain firmly in opposition. Nevertheless, this would have been an attempt
at intercultural communication.
How is the said scheme of validating normative claims applied by authors
who are trying to "open up" Muslim culture, making it more
understandable to the outside world? In the huge variety of positions and
argumentative techniques, one can identify a selective approach to the
universalistic justification of the specific features of the Muslim way of life:
not everything in Islam can be defended or is worth defending. The traditional
way of legitimating scripture-based reforms of sociocultural practices is by
interpreting and reinterpreting scripture itself. If an author thinks that a
particular practice ought to be changed, he tries to convince his readers that
it is not directly prescribed by the word of God, but ensues from the latter's
misinterpretation or distortion by the interpreters. This reformist approach is
manifested in one way or another in the development of any religion. Here,
however, we will cite two, not-so-trivial argumentations as a case of justifying
changes in the Muslim way of life.
Zia Goekalp's approach to reforms in Islam is quite simple. He
distinguishes two sources of the shari'ah: "one is scripture (nass)
and the other -- local practice, mores, custom or convention ('urf)" (Khuri 98:307). Only the divine element of shari'ah is
sacred and not subject to change. The sociocultural one is transitory and ought
to be adjusted to the times and changing conditions.
The algorithm offered by another Islamic scholar, Fazlur Rahman, is more
complicated. According to Rahman, the sacred text of the Qur'an has been offered
to mortals in a concrete form, which corresponds to the specific historical
conditions in Arab society in the age of the Qur'anic revelations. Were it not
adapted to the needs and capacities of the people to whom it is addressed, the
scripture would not have attained its divine purpose. Yet this means that one
should distinguish between the principles enshrined in the Qur'an, which are
sacred and eternal, and their concrete formulation, which is transitory and
cannot be valid for other historical ages and peoples unless it is adapted
accordingly.
The interpretation of the Qur'an must be updated by analogy. "The
relationship between the eternal principles and Arabian life early in the
seventh century (C.E.) must be precisely the same as that between the former and
the various strands of Muslim life today" (Khuri 98:310). This means that
the interpreter must have excellent knowledge of the situation during the
original propagation of Islam and must be capable of, so to speak, translating
backwards -- from the empirically available text of the scripture back to its
principles -- in order to subsequently reproduce the relationship between those
two levels with regard to the contemporary sociocultural situation.
After an author has argued his thesis about what in the Muslim way of
life warrants receiving moral justification from the outside world, he faces the
harder task: to present the cultural specificities in question as a realization
of universal -- to quote Jay Newman, "trans-cultural" -- values.
Contemporary studies usually focus on one or several historical factors which
explain why the Muslim notion of a particular universal value differs from, say,
the Western one. The practices which, to the outside observer, are in
contradiction with a given value, are actually in harmony with the latter but --
due to certain contingent historical circumstances -- take a different form.
The traditional character of Muslim societies is cited as the primary
factor in this respect. Indeed, from the perspective of Modernity it is easiest
to understand cultural specificities that ensue from the difference between
traditional and modern society because one can proceed from the latter's own
history. When European or North American readers study the Islamic mores, they
cannot refrain from analogies with what they know about the not-too-distant past
of their own civilization. If we abstain from the evolutionistic inclination to
evaluate cultural specificities by level of development, to "rate"
cultures as superior and inferior -- in which case any similarity between
someone's present and someone else's past suggests that the former is
"lagging behind" the latter -- then the possibility of reasoning by
analogy with one’s own history helps someone understand the other's
specificity.
The category of "community" is particularly important in this
respect. As is known, one of the main differences between traditional and modern
societies is that relationships, of what F. Toennies defined as gemeinschaft,
prevail in the former, and of gesellschaft, in the latter (see Toennies 57).
Then, this is what could be so unusual and incomprehensible to us in the Muslim
way of life if the latter gives priority to a type of relationship which, albeit
by now less significant, is still present in our social reality. Admittedly, the
validity of universal values differs in content when seen from the
"angle" of exclusivistic communal solidarity, but what could be wrong
about those relationships from our point of view?
The traditional nature of Muslim societies contributes to their cultural
specificity also with regard to the social role of religion. Islam is notorious
for its claims to regulate every sphere of social life in depth, in minute
detail -- to maintain "a congruence of the fanum/sacred
and profanum/profane sphere"
(Trautner 99:I). Prima facie, this is a phenomenon all too familiar from the
general history of religion, some sort of naive mysticism -- an inability to
distinguish between the natural and the supernatural -- which attests to the
primitive nature of communal mentality. This seems to be one of the "pains
of growth" of any civilization from which society, in the course of its
development and secularization, eventually breaks free.
Yet perhaps, the vehement resistance which secularization encounters in
the Muslim world and which creates the impression that the Muslim world is, in a
way, ultra-conservative, ought to be explained with, inter alia, a deeper
cultural difference vis-a-vis the West. Let us remember that the general
opposition between the material and the spiritual world is not new but dates
back to Plato. Adopted by Christianity and asserted especially by St.
Augustine's De Civitate Dei, it steers
Western civilization towards development in the spirit of a dualistic worldview.
Islam is characterized by a holistic view of being, which is too conceptualized
by the theoreticians of this religion to be attributed to some sort of
ignorance. Contemporary scholars, for instance, offer entirely articulate
arguments in favor of the thesis that "it is not human reason that judges
the status of the law [i.e., of Muslim law, the shari'ah], but the law that
directs the use of reason" (Khuri 98:302). Here Richard Khuri is quoting
Seyyed Hossein Nassr and his essay, "The Shari'ah and Changing Historical
Conditions.” After all, today it is difficult to find firm believers in the
absoluteness of reason anyway. In postmodern discourse it is preferred to talk
about a plurality of rationalities. In this context the claims on a society, in
which Muslim law has the status of an immediate embodiment of the Divine Will to
conform its legislation to the standards of reason, look like an attempt to
impose on it an alien rationality.
Another factor that places the Muslim way of life in a rather different
relation to universal values is that Muslim countries are at a geopolitical
disadvantage in regard to the West. Considering that the majority of these
countries have been subject to colonial rule and that today all are the target
of attempts at domination in one form or another, it is hardly surprising that a
defensive position towards any modernization initiative is commonplace in Muslim
societies. Such initiatives are often seen as a threat to the cultural identity
of those peoples. This is due, inter alia, to the fact that, so far, most
political regimes, which have committed themselves to modernizing reforms, have
followed a course of despotism and corruption, thus reasserting their subjects'
conviction that modernization brings moral corruption.
All this has asserted a selective attitude to universal moral
regulatives, with a preference for those that close and isolate the in-group
from the rest of the world. A corporativistic morality, which applies the
ethical standards of behavior differently to "us" and "them,”
is maintained. Consequently, Islam appears to be amoral or, at best, with a
morality of its own, which is radically different from the universally
acceptable morality, as a result of which people from the Muslim world and those
from the non-Muslim world are apparently not bound by any mutual moral
commitments whatsoever.
So far, we have discussed in principle a scheme of moral justification of
the specificities of the Muslim way of life from the perspective of universal
values. Let us now demonstrate how it is applied in practice and how facts are
harmonized with values, by correcting apparent incongruities through reference
to the above-mentioned, or other, factors of their type. As noted at the
beginning, this paper will focus on the issue of the status of women in Muslim
societies: a problem that has sparked acute value-related conflicts between the
West and the Muslim world.
The traditional rhetoric that justifies the underprivileged status of
Muslim women in the public sphere lacks conviction for the outside observer. The
opportunity of women to perform an important mission in the family, assigned to
them by God, to keep the home as a "center of peace, civility, tranquility,
and love, a safe haven and protection from the brutality of the outside
world" (Haddad 98:5), is cited as moral "compensation" for their
isolation from public life. Therefore, women have an opportunity for full
self-realization as individuals because at home they can best realize their
inborn feminine virtues, such as gentleness, compassion, intelligence,
understanding. These virtues are invaluable in rearing children, but at the same
time make women vulnerable in the outside world, which is a scene of conflicts
and tensions, requiring a masculine strength of character.
From the outside point of view, such considerations are cold comfort for
the unequal status of women in public life. It turns out that women are
incapable of coping with the big issues in life, and insofar as they might be
useful in some way, that is, to provide "logistical support" to men,
to bring up their children and to deal with the everyday issues of family life.
On the scale of universal values, this type of human existence is hopelessly
inferior. That is the case, however, only if we ignore the special significance
of the home and the family in the Islamic cultural context. Contemporary
authors, who expound the Islamic position on the issue, conceptualize it with
the help of a category that is universally comprehensible, insofar as it has
been investigated in detail in international social sciences -- on a
sociological and sociopsychological, as well as philosophical, plane. This is
the category of "community."
As noted above, the role of the community in the Muslim way of life
differs from that in the modern world. Richard Khuri characterizes this role by
means of the category of "positive freedom." The latter implies a
relationship between the group and its members, which binds, restricts, but also
gives the individual a distinct identity -- an identity without which the
individual cannot be positively free. The Muslim community (which is called by
Khuri "enabling community") has treated its members "as integral
persons so that it is taken for granted that the Muslim must be able to express
his whole being no matter how encompassing this may be, within the framework
laid out by the community." The "must" here refers not to the
individual but to the community, which should provide all necessary conditions
to its member, so that he can fully express his being within its framework.
(Khuri 98:129).
While in contemporary Western society the boundaries between private and
public life are, in general, also boundaries between spheres of community and
gesellschaft-type relationships, in the Muslim world the community has a
tangible presence in the public sphere, too. This civilizational specificity is
used astutely by Islamic authors, who do not omit to stress that the Islamic
family structure "is predicated by divine design as the paradigmatic social
unit" (Haddad 98:19). In that case, the woman's important role in the
family also proves to be socially significant, in general. Taking care of the
"health" and viability of the family, building the character and value
system of the young generation, the woman guarantees the cultural reproduction
of society. In this context, the business activities of the man seem
insignificant in their limitation and one-sidedness compared to the existential
depth of the woman's mission. The fulfillment of this kind of task demands the
woman's powerful individual presence in the community which, in its turn, is
sufficient to justify the need of a high social status of women, as well as the
prestige and self-confidence of being a full-fledged member of society.
When discussing the justification of the important social role of women
from an Islamic perspective, one should keep in mind that the arguments rule out
gender rivalry, in general. The leading position of men in both public life and
the family is not called into question even in the boldest variants of
emancipatory discourse (see Haddad 98:20). The level at which women can seek
self-realization is not that of competition among individuals. The female and
male roles in community life are assumed to be mutually complementary with,
however, the "power-related" actions of dramatic decision-making,
taking responsibility for the fate of the community in the clash with external
circumstances, wholly confined to the sphere of male competence.
How do all those considerations fit into the debate on the cultural
specificities of the Muslim way of life which, from the Western perspective, are
in contradiction with universal values? For lack of space, we will not provide a
representative picture of the clash of arguments in this sphere but will confine
ourselves to a concrete problem, that of the honor of women. This problem is a
textbook case of a value conflict between civilizations. To the Westerner it is
incomprehensible why a religion should impose a number of limitations on women's
behavior, which are not self-evidently justified and, by rule, do not apply to
men. This seems to be a typical case of injustice, of discrimination against
women.
In traditional Islamic discourse, which does not take into account the
opening up of Islamic culture to the world, the limitations in question are
associated with familiar interpretations of scripture that present women as
inferior to men, as particularly sinful, sensuous creatures, as temptresses by
nature, incapable of controlling their lusts sufficiently. Those interpretations
are called into question by many contemporary scholars (cf. Esposito and Haddad
98; Schoening-Kalender 97; Luckau 91; Brink and Mencher 97). Insofar as there
are attempts to harmonize the status of women as typical of Islam with moral
regulatives respected elsewhere, those attempts stress the specific role of the
community in the Muslim world and, albeit to a lesser extent, of the cohesion of
religion and morality, as well as the defensive position towards the global
imposition of Western culture.
It is thus shown, for instance, that it is entirely wrong to approach the
question of the honor of Muslim women by analogy with the situation in
individualistic European or North American societies. In the latter, women are
as free as men to choose how they will behave. A woman's decision in this
respect binds none other than herself. For the Muslim extended family, however,
the behavior of a woman who belongs to them is representative of their mores. An
immoral, defamatory action would disgrace each of the other members of the
community. This would be catastrophic for the community's prestige and would
affect its status in society and, eo ipso, the future of all its members.
Considering that so much is at stake, shouldn't we approach with understanding
the Muslim world's particular sensitivity to women's abidance by the moral
norms? If a woman's dishonor would have such grave consequences and affect so
many other people along with the woman herself, some authors also support the
thesis that the responsibility of the woman in this respect covers the men
outside her community, too. Because this is a social reality which abounds in
complicated inter- and intra-community ties and is not atomized to relationships
between autonomous individuals only, any illegitimate personal commitment, even
the most innocuous flirting, could have unpredictable destructive consequences
(see Abdul-Rauf 79:36). Isn't it justified for one and all to try to minimize
the risk of women's disgrace? In this context, aren't the pedantic restrictions
on women's behavior more acceptable from an outsider's point of view --
restrictions that aim to rule out even the slightest element of sexual
provocation on the part of women and that seem like a gross intervention in
their private life? Yet if we assume that those restrictions are necessary, we
must also acknowledge the right of anybody to watch over their application.
This brings us to a somewhat different understanding of certain cases of
sexual aggression in Muslim countries, which look like gross disrespect for
women's dignity -- like actions whose express purpose is to humiliate women.
This applies to sexual harassment in cases when, for instance, a woman is not
dressed appropriately for the particular situation or when she appears in public
without being escorted by a male relative if, by convention, she should have
been. In such situations abuse may be seen as a sanction against socially
undesirable behavior. This, of course, cannot justify aggression from the
perspective of modernity, but could nevertheless contribute to intercultural
understanding.
Such an attitude toward women takes an extreme form when sexual abuse is
used as a weapon in a conflict between communities. One of the most brutal ways
of humiliating a "hostile" community is to rape the women who belong
to it. This is regarded as an extreme form of hostility virtually everywhere,
but it has special meaning and significance in an Islamic cultural context.
There is sufficient evidence of clashes of this type between Muslim and
non-Muslim communities too, e.g., in the conflicts in former Yugoslavia. At
that, the Muslim population was usually the object, rather than the agent, of
such aggression, which attests to a sort of "intercultural competence"
of the other party.
Along with more intensive community life, the cultural specificities of
the Muslim world are explained -- in an effort to justify them in terms of
universal values -- by an emphasis on the holistic nature of Islamic morality.
Unlike the European-type morality, where analytical distinctions are made and an
internal differentiation is developed, in Islamic morality the ethical
regulatives are in total unity with the religious ones and constitute, along
with the latter, a monolithic set of rules of conduct. Hence, there is the
conservative and uncompromising nature of Islamic morality. "When a section
of the moral edifice is allowed to be broken the whole structure weakens and
gives in easily to pressure. And thus tolerance of an evil leads to other
evils" (Abdul-Rauf 79:35). The author argues his thesis by referring to a
scale of moral compromises typical of the Western world, which starts with
apparently insignificant, harmless ones, such as female public exposure and
premarital love, and rises steadily, without crossing any visible boundary
between acceptable and unacceptable, to such a moral absurdity as, according to
Abdul-Rauf, uni-sex marriages (ibid.).
So far we have described a technique applied by some authors in their
quest for moral justification of the specific features of the Muslim way of life
to the "outside world." We have seen how those specific features are
presented as realization of universal values, which, however, is determined by
specific historical circumstances and, therefore, differs at the empirical level
from the realization of the self-same values in other cultures with a different
history. We have shown how those authors associate restrictions on women's
behavior that appear absurd to the outside observer, with universal values such
as honor, dignity, duty, solidarity, purpose of life, etc. Yet how convincing
are such associations? Aren't they a superficial, propagandist construct? How
could the success of such attempts to justify normative (in Habermas's terms)
claims be evaluated in general?
The examples discussed above show that formal logic cannot be counted on
in such cases; it is virtually impossible to strictly deduce cultural standards
of behavior from universal values. Besides, we certainly cannot trust some sort
of intuitive, convincing power of argumentation. The situation of intercultural
communication, itself, greatly impedes an intuitive understanding of the other's
position and makes it difficult to establish what in this position is convincing
and what is not.
We mentioned at the beginning that Jay Newman presents cultural
differences as an expression of different strategies of realization of the same
ideals: of the so-called "trans-cultural values." This approach can
arguably be applied to evaluate arguments of the type under consideration. One
can compare the end (some universal value) and the means (alternative sets of
cultural standards), and judge which means are adequate to the end and to what
extent. Newman cites cases of obvious incongruity between historical
undertakings and the values in the name of which they have been allegedly
launched. How could the attack on Poland in 1939 be adequate to Nazi
declarations that the Third Reich was aspiring towards peace; or how could
torture and burning at the stake be adequate to the Spanish Inquisition's claims
that it was guided by love for thy fellow (see Newman 82:70)?
Anyone with some knowledge about the history of the events cited by
Newman ought to realize that it is possible to provide certain arguments that
the means were indeed adequate to the end in both cases. It is a historical fact
that Nazi Germany accused Poland itself of aggression and presented the attack
as justified resistance. It is also known that by causing physical suffering to
the heretics, the Inquisition arguably helped them to atone for their sins and
thus to save their souls. One could always claim that under particular
circumstances a given action or standard of behavior is in harmony with the
universal regulative. In Newman's examples, the means are so plainly inadequate
to the ends only because of the historical distance from the events in question.
If we take a closer look at the contemporary world, we will realize that it is
far from easy to identify inadequacies similar to those cited above. Who could
say for sure today, whether the Western military campaigns against Iraq or
Yugoslavia were to the benefit of world peace, as claimed by the governments
that waged them, or actually pursued entirely different goals?
Newman hopes that a mere "critical examination" (ibid.) is
enough to distinguish adequate from inadequate means of realizing an ideal. This
presumption seems rather optimistic. We believe that more powerful tools, e.g.,
publicity, ought to be used for the purpose. If anything can expose the demagogy
of a claim that a particular cultural practice is in harmony with universal
values, this is the free public clash of arguments "for" and
"against." Of course, by publicity here we mean the discursive
formation of the opinion and will of citizens (Habermas, 90), not the
propaganda, brainwashing machine used in totalitarian societies. Given certain
conditions, which are formulated in their idealized form by Habermas in the book
quoted above -- rationality and "openness" of the process of
communication, equality of participants, presence of a potential for
self-transformation in communication -- publicity (Öffentlichkeit)
could be relied on to winnow just from unjust normative claims.
Yet, this general possibility should not be taken for granted.
Contemporary studies of publicity tend to overrate the homogeneity of the public
sphere. The legitimating potential of public opinion drastically declines when
the latter proves deeply divided in some respect. Even if, having taken our cue
from Habermas and his idealizations, we ignore the possibilities for
"faking" publicity, which ensue from the unequal distribution of the
resources for participation in the public sphere, we should take into account
the influence of cultural differences on the latter. Exclusion mechanisms are
triggered almost automatically in regard to the representation of cultural
"otherness" in the public sphere. This is quite clear in the Western
discourse concerning Islamic culture, too. The latter has little if any
possibility to represent itself in the Western public sphere. And this is not
due only to lack of good will and material resources. There is, also, a deep
mistrust and even suspicion of the normative claims of "the other
side," an odd ring to its moral pathos, an apparent irrationality in the
distribution of value priorities in the other culture.
How could one find a way out and use the otherwise huge, legitimating
potential of publicity to clarify the relation of the specific Islamic cultural
practices and the universally accepted moral values? We think that a direct
campaign against the heterogeneity of the public sphere has little chance of
success. It would be more feasible to focus on intensifying and advancing
in-group dialogical discourse. If the problem of "opening up" Islamic
culture towards modern culture becomes a standing and significant issue of free
discussion in the Muslim world, and this process is accompanied by an analogical
development "on the other side," it will be possible to evaluate not
the only validity of the others' normative claims directly, with all their
"intransparency," but also the formal, procedural quality of the
public discourse that has produced them.
To establish whether public opinion-making in another culture is fair --
i.e., whether each person is free to uphold his position in a way that enjoys
full respect, whether the end result of a debate on a given issue is the product
of a reasonable exchange of arguments -- you do not necessarily have to go into
the specificities of the others' cultural life. In that case, if "the other
side's" in-group discourse meets the general formal criteria, you would be
able to conclude that the normative claims formulated by this discourse really
express the relation between the others' cultural practices and universal
values, and are not yet another propaganda bluff. This will be a crucial step
towards bringing empirical differences under the common denominator of
fundamental similarities, which is the scheme of intercultural understanding
promoted in this paper.
Of course, healthy skepticism demands consideration of the following
questions: Isn't this approach to intercultural understanding yet another
expression of cultural imperialism? Isn't this an attempt to impose a Western
discursive procedure on Islamic culture? Will the Islamic position on any issue
of interaction with other cultures be authentic if it is formulated by applying
alien rules? Wouldn't it be legitimate to refuse to apply free and rational
discourse to the elaboration of such a position simply because this procedure is
against Islamic mores?
The fact that there are numerous publications on the problems of
intercultural relations, which seriously and conscientiously promote the
cultural "opening up" of the Islamic world "from within,"
suggests that in this particular case both sides have the will for meaningful
and open dialogue. Admittedly, however, dialogue cannot start "from
scratch" in principle. It is a higher form of interaction between cultures,
which presumes the fulfillment of certain terms, the most important one of them
being, it seems, that both parties should have attained at least a minimum level
of cultural self-reflection.
Abdul-Rauf,
Muhammad, The Islamic View of Women and
the Family, New York, Robert Speller and Sons, 1979.
Bohannan,
Paul, How Culture Works, New York, The
Free Press, 1995.
Brink,
Judy and Mencher, Joan, Mixed Blessings:
Gender and Religious Fundamentalism Cross Culturally, London/New York,
Routledge, 1997.
Brislin,
Richard, Understanding Culture's Influence
on Behavior, Fort Worth, Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1993.
Carbaugh,
Donal, Cultural Communication and
Intercultural Contact, Hillsdale, N.J. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1990.
Habermas,
Juergen, Moral Consciousness and
Communicative Action, Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press, 1990.
Habermas,
Juergen, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit,
Frankfurt/Main, Suhrkamp, 1990.
Habermas,
Juergen, The Philosophical Discourse of
Modernity, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1987.
Haddad,
Ivonne Yazbeck, “Islam and Gender. Dilemmas in the Changing Arab World,” In:
Esposito, John and Haddad, Ivonne (eds.) Islam,
Gender and Social Change, Oxford. Oxford University Press, 1998.
Huntington,
Samuel, The Clash of Civilizations and the
Remaking of World Order, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1996.
Khuri,
Richard, Freedom, Modernity and Islam,
Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 1998.
Luckau,
Petra, Die Stellung der Frau in Islam,
Bochum, Ruhr Universitaet, 1991.
Newman,
Jay, Foundations of Religious Tolerance,
Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1982.
Said,
Edward, Orientalism, London, Penguin
Books, 1995.
Schoening-Kalender,
Claudia, Feminismus, Islam, Nation,
Frankfurt/Main, Campus Verlag, 1997.
Trautner,
Bernhard, The Clash Within Civilizations:
Islam and the Accommodation of Plurality, Bremen, Institute for
Intercultural and International Studies, 1999.