By Laila Brence

Ever since I became a Muslim, I searched for the answer to the conflict between the West and Islam. I felt that there is more to it than just a superficial dislike because of ignorance and distorted media images.

Being of western origin and accepting Islam as my way of life seemed like a radical step to many of my friends. When I began wearing Hijab, an American pastor inquired, whether I had become a Mohammedan. Upon receiving a positive answer, he asked me with a genuine surprise in his voice: “Why such a strange choice for a girl like you?” I had at the tip of my tongue: “Why not?” but kept it to myself, as I did not want to appear rude. Oddly, many people seemed to hold subconscious prejudices towards my new religion, without having much knowledge either about beliefs or practices of Muslims. Where, where was this unusual dislike coming from?

For me, the pieces of the puzzle began coming together, as I got acquainted with the theory of Muhammad Asad about the origins of the prejudice towards Islam. Asad brings into spotlight the notion of western cultural supremacy, and claims that the roots of prejudice towards Islam can be traced back to the eleventh and twelfth centuries – the infamous time of the Crusades.

Asad begins building his argument by pointing to the very origins of the Western civilization – “the Graeco-Roman mode of thought, which divided the world into Greeks and Romans on one side and ‘barbarians’ on the other”. According to Asad, ever since the time of Greeks and Romans, western scholars have looked at the world from the viewpoint of the western cultural experience alone. The world history was that of the Western civilization, with other parts of the world coming into picture only as much as they affected the development of the West. Thus, such a narrow perspective produced distortions that permanently affected the western mode of thought. The notion of cultural supremacy took such deep roots in the western society that even today’s average westerner finds it difficult to give positive value to anything outside his own cultural orbit and considers the western way of life the only valid norm, by which other ways of life can be judged.

Although Graeco-Roman mode of thought belongs to history, and many ties have been established between the East and the West, Asad argues that “the West has [not] really become less condescending toward foreign cultures than the Greeks and Romans were: it has only become more tolerant”. Asad also especially emphasizes that this tolerance does not include Islam – only other eastern cultures. Why? A westerner, says Asad, can comfortably compare the ideas of Hinduism and Buddhism to those of his own, without ever considering accepting them as his own. Islam, however, does not fall in this category, as its philosophy and values are close enough to those of the West and thus intrude and challenge the intellectual comfort zone of westerners.

Further, Asad addresses the dilemma of Islam by saying that “what Occidentals think and feel about Islam today is rooted in impressions that were born during the Crusades”. Asad applies the concepts of psychoanalysis on the development pattern of Europe by saying that the time of the Crusades coincides with the ‘childhood’ period of today’s Europe. Psychoanalysts claim that “much of the emotional life of a mature person – and most of those seemingly unaccountable leanings, tastes and prejudices comprised in the term ‘idiosyncrasies’ – can be traced back to the experiences of his most formative age, his early childhood, (…) and the molding effect of every such experience depends primarily on its original intensity”.

Expanding on the theory of psychoanalysts, Asad says that since nations and civilizations are but collective individuals, “their development also is bound up with the experiences of their early childhood”. This early childhood of Western civilization, according to Asad, can be dated back to the end of the first millennium – the centuries immediately preceding the Crusades, when Europe was beginning to find its very own cultural face. Asad compares the intensity and effect of the Crusades to that of a “formidable shock,” which Europe received in this extremely sensitive formative age.

According to Asad, “the Crusades were the strongest collective impression on a civilization that had just begun to be conscious of itself”. A cultural unity was beginning to form out of what previously had been merely tribes and feudal kingdoms, held together only by the fact that they all belonged to the Christian faith. The phenomenon of the First Crusade, announced by Pope Urban II in his famous speech at Clermont, in November, 1095, elevated this single common trait of religion to a new level, uniting all the different nations for a common cause of waging a war “upon the ‘wicked race’ [read – Muslims] that held the Holy Land [read – Jerusalem]”.

Unprecedented before and unsurpassed ever since enthusiasm brought together warriors from all over the European lands of the time, crushing the barriers between states, tribes, and classes. “A wave of intoxication,” as Asad puts it, “swept over the Continent”. What was the cause? Religiously based hatred towards Muslims. It was precisely this time, when the misinterpretation of the teachings and ideals of Islam started. For the purpose of justifying the war, Prophet Muhammad (saw) was labeled as the Anti-Christ, and Islam was depicted as nothing more but “a religion of crude sensualism and brutal violence, of an observance of ritual instead of a purification of the heart”.   

Thus, the collective personality of Europe, which constituted the West of the time, was intellectually poisoned against the Muslim world. “The shadow of the Crusades hovers over the West to this day; and all its reactions towards Islam and the Muslim world bear distinct traces of that hard-die ghost.”