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Islamic and Western Values

Ali A. Mazrui
September/October 1997
Summary -- 

The cultural distance between the West and Islam is narrower than Westerners think. Muslim societies are more humane than portrayed in the West, while Western societies often fail to live up to their liberal mythology. Islam has protected other religions and avoided fascism, racism, and genocide. Citizens of Muslim countries may be more vulnerable to their governments and political violence, but their streets are safer and their families more stable. We could all benefit from Islamic values.

Ali A. Mazrui is Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He is also Ibn Khaldun Professor-at-Large at the School of Islamic and Social Sciences in Leesburg, Virginia, and Senior Scholar in Africana Studies at Cornell University. His books include Cultural Forces in World Politics and, with Alamin M. Mazrui, the forthcoming The Power of Babel: Language and Governance in Africa's Experience.

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DEMOCRACY AND THE HUMANE LIFE

Westerners tend to think of Islamic societies as backward- looking, oppressed by religion, and inhumanely governed, comparing them to their own enlightened, secular democracies. But measurement of the cultural distance between the West and Islam is a complex undertaking, and that distance is narrower than they assume. Islam is not just a religion, and certainly not just a fundamentalist political movement. It is a civilization, and a way of life that varies from one Muslim country to another but is animated by a common spirit far more humane than most Westerners realize. Nor do those in the West always recognize how their own societies have failed to live up to their liberal mythology. Moreover, aspects of Islamic culture that Westerners regard as medieval may have prevailed in their own culture until fairly recently; in many cases, Islamic societies may be only a few decades behind socially and technologically advanced Western ones. In the end, the question is what path leads to the highest quality of life for the average citizen, while avoiding the worst abuses. The path of the West does not provide all the answers; Islamic values deserve serious consideration.

THE WAY IT RECENTLY WAS

Mores and values have changed rapidly in the West in the last several decades as revolutions in technology and society progressed. Islamic countries, which are now experiencing many of the same changes, may well follow suit. Premarital sex, for example, was strongly disapproved of in the West until after World War II. There were laws against sex outside marriage, some of which are still on the books, if rarely enforced. Today sex before marriage, with parental consent, is common.

Homosexual acts between males were a crime in Great Britain until the 1960s (although lesbianism was not outlawed). Now such acts between consenting adults, male or female, are legal in much of the West, although they remain illegal in most other countries. Half the Western world, in fact, would say that laws against homosexual sex are a violation of gays' and lesbians' human rights.

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