Japan can 'bridge misunderstanding' between Islam and the West

Kosugi Yasushi, a professor of Islamic affairs and globalization at the Graduate School of Asian and African Studies at Kyoto University, Japan, spoke recently with The Jakarta Post's Muhammad Nafik about a possible role for Japan in bridging the gap between Islam and the West. The following is an excerpt of that interview.

Question: You have said that Japan can bridge the misunderstandings between the Islamic world and the West. Would you explain why you think this?

Answer: Many Muslim countries want to have modernization, and at the same time they want to preserve their Islamic identities. And Japan has been successful in modernization. It is now one of the leading countries in the world. Japan's success indicates that modernization and westernization are not same. Japan is a democratic country. When we look at Japan as a developed country, its development is not at the cost of Japanese culture and identity.

Japan has apparently succeeded in that modernization. Did the West have modernization? No, they didn't. What the West did is that they had just created their own modernity. So, it's always confusing that many people think that the West knows a lot about or teaches modernization. It's wrong.

Japan knows very well how to learn and it became an industrialized country by learning. In my understanding, western elements are not necessarily modern. Japan took modern elements from the West, not necessarily western cultures. When the modern elements were taken or adopted and applied by Japan successfully, we can see this is really modern and universal. The problem is that western countries tend to mix both modern and western elements. Of course, we should separate them completely. They are deeply related but they are not the same.

How can we differentiate between these two elements?

It can be done through adoption. You take a western thing and when it is applicable and workable in other cultures, then it's modern and universal. Japan started modernization by adopting other cultures. What Japan adopted and re-exported to other countries, especially in Asia, has worked very well. So, modernization must go with the needs of people in other areas.

The West often claims to be great in modernization -- "We have this and you learn it." Learn what? That's the problem. A thing is good if it's in line with the needs of people. Modernization in the western way has often not worked perfectly, partly because problems with its own culture.

Could you give an example?

Okay, democracy is good. In western and European countries, democracy has cultural elements. We can take democracy as such, but its cultural elements may not be good for other countries. It could even be destructive for democracy itself.

Many talks have been held to ease tensions or resolve misunderstandings between the West and the Islamic world, but the problems remain. What do you think about this?

The point here is not about the conflict or dialog. I have said that Japan has studied the civilizations of other countries. We learned a lot from China, and we also have studied Islamic civilization. I have a feeling that the Japanese understanding of the Islamic world is more balanced than the West.

Japan has studied civilizations from around the world, including Islam and western cultures, over the last hundreds of years. The study of the West was conducted probably over two and three centuries, while the study of the Islamic world has been less than one century -- maybe 40 years.

How does Japan study the Islamic and western civilizations?

When we study a world civilization, we do it from itself. We try to listen to what it says and what it has. Nationally, when we study the West, we study what it is. When we study Islamic civilization, we do it from itself. We have studied both, Islam and the West, and we developed our understanding based on logic and societies.

We listen to the Islamic world before judging. But western Orientalists always see Islam from their own perspectives. I would say the best example for this is the question of fundamentalism. This word is not recognized in Islam. It was taken from Christianity in North America. In Japan, we call it an Islamic revival movement. It is defined as a movement to revive or reactivate Islamic values and try to reformulate them into society according to their understanding.

So, Islamic understanding is probably something new and not necessarily traditional because it's dynamic. And people think and try to reformulate new things based on the Koran and hadith. That doesn't necessarily mean their Islamic interpretation is old.

What do you understand by Islamic fundamentalism in connection with terrorism and militancy?

First of all, fundamentalism is wrong in this sense. It was a movement of Protestant Christianity during the 20th century in North America. Such a term does not exist in Islam. They (the West) brought the Christian term and call it Islamic. This is not an understanding of what is actually happening.

Second, fundamentalism is a term very much to do with a threat perception. So, when the West thinks Islamic fundamentalism, what they think is only a threat.

Some Muslims say, "Let's go to the mosque, pray and study the Koran." They are not fundamentalists. "Let's collect zakat (obligatory donation under Islam) to help the needy." That also is not fundamentalism. So the Islamic revival is generally peaceful and it's a social movement. It involves people at the grassroots level and they are apolitical activists.

So when we talk about Islamic fundamentalism, we should not link it with terrorism and militancy. It's just a term borrowed from the West.