SE Asian Moslems can help Islam's image
SE Asian Moslems can help Islam's image
JAKARTA (JP): Moslems in Southeast Asia can play an important role in promoting a positive image of Islam in Western countries, according to participants at a two-day conference entitled "Islam and the West in the Era of Globalization."
The seminar was sponsored by Yayasan Paramadina, a foundation led by noted Moslem intellectual, Nurcholish Madjid, in cooperation with the Indonesian Association of Moslem Intellectuals (ICMI), the Goethe Institut and the Dialogue Foundation.
"Indonesians and other people in Southeast Asia could provide an example in promoting a positive image for Islam," Bassam Tibi, a professor of Islamic studies at Goettingen University in Germany, said.
Tibi, a Jordanian-born expert, said that the tolerance and openness practiced by Southeast Asian Moslems could help promote a positive image of Islam to the people of the West.
He said that Islam was not always identical with its image, which had, he said, been shaped by the Western mass media, which had frequently shown terrorism and violence involving Moslems.
Olaf Schumann, a professor of Arab and Islamic studies at Hamburg University said: "what we need in the West is something to present Islam in a different way."
He said that an image of Islam as a cultural product that could adapt to other cultural patterns would help to gradually erase the negative image which Islam currently suffers from among Western people.
He said that the development of Moslem culture in the middle ages, crossing Arab territorial borders and entering Southern Europe and Southeast Asia, had demonstrated the flexibility of Islam.
"Islam's capacity to adapt itself to cultural plurality has proven the rich spiritual habits of Moslems," he said.
Meanwhile Dr. Imaduddin Abdulrahim, a member of the ICMI's board of experts, said Southeast Asian Moslems' numerical superiority over their Middle Eastern counterparts could help the former to take the initiative in improving Islam's image.
Imaduddin said the number of Malay-speaking Moslems, which will reach 200 million at the beginning of the 21st century, was larger than that of the Arab Moslems, who account for only 20 percent of the world's Moslem population.
Negative
The three speakers held similar views as to the cause of Islam's negative image in the West.
Schumann said the negative impression had been caused by the influence of historical events, which had embittered the soul of the West, whose feeling of superiority was offended by the ascendancy of Islam from the eighth century until the end of the 15th century.
"The offense apparently cannot be forgotten by Western nations, even until this the 20th century," he said.
Imaduddin said the negative image had also been promoted by several Western writers, whose books generally disclosed what they believed to be the bad side of Islam.
He referred to Dr. Bernard Lewis, a professor at Harvard University, who since 1964 has issued several warnings about the resurgence of Islam. Such warnings appeared in Lewis' book "The Return of Islam" and in other books, including that by academic John Laffin, "The Dagger of Islam", and, more recently, Samuel P. Huntington's "The Clash of Civilizations".
Bassam Tibi said Islam's negative image had been worsened by a lack of understanding on the part of the western press of the effect of their words, which were motivated by commercial considerations rather than a desire to educate the public through the presentation of information based on research and objective observation.
"The press has been very successful in creating an image of Islam identical to certain countries in the Middle East and Asia which it considers under-developed," he said.
The seminar also heard a speech by lawyer Adnan Buyung Nasution on human rights in Islam. (inn)