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| Nadia Yassine, 2007-05-24 |
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| The difficulty of the contact between the West and islam is essentially caused by the negative regard the former has for the latter; it has multiple causes. An eventful and “crossed” history with islam underlies Western patterns of thought. Orientalist writers have also spared no effort in painting the image of Arabs in the blackest of colors. |
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| In so doing they have elicited and perpetuated the extremely negative images that persist in Western collective consciousness. These images have not been rectified by more recent close contact with immigrants; “Arab” has become a synonym for trouble -and thus islam itself has been tarnished. |
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| The news favored by media coverage further exacerbates a rejection that is more cultural than natural. In order to scrape off the superficial layer of the dross that mars the image of the Universal Message, we must first dissociate islam from Arabhood. This would allow a more objective approach by ridding it of such belittling aspects without paying further tribute to common prejudices. |
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| Islam has certainly an obvious historical link with Arabs, as the Prophet himself (grace and peace be upon him) was an Arab. Islam came to transform “scrawny camel drivers,” as Arabs are described according to a certain orientalism, into the noble bearers of a Universal Message. That is why no one can deny the indestructible link that islam has with Arabhood.The genetic ancestry of the Prophet is a strong evidence of this close relationship. He is certainly the most noble of Arabs, but the transcendence of the Divine Message is the sole nobility that he recognized. He loved those of his race with a natural love. Yet he did not let discriminatory fondness compromise the universal nature of the Message, nor did he love his non-Arab companions any less than the Arab. |
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| The Prophet (grace and peace be upon him) always underlined a disjunction between Arabhood and islam. Islam has never been the private historical property of Arabs. As islam began to spread among other peoples, the Prophet (grace and peace be upon him) said in a hadīth addressing his Companions: “There is no superiority of any Arab over any non-Arab unless by his piety.” Nobility and merit are not measured by race, since behavior and faith in God alone count. |
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| The Qur’ān emphasizes this truth: “The most noble among you in the sight of God is the most pious.” |
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| The relationship between islam and Arabhood merits attention only insofar as it raises the good question of what was behind the Arab miracle. What force, what power, what energy dwelt in a handful of camel drivers that had neither the weapons of Byzantium nor the military technique of Persia, to the extent that, within a century after the death of the Prophet (grace and peace be upon him), they spread the Islamic faith throughout most of the world? Arabhood? Surely not. The power, justice and coherence of their Message? No doubt. |
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| In about ten years, islam enriched the most ancient cultures that were foundering, and the divine breath of the Qur’ān revived dying civilizations from the Sea of China to the Atlantic, including Greece, Persia, Alexandria and Byzantium. Great decadent empires were saved from chaos in the seventeenth century of the Christian era by the profoundness of a Message that made sense. |
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| Islam again today is able to offer a remedy for the illnesses that afflict the modern world, to provide a cure for a system that has in less than two centuries dug the grave of humankind at a Dantesque scale, and that is within a hairsbreadth of putting an end to its epic. |
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| Islam could—but it is only the religion of the Arabs. And there is an unflattering— indeed disgraceful—image of certain Arabs today that disfigures the face of the Message. |
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| *From the Book "Full Sails Ahead" (available online at www.jspublishing.net). |
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