Islam and the West

Extract

The attitude of Christendom towards Islam is part of a story much older than either of the two religions concerned; though Christianity being one of them gives the story certain important differences. Nevertheless, one of the fundamental, and also invigorating, factors of early civilizations was their habit of holding themselves superior to any other culture: of seeing themselves as the unique bearers of all that was best. This sense of superiority might be deemed essential to the process of advancing civilization at all: the process of wresting an area of order, and of grace, out of the mists of errant wildness. It was based on an obvious truth: one’s own patch was cultivated; so far as could be seen, the rest was not. Moreover, the rest was inimical. The patch of enlightenment and perfection needed protection. For this it had its exclusive deities. In course of time, associated with the obvious superiority of the area of life they guarded, these deities became The Deity in the mind’s of their protégés. When there was awareness of other patches of civilization, rivalling the one which had been thought unique, each considered its god the only True God, for now the gods were at war. Contests and comparisons between civilizations were contests between religions and, as the degree of polemic fervour in favour of the one civilization against the barbarisms without, of the one religion that is true against the others that are false, is indicative of the vitality of the polemicists’s cause, in later ages the sterner Christian attitude to its rival may be taken to show a degree of advancement in Christianity absent from Islam.