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View from Islam, View from the West

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Thierry Zarcone
Thierry Zarcone*
Affiliation:
CNRS–EHESS, Paris

Extract

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The East has been upsetting and sometimes even revolutionizing Europeans’ modes of thought, feeling and enjoyment since the most ancient times, well before Marco Polo, when it transmitted its techniques and arts (printing, paper money, the compass, porcelain, etc.). From the 18th century Europe has played a similar role in the technological and even the philosophical field, with regard to India, China and Japan. Apart from the infrequent exchanges between West and East, the transmission of knowledge was carried out through ‘buffer civilizations’ - Persians, Sassanids, the Turkic-Iranian Muslim world - whose languages were Indo-European or whose religion was Abrahamic, and so culturally linked to the West. Thus it was to the east of them that the great frontier between civilizations was situated, in a region that, since around the seventh century, has been dedicated to Islam. The huge Euro-Asian bloc was the arena for several encounters, or clashes, between civilizations which considerably enriched the technical skills, culture and taste of Europeans; the transmission of Greco-Arab knowledge in the 12th century, the contribution of Chinese techniques thanks to the great Asian land routes (christened the Silk Road in the 19th century), the importation of Indian techniques over the sea routes. These encounters were also the occasion for two-way trade that gave a new face to countries like India or Japan; the latter, for instance, opened up not only to western technologies in the Meiji period, but also to the philosophies of Husserl and Heidegger in the early 20th century (the case of the Kyôto School of philosophy should be mentioned). The last of the great encounters date from the late 19th and the 20th centuries at the very moment when Europe and the American world were claiming to be the only ‘civilization’ worthy of the name, and considered they had nothing to learn from others, but, on the contrary, could teach them everything. However, this was also the time when a deepening knowledge of India, China, Korea, Japan led to a ‘rediscovery’ of Asia as a continent of great and rich civilizations whose philosophies, arts and many other disciplines were a match for their European counterparts; the French writer Henri Michaux described himself as a ‘barbarian’ when he visited that part of the world at the beginning of the 20th century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 50 , Issue 4: From East to West - Civilizations in a Looking-Glass: 50 Years, 1952-2002 , November 2003 , pp. 49 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2003

References

Notes

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17. A vaulted room with only one side open to the outside.

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25. This text was translated into French by Daryush Shayegan with the title Hindouisme et Soufisme. Une lecture du ‘confluent des deux océans’, Paris, Albin Michel [1979], 1997.

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27. The term ‘qalandar’, a name given to wandering Sufis in Muslim lands, is a generic term for Sufism in Bengal.

28. Muhammad Enamul-Haq, A History of Sufism in Bengal, Dacca, Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 1975, pp. 378-422.

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31. I have assumed a deconfessionalized Sufism as a path to knowledge, without any God or Being to be known, in my article:’Y-a-t-il une gnose sufie?’, in N. Depraz and J.-F. Marquet (eds), La Gnose, une question philosophique, Paris, Cerf, 2000, pp. 111-20.

32. The Persian text is published by Marijan Molé in ‘Naqshbandiyya. Quelques traités naqshbandis. I’, Farhang-i Irân-i Zamin, Tehran, 6, 1959, pp. 317-18.

33. Denis Matringe, ‘[Le Culte des saints] au Pakistan’, in H. Chambert Loir and C. Guillot (eds), Le Culte des saints dans le monde musulman, Paris, École Française d'Extrême-Orient, 1995, p. 182; Madhu Trivedi, ‘Hindustani Music and Dance: An Examination of Some Texts in the Indo-Persian Tradition’, in M. Alam, N. Delvoye and M. Gaborieau (eds), The Making of the Indo-Persian Culture, Indian and French Studies, New Delhi, Manohar, 2000, pp. 288-90.

34. Zhao Dongdong, ‘La Pensée musulmane chinoise et le confucianisme’, in Études orientales, 13-14, 1994, pp. 70-6; Hung-i Chuang and Su-chun Cheng, ‘Les Conceptions cosmologiques d'un alim chinois du XVIIe siècle’, Études orientales, 13-14, 1994, pp. 77-80; Sachiko Murata, Chinese Gleams of Sufi Light, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2000, pp. 7-10.

35. Helenan Hallenberg, ‘Muslim Martial Arts in China: Tangping (Washing Cans) and Self-Defence’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, vol. 22, no. 1, 2002, pp. 149-75; Wushu Among Chinese Muslims, Beijing, China Sports, 1984.