Tolerance and respect in pluralistic societies

I can accept your very idiosyncratic claim that Islam es fully compatible with secularism, even with just the legal or political secularism (Islam is, on the other hand, as any religion, totally incompatible with philosophical secularism, i. e., the naturalistic and humanistic worldview based upon critical thinking, naturalized epistemology, science and truth seeking scepticism).

But let me say, dear professor Ramadan, that I doubt that you really belive in what you say, for secularism is intrinsically incompatible with any law imposed upon human beings by a trascendental deity. And I doubt that you refuse to accept — be it, at last, at the end of the day only by blind faith — the claim of the divine origin of the Shariah.

But– you know, what I’ve just written about your position about Islam and secularism my be a matter of opinion. And an opinion is a kind of wager that we do on the truth of one of ours beliefs. But a belief is a kowlwdge when it is true, i. e., when it is in correpondance with the facts of the reality. Thefore, it’s a knowledge, and no a matter of opinon, — for it is in correspondance whith the reality of the well known and well satablished historical facts — that is not true, i. e., it’s completely wrong and false, wat you said about secularism in Europe having some kind of roots in the encounter in Medieval Spain between Christianity and Islam. The long, difficult and some times bloody process of secularitation of Europe started with the Investiture Controversy (1050 – 1122) and have its legal and philosophical roots in the Roman Law and reaches it modern form during the Enlightenment– that part of the history of Europe and the West culture most hated by the great majority of the Islamic scholars.

It’s not the first time that I see a serious lack of scholarship in your articles, speechs and lectures when dealing with the history of ideas in Europe and the relationship of European philosopy and theology with their Islamic counterparts. For it’s not a matter of just dropping names as you do when you throw in the same bag of “rationalist” Muslim thinkers to al-Farabi (10th c.), Avicenna (11th c.), Averroes (12th c.), al-Ghazali (12th c.), Ash-Shatibi (13th c.) and Ibn Khaldun (14th c.); it’s a matter of knowing who they were and what was their real influence in both the Islamic and European culture. For, as an example, considering Algazel and Averrores equally « rationalist » Muslim thinkers is a great error, for Algazel was by no means a « rationalist » and Averroes’ books — who was actually a rationalist — were burned in Muslim societies and his ideas considered heretical and therefore banned, with the final and real historical result that his influence in the Islamic culture was and has ever been, unfortunately, of none or marginal importance (that Averroes books where also prohibited in certains European universities during certain periods of times is an other history; but a totally different history, by the way, for the influence of Averroes, via Jews scholars of the 13th and 14th Centuries, was extraordinary important in the medieval studies of the natural philosophy –and the natural theology — spreading from the Universities of Padua and Bologna).

It’s nevertheless alway a pleasure to read your articles and listen to your audio files.