Christopher de Bellaigue Meet the Author


Christopher de Bellaigue

Similar Content

Browse content similar to Christopher de Bellaigue. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!

Transcript


LineFromTo

Vauxhall plant in Luton and elsewhere. Now it is time for Meet

:00:00.:00:07.

The Author. Christopher de Bellaigue wants to challenge our understanding

:00:08.:00:10.

or our miss understanding of Islam. Who is to say that that is not one

:00:11.:00:15.

of the most important questions of our time. The Islamic Enlightenment,

:00:16.:00:21.

the modern struggle of faith and reason is his book. He presents the

:00:22.:00:31.

other side of the story of faith. He charts the progress of intellectual

:00:32.:00:37.

and scientific ideas and presents an issue of the real struggle that is

:00:38.:00:42.

going on. Between those would deny it and set it back. Welcome.

:00:43.:01:00.

Your account of Enlightenment in the Islamic world through the 19th

:01:01.:01:08.

century and into the 20th, will be too many people unknown. Why? The

:01:09.:01:16.

reason why it is unknown is partly because people will think Islamic

:01:17.:01:22.

Enlightenment, is that a contradiction in terms? The idea of

:01:23.:01:27.

a movement towards enlightenment values in the Islamic world has been

:01:28.:01:34.

included in the west because of natural ignorance in the west -- not

:01:35.:01:42.

been included. We have been so involved in the Islamic world that

:01:43.:01:45.

we have needed a kind of justification for being there. One

:01:46.:01:48.

of those is that the Islamic world has not got its act together and we

:01:49.:01:52.

need to be there. That's go back to the beginning of your story. You

:01:53.:01:56.

take this to a period just after the Napoleonic War. You argue that there

:01:57.:02:00.

was an interaction between what we might call the west, just for sake

:02:01.:02:04.

of shorthand, and the Islamic world that was profound and its effect.

:02:05.:02:08.

What was the effect that happened intellectually, scientifically and

:02:09.:02:12.

so on? Is started with a militarily. Everybody wanted a strong military

:02:13.:02:17.

and technology and ideas entered through structures that were sent

:02:18.:02:21.

out from Western countries in order to instruct new armies of the Middle

:02:22.:02:25.

East. It very quickly spread because you cannot quarantine ideas of that

:02:26.:02:30.

kind. Spread into society, it spread into the nature of the relationship

:02:31.:02:35.

between the ruler and the rules, democratic ideas began to bubble up.

:02:36.:02:40.

Science began to evolve, theatres of anatomy were opened, the novel

:02:41.:02:44.

entered the consciousness of the Middle East. All sorts of ideas,

:02:45.:02:48.

along with technologies, where telescoped into a matter of a few

:02:49.:02:52.

decades and suddenly by the end of the 19th century, the Middle East

:02:53.:02:56.

looked radically different from how it had looked at the beginning. Many

:02:57.:02:59.

people looking at this would save that is all very good and well, but

:03:00.:03:03.

we look to the Middle East now and what we see in some places is

:03:04.:03:06.

autocracy that look suspiciously medieval, they will argue about the

:03:07.:03:11.

activities of the Islamic State as being barbaric and they will say if

:03:12.:03:15.

all this is true in the 19th century, what went wrong? What

:03:16.:03:20.

happened is that the high watermark of liberalism and what I would

:03:21.:03:24.

consider Enlightenment values in the Middle East really was about the

:03:25.:03:28.

beginning of the First World War. There had been revolutions in

:03:29.:03:34.

Turkey, Iran to introduce limits to the monarch's rule and his

:03:35.:03:41.

prerogatives. A move towards democracy and representative

:03:42.:03:43.

Government and a lot of other things that we would represent with that.

:03:44.:03:47.

The autonomy of the individual. After the world war, the region was

:03:48.:03:53.

obliterating. The hole changed. That's right. The hole. The French

:03:54.:04:03.

and the British could not stop themselves from coming in and

:04:04.:04:08.

carving it up. Moving toward independence and self-determination,

:04:09.:04:15.

the movement was on the other direction. The reaction took two

:04:16.:04:22.

forms. The first was what we would call Islamist and the other was a

:04:23.:04:29.

kind of emulation of the west, but in its almost fascist it formed.

:04:30.:04:34.

This is the struggle that is still going on today. It is the essence of

:04:35.:04:38.

your argument. It can be boiled down to the struggle between a man in a

:04:39.:04:45.

uniform supported by the west who is keeping the country in some ways

:04:46.:04:50.

secular, in some ways preserving the outward appearances of Western

:04:51.:04:55.

modernity against various forms of Islamists Government, Islamists

:04:56.:04:59.

movements from the authoritarian to the much more anarchic and we see

:05:00.:05:06.

this conflict playing out right now. You know the countries that you talk

:05:07.:05:10.

about very now. You lived in a run for quite a long period in your own

:05:11.:05:15.

life. What you are describing as your account as it is really a

:05:16.:05:21.

tragedy of civilisation. When a coloniser comes in, it doesn't

:05:22.:05:24.

matter how good the idea he brings in is, the fact that he is a

:05:25.:05:28.

coloniser and he is holding a bed net at your neck means that you are

:05:29.:05:33.

naturally going to be resistant. From your perspective, how do you

:05:34.:05:37.

think people should go about trying to heal that divide? People in the

:05:38.:05:47.

Middle Ages now have experienced many interactions with the east and

:05:48.:05:51.

the west. The first was the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan which

:05:52.:05:55.

essentially tried to export an ideology, an idea of liberal

:05:56.:06:00.

democracy and in some ways was optimistic because it argued that

:06:01.:06:04.

you can share ideas and that ideas don't belong with you or me, they

:06:05.:06:09.

are the common heritage of humanity. From that stage, that the disaster,

:06:10.:06:18.

we are now at position where there is a clash. They are making the most

:06:19.:06:24.

amount of noise and wielding power. What about leadership in the Islamic

:06:25.:06:30.

world? Why if you are right, had there not been figures who have

:06:31.:06:33.

emerged in very powerful positions who have said, look, we can find a

:06:34.:06:39.

way through this. We can cross this divide. I have seen many leaders

:06:40.:06:50.

rise in the Islamic world rise. Mr edge one in Turkey is someone who at

:06:51.:06:54.

one stage and have that potential. The potential to act as a bridge

:06:55.:06:59.

between one culture and civilisation and another. For various reasons,

:07:00.:07:04.

the relationship with the rest has soured. He has been in power for too

:07:05.:07:09.

long and has become authoritarian. That hopeful mission he prepared to

:07:10.:07:15.

-- appeared to be on has fallen to dust. You are saying that we are in

:07:16.:07:20.

in the early 19th century has been reversed and that now in the

:07:21.:07:26.

21st-century with all the technical and intellectual advances that we

:07:27.:07:30.

have, we are set on a backward path. Do you think there is any

:07:31.:07:32.

alternative to that as you look into the next two or three decades? The

:07:33.:07:36.

first thing is that I would concur that a lot has been reversed. It is

:07:37.:07:40.

one of the extraordinary facts that I have been confronted with is that

:07:41.:07:44.

at the turn of the 20th century, it was easier to express your religious

:07:45.:07:48.

and sceptical views in Cairo for example then it is today. That is an

:07:49.:07:52.

extraordinary thing if you think about a view of history that

:07:53.:07:57.

involves steps and progression. The alternative? It is simply for people

:07:58.:08:06.

like me and other people to think like me on all sides to continue to

:08:07.:08:10.

make our voices heard. At the moment, we are going into a position

:08:11.:08:13.

where we are becoming a minority. Those who call for accommodation,

:08:14.:08:17.

those who call for dialogue, those who insist that people can meet. We

:08:18.:08:25.

are falling into a minority and we need to make sure that our voices

:08:26.:08:27.

will be heard. There will be a return to that way of thinking and

:08:28.:08:32.

we need to be there to catch it. Christopher de Bellaigue, author of

:08:33.:08:36.

The Islamic Enlightenment thank you very much.

:08:37.:08:55.

Here is loyal latest live weather update. Some rain this evening. Here

:08:56.:09:00.

is the view earlier today

:09:01.:09:01.

Download Subtitles

SRT

ASS