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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. |