Category: Past Events Published Date
Date: 17 Apr 2009
Title: The Crisis of Islamic Civilization
Speakers: Ali A. Allawi, former Defence Minister of Post-War Iraq
Event Details
Ali A. Allawi has served as Minister of Defence and Minister of Finance in the Iraqi postwar governments. A graduate of LSE, Harvard University and MIT, he is Senior Associate Member of St Antony's College, Oxford. He has written one previous book, The Occupation of Iraq (Yale 2007). The City Circle will be hosting a launch of his new book, The Crisis of Islamic Civilization, published in March by Yale University Press.
Ali A. Allawi makes a compelling and provocative case that the best hope for the world's Muslims is a rejuvenated Islamic civilization - one that unites the inner world of Islamic spirituality with a public, outer world that is also genuinely Islamic. A deep thinker who has the respect of both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars, and a former cabinet minister in post-invasion Iraq, Allawi has studied the past and has witnessed firsthand the convulsions of Islam's encounters with modernity. His voice is one that cannot be ignored as the world grapples with the challenges of the twenty-first century.
Assessing each of the building blocks of Islamic civilization, the author concludes that it cannot survive without the vital spirituality that underpinned it in the past. Unity of the private sphere of personal spirituality and the public sphere of government and institutions forms the essential core of Islamic civilization, and it is this core that has been allowed to decay, he will argue.
Ali A. Allawi argues persuasively for Islamic civilization's inherent value and potential to generate new paths and better lives in a complex world - a world increasingly aware of the consumerist dark side of the Western model. But the destruction of Islamic civilization is well underway and continues apace. Muslims, Allawi argues, must decide whether they want to create and dwell in a civilization which grows out of their own beliefs without disrupting the world of others. If they do choose this path, they will have to overcome years of indifference and inaction as well as the enormous influence of competing civilizational forces. The challenges are not insurmountable, but they will indeed test to the limit Muslims' commitment to Islam as a complete way of life.
We will be looking at the following difficult questions:
- Is Islam inherently opposed to modernity? Or is there a different, genuinely Islamic path to modernity that would better serve Muslims than the path forged by Western civilization?
- Can Islamic spirituality be separated from the public sphere? Should it be separated, following the Western model?
- Can sharia, so often condemned as inhumane in the West, offer a just and legitimate legal system for Muslims?
- Given Islam's ban on interest, is a truly Islamic economic system possible in today's world? How well do current Islamic banking institutions meet the spiritual and economic needs of Muslims?
- How well do today's Muslim leaders meet Islam's standards for just, honest governance?
- Is the rise of radical political Islam and Wahabbist thought likely to hasten or slow the decline of Islamic civilization that is clearly underway?
- What forces in today's Islamic world could productively contribute to a rejuvenated Islamic civilization?
Join us for a fascinating evening. All Welcome. Free Entrance.