Ramadan goes on to say that without an intra-religious dialogue between Muslims 'it is impossible - and it may indeed be counter-productive - to engage in a 'dialogue of civilisations'. One has to do both, however: 'one should enter dialogue as one looks at oneself in a mirror ... and draw on the ... information that dialogue with the other reveals about oneself ... one should indeed, when starting a critical, constructive dialogue with other civilisations, ask oneself about one's own meaning and objectives.' (p 305). Ramadan is writing of course as a Muslim concerned about the current condition of Islam, but when he says 'one' here he surely refers to anyone who is concerned to start a dialogue, though he finds too many of his fellow Muslims wanting in this respect:

"Referring to ethical outcomes should give rise to a collective, critical and constructive approach of the very notion of "dialogue" and its meaning. Instead of such fundamental reflection, idealistic reflections appear here and there about common values and respectiing diversity'. One knows what he means, but what is the exact nature of its limitations? 'The debate over "civilisations" and "cultures" must not act as a screen and be a pretext behind which the other real problems of contemporary times are hidden ... Depicting the "dialogue of civilisations" as the positive ideology of our time to avoid discussing the strategies of political, economic, cultural and military domination is a smokescreen and, when all is said and done, nothing but hypocrisy ... a twofold displacement is being performed in the North: a kind of ideology of fear is created, fixing attention on differences and on potential disruptions and clashes between religions and cultures, then debates focus on issues concerning civilisations and values, far from any general political or economic considerations. This clever strategy encloses the agents of dialogue in an isolated Universe where issues that suddenly seem the most important are discussed without dealing with previously existing real problems that nevertheless remain essential" (p 306)

Ramadan claims that this kind of displacement occurs nationally as well as internationally, thus, 'in many European countries, problems are being 'culturalised', 'religionalised', or 'Islamisised' while they are in actuality primarily social and political in nature." (p 306)

He goes on to talk about the monolithic construction of one's own civilsation and that of the other, and that the West needs to overcome its own selective memory and recall its hidden islamic sources. Ditto the Muslim world, nurtured by Greek, Roman, Jewish and Christian thought: 'it is impossible to start earnest ddialogue about present diversity if one persists in denying the plural reality and diversity of one's own past'. (p 307)

Crucially, 'ideas and values should not only be discussed, but measured through their concrete implementation in reality ... ... we must undertake a true critical and self-critical analysis to measure the gap between our values and our practices. Dialogue between civilisations is meaningful only if it compels its agents and involved parties to ponder the inconsistency between ideals and respective concrete policies. Intellectual probity calls for such self-awareness in the mirror of the other's questioning. One can then realise that the problems encountered have less to do with values, which have often been historically or philosophically shared, than with disagreements about their ideological use or with the inconsistency observed every day in political, social, or economic practices. Both universes refer to dignity, justice, equality, and freedom and in both Universes-to various dehrees-one can observe undignified or wrongful treatment of human beings (from immigration policies to torture), conspicuous injustice ... persistent inequalities ... breaches of freedom' (308)

Some of these realities are presumably to be understood in terms of the 'shadow', thus our self-image is framed in terms of the positive values, our practice is furtive and concealed from ourselves and there is an aura of resistance in the demeanour of the political leaders who announce the one and practice the other. Tony Blair and Jack Straw manifested this kind of demeanour in their public utterances about the Iraq war and it came out most strongly when they resolutely refused to acknowledge what everyone else knew clearly, that the war was a recruting sergeant for violent extremism, which was put down to corrupt forms of Islam, whereas in fact it was expressed in those forms and not caused by them. We quite properly want to counter violent extremism but find it impossible to acknowledge that our own actions and policies have something to do with its growth. Now, it is one thing to acknowledge a link and another to condemn those policies. That is an independent question. In principle, if we think our policies are just then we ought to pursue them and accept that we shall to suffer violent reaction from some quarters. But violence is often allied to a sense of injustice, and if the policies are unjust ...

Ramadan talks rightly about the conditions for the possibility of dialogue, humility, respect, self-criticism and so on, and similarly with inter-faith dialogue ...

I have been reading what seems to me an important book, Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation by Tariq Ramadan. He talks about how 'Popular demonstrations, so excessive in the Muslim world, against the Danish cartoons or Pope Benedict XVI's speech in Germany, reveal far more about societies where critical debate is lacking, where civil society is muzzled (and sometimes cunningly instrumentalized to vent its anger on the outside world, the West), where hypocritical formalism is institutionalized, than they do about the specific object of the anger. The same is true of mobilizations against the war in Iraq or of opposition to the Israeli government's repressive policy towards the Palestinians. From the top leaders to the grass roots of Muslim societies and communities, one can observe emotional mobilizations determined by the timing and the intensity of media coverage. There is no in-depth debate between trends of thought, no critical dialogue, no long-term strategy ... and always the same lack of vision and co-ordination' ( p 305).

School is out

Well, it has felt like school is out after a heavy few days inserting other people's proof corrections into a master copy and producing an Index. All is in hand then for Philosophers and God, which should appear some time in the Spring: there are some interesting papers in it, though I say so myself. Anyway, I managed to get out of the house and do a circuit of the north end of the island, the sky blue, the wind not too hard, but one breathed it in like delicious sips of iced water. I was thinking about death again, though not for gloomy reasons. I wonder whether representations of it as an utterly bleak deprivation of sense is precisely a result of attempts to imagine one's own non-existence. There is heaven and there is Hell, of course, neither of which are 'non-existence'. For those who hope for the life to come the problem is that they cannot imagine the positive, only the absence of what belongs to this physical, mortal life. As for 'non-existence' or 'extinction', when the bubble bursts there is no bubble, when the flame is extinguished there is no flame.. Neither of these images are of the sensory deprivation that some people imagine as the negative aspect of a presumed or hoped for survival..

One cannot stress enough the significance of the ebbing of the Sea of Faith. I find it very difficult to think in terms of 'the meaning of life' or the idea that 'life has a meaning'. Both these expressions are predicated, historically, on the idea of a life to come, a life that will make sense of this one, restore the balance of justice and affliction and so forth. In the absence of these concepts ... the trouble is that people will then ask, well what is the meaning of life? Whereas, it seems to me that at best we are dealing in metaphor when we apply this term to 'life'. A person loves their life or hates it, they are anguished at the prospect of losing things they hold dear, they will be relieved of what causes them affliction, they want to live or they don't want to live, they live for this or they live for that, they are bored or in despair, they are absorbed and engaged, and so forth, these are the primary categories. In the absence of what we love, the presence of what we recoil from we might start talking of 'meaning' or 'loss of meaning', but these expressions are derivative and to understand them we have toi refer to what is primary.

I have just taken delivery of something completely different, Hutton's Arse.