I highly recommend reading this article (link below) by UCLA history professor Nile Green. We need to learn more from the lessons of history as we endeavour to forge mutually enriching ties between Muslims and the “western world” in the present.
One of the key elements of such community, as the article illuminates, is the recognition of and unity in universal struggles across cultural frontiers. Insistence on this emancipatory principle is one of the reasons I find Slavoj Zizek’s works so compelling, and timely.
In the article, the Muslim students living abroad in London admired and learned from the feminist struggle there, and were moved to action. What could be more universal–and inspiring–than that?!
The only area where I see a need for expansion is with regard to the mutuality of responsibility to reach out and learn from the “other”. The onus cannot be solely on Muslims to do so. We all, as human beings, share in this fundamental responsibility. And in so doing we are walking the exhilarating walk of making a better world. Let’s do this!
Read and share the article here: Zócalo Public Square :: When Muslims Admired the West and Were Admired Back
h ~ e ~ a ~ r ~ t ~ s ~ p ~ a ~ c ~ e 
Your words give me chills. I wish your wisdom would spread. Thank you so much for doing what you do. We chip away at the stone….
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Right on, sister! Thank you! 🙂
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Very interesting moment in history. And I like to look even earlier to the Middle Ages and early modern eras when Muslim societies were models of tolerance and inclusion and Christian Europeans were slaughtering each other over doctrinal differences while restricting the rights of non-Christians when not driving them out or burning them at the stake.
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Indeed! I suspect there are many more illuminating lessons to be gleaned from the history of relative harmony among adherents of the Abrahamic traditions in the Iberian Peninsula.
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