Looking at Islam
By Roberto Rossellini
Now that the world is more and more torn by new misunderstandings and unusual resentments, it is urgent to do something useful. A new fracture has taken place between the western world, proud of its pragmatism, and the Moslem world which, finally reawakened, is encouraged to make up for lost time.
I believe the Moslem world's traditional profound capacity to meditate, theorize and philosophize can cure the presumptuous empirical practicality of the western world and many of the tragic consequences derived from its actions.
The objective situation of our planet (the vertiginous population growth, the ecological drama, the accumulation of arms of mass destruction, the potential capacity for genocide, the crisis of the economic-social system) compels us to work patiently to mend the human species.
If we men of the earth will be capable of this then we will also be capable of moving toward a radiant future, a future no longer dominated by misanthropy but by philanthropy.
I am aware that my words may raise suspicions. In fact, today the western world to which I belong is in crisis and makes offers of collaboration, but also threats. I am trying to see things in another light and to act differently: maybe I am a utopian. But my life, my actions and what I have done, I think, can show what I believe. I am convinced that there can be salvation if we men find a way to live conscientiously. That requires that each of us knows more. By developing our thinking we can dominate our instincts. Instinct is impulse, our unconsidered inclinations; thought is deliberation, conception, consideration.
To think one must know.
Today, we of the West, because of our education, but also because of our presumptions and chauvinism, do not know the Moslem world at all. We do not know how much it has counted for our own culture; we do not know how fundamental it has been for the development of our science and technology of which we are so proud.
Anything at all may happen. But in order not to hate or destroy each other and to work together, we must know each other well.
The history of the Moslem world is unusual, at least for its variety and extension: it succeeded in fusing very diverse cultures. This phenomenon is reflected in its composition: Arabs, Persians, Syrians, Greeks, Indians, Indonesians, et al. From the fusion and concord of diverse ethnic groups and their cultures emerged an immense development of its philosophy (as well as its poetry). The acumen and harmony of its thought produced the extraordinary evolution of mathematics, algebra, trigonometry, that gave rationality to the phenomena of nature and the universe.
Along the routes of reason and coherency, the Moslem world contributed to all fields of knowledge: from agriculture to medicine, from the invention of windmills to paper, from mechanics to the natural sciences. Without Arabic numbers, we would not understand anything today. In fact, there is no science without method.
But there is more. We still cannot identify ourselves as men; but to move toward understanding of ourselves, a first step was necessary, the most difficult step, that of situating our planet earth in its place in the universe. All of that came to us from the Moslem world.
The world should know that medicine, astrology, pharmacology, optics, mechanics were all developed in Jundishapar and Baghdad, which were great centres of convergence and refuge for all the world's sciences. Where would philosophy and history be today without Cairo, Isphahan, Algiers, Alexandria, Cordova, Granada, and without Al Khawarizin, Al Biruni, Omar
Kayyam. Avicenne, Averroes, et al?
The western world, by nature racist, would do well to remember that the cradle of civilization and human progress were Africa and Asia. Without the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Phoenician and Indian civilizations where would we be today?
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