Islam and Civilizational Interaction: Understanding the Prophetic Paradigm of Dialogue

The concept of civilizational interaction is central to philosophy ofunderstanding human relationships. The exchange of knowledge, art, andscience between people of diverse religious and cultural backgrounds has beenonly possible through the process of dynamic interactions. However,sometimes, when civilizations interact, they collide and leave a legacy ofresentment that in turn becomes base for parochial and self-serving myths,feeding further conflict narratives. At the threshold of 21stcentury, world iswitnessing that same myths are being manipulated in national andinternational politics. Consequently, nations seem moving towards the policyof establishing walls , dividing people into we and them . It led somepeople to describe the relations among diverse social groups on the basis of clash . Clash theorists have suggested that differences in ideologies,structures, values, and most important of all, religion, necessarily give rise toconflict situations. Despite the fact that all religions have been criticized forcreating confrontations, Islam alone has become a target point for most of the clash theorists. Islam is accused for being an intolerant and exclusivist religion and claims are made that Islamic civilization and the rest willinevitably clash. Quite strangely, after manipulated the things out ofcontext , it is allegedly concluded that Islam advocates philosophy of perpetual war with the other . However, there are obviously certainmiscreant so called Islamic groups who elude the essence of their religionand aggravate the differences by misconstruing their meaning andapplication. Therefore, Islam at many occurrences seems to be simply hijacked and disconnected from its essential qualities such as love of God,love of His creation, and love of whole humankind. In this backdrop, thepresent paper is an attempt to examine the meaning of the phrase civilizational interaction and the nature of relationship between Propheticparadigm of dialogue and clash of civilizations . Emphasizing on theformative period of Islamic civilization, the paper will identify the correlationbetween Islamic civilization and philosophy of coexistence in the light of its theological and ideological underpinnings

کلیدواژه ها:

Islam ، civilization interaction ، clash theorists ، prophetic paradigm