What is the view from within- a Muslim’s view- on the relationship between Islaam and the West?
We have to place the concrete experience of the Muslims with the West in a complex historical context. The firstdialoguebetweenthe West and Islaam was an armed one. The imperialist troops of Europe marched on Africa and Asia, and pounded Muslim societies with superior military technology.

Despite the imperialist onslaught, however, many Arab thinkers called for an adoption of Western modernity, for it had produced coherent societies with a sense of purpose, stable family structures, humanistic value systems, and impressive technological achievements. 

The importance of national dialogue, in the absence of which we lapse into a conflict that depletes all energy, cannot be overemphasised; hence calls for change, for reform of the constitution, for new parties to be established, for emergency laws to be annulled so all political trends can participate in the democratic process without fear and without attempting either to retain power for life.

I also wish to express admiration for Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni [Faaroo’q Hunsny].

I am aware of the efforts expended by his ministry to restore Ancient Egyptian, Coptic and Islaamic monuments, and to safeguard antiquities from theft.

While the old Islaamic discourse may have reflected a naive infatuation with Western civilisation, the bearers of a new way of thinking discovered a tainted modernity, embroiled in crises and questions of its own.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X is a hymn of praise to the soul of man, which can survive in the face of the most corrupting circumstances. This heroic achievement is possible because man is always capable of dreaming of a world of pastoral innocence and of maintaining a measure of spiritual purity even after becoming the most cynical of all cynics.

In his controversial book The Holocaust Industry, the Jewish American historian Norman Finkelstein deals with the business of the Holocaust and its relation to Israeli strategic interests.