Between Conflict and Co-operation

Alfred Schlicht, orientalist and legation counsellor at the German foreign ministry, analyzes the enduring 2,000-year relationship between the Arab world and Europe in his new book.

He begins with initial contact between the two in ancient times and continues with the spread of Islam to the Spanish peninsula. In his analysis of the Crusades, he focuses not only on irreconcilable religious standpoints, but also on European-Islamic alliances.

Schlicht focuses in particular on Islam in Spain. His narrative goes beyond the stigmatization of the Islamic conquest and the subsequent banishment of Muslims during the Reconquista, and portrays the lasting influences of the long period of Arab-Muslim dominance in Spain as a saga of conflict and cultural exchange.

Columbus: "a figure that embodies this polarity"

By way of example, Schlicht explains that Christopher Columbus' voyages of discovery were inspired by Islam. According to Schlicht, Columbus has become a "figure that embodied this centuries-old, historic polarity between East and West". Schlicht does not intend this to be a sweeping statement, nor is his book a pseudo-Islamophobic historical account penned in the wake of the terrorist attacks in New York, Madrid and London.

Instead, he tries to achieve a balanced view of the motives driving both Arab and European agendas. As Schlicht himself emphasizes in the book's preface, this is most definitely a "historical portrayal in the narrower sense". Only basic consideration can be given to intellectual history, he adds.

Thus, although the reader gets a profound and precise historical overview of military and political events, the book lacks a more thorough treatment of the exchange between intellectual elites.

Egypt: no progress without Europe

In Schlicht's view, the subsequent development of the Arab world cannot be explained without acknowledging the influence of Europe. For him, only European influence can explain the ascent of Officer Muhammad Ali to the status of ruler of Egypt. Ali's conviction that the East must learn from the West made it possible for him to disengage from conventional norms and traditions, and follow a new path that led Egypt away from Ottoman control.

Schlicht believes that Egypt's advancement would not have been possible without European influence. Europe had for the first time "served as an example to an Arab country, as a model for reform and the overcoming of backwardness", he writes.

The author subsequently devotes himself to the colonial era. Although colonialism is often equated with foreign rule and repression, Schlicht describes its initially positive effects: assimilation into the global market, economic recovery and cultural progress.

But all that soon changed; Europe stopped seeing the Arab world as its partner, and instead viewed it as a forum for its own interests. Says Schlicht: "For the Arab world, Europe stands for defiance and uncertainty, danger and opportunity, spiritual stimulation and intellectual provocation".

The focus of the book then shifts to the Middle East conflict, which Schlicht describes as the most crippling burden on European-Arab relations in the twentieth century. Schlicht emphasizes that the conflict did not arise from a religious dispute, but rather a territorial conflict of interests between Palestinians and Israelis.

In this context, the author criticizes Germany. "People could not and did not want to see that injustices committed by Germans against Jews were now resulting in injustices committed against the Palestinians", he writes. "The 'victims of the victims' were quite simply not acknowledged". In the meantime, says Schlicht, German foreign policy has liberated itself from the moral shadow cast by the country's Nazi past and now levels criticism at Israeli policy.

Reaction to European and US influences

Schlicht describes contemporary relations between the Arab world and Europe as a combination of co-operation and confrontation. He notes that East and West are today defined by issues and phenomena such as intercultural dialogue and terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism and the search for one's own identity: "The process of re-Islamisation developed as a reaction to US and European influences and in opposition to these", says Schlicht.

In his study, Schlicht explains that the relationship between Europeans and Arabs has always been characterised by an ambivalent blend of co-operation and mistrust, wars and alliances, exchange and rejection. He tries not to adopt the retrospective, Eurocentric position of stereotypes, but to differentiate – something he does not always manage to do in the context of the period under analysis.

Nevertheless, with his precise opinions, a straightforward structure and a clear line of argument, Schlicht succeeds in sketching a picture that turns out to be as heterogeneous and diverse as historical reality itself. After all: "Islam and Christianity are not just siblings, they are twins."

Sebastian Sons

© Qantara.de 2009

Alfred Schlicht: Die Araber und Europa. 2000 Jahre gemeinsame Geschichte (The Arabs and Europe. 2,000 Years of Shared History), published by Kohlhammer, 2008, 226 pages.

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