356 AFTERWORDMany points for discussion, even argument, simmer between the Islamic
world and the West. There can be no sensible argument, however, until both
sides are using the same terms and mean the same things by those terms-
until, that is, both sides share the same framework or at least understand
what framework the other is assuming. Following multiple narratives of
world history can contribute at least to developing such a perspective.
Everybody likes democracy, especially as it applies to themselves per-
sonally; but Islam is not the opposite of democracy; it's a whole other
framework. Within that framework there can be democracy, there can
tyranny, there can be many states in between.
For that matter, Islam is not the opposite of Christianity, nor of]udaism.
Taken strictly as a system of religious beliefs, it has more areas of agree-
ment than argument with Christianity and even more so with Judaism-
take a look sometime at the laws of diet, hygiene, and sexuality prescribed
by orthodox religious Judaism, and you'll see almost exactly the same list
as you find in orthodox, religious Islam. Indeed, as Pakistani writer Eqbal
Ahmad once noted, until recent centuries, it made more sense to speak of
Judeo-Muslim than of]udeo-Christian culture.
It is, however, problematically misleading to think oflslam as one item
in a class whose other items are Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Bud-
dhism, etc. Not inaccurate, of course: Islam is a religion, like those others,
a distinct set of beliefs and practices related to ethics, morals, God, the cos-
mos, and mortality. But Islam might just as validly be considered as one
item in a class whose other items include communism, parliamentary
democracy, fascism, and the like, because Islam is a social project like those
others, an idea for how politics and the economy ought to be managed, a
complete system of civil and criminal law.
Then again, Islam can quite validly be seen as one item in a class whose
other items include Chinese civilization, Indian civilization, Western civi-
lization, and so on, because there is a universe of cultural artifacts from art
to philosophy to architecture to handicrafts to virtually every other realm
of human cultural endeavor that could properly be called Islamic.
Or, as I have tried to demonstrate, Islam can be seen as one world his-
tory among many that are unfolding simultaneously, each in some way in-
corporating all the others. Considered in this light, Islam is a vast narrative
moving through time, anchored by the birth of that community in Mecca