Dialogue for Peace and Harmony:
A Human Sciences Approach1
Syed Farid Alatas

IntroductionThis paper discusses the role of the human sciences in dialogue. The
type of dialogue I am concerned with that which concerns therelations between different religious and ethnic groups. The goal of suchdialogue is to minimize conflicts between groups and to strive towards
achieving peace and harmony among them. Dialogue can be defined interms of a conversation on a subject of mutual interest between two or
more individuals or groups whose beliefs are defined by differing andeven opposing worldviews. The most supreme aim of dialogue is tobring about interest, understanding, appreciation, and even compassion
for the religions, cultures and worldviews of others. This paper deals
with how the human sciences can have a role in developing such a
dialogue. The role of the human sciences is essentially a preventive one.
It involves engaging the other group continuously dialogue in order toboth minimize the potential for confrontation and conflict as well as
achieve understanding and appreciation.
This paper focusses on what I understand to be the necessary
preconditions for dialogue among religions. Dialogue among religions isparticularly important at this juncture in time when the various religionsof the world are facing some common problems. There is a wide spreadview that religions are the causes of much conflict in the world today.
On the other hand, experience tells us that the worst cases of genocide inrecent history took place in the name of secular ideologies, namely,
fascism, liberal democracy, and socialism. Examples are the Nazi massmurder of Jews during World War II, the bombing of Hiroshima andNagasaki, and the mass killings under Stalin and Polpot. Of course, itwould be as illogical to conclude that it is secularism that is the cause ofsuch genocide, as it is to conclude that secularism is the reason behindreligious harmony. I feel it necessary to clarify these distinctions
because of a dominant perception that it is religion which is the cause ofmany problems. There is a view which is founded on the notion that94

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religion breeds intolerance. It is more accurate to say that all belief
systems are corruptible and can be perverted and that there are specificsocial and historical conditions that result in these perversions. It is vitalthat dialogue functions to correct such misconceptions.
However, in order for the human sciences to have a role in suchdialogue, there are certain problems that the human sciences have thatneed to be overcome. This has to do with the problem of Eurocentrism.

The Problem of Eurocentrism
The Muslim world had been in conflict with what is now referred to as
the West for centuries. In the 8th Century there was the Arab conquestof Spain and Sicily. The Arabs ruled over Spain for 700 years and werein Sicily for 500 years. There were also the wars of the so-called
Crusades that took place over a period of about 200 years. The Ottoman
Turks ruled over parts of Europe and laid Vienna to siege. After Europe
and America became militarily and culturally dominant over the
Muslims, Muslim civilization continued to constitute a threat and aproblem in the form of anti-colonial and other types of movements
following political independence. Therefore, the feeling of mistrust andsuspicion can be found both in the West and in Muslim societies.
The need for dialogue between Muslims and the West is clear. Morethan a decade ago, the United Nations Year of Dialogue Among
Civilizations was proclaimed.2 In order for dialogue to be successful, it
is necessary that there be no prejudices that are harboured by the various
parties involved. In the case of public discourse on Islam there arecertainly prejudicial views about Islam that are widely expressed. This is
the case in both the print as well as electronic media. At the root of thisproblem is that of Eurocentrism in the human sciences. It is this Euro­
centrism that eventually influences the views towards Islam that are
expressed in the media and affect the public’s perception.
To provide an example of this, I would like to discuss the work of
Joachim Matthes (2000) on the concept of religion. This concerns thetranslation of terms rooted in a particular religious tradition into
universal social scientific concepts. Concepts in the human sciences
originate from a particular culture and may present problems whenbrought into scientific discussions about geographies and times outsideof those of their origins. This may result in the distortion of the phe­nomena that they are meant to explain and understand.
Matthes discusses this with reference to the concept of religion. The
Latin term religio, from which the English “religion” is derived, referred

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to the many practices and cults of Rome in pre-Christian times. With the
emergence of Christianity as the dominant belief, other systems were
either absorbed or eliminated. Christianity was the only religio, although
the term was often not applied as there was no need to. Christianity was
the only legitimate belief and was simply known as the Church. With theonset of the Protestant Reformation, religio came to refer to Christianbeliefs and practices separate from the institution of the Catholic
Church. In other words, it was the religion of laypeople. Religion,
however, still referred to Christianity and not to other faiths. This was togradually change. Jean Bodin, the French philosopher, published his
Colloquium Heptaplomeres (Colloquium of the Seven about the Secretsof the Sublime) in 1953. Here we find a more universal understanding of“religion” which included non-Christian faiths. From the eighteenth
century on “religion” came to be used more as a scientific concept inphilosophy, anthropology, history and sociology, and referred to faiths
other than Christianity.
What is interesting however is that while “religion” encompassed offaiths and not just Christianity, when European scholars wrote about
non-Christian religions, they did so with Protestantism or Catholicism in
mind. In other words, there was a tendency to view other religions
through the lens of Christianity. This involved the implicit or explicit
comparison with Christianity, resulting in an elision of reality. To help
us understand the problem, Matthes draws out attention to the logic ofcomparison. When we make comparisons the two things to be compared
are subsumed under a third category or term which is at a higher level ofabstraction. For instance, apples and grapes are subsumed under fruits.
The third term “Fruits” is the tertium comparationis. If we compare
Christianity and Islam, the tertium comparationis is religion. Obviously,
the tertium comparationis should be a more general term whose charac­
teristics are not derived from one particular religion. But, this is not thecase. In many disciplines, the characteristics of the concept of religion
are derived from Christianity to begin with. Therefore, the supposedly
general scientific concept “religion” is intellectually or culturally
defined by Christianity. The result is that other religions such as Islam,Hinduism and Buddhism are seen through the lens of Christianity rather
than compared to Christianity in terms of a more general tertiumcomparationis, that is, a genuinely universal concept “religion”.
What elision of reality is caused by this mis-comparison? Whatdistortions of non-Christian religions result from a less than universal
tertium comparationis? One example is from the literature on ProtestantIslam. This literature attempts to draw parallels between the Protestantdialogue for peace and harmony

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Reformation and the modern Muslim revival since the nineteenth
century. The impression is given that the goals of the modern Muslims
revivalists were similar to those who participated in the revolt against
the Catholic Church.3
Another example comes from Buddhism. Herbrechtsmeier, in sayingthat Buddhism is largely devoid of the belief in supernatural beings, also
said that it has all the other features of religion such as temples, ritual
practices, a sacred canon, pilgrimage sites, reverence for saints, andpriest-monks (Herbrechtsmeier, 1993: 7). The claim that the Theravada
dharma (central teachings) is derived from a superhuman Buddha is adistortion of Buddhism because it is not Buddha’s being superhuman but
his being transcendental, referring to the residing of his transcendental
spirit in the teachings or dharma, that makes the dharma valid(Herbrechtsmeier, 1993: 11). Herbrechtsmeier suggests that Western
scholars often brought in ideas of religion into non-Western contexts
that do not fit the experience and understanding of the peoples that they
study, resulting in the etic concept of religion not allowing for aempathic and non-distorted understanding of the variety of emic
religious phenomena outside of the West. An example is the Western
association of religion with worship of supernatural beings(Herbrechtsmeier,1993: 1).
Yet another example comes from Hinduism. According to Smith,Hinduism is a particularly false conceptualization, one that isconspicuously incompatible with any adequate understanding of thereligious outlook of the Hindus. Even the term ‘Hindu’ [an Indian or
non-Muslim inhabitant of India] was unknown to the classical Hindus.
‘Hinduism’ as a concept they certainly did not have” (Smith, 1964: 61,
cited in Frykenberg, 1989: 102, n. 3). The term ‘Hindu’ has its origins in
antiquity as the Indo-Aryan name of the river Indus, which is its Greek
transliteration (Smith, 1964: 249, n. 46, cited in Frykenberg, 1989: 83)4.
It is from this usage that the terms ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hinduism’ graduallyacquired their descriptive and geographical denotations. Muslim
scholars such as AbË Rayhan al-Biruni (A.D. 973–1048), writing in
Arabic, used the term al-Hind to refer to the Indian subcontinent, butwhen they referred to the people of that subcontinent or aspects thereof
they were referring to what they considered the indigenous and nonMuslim inhabitants of India. In Persian and Urdu the corresponding
geographical term to al-Hind was Hindustan Things Hindustani referred
to whatever that was indigenous to India and non-Muslim (Frykenberg,
1989: 84). The English ‘Hindu’ probably derived from the Persian. The
term “Hindu” appears in the Gaudiya Vaisnava texts of the sixteenth

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century (O’Connell, 1973: 340–3, cited in Frykenberg, 1989: 84),
probably as a result of Muslim influence. The usage here is consistent
with that in the Muslim texts of the premodern Arabs and Persians. Evenin the modern period, this negative definition of Hinduism is found as
evident in the Hindu Marriage Act. The Act defines a Hindu, among
other things, as one “who is not a Muslim, Christian, Parsi or Jew byreligion…” (Derrett, 1963: 18–19).
The terms ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hinduism’ in reference to religion, and aunitary one at that, was for the most part, a modern development. In theeighteenth century it began to be used to denote an Aryan, Brahmanicalor Vedic-based high culture and religion by European Orientalists suchas Halhed, Jones and Müller (Frykenberg, 1989: 85–86). It is this usagethat was adopted by the early Indian nationalists themselves like
Ramohun Roy, Gandhi and Nehru (Frykenberg, 1989: 86). This ‘new’
religion was founded on the ontology and epistemology contained in the
Varnasramadharma and encompassed the entire cosmos, detailing aspart of its vision a corresponding stratified social structure (Frykenberg,
1989: 86).
What is important in these developments as far as the intellectual
Christianization of Indian beliefs systems is concerned is that (i) the
belief systems of the inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent (excluding
Muslims, Jews, Christians and Parsis) came to be regarded as religion;(ii) these beliefs systems were seen to constitute a single religion; and(iii) were founded on a system of Brahmanical doctrines based on the
Catur-Veda (Four Vedas) (Frykenberg, 1989: 86). It is in these senses
that characteristics of Christianity were read into Indian beliefs.
What is the problem with this tendency to intellectually Christianise
other religions? First of all, there is the imposition of categories fromthe outside. Categories such as “religion” or “Hinduism”, imposed fromthe outside, that is, by European scholars, result in constructions that do
not accord with the self-description of the communities concerned. This
results in the curious mix of fact and fiction. The beliefs of peoples suchas those of Muslims, Buddhists and of people of the Indian subcontinent are not understood according to the self-understanding ofthese peoples. Facts are mixed in with accounts that are a result of theimagination of European scholars determined by the a framework that isderived from Christian categories posing as the tertium comparationis.
The intellectual Christianisation of other religions can be said to be an
instance of Eurocentrism in the human sciences. The conceptual
vocabulary often used to talk about non-Christian religions is often
derived from Christianity. Terms like church, sect, denomination, cultdialogue for peace and harmony

99

and religion itself are widely used in discusisons and research on otherreligions to the point that concepts internal to these traditions are
marginalised. For example, a term like fundamentalism that originatedin discussions on Christianity has been used to talk about Muslim
extremism while the Muslims’ own conceptualization of the problem
has yet to enter the vocabulary of the social scientists, journalists andpolicy analysts.
The problem persists because of the phenmenon of what Syed
Hussein Alatas called the captive mind. In the captive mind, there is an“unreality of basic assumptions, misplaced abstraction, ignorance ormisinterpretation of data, and an erroneous conception of problems andtheir significance” in social science (Alatas 1972, 11). The captive mind
is not creative and does not have the ability to raise original problems.
Furthermore, it is alienated from its own national traditions and isdominated by Western ideas (Alatas, 1974: 691).
It is therefore important that the problem of Eurocentrism be
addressed in order for dialogue to progress. One important area ofaction in which the issue of Eurocentrism can be dealt with is education.

Teaching against Eurocentrism and Preparing for Dialogue
It is vital that in our teaching in of the various human sciences in theuniversities of Asia and Africa we become more conscious of the
problem of Eurocentrism. This would result in effort to introduce more
Asian and African thinkers into the curricula. This was the logic that I
have followed in various courses that I teach at the National Universityof Singapore. One was entitled Social Thought and Social Theory. In
this course, co-taught for many years with my colleague, Vineeta Sinha,
the works of thinkers such as Ibn Khaldun,5 Rammohun Roy,6 Jose
Rizal,7 Benoy Kumar Sarkar,8 and OgyË Sorai (1666–1728)9 were taught
in addition to those of Marx, Weber and Durkheim.10
I followed a similar logic in another course I taught, “Development
and Social Change”. The aim of this course was to understand thedifferent reasons for which peoples’ lives in so many parts of the world
are affected in one way or another by poverty, income inequality, lowlevels of education, corruption, political oppression, and other featuresof underdevelopment. The complexity of the development process canbe grasped from the multitude of explanations that have emerged since
the nineteenth century and include those from India such as D. Naoroji
who wrote at the turn of the last century (1962 [1901]) and the Indian
Marxist M. N. Roy (1971 [1922]).

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The purpose behind such changes to the courses or curriculum lies in
the need to educate people about the multicultural origins of modern
civilization, about the contributions of the Muslims, Indians and Chinese
to modern Europe, about the positive aspects of all these civilizations,and about the common values and problems that humanity shares. A
course on World Religions should be introduced to the schools. Children
should not be learning only about their own religions but about all
religions. Apart from having such a subject, the theme of inter-religious
experience can be reflected in other subjects such as social studies,
literature, geography and history. All this would require a serious relook
at the curricula of schools and universities.
Because of the relative autonomy that university professors enjoy, we
are in a position to make such changes in the courses that we teach, even
if entire curricula cannot be revamped along these lines. I have also
attempted to put into practice some themes that I believe should informthe dialogue among civilization in a course entitled “Islam andContemporary Muslim Civilizations”.
This is an introductory course to Muslim civilization. Emphasis is on
the historical, cultural and social context of the emergence anddevelopment of Islam, and the great diversity that exists in the Muslim
world, from Morocco in the west to Indonesia in the east. The course isdivided into five sections. The first, consisting of two lectures, provides
an introduction to the study of civilizations in general, defines Islam as
belief and practice, creed and civilization, and briefly discusses theorigins of Islam. The next set of lectures discusses the spread of Islamand the encounter between Islam and the West in the past. This part ofthe course introduces the major cultural areas within Muslim
civilization, that is, the Arab, Persian, Ottoman, Moghul, and Malay, andcovers topics such as the Muslim conquest of Spain and Sicily, theCrusades, and the Islamization of Southeast Asia. The third part of thecourse examines the cultural dimension of Muslim civilization, withparticular emphasis placed on the religious and rational sciences thatdeveloped among the Arabs and Persians, their contact with the Greek
heritage, and the impact that Islam had on medieval European
philosophy and science. Also discussed in this part of the course are theliterary and artistic dimensions of Muslim civilization. The fourth partof the course focuses on current issues in the contemporary period (postWorld War II). Particular emphasis is given to the emergence ofOrientalism in Europe and the Islamic response to it. This section also
provides an overview of the political economy of the Muslim world,
setting the stage for discussions on a number of contemporary problems

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and issues such as gender, underdevelopment, Islamic revivalism, andimperialism.
While a great deal of information is covered in the course, its
objective was to achieve more than that. It was necessary to cover a lotof historical facts and expose the students to a wide variety of readings
on Muslim history, society, literature and the arts in order to introduce tothem the three central themes of the study of civilizations. There are as
follows:
1. Intercivilizational encounters. The study of Islam is one case ofencounter between civilizations. As Islam was the only civilization tohave conquered the West and to be in continuous conflict with West, it isimportant that people be introduced to the idea that such civilizational
encounters are not always negative. The Crusades, for example, resulted
in a great deal of scientific and cultural borrowings between the Mus­lims and the Europeans. A wonderful example of such an encounter isthe meeting between St. Francis and Sultan Malik al-Kåmil.11
2. Multicultural origins of modernity. Modern civilization is usually
defined in Western terms. But many aspects of modern civilization comefrom Islam and other civilizations, including the sciences, the arts,
cuisine, commercial techniques, and so on.12 The university is a fineexample. The notion of the university as a degree granting institution oflearning was developed and put into practice by the Muslims by thetenth century and adopted by the Europeans in the thirteenth century.
For example, the ijazah was the principles means by which scholars andSufis passed on their teachings to students, granting them permission tocarry on their teachings. Although the learned scholars of Islam taught
in formal institutions of learning such as the maktab, the kuttab, themadrasah and the jami`ah, the degree was personally granted by thescholar to the student. The ijazah is the origin of the European univer­sity degree or license.13
3. The variety of points of view. The study of Islam provides us with
an opportunity to experience the multiplicity of perspectives from which
any one fact or event can be viewed. For example, most works on the
Crusades provide accounts from the point of view of the European
crusaders. The perspective of Muslims who fought the crusaders andthen lived amongst them when European soldiers settled in and aroundthe Holy Land between Crusades is instructive as it helps complete thepicture of an otherwise fragmented reality. Another example of thisconcerns the hijab or head covering worn by many Muslim women.
While in some settings it co-exists with the oppression of women, inothers it is a symbol of liberation. It is important, for example, to expose

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students to the experiences of Muslim women who took to the hijab inorder to escape the critical gaze of the fashion and beauty industry.

Conclusion
The idea of the intellectual Christianization of “religion” presupposes amore general notion of constructions of which the former is a type. This
general notion is based on the critique of Orientalism by Edward Said.
Said describes Orientalism as not just a learned field or discipline, but a“theoretical stage affixed to Europe”. The Orientalist, like a dramatist
who puts together the drama, constructs images of the Orient in a waythat betrays the influence of the history and cultural climate of his
society (Said, 1979: 63). Orientalism represents more Western knowl­edge of the Orient rather than true discourse about the Orient (Said,
1979: 6, 63). Said makes a distinction between early or pre-modern
Orientalism and modern Orientalism. Pre-modern Orientalism, formally
beginning in 1312 as a result of the establishment of chairs in Arabic,
Greek, Hebrew and Syriac at universities in Avignon, Bologna, Oxford,
Paris and Salamanca (Said, 1979: 49–50), was articulated and elabo­
rated by prominent European authors such as Ariosto, Milton, Marlowe,
Tasso, Shakespeare, Cervantes and others, all of whom helped sharpen
the image of the Orient (Said, 1979: 63).
Early Orientalism was not simply ignorant of the Orient, it wascharacterised by a complex ignorance of the Orient (Southern, 1962: 14,cited in Said, 1979: 55). The image of the Orient was not only far fromreality but also complex. The Orient was seen to be hostile to Europe but
also weak and defeated, although always a threat, in contrast to a
powerful Europe that speaks on her behalf, as when Aeschylus has the
Persian queen speak rather than the Persians speaking on their own
volition (Aeschylus, 1970, cited in Said, 1979: 57). Said makes a very
interesting point about early Orientalism. In the encounter between Eastand West the Orient neither remains as something completely novel to
the Occident nor as something completely well-known. Instead a “newmedian category emerges, a category that allows one to see new things,
things seen for the first times as versions of a previously known thing”(Said, 1979: 58–59). And example of a new thing was Islam, at least to
medieval Europeans, which was gradually dealt with by being
considered as a fake version of something known, that is, Christianity(Said, 1979: 59). Here said is speaking of the European Christian viewof Islam which developed and spread in poetry, scholarly controversies
and popular superstitions (Said, 1979: 61).14

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It can be said, therefore, that the role of the human sciences in the
dialogue among civilizations covers a number of areas:
1. the participation in and monitoring of public discourse with theobjective of breaking stereotypes and unsettling commonly held notions
that typically translate into prejudiced views.
2. The formal education of the public at all levels, that is, primary,secondary and tertiary education, in such as way that the three themes
mentioned above, that is, intercivilizational encounters, the multicultural
origins of modernity and the variety of points of view, inform the devel­
opment of curricula. In order for this to be done on the basis of a soundintellectual basis, there must be serious efforts to develop ade­quate
tertium comparationis.
3. Greater interaction among social scientists in the Asia andAfrican regions and more support to journals and other scientificpublications that are produced out of these regions.
In order for dialogue among religions, particularly between the Westand other Civilizations, to be facilitated it goes without saying that
serious inroads must be made in the trafficking of stereotypes by the
media, which in turn are influenced by the extent to which education is
Orientalist or Eurocentric. This is because the media and public
discourse are influenced directly or indirectly by knowledge that is
produced in tertiary education. Therefore, the problem has to be dealt
with at the level of knowledge production in these institutions, that is,teaching and research. This would then mean that there should begreater interaction among social scientists in Asia and Africa.
The experience and example of St. Francis of Assisi is truly
something to be admired and taught. The Sultan had invited St. Francis
to visit a mosque where he asked St. Francis to pray for him as he would
for St. Francis. St. Francis saw the humanity of Islam and indeed
modified his preconceptions of the Sultan’s religion (Bonaventura,
1260/1950: 361–363).15 St. Francis had entered into a true spirit of
dialogue with Islam and was sincere about the positive values that were
to be found in that religion to the point of being inspired. For example,
after witnessing the adhan or call to prayers in Egypt, St. Francis sug­gested his people should praise and thank God every sunset after theappropriate signal by herald or some other way is given (Wintz, 2003).
The case of St. Francis and the Sultan clearly illustrates what resultsfrom a realization of the true spirit of dialogue.

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Notes
This article draws from a previous piece of mine. See Alatas (2002)
See http://www.un.org/Dialogue/
3
For more on the problem of Protestant Islam, see Alatas (2007).
4
Smith’s source is Spiegel (1881, Vol. 1, lines 17–18, A, line 25: 50, 54, 246).
5
Ibn KhaldÉn (1967).
6
Roy (1906).
7
Alatas (2011).
8
Sarkar (1937[1985]).
9On OgyË Sorai see Najita, 199810
For a discussion of the course, see Alatas & Sinha (2001).
11
See Moses (2009).
12
For example, by the middle of the thirteenth century almost all the philosophicalwritings of Ibn Rushd had been translated into Latin. A peculiarly Christian appropria­
tion of Ibn Rushd began to develop in Europe and came to be known as Latin Averroism,
establishing itself in various European universities such as Bologna, Padua and Paris (O’Leary, 1939: 290–291, 294).
13
See Guillaume (1931); Ebied and Young (1974).
14
See also Comfort (1940, cited in Said, 1979: 61, n. 40).
15
Sermon at Christ Church, Freemantle, Southampton, St. Francis of Assisi Day, cele­
brated on 10 October 2004 http://www.cms.hampshire.org.uk/livingwater/francis-islam.
htm accessed 5 August 2013.
1
2

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