General Supervisor

thinkers and researchers, the East-West cleavage was not really clear-cut
as it appeared to be later on.”1 “In the budding age of Islam, Muslims had
had contacts with the Byzantines through the prophet’s (PBUH) expeditions
which were delegated to neighbouring nations calling them to convert to
Islam.2
Such a style of contact has overshadowed the civilisational relationships
up to the present day, as almost every intellectual product—whether it
be Eastern or Western—tends to accord importance to the influence of
the East upon the West during this lengthy historical period, and later the
influence of the West upon the East, taking into account such contributions
as made by Goerg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1830), Oswald Spengler
(1880-1936), and Arnold Twinby (1889-1975). It is worth noting that the East-
West relations have not been restricted to wars and polemics, but the latter
have always been associated with civilisational and civil exchange where
the factor of mutual influence has been crystal clear. Then, civilisational
exchange continued to exist between Muslims and Non-Muslims originating
from the Indian and Persian East and also from the Byzantine West, whose
relationships started before 490 BC when the Greeks defeated the Persians
in the battle of Marathon.3
Muslims set off on their quest for knowledge and wisdom in these international
metropolitan areas eastward and westward. They started spreading the
divine wisdom revealed in the Holy Book. Thus, driven by a belief in a giveand-take
cultural process, they were able to establish dialogue with those
1. Zakari Lukman, The History and Policies of Orientalism (Cairo: Al-Shuruq Publications, 2007: 53).
2. Khaled Sayed, The Epistles of the Prophet (PBUH) to Kings, Princes and Tribes (Kuwait: Dar Al-
Turath, 1987: 128).
3. Zakari Lukman, The History and Policies of Orientalism (Cairo: Al-Shuruq Publications, 2007: 141).
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civilisations through translating into and from Arabic, via the Assyrian
language or directly from Persian, Indian or Greek, as recorded in this area of
civilisational contacts.1
Nonetheless, such a positive and dynamic interpretation of this style of
cultural relations between the Orient and the Occident, along with the
efforts of those supporting the thesis of cultural coexistence between the
Orient and the Occident, are paralleled nowadays with the emergence
of certain extremist intellectual contributions which itch old injuries to
perpetuate the logic of the Crusades nowadays. An illustration of this is the
declarations of the Serbia Minister of Information during the Bosnian crisis
when he said, “We are the avant-garde of the neo-Crusades.”2 Nevertheless,
“the efforts of reverse acculturation have been considerably revived during
the last half century, which is so beneficial to the dialogue of civilisations
when confirming the interactivity in terms of civilisation amongst all the
races, the peoples, and the nations of the world”.3
Such extremist intellectual contributions are characterised by generalisation
as regards the West, including the near West, and Germany from the Middle
West, who have no proven record of exerting any clear pressure or assuming
any visible role in the Crusades or during the colonisation era, compared to
what was performed by the rest of the Mid-Western countries (i.e. Western
1. Mohamed Abdelhamid Al-Hamd, Dialogue between Nations: The History of Translation and
Creativity in the Arab and Assyrian Communities (Damascus: Dar Al-Mada, 2001: 531).
2. Mahdi Rezkullah Ahmed, “Missionary Campaigns in the Islamic World: Its Goals and Programmes”;
Special issue: Arab World; The Sudan, Egypt, Iraq, and Algeria as Case Study In Al-Bayen wa
Mabarratu Al-Aamel Al-Khayria, Proceedings of the Conference on Glorifying the Restrictions of
Islam (Kuwait, 2007: 317-388).
3. Abdullah Abu Heif, Acculturation and Reverse Acculturation in Orientalism: The Influence of Arab-
Islamic Culture as Case Study (Al-Kalima, 50.13, Winter 2006).
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