Dr. Kamel Al-Ajlouni has undertaken an important endeavor through his encyclopedic work, The West and Arab-Islamic Civilization: Enduring Hostility or Reluctant Coexistence? From Mu’tah to Gaza. In this work, he examines the recurring confrontations between the Arab-Islamic and Western worlds and explores whether they reflect deep-seated contradictions that have persisted through the centuries.
اضافة اعلان
The four-volume work brings together historical events in chronological order and examines the logic that has governed the relationship between two civilizations whose interactions and conflicts have helped shape a substantial part of human history.
Al-Ajlouni revisits historical events and investigates the connections between them in an effort to understand the contexts that gave rise to wars and alliances. This is undoubtedly a task that required considerable research, given the extensive historical period covered by the work and the diversity of subjects it addresses. More importantly, the author draws on the past to interpret the present, particularly with regard to the Palestinian cause and international positions on it.
The relationship between the two civilizations was shaped by wars, religious institutions, commercial interests, political expansionist movements, and competition over resources and strategic locations. By tracing these transformations, Al-Ajlouni presents readers with extensive material that helps them understand that major events emerge from developments that precede them. Understanding their outcomes therefore requires returning to the circumstances, ideas and interests that paved the way for them.
The encyclopedia examines the role played by religious, educational and medical institutions in the history of relations between East and West. It also explores the activities of missionary organizations, hospitals and foreign schools as a means of understanding the cultural and social influence that accompanied some Western expansion projects.
Religion occupies a central place in Al-Ajlouni’s work. It helped shape mutual perceptions, mobilize societies and provide ideological legitimacy for certain political projects. This approach becomes particularly significant when examining the religious foundations of Zionism and the relationship between certain Western Christian movements and the Zionist project. Such an analysis helps explain part of the relationship between religious belief and political decision-making, while highlighting that strategic interests consistently operate within the ideas and perceptions embraced by societies and their ruling elites.
The encyclopedia’s extensive historical scope places it at the center of future debate, particularly concerning the transformations experienced by the Western and Arab-Islamic worlds, the changes in their identities and interests, and the shifting balance of power between them. It also invites reflection on the factors that have persisted through the centuries. Furthermore, it opens the way to understanding the links between historical confrontations, from the Crusades to modern colonialism, and the role of religious beliefs and political and economic interests in shaping them. It is also useful to consider periods of civilizational interaction, which witnessed exchanges of scientific knowledge, ideas and trade. This would enrich the thesis presented by Al-Ajlouni and broaden perspectives on the historical and human dimensions of the relationship between the two civilizations.
This particular aspect is likely to generate considerable debate about the historical scope of the work and the concept of the West as presented in the encyclopedia. It raises the question of whether it is possible to reconcile the West represented by the Byzantine Empire, whose political and cultural composition differed from that of medieval Europe and the European states that emerged after the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. The Arab-Islamic world, too, underwent extensive transformations involving its states, religious schools of thought and centers of civilization.
Civilizational exchange is another important aspect of the historical relationship between the two worlds. The transfer of scientific knowledge and philosophy, along with commercial and cultural activities, represents a series of interactions that must be explained and understood within the contexts that produced them, particularly in light of the encyclopedia’s central question about hostility and coexistence.
The encyclopedia reaches a particularly significant point when it addresses the Palestinian cause, which Al-Ajlouni places at the center of the historical relationship between the two worlds, where religious backgrounds and strategic interests intersect. By extending its account to Gaza, the work places the ongoing Palestinian tragedy within a broader effort to understand the roots of the conflict, the factors that have contributed to its continuation, and the forces influencing its course.
Dr. Al-Ajlouni has completed an encyclopedic project worthy of recognition for the effort he devoted to collecting and organizing historical material and for his intellectual boldness in tackling a question whose implications extend from the distant past to some of the most pressing issues of the present. The work’s importance lies not only in the answers it offers but also in the questions it raises and the new avenues it opens for understanding history.
