Islam and the West

Abstract

Ladies and gentlemen, it was suggested to me when I first began to
consider the subject of this lecture that I should take comfort from the
Arab proverb: "In every head there is some wisdom." I confess that I have
few qualifications as a scholar to justify my presence here in this theatre,
where so many people much more learned than I have preached and
generally advanced the sum of human knowledge. I might feel more
prepared if I were an offspring of your distinguished university, rather
than a product of that "Technical College of the Fens," though I hope you
will bear in mind that a chair of Arabic was established in
seven-teenth-century Cambridge a full four years before your first chair
of Arabic at Oxford.
Unlike many of you, I am not an expert on Islam, though I am
delighted, for reasons that I hope will become clear, to be a vice patron of
the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. The Centre has the potential to be
an important and exciting vehicle for promoting and improving
understanding of the Islamic world in Britain, and one which I hope will
earn its place alongside other centres of Islamic study in Oxford, like the
Oriental Institute and the Middle East Centre, as an institution of which
the university, and scholars more widely, will become justly proud.
Given all the reservations I have about venturing into a complex and
controversial field, you may well ask why I am here in this marvelous
Wren building talking to you on the subject of Islam and the West. The
reason is, ladies and gentlemen, that I believe wholeheartedly that the
links between these two worlds matter more today than ever before,
because the degree of misunderstanding between the Islamic and the
west ...