Address at the Washington National Cathedral, 7 September 2006 by Mohammad Khatami
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The Renaissance-era intellectuals and thinkers defined human beings in a different light. Instead of turning his back to the world and despising material life as the primordial human being had done, the newly defined man was an individual who turned to the world and material life. Thus, the human being became the subject of a new religion.
In its turn, worldly life embraced this new creature. The mutual acceptance and admiration of man and the world by each other is the most remarkable peculiarity of the Renaissance legacy. In its essence, this extraordinary religious event started with the purpose of reforming religion, rather than opposing it or pushing it to the background. Yet in its historical development, this process deviated from its original objectives.
Man's success in controlling the world did not stop there. Rather, it turned into aggression and domination that extended beyond the world of nature and to human societies as well. The development that came to be known as colonialism, which was the natural outcome of the domination of modern science over nature and was extended to human sciences as well. The extreme reaction against the absolute domination of the church over man in the Middle Ages, and the denial of his fundamental rights and freedoms, led to another extreme reaction in the form of an encounter between faith and reason in modern times. In the new environment that was created, instrumental rationality confronted faith. As a result, man showed utmost effort to dominate not only nature; but also once this was accomplished, the strong established dominance over weak societies. After the establishment of what we know as Western Civilization, we witnessed the emergence of a belief in both the dominance of that civilization and in the integration of other civilizations or the remnants of other civilizations into a unified Western one.
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The time has come for the West to take a step forward and view itself from another angle. And this is by no means a call for the West to forgo its lofty cultural heritage and civilization. Neither is this an invitation to obscurantism but an attempt at persuading the West to seek new understanding and to better comprehend the cultural geography of the world.
On the other hand, the Orient and specifically the Islamic Orient, can fill the enormous void of spirituality and estrangement from the truth of existence, which today is the great affliction of our world, by reliance upon its moral heritage and transcendental wisdom and by the avoidance of ostentation and superficiality. Great religions, particularly Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, can help mankind solve modern problems and challenges by a return to their vital, vibrant, and common essence. At the same time, the East needs to utilize the rationality and prudence of the West in its worldly affairs and must embark on the important path of development.
Today, no other course is before us but that of recognition of the right of humankind to rule its own destiny and the manifestation of this right in democratic systems that ought not to be limited to liberal democracies. We also need to utilize science and technology, and it is now up to the East to understand its own spiritual wisdom in a way that enables it to utilize the accomplishments attained by the West without disregarding the more important spiritual and moral aspects of the human soul.
FULL TEXT: <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/khatami080906.html>
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