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THE MYTH OF AL-ANDALUS

Food for thought on religious tolerance

A well-known French orientalist scholar of the twentieth century, Jacques Berque,

delivered his last academic lecture, at the Collège de France, in a famous speech, published

afterwards under the title Andalusias, with that strange plural; after a life devoted to

communication between the cultures around the Mediterranean sea, he concluded in a

prophetical way:

« I call for constantly renewed Andalusias which have bequeathed us both accumulated rubble and

enduring hopes. »

If we tried to change the sentence with any other European region (Kent, Calabria,

Bavaria…), it would not mean anything: in such a sentence, Andalusia doesn’t refer to the

autonomous community in the south of Spain. He clearly uses the word Andalusia not as a

geographical entity, but as a myth. And he did not need to explain further what he meant:

Andalusia commonly means, in connection with the Arab domination in this region in the middle

ages, religious tolerance, pacific coexistence and open dialogue between different cultures and

peoples; and the setting of this dialogue is necessarily sophisticated and delightful, like the

Alhambra palace gardens in Grenada. It sounds like Paradise – and a “Paradise lost”, which is

followed by the most intolerant institution ever: the Spanish Inquisition… and its leyenda negra!

Of course, we know that such a Paradise is nothing but a dream. But it’s a dream shared

by the East and the West. Western literature used it as a topos (for example that theme is

important for French writers in a colonial war context, like Camus or Amrouche, as if they were

looking at the past in search for a possible peace between Muslims and Christians), but the dream

can also be found in the academic field: in 2003, the American researcher Maria Rosa Menocal,

professor at Yale University, published a book whose title would not be a model of scientific

objectivity: The Ornament of the World. How Muslims, Jews and Christians created a culture of tolerance in

medieval Spain. Such enthusiasm, not so frequent in the field of historical studies, may be partially

explained by the proximity of 9/11. In the East, the Egyptian movie Destiny (1997), directed by

Youssef Chahine (that was a success even in the West) shows how Averroes manages to

broadcast his message of tolerance, even when Islamic extremists try to prevent him. But you can

also see it in Mahmoud Darwish’s poems: the famous Palestinian poet wrote his Eleven Planets as a

nostalgic evocation of the Arab Andalusia.

Obviously, in all these examples, Andalusia is not a mere dream, an insignificant myth: in

each example, you can connect it to a very precise political situation; and Andalusia was used as a

political myth, with its own agenda, its own political program. What is the program behind the

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myth? The possibility of religious tolerance, especially between Islam on one hand, and

Christianity and Judaism on another. Of course, we’re not talking about the past, but about our

present, about the famous “clash of civilizations”, about terrorism, about war in Iraq or in Mali,

about the deprived areas in Europe … Andalusia shows us that peaceful coexistence, where

respect and tolerance have their place, is possible; furthermore, it’s here to show that Islam, even

when it’s hegemonic, can be tolerant and open-minded. Averroes is used as an antidote to Bin

Laden. Andalusia is a myth, and a myth always refers to the present time. Let’s accept it, without

complaining about all the historical mistakes that are heard on the topic.

My purpose today is not to show how mythical (and false, from a historian’s point of

view) is this picture of medieval Andalusia. First of all, because it’s obvious: no one can believe

such a Paradise actually existed; even when you use it as an argument, you know that it’s more a

wish than anything else. Second, competent historians have already done the job: a lot of

excellent studies give a realistic and finely-shaded picture of medieval Spain. Whoever wants to

study Arab Andalusia already knows that it can’t be naively described as a tolerant land, but it has

had a few tolerant periods: the Umayyad caliphate in Cordova, the period of the Taifas States, the

city of Toledo after the Christian Reconquista; for the rest, most of medieval Spain’s history, like

every border-region’s history, is full of wars, wars of religion, persecutions and intolerance. And

of course, even for these tolerant periods, we hardly know anything about the daily relationships

between Muslim and Christian people; we can only talk about the presence of Christian civil

servants or of Jewish doctors at the Caliph’s court, about translations of scientific works from

Arabic into Latin, about links between Muslim, Jewish and Christian scholars… But we have no

idea about the atmosphere in the market place in Cordova or Toledo !

There is another reason why I won’t try to demythologize Andalusia with you today. It’s

the historians’ duty to give a realistic picture of Andalusia, and they do it well; but

demythologization can also be a political program. Some people do their utmost to denounce the

pure deception of Andalusia. If you’re looking for this kind of literature, it abounds on the

Internet; and almost every year books point out the trickery. Many of them have a clear purpose:

they intend to demonstrate that a peaceful coexistence between Islam and the West is impossible,

because Islam cannot be tolerant, whatever the country, whatever the period. On both sides, the

question is not a historical debate: we have two political agendas facing each other, and I confess

that I prefer the first one.

Even so I would like to discuss the myth of al-Andalus, not as a historian, and certainly

not as an activist. My point is that the myth is based on a projection in medieval Spain of the

modern European status of religious truth, Spinoza or Kant with a turban, while al-Andalus could

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teach us something extremely different if we’re looking for a model of religious tolerance: a

model that would not be based on religious indifference or the privatization of religious faith, but

on the contrary based on religious discussion and debate.

To be efficient, a myth needs mythical characters. Our Paradise of tolerance has its

heroes, and primarily its “good guy”: Averroes, the famous Aristotelian philosopher of Cordova.

After centuries of complete indifference in the East (he was never quoted by an Islamic author

until the twentieth century) and of sulfurous reputation in the West, he has become today a very

popular figure, the friendly main character in Youssef Chahine’s film or in many novels (even in

one of Borges’s short stories). His commitment to the building of a rational Islam seems the

exact model of the “Islamic Enlightenment” that so many non-Muslim Europeans wish to find.

He is now the symbol of tolerance in al-Andalus. Novelists have even described his imaginary

friendship with the Jewish scholar Maimonides, who was born ten years after him in Cordova.

Such infatuation for Averroes, the hero of religious tolerance, could be surprising. Of

course, he’s a major philosopher, but if you’re looking for tolerance in his work, you’ll be

disappointed: not a single word on that topic; concerning other religions, a few trite words on the

superiority of Islam. He was a high magistrate of the Almohad Caliphate, an extremely intolerant

period under the domination of a Berber-Muslim dynasty that expelled or killed all the Christians

and the Jews (like Maimonides himself) still living in al-Andalus. As such, each year he made an

official speech to call the people to the jihād. Of course, it would be anachronistic to blame him

for that: it was his duty in his situation. But in that field, he was in keeping with his time.

Why is he so popular then, especially in the West? I would have two explanations. First of

all, we in the West have a great intellectual debt to Islam and to al-Andalus, and Averroes is

probably the main creditor of this debt because of his importance in our understanding of

Aristotle. His commentaries of “the Philosopher” were translated into Latin almost immediately

and fuelled passionate debates at the University of Paris. When Aquinas writes “the

Commentator”, the word refers to him. For many centuries, the word “averroism” was an

accusation or a rallying sign for many philosophers or thinkers. As an Aristotelian transmitter,

Averroes played an important role in the intellectual history of the West. Our enthusiasm for his

person may be a way to pay our debt.

There is another, a deeper, explanation, linked to his philosophy but based on a complete

misunderstanding. This misunderstanding goes back to the middle ages, when Averroes was

translated and read in the West at the end of the twelfth century: only his Aristotelian

commentaries were translated and known; but his major books were not translated, in particular

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those where he studies the relationships between faith and reason (Fasl al-Maqāl, Kitāb al-Kashf

and The Incoherence of the Incoherence, where he defends the falsafa, the Arab Aristotelian philosophy,

against Ghazāli’s Incoherence of the Philosophers; more specifically, this last book was translated, but at

the very end of the middle ages). The understanding of Averroism was extremely partial and

problematic. What would we understand of Kant’s philosophy if the Critique of Pure Reason had

been lost?

It can explain why averroism was associated with – and even almost equivalent with – a

doctrine that the Cordovan judge would have obviously rejected, known as the “double truth

doctrine”. According to that doctrine, religion and philosophy, faith and reason, are separate

sources of knowledge and might lead to contradictory results, contradictory truths. It means that

you have two kinds of truth (religious truth and rational truth), and they can disagree even while

being true at the same time. An adversary of Latin averroism, the Catalan thinker Ramon Llull,

summarized it in a formula: it was no longer the legendary “Credo quia absurdum” (which, as you

may know, never existed) but “Credo fidem esse veram et intellego quod non est vera”, I believe

that faith is true and I understand that it is not. This distinction of two kinds of truth seems to open

the door to religious tolerance, because religious truth is no longer submitted to precise logical

rules: coherence is no longer necessary, so two contradictory beliefs can be true at the same time.

If we fear the hegemonic claims and the totalitarian potential of a monopoly on truth, we feel it is

a sound track, because such a monopoly is no longer possible; and at the same time the truth of

religious beliefs is preserved and respected. Nevertheless, the reception of this doctrine was

mainly negative in the Catholic Church, for at least two reasons.

For Thomas Aquinas, the affirmation of the unity of truth is the keystone of theology, as

he explains for example at the beginning of his Summa contra Gentiles. A revealed dogma can never

be contradictory with reason, with the conclusions of a rational argument. It doesn’t mean that

each dogma can be rationally demonstrated: the Trinity, for example, is only known by revelation,

not by necessary reasons. But the Trinity dogma has to be coherent and acceptable for human

reason. When a contradiction seems to arise between a dogma and a philosophical truth, it’s a

challenge for Aquinas: here begins the work of the theologian. If you simply accept the

contradiction, without trying to resolve it by rational tools, there is no theology: faith becomes

mere fideism. And fideism would be another word for stupidity.

At the same time, Catholic authorities, like the bishop of Paris Étienne Tempier, saw that

such a doctrine, apparently neutral towards the two kinds of truth, was potentially dangerous for

the religious one, weaker than the rational one, and he clearly rejected it. Such a position,

expressed in solemn condemnations, was probably far stronger than the diffusion of the doctrine

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itself: if traditional historiography associates it with the name of master Siger of Brabant, we are

today more prudent about the existence of a “Latin averroist party” in the University of Paris,

and we’re not sure that someone supported that doctrine in the 13th century. But we find revivals

of this doctrine, for example in Northern Italy in the 15th century, always under the name of

Averroes (the “Paduan averroism”).

Averroes explicitly refuted such a doctrine. In one of his works, the Fasl al-Maqāl (the

Decisive speech), he even aims at demonstrating that a philosophical exegesis of the Quran is not

only possible, but also required by the Quran itself. The only limit to this deep unity of faith and

reason is education: ignorant people can only understand the clear verses of the Quran, and

should not try to understand philosophical explanations. That’s why Averroes is often presented,

in very superficial way, as a forerunner of Spinoza. He isn’t, of course: philosophical

interpretation, that is necessary to explain the difficult verses of the Sacred Text, can never

oppose the literal meaning of the clear verses. He doesn’t propose an esoterical-philosophical

reading of the Quran. On the contrary, reason and revelation lead to the same results.

Nevertheless, in the western middle Ages, his name was synonymous with “double truth”

and this gave birth to his black legend. Averroes, in fact, has not always been so popular in the

West; he was indeed, for a long time, the symbol of error and blasphemy, and I think these two

opposed opinions are based on the same misunderstanding about his position on truth. In the

Middle Ages, the philosophical and theological opposition to the double truth doctrine became

mere slander: Averroes would have considered Moses, Jesus and Muhammad as “three

impostors”, in a very famous but never written Treatise of the Three Impostors (in the 18th century,

anonymous authors finally wrote it, in several different versions), also attributed to the emperor

Frederick II, Machiavelli, Spinoza...

But during the 19th century, scholars like the French Ernest Renan saw him as an ancestor

of the freethought movement, a forerunner of secular humanism. His reputation as a blasphemer

became an asset, the trump card to his rehabilitation. But I think it was more than the

glorification of an atheist: the West recognized in him, and still does, the way it chose to deal with

religious intolerance.

We could simplify the history of the western model of tolerance after the wars of religion

in Europe. Locke explained that religious beliefs were not worth fighting for, while until then

they were the only ideas you could fight for. Then Spinoza distinguished the philosophical truth

from its theological (which means mythological) expression: truth became not only double, but

the two truths are also hierarchized. Kant gave a clear basis for this separation, when he rejected

religious truth from the possibilities of human knowledge, from the domain of pure reason, and

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set it in the field of practical reason. We know how he defended his work: “I had to deny

knowledge in order to make room for faith”; he meant indeed that religious beliefs were only a

question of faith, and not of reasonable reflection. After that, it becomes absurd to discuss

religious dogmas, because their truth is only subjective, not rational. We have here the foundation

of secularism – not State “laïcité”, but secularism of the civil society. Faith becomes a private

matter. The only way to talk about it in public is testimony (“that’s what I feel, that’s what I

believe”), but a public debate on these topics is impossible, because it is no longer under the

control of reason. Religious beliefs are like the family of your friends: you have to respect them

and you can’t argue about them. It doesn’t mean that your belief is false, but that it can’t be true

or false: it’s true because you believe it. It’s true, but you can’t claim that your belief is truer than

mine. I believe that God is One in three Persons; you believe He is only One and certainly not in

three Persons. We could argue for a while but in the end, as no one has a direct and available

experience of what we’re talking about, we will only lose ourselves in reasoning and cannot come

to a conclusion. So it’s better not to talk about it and to respect each other’s belief, at least as a

possible truth, or a subjective truth (just like mine is). Then, obviously, when I consider my belief

in that way, I can’t fight for it anymore.

This privatization of religious beliefs, based on a distinction between a rational truth (that

comes from experience and is in the field of rational speech) and a subjective truth (it’s what you

feel, and I have to respect it), created in the West a real and efficient model of religious tolerance,

with very few religious persecutions or fights, with equal rights for everyone whatever they think

and believe, and I would certainly not deny its historical virtues. But I also think it has reached

some of its limits.

In a novel he wrote in 2004, the French polygraph Jacques Attali drew Averroes’s portrait

as a wise philosopher whose doctrine is strangely very similar to Spinoza’s. Attali clearly aims to

show his readers a way to religious tolerance: if the believers could stop believing that their own

dogmas are objective truths, and accepted to consider them just as subjective truths, outside the

field of rational discussion, everything would be fine. But Attali doesn’t seem to notice that he

proposes, through the myth of al-Andalus, precisely the modern model of religious tolerance in

the West, based on the eviction of religious beliefs outside the field of common discussion. The

problem is not the anachronism (of course, his novel has nothing to do with history of medieval

Spain), but I think a myth is useful when it helps you to say something new, not to repeat what

everyone has said for more than two hundred years. And if you have to defend again and again

your model, it means that your model may have a problem.

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Attali’s point is about Europe today, and the possibility of religious tolerance on the part

of Islam and towards Islam. Islam has to accept that its beliefs are subjective truths, just like most

Christians or Jews have already done in the West, and all our problems will be over. He doesn’t

say what we have to do if Muslims do not accept to adopt that strange way of believing. And he

doesn’t see that his solution is actually part of the problem. Eviction of religious beliefs outside

the field of reason has indeed three unfortunate side effects.

1. Through lack of confrontation with reason, believers are more likely to accept fideism,

anti-rational religious attitudes and maybe complete nonsense. Giving a rational account, and not

only a testimony, of your religious beliefs is an excellent exercise against nonsense; without it, you

are more vulnerable to sectarian movements or to violent activism. Reason gives you a

framework. I fear that the world wide popularity of movements like Pentecostalism in

Christianity or the Salafi movements in Islam is linked to this disconnection with reason. When

religion becomes only a question of faith, it can be dangerous, and for religion in particular. And

I’m not really sure that this acceptance of nonsense in the field of religion is the best way to reach

tolerance or respect.

2. If religious beliefs are only a question of subjective truth, that has nothing to do with

logics, they deserve unconditional respect – a respect that does not depend on their meaning or

merit. But do I really respect someone when I think his action or belief is complete nonsense,

and I don’t tell him? In such a case, wouldn’t a rational discussion be a more respectful attitude?

3. Outside the field of reason, religion becomes merely a question of identity. Of course it

is! I know that, if I’m a Roman Catholic, it has much to do with the fact that I was born in

France, and not in Afghanistan. The problem begins when religion leads to an introverted

assertion of one’s identity. It no longer has any connection with my relationship to God, but only

with myself or with my group. Here, religious membership is not a choice anymore (a choice that

can be the acceptation of the tradition you have received from your parents), but a fact you have

to respect as such, exactly as you have to respect the fact that I’m gay or bald. When it’s a choice,

we can argue about it (Why are you an atheist? Why are you Muslim? But also, why are you a

vegetarian?); but you won’t argue about a fact. Outside the field of reason, religion becomes

identity, and once again I’m not sure that’s the best way to reach tolerance.

Does all this mean that the myth of al-Andalus has to be abandoned? It would be a

mistake: in my opinion, medieval Spain can show us ways to cope with these problematics.

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Another great Andalusian thinker, the polymath Ibn Hazm who was born in Cordova at

the very end of the 10th century, was confronted with forerunners of our modern model of

tolerance. He gives us the names of two Jewish doctors, who seemed to have preached radical

scepticism: in religious speeches, the pieces of evidence cancel each other out and in the end, you

can’t decide which positive religion is the right one. Ibn Hazm says that, in a debate with one of

them, he concluded: “So, you can convert to Islam, if you don’t think your religion is better.” But

the Jewish doctor, Ismael, refused, because: “To change your religion is a bad joke.” The

argument seems very weak, but Ismael explains his point of view: Judaism and Islam are only

singular expressions of universal religion. You have to stay in the religion you were born in: God

decided that you will worship him in that way, so changing your religion would mean refusing

God’s will. Unfortunately, Ismael did not explain what you had to do if you were born in an

atheist family; is atheism part of this universal religion? We don’t know. But for him, as Ibn

Hazm demonstrates, religion was not a question of faith or opinion, but of identity, so it’s useless

to talk about it. On the contrary, says Ibn Hazm! We have to talk about it! And so he did. He was

a politician, a jurist, a commentator of the Quran, but his main works are devoted to

interreligious polemics. In that way, I think he belongs to the real Andalusian model of tolerance,

which is extremely different from ours: it is not based on religious indifference or consideration

of religious truth as a second-rank truth, but on the extreme importance of religious truth. You

can see it in three closely connected fields: conversions, translations and polemics.

The anecdote told by Ibn Hazm touches an important point of the history of medieval

Spain: religious conversion is an extremely frequent topic. Through historical sources, we meet

many people who changed their religion, and not only in one direction, and not only according to

the political circumstances, when a city became Muslim or Christian because of a military

conquest. It seems that medieval Spain was a place where people could consider changing

religion, even if that would have separated them from their own family, from their own group. I

am aware of the social and political meaning of many conversions, but it is also a sign that the

search for truth was a great concern in medieval Spain, and that religion was not merely

considered as a part of one’s identity.

Another sign of this great interest about religious truth was the importance of translation.

We all know that medieval Spain played an important role, even greater than Sicily, in the wave of

translations that brought Arab science (medicine, astronomy, mathematics…) and Arab

philosophy to Europe, and through it, it also brought a better knowledge of Greek philosophy.

Even if some scholars, for ideological reasons, over-evaluated the importance of this Islamic

transmission in European philosophy, whoever is used to reading medieval theology knows that,

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when Thomas Aquinas speaks about “the philosophers”, he doesn’t refers to the Greeks, but to

the Arabs. But the aim of these translations was not merely to transmit useful knowledge like

medicine or philosophy: religious Islamic texts, and namely the Quran itself, were also translated

from Arabic into Latin. The city of Toledo, after it was taken from the Moors by the king of

Castile (1085), remained a great cultural centre: the Arab libraries were not pillaged, and on the

contrary many of these books were translated into Latin during the 12th century by a real school

of translators, whose first appointed director was Domingo Gundisalvo, a converted Jew who

became archdeacon of Segovia. It involved several teams of translators, with Muslims, Jews and

Christians, in order to understand and translate the major library in the West. Tolerant politics

from the king of Castile made such a thing possible.

During this period, in 12th-century Toledo, the Quran was translated into Latin at least

twice. One of these translations was commissioned by Petrus Venerabilis (Peter the Venerable),

abbot of most powerful French abbey of Cluny: he organized a team to complete the first

western translation of the sacred book of the Muslims, but also of other religious Islamic texts.

He explained, in a letter, the purpose of his project: the Crusades were meaningless if the

Christians could not refute Islam; and no one could do it, because no one even knew what Islam

was. The first step was to invest in knowledge; polemics would come later.

Of course, this project is not a model of scientific neutrality and I don’t say we should

imitate it. But it was very new, because, until then, the refutation of Islam was merely the

repetition of old arguments, mainly from texts by Saint John of Damascus. Now the idea was to

listen to the Muslims themselves, not to apply to them definitions built without them. It’s an

anthropological revolution in the field of relationships with “the others”: to accept that you don’t

know who they are and to ask them how they talk about themselves, instead of telling them who

they are (because, of course, you know better). This is a far cry from indifference towards the

question of truth! Even if he was certain that his religion was true, Peter the Venerable wanted to

understand how other people could not agree with it; his own faith, his own certainty did not

quench his curiosity for other ways of thinking. And for many centuries, this translation (which

was printed after the Reformation in Switzerland, by Buchmann, also known as Bibliander) was

the only way to read the Quran in Europe, even if it’s not a perfect translation, even if it was

made with a polemical purpose.

But Andalusia may show us that polemics can be positive. In these Border States, the

local authorities – Muslim or Christian – often organized public disputationes, between

representatives of the three Abrahamic religions, in order to find the best one. I am not naïve

enough to idealize such debates: of course, most of the time, they were just like box matches

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where people come to support their champion; the communities were not there to listen to

rational arguments. And even if it was the case for some people, we all know that a public and

polemical debate is not the best way to search for the truth: it will favour sophistic or theatrical

skills much more than honesty and depth. Nevertheless, as we have to find another hero, another

“good guy” after our disappointment with Averroes, I would choose him – or rather them,

because there are two of them: one is Muslim, the other one is Christian – in that polemical field.

I don’t know if I can call them “good guys”; even if both of them were great poets, in Arabic or

in Catalan, they were also fierce polemists and probably no one in their time would have said they

might be models of tolerance.

I’ve just mentioned Ibn Hazm of Cordova, one of the most brilliant minds of Islamic

Spain, who wrote many books on many topics (he is thought to be the second most prolific

author in Muslim history, with more than 400 works) at the beginning of the 11th century. His

style is well-known as abrasive, often aggressive toward all those (and they are many) he disagrees

with, be they fellow academics or government officials. He never fears to insult them, and we can

understand why, after his death, his (Muslim) enemies managed to have his works burned in

Seville. Of course I understand how strange it is to talk about this master of invective, especially

against Jews and Christians, when we are speaking about tolerance. But tolerance is not

necessarily gentle and kind.

What was Ibn Hazm’s tolerance, then? In order to demonstrate that Islam was the only

true religion, he did not just insult the other faiths: he studied them very accurately, and that is, in

a way, a mark of respect. Respect is for the persons, not for the doctrines; and you respect

someone when you accept to argue with him about what he thinks, when you think he’s wrong.

Polemics can be far more respectful than polite indifference, when it’s well informed polemics.

And Ibn Hazm’s polemics well extremely well informed. He wrote a kind of polemical

Encyclopaedia (called Fisal, Detailed critical Examination) against Judaism, Christianity and what he

considered as Muslim heresies. For the first time, Ibn Hazm was able to defend the thesis of the

falsification of the Bible with arguments based on the Bible itself: in order to demonstrate that

Jews and Christians had deliberately modified their Sacred Scriptures to make them more

convenient, he pointed out the contradictory passages or those which he deemed completely

nonsensical. According to him, if you believe the Bible, it means that you have no morality, or no

common sense.

That’s not very kind of him, and you feel all the time, when you read him, the self-

confidence of a civilized person talking about barbarians. It may not be very kind of him, but Ibn

Hazm was doing his job: he tried to understand and then to answer. He did not just repeat old

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arguments: he personally read the Bible, even some theological works, which forced his

adversaries to work hard if they wanted to be able to answer. He pointed out real problems, real

difficulties. We are far from a sophistic debate. If all interreligious discussions were of this

quality, they could even be more aggressive: they would still be extremely interesting. There is a

difference between the sort of debates you can read on Internet forums, where ignorant people

exchange insults in order to reassure themselves about their own identity beliefs, and a real and

constructive controversy. I think both of them were present in medieval Spain. Maybe we should

have in mind that the second option is possible.

My point is that you can be tolerant (or better: respectful towards people) and believe that

there is only one truth, and only one religious truth, and that your religious faith gives you access

to this unique truth; you can be respectful and think, consequently, that the believers of other

religions are wrong; you can be respectful and even try to convince them that you are right and

they are wrong. It may seem impossible according to our modern conception of tolerance, but I

think this real and deep respect can be expressed in two ways:

1. Making efforts to understand. It takes time, but these efforts are marks of a greater respect

than considering the faiths of the “others” as taboos you can’t discuss about and do not even try

to understand.

2. Reasoning with “the others”, even if you quarrel. Reason is our only common ground: when

we accept to meet, even to fight on that ground, we recognize our common humanity. In a real

controversy, I acknowledge that my adversary is my equal. When we deny reason the right to

question the religious beliefs of others, we create separate humankinds.

An alternative Andalusian model, based on translations and polemics, could be more

tolerant than a model based on inaccessibility of truth. We have a positive example of it in a

strange book written by Ramon Llull, The Book of the Gentile and the Three Wise Men. Ramon, born

in Majorca in 1232, was a knight and a poet who wrote love poems, who was a familiar of the

king of Aragon James II. He had a mystical experience and decided to leave his wife, his children

and his successful life to devote himself to the conversion of Muslims. Then began a strange life;

first of all, he studied extensively: philosophy, Christian theology, but also Islamic theology and

Arabic. He wrote a lot of books, in particular his Abbreviated Art of Finding Truth, where he says he

has a method to distinguish truth from mistake – a very complex mechanism based on a personal

use of Aristotelian logics. The purpose of his system was, of course, to demonstrate the truth of

Christian faith and the error of Muslim faith. He tried to organize schools of missionaries on this

basis, but most of the time, in Europe, his exaltation made people take him for a mad man.

Raymundus phantasticus, “Raymond the fool”, was one of his nicknames, just like Arabicus christianus

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(because of his perfect command of Arabic) or “the bearded Philosopher”, philosophus barbatus.

He became a missionary himself, and tried to argue against the errors of the Quran in the very

heart of the Tunis sūq. “The Christian Law is blessed and perfect”, he shouted there, “while the

Muslim Law doesn’t make sense. And I can demonstrate it!” Even in such a situation, his main

concern was to use his reason and “help” everyone to use it. But he was not successful: no one

wanted to discuss with him, and he was only arrested, locked up in the latrines of the prison of

Tunis and then expelled to Aragon. He went back several times to Islamic countries but never

found anyone to discuss with. We don’t even know if he converted a single Muslim in his whole

life.

A few years after his visions and his own conversion, he wrote his first book, The Book of

the Gentile and the Three Wise Men, which is different from his other works: most of them are

polemics, while this one is a fictional dialogue. But he didn’t seem to think these two forms were

contradictory.

Three wise men are good friends, even if one of them is a Jew, the second one a Christian

and the third one a Muslim (a Saracen); they are together when they receive a visit from Lady

Wisdom, who gives them advice about the way to look for truth. They are still discussing about

these gifts on the sudden arrival of a Gentile, a pagan, who’s desperate because he fears death.

They talk together, and they decide to demonstrate to this Gentile the existence of God and the

resurrection. They give him a lot of evidence, and we don’t even know, when reading the book,

which wise man is talking: they all agree about these truths. The Gentile is very impressed and is

convinced of the existence of God and eternal life. He’s so happy he’s discovered faith that he

wants to convert all his friends, who are pagans of course. “How can I do that?”, he asks. But the

wise men answer that, first of all, he has to follow a religion. The Gentile is very surprised: he

discovers that these wise men who agreed about such important things do not belong to the

same religion. Which one should he convert to? That is the question…

The three wise men propose to present their creeds successively, to enable him to choose

which religion seems the best. They also decide not to interrupt each other: only the Gentile can

ask questions during the three presentations; it’s not a polemical debate, but an honest exposition

of the three religions.

With necessary reasons, the Jew demonstrates God’s unity, the revelation of the divine

Law to Moses and the coming of the Messiah … Then the Christian demonstrates the Trinity

and the Incarnation. And in the end, the Saracen demonstrates that Muhammad is a prophet and

the Quran is a divine book. The Gentile listens to all of them very carefully and asks many

questions; and then, he says that he can see the truth clearly: he has no doubt; he knows which of

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these religions is the true one. He’s about to tell them which one it is, when he sees two of his

friends who are pagans. He wants to convert them and says to the wise men: “I’ll go to them and

I shall bring them back, so I can tell you which religion I’ve chosen.” But during his absence, the

three wise men decide not to wait for him and not to know which one of them has won the

debate. As a matter of fact, they have enjoyed this moment and want it to go on: they decide to

meet every day, until they find together whose religion is the true one. In the end, the reader is

like the wise men: he doesn’t know which religion has been chosen.

This book is an initiatory tale and a dialogue at the same time. Even if it’s written by a

Christian, it’s very well informed about the other religions. At least for Islam, the main elements

of the Islamic creed are exposed and demonstrated by classical Islamic evidence. But the tale is

more than a handbook of comparative religion; it teaches you many important things about

interreligious dialogue. I would point only two of them:

- the importance of silence. The wise men decide to let each one talk without interrupting him.

The beginning of the discussion has to be this attentive silence. But for that, first of all, I have to

accept that I don’t understand. I don’t understand who you are, what you think, and my only

chance to understand is to listen to you. As the book of ben Sirach says, “an attentive ear is the

wise man’s desire” (Sir 3, 29). In order to write this well-informed book, Ramon had to sit down

and listen to Jewish and Muslim masters for a while.

- the acceptance of diversity. At first, religious diversity seems to be a catastrophe: the Gentile

is desperate and the wise men are quite embarrassed. It was so perfect when they agreed! But

now, the harmony is broken: we are in the field of reality, where several positive religions exist.

Our wise men never try to keep up their initial agreement artificially: they listen to each other,

without looking for a common position on the basis of the greatest common divisor. They do

not decide that what they believe in common would be truer, or the expression of a universal

religion. On the contrary, they organize a fair but real competition between them, a competition

which is not the abolition of their personal opinions or their fusion in a neutral “us”, but the

affirmation of their personal creed. Even if they are exquisitely polite towards each other, this

affirmation creates a confrontation, which contains a form of violence. But at the same time, by

choosing to listen to each other, they refuse another form of violence: a violence that would

neutralize the dialogue and cancel all kind of diversity in the name of a pre-established common

truth. Dialogue will be based on reciprocal listening, which is very different from agreement.

Syncretism might seem to be a far more tolerant solution. Looking for a deeper unity

between the three religions could be a way to conciliate the three wisdoms and to cancel the

failure of religious diversity. Nevertheless, the three wise men refuse to adopt this solution, and I

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think that is why they are really wise and tolerant. They refuse to follow a syncretic direction: this

tale is thus a kind of anti-Nathan the Wise, its exact contrary.

It underlines that looking for a deeper and syncretic integration of the different religions

could still be a way to refuse diversity and turn it into unity. This kind of project doesn’t

acknowledge the weight of the differences: they are considered as superficial and worthless. But

on the contrary the real challenge of tolerance is to accept diversity, to accept that religious

dissents are real dissents, to accept that someone else can really think in a different way, can really

disagree with me. Syncretic thoughts bring us back to unity: at end of the day, you think like me,

we are similar. From an intellectual point of view, this reduction to unity is violent because

dissent is no longer possible.

It echoes with my personal experience in the field of interreligious dialogue. I live in Cairo

and my priory is also a Research Institute, a team of scholars and researchers wishing to promote

a better understanding between Christians and Muslims, studying Islam through its primary

sources. I often realize that a major obstacle to dialogue comes when I think I already

understand. For example, Muslims and Christians share a lot of elements and it is often easier to

consider that we are similar. A mosque is a kind of church, an imām is a kind of priest, the Quran

is like the Bible and so on. This way of thinking makes understanding impossible: I’ll never know

what a mosque is, what an imām is and how a Muslim considers the Quran. In order to

understand, distinction is always more constructive than analogy. Analogy can even lead to a

form of intolerance! If I think I understand what Muslim prayer is, because I know what

Christian prayer is, I will claim to know what is important in it and what is irrelevant. In

particular, I will say that it’s too legalistic and not spiritual enough. I will be tempted to decide

what a good Muslim prayer is, according to my own beliefs. I will consider the legal ablutions

irrelevant, because there is nothing in Christianity like ritual purity, or I will interpret them in a

hygienist way: in both cases, I have not understood anything.

Furthermore, we also share great figures in both traditions. Abraham, Jacob, Moses,

David and Salomon are present in the Quran and in the Bible. Jesus is a very important character

in both books. People often think it can be an asset in interreligious dialogue, but it is not: on the

contrary, they are “false friends”, as when you learn a language and find a word is similar to a

word in your own language, but with a completely different meaning. On reading the Quran, you

will see that Abraham was mostly an anti-idolatry activist, while in the Bible he’s never involved

in polemics against idolatry. From a literary point of view, they are two different characters. If we

write a common text saying “We are all sons of Abraham”, it sounds appealing, but it doesn’t

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mean the same thing for me and for a Muslim; not to mention Jesus, where the

misunderstandings can be much greater.

There is probably a more dangerous “false friend” in interreligious dialogue: the word

“God”. Do we worship the same God, as it is often said? I think this question doesn’t make

sense. Of course, I believe that there is only one God, and my Christian faith doesn’t have any

kind of monopoly on Him. I also believe that my prayers and the prayers of the Muslims are

delivered at the same address. From God’s point of view, He is the same. But we cannot speak

from His point of view, because we have no direct access to Him. When I say “God”, my aim is

to designate Him, but what I’m actually referring to is an image of God through the mediation of

His revelation. Can I say a priori that the biblical and the quranic revelations give the same image

of God? It would be reckless, and that would probably be a way for me to refuse to hear the

differences to be found in the Quran. That’s why I could not say that “we worship the same

God”.

By chance, accepting diversity is not an end in itself. Diversity is not a chiasm you can’t

cross. It doesn’t mean that we’ll never understand each other. It merely means that it will take a

long time but there is no other way. Rational tools can help us to understand each other. The

Andalusian model shows us how to conciliate the acceptance of diversity and the awareness of a

common rational ground.

Now we can understand why Ramon Llull doesn’t disclose the end of the debate. He

doesn’t mean that all religions are equal (on the contrary, he was a strong supporter of Christian

proselytism) but that the search for truth, which is the most respectful of human activities,

cannot merely end in a single discussion.

As I tried to show earlier, Andalusia is often used nowadays as a model of religious

peaceful coexistence, but on the basis of a misunderstanding. The price for tolerance would have

been the loss, or at least the weakening, of the concept of religious truth. This weakening has no

link with Andalusia; it comes from the original trauma of European modernity, the wars of

religion in the 16th century. We have become aware of the totalitarian potential of religious truth

and have understood that, if we want to live together in peace, we have to give up any claim to

know the truth – at least if we keep a strong realistic aristotelian-thomistic definition of truth

(adequatio rei et intellectus, first used by an Egyptian Jewish philosopher of the 10th century, Isaac

Israeli ben Solomon). It has become weaker and weaker when applied to religious truth: it cannot

be objective, because someone might think he’s right and someone else is wrong, and thus could

trigger new wars of religion.

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The link between a weak conception of religious truth and religious tolerance is now so

obvious that we can’t see that medieval Spain points out a different model. It is clear that in al-

Andalus, truth was not a secondary question, but probably the main concern. And it was not an

obstacle to a real convivencia, not based on unity or harmony but on discussion and debate, with a

strong awareness of sharing a unique humanity on the common ground of reason. It shows that a

strong and realistic definition of religious truth does not necessarily lead to violence: on the

contrary, it is the condition for a real acceptance of religious diversity as such, and for respectful

discussion where I take not only my religious beliefs seriously, but also the creeds of others.