Abstract

Islamic cultural and religious identity is one of the most contested topics in the modern world. Hardly a day goes by in which we do not hear about Muslims in conflict with ‘the West’, although many of them live in ‘the  West’ and have long sought an accommodation with ‘Western’ culture. At the same time, right-wing movements across the Europe and the Americas ardently affirm the need to protect ‘Western culture’ from Islamic influences. In all this, however, we often forget the shared heritage that unites the Abrahamic religions. The most important part of this shared heritage is the classical tradition, the works of Greek and (to a much lesser extant) Roman writers, who were eagerly read, dispassionately discussed, but also hotly contested in the Islamic world from the eighth to the twenty-first century.

Through a series of vignettes, this lecture tells the story of this encounter between Greek culture and Arabo-Islamic thought. It argues that Islam both as a religion and as a culture is as much heir to the classical tradition as our so-called ‘West’. And it show the role that both the classical heritage and classical scholarship played in the battle of Arabs and Muslims in their fight against colonial oppression and for independence.