Islam between East and West

Islam between East and West, by Alija Izetbegovic, Héritage Editions

“Islam between East and West” is not a book of theology. This work deals with the dogmas, institutions and teachings of Islam, with the aim of establishing and determining the place of Islam in the general spectrum of ideas. It is a look at Islam not from the inside, but from the outside. In this sense, the subject of the book is not primarily Islam as a teaching, but Islam as a worldview. This book consists of two parts. The first, entitled "Premises", deals with religion in general. The second part is devoted to Islam, or more precisely to one of its aspects: bipolarity.

Islam between East and West is a masterful work that will leave no reader interested in things of the mind indifferent. At the same time a remarkable work of multidisciplinary research, an overview of the history of humanity, a comparative study of the fundamental premises and the social, legal, political, cultural, psychological and even artistic consequences of the great competing ideologies of this world, this philosophical essay unique in its genre is unquestionably one of the most striking – and above all, original – works of contemporary Islamic thought.

If Alija Izetbegović dazzles with her impressive mastery of all the subjects covered, beyond the undeniable erudition of the author, it is above all a central thesis that is defended here in this approach revisited and reformulated in terms intelligible to the West of the Islamic tradition: that of Islam as a "middle way" between the two quite distinct worldviews of pure religion and materialism, which offer only partial answers to the big questions of life and existence.

Conversely, Islam, by its integral essence, fully embraces the nature of Man in all its bipolarity and in all its aspects: consciousness and matter, soul and body, spirituality and nature. , thought and practice, culture and civilisation, this world and the next. By this intellectual and concrete synthesis of the best of the two rival traditions, therefore, Islam sublimates the oppositions and proves to be the best response to this innate human duality - the only conception capable of resolving all the contradictions which form the philosophical basis of the moral and cultural crisis of the modern world.