FAMOUS CATALAN HISTORIAN PROF. JOSEPH FONTANA: THERE WAS NO ISLAMIC TERRORISM BEFORE 1945, AND THAT YOU SHOULD LOOK AT IT AS A RESPONSE TO THE EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN TERRORISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST.
BY RABİA ALBAYRAK
I talked with Prof. Joseph Fontana about Middle East, Ottaman Empire and Islamophobia… Ready for the flash answers from famous Catalan historian!
Today, many alternative viewpoints began to emerge instead of a Eurocentric historiography. (Such as the claim that America was discovered by the Chinese.) Do you regard this as a positive trend?
We have today a good historiography that has nothing to do with “Eurocentrism”, with trends such as “world history” or “big history”, and authors like Victor Lieberman, David Abulafia, etc. I strongly recommend a wonderful and little known book of Asian history, by L. N. Gumilev, that we published, translated from the Russian, some years ago. But I would not say that the Chinese discovered America; the Americans did. And what we have to do is to study the American civilizations before the conquest, that gave us as important contributions such as maize and potatoes, which are not “natural”, but the product of a long cultural evolution.
To what extent did the European historians remain loyal to the principle of objectivity?
A historian can be objective, or not, whether European or African or born anywhere. The difference has nothing to do with the birthplace. You speak of Europe like a “nation”, a living reality. Europe has never existed in this sense. In the past there was the “Christianity”; after that, the “West”. The European Union is a political entity that does not engender a sense of identity. Nobody feels “European”, as I believe you do not feel “Asian”.
How come the Church, which tortured and impaled those who disaccorded with it, those who were different and those who were labeled as ‘infidels, heretics, abettors of the devil’ just because they were born as females, has today become the apostle of tolerance?
The Christian churches are only tolerant when the civil power does not allow them to be intolerant. As I think do most churches, of any faith. Tolerance began in Europe with the Enlightenment, and we still have not enough of it.
Only those who take part in the European Project in body and soul are accepted as true Europeans. Given the fact that Ottoman Empire ruled over Europe for hundreds of years, when and for what reason was Ottoman Empire rendered as an “eastern barbarian”?
The problem is not when the Ottoman Empire was considered eastern, because it was, and is, eastern, in a geographic sense, as is Russia, but when the term eastern, or oriental, acquired the connotation of backward. About the reasons for that qualification there is a huge literature, starting with the old book of Edward Said, with which I only partially agree.
Does Europe continue to keep a barrier referred to as “The Great Wall of Europe” –with reference to the Great Wall of China- against the marginalized (the other)?
A wall that is now higher than ever, to keep out the poor of other parts of the world, after having contributed to impoverish them.
What are Muslim contributions to Europe? Could you give some examples? Why did Europe disregard these contributions?
There are many, and very important, contributions that Muslims brought to Europe: some were typical of the Islamic civilization, others came from a Greek science that Christian Europe had forgotten, and others still had their origin in India or China; but they would not have arrived without the Islamic mediation. The items included are as important as some plant species, agricultural irrigation techniques, or some scientific elements as important as the introduction of a new numbering -what is often call “Arabic numerals” or “Indian numbers”- without which it would not have been possible the development of modern science.
What are your opinions on Islamophobia in Europe?
Islamophobia is usually justified by the identification of Islam with Islamic terrorism. What people does not usually notice is that there was no Islamic terrorism before 1945, and that you should look at it as a response to the European and American terrorism in the Middle East. But I think that no terrorism –Islamic, Jewish or Christian- must be admitted.
Europe and the European Civilization experience an economically and culturally tumultuous period? What should Europe do and what should it avoid now?
Ask never a historian about the future. No one knows better that prophecies usually fail. The most serious problems we have today affect us all: the rising inequality that threatens to impoverish the majority, the environmental and climatic crisis, etc. If there seems to be a hope for change today I think you should seek it in Latin America, with its evolution towards greater equality and greater integration of the indigenous population. Whatever you call Europe, and I call the European Union, does not go exactly this way. Look at Greece.
You stated in your book that the spirit of the crusades not only distorted our notions with regard to the Muslims but also to the Eastern Christianity. Could you further elaborate on this topic?
This is an issue that would require a lengthy explanation. The Church of Rome used the concept of orthodoxy in a political sense. It not only was used to exclude Asiatic Christian churches, as the Nestorian, but inside the Christianity against all those who wanted to practice their faith outside the control of the authorities, civil and ecclesiastical. Do not forget that there were also internal crusades, like the directed against the Cathars.
What are your opinions about the massacres in Palestine today considering that these massacres are incurred by Israel, whose people were discriminated against and massacred many times by the Europeans?
I’ve expressed my condemnation of the policy of the state of Israel against the Palestinians in a book –“Por el bien del imperio”- and I’ve always tried to clarify that I am “anti-Zionist” but not “anti-Semitic”. Some of my intellectual references -like Spinoza, Heine, Marx and Walter Benjamin- were Jews; but I do not think any of them had approved the political conduct of Israel.
P.S: Turkish version published at Derin Tarih history magazine. (February 2015)
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