How many roads are there for Europe?

How many roads are there for Europe?

By Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

An excellent article entitled "Il n' y aura pas d' Europe sans Europe de la Culture" (There will be no Europe without Cultural Europe) by Regis Turrini (Liberation, 4 August: http://www.libe.com/page.php?Article=315346) was the motivation of the present considerations.

European Confusion and False Debates

Following the French and Dutch referenda, and pending the beginning of the negotiations with Turkey, Europe – with the exception of few – seems disoriented. Engulfed into traditional and long debates on the Common Agricultural Policies, the British rebate, and other financial and political issues, European politicians, statesmen, academia and intellectuals proceed now in a way that is diametrically opposed to the way of thinking of the – let's call them like that – Fathers of Europe, namely Jean Monnet, Maurice Schumann, and others. Today's European elite fail to 'think big' and even worse they fail to understand that there is no real opposition between 'little step' and 'great vision'. Yet, without this state of spirit and thought, without little steps made in the direction of a great vision, Europe would not have been created so far. And Great Vision relates to Culture, not to the 'microcosm' of the technocrats, the administrators and the bureaucrats.

European Union is a matter of Culture

Edgar Morin specified first that 'Europe is a cultural notion'. And Regis Turrini adds: 'We can move to any region of Italy or Germany without feeling foreign. In Eastern Europe, we do not feel disorientated as we do in India and China. Tallinn in Estonia and Vilnius in Lithuania, that's Europe'.

Of course, what 'Cultural' Europe is, has been, should or can be, this is a matter of debate. And after so many decades, we have people like Thierry de Montbrial realizing that, although we have been engaged in making Europe, we still have to start making 'the Europeans'. There have been reasons for all that; with the European continent divided until as recently as 1991, there was no real purpose in focusing on an all-encompassing 'Union'. De Gaulle's words about a future Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals were thought to be farfetched, too bold, and somewhat extravagant.

Speaking about the Cultural Identity of Europe, we come immediately to understand that there may be many approaches to the historical facts, and various interpretations, which therefore lead to very different concepts of the European Culture. If we asked a 13th century Dominican monk about Europe, and took his answer for granted, we would automatically exclude the largest part of Europe, disregarding the Eastern Roman Christian Orthodox and the Andalusian Islamic cultures. The European horizons of a Medieval Christian intellectual were very limited. By identifying Catholic Christianity with Europe, these intellectuals would deprive the continent from the wealth of other cultures.

European overseas expansion

The rise of European colonialism with Spain and Portugal first led to an unbelievable European expansion overseas. The result of this movement was the diffusion of Western European culture in other faraway parts of the world. We would be keen to admit that today there are more things in common between England and New Zealand, Spain and Venezuela, France and Canada, than between the aforementioned three European states and Turkey, Ukraine, and/or Russia.

European Colonialism and Orientalism

When the West Indies were divided among the Western colonial powers, with Spain, Portugal, France, Holland and England controlling all the landmass between Greenland and Tierra del Fuego, the overseas antagonism turned towards Asia, Africa and what we call the Middle East. Four Islamic countries were then in control of all the explored areas between the Atlantic and Indonesia: the kingdom of Morocco, the Ottoman Empire, the Safevid Empire of Iran, and the Mogul Empire of India. The two former were involved in quasi-continuous strife with various European states, but the Ottoman Empire controlled – on Euroepan soil – larger area than any other European country.

But it would be over-simplistic to view everything through the viewpoint of the confrontation. Exchanges and cooperation were frequent if not more regular than wars between the Christian and the Islamic states of Europe. This has been repeatedly illustrated by eminent European scholars like Fernand Braudel; despite their religious differences in the year 1500, there were more things in common between Venice and Istanbul than between Venice and Moscow or Venice and Stockholm.

Napoleon's expedition to Egypt and the rise of the Oriental disciplines of the Humanities led the European intellectual life to an academic – political impasse. Diametrically opposed to what the Humanities had been for three or even four centuries before the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, Orientalism was not any more the Search of the Historically True, but a fabricated series of Disciplines that would further develop and expand without shaking the foundations of the Greco-Romano-centrism that had risen to power at the times of Classicism (17th century).

The following oxymoron was therefore produced throughout the centuries: when Europe sought its roots and the knowledge of the Antiquity (at the times of Renaissance), the approach was characterized by a humanist philosophical background, and all subjects were dealt with in terms of fairness and impartiality. The truth (so disturbing for the medieval monks) had to be read aloud! When Europe sought the roots of the Mankind and more precisely the knowledge of the Great Oriental Antiquity (at the times of Romanticism), inequity and discrimination were introduced into the research, and 'annoying' truths (proving that the Ancient Greek civilization was neither the older nor original but the Ancient Greeks were influenced in all sectors from Philosophy and Literature to Democracy and other political concepts) had to be kept under silence. Contrarily to Classical Studies, the Oriental disciplines, like Egyptology, Assyriology, etc. had to adjust findings according to the preconceived scheme of Colonial History that stipulated the Anteriority and the Superiority of the Western World!

Suddenly, unexpectedly and paradoxically, for the needs of this falsification, the World was divided into 'East' and 'West', with the former representing whatever backward, obscurantist and retrospective. When an Oriental civilization left marvels superior to the Greco-Roman antiquities, the European colonial historians presented the achievement as an isolated point that did not influence later cultures. The falsified divide was provocatively imposed in the colonized lands where indigenous peoples were taught a most erroneous and vicious, discriminatory and perverse dogma. Colonialism led to Islamic fanaticism and extremism, but this only corroborates the belief that we cannot afford to use the Colonial Greco-Romano-centrist viewpoint anymore – and even more so when we attempt to define the European Culture.

Today, there are basically two approaches to European Culture, Identity-making, and political unification.

European Culture according to the Greco-Romano-centrism

This approach leads to isolating Europe from three genuinely European states, namely Turkey, Ukraine and Russia, and two genuinely European cultures, i.e. European Islam and Eastern Roman Christian Orthodoxy. Closely following the aberrational division 'East' vs. 'West', this approach has deep routes in a false perception of Ancient Greece, Herodotus and Thucydides. It will generate a direct confrontation with the world of the Middle East, it will push Turkey towards the radical Islam, and it will generate in Moscow the temptation of flirting (in view of an eventual control) the radical Islam. This is the blind way of Valery Giscard d' Estaing and other European fellows for whom Turkey's adhesion to the EU would signify the end of EU; mostly irrelevant, this approach generates civil wars since the model chosen is the Civil War in Ancient Greece.

If this is followed, fortress Europe will be further engulfed in counterproductive and self-destructive concepts, such as opposition to the US, economic protectionism, perpetuation of colonial structures in Asia and Africa, and will ultimately be led to a split in two axes, France and Germany vs. England and Poland. China, India, and Brazil will be challenges impossible to face, and the Chamberlain – Dalladier tactics of appeasement pursued with respect to Islamic terrorism will bring about the Twilight of the Old Continent.

European Culture according to Post-Colonial viewpoint

If the European Search for Identity and Culture follows an unbiased method, Europe will gradually, properly and adequately incorporate Turkey, Ukraine and Russia. The bogus division 'East' and 'West' will end because a multicultural environment will be set up. Alexander the Great, Octavian and Justinian will be the direct models, and this would be the only way for an empire starting in Lisbon and ending in Vladivostok. This state would pursue a very firm policy and ultimately eradicate the phenomenon of Islamic Terrorism by imposing the M. K. Ataturk (Kemalist) ideology and by applying the Turkish secular Muslim social, cultural and educational experience throughout the Muslim World. With the Colonial ideology dismantled and with universalist aspirations, Imperial Europe will be in control of the Middle East and Africa, linking to its vast territory China, India and Oceania as periphery. By promoting communications and interactions among all the parts of the 4-continental milieu, Europe will become the center of the world, avoiding any useless confrontation with the US.

This is the dilemma that stands today in front of Europe: approach life by the path of virtue (Arete) or the path of vice (Kakia). In the Ancient Greek Myth, the mythical hero Heracles (Greek embodiment of the archetypal Assyrian – Babylonian Gilgamesh, with an amalgamation of narrative elements of the Hittite Telipinus) preferred the difficult road that Arete offered instead of the easy one by 'Kakia'. Today, European politicians, statesmen, academia and intellectuals know very well that it will be very difficult for Europe's 25 to incorporate gradually Turkey, Ukraine and Russia.

But this is the road of Arete.