At Mont-Saint-Michel, Adrien Candiard gives “keys to understanding Islam”

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Adrien Candiard, author of several works on Islamology and Christian spirituality, is the guest of the Mont-Saint-Michel Foundation (Manche) for a conference on Islamthe Wednesday November 20, 2024at 6:30 p.m., at Ardevon Priory. The Dominican, who lives in Egypt, comes to shed his light on Islam and explain why it is complex.

Since the 2015 attacks, France has faced several Islamic terrorist attacks (Nice, Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, Samuel Paty, Dominique Bernard, etc.). Is Islam at war against Western societies and their ways of life?

It is obviously not all of Islam that considers itself to be at war against Western societies, but a certain number of violent movements that claim to be so. These movements, which we call “jihadists” because they refer to a very modern interpretation of the classic concept of holy war, are far from unanimous among Muslims! But their very existence, which is not anecdotal, is the sign of a serious crisis which has been affecting the Muslim world for several decades. An essential element of this crisis is the vitality of a modern movement, Salafism, which intends to reform traditional Islam, but in a more rigorous sense and hostile to modernity. This reform movement deeply destabilized the Muslim world; contemporary terrorism is, in part, an effect of this destabilization. But we must not give a theological explanation for everything! Many other factors, political or economic, also come into play in our complex contemporary realities.

“The Koran is in fact a very complex text, which necessarily needs to be interpreted (like most sacred texts, for that matter). And these interpretations diverge! »

What do you think is the true face of this religion? Does the Quran describe us as disbelievers?

Islam does not have a “real face”: it has thousands, millions, real faces, those of very different people who, in one way or another, claim to belong to this religion. There are so many ways to be Muslim! We often neglect the extreme diversity of Islam: cultural of course, but also theological and spiritual. Some Islams are worrying, others are peaceful: it is not up to us, from the outside, to judge what is Muslim or not. Islam is this diversity! We sometimes believe that it would be enough to open the Koran to be able to decide between them, to find which current is more authentically Muslim, but this is an illusion: the Koran is in fact a very complex text, which necessarily needs to be interpreted (like most sacred texts, moreover)… and these interpretations diverge!

Your conference is called “Understanding Islam”. What message do you want to send?

We often seek to pass judgment on Islam: is it violent, is it peaceful, is it good or bad, is it compatible with modernity, democracy and human rights? This is quite normal: it is an important phenomenon, which affects us in many ways. But before passing judgment, we must try to understand what we are talking about! My goal is not to tell people what they should think about Islam, but to give some keys to understanding to help them form a more nuanced and freer opinion.

You live in Cairo. How do Middle Eastern countries view our Western civilizations?

Unquestionably, the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East do not contribute to making the West popular in the Arab world, where many express the feeling of “double standards”: the West, which has allowed itself to Invading Iraq twenty years ago, cries out when Ukraine is attacked, but shows himself incapable of raising his voice against Israel. This speech would call for many nuances: Western societies are complex and full of debates. But this is also the case for Middle Eastern societies which, like ours, are not homogeneous: contradictory feelings are expressed towards the West, ranging from fascination to distrust.

Wednesday November 20, 2024, at 6:30 p.m., at the Priory of Mont-Saint-Michel (Ardevon). Price: €10/person – free for under 18s. Registration required – ticket office: https://my.weezevent.com/adrien-candiard. Book sale and signing.

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