Venice, 15 Sept. (AKI) - A leading Tunisian writer and Islamic analyst, Abdelwahab Meddeb, says there is a civil war going on within Islam, "where the battle involves not just weapons but above all ideas". Speaking in Venice where he was a guest at a conference organised by the Cini Foundation, Meddeb predicted that this ’civil war’ would not last more than a decade. "I am not a soldier and certainly not a terrorist but I am in the front line in this battle, along with many other intellectuals" Meddeb told Italian Catholic daily Avvenire .

"The extremist ideology of death is destined to failure. On the other hand the Islamism (extremist Islamic fundamentalism) is on a par with fascism" said Meddeb, who lives in Paris, where he teaches at the Paris X-Nanterre university.

Meddeb argues that the West is dangerously late in recognising that Islam is profoundly divided internally and that "a minority of fundamentalists has captured the majority and silenced it."

For Meddeb, who divides fundamentalism into two forms - terrorism and a much more widespread but less violent version - says the latter is by far the more dangerous.

"Inside and outside Islam there is one sole mission for political powers at various levels ; to struggle and fight to affirm the few ’enlightened’ ideas there are within Islam and make sure that fundamentalism does not take the majority of Muslims prisoner" he told Avvenire.

Referring to the absence within Islam of the Enlightenment - the secular movement which in the 18th and 19th century shifted the focus in Christian Europe from God to man - Meddeb says that as far back as the ninth and tenth centuries there was a ’secular’ challenge to Islam from science and medicine, but "unfortunately today Islam seems to have removed that current of thought."

On the challenges of multiculturalism in Europe, Meddeb noted that there were two very different but not contrasting models of integration - the British and the French - and that the best solution for Europe was "a middle way".

He also emphasised that Europe can play an important mediating role in the conflict between "Islamic fundamentalism and American neo-evangelism" as exemplified by president George W. Bush.

Source : adn kronos international