"Atheism will never understand the very nature of art, and religion will never understand science... There are atheists who have morals, but you will never find an atheistic system that is built on morality." "Good and evil are within man... There are two kinds of justice: man's and God's, the first looking at deeds and the other at the essence of human being... The body in prayer can follow the movement of the soul." These are some quotes from the book "Islam between East and West" authored by Alija Izetbegović, the Bosnian Islamic thinker and philosopher who grew up under a brutal communist regime during the authoritarian era of the former Yugoslav Federation. He was arrested after he nearly finished the book, where he could not insert the reference section. He was sentenced to five years in prison for his Islamic activism. His generation was trapped between the official atheism, the Croatian Catholicism, and the Serbian Orthodoxy. He was concerned about the Islamic identity where the Muslims of Bosnia were surrounded emotionally and culturally by atheism which was taught in schools. In 1990, Izetbegović became the first president of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The author is well-versed in Islamic and Western thoughts and is intimately familiar with relevant literature in physical, biological and social sciences as well as in humanities. This book, published in 1980, is - by the author's definition - ''not a book of theology'' but an attempt to define the ''place of Islam in the general spectrum of ideas.'' The book argues that ''Islam is more than a religion.'' The book, which was written in Izetbegović's native language and translated into several languages including Arabic, shows how Islam views the world. It highlights the position of religion and atheism towards issues and concepts of humanity. It talks about creation, evolution, art, ethics, culture and civilization. The author shows how Islam played an important role as an intermediary between the ancient cultures and the modern West. He argues that Islam must again today, "in a time of dramatic dilemmas and alternatives", resume its role as an intermediary ideology in a divided world. The true Islam, as Izetbegović says, is not just a spiritual religion or a way of life only, but it is an order and concept of organizing the universe. He argues that Islam is not religion as some say, but is a religion and life, striking the right balance between both spiritual and materialistic sides. Izetbegović points out that the Western hostility towards Islam is not just an extension of the usual hostility and the civilizational conflict between Islam and the West since the Crusades, but this hostility is originally formed because of the West's one-sided view of the world and its inability to understand Islamic terminology properly and comprehend the unique nature of Islam. The author says the failure that afflicted major ideologies is ascribed to their one-sided views of human beings and life. This, according to him, has divided the world into two conflicting parts, namely atheist materialism and Catholicism immersed in secrets, and the two denied each other. But Islam combines the two extremes that perplexed the West, namely spirit and material; human and animal; religion and life. The author refutes Darwin's theory of evolution, not by religion but by art and poetry. For example, he says that the Greek drama, Dante's vision of heavens and hell, African spirituals, Faust's prologue in heaven, Melanesian masks, ancient Japanese frescoes, and modern paintings bear the same testimony. "It is evident that they have nothing to do with Darwin's man, and it is not possible to imagine them as products of the surrounding nature," he says. "All this makes us wonder if the picture sketched by science is even complete," he notes. On the issue of man's origin, Izetbegović says that science and art are on a complete and irrevocable path of collision. "Science enumerates facts leading inexorably to the conclusion of man's gradual evolution from animal to human. Art shows in exciting pictures man coming from the unknown. Science refers to Darwin and his gigantic synthesis, while art refers to Michelangelo and his grandiose charter on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel," he says. "Generally speaking, there is nothing in man that does not also exist in higher stages of animals, vertebrates, and insects. There are consciousness, intelligence, one or more means of communication, desire to satisfy needs and join in societies, and some form of economy. Looking from this side, man may appear to have something in common with the animal world. However, there is nothing in the animal kingdom which resembles – even in a rudimentary form – religion, magic, drama, taboo, art, moral prohibitions, and so forth, with which the life of prehistoric as well as civilized man is surrounded. The evolution of animals may appear to be logical, gradual, and easily understood, compared to the evolution of primitive man," the author says. The author dedicates an entire chapter to the relationship between art and religion. He says that there is an "inextricable link" between art and religion, as poetry is the fruit of the link between the soul and the truth, and the source of both is God. Giving an example of the close relationship between art and religion on the one hand, and between atheism and science on the other hand, he says that Soviet Russia has yielded physicists, atomists, statesmen and organizers, but has not yielded poets, painters and composers. Giving another example, he says: "The lime tree the poet mentions is not the tree which the botanists discuss; it is a scented, shady tree in the poet's garden under which he dreamed his boyish dreams." The author dedicates another chapter to the relationship between religion and revolution. He says that revolution is influential as religion. He sees revolution as an epic poem and not just a mechanical overthrow or a simple change of the ruling regime. Then, the author analyses the human being who always yearns for change and rebellion against the automatized life. "The ruling ideology is repressing the personality more and more; it directs man to the automatized life according to the scheme of sleep, tube and work, which offers a certain standard but deprives him of all true experience and excitement," he says. In another chapter, the author tackles the issue of morals. He argues that man is never morally neutral. "That is why he is always either morally true or false, or both, which is the most frequent," he says. "People have acted and behaved differently, but they have always spoken in the same way about justice, truth, equality and freedom; the wise men and heroes out of sincerity because of truth, and politicians and demagogues hypocritically out of interest," he adds. He says that man's feigned morality, moral mask, centuries-old campaigning with the words justice, equality, humanity, and so on confirm the reality of morals as do the noble sufferings of heroes and saints. "Man is capable of the most abominable crimes and the noblest sacrifices," he says. Caption: Alija Izetbegović (Bosnian pronunciation: (1925 – 2003) was a Bosniak politician, activist, lawyer, author, and philosopher who in 1990 became the first President of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
