In Western polities, a separation of state and religion (secularism) was necessary to safeguard the modernisation project - and its assorted properties of industrialisation, urbanisation, bureaucratisation, technology, growth in communications, etc. - but Islam is still against any such separation [43]. Huntington observes that fundamentalist Islam demands political rulers to be practising Muslims: ‘shari’a [Islamic law] should be the basic law, and ulema [theologians and jurists] should have “a decisive vote in articulating, or at least reviewing and ratifying, all governmental policy”’ [44]. According to Islamists, modernity may only be reached within the framework of indigenous values and not through their assimilation to Western culture. As Aliboni asserts, modernisation through imitation of the West is but a trap leading to subordination [45]. In this context, Huntington notes that, ‘to the extent that governmental legitimacy and policy flow from religious doctrines and religious expertise, Islamic concepts of politics differ from and contradict the premises of democratic politics’ [46]. This view accords with Diamond, Linz and Lipset’s earlier analysis that ‘the Islamic countries of the Middle East and Northern Africa ... appear to have little prospect of transition even to semi-democracy’ [47]. But it comes in direct opposition to Pool’s claims that ‘the view that Islam is utterly incompatible with democracy, whatever form the latter takes, is to view Islam from a limited and simplistic perspective. Contemporary Islam can be democratic, undemocratic and anti-democratic and the political orientations of Muslim and Islamic movements have exhibited similar variations’ [48]. Although Curdy argues that democracy and Islam ‘are contradictory only if democracy is defined by certain Western standards’ [49], Pool is right to suggest that ‘presidents and kings remain in charge of a state-controlled process of democratisation as part of strategies of ... regime survival’ [50]. The revival of Islam per se, of political Islamism, and of Islamic radicalism are products of these antitheses. Fragmented and struggling with modernity, Islam now faces a variety of challenges including potentially violent movements. The threat of radicalism currently manifested in the Southern Mediterranean rim lies in the fact that many of its essential aspects represent a reaction to years of intolerable political and socio-economic conditions. In this sense, the fundamentalist threat is not merely a symptom of deeply rooted differences between the West and Islam, but also a means of responding to post-colonial pressures towards liberalisation, which is perceived as threatening the ‘inner cohesion’ of the Islamic tradition. In this context, religion is used to cover other deficits like economic, social and political, pointing to an alleged inferiority in self-perception, dissatisfaction in terms of social development and the non-acceptance of an organisational/technocratic problem-solving capacity of ‘the other’. In brief, the creation of a climate of open dialogue in the Mediterranean may not be an easy task given the tendency by both sides to fuel prejudices, but as long as misperceptions persist and differences are not tolerated, the existing tensions between Islam and Europe will be merely offering an apology for inaction. Therefore, a new ‘hermeneutics of civilizational dialogue’ [51] emanates as a praesumptio juris et de jure: a dialectic of cultural self-realisation through a reciprocal exchange based on a philosophy of mutual understanding that does away with any subjectivist view that wants the ‘West’ to act as a universal civilising force based on an almost metaphysical obligation to humanity. But let us now turn to the Barcelona Process and examine the extent to which it has marked a break with past European policies towards the region, by means of advancing the socio-cultural dimension of Euro-Mediterranean governance.
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