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Foreign Policy
Summer 1998
Mediterraneo: Cristianesimo e Islam tra
Coabitazione e Conflitto
(Mediterranean Christianity and Islam
between Coexistence and Conflict)
by Andrea Riccardi
Reviewed by Lucio Caracciolo *
Can a region of the world with 17 countries and territories, 22 languages, and three religions ever really be thought of as a single entity? Or is the "Mediterranean" merely a geographical expression, a frontier zone between North and South, between Christendom and the world of Islam? In his most recent book, Mediterraneo, one of Italy’s most brilliant historians, Andrea Riccardi, takes subtle issue with the "clash of civilizations" thesis espoused by Samuel Huntington, arguing that the Mediterranean, in spite of—and indeed perhaps because of—its diversity, exhibits all the characteristics of a unified whole.
This book is more than a scholarly analysis. It is the result of on-the-job experience acquired through attempts to broker dialogue between opposite shores of the Mediterranean. In fact, Riccardi is the president and founder of the Comunità di Sant’Egidio, an association of Catholic laypeople who, among other things, bear witness to the Christian message through their peace initiatives in Africa and the Mediterranean. From Algeria to Mozambique, from Israel-Palestine to the former Yugoslavia, Sant’Egidio has become such a major player on the international scene that when U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Rome this March, she felt obliged to drop in and pay her respects, holding informal meetings on the Mediterranean’s "hot spots" at the ex-convent that serves as the community’s headquarters.
Therefore, Mediterraneo is also useful for those who wish to understand just what the Comunità di Sant’Egidio is all about. Riccardi evokes French historian Fernand Braudel’s vision of the Mediterranean as a sea of diversity that over the centuries had been "melded into larger units such as empires or cosmopolitan cities." His was the Mediterranean of coexistence, until it entered a period of crisis between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As the great empires (most notably that of the Ottomans) fell to the wayside, they were replaced by several different "nations"—each one affiliated with a distinct religion, culture, and ideology. But by employing what Braudel once termed a "long-view lens" to observe the current fragmentary state of things, Riccardi suggests that one can detect the persistence of an underlying unitary fabric. "The Muslim south and the European north are obliged by geography and history," he argues, "to find a way to live together in that set of common circumstances that is the Mediterranean."
Riccardi opposes the idea of a "Yalta-style" Mediterranean wherein the Mare Nostrum (as the Romans called it) would be divided into a Euro-Christian coast and an Arab-Islamic coast: "The Yalta system failed to hold up in Europe and cannot survive in a sea where both shores have always been concerned with mutual dialogue," he observes. According to Riccardi, "The religious worlds cannot be thought of as being isolated or separate from one another; history has mixed them up and reshuffled them. Coexistence appears to be a historical and cultural destiny." In stark contrast to Huntington, who sees religion as a divisive element underlying civilizational fault lines, Riccardi holds that it is the religions themselves that can nourish dialogue between North and South.
By its very nature, such an approach rules out an "Islamic threat" from the South. Riccardi notes that fundamentalism provokes far greater conflict within the Islamic world itself than between Islam and Christianity: "Islam is not Marxism-Leninism. And, above all, there is no such thing as a Comintern for Islamic movements." Consequently, in his view, the greatest risk to the West is "that ‘Somalified’ areas might be created at the very gates of Europe," which could place the southern shore of the Mediterranean in genuine peril.
But Riccardi’s book represents more than a treatise advocating dialogue between Christianity and Islam. It also examines a number of specific areas where cohabitation has occurred and ultimately has influenced the history of the Mediterranean. In particular, Riccardi stresses the importance of the Ottoman Empire’s "millet" system, wherein Greek Orthodox Christians (and later, Jews and Armenians) were granted extensive autonomy over their religious and civil affairs. By the beginning of this century, one could find millets in any Ottoman town, from Istanbul (where non-Muslims accounted for more than 38 percent of the population) to Jerusalem.
Another of the book’s merits is its explicitness about presenting its own point of view. Historical analysis should not serve as an end in and of itself but should come to the aid of political action, a vocation that is often difficult to undertake in the face of opposition. Riccardi’s study should be required reading for anyone who wishes to gain a deeper understanding of how Italian (and, more broadly speaking, European) and American approaches differ toward a sea whose cultural and strategic importance is on the rise.
Notes
*: Lucio Caracciolo is editor in chief of the Italian geopolitical review LiMes. Back.