ABSTRACT
Symbolically the date 1798 is highly meaningful in the relations between Islam and the West. Islam had in the old days been superior, so Muslims were confident, to Christendom in intellectual and practical powers. The secular or non-religious emphasis also animated the Palestinian resistance to Israel, chiefly because Palestinians included many Christians and it seemed necessary to transcend religion in the combat with the intruders. Secularist positions kept control of Islam, or campaigned actively against it; or at least framed the laws of the nation State without great regard to it. The positions of Secular Nationalism and Muslim Modernism could be merged in a compromise position which retained the essentials of Islamic piety with a broadly non-religious and technocratic ordering of the State, with national aspirations emphasized, either in the narrower sense or in the wider meaning of Pan-Arabism. The fact is that Islam has to make dramatic concessions to live in modernity.
