Civilization and religious freedom in the West and in Islam

Abstract

On account of the lack of knowledge about other civilizations and religions, in the West there is widespread use of certain words which do not convey the exact meanings of the original concepts that belong to different civilizations. To complicate matters, Western languages do not express concepts that have transcendent and immanent values at the same time, that is words that have a truly "universal" character. However, in other "civilizations" words are often used that express metaphysical meanings which can be understood on different levels of meaning, arranged hierarchically.

This problem has been around since the Middle Ages, especially as regards the sciences which were passed on through the Islamic world. The majority of the problems that lacerated Christian scholasticism originated from the difficulty to understand and translate certain concepts of an essentially symbolic and metaphysical nature like those of "time" and "eternity", which reflect a particular vision of the world, of history and of law.