LEWISTON – While western culture draws clear distinctions between the spiritual and the intellectual, followers of Islam find a more comfortable blend of these concepts in their lives.

An audience at Bates College heard these views from an Islamic scholar Tuesday afternoon.

Ibrahim Kalin, assistant professor of religious studies, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Mass., spoke on “Islam as a Spiritual and Intellectual Journey: Reflections of a Scholar.”

“Multiple perspectives enrich our vision of the world and I believe this is an important element in having intellectual honesty and spiritual integrity,” he said.

Kalin discussed perceptions of spirituality and intellectualism in all religions. He emphasized that such discussions between Jewish and Christian speakers come easily because there is a shared basis in their traditions, but discussions of Islam that involve Christians and Jews always start at a level he calls “Islam 101” because its traditions are not well known in the West.

He said the question of what it means to be religious is a cross-cultural problem. While spirituality and intellectualism are closely related in the Islamic world, they are distinctly separated concepts in the West, although there is really no clear-cut division, Kalin told the audience.

“These things we have to know if we are to understand the spiritual and intellectual parameters of the Islamic world,” he said. “In Europe, especially, it is true to say that Islamic society is much more religious today.” He added that “America is a much more religious society, compared to Europe.”

Kalin said he finds that many of the great religious buildings and shrines of Europe have become mostly tourist attractions.

“The Islamic world has preserved much more of its tradition,” he said.

Members of the audience asked for Kalin’s views on current exhibitions of hatred by Muslims toward America.

“Fundamentalists exist on all sides,” he responded. He described some extreme fundamentalists such as Osama bin Laden as “misguided” and “a bunch of fanatics.”

Basically, Muslims are opposed to the export of Western culture to their world. They do not oppose Western culture in the West, he said. In fact, many things such as materialism and destruction of family values are opposed by as many people in the West as in the Muslim world.

Kalin said, “Every tradition has done this – criticized a nation’s tradition on theological grounds. As long as you leave a space for your opponent, it’s a civilized debate.”

Kalin told the multicultural group of about 50 people that Islamic political movements currently in the news “are the creation and product of modernity and without the tools of modern communication and ideology, most of these movements would not have existed today.”

The speaker, who is a performer of Turkish folk music as well as a Turkish scholar, also played a song on a traditional Turkish reed flute.

Kalin earned his doctorate at George Washington University, a master of arts degree at the International Islamic University of Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, and his bachelor of arts at Istanbul University in Turkey.

Kalin’s talk was the fourth in the 2003-2004 series on “Spiritual Journeys: Stories of the Soul,” presented by the Office of the College Chaplain at Bates College.

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