In the spring of 2003, Jacques Derrida sat down for a public debate in
Paris with Algerian intellectual Mustapha Chérif. The eminent
philosopher arrived at the event directly from the hospital where he had
just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, the illness that would take
his life just over a year later. That he still participated in the
exchange testifies to the magnitude of the subject at hand: the
increasingly distressed relationship between Islam and the West, and the
questions of freedom, justice, and democracy that surround it. As Chérif
relates in this account of their dialogue, the topic of Islam held
special resonance for Derrida--perhaps it is to be expected that near
the end of his life his thoughts would return to Algeria, the country
where he was born in 1930. Indeed, these roots served as the impetus for
their conversation, which first centers on the ways in which Derrida's
Algerian-Jewish identity has shaped his thinking. From there, the two
men move to broader questions of secularism and democracy; to politics
and religion and how the former manipulates the latter; and to the
parallels between xenophobia in the West and fanaticism among Islamists.
Ultimately, the discussion is an attempt to tear down the notion that
Islam and the West are two civilizations locked in a bitter struggle for
supremacy and to reconsider them as the two shores of the
Mediterranean--two halves of the same geographical, religious, and
cultural sphere. Islam and the West is a crucial opportunity to
further our understanding of Derrida's views on the key political and
religious divisions of our time and an often moving testament to the
power of friendship and solidarity to surmount them.
