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• <bblockquote>The Antinomies Today, it is behind Islam that I contemplate India; the India of Tolerant Reason<Buddha, prior to Muhammad who – for me as a European and because I am European – arises between our reflection and the teachings which are closest to it /…/b><the hands of the East and the West, predestined to be joined, were kept apart by it. /a><.../font><font color="#73737b"><br>

<br> </font><p align="justify"><font color="#73737b"><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" size="3">To many a Western historian of religion, Islam is a problem – how could it have emerged <i>after</i> Christianity, the religion to end all religions? Its very geographic place belies the cliché on Orientalism: much more than belonging to the Orient, the location of Islam makes it a fatal obstacle to the true union of the East and the West – the point made exemplarily by Claude Levi-Strauss:</font></font></p> <blockquote><p align="justify"><font color="#73737b"><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" size="3"> Today, it is behind Islam that I contemplate India; the India of Buddha, prior to Muhammad who – for me as a European and because I am European – arises between our reflection and the teachings which are closest to it /…/ the hands of the East and the West, predestined to be joined, were kept apart by it. /.../<br> The West should return to the sources of its torn condition: by way of interposing itself between Buddhism and Christianity, Islam islamized us when, in the course of the Crusades, the West let itself be caught in the opposition to it and thus started to resemble it, instead of delivering itself – in the case of the inexistence of Islam – to the slow osmosis with Buddhism which would christianize us even more, in a sense which would have been all the more Christian insofar as we were to mount beyond Christianity itself. It is then that the West has lost its chance to remain woman. <a title="" name="_ftnref1" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a></font></font></p>