I want to discuss Dante's debt to Islamic thought in general...

I want to discuss Dante's debt to Islamic thought in general and to one Islamic philosopher in particular.5 This may seem like a recondite subject, one that will lead me away from the center of Dante studies. In many ways it will, but I hope that I have already suggested its larger importance. The charge against the Western canon is that it is Eurocentric and works to exclude all non-Western cultures. No figure is more firmly entrenched than Dante at the center of the Western canon.

What happens if we can show that Dante displays a secret and even sometimes a not-so-secret sympathy for and affinity with Islamic thought? Non-Western culture in the very bastion of Western culture, Dante's Divine Comedy--that is a remarkable prospect, and one calculated to throw both attackers and defenders of the canon off balance. Attackers would have to grant that the Western canon is not as Eurocentric as they have claimed.

And defenders of the canon might have to admit that canonical works are not quite as orthodox as they often maintain.…