Mouood Mouood English Edition
As far as Muslims are concerned, they cannot afford to view the present conflict as a “clash of civilizations”, because this construction automatically puts them at a massive disadvantage because Islamic civilization is presently so much weaker in material and worldly terms compared to the Western civilization. It is precisely due to this false construction that many Muslims today feel hopeless and helpless against the onslaught by the West; an attitude that breeds defeatism which has now become a deeply entrenched attitude in the ruling classes in the Muslim world. They forget that civilizations are not primary entities and can therefore change and decay, and yet regain their strength, as long as they remain attached to the unchanging, Divinely-revealed truths.
It allows us to open ways to the message of the Holy Qur’an and to the noble example of His Messenger (S.A.W.A.) for all humanity – ironically, through its own devices, the Western civilization has opened ways for the spread of this universal message to all humanity. The inherent truth and power of Divine Revelation as manifested in the Holy Qur’an can guide us to a straight path. The Western civilization has produced a crumbling world, beset with myriad social and moral problems. Although Muslims face a global terror today, we have a fortification that is beyond the reach of the most sophisticated weapons: our faith.
4- Resolving the Crisis in Humanity
The discussion about “the concept of humanity” is a relatively new term in human history. It is part of the increasingly global outlook that many people have been adopting in recent decades. In any case, the concept of humanity today implies a common sense of existence and fellowship, or shared identity and shared habitation on a single planet, which is fairly new in human history.
Humanity is bigger and more complex, but of course Muslims are part of that humanity and are living within its precepts in one way or another.
This question needs to be asked in ever-widening circles, culminating in humanity as noted above, to avoid heading in the wrong direction, since what happens in one part of humanity does have an impact on other parts. Addressing the question of humanity that is different from that of the usual global slogans, such as “information age,” or those various ways of undermining humanity that are at bottom cruel or exclusive.
Muslims only see Islam as the true way of humanity, and believe that the crisis of humanity in the modern world is simply a matter of “being far away from Islam.”
The technological futurists are taking the idea of human “progress” to an absurd conclusion, opining in fantasies of the Star Trek sort that people will one day be able to transcend death or the earth, or be able to upload themselves into orbs and transverse the universe. In a way, these sorts of fantasies are the strongest indication that some people have already become severely dehumanized.
The problem, from a certain perspective, is that the life many people live today is a dehumanizing life. This has been most forcefully argued by some of those most deeply embedded in the modern bureaucratic mega-technic society; but that sort of society is spreading globally, like a virus.
Islam is profoundly humanistic, not in the sense of secular humanism, but in the sense of learning to live the way humans lived for thousands of years, before the modern period. That way of life supposed close contact with nature and time to contemplate one’s existence.
Yes, some of the problems of modern technological societies began in the West, but the pathologies of dis-humanity are going global fast, and that is why it is necessary to step back and ask how the meanings of being human have been altered, by “the West” and by the lifestyles that people have adopted, especially the sort of lifestyle that separates them from those essential features of being human, namely a connection to nature, a connection to the world of the unseen, and a connection to one’s fellow humans.
Regarding the issue of secular humanism, which came about in the West during the Renaissance period, it has displaced the centrality of God with the centrality of humanity, “to celebrate our humanity,” as it is often put today. Given the inversion of reality imposed by the narrow secular view of humanity, it may be asked how Muslims can contribute to the discussion of humanism from an Islamic perspective.
One major problem related to the lack of humanity in modern technological societies is selfishness. Many people, including Muslims, don’t seem to have time to help others, or they use various restrictions as excuses to keep them in their own worlds rather than being out helping others – they want to ignore the other people around them.
The busy lifestyle of modern technological societies (which is ironic, since technology was supposed to give humans more time for reflection) is not limited to the West but it is part of the problem. That lifestyle, in the way of understanding humanity developed above, is responsible in part for creating a sense of dis-humanity among everyone.
Ivan Illich’s books, Deschooling Society and Medical Nemesis, in which he talks about the effects of educational and medical bureaucracies. In these and other books, Illich makes a good case that modern education, health care, transportation and urban life have become dehumanizing, and that modern bureaucracies and institutions are distorting people’s humanity. After that, in order to gain some historical perspective, one can move on to The Pentagon of Power and The Myth of the Machine by Lewis Mumford, both of which trace the roots and development of what he calls “mega-technic society” from Pharaonic Egypt to modern America, making startling parallels between the two. This course of reading can be rounded out be looking at works that develop the environmental perspective, such as Nature and Madness and Thinking Animals by Paul Shepard, which argue that the further from nature and animals that modern man has travelled, the more insane he has become.
Muslim writers who have reflected on these issues, one can recommend The Machine in Captivity of Machinism by Ali Shariati and Occidentosis by Jalal Ale-Ahmed, both of which discuss the impact of “machinism” and addictions to technology on humanity. To gain a sense of the metaphysical dimension of this discussion, one can consult Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man by Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
The works mentioned above can help open a way of understanding the crisis of humanity, and after reading them Muslim seekers can then go back into the Islamic tradition, in whatever shape or form they prefer – or any tradition for that matter – and look at it anew, and ask fresh questions, with new eyes, and, Insha’Allah, develop a deeper sense of humanity.
