Gaza: Rejecting Western Concept of “Civilization”

Creation of the Concept of “Civilization”

This begs the question of how Muslims have come to this nadir?

The origins of the predicament can be traced to two persons: first, Adam Ferguson (d. 1816) – a Scottish philosopher and historian of the Scottish Enlightenment – who in 1767 published a book titled “An Essay on the History of Civil Society”; and second, Victor de Riqueti Marquis de Mirabeau (d. 1789) – a French economist – who in 1763 published a book titled “Philosophie Rurale.”

 

What is special about these two individuals and their seminal books is that they were the first in history to coin and articulate the concept of “civilization”. They did so in English and French respectively.

The new concept of “civilization” signified not only the description of an advanced stage of Western one-dimensional material development but also a direction toward the future. Representing the advancement of Western inclusive social and cultural development as well as organization, civilization became synonymous with material progress, corresponding state of mind, comfort, convenience, and the overall dynamics of the Western standards of living.

 

To the West, that was the pinnacle of human evolution. It was the threshold of a terrestrial “promised land” of which all visionaries-cum-romanticists have ever dreamed.

 

People stood on the verge of the end of history. Whatever the West did was avant-garde, and whatever it said was a revelation.

Hence, one of Adam Ferguson’s epoch-making statements was these words: “Not only the individual advances from infancy to manhood but the species itself from rudeness to civilization.”

 

Colonization & Civilization

No sooner had the concept of “civilization” been created, than the West started to use it both as an objective and instrument of colonization, which towards the end of the 18th century was in full swing.

The West felt “morally” obliged to take the rest of the world from the abyss of primitiveness and barbarism to the light of “civilization” (i.e., Western values and ways of life).

Thus, a new concept, the “mission to civilize”, was born. It quickly morphed into the pillar of the “legitimacy” of colonization. In many ways, colonization was civilization and civilization colonization.

 

They were virtually indistinguishable, oozing the same essence and performing identical functions. To be more precise, though, colonization facilitated the spread of civilization, which in turn, validated colonization.

One of the fathers of the concept of “civilization”, Adam Ferguson, said about this subtle relationship between civilization and colonization: “We are ourselves the supposed standards of politeness and civilization, and where our own features do not appear, we apprehend, that there is nothing which deserves to be known.”

Also: “And if our rule in measuring degrees of politeness and civilization is to be taken from hence, or from the advancement of commercial arts, we shall be found to have greatly excelled any of the celebrated nations of antiquity.”

 

The objective of the marriage between colonization and civilization was to force the colonized to embrace – in the name of civilization – the laws, ideas, education, values, culture, socio-political systems, economic systems, language, art, and architecture, of the colonizers, to render the colonized nations predictable and controllable.

The lives of the colonized victims had to be shaped in such a way that the colonizers could know everything about them: how and what they thought, what and how much they had of material and immaterial assets, the level of their expertise plus readiness, and generally all their strengths and weaknesses.

 

The colonizers could not afford to be taken by surprise, or to be outdone, concerning any aspect of either colonization or civilization. It goes without saying that colonization spelled physical bondage and civilization its psychological and spiritual equivalents.

 

Muslims Took the Bait

 

In the past, the West was seen by Muslims as an embodiment and home of Christianity (Christendom), which effortlessly presented itself as an obstacle to any serious cooperation with it.

However, as the West was gradually shedding off its religious garb in favor of secular science, enlightenment, and industrialization, championing such attractive and at first glance universally acceptable ideas as freedom, justice, prosperity, democracy, and equality – all in the name of the novel concept of “civilization” – the West all of a sudden started emerging as not-so-distant or atypical.

It soon became an alluring proposition. It was now possible to deal with the West and be influenced by its progressive thought, without compromising the beliefs and traditions of Islam.

 

This need for the increasingly “attractive” West was generated by the decline of Islamic civilization which had been caused by Muslim disunity and the degeneration of the Muslim mind. Like never before, the Muslim world was in disarray.

It was breaking up into fragments with novel political ideologies and average political, plus intellectual, protagonists routinely emerging on the regional socio-political scene.

 

They were in a bitter contention, desperately trying to outdo one another and to establish an ostensible legitimacy for their claims by whatever justifiable or otherwise means.

 

However, with the increasing Westernization and professed empowerment due to the alignments with the West, more intense alienations and deeper divisions were taking place internally, which in turn called for more external influences and even interferences to smooth over tensions.

The situation resembled a vicious circle, akin to being stuck in a quagmire with no means of escape. The more one strove to improve his condition, the more inextricably entrapped he became.

Undeniably, Islam and Muslims found themselves at a critical juncture. However due to various political and ideological divisions, little were Muslims able to do.

 

The majority of Muslim leaders were busy with themselves, investing everything they had in securing or preserving their own positions and warding off at once internal and external opposition.

In doing so, most of them sought help from powerful Western players. The initiative assumed the forms of purchasing weapons, modernizing armies, modernizing education and other socio-political systems, engaging human resources, acquiring protection, and intelligence sharing.

In his book titled “The Emergence of Modern Turkey,” Bernard Lewis wrote in the context of the decline of the Ottoman Empire and its attempt to remain afloat by means of embracing Western civilization, that the whole process started with adopting European weapons, continued with inviting European advisers, and ended with admitting all the new ideas and institutions that underlie the modern state and army.

 

With “Civilization” Came the Loss of Freedom, Dignity

 

 

In other words, Muslims wanted to extract themselves from the hole they had dug for themselves by means of buying into the Western concept of “civilization”, which in the end forced Muslims either into a form of physical colonization or a form of its spiritual counterpart.

Either way, civilization, and its progress were used as a smokescreen for attacking every positivity associated with Islam and its not only religious but also worldly legacies.

History has witnessed that as far as Muslims are concerned, the mission either to be civilized by the West or to become self-civilized by the Western standards of development, the situation kept going from bad to worse.

 

So much so that almost a couple of centuries later, Muslims had virtually nothing to show for their coveted or imposed following of the Western civilization paradigm.

As a result, Muslims were some of the fiercest nationalists, fiercest communists, fiercest socialists, fiercest capitalists, fiercest materialists, fiercest consumerists, and now fiercest liberalists, but their overall condition never really improved.

 

They remained alienated from themselves and everything that was truly theirs. Muslims were to be found nowhere on the map of the movers and shakers of world orders.

They were not even close to any of the global corridors of power, not to mention being taken seriously in any of the global decision-making processes.

This means that by the virtue of pursuing “civilization”, Muslims became entrapped in the snares of Western imperialism and its eternal desire to manipulate and control.

 

The curtailing of the autonomy of Muslims had been established long ago; the vicissitudes in their state of entrapment during the past 150 years or so signified nothing more than continuous subjugation. Nothing changed except the modes and intensities of the condition.

Now that the West in the Gaza theatre has revealed its true colors, many Muslims will be happy to start thinking and acting on their own, but to no avail.

Completely incapacitated, our hands are tied and all access points have been shut off. It is becoming crystal clear to what extent the West has been successful in enslaving (“civilizing”) all of us.

We pose no problem whatsoever to them. That is because they know how and what we think, for they taught us; what we have and how much of everything, for they gave us; how capable we are, for they enabled us; and how competent we are, for they educated and trained us.

Why has nobody been able to conquer and rule Afghanistan?

 

 

And lastly, it has become the stuff of legend that the country of Afghanistan in general and the Taliban as its most prominent contemporary religious, social, and political force in particular, are unconquerable and uncontrollable.

The country’s petrifying reputation is that it is the graveyard of empires. When Harold Macmillan, the British Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963, was handing over the prime ministership to Alec Douglas-Home, he is understood to have passed on some advice: “My dear boy, as long as you do not (try to) invade Afghanistan you will be absolutely fine.”

Various reasons are given for this status of Afghanistan, from geography and landscape to the country’s location, prevalence of tribalism, and lawlessness.

 

However, the real reason that encapsulates the given factors, and breaks away from the pack, is that nobody managed to “civilize” Afghanistan.

Indeed, for the same reason, Gaza remains steadfast and perennially free. It refuses to be “civilized.”

 

 

SOURCE: https://aboutislam.net/muslim-issues/opinion-analysis/gaza-rejecting-western-concept-of-civilization/2/