Quranic Foundations And Structure Of Muslim Society
MODERN CIVILISATION:
A CONTINUATION OF ARABIC-ISLAMIC CIVILISATION
The present civilisation is, in respect of its merits, the continuation
of the Islamic civilisation, with the difference that theocentricism,
integralism and comprehensiveness have dropped off under the stress of certain
well-known historical circumstances, culminating in its transformation into a
purely sensate civilisation. However, its tragic inadequacy and diseased
condition is now taken notice of by all sane-thinking Westerners, together with
the necessity of adopting the Islamic
philosophy of civilisation for restoring the balanced accommodation of all the
values and thereby reverting to the original Islamic civilization from which it
sprang up. The thick curtain of hatred against Islam, nurtured assiduously for
centuries by a scheming priesthood, is the only obstacle. But the goodness of
human nature is bound to win the day, and the yearnings of the human soul for
Truth and Beauty and Justice are bound to attain realisation. The light of
reality has already begun to shine forth, as manifested in the following
considered judgment of Prof. H.A.R. Gibb, the famous British orientalist:
“… in its foundations we have seen that Islam belongs to and is an integral part of the larger Western society. It is the complement and counterbalance to European civilisation, nourished at the same springs, breathing the same air. In the broadest aspect of history, what is now happening between Europe and Islam is the reintegration of western civilization, artificially sundered at the Renaissance and now reasserting its unity with overwhelming force. The student of history, though fearfully conscious of the pitfalls of analogy, cannot help recalling two earlier (though even then not the earliest) moments in this secular process of creative interaction between the two halves of the western world. It was the glory and the greatness of the Roman Empire that it united them under its imperium and that from that unity were born the spiritual forces which have governed the course of Western history ever since. Halfway between that age and ours occurred the first great intellectual adventure of Islam, when it absorbed the heritage of Hellenism and brought it to a new flowering, the seeds from which contributed to the Renaissance in Europe.
“The process could not end there. It is going on before our very eyes, on a wider and vaster scale, though the contrast offered by the Islamic world as a whole to the amazing technical progress of Europe may still blind us to it: and it may be that the sequel will be the same, that we must wait upon the Islamic society to restore the balance of Western civilization upset by the onesided nature of that progress … At all events Islam stands side by side with Europe in distinction from the true Oriental societies of India and the Far East … for the fullest development of its cultural life, particularly of its spiritual life, Europe cannot do without the forces and capacities which lie within Islamic society…
“Within the Western world Islam still maintains the balance between exaggerated opposites. Opposed equally to the anarchy of European nationalism and the regimentation of Russian communism, it has not yet succumbed to that obsession with the economic side of life which is characteristic of present day Europe and present-day Russia alike. Its social ethic has been admirably summed up by Professor Massignon: ‘Islam has the merit of standing for a very equalitarian conception of the contribution of each citizen by the tithe to the resources of the community; it is hostile to unrestricted exchange, to banking capital, to state loans, to indirect taxes on objects of prime necessity, but it holds to the rights of the father and the husband, to private property, and to commercial capital. Here again it occupies an intermediate position between the doctrines of bourgeois capitalism and Bolshevist communism’.
“But Islam has a still further service to render to the cause of humanity. It stands after all nearer to the real East than Europe does, and it possesses a magnificent tradition of inter-racial understanding and co-operation. No other society has such a record of success in uniting in an equality of status, of opportunity, and of endeavour so many and so various races of mankind … Islam has still the power to reconcile apparently irreconcilable elements of race and tradition. If ever the opposition of the great societies of East and West is to be replaced by co-operation, the mediation of Islam is an indispensable condition. In its hands lies very largely the solution of the problem with which Europe is faced in its relation with the East. If they unite, the hope of a peaceful issue is immeasurably enhanced. But if Europe, by rejecting the cooperation of Islam, throws it into the arms of its rivals, the issue can only be disastrous for both.”[1]
Besides the above judgment of H.A.R. Gibb, the verdict of Arnold J. Toynbee, the fanatical crusader against Islam and zealous upholder of Christian cause, is also worthy of note. He says (Civilisation on Trial, London, 1957; pp. 87, 88, 205-209):
“What value are we to place on Islam ourselves? … Islam’s creative gift to mankind is monotheism and we surely dare not throw this gift away … Islam remains, with a mighty spiritual mission still to carry out … (italics, present writer’s).
“Two conspicuous sources of danger—one psychological and the other material—in the present relations of this cosmopolitan proletariat (—i.e, westernised humanity—) with the dominant element in our modern Western society are race consciousness and alcohol; and in the struggle with each of these evils the Islamic spirit has a service to render which might prove, if it were accepted, to be of high moral and social value.
“The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding moral achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue … It is conceivable that the spirit of Islam might be the timely reinforcement which would decide this issue in favour of tolerance and peace.
“As for the evil of alcohol, it is at its worst among primitive populations in tropical regions which have been ‘opened up’ by Western enterprise … the fact remains that even the most statesmanlike preventive measures imposed by external authority are incapable of liberating a community from a social vice unless a desire for liberation and a will to carry this desire into voluntary action on its own part are awakened in the hearts of the people concerned. Now Western administrators, at any rate those of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ origin, are spiritually isolated from their ‘native’ wards by the physical ‘colour bar’ which their race-consciousness sets up; the conversion of the natives’ souls is a task to which their competence can hardly be expected to extend; and it is at this point that Islam may have a part to play. “In these recently and rapidly ‘opened up’ tropical territories, the Western civilization has produced an economic and political plenum and, in the same breath, a social and spiritual void…
“Here, then, in the foreground of the future, we can remark two valueable influences which Islam may exert upon the cosmopolitan proletariat of a Western society that has cast its net round the world and embraced the the whole mankind; while in the more distant future we may speculate on the possible contributions of Islam to some new manifestation of religion.”
to be continued . . . . .
Quranic Foundation & Structure Of Muslim Society In The End Times
