|
News & Articles
Defining Modernity
There is a great deal of material available regarding the
political, military, and even economic encounter between the
Muslim world and the modern West. The political factors that
made possible the penetration of the West into the Muslim world,
the military confrontation that often ensued, and the economic
costs and benefits affecting the parties involved — these topics
have all been well documented. Political scientists and area
studies specialists have produced a wealth of information
regarding these issues. In the present work, therefore, I
propose to study the encounter between Islam and the West from a
different perspective, because it is my position that prior to
being a political, military, or economic challenge to the Muslim
world, the West represents an intellectual challenge.
One would not be far
off the mark by noting that the political, economic, and
military triumph of Western powers across the globe is a
by-product of the triumph of Western thought and ideas.
Currently there is considerable debate regarding the longevity
of this period of Western domination. One school of thought,
best represented by Francis Fukuyama, argues that the triumph of
Western thought and ideas is permanent and irreversible. An
opposing view, best represented by Samuel Huntington, argues
that even though Western thought has triumphed across the globe,
its continued domination in the indefinite future is not a sure
thing. In spite of their differences regarding the future course
of events, both schools of thought agree that the closing
decades of the 20th century have witnessed the global triumph of
Western thought and ideas. In light of this discussion, it makes
sense to ask the question: How the Muslims have responded, on
the intellectual level, to the onslaught of Western thought?
This question needs to be asked because the response at the
intellectual level determines the concrete policies that are
adopted to meet the challenge. It is the goal of our current
survey to analyze the various responses that the Muslims have
formulated over the past century or so to the intellectual
challenge posed by the West.
The necessity of such a survey is highlighted by the fact that
Western ideas and thought are exercising ever-increasing
influence on not only the Muslim world but throughout the globe
as a whole — the global village is in reality a Western village.
The proposition that Western thought and ideas have been
generally accepted throughout the world is a curious one in
light of the fact that today the globe is more politically
fragmented than ever before. But a closer look behind the facade
of political fragmentation reveals that the political and
intellectual elite in virtually all the countries share similar
values and ideas — values and ideas that are rooted in Western
thought. The intensity of the impact of the West in the 20th
century can be best measured by glancing at the oppositional
ideologies that have arisen as a challenge to the West. To a
greater or lesser degree, even these oppositional movements have
been shaped by Western thought. As in the case of fascism and
communism, some of them have been nothing more than extreme
expressions of the very thought that they ostensibly opposed.
In the following pages I will first identify the fundamental
concepts which have shaped the modern West. These will be
identified as being an epistemology based on scientism, a
sociology based on secularism, and an ideology based on
capitalism. It will be argued that the cumulative effect of
these concepts in the modern West is a total loss of faith in
any transcendent, spiritual, and/or metaphysical reality, i.e.,
a loss of faith in the possibility that a reality other than the
one which we can comprehend with our physical senses may exist.
This loss of faith will be identified as being the one
characteristics that differentiates modernity and its progenitor
(the modern West) from all pre-modern modes of thought and all
pre-modern societies. It should be stated at this stage that the
real purpose behind this survey is to present evidence to
support the argument that even the contemporary Islamic
resurgence has been significantly impacted by Western thoughts
and ideas — the protests of the Islamists notwithstanding. The
Islamists clearly recognize and loudly assert that Islam strikes
a balance between worldly concerns and concerns for the
Hereafter. In other words, it deals with matters of the spirit
as well as the temporal affairs of the world. But when one looks
beyond this initial statement and analyzes modern Islamic
thought in some detail, it becomes apparent that, practically
speaking, this balance is nowhere to be found. Comparatively
speaking, the emphasis on the aspect of Islam which deals with
worldly affairs is so pronounced in modern Islamic thought and
the emphasis on the metaphysical and spiritual aspect of Islam
is so paltry, that any talk of a “balance” between these two
aspects is rendered meaningless. This loss of balance is a
direct result of the penetration of modern Western thought into
the Muslim world.
This work is a survey of Islam´s encounter with the modern West.
It is necessary to make this qualification because the dynamics
of Islam´s encounter with medieval Christianity were quite
different from what they are today. Even though the modern West
is the product of an organic process of the development of
medieval Christianity (which itself was significantly influenced
by Islam), its unique characteristics are truly novel
inventions. The fundamental concepts on which the modern West is
built represent a rupture in the intellectual tradition of not
only the West but of humanity. The following survey of these
fundamental concepts will show that these concepts are not only
entirely novel, but they have come to be commonly accepted only
after a long and bitter struggle. In other words the conceptual
paradigm is the result of a historical process, not of any
self-evident truths that have suddenly become apparent to
everyone.
Each human society contains certain unique characteristics that
distinguish it from other societies, and imbue it with its
peculiar character. These unique characteristics are invariably
based upon certain intellectual propositions that shape and mold
the visible institutions and practices of the society. In the
following pages we shall identify those characteristics of the
modern West which set it apart from other human societies. In
other words, we will identify the foundational intellectual
propositions on which modern Western thought is based, which in
turn are responsible for the unique character of not only modern
Western thought but also of modern Western society.
Scientism as Epistemology
How does one arrive
at an accurate description of Reality and Truth? Epistemology is
the study of the various ways in which man has attempted to
answer this question. This question has been the preoccupation
of all civilizations known to man, and the manner in which this
particular question was answered greatly determined the
character of each civilization. Modern Western thought has
answered this question by categorically stating that only
“scientific” knowledge is capable of providing an accurate
description of Reality and Truth. There are varying definitions
of “scientific” knowledge, some of which seem to be at great
variance with others. But in spite of the apparent differences,
there is a common theme that runs through all these definitions,
viz., “scientific knowledge” refers to all the information that
can be collected using the five human senses and synthesized
using the powers of the human intellect. Scientism is the belief
that “scientific” knowledge alone is capable of providing an
accurate description of Reality and Truth, to the exclusion of
all other sources of knowledge. In other words, it is the belief
that scientific knowledge is the only reliable source of
knowledge. It is worth noting that there are sources of
knowledge which scientism does not regard as being valid and
reliable, i.e., Divine Revelation, individual religious
experience, and inner intuition.
Here, a distinction needs to be made between “science” and
“scientism.” “Science” is a particular way of investigating and
exploring the nature of reality, while “scientism” is the belief
that science provides the only reliable and valid way of
carrying out this investigation. Throughout the present work,
the focus will be on scientism the belief, not science the
method. A corollary to this belief is the conviction that
technology and “scientific” methods are capable of solving all
the problems that affect human individuals and society.
Even though the selection of science as the only reliable source
of knowledge is a subjective choice, it is by no means an
irrational one. Nearly three hundred years of European history
made this choice virtually inevitable, and the past century or
so seems to have justified this choice. The only other contender
that could, and did, challenge science´s designation to this
privileged status was religion — or the Catholic Church, to be
more specific. While tensions between the established religious
authorities and a few individual scientists were present just
under the surface in the 16th century, the conflict between
religion and science exploded into the open in the first quarter
of the 17th century. The catalyst for this explosion was
Galileo´s observational finding that confirmed Copernicus´
heliocentric theory. This confirmation of heliocentricism
conflicted with the official Church view that advocated a
geocentric view of the cosmos.
Prior to the advent of modern science, all religious and
philosophical systems in the West assigned man a special and
central place in the universe. The Aristotelian, Ptolemaic,
Augustinian, and Thomist systems place the earth in the center
of the universe and man as unique among all the inhabitants of
the earth. According to this traditional view of the cosmos, the
whole drama of creation is centered around the earth and
humanity, and the geocentric model was an expression of this
belief. For obvious reasons the geocentric model corresponded
with the religious teachings of the Church. Copernicus´s
heliocentric model removed the earth from its privileged,
central place in the cosmos and made it just one of the many
heavenly bodies orbiting the sun, thus directly challenging
Church teachings. Following in the footsteps of Copernicus and
Kepler (who provided the mathematical proof supporting the
heliocentric model), Galileo came up with the observational
evidence confirming Copernicus´s theory, using a powerful new
invention, the telescope. Even though the Church authorities
were temporarily able to silence Galileo, the passage of time
only strengthened his position. The scientific description of
Reality and Truth proved to be sounder than the “religious”
description.
This victory of science over religion in the 17th century,
significant as it was, proved to be minor when compared to the
events in the 18th century. The debate between the geocentric
and heliocentric models revolved around a single issue and in
this particular debate science had proven its worth. The 18th
century witnessed the triumph of the Newtonian description of
the universe. This description posed a systemic challenge to
religion because it professed to describe universal laws that
governed the cosmos. Moreover, this was not a capricious claim;
it was confirmed by overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence
in the form of mathematical equations and precise predictions of
planetary motion. The claims of the religious authorities that
the heavenly bodies obeyed the “the Will of God” which was
beyond the comprehension of mere mortals, sounded dry and pale
when compared to Newton´s laws and descriptions. The Newtonian
description of the universe was so accurate and astounding that
progressively all alternative and competing descriptions had to
be discarded — including the religious one. This point is
poignantly illustrated by Pierre Simon de Laplace´s comment when
he presented a book he had written to Napoleon. The book, titled
Philosophical Essays on Probabilities, dealt with various laws
governing the working of the universe. When asked why his book
contained no mention of the Creator, Laplace firmly replied: “I
have no need of that hypothesis.”1
By the beginning of the 19th century there was hardly any doubt
among the intellectual elite in Europe that, epistemologically,
science was far superior than religion. So when science turned
its gaze upon man himself in the middle of the 19th century, its
findings carried the same import that Divine Revelation had
carried at an earlier stage in history. Whereas the heliocentric
theory had removed the earth from its privileged place in the
universe, Darwin´s theory of evolution completed the task by
removing man from his privileged place on earth. The defense
raised by the religious authorities to uphold the belief that
man is a special creation of God was far less vigorous than had
been the case two and a half centuries earlier during the
confrontation with Galileo. The result of the confrontation
between the religious view and the Darwinian view of human
origins was a foregone conclusion. By the end of the 19th
century, therefore, the belief in scientism was not only
confined to the intellectual elite in Europe but was found to be
spreading among the general population as well. The spread of
this belief among the populace had less to do with the discovery
of heliocentricism or the theory of Natural Selection and more
to do with the practical fruit of science — technology.
During the period of its decay, which lasted several centuries,
religion had begun to preach that one´s fate in this life was a
matter of Divine Decree and this fate should be accepted
passively. Often in league with the political authorities, the
religious authorities preached a doctrine of passivity that
promised the believers immense rewards in the Hereafter for
patiently accepting all the difficulties in the present life. At
certain times the religious authorities went even further and
preached that any attempt to change the social-political order
of the day was a sin against God. In the midst of this
fatalistic view of human potentialities came science, which not
only advocated that one should work to improve one´s conditions
but also provided the wherewithal with which to do it. New
technology continually increased man´s control over space, time,
and nature — consequently increasing his control over his own
fate. At just the time that belief in scientism was reaching a
pitch among the intellectuals in the West, the masses began to
taste the fruits of the Industrial Revolution. Beginning in
England and then quickly spreading to the rest of Europe and
North America, the byproducts of science radically altered the
living conditions of the ordinary citizen.
By the beginning of the 20th century the results of the
centuries old struggle between religion and science came to an
end and science emerged as the clear victor. The exuberance of
the victory is aptly portrayed in these words of an Italian
futurist written in 1910:
Comrades, we tell you now that the triumphant progress of
science makes changes in humanity inevitable, changes that are
hacking an abyss between those docile slaves of tradition and us
free moderns who are confident in the radiant splendor of our
future.1
The confidence of these moderns in a radiant and splendid future
produced by science suffered an unexpected and severe shock with
the outbreak of WWI. The very science and technology that was
supposed to create a virtual heaven on earth was employed to
wreak havoc and destruction of unprecedented proportions. A
brief glimpse of the magnitude of this destruction was provided
by the outcome of one of the numerous battles during the war. At
the Battle of Somme in 1915 “...more lives were lost than in the
whole previous centuries of conflicts.”2 As terrible as the
events of WWI were, they proved to be only a prelude to what was
to come. The following decades saw the birth of Fascism,
totalitarianism, total war, the Final Solution, and the Atomic
bomb — all made possible by the very science and technology that
were previously believed to be capable of producing only
beneficial results for mankind.
The fact that faith in scientism survived these cataclysmic
events seems remarkable. But as recorded by history, not only
has this faith survived, it has in fact become stronger in the
post-WWII years. The second half of the 20th century has
witnessed a revival of the total commitment to scientism. The
doubts engendered by the events of the first half of the present
century have been nullified by the explanation that “evil
people” were the root cause of all the death and destruction,
not science and technology. Subsequent experience apparently
vindicates this view. Science has broadened man´s knowledge to
unparalleled heights, giving him profound insight into the
workings of the universe as well as his own self. Sputnik,
Moonshot, the Hubble telescope, gray matter, DNA, and the Genome
Project are all fruits of modern science. Similarly, technology
and “scientific” planning and methods have produced a standard
of living in the West to which the rest of the world aspires.
This is a standard of living that no human society has achieved
in recorded history.
The following quote by Jawaharlal Nehru not only expresses the
basic tenets of scientism but also reflects the globalization of
an idea originating in the West:
It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and
poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and
deadening custom, of vast resources running to waste, of a rich
country inhabited by starving people.… Who indeed can afford to
ignore science today? At every turn we have to seek its aid.…
The future belongs to science and those who make friends with
science.3
In the closing decades of the 20th century, leading scientists
are confident that science has the capacity to not only fulfill
the material needs of man, but also to answer the most
perplexing questions that have haunted man for eons. In their
search for the Grand Unified Theory (also called the Theory of
Everything), theoretical physicists are looking for an equation
that will enable man to answer any question which comes to his
mind, whether the question deals with physics or metaphysics.
The discovery of this equation would enable man not only to
definitively explain the origin and history of the universe but
also its ultimate end. The explanatory power of this equation is
to be so all-embracing that, with its aid, a scientist will be
able to precisely outline the personal history, present
circumstances, and future fate of any individual down to the
minutest detail by just plugging in the variables into the
equation. The quest for this equation has been likened to the
quest for the “...mind of God.” And if the contemporary prophets
of scientism are to be believed, we are only a decade or so away
from finding this equation.4
The claim of modern science that it has the ability to unravel
the mystery of the “mind of God” marks the point where science
enters the field of philosophy and metaphysics, those fields
which it has consciously avoided in the past. The fact that
modern science is delving into these fields denotes the
confidence which contemporary scientists have in their faith in
scientism. The claim that science has the ability to understand
the mind of God is an explicit statement that Truth and Reality
can be adequately discerned through the medium of science — that
science is the root of epistemology.
The remarkable similarity between the methodology used by Karl
Marx and Francis Fukuyama arguing for the ultimate triumph of
their respective socio-political systems aptly summarizes the
degree to which scientism has come to dominate Western
epistemology. Marx claimed that he had discerned certain
“scientific” laws that govern the evolution of human society,
laws that his later followers developed into the theory of
dialectical materialism. According to Marx, the analysis of
human history in the light of his materialist interpretation of
history made it inevitable that all of humanity would eventually
come to be organized into a global communist society. A century
and a half after Marx, Fukuyama claims that the “…historical
directionality implied by modern natural science”5 makes the
emergence of a global liberal-bourgeois society inevitable.
Leaving aside the question as to whether one agrees with the one
thinker or the other, the point to note is that the fundamental
root of their argument rests on “scientific” principles. For
both thinkers “the logic of science” combined with man´s need to
acquire material comforts make the ultimate triumph of their
respective socioeconomic systems inevitable. The similarity in
the epistemological basis of the leading contemporary ideologue
of liberal-bourgeoisie society and the father of Marxism
illustrates the degree to which scientism has come to dominate
the modern Western mind.
Secularism as Sociology
Secularism is often associated with the notion of rejection of
religion. In the context of the present discussion, however, it
refers not to the total rejection of religion but confining it
merely to the private sphere. Secularism is the attitude that
religion has no role to play in the public affairs of society
and that it should strictly remain the private affair of the
individual. This may appear to be an extension of the concept of
scientism, but the two terms are not synonymous. There are two
major reasons for treating scientism and secularism separately.
Firstly, early scientists whose work contributed to the
emergence of scientism were by no means secularists. Copernicus,
Galileo, and Newton were profoundly religious men who viewed
their work as contributing to a better understanding of the
working of the Creator, and this is expressly stated in their
own writings. None of them had nearly the antagonistic attitude
towards religion that their latter-day followers display.
Secondly, whereas scientism emerged as a result of the advances
in the physical sciences, secularism is a product of the
evolution of the social sciences and institutions in Europe. And
it is well known that the development of the social sciences is
distinct from, and has lagged behind, the development of the
physical sciences.
When one looks for the factors that provided the initial impetus
for the rise of secularism in Europe, two major factors stand
out: a) the violence that engulfed virtually all of Europe in
the Reformation vs. Counter-Reformation debate, and b) the
Church´s alliance with the ancien regime.
Even though it initially began as a reform movement within
Catholicism, the Reformation quickly evolved into an open
schism. Seeing the ecclesiastical authority of the Church being
challenged along with their own political preeminence, the
leading Catholic countries, Spain and Italy, initiated a
Counter-Reformation at the Council of Trent in 1543. Generally
speaking, the rest of the 16th century saw the demarcation of
the Catholic-Protestant divide in Europe. This proved to be
significant in the religio-political conflicts that erupted in
the 17th century. Commenting on the overall character of the
17th century, a contemporary historian notes: “...European
rulers and their people indulged in the seventeenth century in
an orgy of hatred, bigotry, massacre, torture, and brutality
which has no parallel until the twentieth century.”6 This
violence and bloodletting ran across the Protestant-Catholic
divide that had emerged in the previous century.
The scale and intensity of the violence that erupted in the
aftermath of these “religious” debates led to an indelible
impact on the Western psyche. Having the advantage of hindsight,
today it is clear that much of the violence that expressed
itself in religious idiom was actually a demonstration of
simmering social and political grievances. Not having the
advantage of hindsight, however, some of the leading
intellectuals of the day blamed the violence and bloodshed of
these wars entirely on religion. By the end of the 17th century,
therefore, more than a few people in Europe were attempting to
formulate new principles of political organization that would
extricate the political state from theological issues. Even
though the practical implementation of this idea did not occur
until the founding of the United States of America in 1776, the
factors that led to the desire for such an order are rooted in
the religio-political violence from the Reformation vs.
Counter-Reformation period.
The alliance of the Church with the ancien regime is another
significant factor that contributed to the emergence of
secularism. In this case, the Church was allied with a system of
social thought and organization that was being bypassed by
history. The concept of the “Divine right of kings” to rule
their subjects without any restrictions was expressed in
religious terms and, more often than not, officially advocated
by the religious authorities. Additionally, the Church itself
was the largest landlord in Europe. As the demise of feudalism
set in, the Church was perceived to be the major defender of
this antiquated institution. Consequently, religious authorities
were seen as a major obstacle in the development of social
institutions.
The bloody history of 17th century Europe and the Church´s
continued support of the ancien regime made religion vulnerable
to criticism from a number of quarters. This criticism found its
most articulate expression in the writings of the French
philosophes during the last quarter of the 18th century.
Symbolizing a movement that has come to be known as the
Enlightenment, the attacks of the philosophes on traditional
religion and traditional modes of thought provided the
intellectual framework in which the principles of secularism
were eloquently expressed. Holding the Church to be responsible
for practically all the bigotry and intolerance that was to be
found in the European society, the philosophes argued that
religious teachings were the major obstacle to the growth and
progress of man. Under the guidance of Denis Diderot they
compiled the Encyplopedie, with the purpose of demonstrating the
grandeur of human achievements if rational and empirical thought
was adopted, contrasted against the conservatism and
obscurantism of religious authorities. The enlightenment
attitude towards religion is best expressed in the thought of
Voltaire. The only redeeming feature that Voltaire could find in
religion was that it provided the masses with an incentive to
behave morally. For Voltaire, if the masses were to find out the
real nature of religion they would all lose faith in its
doctrine, thus leading to anarchy in society.
By the end of the 18th century, the Enlightenment critique of
religion had become a part of the intellectual debate taking
place in Europe. The position of the philosophes on the need to
remove religion from the public sphere was strengthened by
developments in the socio-political realm. The modern
nation-state was emerging to challenge the political supremacy
of the Church in Europe. Centralization and administrative
uniformity are essential prerequisites for the efficient
functioning of a modern nation-state. But this is hardly
possible if the very geographical land on which the state is
based is not under its jurisdiction and neither are the
educational institutions that are present in its realm. This was
the situation that faced the forerunners of today´s European
republics. And everywhere it was the Church that was proving to
be an obstacle in the way of “modernization” and “development.”
The claims of the Church carried the weight of tradition, cannon
law, and papal authority behind them. A rival claim to
jurisdiction over lands and institutions implies a critique of
the very principles on which the established claim is based.
Hence, by the end of the 18th century, we find the development
of a political theory in Europe that totally divorces the
process of legislation from any reference to religious
authority.
By the beginning of the 19th century, the principle of
legislative sovereignty became an integral part of progressive
political theory. The European mind came to accept the principle
that as long as the political authority of the state is in
legitimate hands, the state is absolutely free to draft any
legislation as it sees fit. The only argument in this context is
regarding the definition of legitimate political authority. The
thinkers following the Hobbesian tradition place this legitimacy
in the hands of a single ruler, those following the Lockean
tradition place this authority in an elected assembly. But it is
clear to all that absolute legislative sovereignty now rests
with mortals, without any need for a reference to the Divine.
The acceptance of this idea was a radical break from the past
because it had always been assumed that there were certain laws,
dictated by God, that could not be superseded by those of man.
The acceptance of the principle of legislative sovereignty was a
clear signal that religion had become marginalized in the public
affairs of society. Even though it was marginalized at the
societal level, religion found a refuge in the individual
conscience of the believer. But the events of the 19th century
would prove that religion was not safe even in the private
sphere. Whereas the leading intellectuals of 17th and 18th
century had argued that the interference of religion in the
public affairs of society hampered society´s progress, the 19th
century saw the emergence of thinkers who argued that the
effects of religion are so pernicious that it should be banished
from even the psyche of the individual. The 19th century
thinkers gave numerous arguments, some of them contradictory,
for the expulsion of religion from the private sphere as well.
Nietzsche argued that religion had been invented by the weak to
fool the strong, Marx argued that religion was the product of
the dominant mode of production (thereby reflecting the
interests of the strong) that legitimized existing exploitative
social relation, Feuerbach saw religion as merely a projection
of human wishes, and Freud viewed religion as a manifestation of
infantile regression.
The ideas of these critics of religion carried added force
because of developments in a new academic discipline called
“biblical criticism.” This discipline applied critical and
empirical methods to a historical study of the Bible, and in the
end the conclusion was reached that fundamental teachings of
Christianity could not be traced back to Jesus, but were
additions from later periods. One of the seminal works in this
field was by a committed Christian, David Friedrich Strauss, who
wrote The Life of Jesus Critically Examined in 1836. After
noting that it was not possible to establish the historical
authenticity of the person of Jesus, the book made an attempt to
get around the question of historical authenticity and still
keep central Christian teachings intact by explaining the
teachings in purely allegorical terms. The effects of this
approach to religious belief can be gauged by the fact that the
person who translated it into English, George Eliot, spurned
belief in Christianity after reading the book.7
But this attempt to keep the Christian teachings relevant by
giving them allegorical significance failed because further
research revealed that even the authenticity of the allegories
was questionable. Another committed Christian, Albrecht Ritschl,
argued that the doctrine of Trinity had nothing to do with
authentic Christian teachings. In his book Theology and
Metaphysics, Ritschl argued that the doctrine of Trinity was
introduced into Christianity as a result of Greek influence. If
the allegories in which religious doctrines were expressed
proved to be of questionable origin themselves, the question
naturally arose regarding the authenticity of religion itself.
This vacuum of legitimacy was filled by the philosophies of
thinkers like Feuerbach, Nietzsche, and Marx and by the end of
the 19th century the concept of the “death of God” had become
the accepted norm among the intellectual elite in Europe.
By the beginning of the 20th century all the elements were in
place that would eventually lead to the spread of the notion of
“death of God” among the masses. Sigmund Freud in his Future of
an Illusion notes that the educated elite, those responsible for
constructing and maintaining human society, have largely
replaced religious motives for civilized behavior by secular
motives. Because “...such people are to a large extent
themselves vehicles of civilization,” it is only a matter of
time before the masses at large are also infected with this
“enlightened” attitude. Freud goes on to state that
criticism has whittled away the evidential value of religious
documents, natural science has shown up the errors in them, and
comparative research has been struck by the fatal resemblance
between the religious ideas which we revere and the mental
products of primitive peoples. 8
During roughly the same time period that Freud was expressing
his views, the concept of secularism received a “scientific”
stamp of approval from some of the leading mathematicians of the
20th century. Bertrand Russell´s work gave rise to a
philosophical school called logical positivism. The fundamental
axiom of this philosophy is that “any statement that cannot be
proven or disproven is meaningless.” The statement that “God
exists” cannot be empirically verified or refuted, thus any
discussion regarding it in any context is an exercise in
futility. Even though Logical Positivism has been supplanted by
other philosophical schools in academic circles, the application
of its fundamental axiom to religious issues is common among the
masses even today.
In principle, secularism allows an individual the right to hold
religious beliefs, but in the contemporary West it is expected
that an educated and enlightened individual not hold any
religious conviction. Any suggestion that a particular matter of
public concern should in any way be referred to a religious
context is to be totally rejected. In the 20th century
socialism, fascism, communism, liberalism, and often a motley
mixture of one or more of these -isms has characterized the
collective affairs of European societies. The important point to
note is that in a sociological setup based on any of these
-isms, religion at best plays only a marginal role and even then
it is sometime actively fought against. If sociology is taken to
refer to the collective affairs of society, then secularism is
the cardinal principle that determines the sociological
character of modern Western society.
Capitalism as Ideology
Capitalism is the one element that has imbued the modern West
with its dynamic character. Keeping in mind the fact that the
“modern West” was earlier defined in socio-cultural terms, not
merely geographic terms, the penetration of Western culture into
the non-Western world has been fueled by the birth and expansion
of the capitalist economic system. It is well known that the
need for cheap raw materials and new markets provided a
significant portion of the impetus for the colonizing enterprise
undertaken by the West in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Furthermore, the fact that the establishment of the capitalist
market system in a given society is an essential pre-requisite
for the spread of socio-political liberalism in that society is
a point on which most liberal and socialist theoreticians agree.
In spite of the fact that capitalism plays such a critical role
in shaping the character of the modern world, it is not an easy
term to define. The fundamental principle underlying capitalist
theory is that the collective interests of society are best
served if each individual is afforded the maximum opportunity to
pursue his own self-defined selfish interests. And it is taken
for granted that the selfish interest of each individual would
drive him to accumulate as much private wealth as possible. But
before the capitalist ethos could become acceptable even for the
political and intellectual elite in Europe a number of
conceptual thresholds had to be crossed. The foremost among
these thresholds is the concept of interest.
In a tradition dating back to Aristotle and Seneca, continuing
through the early Church Fathers and the great medieval
theologians, the charging of interest on loans was held to be an
anathema by the Europeans. As recently as the Council of Vienna
of 1311, the Catholic Church declared the charging of interest
to be a crime punishable by excommunication. And there were
anti-usury laws on the statute books of Western countries even
in the closing decades of the 19th century. It is impossible to
speak of the emergence of a capitalist economy in the absence of
the concept of interest. Consequently, it is not surprising to
see such an economy emerge in embryonic form in the aftermath of
the Protestant Reformation, because Luther, Calvin, and Zwingle
all favored the allowance of the charging of interest.
Whereas capitalism imbues the modern West with its dynamic
character, capitalism owes its own dynamism to a banking system
based on interest!
A related concept that had to be accepted in order for a
capitalist economy to come into existence was the notion of
“profit.” The simple idea that engaging in a business enterprise
in order to accumulate personal wealth so that one would be able
to use that wealth to obtain more wealth ran contrary to the
teachings of a thousand year old religious tradition. As late as
the mid-17th century, people were being put on trial in the
American colonies for engaging in commerce that resulted in
accruing a profit of as little as sixpence on a shilling. One of
the basic teachings of the Church in the Middle Ages was this:
“No Christian ought to be a merchant.” The force of the precept
against the accumulation of wealth can be gauged by the
apologetic that was produced in order to justify it. John Locke
in his famous Second Treatise on Government dedicates a whole
chapter — “On Property” — endeavoring to prove that the
accumulation of wealth is sanctioned by morality, the
Scriptures, and is above all also logical. Not content to prove
that the simple accumulation of wealth is moral, Locke´s main
argument was that unlimited accumulation of wealth was also
moral, religiously sanctioned, and logical. Similarly, Adam
Smith´s masterpiece The Wealth of Nations attempted to maintain
an “objective” balance while discussing the benefits of wealth
accumulation and its negative effects. But in the end Smith
comes down definitively on the side of the positive benefits of
wealth accumulation. The notion that one should work hard,
accumulate wealth, and improve one´s standard of living still
had not taken root in the minds of 17th century Europeans.
During this period, those who engaged in commerce and work in
order to accumulate wealth were the outcasts of society, not its
pillars.
A third concept that was crystallized in the Western mind with
the emergence and development of the capitalist ethos can be
described as “commodification.” Even though today the buying and
selling of land causes the modern individual no conceptual — to
say nothing of spiritual — malaise, for a medieval baron such a
concept simply did not make sense. For him the “selling” of his
land made as much sense as the buying and selling of a Fulbright
or Rhodes scholarship makes to a modern individual. Even though
land has existed before man, it has become a commodity only in
modern times. Similarly, even though work is as old as man
himself, its commodified version — labor — is a modern
invention. The notion that one has to “work” in order to earn a
“wage” simply did not make sense to a medieval European, and
even in the early part of the 20th century to most inhabitants
of the non-Western world.
By the middle of the 18th century, then, the concepts of
interest on money, profit, and commodity had become acceptable
to a significant enough portion of the European population to
give birth to a new way of conducting trade. In these early
years there was a great deal of confusion regarding the
mechanisms and rules that governed this new method of exchange,
and a number of bizarre and contradictory theories were offered
as explanations. It was the genius of Adam Smith to rise above
the conceptual morass that was surrounding the subject and write
his monumental work, titled Inquiry into the Nature and Causes
of the Wealth of Nations, in the fateful year of 1776. He argued
that the matter of exchange of goods among the citizens should
not be regulated by any authority or restricted by custom. Smith
argued that a mechanism called “the market” is best suited to
provide the optimal results in the area of trade, if it is
allowed to function freely. In providing evidence to support his
argument, Smith noted that if each individual is allowed the
maximum freedom to pursue his own selfish interest then society
as a whole will accrue the maximum benefit. The proposition that
the collective interests of society would be best served if each
individual in society is allowed to pursue his own selfish
interest is in sharp contrast to the opposing assertion that the
collective interests of society are best served if the
individuals in society obey the edicts of a central government
or certain traditional or religious principles. If anything, in
the capitalistic ethos the interference of the governmental,
traditional, and/or religious authorities in the private affairs
of individuals (be they economic or otherwise) are deemed to be
negative factors in the development of society. Even though this
basic premise underlying the capitalistic ethos is taken for
granted today, having the status of a self-evident truism, it
has not always been the case. In fact it is only over the last
few decades that this premise has come to be accepted by the
majority of the inhabitants of the West, to say nothing of the
rest of the globe.
Less than eighty years after Smith wrote his book detailing the
benefits of an economy governed by the market mechanism, the
survival of a market economy in Europe seemed to be in serious
jeopardy due to strong challenges from two opposing quarters.
First, there was the revolutionary upheaval of 1848, which the
feudal aristocrats attempted to manipulate to their own benefit
and ride the revolutionary wave back into a position of
prominence. These aristocrats were the bitter enemies of the
emerging capitalists because it was at their hands that they had
lost their political and economic clout. As Marx has noted, the
French Revolution of 1789 abolished feudal property in favor of
capitalist property. And in 1848 the feudal lords made a
desperate attempt to undo the events of the previous six
decades, and for a while they succeeded. The events of 1848 in
both France and Germany were a sharp reaction to the unsettling
effects of a market economy and an attempt to return to the safe
and familiar world of the guilds, manors, and apprenticeships.
While the still emerging capitalist system was facing a
political challenge from the conservative quarters in the middle
of the 19th century, it suddenly had to face an ideological
challenge formulated by a young man named Karl Marx. Whereas the
revolutionary upheaval of 1848 represented the disaffection of
the peasants and aristocrats with the capitalist system, the
ideological challenge of Marx was the voice of the disaffected
industrial working class. Marx argued that all the misery that
was the lot of the industrial working class was the result of
the workings of a market economy. He argued that the only way to
alleviate this misery is to adopt a planned economy that would
be run by the workers, not the capitalists.
By the close of the 19th century, it was not entirely clear
whether capitalism would survive on mainland Europe. Powerful
forces were advocating the organization of society´s economic
system according to the dictates of a central authority, not to
the working of a free market.
While capitalism was being challenged on both the ideological
and political fronts on mainland Europe, the capitalist system
continued to mature in England and the United States.
Comparatively speaking, these two countries remained unaffected
by upheaval on mainland Europe. And it is not a coincidence that
it was these very two countries that emerged as the dominant
economic and political powers in the West in the first quarter
of the 20th century. The citizens of the United States enjoyed a
standard of living that no previous generation in recorded
history had achieved. And England for its part ruled an overseas
empire that was greater in extent than any empire in history.
The spectacular performance of these two countries vindicated
the capitalist system in spite of the shocks that it suffered in
mid 19th century. And, quite naturally, people began to once
again take note of the benefits of a market economy. But this
confidence in the market economy suffered a severe blow in 1929
with the crash of the stock market.
The effects of this shock to the capitalist system were more
severe and longer lasting than any of the previous shocks. In
order for the United States to dig out from the collapse of the
stock market, strong intervention on the part of the government
was needed, and it is doubtful if even this intervention would
have sufficed had it not been for WWII. The two decades after
WWII proved to be even more trying because of the emergence of a
rival system that claimed to be the successor of the failing
capitalist system. Due to both the unsettling domestic situation
in the United States and the rapid expansion of communist
influence throughout the Third World in the 1950s and ´60s, it
was almost taken for granted that communism would very soon
supplant capitalism as the dominant global power. But by the end
of the 1980s communism itself, to say nothing of its claim to
global domination, had collapsed and capitalism had emerged as
the clear victor in this ideological struggle.
Even though Marx and his followers had astutely recognized the
weaknesses of the capitalist system — the cycle of boom and
bust, the concentration of capital in fewer and fewer hands, the
disruption of social development etc. — they grossly
underestimated its one strength. The Marxists failed to realize
that capitalism had the ability to improve the standard of
living of the industrial worker much more competently than their
own proposed alternative, and that it had the ability to adapt
to changing circumstances.
The days when apologists had to put forth arguments justifying
the charging of interest on money and the concepts of profit and
commodity have been long forgotten. Today it is often assumed
that the legitimacy of these concepts has always been accepted
by all people since the dawn of time, that these concepts are
part and parcel of the natural order of things. Today, the
concepts on which capitalism is based carry the import of
self-evident, eternal, universal truths. It would be tedious to
go into a detailed discussion regarding the degree to which the
market system has become the dominant instrument that is shaping
the modern West. It would suffice to discuss the broad outlines
of Milton Friedman´s and Francis Fukuyama´s thoughts on this
issue.
These thinkers are the leading ideologues of liberal-bourgeoisie
society. Both of them see a direct correlation between the
emergence of a capitalist economy in a given society and the
emergence of a liberal/democratic political system. They argue
that the emergence of economic capitalism is a pre-requisite for
the emergence of political liberalism. The converse of this
argument also holds true. Friedman and Fukuyama contend that
government interference in the free workings of the market
economy is either a prelude to or a symptom of the usurpation of
political freedom. In the developed societies of the West the
free-market economy is the principle guarantor of political
freedom, and in the developing countries the adoption of the
capitalist system is the principal pre-requisite for political
liberalism.
This is not the place to discuss the validity, or the lack
thereof, of these arguments. It merely needs to be noted that
the drive to maintain and strengthen the existing free-market
system on the domestic level is justified by the claim that the
free-market is the best guarantor of political freedoms and
economic well-being. In the domain of foreign policy the
incorporation of those areas that are still outside the global
market system (and a more efficient exploitation of those
already within) is the principal factor that shapes the foreign
policies. If ideology is defined as a conceptual framework used
by a group in order to justify its actions to itself, then
capitalism is the ideology of the modern West!
At the end of this discussion, it is worth noting that this
description of the fundamental characteristics of modernity is
neither novel nor original. The manner in which the argument has
been presented may be different, but the fundamental ideas
underlying the above description of the modern West closely
approximates the position of some of the leading thinkers who
have studied the birth and development of modernity. J. Lyotard,
Marshall Berman, Bryan Appleyard, and Anthony Giddens are among
the thinkers whose analysis of the development of the modern
West at least partially resembles the description presented
above. It would be tedious to discuss the position of each on
the subject, but it would be certainly useful to choose one and
look at his thought in some detail.
Anthony Giddens identifies the institutional dimensions of
modernity as being capitalism, industrialism, military power,
and surveillance. He goes on to describe capitalism and the
nation-state as being “...the great institutional elements
promoting the acceleration and expansion of modern
institutions.”9 He agrees with Marx that it is the dynamism
inherent in the capitalist system that imbued the modern West
with its aggressive expansionist impulse. Giddens notes that
from “...its early origins capitalism is international in
scope.”10 Even though he never identifies capitalism as being
the dominant ideology of the modern West in as explicit terms as
we have done above, he is keenly aware of the fact that the
elite in the West justify their actions to themselves largely
according to concepts rooted in capitalist thought. He notes
that the stimulus to accelerate the rate of economic growth in
the West is so overwhelming that it “...inevitably pushes
economic interests to the forefront of the policies which states
pursue in the international arena.”11 Samuel Wallerstein is even
more candid in identifying capitalism as being the dominant
factor that shapes the behavior of the modern West.
Giddens also recognizes the importance of the nation-state in
the modernization enterprise, and criticizes Wallerstien for
overlooking the role that this institution has played and is
playing. He notes that the coming of the nation-state into
existence was essential for the proper functioning of a
capitalist economy. He goes so far as to state that, “[a]
capitalist society is a ´society´ because it is a
nation-state.”12
In light of the critical importance that Giddens attaches to the
role played by the nation-state, it is very curious that he does
not discuss the pivotal role played by the emergence of secular
political thought. Medieval Christianity saw itself as a
universal enterprise that was not limited to any geographical
locality and also saw itself as the instrument through which the
dictates of God were to be implemented on earth. Two crucial
concepts on which the modern nation-state is built are absent
from the medieval political arrangement, a) territorial
boundaries (i.e., well defined borders), and b) absolute
legislative sovereignty. We cannot imagine the emergence of the
modern nation-state in the absence of a political theory
limiting the administrative powers of a claimant within certain
geographical boundaries, and also providing the claimant with
absolute legislative sovereignty. Such a political theory can
only emerge outside the framework of a religious reference. The
fact that Giddens recognizes the key role played by the
nation-state in the project of modernity, while simultaneously
disregarding the contribution of secularism, represents a
noticeable oversight on his part.
Giddens notes that before a break with tradition could even be
contemplated, a new criterion for establishing certitude had to
be articulated. He maintains that the project of modernity was
made possible by the enthronement of reason as the yardstick to
measure certitude. The enthronement of reason replaced
revelation and tradition as being the supreme source of
knowledge regarding Truth and Certainty. This shift of the
epistemological sources marked the beginning of a new process
and represented a new (i.e., modern) way of looking at the
universe and of man´s place in it. It is only after this shift
had been made that concepts such as the nation-state,
capitalism, secularism, etc., could even be envisioned by the
modern mind that was emerging in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Consequently we find that Giddens explicitly identifies
capitalism and scientism as being the two fundamental pillars of
modernity and the third (i.e., secularism) is implicit in his
discussion of the modern nation-state.
Modernity and the Death of the Transcendent
The cumulative effects of an epistemology based on scientism, a
sociology based on secularism, and an ideology based on
capitalism has given birth to a society that has lost all faith
in transcendence. Concepts such as God, life after death,
beauty, honor, virtue, vice, evil, etc., are virtually
meaningless in the modern world. In the words of Vaclav Havel,
these terms and concepts “...represent merely some kind of
psychological idiosyncrasy, or some kind of stray relic from
times past.…”13 One cannot discuss the validity, or the lack
thereof, of any of these concepts within a conceptual framework
that is defined by scientism, secularism, and capitalism. If
anything, the discussion of some of these terms and concepts is
emphatically held to be not only worthless in the modern setting
but exceedingly deleterious to the well-being of the individual
and society, because discussions about such concepts is a waste
of valuable energy and time. Huston Smith notes that the modern
mind is capable of taking ideas, concepts, and propositions
seriously only to the degree that they can be quantified. The
realm of the transcendent, metaphysical, and spiritual reality
is relegated to the category of “excluded knowledge,”14 because
this realm cannot be defined and/or explored using the modern
quantitative methods. During the pre-modern era, the human mind
was profoundly concerned with issues related to God, vice,
virtue, evil, beauty, demons, and angels, etc. Relegating
discussion about these things to the domain of “excluded
knowledge” is a radical shift in human concerns. Smith
summarizes the parable of the map that E. F. Schumacher used to
describe the philosophical education that he received at
Cambridge University:
Most of the things that most of mankind has considered most
important throughout its history didn´t show on it. Or if they
did, they showed as museum pieces — things people used to
believe about the world but believe no longer.15
It is exceedingly important to get a full grasp of the
significance of the loss of faith in the transcendent,
metaphysical, and spiritual realm in the modern setting if one
is to fully appreciate the complex issues surrounding the
encounter between the modern West and Islam. A failure to
realize the import of this issue is responsible for much of the
misunderstanding that characterizes the relationship between the
two.
Before being anything else, Islam is a belief system centered on
belief in One God, the institution of Prophethood, and life
after death — these are all transcendental principles whose
validity cannot be determined by any instrument or theory
available to modern science. In other words, these are
transcendent, metaphysical realities that cannot be discovered
and/or described using modern quantitative methods. On the other
hand the modern West, because of its utter inability to accept
the existence of transcendent, metaphysical, and spiritual
realities, is unable to comprehend the importance of belief in
such principles as being a legitimate motivating factor in the
behavior of individuals. Consequently, Western scholars have
offered a myriad of explanations for the “revival” of Islam in
recent decades, arguing that it is the result of oil money, an
inferiority complex, a way to justify their poverty to
themselves, or a reaction to the modernization process on the
part of the Muslims, etc. The simple notion that Muslims might
be adhering to at least some Islamic principles simply as a
matter of faith is not even in the realm of possibility as far
as many Western “experts” are concerned. Similarly, the Muslims
often take every perceived hostile action on the part of the
West to be evidence of its hatred of Islam. The possibility that
the West´s (perceived) hostility towards Islam is not the result
of some special attitude towards Islam per se but a byproduct of
hostility towards any system of belief based on transcendent
values is left unconsidered by the Muslims. Both parties often
address each other from within the confines of their own
particular conceptual framework, without taking into account the
fact that the categories and concepts often do not make sense to
the other side.
To bridge this gap of miscommunication is reason enough to
investigate, in greater detail, the modern West´s loss of faith
in a reality that lies beyond science and the instruments of
science. But for the purposes of our current discussion this is
of secondary importance. The central purpose of this
investigation is to outline the ways in which this loss of faith
has caused a radical shift in the Western view of reality, and
to describe the alternative vision of reality that has replaced
the old.
Since the very dawn of modernity in the 17th century, Western
philosophers have been keenly aware that the birth of this new
phenomenon signaled the death of transcendence, and consequently
of certainty itself. Any description of Truth and Reality
exclusively based on science is, in the final analysis, open to
revision and change, and is therefore fraught with uncertainty.
Whereas traditionally knowledge was considered to be the gateway
to certainty, in modernity the relationship between the two is
shattered because the propositions made by scientific knowledge
always remain subject to modification.
The fact that science cannot provide a firm basis for certainty
was recognized by the individuals who not only witnessed the
birth of modern science but also served as midwives. Writing in
the middle of the 17th century — the century of Newton — Blaise
Pascal noted in his masterpiece, Pensées,
It is in vain oh men that you seek within yourselves the cure
for your miseries. All your insight only leads you to the
knowledge that is not in yourselves that you will discover the
true and the good. The philosophers [i.e., the scientists]
promised them to you and they have not been able to keep their
promise.16
Echoing the sentiments of the early moderns like Pascal and
Descartes, Ludwig Wittgenstien noted three centuries later that,
“we feel that even when all possible scientific questions have
been answered, the problems of life remain completely
untouched.”17
It has been clear to many astute thinkers throughout the past
three centuries that not only does science not have the ability
to provide a firm basis for certainty, but that it is quite
limited regarding issues of crucial importance to the individual
human being. The problems that such a flux would present for an
individual, to say nothing of society at large, alarmed the
early moderns. They attempted to formulate philosophical systems
in which transcendent principles would remain meaningful in
spite of the corrosive effects of science. Pascal and Descartes
from the 17th century and John Wesley, Rousseau, Berkeley, and
Kant from the 18th century represent thinkers who attempted to
construct philosophical systems in which a reality beyond
scientific equations and instruments remains meaningful. It must
be noted that for a limited time their efforts did bear fruit.
It would be useful to look at the thought of one thinker from
each century in order to gain additional insight into the issue.
The attempt to keep the transcendent alive in the face of
advancing modernity is clearly visible in the thought of René
Descartes. Considered the father of modern philosophy, Descartes
asserted that reality consists of two dimensions. One dimension
is the realm of matter, which is characterized by spatial
extension; and the other dimension is the realm of
consciousness, which is characterized by the process of thought.
For Descartes, both of these dimensions exist independent of
each other with no mediating agent. Consequently, it is the
individual´s awareness of his/her own existence that provides
the foundational basis for certainty, as expressed in his famous
assertion “I think, therefore I am.” These assertions easily
allow themselves to being formulated into a theory in which
thinking/cogitating minds survey a materialistic and mechanistic
nature in order to arrive at an accurate description of reality.
As noted above, this is the fundamental premise on which
modernity is based, but Descartes managed to keep transcendence
meaningful in his philosophy by noting that in the end it was
God who was the foundation of all things. As Whitehead has
noted, this Cartesian dualism signaled the onset of a process
where “…science took charge of [describing] the materialist
nature and philosophy took charge of [describing] the cogitating
minds.”18 This was to have profound repercussion in the coming
centuries. According to Descartes, the certainty of his thought
process could only be supported by a belief structure whose
foundation was God, because it was easier and more certain to
know about the existence of God than anything else.
But it must be noted that Descartes´s God could hardly be
recognized by a medieval Christian, because his God is not to be
found in the natural world insofar as the workings of nature
point towards the existence of God. He argued that the existence
of God could only be proven because the process of human
reasoning led to this conclusion. He maintained that it was
possible to explain the workings of the universe without
reference to Divine interference. Armstrong notes that “instead
of using the world to prove the existence of God, Descartes had
used the idea of God to give him faith in the reality of the
world.”19
By the beginning of the 18th century faith in a transcendent
reality was still alive in the West, though its condition was
very precarious. This is best illustrated by the fact that, in
his famous work Discourse on Method, Descartes argues that it is
possible to devise a system of inquiry that would put all truth
at the disposal of humanity. In other words, it was within the
ability of the human mind to arrive at an accurate description
of Truth and Reality without any reference to external sources.
A century after Descartes, Kant took a different approach to the
problem of keeping a transcendent reality meaningful in an age
when the progress of science continued to weaken such a
proposition. Kant caused a furor among his contemporaries when
he wrote Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. In this book he argued
that none of the traditional arguments for the existence of God
are valid. Any attempt to prove the existence of God based on
logic and reason is doomed to fail, because every such argument
can be proved to be self-contradictory or incomplete. The same
could be said for any arguments that purport to prove the
nonexistence of God. At this stage Kant´s critique seemed to
nullify the precarious foundations on which Descartes had built
his argument in favor of the existence of God. But in a
companion volume written in 1788, titled Critique of Practical
Reason, Kant put forth his own evidence supporting the
contention that a transcendent reality, in the form a Supreme
Creator and Supreme Judge, does exist.
In this second volume Kant argued that a careful, concerted
contemplation focusing on “the starred heaven above” and “the
moral law within” provides one with the most compelling evidence
for the existence of God. Armstrong notes that Kant attempted to
do in the Christian world what Al-Ghazzali had done centuries
earlier in the Muslim world, i.e., make personal experience a
valid source of religious knowledge.”20 Taking this as his
starting point, Kant was able to formulate a philosophy in which
the determinism of science is challenged, the irreducibility of
the human being is asserted and a metaphysical basis for belief
and morality is provided.21 In other words, Kant was able to
construct the philosophical foundations of a reality that cannot
be measured by any scientific instrument, but whose existence is
nonetheless very real. Even though Kant´s argument began from a
different starting point and followed a different route, he
essentially concluded his argument on the same terminus as
Descartes, i.e., proof for the existence of God is to be found
within the human being.
It was noted earlier that the attempts of these early moderns to
keep transcendental values alive in the West were not entirely
in vain; for a while their efforts did bear fruit. But a stream
in the historical process strongly worked against their efforts,
and they could not achieve any lasting success. The Cartesian
dualism of mind and matter provided room for a division of the
sphere of influence between science and philosophy, and, as
Whitehead notes, this division of the sphere of influence was
not only affirmed but also actualized. The world of matter was
to be studied by science, the world of the human mind by
philosophy. This “division of labor” remained possible only as
long as science concentrated its gaze on the natural and
material world, but as we noted in our discussion on Secularism
as Sociology, by the beginning of the 19th century science was
already turning its gaze upon man himself. Initially it was only
the institutions built by man which were studied, but eventually
his body and ultimately his mind also fell within the domain of
scientific inquiry. Once this happened, philosophy was gradually
squeezed out by the increasing intrusion of science. By the
beginning of the 20th century, philosophy ceased to exist as an
independent entity, and the survival of its very name in the
closing decades of the 20th century is only made possible by the
fact that it now merely serves as the hand-maiden of science.
With the disappearance of philosophy it is not surprising the
philosophical systems laboriously constructed by Descartes,
Kant, and others attempting to keep a vision of the transcendent
alive in the face of the corrosive effects of science have also
disappeared.
Up till this point in our discussion we have offered a very
general definition of “transcendence,” much more general than
what we have in mind, because it was deemed more necessary to
understand the fate of “transcendence” in the modern West than
its specific meaning. At this point we will spell out in greater
detail what we mean by the death of transcendental idealism in
the modern West.
All cultures known to man have been profoundly concerned with
metaphysical questions, and each society has shaped itself in
accordance with its understanding of certain metaphysical
beliefs. Questions concerning the nature of God (or gods), the
nature of the human spirit/soul, and the nature of life after
death are to be found in every culture studied by
anthropologists. To list the ways in which the modern West is
distinguishable from all other cultures known to historians and
anthropologists could fill up many pages. If we were to
summarize this list in two sentences then the following would
provide a good summary: The thought process in the modern West
is dominated by the study of the material reality, to the
exclusion of concern for metaphysical and spiritual issues.
Consequently, all of its mental faculties and attention are
focused on the study of the material universe, man´s physical
needs, and providing the means to make man´s earthly existence
as comfortable as possible. Comparing this position to the
traditional approach, the modern West has chosen to focus its
attention on the created universe to the exclusion of the
Creator, on the human body to the exclusion of the human soul,
and on earthly existence to the exclusion of concern for the
life after death. One way of illustrating the distinction
between modernity and pre-modernity is the following:
The Shift from
Pre-Modernity to Modernity
The Creator of the Universe ® The Created Universe
The Human Soul ® The Human Body
Life Hereafter ® Life Here-and-Now
Metaphysics & Spirituality ® Physics & Materialism
Since the beginning of the 19th century, nearly twenty different
philosophical schools of thought have emerged in the West. Such
diverse and distinct philosophies as naturalism, humanism,
dialectical materialism, existentialism, and behaviorism, to
name only a few, are a part of this group. But in spite of their
diversity, the one common characteristic that all of these
philosophical schools share is the disregard for ideational and
transcendental concepts. As far as all of these schools are
concerned, concrete fact and physical phenomena are to be the
sole subject of human inquiry. The concepts of God, soul, and
the Hereafter are not a part of the conceptual framework of
modern Western thought. On the theoretical level, some of these
schools of thought leave open the possibility that God, soul,
and Hereafter may exist, their existence and hence their
importance is neither affirmed nor rejected. But in practice
this avowedly agnostic position has led, quite naturally, to the
gradual elimination of these concepts from the realm of inquiry.
The only philosophical school to emerge during this time period
that maintained the validity of a transcendent reality is
idealism. Tracing its lineage all the way back to Plato,
idealism asserts that the physical world is only a defective
replica of actual reality. Because the human being and the human
mind are a part of this imperfect replica, they can only have
imperfect knowledge of true reality. Plato attempted to
illustrate this point in his famous allegory of the “people of
the cave.” In modern times, idealism did find proponents, most
notably in the thought of Kant as we have already discussed.
Even in the late 19th century, Appearance and Reality (1897) by
F. H. Bradley stands out as a first rate work of philosophy. But
the lone voice of idealism has been easily overwhelmed by the
combined weight of the other materialist philosophies. Today,
idealism is considered to be only a curiosity that challenged
the dominant assumption of the 19th and 20th centuries, viz.,
that which cannot be measured or explored by science is not
worthy of investigation.
It is again worth noting that we have not offered any original
insight by pointing out that the modern West has no regard for
ideational and transcendental concepts. Throughout the modern
period leading thinkers have recognized this condition, and some
have even voiced grave concerns regarding it. Reviewing the
history of modern Western thought it is difficult to find a
person who recognized the death of transcendence with such
brutal clarity as Nietzsche. Hannah Arendt points out that for
Nietzsche “God” symbolized “...the suprasensual realm as
understood by metaphysics.”22 Taking this insight into
consideration Nietzsche´s utterance regarding “the death of God”
in his famous work Thus Spoke Zarathustra takes on a new
significance. He clearly recognized the fact that it was the
work of man himself that was destroying his faith in any
metaphysical reality, and he described this loss of faith in
metaphysics as “the death of God.” He was acutely aware of the
fact that any attempt to keep any transcendent value meaningful
in the absence of belief in some metaphysical principles was an
exercise in futility. He urged modern man to recognize this
reality and stop wasting his energies trying to salvage the
morality, ethics, and metaphysics of a bygone era. Nietzsche
preached that it would be better if modern man spent his
energies creating his own morality, ethics, and metaphysics; in
fact, this was the need of the hour. He considered the attempts
of Kant and others to preserve the traditional values of
Christianity in the face of advancing modernity with hostile
disgust. This is clearly evident in his description of Kant as
“a catastrophic spider.”23
The 20th century has also produced prominent thinkers who have
noticed the death of transcendence and metaphysics in the West.
Rene Guenon, one of the leading French intellectuals of the
inter-war period, noted that a “normal” civilization is;
...one that is based on principles, in the true sense of the
word, one where everything is arranged in hierarchy to conform
to these principles, so that everything in it is seen as the
application and extension of a doctrine whose essence is purely
intellectual and metaphysical.24
Guenon goes on to note that the “doctrine” on which the modern
West is based is neither “purely intellectual” nor “purely
metaphysical.” Looking at the work of some of the leading
Post-WWII thinkers, it becomes clear that neither “pure
intellectualism” nor “pure metaphysics” are to be found anywhere
in the modern West. Lyotard describes the nature and function of
“knowledge” being produced by the modern Western intellect in
these words: “Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be
consumed, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorized in
a new production.”25 He has accurately described the
degeneration of intellectualism into crass consumerist
operationalism. Marcuse describes the last rites that have been
performed over metaphysics in the West. He notes that the
disciples of positivism have seen to it that “…the metaphysical
dimension, formerly a genuine field of rational thought”26 is
relegated to the realm of irrational hysterics. The triumph of
postivistic rationality has meant that metaphysics is consigned
to the realm of “…obscurationist and regressive modes of
thought,” along with all other idealism and transcedentalisms.27
Thus, it was this modern West — profoundly shaped by scientism,
secularism, and capitalism and divorced from any connection with
metaphysics, idealism, or transcendence — that swept across the
Muslim world in the 19th century. The West´s occupation of the
Muslim world was two-dimensional: military and political on the
one hand and cultural and ideological on the other. In its early
stages the Muslims saw this occupation primarily as a
military/political challenge and reacted accordingly. They
attempted to achieve military parity with the West through
adopting modern weapons and methods. Consequently, we witness
the drive to modernize the Egyptian military, initiated by
Muhammad Ali, in the aftermath of the humiliating defeat at the
hands of Napoleon in the first decade of the 19th century. After
two disastrous wars with Russia in 1813 and 1823, Iran embarked
on a military modernization campaign. The Tanzimat Reforms
(1839-76) in the Ottoman Empire also focused on military
modernization to counter the increasing gains being made by the
West in Eastern Europe. Military recovery, reform, and strength
were seen by a vast majority of Muslims as the primary vehicle
that would lead to societal regeneration, up till the last
decades of the 19th century.
Towards the end of the 19th century, a more sophisticated view
linking the socio-political backwardness of Muslim societies to
the existing institutions began to be articulated by influential
Muslim thinkers. The exponents of this view argued that the
superiority of the West was rooted in its socio-political
institutions and principles, not in its military strength.
Therefore, they argued, the Muslims had to adopt Western
principles and institutions if they were to have any hope of
escaping from their backwardness. It is at this juncture that
the intellectual encounter between the modern West and Islam
began, thus providing us with the starting point of our
analysis.
The realization that military superiority was only the most
obvious manifestation of strength rooted in ideas and
institutions inevitably led at least some Muslims to start to
grapple with Western ideas and institutions. This encounter on
the intellectual level was to profoundly change the character of
Muslim society during the 20th century. It is well known that a
Westernized ruling elite soon emerged in the Muslim world, whose
attitude towards the metaphysics and transcendental themes in
Islam hardly differed from the attitude of their Western
teachers towards Christian metaphysics and transcendental
themes. But the reaction of this segment of Muslim society to
the Western intellectual challenge is not of pressing concern to
us, because they totally disregarded any reference to an Islamic
framework in the course of their interaction with Western
thought. Of more pressing concern to us are the attempts
consciously designed to keep Islamic teachings meaningful in the
face of the Western onslaught. It will be shown in the following
analysis that even this “religious” response to the Western
challenge has been profoundly shaped by Western ideas. All
Muslim thinkers who formulated a religious response to the West
acknowledged the fact that a balanced attitude towards
metaphysical and spiritual concerns on the one hand and worldly
concerns on the other is a defining characteristic of Islamic
teachings. According to them, Islam contains the prescription
for both worldly (i.e., material) success and salvation in the
hereafter (i.e., spiritual bliss). But a careful scrutiny of
this religious response reveals that their emphasis on the
prescription for worldly success offered by Islam is so
pronounced in modern Islamic thought, and reference to the
metaphysical and spiritual dimension of Islam so paltry and
insignificant, that any talk of a “balance” between the two is
rendered meaningless.
Summary
The modern West is shaped by three fundamental concepts that
emerged during the 17th and 18th centuries, and evolved and
matured in the 19th and 20th centuries.
*Scientism as Epistemology: Scientism is the belief that
scientific methods and instruments alone are capable of
providing an accurate description of Truth and Reality. A
corollary to this is the belief that technology and “scientific”
planning can solve all the problems which afflict individuals as
well as society at large. Modern Western epistemology is based
on scientism.
*Secularism as Sociology: Secularism is the belief that religion
has no role to play in the public/collective affairs of society
and should remain the private affair of the individual believer.
The exclusive claim to legislative and territorial sovereignty
on the part of the modern nation-state is the starting point as
well as the most pronounced evidence of secularism. Secularism
is the foundation of modern Western sociology.
*Capitalism as Ideology: The underlying assertion on which
capitalist theory is based is that the interests of the society
as a whole are best served if each individual is afforded the
maximum opportunity to pursue his own self-defined selfish
interests. The role of the state is limited to assuring the
smooth working of the free-market, not being a hindrance in the
process of its expansion. The modern West justifies its actions
to itself and to others almost totally within the context of the
capitalist logic, thus making capitalism the ideology of the
modern West.
The combined effects of scientism, secularism, and capitalism
have led to the death of transcendence and metaphysics in the
modern West. This is evidenced by the loss of faith in anything
that lies beyond the visible material universe, and which
therefore cannot be measured by scientific instruments. This is
the defining characteristic that distinguishes the modern West
from all pre-modern societies.
Endnotes
1. Quoted by Marshall Berman in All that is Solid Melts into
Air: The Experience of Modernity (NY: Penguin Books, 1988)
pp.24f.
2. Appleyard, B., Understanding the Present: Science and the
Soul of Man (New York: Anchor Books, 1993) p.111.
3. Quoted by Appleyard in ibid, pp.3f.
4. These claims are being made by such prominent scientists as
Stephen Hawking, Paul Davies, and to some extent Roger Penrose.
5. Fukuyama, F., The End of History and the Last Man (New York:
The Free Press, 1992) p.81.
6. Roberts, J.M., The History of the World (New York: Macmillan
Press, 1991) p.480.
7. Appleyard, op. cit., p.93
8. Freud, S., “The Future of an Illusion” in The Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud edited by James Strachey
(London: Hogarth Press, 1961) vol. xxi, p.38.
9. Giddens, A., The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford,
California: Stanford Univ. Press, 1990) p.62.
10. Ibid., p.57
11. Ibid., p.72
12. Ibid., p.57
13. Havel, V., “Vaclav Havel´s New Year Address” in Orbis,
Spring 1990, p.255.
14. Smith, H., Beyond the Post-Modern Mind (New York: Crossroad
Publishing Co., 1982), pp. 62f.
15. Ibid., p. 72.
16. Quoted by M. Muggeridge in The End of Christendom (London:
Scribner Press, 1978) p.12.
17. Quoted by Appleyard in op cit. pg. 15.
18. Whitehead, A. N., Science and the Modern World (New York:
Mentor Books, 1964) p. 131.
19. Armstrong, K., A History of God: The 4,000 Year Quest of
Judaism, Christianity and Islam (New York: Ballantine Books,
1991) p. 301.
20. Ibid., p.315.
21. Appleyard, op. cit., pp. 64f.
22. Hannah Arendt quoted by Huston Smith “Can Modernity
Accommodate Transcendence” in Modernity and Religion, ed.
William Nichols (Canada: Canadian Corporation for Studies in
Religion, 1987) p. 162.
23. Quoted by Appleyard in op cit., p.78.
24. Guenon, R., East and West (London: Luzac and Co. Publishers,
1941) p.241.
25. Lyotard, J.F., The Postmodern Condition: A Report on
Knowledge (Minnesota: The Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1984) p.5.
26. Marcuse, H., One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press,
1991) p.172.
27. Ibid.
Written By: Basit Bilal Koshul (Tanzeemi Islami)
|
