Westernization versus Muslims Maryam Jameelah, 1976 Islamic Internet Archives · Archive of Modern Islamic Thought ABOUT THIS EDITION Title: Westernization versus Muslims Author: Maryam Jameelah Published in: Mohammad Yusuf Khan First published: 1976 Rights: Published with permission of the rights holder; copyright remains with the owner. © Mohammad Yusuf Khan (publisher); free scan at Chughtai Library Text quality: AI-tidied: Read from a scan, then tidied by AI. Not yet checked by a person: expect some errors. Source: https://dl.chughtailibrary.com/files/repository/personal_collections/maryam_jameela/MJ20/Westernization%20Versus%20muslims.pdf Archived: 14 October 2026 Web page: https://islamicarchives.org/works/mj-westernization-versus-muslims/ This file: Made on 3 November 2026 by islamicarchives.org from the archive's text. Corrections: use the Suggest a correction link on the web page. CONTENTS Foreword WESTERNIZATION VERSUS MUSLIMS I INTRODUCING THE AUTHOR WESTERNIZATION-A PANORAMIC VIEW MUSLIMS AWAKE! **************************************** WESTERNIZATION VERSUS MUSLIMS Cultural Slavery is inseparable from Political Slavery Westernization - a Panoramic View MARYAM JAMEELAH Publisher: MOHAMMAD YUSUF KHAN Sant Nagar, LAHORE (Pakistan) Price: Rs. WESTERNIZATION VERSUS MUSLIMS ============================= Cultural Slavery is inseparable from Political Slavery Westernization - a Panoramic View I === MARYAM JAMEELAH =============== Publisher: MOHAMMAD YUSUF KHAN & SONS ========================== SUNNAT NAGAR, LAHORE - PAKISTAN All Rights Reserved 2nd Edition, October, 1978, 2000 Price: Rs. 10-00 Printed at: Sindhu Press, Lahore INTRODUCING THE AUTHOR ====================== INTRODUCING THE AUTHOR ====================== Maryam Jameelah was born in 1934 in New York at the height of the Great Depression, a fourth-generation American of German-Jewish origin. She was reared in Westchester, one of the most prosperous and populated suburbs of New York, and received a thoroughly secular American education at the local public schools. Always an above-average student, she soon became a passionate intellectual and insatiable bibliophile, hardly ever without a book in hand, her readings extending far beyond the requirements of the school curriculum. As she entered adolescence, she became intensely serious-minded, scorning all frivolities, which is very rare for an otherwise attractive young girl. Her main interests were religion, philosophy, history, anthropology, sociology, psychology and biology. The school and local community public libraries and later, the New York Public Library, became her second home. After her graduation from secondary school in the summer of 1952, she was admitted to New York University where she studied a general liberal arts programme. While at the university, she became severely ill in 1953, grew steadily worse and had to discontinue college two years later without earning any diploma. She was confined to private and public hospitals for two years (1957-1959) and only after her discharge, did she discover her facility for writing. Allama Muhammad Asad’s two books—his autobiographical The Road to Mecca and Islam at the Crossroads—ignited her interest in Islam and after correspondence with some prominent Muslims in Muslim lands1 6 carrying their arms, in their equipment and in all their mode of living. In fact every country which has powerful conquering neighbours tends to a large extent to imitate those neighbours as we see among the Spanish Muslims today in respect to their Christian neighbours. For the Muslims imitate the Christians in their dress and ornaments—and indeed in many of their customs and institutions even to the extent of having statues and pictures on the walls of their houses and shops. And in this, the careful observer will mark a sign of inferiority. An Arab Philosophy of History: Selections from the Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun of Tunis (1332-1406), compiled and translated by Charles Issawi, John Murray, London, 1950, pp. 53-54. ====================================================================== True to the genius that he was, Ibn Khaldun shows his profound insight into the psychology of human nature which applies as much to us here in Pakistan now as it did to the Spanish Muslims of his day. However, it must never be forgotten that our blind and uncritical imitation of foreign civilization is far from spontaneous. From the very beginning of their rule our foreign masters had very carefully mapped out a conspiracy to destroy every manifestation of our indigenous way of life and replace it with their own. About a hundred years ago, the British Government appointed Dr. William Hunter to write a report on the condition of the Muslims of the subcontinent and suggest specific measures as to how they could be ruled most effectively. Accordingly in 1871 he wrote: Our Indian Musalmans: Are They Bound in Conscience to Rebel Against The Queen? In order to break the spirit of resistance of the Muslims and make them resigned to accept foreign subjection indefinitely, 7 the panacea Dr. Hunter proposed was English education. Thus in the concluding pages of his book, he advised his Government: We should thus at length have the Muhammadan youth educated according to our own plan. Without interfering in any way with their religion and in the very process of enabling them to learn their religious duties, we should render that religion, perhaps less sincere, but certainly less fanatical. The rising generation of Muhammadans would then tread the steps which have conducted the Hindus, not long ago the most bigoted nation on earth, into their present state of easy tolerance. Such a tolerance (to modern Western civilization) implies a less earnest belief than their fathers had but it has freed them, as it would liberate the Musalmans from the cruelties which they endured in the name of their mistaken religion. It is more than doubtful whether the Muhammadan law should be taught as a regular study incumbent on all. It certainly should not be made the chief object of instruction. For the Muhammadan law means the Muhammadan religion—that religion too, at a time when its followers looked upon the whole earth as their lawful prey and before they had learned the duties of modern Musalman states in alliance with or in subjection to a Christian government. The study of Muhammadan law no longer answers any requirement of the Government nor does it offer to its students any career in life. We should instead develop a rising generation of Muhammadans no longer learned in their own narrow learning nor imbued with the bitter doctrines of their medieval law but tinctured with the sober and genial knowledge of the West. An English training would secure them an entry into the lucrative walks of life. I do not permit myself here to touch upon the means by which through a state of indifference (to their faiths), the Hindus and Musalmans alike may yet reach a higher level of belief. But I firmly believe that that 8 day will come and that our system of education which has hitherto produced only negative virtues is the first stage towards it. Dr. Hunter’s prophecy has literally come true and today we are reaping its results. This legacy has continued down to the present day virtually unchanged despite the two decades of our alleged independence. So efficiently implemented was the British educational policy that until now there does not exist a single school in this country where an adequate knowledge of Islam is imparted in relation to modern needs to combat secularism, materialism and atheism. Is it then any mystery why our youth are growing to maturity without the slightest appreciation for their own cultural heritage? At the close of the last century, Lord Cromer (formerly Sir Evelyn Baring) was the master-mind of British imperialism in the Arab world. For twenty-five years from 1883 to 1907 he ruled unchallenged over Egypt. His voluminous book, Modern Egypt, (Macmillan, New York, 1908) is indispensable for any student who wants to know the machinations of British imperialism in all its aspects. In its concluding chapter, he leaves no doubt in the reader’s mind that his policy regarded cultural imperialism much more important than direct political intervention: Let no practical politician think that they have a plan capable of resuscitating (Islam) which is not indeed dead and which may yet linger on for centuries, but which is nevertheless politically and socially moribund and whose gradual decay cannot be arrested by any modern palliatives, however skilfully they may be applied. (p. 184) 9 So far as can be judged at present, only two alternative courses are possible. Egypt must eventually either become autonomous or it must be incorporated into the British empire. Personally I am decidedly in favour of moving in the direction of the former of these alternatives. All we have to do is to leave behind us a fairly good, strong and, above all things, stable government which will obviate anarchy and bankruptcy and thus prevent the Egyptian question from again becoming a serious cause of trouble to Europe. We need not inquire too minutely into the acts of such a government. But it is essential that, subsequently to our evacuation, that government should act on principles which will be in conformity with the commonplace requirements of Western civilization. It is absurd to suppose that Europe will look on as a passive spectator whilst a retrograde government based on purely Muhammadan principles and obsolete oriental ideas, is established in Egypt. The material interests at stake are too important and the degree of civilization to which Egypt has attained is too advanced to admit of such a line of conduct being adopted. (pp. 563-565). Let anyone who is inclined to take a sanguine view of this subject, cast for a moment, all details aside and consider the general nature of the problem which presents itself for solution. It is nothing less than this: that the new generation of Egyptians has to be persuaded or forced into imbibing the true spirit of Western Civilization. I ask myself… is it destined that under the guiding hand of England, the rays of true civilization shall at last pierce into the oldest and most interesting corner of the dark African continent and brighten with their sunshine, even the mud hut of the Egyptian fellah (peasant)? In spite of the ignorance and alleged ingratitude of the Egyptians, I still dare to cherish a hope that the present and future generations… will remember with some feeling akin to gratitude that it was the sterling qualities of the Anglo-Saxon race who first delivered them from the thraldom of the 10 oppressors, who taught them that they too, had the right to be treated like human beings, who opened out to them the path which leads to moral progress and elevation of thought and who conferred upon them the material blessings which follow in the train of true Western civilization. (pp. 196-7). This was the real aim of British imperialism and here one of its chief architects has given us the correct answer to the question as to why, since our alleged independence, foreign influences have become more firmly entrenched in our midst than ever before. The fact is that despite all propaganda to the contrary, our national freedom is only nominal. During the long period our country was subjected to foreign domination, our masters took great care that everything would be done to cut our people off from their past. In this way they successfully created, especially among the socially and economically elite, a whole class of puppets and quislings. When so-called political freedom was at last granted, our leadership automatically fell into the hands of this same westernized clique. It is crucial in the interests of these foreign imperialisms that this type of leadership continue. Since the majority of our people detest them and all they stand for, and it is therefore impossible to implement Westernization by democratic means, the most highhanded dictatorial methods must be imposed and all those who dare resist, mercilessly persecuted. Even those Great Powers, like England, France and America which never stop boasting about all the democracy and political freedom their citizens enjoy, would deny these blessings to the Muslim world, for they know full well that Islam still remains their most formidable 11 rival in international affairs and once they allowed democracy to take its natural course, every Muslim country would become an Islamic state! If this happened, their stranglehold over Asia and Africa would be broken once and for all. That is their great fear which explains the motivations behind all their organized conspiracies to crush Islamic movements throughout the world. Closely allied with this political slavery, we cannot ignore the economic slavery which these circumstances have forced upon us. Under the slogan of “economic development”, the imperialisms of the Great Powers are most anxious to induce us to accept their “foreign aid,” which, with its high rates of interest, impoverishes the borrowing country until it is reduced to the status of a beggar. It is no exaggeration to assert that Western big business enterprise is their chief medium of cultural invasion. “Economic development” of “underdeveloped” (and now “developing”) Muslim countries consequently brings in its wake the construction of hideous palatial buildings of ultra-modern architecture that give our cities an uglier face every day; luxury hotels with night clubs and cabarets; the most depraved Hollywood films on crime and illicit sex combined with our home-made imitations for our cinema; a flood of pornographic literature and pictures and indecent fashions of dress growing so popular as to be regarded as the height of social refinement. Food-adulteration—a deadly sin in the eyes of our Shariah—flourishes openly and those in the racket get rich quick at the cost of the health of all our people; 12 consumption of alcoholic beverages and narcotics soars while meantime our radio keeps the masses drugged all their waking hours with filthy, vulgar songs. Foreign-dominated business and industry insist that women leave the home and compete with men for jobs in offices and factories; thus our women are transformed from chaste wives, mothers, sisters and daughters into ticket collectors on buses and trains, bank-clerks, telephone-operators, sales-ladies, air-hostesses, waitresses in restaurants, room attendants in hotels, fashion-models and singers and dancers over radio, television, the films and state-organized “cultural” shows. Consequently Purdah, the home and the family are destroyed with illicit sex and children mature into vicious “teddies” and juvenile delinquents. All of this is no coincidence but a very deliberate policy on the part of those who want to control and dominate over us. Our enemies are trying to degrade us morally and spiritually and enfeeble us in body and mind. It is in their interests that we become as degenerate as they are and our country thoroughly corrupt from top to bottom. In order that we may effectively combat this menace, we must understand why cultural slavery is not only inseparable from political slavery but that we cannot ever achieve genuine political freedom without cultural independence. It is impossible for Islam to flourish under hostile, alien rule. The first step we must take to achieve our cultural freedom is to lend our full support to all movements working for the revival of Islam and strive our utmost to persuade our 13 leadership to adopt an unadulterated Shariah as the law of our land. The Islamic movement must then assume control over all the mass-media and drastically reshape our entire educational system. Arabic must be adopted as our national language and as the chief medium of instruction in our schools and colleges. At the same time we must strenuously resist any proposal to accept the Roman alphabet for Urdu, Bengali or for the other languages spoken in our country, and continue the use of English only so long as its practical necessity remains. We must absolutely refuse the right of any foreign power to maintain military bases on our soil and in the field of economic development, we must try to rely upon our own resources and those of other friendly Muslim countries, avoiding “foreign aid” like the plague! In our international commercial dealings, particularly with the “Great Powers,” we must insist upon conducting honest business as free and equal partners. Foreign Christian missions, Zionism, Communism and the Freemasons must be outlawed and anybody found guilty of overt support to these subversive activities should be punished with immediate loss of citizenship and permanent exile. As the leadership in Europe and America has always been cognisant of Islam as a potent rival in world affairs, generations of their orientalists have studied Islam in relation to their needs and aims. Since materialist philosophies originating from Western Europe now pose the greatest threat to the survival of the Islamic way of life in every Muslim country, is it not equally essential for some of our ulema to become Occidentalists and study European lite14 rature, history, religions and philosophies in order to produce superior works of scholarship from the Islamic viewpoint? Thus we must combat imperialism in all its varied faces so that the power of our faith and the culture it creates can grow and prosper as our salvation in this life and in the world to come. 1. Otherwise attractive WESTERNIZATION-A PANORAMIC VIEW =============================== 15 WESTERNIZATION-A PANORAMIC VIEW =============================== It is now a common assumption that since mechanical means of transportation, communication and the mass-media have successfully created one world, they have also made possible for the first time in history, a genuine international civilization equally shared by the entire human race. Divisions between different civilizations and cultures are no longer recognized as valid. It is often argued that modernity is Western only historically; that sociologically, it is now global. The conclusion therefore is that modernity is no longer distinctively Western but has become a universal phenomenon all races and nationalities are in the process of rapidly assimilating. Before accepting these arguments as dogmatic truths which nobody dare question, the scholar must penetrate beneath the superficiality of glib cliches to understand in depth the realities of the plight in which we now find ourselves trapped by historical forces seemingly beyond our control from which there appears to be no escape. A genuine international culture must not only transcend geography and political boundaries but must also resemble international trade in a free exchange of ideologies and cultural values. In this sense, what is fashionably termed as ‘international culture’ or “modernism” is simply one-way traffic from the West; Europe and America involved wholly in export and Asia and Africa only in import. It lies in the nature of human history that nations and 16 civilizations which are politically and economically more dynamic and virile, exert an irresistible attraction on weaker and less active societies and are thus able to dominate them without being influenced themselves. If modernity deserved the rank of an international civilization, all nations should participate and benefit equally without any discrimination or prejudice on racial or ethnic grounds. Indeed, under the slogan of economic development, technological progress and ‘modernization’, the peoples of the East are deprived of the right to a recognized unique and distinct civilization of their own and stripped of all dignity and self-respect by defining the problem merely as the “backward” versus the “advanced”; the “rich” versus the “poor” countries and the “haves” versus the “have-nots” as if nothing else is at stake except wealth, technology and high living-standards. It is no longer the occident versus the orient since the world-wide diffusion of modernism has rendered “East” and “West” irrelevant. For the sake of convenience in terminology, the so-called “developing” countries of Asia and Africa are merely lumped together under the vague and meaningless “Third World.” But it is a fact which none can dispute that the so-called “Third World” suffers every disadvantage, discrimination and deprivation and that the discrepancy between the “rich” and the “poor” countries is widening. It is no accident that the “rich” countries, with few exceptions, are restricted to Europe and North America, that the United States of America owes its prosperity because, though its population comprises a mere six-percent of the world’s, 17 total, it consumes nearly two-thirds of the earth’s natural resources. When the oil-producing Arab states demanded their rightful share, President Ford threatened to seize the oil fields by force. It is not merely the contrast between wealth and poverty; it is a contrast based to a great extent on the accident of race. Wealth is synonymous with “white”; poverty is “coloured.” The bulk of America’s hungry people are concentrated among the blacks, the Indians and the Puerto-Ricans. In a chart entitled “Diet-Deficient Regions”, showing the geography of hunger throughout the world, all of the well-fed countries (with the sole exception of Greece) are white European and all of the hungry countries (with the exception of Japan) are non-white.1 Both wealth and poverty co-exist. Since cinema and television have become the chief entertainments of the common man, the contrast is compulsory, inevitable and unending. Those who still resist and criticize modern ways are chided for remaining “backward”, “narrow-minded,” “traditionalist”, “medieval”, “obscurantist”, “unscientific” and “reactionary” which are all terms of abuse. Both the aim and result of this propaganda campaign is to afflict the victim with acute feelings of inferiority. Thus “modernity” is not truly “international culture” at all but only turns out to be the same old Western imperialism under a new and far more deceptive guise. From the viewpoint of the historical observer, the powerful, irresistible, one-sided influence which Western civilization has exerted on the Muslim world during 18 the last century is not in the least surprising because it is the end-result of a long historical process for which there are many analogies elsewhere. But while the Western historian may be satisfied, for us the problem remains acute since we are not merely disinterested, passive spectators watching the drama take place from outside but are the active participants in events which for us mean no less than our life or death as Muslims. In view of the thousand-year struggle between European Christendom and Islam for world-supremacy, it is no accident that Muslim territory became the main target for Western aggression but in order to understand our plight in its proper perspective, we must know that we are not unique. All non-European cultures and peoples—no matter how highly civilized or primitive—have shared the same fate. ====================================================================== The reaction to defeat at the hands of Western imperialism, the development of Westernization in its various stages and its end-products are the same story repeated with sad monotony everywhere among all non-European peoples. ====================================================================== The history of Westernization in Turkey portrays in bold relief the features characteristic of this movement everywhere else, only perhaps more clearly. It is typical that the impact of Western culture in Turkey was a direct result of internal decline and a series of military defeats. Sultan Selim III rightly concluded that a policy of isolationism and complacency was leading the Ottoman Empire to ruin; that in order to arrest the internal decay and strengthen its power, a reorganization of the armed forces on modern lines was essential. At first, it was correctly assumed that the ====================================================================== waging of Jihad in the cause of Islam justified and even required the use of all the powerful new weapons recently invented by the enemy. Tragically, those who opposed Sultan Selim’s reforms—namely the ulema and the Janissaries—did so not to promote Islamic regeneration on the basis of enlightened knowledge and personal conviction but merely to preserve as long as possible the status-quo, including all its decadent and corrupt aspects. Naturally this provoked the wrath of the educated youth who had contacts with Europeans and were strongly influenced by the ideals of the French revolution. The ulema reacted, not with calm, reasonable, persuasive refutations of this materialistic philosophy but contented themselves with angry denunciations of the heretics which only made the forbidden fruit more alluring and the rising generation more rebellious than ever against the established religious, cultural and social order. In the summer of 1807, Sultan Selim III was assassinated as a result of the intrigues of the Janissaries. The so-called “reactionary” period which followed was short-lived. In 1826, Sultan Mahmud instituted a series of Westernizing reforms, henceforth to be known as the Tanzimat. The first reforms were connected with the armed forces. Correctly it was assumed that a modern army required modern weapons. The Janissaries, a major symbol of the old order, were massacred wholesale, help was eagerly sought from English, French and German advisers to reorganize the Turkish army on purely European lines, establish modern naval and military engineering schools; a year later, in 1827, the foundation of a medical school and finally the opening ====================================================================== 20 of the first European-type schools for the children of civilians. ================================================================= Also, Sultan Mahmud was eager to send batches of young Turkish students to France for their advanced education which was destined to greatly accelerate the rate of Westernization in future decades. Finally, Western dress was declared compulsory for official purposes. All these reforms were imposed on the country by autocratic decree a century before Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Thus within a generation, the attitude of complacent superiority of the Turk over the hated infidel had been transformed into a blind, uncritical adoration of all things European. The original intention of these reforms—namely, to arrest and, if possible, reverse the internal decline, eradicate corruption and take over all useful knowledge from Europe as essential to strengthen Ottoman power and enable it to wage Jihad on a plane of equality and, if possible, superiority to the enemy had been forgotten. ====================================================================== Rather, Westernization was worshipped as the supreme end in itself. It was assumed by the modernizers that the humiliating defeats suffered at the hands of the Europeans were not caused merely by the superior physical force of the enemy but because something was inherently defective in Islam, its social order, its culture and institutions. Therefore the adoption of European culture was essential for Turkey’s acceptance into the so-called “fraternity of civilized nations.” ====================================================================== In 1831, Sultan Mahmud founded the Imperial Music School to promote European music, primarily for the benefit of the army, and clothed Turkish soldiers for the first time in Western-style uniforms. To ====================================================================== 21 advertise this dramatic event, Sultan Mahmud had his portrait painted by a European artist before and after the destruction of the Janissaries. The first painting shows Sultan Mahmud on horseback in long, flowing oriental robes, turban, beard and horse decorated in a richly embroidered saddle. The second painting, after the destruction of the Janissaries, proudly displays Sultan Mahmud clad in tight-fitting European dress; even the saddle on his horse has changed! Both these paintings are on public exhibition at the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul. 2 ====================================================================== Needless to say, such superficial westernization, imposed so hastily and thoughtlessly, brought no benefit whatsoever to the country. It did nothing to arrest internal corruption and most significant, the Turkish army continued to suffer many more humiliating defeats at the mercy of the imperial powers of Europe who were determined to hasten the demise of the “Sick Man of Europe” as speedily as possible and divide the spoils of the Empire between them. Thus, despite the Tanzimat, the disintegration of Ottoman Turkey continued unabated until the Empire was entirely destroyed by the end of the first world war and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk abolished the Khalifate in 1924. Acute inferiority-complexes have driven the Arabs along the same path: The acquisition of Western cultural trappings became for the native upper class, a symbol of identification with the foreign ruling group and an index of social advancement for all the other classes. The upper class were the first to fall for the glitter of the West. Their financial means, their openness to external influences as well as their education made it easy for them to establish close contacts with the Europeans. The identification of the higher stratum with Western culture added to the motivation of the remaining classes in Arab society to adopt, as much as their position and means would permit, the style of Western life. By adopting Western cultural trappings people of the lower classes felt they were sharing some common characteristics with the higher stratum. The native dress is a good example of this trend. Formerly the urban Effendi, the member of the lower city-class3 the peasant and the beduin each had a different dress that distinguished his class. However, once they adopted the Western suit, it became hard to differentiate between them. In dressing like a European, a lower-class man demonstrates an advanced social status vis-a-vis his more backward countryman and an approximation, even though only in appearance, to the coveted upper status. To the extent that the people were attracted to the Western style of life, their local indigenous culture became non-existant for them. As they became oriented towards the West, the upper-class identified progress with Westernization and began to look at the members of the lower classes who still represented the traditional culture—although in a poor version—as backward and primitive.4 Inferiority-complexes soon intensify into the most furious self-hatred with all negativistic aggression turned inward against one’s own people and their religious, cultural and historical heritage: The quantitative impact of the cinema and television is having a far greater effect on the Arab consciousness than the studied pleas for change advanced over the last century or more by modernists. For the modern world infuses its own standards without argument and they are in this way irrefutable. Change is the greatest unifying factor in the new Arab world for all Arab youth share a sense of belonging to a generation which has the power to remake their world. In their eyes, whatever modernizes the Arab world is good; whatever holds it back is bad. Hence the eagerness with which visitors to the Arab world will be shown hospitals, factories, schools; hence the amazing indifference to previous antiquities shown by those who have grown up with them. The Egyptian or Iraqi on tour hunts for a new hotel, a television station or a steel mill. For long the Arabs have felt themselves prisoners of a mold. They are now breaking free. From Morocco to Iraq they are determined to destroy the old stereotypes. The new stereotypes may not please the tourist who craves the quaint nor the antiquarian who worships the old. But they please the Arabs who are burning their fezzes and the whole apparatus of traditional dress. In assuming as their own, the dress and life-style of the West, they show what they admire.5 The self-hatred of the West-worshipping oriental is not only cultural but includes race as well. In the same book as the above quote, under an illustration advertising Coca-Cola in Cairo, the caption reads: ====================================================================== Blaring billboard advertising Coca-Cola provides a background for a daring young girl on a Cairo playground swing. The use of a most un-Egyptian looking white girl in a bathing suit in the advertisement is geared to an Egyptian preference for blondes.6 Not long ago, I ventured into a Lahore toy shop to select a doll for my small daughter. All the dolls on display were pink-skinned, snub-nosed, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, dressed in cheap lacy English frocks. 24 haired and blue-eyed, dressed in cheap lacy English frocks. But I wanted a doll for my little girl which looked and was dressed like a Pakistani: There was none to be had! “Why not?” I asked. “Nobody would buy,” replied the salesman. Racial self-hatred descended to its most extreme human degradation among the black people in America—as described from first-hand experience in the autobiography of Malcolm-X. My first view in the mirror blotted out the pain. I’d seen some pretty conks but when it’s the first time on your own head, the transformation after a lifetime of kinky hair, is staggering. The mirror reflected my friend, Shorty, behind me. We were both grinning and sweating. And on top of my head was this thick smooth sheen of shining red hair—real red, as straight as any white man’s. How ridiculous I was! Stupid enough to stand there simply lost in admiration of how my hair, now looking “white”, reflected in the mirror in Shorty’s room. I vowed that I’d never again be without a conk and I never was for many years. This was my first really big step towards self-degradation when I endured all of that agony, literally burning the flesh of my scalp with lye in order to cook my natural hair until it was limp, to have it look like white-man’s hair. I had joined that multitude of Negro men and women in America who are brainwashed into believing that black people are “inferior” and white people “superior”—that they will even violate and mutilate their God-created bodies to try to look “pretty” by white standards. Just look around today in every small town and big city from two-bit soda-pop joints into the “integrated” lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York and you’ll see conks on black men. And you’ll see black women wearing these green, pink, purple, red and platinum-blonde wigs. They’re all more ridiculous than a slap-stick comedy. It makes you wonder if the black man in America has completely repudiated his sense of identity, lost his self-respect and all touch with himself. You’ll see the conk worn by many so-called upper-class Negroes and as much as I hate to say it about them, on all too many Negro entertainers. One of the reasons I’ve especially admired some of them like Ossie Davis, Lionel Hampton and Sidney Poitier, among others, is that they have kept their natural hair and fought their way to the top. I admire any black man in America who has never had himself conked or who has had the sense to get rid of it—as I finally did. To my own shame, when I tell you all of this, I’m first of all talking about myself because you can’t show me any Negro who ever conked more faithfully than I did. I’m speaking from personal experience when I say of any black man who conks today or any platinum-blonde wigged black woman that if they gave the brains in their heads half as much attention as they do their hair, they would be a thousand times better off. 7 In the Republic of South Africa, the most popular and widely sold cosmetic was a “skin-cream,” guaranteed to whiten a dark complexion. It was all the rage among the black people there until hundreds landed in the hospitals covered with third-degree burns. Visitors who saw these patients on the wards said that some of them looked like the victims of a napalm bombing. Even Lambarene is changing. The winds of change which sweep over all Africa are not stopped by any jungle. Schweitzer is still the great witch-doctor to the old but the 26 young progressives despise his hospital. It may have been true twenty years ago that village tribal Africans were afraid of a gleaming white hospital and preferred one which reminded them of their villages. But the young Africans have a new god—the cruel god of “Progress.” In Lagos (Nigeria), I saw Yoruba women who lived in slums without plumbing or any sanitation proudly push the buttons of the self-service elevator in the new sky-scraper hospital. No condescending pseudo-villages for them but the shiny gadgets, the roaring power of car, plane, bus and tractor which at last will make them equals of the whites. “Schweitzer’s hospital was O.K. fifty years ago but come on; have you ever seen the new hospital at Libreville?” The African bus-driver knows what he is talking about. The hospital at Libreville, five hours by bus, is hypermodern and built in the latest international style. It is huge, no doubt, most highly efficient. They scorn Schweitzer’s old curative hospital which, even though it is not modern and far from perfect, has nevertheless relieved suffering for nearly a half century. They think only in terms of the mass approach of preventive medicine. At the same time, those African doctors, who are so quick to criticize the old pioneer, flock to the cities where almost all of them work for status, money, large houses and gleaming cars. 8 One of my earliest books, Islam and Modernism, criticizes and refutes the ideas of all the pioneers of Westernization in the Muslim world—Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, Shaikh Muhammad Abduh, Qassim Amin, Shaikh M. Abd ar-Raziq, Dr. Taha Hussain, Ziya Gokalp, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the rest. I have long been convinced that none of these deserve the rank of truly great men since the truly great personality changes the direction of history and literally shapes his 27 times as well as imprinting an indelible mark on the future. Rather, all these modernizers were merely the mediocre end-product of their circumstances and more specifically, the result of the overwhelming sense of inferiority which engulfed the East after its humiliating capitulation under the feet of the imperialist West. It is in the nature of human psychology that the vanquished always adores the victor as the epitome of perfection. In April 1862, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan went to England. He was the first Indian Muslim of note to undertake the voyage. The Suez Canal was then under construction and Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan had the opportunity of meeting its builder, Ferdinand de Lesseps who was travelling by the same boat. In London, he was received with singular warmth and honour. He was warmly greeted as a distinguished guest and a worthy friend. The most exclusive circles of English society opened their doors to him. He was invited to regal parties and lavish banquets and receptions were held in his honour where he was able to acquire a first-hand experience of the Western style of living in all its glamour and of the elite of the British nation. The title of C.S.I. was conferred upon him, he was knighted and was received by no less than Queen Victoria in person, the Prince of Wales and high-ranking ministers and made an honorary member of clubs and distinguished academic and literary societies famous for their exclusiveness. He attended the annual dinner of the society of Civil Engineers at which he heard of the progress made in technology during the proceeding year and saw for himself the development projects which had brought about a miraculous transformation in the political and economic structure of Britain and paved the way for its ascendancy in the world. Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan visited England at the zenith of her glory when modern sciences, technology and industry were in command of unchallenged supremacy. Symptoms of the decay which was to culminate in World War I had not yet been noticed in Western society. Western civilization was pulsating with vitality and ready to conquer and dominate the world. Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan was literally bewitched with what he saw and in his enthusiasm, he failed to notice the utter disregard of the higher moral and spiritual values, the insatiable lust for political aggrandisement and the unbounded self-conceit and arrogance of which India during those days was the agonized victim in no uncertain manner. Thus Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan returned home in October 1870 as the most ardent admirer of the civilization of the West and determined to reconstruct the Muslim society in its image. He pressed every ounce of his massive energy to the task which now became the reigning passion of his life. His outlook became entirely materialistic and the surrender he made to the scientific notions of his day was so complete that he proceeded to interpret the Islamic faith and the Quran in the light of this materialistic thought, so much so that he made a mockery of the basic principles of Arabic grammar and played foul with the Arabic lexicon by giving strange meanings to words and turning and twisting the idiom to suit his purpose.9 Like all the other modernizers of the East, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan did not attribute the victories of British power to its superior energy, efficiency of organization and technology but characteristically imagined the defeat of the Indian Muslims to be the inherent defects of indigenous social customs which he felt kept his people backward and primitive. Thus the modernizers of this country and elsewhere waged a violent campaign against polygamy, purdah and the 29 extended family-system, their brain-washed minds unable to comprehend that the only thing wrong with these practices is that they are not approved by the modern West. I can assure the reader that if polyandry (the marriage of a woman to several husbands at a time) were the foundation of Western society, our modernizers would surely set up elaborate “Research Institutes” to prove that this practice is in conformity to the “spirit” of Muslim family life! Perhaps they would go so far as to amend our family laws accordingly! West-worshipping is not restricted to the Muslims. All the peoples of Asia, and Africa, regardless of their racial, religious and cultural origins, have fallen an easy prey to the same fallacies. The recent history of China should be most instructive for us. The Chinese can rightly claim to have lived a civilized existence continuously longer than almost any other people. Traditional Chinese civilization lasted for more than three-thousand years. The Confucian ethical classics remained the basis of that culture for more than two thousand years. Chinese culture had many characteristics capable of winning the respect of the Westerner. Confucius was essentially an agnostic humanist and therefore the Chinese, like the Westerners, reposed great faith in man and in human reason and intelligence, unaided by any supernatural power, to create a good life for all. Since antiquity, China has been the most densely peopled region in the world and Chinese institutions superbly adapted to regulating the lives of huge populations on limited space. The Chinese could also win the respect of the West for their diligence, 30 industry and hard work. Until the industrial revolution, the products of Chinese craftsmanship were unsurpassed in quality and prized all over the world. Furthermore, gunpowder, the compass, paper and the printing press are all Chinese inventions without which civilization as we know it today could not exist. Thus the Chinese elite had every reason to feel proud of their culture and its achievements. Yet as soon as the Chinese were defeated and humiliated by the atrocities of the imperialist West at the end of the last century, their reaction was exactly the same as that of Russia under Peter the Great and the Turks under Ataturk. As soon as their capitulation became manifest, China at once produced a horde of their home-grown modernizers who promptly set to work to denounce and shun their culture, their social order, their institutions and traditions. No one can read modern Chinese history without being amazed at the rapid speed with which age-old traditions were overturned. The first two decades of the twentieth century were decades of revolt against Tradition. These traditions, whether in the form of institutions, classics or social and moral norms, were all condemned and rejected. Let us consider institutions. The first institution to go was the 1,000 year-old Civil Service Examination system through which most government officials were elected. At the same time, the 2,000 year-old educational system, strictly confined to Confucian texts, was replaced by modern educational structures in 1905. The old monarchal system, which had been in force for some three thousand years, was overthrown in 1911, and with it, the traditional imperial sacrifices to Heaven and to Confucius abolished. As a result of the literary revolution of 1917, the old style of classical writing, the 31 standard form of writing since the third-century B.C., was given up in favor of the colloquial style. By this time, many social institutions such as polygamy, the old system of arranged marriages, ancestor-worship and others had already begun to crumble. Along with these Confucian institutions, Buddhist and Taoist religious institutions were also failing. Just as the Confucian temples were neglected—and some were being used for storage, dormitories or garbage dumps—few new Buddhist or Taoist temples were built and the central feature of Mahayana Buddhism—the mass for the dead—had become a rare event. The highest Taoist priest, who was called “the Heavenly Teacher,” had almost been forgotten. It is rumored that he is now an exile and a beggar. The Confucian classics suffered the same fate as these institutions. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the so-called Modern Script School, which looked upon the Confucian classics as history rather than as the embodiment of eternal truth, represented a very radical departure from tradition. This lowered the authority of the Classics. The dropping of the Classics as required texts for the schools, further reduced their prestige. Even greater damage to them was done by the movement of the so-called “doubting antiquities” in the early 1920’s. This was actually begun by the leader of the intellectual Renaissance and former ambassador to the United States of America, Dr. Hu-Shih (1891-) in his new historical and critical approach to the study of Chinese philosophy and literature but it was his friend, a professor by the name of Ch’ien Hsuan T’ung (1887-1958), who carried on the movement and directed it against Confucian classics in particular. He declared that Confucius had never edited or wrote the Classics as Traditions claim and that they were originally not grouped as a set. These ideas were not original with either Hu or Ch’ien. However, because of this movement, the authority of the Classics was decidedly overthrown. Dr. Hu-Shih was widely applauded when he later declared that the Confucian classics were unable to provide leadership for the modern age. 32 Not only were the institutions and the authority of the Classics under attack. Confucian social and moral norms, that is, Confucian philosophy itself was also the target of the rebellion. The leaders of the movement were Hu-Shih, Ch’ien Tu-hsiu (1879-1942), one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party and Wu-Yu (1874-1949). They were followed faithfully by most of the intellectuals and the younger generation. Wu-Yu declared that Confucian morals were “man-eating” mores and that the Confucian class concept was basically incompatible with modern life. Ch’ien Tu-hsiu said that the Confucian double-standard for women, his doctrine of filial piety etc., were ethics of the feudal age in which Confucius lived and had no place in the twentieth century. Under this leadership, professors and students from 1917 onwards shouted: “Destroy the old curiosity shop of Confucius” and “take down the signboard of Confucianism!” The upshot was that to be a Confucianist meant to be a feudalist, a reactionary and an outmoded thinker. In place of Confucianism as a philosophy of life and a moral and social order, pragmatism, evolutionism and finally Marxism and Communism successively took hold. The downfall of Confucianism was considered complete and irrevocable.10 With the Communist take-over of the whole of mainland China in 1949, the official slogan was: “Destroying the old world: Building the new.” ====================================================================== One is the Confucian code of ethics that controlled Chinese society for more than two thousand years with inflexible laws. ====================================================================== Mao Tse-tung stated the aim of his Communist revolutionaries: ============================================================= “We wish to completely eradicate the old Chinese culture.11” ============================================================ 33 The fate of the distinct and unique Jewish culture, which flourished in the ghettos of medieval Europe for many centuries, should also serve as a lesson and a warning for us. ====================================================================== The new ideas of the Renaissance, the liberalism of the eighteenth century and the loosening society of the industrial age meant the end of the ghetto. At the time, the emancipation of the Jews from the restrictions of ghetto life probably seemed to come at a crawl. But looking back on it, we see it as happening almost at once. Jews one moment living in twilight segregation and in the next moment, blinking around at the open light of the Western world. Young Jews poured out of their traditional Talmudic Yeshivas into modern Western schools, colleges and universities. Germany, the place of one of the stablest Jewish communities in Europe, became a center for apostasy. Here the westernizing epidemic raged. Young educated Jews repudiated their religious faith, their Talmudic learning, even their Hebrew names. They became atheists, agnostics, materialists or Christians for social convenience in droves. Or they adopted semblances of the old faith resembling traditional synagogue-Judaism as little as possible and polite Western church-going as much as possible. Reformed Judaism began in Germany early in the 19th century. It drew its energy, which was at first very high, from two sources: the new freedom of the enlightenment and the strong resistance of the rabbis against change. In the teeth of all traditionalist opposition, the leaders of the reformed movement went boldly to work. At the start, the changes were mere touches of ritual; prayer in German instead of Hebrew, the use of organ music, trained professional choir singers, uncovered heads, men and women seated together in the same pews and attractive vestments for the rabbi. But the appetite for change was not to be appeased by such crumbs. There ensued a rapid repudiation of laws, hitherto regarded as sacred and immutable, and traditional customs. A new credo for Judaism emerged. 34 Judaism emerged =============== Judaism was the worship of the One Universal God. The Mosaic Law, hitherto regarded as sacred and immutable, and traditional customs associated with it were rapidly repudiated. The Mosaic Laws were denounced as outmoded and incompatible with modern life. Since it drew its source-material from the Torah, the Talmud was repudiated as out-of-date and irrelevant for our present age. On this premise, German Jewry within a single generation worked out an undemanding religion, freed from any ritual or legal inconvenience, housed in elegant “temples” and invitingly Western in tone. The German Jews who immigrated to the United States between 1840-1860, brought their Reformed faith with them. Here in America it survives. German Reform was obliterated by Hitler.12 During the 1920’s under the rule of Ataturk, a parallel movement was at work among our own modernizers with exactly the same implications: ====================================================================== The new faculty of Divinity at the University of Istanbul was intended to serve as the centre of a new modernized and scientific form of religious instruction more appropriate to a secular westernized republic. In 1928 the faculty appointed a committee to examine the problem of reform and the modernization of the Islamic religion and to make proposals through the University to the Ministry of Education. The Chairman of the committee was Professor Mehmed Fuad Koprulu; its members included professors of psychology and logic as well as a number of theologians. ====================================================================== Its report, published in June 1928, begins with a clear assertion that religion is a social institution and like other social institutions, it must meet the needs of contemporary life and keep pace with Change, Progress and Development. Religious life, like economic and social life, must be reformed on scientific 35 lines. The recommendations of the committee included the “need for cloakrooms and pews in the mosques, worshippers must be urged to enter the mosques with their shoes on, the language of worship must be in Turkish and that none of the prayers or sermons should be in Arabic but only in the latinized national language. The character of modern Islamic worship must be beautiful, inspiring, spiritual and for this the mosque needs trained European musicians and also Western musical instruments. The need is urgent for modern Western music to be introduced into the mosque.”13 Characteristically, these “reforms” were loudly applauded by an Indian modernist: ====================================================================== Just as Martin Luther broke down the barriers of dogma in Christianity and Moses Mendelssohn sought to bring a progressive reformed version of Judaism to the Jews, so also liberal Islam must also be recognized and given its place by the Orthodox.14 In his book, Islam in Modern History, the orientalist, Dr. Wilfred Cantwell Smith insists that “the intention of such reforms does not involve the question of adopting Christianity but rather of being modern instead of medieval.”15 ====================================================================== Although by the grace and mercy of Almighty Allah, “reformed” Islam never emerged as a successful organized movement, as did its counterpart in Judaism, and if a “progressive” Muslim wishes to offer his Salat, he is compelled to worship in a “traditionalist” mosque ====================================================================== 36 side by side with his “unenlightened” brother, there exist numerous modernized individuals throughout the ex-Muslim world with the same views. What does the “modern”, “progressive” hurricane of “change” have to offer the contemporary Muslim? Here is an intimate portrait of two rather typical Turkish-Cypriot families living today in London: ====================================================================== Mr. Ali Riffat’s sitting room is attractive and lavishly furnished. Adjacent to a heavy beige sofa suite, a large mahogany drink cabinet filled with liquors stands decorating one corner of the room. The other corner has a large ostentatious television with a generous sprinkling of ornaments. A framed portrait of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and a photo of a Turkish airplane pilot shot down over Cyprus look down on the thick luxurious carpet covering the floor from wall to wall. The wall opposite is adorned with a glaring velvet prayer mat manufactured in Italy. When I asked them about the significance of the prayer-mat hanging upside down on the wall, both Ali and his son-in-law, Taniel proudly said that “it is used for worship.” “We are Muslims!” they exclaimed. But beyond that, they couldn’t add anything further. They seemed much more keen to praise Ghazi Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and “how he liberated us Turks from the yoke of the Hojas (ulema).” When I persuaded him to talk about his religious background, he reluctantly revealed that he knows only what his grandmother had taught him. “And that’s not very much. But I believe in One God and the Prophet Muhammad.” There are few religious schools in Cyprus. Worst of all, where he lived, the mosque was never open. Every now and then the local green-grocer would be persuaded by some elder inhabitant of the village to unlock the mosque and admit a few. How typical is Ali Riffat’s family of the more than 30,000 Turkish-Cypriots who have settled in Britain seeking economic opportunities? 37 opportunities? Apparently they seemed to be the average type. The Noori family live in a tower block and are not economically as prosperous as the Riffat’s. Although they are relatively new-comers to Britain, the children have integrated and assimilated so thoroughly that it is almost impossible to distinguish them from ordinary English teenagers. The two girls attend a local co-educational public school and look, talk and behave just like English adolescents their age. When I visited the family, they were preparing to go to the pictures. The parents were getting ready for their visit to see a Turkish film while the girls were off to the local Odeon with their school friends. “We go to the Turkish pictures every week,” said Mustafa Noori who works in a clothing factory owned by a fellow countryman. He showed naturalistic inclinations and wasn’t keen to discuss religion. “I am an atheist,” he declared. “Mustafa Kemal Ataturk put an end to all dogma and freed us.” There was a smile on his face. His wife did not agree. When I mentioned the Quran, she immediately tried subconsciously but in vain to cover her legs. Referring to her husband, she excused herself in broken English and said that there was no mosque in his village. Village next to Noori had been converted to Christianity from Islam. Mustafa took me to the Turkish picture. Outside the cinema hall, a neat row of cars were parked. Inside, a young Turkish girl wearing hippie clothes sat behind the glass of the ticket kiosk. The cinema hall was moderately full, mainly with middle-aged couples. The plot of the film was well-worn, trite, stereotyped and so was the behaviour of the characters. Everyone drank and it appeared from the film that dancing and other similar ingredients of the permissive society were to be commonly found in Turkey and Cyprus. There was, however, no kissing. After the show, Mustafa talked of life back home and how the Greeks were persecuting the Turkish community. He said that he does not believe in “traditional values” and would like to see the Turkish-Cypriots freed from such “old-enslavement”16 38 so that they can fight the Greeks more effectively. Mustafa speaks for those Turkish-Cypriots who have adopted the Western life-style and support contemporary English norms and values. But a majority still retain a sentimental attachment for Islam. “We are persecuted in Cyprus,” says Taniel, “because we are Muslims.” Ali Riffat says: “We are Muslims and we wouldn’t be anything else.” 17 The modernization of traditional peoples has brought in its wake intense self-depreciation, feelings of inferiority and shame for their “oriental” origins. There are Jews who think even less of themselves and their background than critical Christians do. Let us examine a well-to-do and fairly cultivated Jew of this mind. To give him character, we will make him a successful minor executive or perhaps an accountant or a lawyer. He is a graduate of a good eastern college. He lives in a pleasant suburban home. His hi-fidelity stereophonic gramophone is his pride and he has a genuine love for Brahms. His golf and tennis are good and sailing is his chief pleasure. His grandparents were fairly religious, his parents much less so and he is wholly indifferent. He barbecues pork chops or steaks on his barbecue pit with equal relish and not a trace of bother because pork is pork. Of late, he may have joined a reformed temple in the neighbourhood because his children seemed at loose ends without any religious training or affiliation. He is a good-hearted, warm, charitable and exceptionally intelligent American. Now we see him walking down Fifth Avenue in New York City after a hard day at his Rockefeller Center office taking the pleasant evening air instead of hurrying in a taxi to Grand Central Station. Two men pass him on the street. They are obviously vestigial survivors of some Eastern European 1 ghetto destroyed by Hitler. The older one wears a beard and a hat trimmed with fur and gray earlocks curl down his cheeks; he is dressed in a rusty black coat though the day is warm. The younger man is pallid and clean-shaven and he has ordinary American clothes yet he looks hardly less alien than his companion. His hat is too big and he wears it at a clumsy angle far back on his head. His trousers are not well-pressed and they do not taper as they should so that they seem to flap around his ankles. He has an odd abstracted look around the eyes. The two men are talking in Yiddish with sweeping hand gestures. As they pass our man, these two unmistakable Jews, he is filled with resentment. They offend him not only because they tar him with the brush of the alien; they offend him by being alive in 1959, by keeping up that despised ghetto culture and confronting him with it, by insisting that with their mere presence on the street, his true origin cannot be buried. He cries out in his heart—it will not do to shout it in the street—“I am not one of you! If you are Jews, then I am not a Jew!” His misery is double because he knows that he could shout this through a bull-horn to all the world and it would make no difference. He is one of them. Tell such a man that he should be proud of being a Jew and he will laugh at you. Tell him that he is a member of the Chosen People of God and he will be ready to take off his coat and fight you, so deeply do you affront everything he believes. It would be a hopeless task for the most eloquent writer or preacher who ever lived to persuade him to think differently.18 The modernized upper-class in Pakistan share the identical feelings towards their less-favoured countrymen of the villages and slums who lack the financial means and resources to ape the Western mode of life: ====================================================================== Their whole life is marred by two regrets; one of being born in Pakistan and the other of having the curse of a brown or black skin. Their entire life is devoted to removing these two stains from their persons. They do their best to improve the colour of their skin. Where Max Factor fails, they try to compensate with accurate pronunciation, correct accents and deceptive intonations. They very closely ape the mannerisms of the West, so much so that some of them could easily pass as a real white man from behind a screen. They find every fault with the indigenous culture and abuse and curse all the natives love, respect and cherish. They draw satisfaction from the fact that the people in the West are better, their conditions of life easier and their values higher. They therefore fail to understand the exaggerated love some of the natives show for Islam and its culture. They do not make any effort to understand the furtive, filthy, illiterate and ignorant masses or the impoverished and ugly country of theirs. There is an air of arrogance and swagger in his gait especially when he is moving among the natives. If his stature is short, he will probably use a bow-tie and flourish a pipe to compensate for the deficiency. If his skin is too dark, he will most likely carry a felt hat. The modernized rich are anxious to strengthen their position by the cultural subjugation of the natives. They therefore discourage opening of native madrassas and maktabs. Graduates from these indigenous religious schools cannot find employment with government departments, educational institutions or commercial concerns. To ensure that the natives adopt the culture of the West, procedures have been established denying the natives access to any position of dignity, profit or status.19 As much as the assimilated Jew, the modernized elite in ex-Muslim lands attempt to conceal their oriental identity and consider it the highest possible flattery to be mistaken for a European. Here are excerpts quoted from the printed text of “Portraits of our Time” broadcast on December 4, 1973 over the World Service of the B.B.C. 41 The discussion is taking place between two noted English journalists: MACKAY: Mr. Bhutto’s rise to the top has been turbulent and colourful. But on the international stage, he appears the urbane, educated, thoroughly westernized lawyer-politician. KEATLY: I’m sure he’s most comfortable in Western clothes, let’s put it that way. I’ve seen him once or twice, on one occasion at a folk festival in Lahore where he tried to rig himself up in something like indigenous dress. He wasn’t a bit comfortable. He’s an impeccable dresser. If you saw him (indeed he was many years at the United Nations and I’ve seen him there as a correspondent), if you saw him in the General Assembly speaking with his lawyer’s voice and his sharp mind, you would be unaware that this was somebody from Asia, unless it was pointed out to you. You might easily think he was an Italian diplomat or an incisive Frenchman; a suave, polished, sophisticated, confident, very Western person. MACKAY: To me, he is a perfectly secular man, an exact middle-of-the-road, non-ideological, I think, super-pragmatic. And therefore when he speaks of “Islamic Socialism” or that kind of thing, it’s simply that he knows he must make a ritual deference, a bow in the direction of Islam because that’s the glue that binds all the diverse peoples of Pakistan together…………20 The Arabs share the same feelings: ================================== I shall never forget my first lecture tour upon my return to America from my first trip to the Middle East. It had been advertised that my speech would be illustrated with coloured slides. A number of my Arab friends pleaded with me not to show any slides of mud villages, impoverished peasants or Bedouin, no pictures of camels or waterwheels but only of modernization in Beirut and Cairo, new automobiles or modern irrigation projects. These feelings, however misplaced, are nevertheless understandable in the context of Zionist propaganda. Considering the constant unrealistic pining of the Palestinian Arab refugees for their homeland, the main trouble is the profoundly emotional and irrational nature of Arab demands and expectations—an inability to accept the hard facts of life. The Arabs have seen the Israelis prosper on soil from which they barely scratched a living when they had it. Israel’s success is not only a blow to their pride but a constant rebuke to the dismal poverty in which most of the Arab world still lives.21 For nearly five centuries, the white man justified his imperialist ambitions and colonial expansion on the grounds of his superior “civilization” and the native “backwardness.” The “white-man’s burden” was to “civilize” the rest of the world in order to transform it into his image. In this view, the white-man’s “civilizing mission” glorified any atrocity or injustice. Here is how an eminent American historian justifies the aggrandizement of the whites and the ruthless dispossession and extermination of the aboriginal Indians: The planting of a new nation in America was no holiday undertaking. It meant grim, dirty, toilsome, dangerous work.22 43 Here was a great shaggy continent covered with pathless, fiercely cold, water, burning hot in summer, filled with wild beasts and populated by warlike, cruel, treacherous savages still in the Stone Age of culture… it was fortunate for the white settlers that the Indians of North America were too few and too backward to be a grave impediment to white colonization. They harassed and at times delayed it but they never really stopped it. Armed only with the bow and arrow, the tomahawk and the war-club and ignorant of any military art save the ambush, they were no match for the well-accoutered and vigilant bodies of whites. For that matter, they had shown little capacity to subdue nature and adapt their environment as they lived mainly by hunting, fishing and the most primitive, subsistence agriculture.23 It is hardly surprising therefore to find Zionist propaganda employing the identical arguments to glorify the Jewish colonization of Palestine and the dispossession of the indigenous population there. In the face of the incontestable claims of the Jewish people to a national state in Palestine, only one possibility could necessitate the renunciation of those claims. If Palestine were completely or even for the most part occupied and developed by its inhabitants, the Jews might have to resign themselves to the loss of their homeland. In actuality, only a fraction of the material and cultural values that Palestine is capable of yielding is utilized and rendered productive by the native Arab population. With an influx of Jewish colonizers from Europe who could render the land productive agriculturally and industrially, it could be brought to a stage of economic development sufficient to support in prosperity a population five or six times its present numbers. The Jews, driven by an inner necessity which can give them no rest until they have reclaimed Palestine, are prepared to render it fruitful with their sweat and blood. They alone can supply the labour, the effort and endurance necessary to convert the barren rocks, the infested swamps and the baffling sand dunes into thriving and healthful oases. With the development of foreign raw materials, there arises the dream of a land economically affluent, culturally creative and capable of supporting three million people. Such considerations moved Great Britain, while freeing Palestine from Turkish rule, to make the promise to the Jewish people known as the Balfour Declaration… If Judaism succeeds in evolving a modern civilization in the land of its origin, it is bound to enrich the life of mankind with new social and religious values. By demonstrating anew the reality and potency of spiritual values, the sovereignty of righteousness—as the revelation of the divine in man—and the method whereby nationhood may exalt human individuality, Judaism will be doing its share towards advancing the kingdom of God on earth. Then, indeed, will the Jew have both the right and the means to come before the world as the bearer of a noble mission.24 No wonder the Palestinian Arabs, in the struggle for their rights, try in vain to win the sympathy of the Western peoples by the pathetic claim that they are now just as “civilized” and “modernized” as the Jews who displaced them. The “New Palestinian” can be Christian or Muslim. They could come from the families of lawyers or pharmacists, tourist guides, professors or engineers. Could they run a modern hotel? Some of them can and do. They also run big businesses and cope with modern city-planning in Kuwait or Beirut, have long since given up tarboushes, turbans and kaffiyehs for felt hats or no hat at all; are 45 college deans, priests and bishops, read anything from Shakespeare to Marcuse; subscribe to Le Monde, the Economist and on occasion, Pravda; design ultra-modern buildings and construct them, listen to the “Beatles” and form successful pop-singing groups of their own. The undramatic, important fact is that so many Palestinians are just like anybody else. They feel thoroughly at home in large European or American cities. Through family sacrifice, Palestinians have fanned out into colleges and universities from California to Pakistan. Schools and colleges of the Arab world are stocked full of Palestinian professors of law, physics, political science; others are teaching in America or Europe. Typical of Palestinian middle-class women is Mrs. El-Musri of Nablus. Her husband has studied at Cardiff (England) and runs a modern farm. Discussing his herd of friesian cows with his farmhand, he wears a cloth cap, wind-breaker, gum boots and carries his pipe and walking stick like any gentleman farmer in England. She herself runs a comfortable houseful of children, is smartly dressed like her husband, speaks excellent English and has four brothers, two of them doctors working in Dusseldorf (Germany) and another in Kuwait.25 Characteristic of the ethnocentricity of the Westerner which breeds these feelings, is the emotional reaction of an American who visited a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan: ====================================================================== In speaking for the rights of the Palestinians, much greater emphasis should be placed on the high quality of so many of these refugees. I shall never forget my first visit to one of the camps in the Jordan valley. Haltingly and with great embarrassment—at the urging of the camp authorities, I tried to utter a few words of understanding, sympathy and perhaps even of hope in broken Arabic. When I finished my wholly 46 inadequate remarks, I was surrounded by a group of youth, most of whom spoke the polished English of British and American universities, all dressed in western clothes. Even I, who had already spent years of long-distance study of this problem, was surprised—and so greatly pleased! A kind of involuntary chemical reaction to familiar, even if superficial ingredients, reinforced my already formulated sympathies. The West needs to hear and see more of these Palestinians whose rights are rooted firmly in cultural, political and legal sophistication rather than simply hearing the pathetic cries of deprived individuals for palliatives which charity offers.26 All this shows how feeble is the moral sense of the contemporary West—so weak, in fact, that the Palestinians can expect to appeal against the injustices inflicted upon them for the restoration of their usurped lands solely on the degree of westernization they have achieved. The great unasked question remains unanswered; Must a person be “modern,” speak the “polished English of British and American universities,” dressed in smart Western clothes and look like a white man in order to qualify for his human rights? ====================================================================== Western superiority and domination over the earth is due to the following reasons only: ====================================================================== • Superior physical energy, vitality and dynamism. By comparison, the non-European cultures and peoples tended to be rather lazy, sluggish, apathetic and easy-going while the West was wide-awake, alert, restless and unceasingly active. • Superior organization and the maximum efficiency in the utilization of both natural and human resources. Western institutions were unparalleled in 47 their strength and effectiveness in organization which no oriental people could match. Investigate Islamic organizations and movements today and one will find most of them inactive and doing little, if any, constructive work. Muslims do much talking but little doing. Grandiose, high-sounding ideas are conceived but Muslims rarely carry their proposed projects through. Among too many orientals, promises are made only to be broken. Work is regarded by too many of us as a burden to be shirked whenever possible. Zeal, zest and enthusiasm to get the job done are quickly replaced by apathy and indifference. It is extremely difficult to get Muslims and most other oriental peoples to collaborate and cooperate with one another. This is the time when many willing hands are urgently required to collaborate in harmony if our goal of an Islamic order is to succeed, yet in the ex-Muslim world, it is very rare that two or more scholars will agree to work together even on a single book. Western achievement is indebted to high morale, self-confidence and a frantic single-mindedness to let nothing stand in the way of getting the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible. • Superior technology: God has imbued man with great potentialities and mental faculties to exploit to his benefit any field or domain in which he uses them. Every earnest research worker can explore a new world in the domain of his selected field of inquiry. Even a tiny particle of dust may open up for the scientist, realms hardly less in complexity than the dazzling light of the sun. This is what happened in Europe. When matter was brought under intense scientific investigation, Western man discovered the clue to power and energy in apparently dead and inert matter. This led to a revolution in the realm of technology which gave the West tremendous superiority in arms and military equipment. As a result, its political power swept across the world in a very short time, eastern nations and civilizations crumbling before it like hills of sand. Advances in technology permit the invading culture or the West to penetrate all barriers—geographical and linguistic—without fear of confrontation. Powerful radio stations beam foreign-language broadcasts and through clever commentaries and slanted news, influence the thinking of the victim. Telecommunication satellites permit the enemy to project her culture right into our bedrooms and win adherents among innocent and defenseless children. Where the national television policy is the same as the enemy’s, the situation of the victim country becomes almost hopeless. If the work of the Islamic revivalists and the activity and achievements of our movements of the recent past are put on one side of the scale and balanced with the total weight with which the evil influences in the West have been working for the past five centuries, one can form some idea of the ratio of physical strength between the two opposing forces. Being as precise as possible, one can say it was the ratio of a tola to a maund. Therefore what happened was inevitable and quite in conformity with the laws of this material world. In short, Western world domination owes its victory solely because of its superior physical force—that “might is right!” It can lay no claim to have produced a religion, philosophy, morality, law, culture, art or social order superior to any of the major historic civilizations of Asia. 49 What is the secret of the irresistible attraction of Western culture for the younger generation and how can it win over the hearts and minds of multitudes of people everywhere? All its technological ingenuity and unlimited financial resources have been mobilized to proclaim the materialistic way of life—in cinema, television, radio and the popular press, while all counteracting religious and moral agencies have been suppressed and silenced. Therefore Western propaganda enjoys an unfettered, unrestrained monopoly with no rivals that can interfere. All indigenous educational and social institutions have either been destroyed outright or their effectiveness nullified so they cannot operate effectively today. There is no alternative left but the Western way. 4. Western propaganda for materialism over the mass-media has a universal appeal to the baser-self in man! After all, it is no great achievement to make poor people discontent with their lot and yearn to become rich; it is the easiest thing in the world to persuade the young that it is wealth and “fashion”—not virtue or piety which counts; no miracle is needed to make people who have suffered hardships and deprivations all their lives desire the comforts, conveniences, luxuries and amusements modern life has to offer. It is an effortless task to incite children towards disrespect, insolence and contempt towards their parents and call this the “generation gap.” No undue effort is required to convince women and young girls that they are now free to do anything they please and equal with men in all walks of life and label that as “Women’s Lib.” Nor is there 50 the slightest difficulty in persuading the young, where the urge to do mischief is already in their blood, to cast aside all “taboos” and “restraints”, be absolutely uninhibited in all their activities and live only for the pleasure, enjoyment, excitement and thrills of the moment. It is the easiest thing in the world to persuade people, especially young people, to be materialistic, selfish, greedy and even delinquent when one has all the educational institutions, cinema, television, radio and the press at one’s disposal. Do the Muslims have a future in the modern world? This is a question which Orientalists and Western sociologists are never tired of posing. Whether it is Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Albert Hourani or Rosenthal, they are all in agreement that Islam has become a decadent force and that its adherents have failed to establish compatibility of religion and modern sciences. Various modernists have elaborated the same theme and the view is generally accepted that unless the Muslims reinterpret their faith in the light of contemporary realities and evolve a synthesis between Islam and secularism, they are unlikely to survive. If one forgets the rhetoric, it means simply that the future of the Muslims depends on their willingness and capacity to adopt the Western way of life. Western scholars assume that the Muslims, being economically backward, must be facing a great dilemma; how to reconcile lagging faith with the march of science. They evaluate Muslim history in purely material terms. So long as the Muslims were in power, which is the hallmark of superiority and progress, they were regarded as dynamic. The moment they lost political power and were subjugated by more forceful adversaries, they were condemned as a stagnant people. Once Muslim political power declined, the Western historians rejected Islam and the cultures of the various Muslim peoples as of no consequence. 51 When Western orientalists decry the “stagnation of Muslim culture” and the “torpor of the Muslim mind,” they fail to take into account the fact that our present plight is the direct and inevitable result of prolonged colonial exploitation. The Muslims must be held primarily responsible for their decline and downfall, but the imperialist powers set about the task of deculturizing us in a methodical, scientific manner to ensure that we should not ever be able to recover and re-organize ourselves into a vital force. A liberal elite was created who regarded their own faith, historical and cultural heritage with indifference which quickly developed into unconcealed contempt. A sense of acute inferiority was injected into the masses who were looked down upon for their primitive ways. A native was an outcast whose proper place was the jungle. The Westernized elite among us, with their talk of progress and the requirements of science, stood out as the symbol of success for the rest to emulate. In the course of time, we were alienated from our moral values and norms of conduct. The colonial masters did not destroy our culture outright. They caused it to stultify so that it should become a source of embarrassment and shame. Historic observation reveals that the aim sought was a continued agony rather than a total disappearance of the pre-existing culture. This culture, once living and open to the future, now became closed, fixed in the colonial status, caught in the yoke of oppression. Thus shrivelled and mummified, it testifies against its members. Once we were subjugated, our conquerors closed the door to the future of our culture. A selected few were admitted into the educational institutions of the West and turned into a power elite to exercise authority over the people on behalf of the masters. This class consisted of westernized politicians, diplomats, bureaucrats, teachers, lawyers, judges, journalists and businessmen and their views are assumed to be the representative expression of the “hopes and aspirations of their people.” But they forget that they are merely quoting themselves because our “liberals” and “progressives” never say anything original. They dutifully reproduce whatever they are taught.27 52 Why have we as Muslims fared no better than any other non-European people or culture? Why must the impartial historian place Muslim civilization, which proclaims Islam as the supreme universal, eternal Truth and the only route to salvation in this world and the Hereafter, on the same level as the pagan Chinese, Hindus, Buddhists, African animists and the hated and despised Jews? Why did we succumb so easily and swiftly? Why must we be forced to admit that even primitive heathens like the American Indian tribes put up a far more spirited and heroic resistance against the encroaching whites than most of our ancestors with centuries of high civilization behind them? Does this mean that there is anything inherently wrong with Islam and its moral, cultural and social order? The correct reply to this question requires a sharp distinction between “Islam” and “Muslim.” Ideally of course, the two should be identical but since Muslims are only human and not angels and therefore have no automatic immunity to the same weaknesses, shortcomings, trials and temptations as other people, they have strayed so far from what the Quran terms “The Straight Path” until today under alien sway, most Muslims are virtually indistinguishable in their conduct and behaviour from non-Muslims. Like all other traditional people in traditional societies, the average Muslim practiced his faith out of mere custom and tradition rather than personal conviction supported by enlightened knowledge. 53 He performed his worship and other obligatory duties not so much to earn the pleasure of God and eternal reward in the Hereafter but merely habit under the pressures of social conformity—a ritual or legal formality to be gone through and gotten over with as quickly as possible. As most of them were ignorant and illiterate, had very limited experience and a narrow mental outlook, the real meaning of the spiritual truths of Quran and sunnah, which inspired our ancestors to such heights of power and achievement, were ignored and overlooked, if not almost entirely forgotten. Thus while Islam is Divine, the Muslim must remain human and it is in the nature of human psychology that the original zeal and enthusiasm which inspires the new convert in a revolutionary movement cannot be maintained indefinitely unless periodically replenished by inspiring leadership. In every generation a Mujaddid or Mujahid of extraordinary mental and spiritual capacity must arise to renew and revitalize the faith. When Western imperialism threatened the integrity and independence of the Muslim world, the leadership available to us was simply not equal to the task. A social structure which is based mainly on national or local custom and traditions and behind which there is not the sustaining force of a powerful creed founded upon wisdom and understanding and defended with zealous personal conviction and which is rigid and lacking in the ability to meet the challenges of the changing problems of the age without losing its own cultural and spiritual identity and of discriminating between the useful and beneficial knowledge and the social and moral 56 They may have led very pleasant lives; certainly many of them did, but we have no way of knowing for today there is no trace of them left. But the masses of humble common people, remaining true to Judaism, produced new religious, spiritual and intellectual leaders, among them, Jesus of Nazareth. The Zealots, who in their day were scorned by the Hellenizers as 28 “reactionaries,” composed the Talmud which preserved the religious and cultural identity of the Jewish people intact in their dispersion and exile for the next two thousand years; The Hellenizers vanished.28 What is the result of universal westernization? Is the future bright with “progress” in its true sense? ====================================================================== What sort of human being can be expected to emerge as the end-product of our “modern” era? ====================================================================== Literature on psychopathy dates back [^150] years. The newly observed character disorder was described early in the nineteenth century by Dr. J. C. Pritchard in England as “moral insanity.” The French physician, Dr. Philippe Pinel, who first freed madmen from dungeons and shackles, called it “mania without delirium.” Later in the century, the Italian, Cesare Lombroso saw the lucid, apparently not in the least deranged person who committed violently anti-social acts as a “born criminal” and “moral imbecile.” Until very recently, psychiatric students of the psychopath assumed that the psychopath usually was rejected and cruelly or indifferently treated as a child or may have possibly suffered early brain damage, detected or not. They strike back at the world with aggressive unrestrained, attention-drawing behaviour. Since conscience is instilled by early love, faith in the adults close by and the desire to hold their affection by being good, the child unrewarded with love, grows up experiencing no conscience. Uncared for, he doesn’t care, can’t really love or form permanent deep emotional attachments to anyone. He feels no 57 anxiety to speak of, having experienced little or no love to lose, does not worry about whether he is good or bad and literally has no idea of guilt, remorse or shame. For adult psychopaths, no remedy is known; successful psychotherapy has proved to be virtually impossible. For one thing, the therapist must try to instil guilt and anxiety rather than alleviate such feelings in a “patient” who feels fine and insists that there is nothing wrong with him. The psychopath doesn’t suffer; rather he makes his victims suffer. Since he is free of inhibitions, his impulses immediately spill over into action. He takes what he wants when he wants it, regardless of the consequences. He may lie glibly and show little, if any, embarrassment when caught. The classic psychopath leaves a trail of misery, fighting, fraud, running up debts; he may abandon his wife and children, perhaps returning now and then if he feels like it or leave a job without notice or suddenly for no reason begin to perform so poorly or dishonestly that the company fires him. If prompted by more vicious impulses, psychopaths will kill, rape or molest children. Whether arrested for disturbing the peace, theft, forgery, child abuse, child abandonment or murder, the psychopath will act with indifference or it may be he will put on a show of innocence, protesting that he has been misunderstood. But psychopaths generally go free to create more trouble. They frequently turn on charm that proves hard to resist, time and time again deceiving police, judges, juries, mental hospital authorities, employers, wives, families and psychiatrists into accepting their argument that their latest delinquency was all a “mistake.” If need be, they make fake repentance—tearful self-denunciations and the like—which entirely disappear as soon as freedom or forgiveness has been attained. There may follow a quiet period with every evidence of stability and cautious predictions that the wayward individual has straightened out or learned his lesson. But psychopaths never learn, even from the most painful experiences. The most severe punishment will not deter them from wrong-doing 58 again. These men and women have virtually no worries. Another quality of this “new man” is his excessive energy. In contrast to the profound listlessness and fatigue experienced by many neurotics and schizophrenics, almost unlimited energy possesses the psychopath. Such individuals are never weakened by reflection or doubt. The psychopath lives only for the moment. He has no sense of time, especially of the future; he senses only the here and now. He lives free of form, predictable only in his impulsiveness and the probability that if confined to any sort of routine or discipline, he will rebel against it, bringing trouble to somebody. He refuses to delay gratification of his whims; he will not submit to any rules except his own. The good of society does not in the slightest interest him. He has a completely defective sense of property. Thus he may steal, he fails to live up to his family obligations, refuses to do his duty, wipes out boredom with drugs or drunkenness, blithely and coldly takes what he wants and then grins happily or suddenly explodes into rage, hits out, copulates at random, leaves, grasps, exploits and manipulates people without guilt, heedless of warnings or threats of punishment. Psychopathy among the young is expressed not so much in lone wolf anti-social acts as in conformity. Two principal characteristics of the psychopathic adolescent are: (1) acting out against society impulses arising from internal distress, (2) drifting in crowds or gangs. Combined, they produce a state of suffer that renders them essentially anti-social, without conscience, inclined to violence in behaviour and liable to loss of self-identity in the group, gang, mob or herd. 29 Dr. Harvey Cleckley, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical College of Georgia was the first to call attention not merely to the seriousness of psychopathy as a nation-wide phenomenon but to its potential for “social disaster.” “It is urgent and obvious,” he wrote, “that we devise more effective means of restraining these people in their persistently destructive careers.” Dr. Robert Lindner declared: “Psychopathy represents the most expensive and most destructive of all known forms 59 of errant behaviour. Psychopathy, possibly more than any other mental disorder, threatens the safety, the serenity and security of American life. I am convinced that the terminal stages of any given civilization are marked by the appearance of this new breed of man—always psychopathic, dedicated to action and violence rather than contemplation and compassion. He speaks in his books of the “psychopathic plague which is now ravaging the world with more dangerous implications than the most deadly of organic diseases.” As early as 1950, he found that a new kind of youth had come into being: “A profound and terrifying change has overtaken the character of that time of life we call adolescence. More than conventionally rebellious,” he stressed, “young people were in a state of mutiny against civilization itself.” Shortly before his death, Dr. Lindner described the “new man” as the harbinger of social and political distress and suggested that one of the highest missions our leadership can have is to identify the psychopath and struggle against the conditions that produce him. It is no accident that there are very definite aspects to our cultural pattern which give psychopaths every encouragement. In America, we place great value on the acquisition of material gain, prestige, power, personal ascendance and the competitive massing of goods. We have very short memories about the origins of some of our great national fortunes, towards the holders of which we so highly revere. At the other end, our machine-civilization tends to level and strangle individuality, leaving large groups within our culture fearful, anxious, resentful, and openly hostile. In such an atmosphere, psychopathy flourishes. America has become a violent, pitiless nation, hard and calculating, whose moments of generosity are only brief intervals in a ferocious narrative of life. We are faced with a revolutionary, cynical, but also intellectually fashionable proposal that Western man is rapidly turning into a new breed for whom violence, sensuality, immediate gratification of every desire or whim, to be hard, merciless, and predatory is essential 60 for survival in the world we now live in and where kindness, sympathy, compassion, tenderness and affection have become moral luxuries that growing numbers of us can no longer afford. Can it be true that, far from seeking to treat psychopaths in mental hospitals or clinics, we should rather emulate him and learn how to become like him? Would it be expedient for us to adopt psychopathy as our style of life, honour only the present and go about annihilating history, past standards, the memory of by-gone cultures—eradicate them because defunct models of life can only get in our way? We are living in the Age of the Psychopath or at least witnessing the start of such an age for the true psychopath is the hero and the ideal of our new young generation. Free from responsibility, anxiety, guilt, remorse or shame, psychopaths pursue their interests with no religion or morality to restrain them, manipulating others without scruple to attain their self-centered goals. Corporation president, statesman, educator, physician, his calling is irrelevant, his characteristics everywhere the same. Successful psychopaths find the world’s cornucopia open to them as they utilize all their ingenuity for concrete gain. We see them glorified week after week on the covers of TIME and NEWSWEEK. Moreover, every level of our society seems unwittingly bent on imitating this behaviour. No nation or culture consisting of psychopaths can long survive. The psychopath is a disruptive, parasitic, immoral influence and any group, while it may for various reasons support and even honour them, must fundamentally rest on the firm support of a great number of honest, hard-working, law-abiding, responsible people to exist and in direct proportion to the extent that they are tolerated, that their attitudes find support in the cultural pattern, to that extent we are a diseased society.30 61 Is this what we want—for ourselves, our children, our grandchildren? This is the fruit of the tree—what we shall certainly get if we continue in the same thoughtless ways. ====================================================================== Most hippies, beatniks, juvenile delinquents and hardened criminals are psychopathic. They fill the prisons throughout the world. They also fill the pages of Western history—Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler being recent examples of psychopathy in its most extreme form. ====================================================================== Psychopathy is not a unique product of the modern age, having no precedent in the past. ====================================================================== Roman emperors like Caligula, Claudius, Domitian and Nero clearly showed the same tendencies. So did many of the Western explorers, exploiters and imperialists down through the centuries. ====================================================================== Cortez, who destroyed the Aztecs, Pizzaro, who exterminated the Incas, Clive who conquered India for the British empire and such imperialists as Kitchener, who vanquished the Mahdists of the Sudan, were of the same type. ====================================================================== So was Peter the Great and Ataturk and probably even the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser. ====================================================================== Those who strive for Islamic regeneration must appeal to the nobler self in man which is as universal as his baser inclinations. Today almost everyone living in the giant urban centers subconsciously feels an intuitive emptiness in his days, a lack of purpose, direction and meaning in his existence which no amount of material goods and the frantic chase after “happiness” or enjoyment of sensual pleasures can satisfy. ====================================================================== This is the province of religion and entirely beyond the sphere of science, at least in its present form. ====================================================================== The present century can rightly be described as the age of the predominance of Western philosophical ====================================================================== 64 our adversaries. Islamic history provides the most effective refutation of this wide-spread fallacy. ====================================================================== To the sophisticated Persians and Romans of the days of the Holy Prophet and the Sahabah or Companions, the early Muslims of Arabia must have appeared hopelessly “backward” and “primitive.” Though grossly inferior in numbers and poorly equipped, often ragged and half-starved, they successfully vanquished infinitely more “civilized” foes. They were never ashamed of their material poverty nor did they regard it as any obstacle for the propagation of their mission. ====================================================================== The following Hadith is eloquent testimony to the contempt of the Holy Prophet for worldly advantages: ====================================================================== Umar Ibn Khattab said: “When I entered the room, the Holy Prophet was lying on a date palm mat on the floor. There was no bedding between it and him. The marks of the matting were imprinted on his body. He had a leather bag filled with the bark of the date-palm tree as his pillow. I noticed that the contents of his room comprised of only three pieces of tanned skin and a handful of barley lying in a corner. I looked about but failed to find anything else. I began to weep. “Oh Prophet of Allah!” I cried. “Pray that Allah may issue ample provisions for us. The Persians and the Romans, who have no faith in Allah, enjoy abundance and prosperity. Then why should the chosen Prophet of Allah live in such dire poverty?” The Holy Prophet was resting on his hard pillow, but when he heard me talk like this, he quickly sat up and rebuked me. “Oh Umar! Why do you envy their ease and comfort? Are you not satisfied that for them is this world and for us the Hereafter?” I implored: “Oh Prophet of Allah! Forgive me! I was in error.” 65 Pseudo-scientific interpretations of “Islam” are entirely devoid of the spiritual content of the Prophetic mission. They are without relevance to the Quranic revelation. Thus an Islamic renaissance can never take place unless the message that is the essence of the Muslim community is revived. The first step in the transition from a materialistic to a religious view of life is to regard the transcendental and unseen as more important than material objects and to regard the experiences of the heart and soul as more valuable and trustworthy than what is observed by external sense organs. According to the religious view, the whole order of creation should be considered as nothing more than a fleeting shadow while God is the eternal, living Reality. In contrast to the prevailing view that the universe is a chain of mechanical causes and effects and rigid “natural” laws, the will of God and His design and purpose must be seen and felt in operation at all times and in all places. Matter is instead regarded as insignificant and the soul or spiritual existence is considered the true Reality. The significance of man is not his corporeal body but the divine spirit in his soul which the Quran tells us why man was created superior to angels. Our worldly life should not only appear transitory and short-lived but unreal and insignificant and the Hereafter everlasting and of supreme importance. The pleasure of God must be valued as more precious than all the riches, fame, honour and reputation of this earth in conformity to the Prophet’s saying that worldly wealth and advantages are no more important than a 10 66 mosquito’s wing. Until a major portion of the Ummah or Muslim community undergoes this radical transformation of outlook, a genuine Islamic renaissance can never occur. Surely We created man in the best stature > Then We reduced him to the lowest of the low > Save those who believe and do good works > And theirs is a reward unfailing. > So who henceforth will give the lie unto thee (O Muhammad) about the Judgment? > Is not Allah the most conclusive of all judges? 1. Hunger, Barbara Milbauer and Gerald Leinwand, Pocket Books Inc., New York, 1971, p. 147. 2. The Emergence of Modern Turkey, Bernard Lewis, Oxford University Press, London, 1961, Plate IV, between pp. 273-274. 3. the member of the lower city-class 4. Temperament and Character of the Arabs, Sania Hamady, Twayne Publishers, New York, 1960, pp. 135-137. 5. The Arab World, Desmond Stewart, Time Inc., New York, 1962, pp. 134-135. 6. Ibid., p. 16. 7. The Autobiography of Malcolm-X, with the assistance of Alex Haley, Grove Press, New York, 1965, pp. 55-56. 8. “Schweitzer and the New Africa,” Atlantic Monthly, Boston, November 1961, pp. 55-56. 9. Western Civilization, Islam and Muslims, Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi. Academy of Islamic Research and Publications, Lucknow, 1969, pp. 64-65. 10. “Modern Trends in Chinese Philosophy and Religion,” Wing-tsit Chan, Modern Trends in World Religions, edited by Joseph M. Kitagawa, Open Court Publishing Co., La Salle, Illinois, 1959, pp. 194-196. 11. Great Ages of Man: The Twentieth Century, Joel Colton, Time-Life, New York, 1968, p. 121. 12. This Is My God; the Jewish Way of Life, Herman Wouk, Doubleday New York, 1960, pp. 190, 202-203. 13. The Emergence of Modern Turkey, Bernard Lewis, Oxford University Press, London, 1961, p. 408. 14. A Modern Approach to Islam, Asaf A. Fyzee, Asia Publishing House, Bombay, 1963, p. 107. 15. Islam in Modern History, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Princeton University Press, 1957, p. 204. 16. Although they are relatively new-comers to Britain, the children have integrated and assimilated so thoroughly that it is almost impossible to distinguish them from ordinary English teenagers. 17. “Turkish Cypriots in Britain,” Jamal Sardar, Impact International Fortnightly, London, May 1974. 18. This is My God: The Jewish Way of Life, op. cit., pp. 12-13. 19. “Cultural Segregation in Pakistan,” Mohammad Masih-uz-Zaman, Muslimnews International, Karachi, May 1974, pp. 15-19. 20. “B. B. C. Portrait of Bhutto: A Combination of Ataturk and Napoleon,” The Pakistan Times, Lahore, December 20, 1973, pp. 4-5. 21. “Israel—a Nation under Siege,” Time Magazine, June 9, 1967, p. 20. 22. How Can Palestine be Explained to the West?, Dr. Elmer Berger, The Fifth of June Society, Beirut, November 7, 1968, p. 6. 23. A Short History of the United States, Allan Nevins and Henry Steele Commager, Modern Library, Random House, New York, 1945, pp. 2-3. 24. Judaism as a Civilization, Mordecai Kaplan, Macmillan, New York, 1934, pp. 275-276. 25. “Birth of a Nation,” Gavin Young, The Observer, London, April 13, 1969. 26. How Can Palestine be Explained to the West?, op. cit., pp. 12-13. 27. Translations from the Quran, Altaf Gauhar, Idara Tarjuman-ul-Quran, Lahore, February 1975, pp. 30-31, 35-36, 38-39. 28. This is My God: the Jewish Way of Life, op. cit., pp. 23-24. 29. of [This footnote appears to be cut off in the source text] 30. Psychopaths, Alan Harrington, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1972, pp. 14-42 (abridged). MUSLIMS AWAKE! ============== While the evils of atheism and materialism, supported by all the forces of modern technology, are working day and night to destroy us—spiritually, culturally and politically—rather than hold fast to faith in Allah, unite and combat our real enemies, we foolishly choose to tread the path of an alien civilization, hoping thereby in vain to attain social prestige and the comforts and pleasures of this transitory world in utter forgetfulness of the eternal Life Hereafter and thus totally neglect our duties as Muslims to Allah and our fellow-beings. This is not the way to progress but can only result in our failure, degeneration and doom, both individually and collectively! Muslim brothers and sisters! Follow the path of the Qur’an and Sunnah, not as a set of dead rituals but as a practical manual of guidance for our conduct in daily private and 1 public, put aside sectarian and political controversies and let us all cooperate and work together in harmony for the cause of Allah in Islamic movements in whichever country you happen to live, do not waste valuable time in useless things, and inshallah, Allah shall crown your life with great achievements here and supreme success in the Hereafter. MARYAM JAMEELAH 1. a