THE DOGMA OF "PROGRESS" - OUR DEADLIEST ENEMY

The philosophy of “progress” has been almost universally accepted with the unquestioning submission of religious dogma. The advocates of this dogma assume that evolutionary progress is the unalterable Law of history whereby the constant advance of the human race by means of its collective material achievements is regarded not only as praiseworthy but inevitable.

The philosophy of “progress” rests upon the following assumptions: (1) the uncritical acceptance of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution that mankind emerged from very lowly origins; that when life first appeared on earth, it was of the simplest and lowliest which over the ages has evolved into more and more complex and highly developed creatures at the apex of which stands the human race; (2) that Darwin’s theory of biology is equally valid when applied to human society which has emerged from the most primitive level (such as the black, Australian bushman) to ever more and more complex and highly developed cultures at the apex of which stands modern Western civilization; (3) Therefore to defy modern Western culture is tantamount to defying the Law of evolution—to rebel against “Progress,” against the very Law of nature itself.

The progress from the low, primitive culture to ever more and more highly advanced civilization is not only desirable but an immutable 127 Law of nature.

Since every change is an improvement along the road to progress, the newest is always the best and any attempt to defend older or previously established standards means retrogression to a more primitive way of life; (4) Modern scientific knowledge has rendered all religions based upon Divine revelation and transcendental values obsolete. A society whose members regulate all aspects of their lives according to a fixed, divinely-revealed Law, equally valid at all times and in all places, inevitably results in cultural stagnation because once the truth is known, it cannot be changed and without change, no “progress” is possible.

The dogma of “progress” is no more than a psychological weapon to demoralize the non-Western peoples, promote the propaganda that only the culture of the modern West has any future and that all attempts to resist it are hopeless.

As one of the disciples of this concept of “progress” writes:

There is one experience which all societies must undergo. This experience is one in which a society, starting from a position of adherence to a theologically-oriented belief-system, first comes under the impact of modern science, technology, economics and methods of organization and so faces the need to reformulate its belief-system to give it a human-orientation. In applying the terms “theological” and “human” to belief-systems, we do not differentiate between systems that do or do not have a place for the deity and religion, but between those in which the ideas, values and norms they encompass are viewed as having their foundation in objective, “given” transcendentally “revealed” truth and those in which these values are viewed as having their foundation in the truth that is ascertained by the human faculties, including, as the case may be, ideas about the 128 deity and religion.

Why a transition is made necessary by modern science, technology, economics and methods of organization is apparent. These disciplines testify to man’s ability to understand and manipulate his natural and human environment by means of principles which He has discovered or learned. The reason why the transition is so difficult is that belief-systems in general, by virtue of the function they fulfil in a community, become part of the community’s consciousness of itself, a means of identifying and distinguishing it from others and they therefore acquire a certain sanctity which makes them more resistant to change than material conditions. To the community itself, its established belief-system is never the temporary and changing phenomena that in fact it is, but regarded as the culmination and the final result of the historical process. And if this is the case with belief-systems in general, how much more is it with systems like that of Islam, that are avowedly considered as revealed and sacred?

Egypt in Search of a Political Community, Nadav Safran, Harvard University Press, 1961, pp. 2-3. Now-a-days nearly all the attacks against Islam and its way of life conform with arguments given in the quotation above.

Since the dogma of “progress” demands that “change” be worshipped as a virtue in itself, there can be no such thing as permanency in the realm of moral or cultural values. Consequently, any system that claims for itself permanency on a Divinely-revealed basis, could be appropriate only for the particular time and place of its inception, and therefore must inevitably become obsolete and doomed to oblivion. Hence follows through these spectacles, a characteristic distortion of Islamic history.

The conception of Muhammad’s mission has led to a pessimistic view of history. Until the appearance of the Prophet, it was possible to view the historical process as a 129 progress towards a perfect revelation of God’s will but with the appearance of Muhammad, this process came to an end. Since Muhammad was viewed as the “Seal of the Prophets” no further perfection could be expected in the statement and interpretation of the Divine will.

Henceforth history could move only on or below the level to which Muhammad has raised it and, as a matter of fact, the chances it would remain on that level were poor. It is clear that in the Islamic view, perfection is to be sought in the past to which all present activity must refer for justification…. Ibid., p. 16. The advocates of “progress” employ all the psychological weapons at their disposal as to render the injunctions of our Shariat as antiquated and superseded by modernism.

Their main argument runs as follows: Since the conditions of contemporary society are so utterly different from what prevailed in the Prophet’s day, Islam is thus “out-of-date”, the injunctions of our Shariat are irrelevant to modern life and thus provide no guidance, much less, solution to today’s problems.

The smashing attack of reliance upon ancient authority (taqlid) is an inherent element of the transition from a pre-bourgeois to a bourgeois life. For not only was the authority in question now out-dated and irrelevant—it answered questions which in capitalist society do not arise—but all authoritative moral codes now in principle are superseded.

In an agricultural community, life is, by and large, static; the problems the peasant faces one day are more or less similar to those that he faces another, even to those that his ancestors faced and which, consequently, the wisdom of society has solved. In a peasant village, therefore, morality is a system which can be codified and imposed by authority. Furthermore, in such a society, the individual is used to authority in every sphere of life; he is under constant supervision…. With the advent of dynamic capitalism, all this was changed. Innumerable individuals became detached from their traditional bodies their ancestors had belonged to and had 120 to face life on their own account deprived of the protection as well as the supervision of any authoritative body. Thus, the modern, independent individual came into existence. Not only was the new individual without any authority. The nature of his life in modern society is constantly developing, changing, producing new and more complex situations—was such that he could never develop a new authority. The individual himself became morally responsible and had to decide questions on his own …. Thus it is that Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, on rejecting the old Shariat, did not replace it with a new one nor has any of his successors done so but only emphasized the general moral “principles” of the Quran (pp. 12-13) …. It is inevitable that sooner or later, the liberals recognize that the situations in their life are complicated and conditioned by so many new and utterly divergent factors that they demand new answers. The final stage of this process is when the modern Muslim ceases altogether to regulate and even to think he is regulating his life on ancient patterns. But before this point is reached, there is a period in which he devotes himself, not to the specific answers which his Prophet gave to problems but to the “spirit” in which these answers were given …… (p. 70). Modern Islam in India, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Shaikh Muhammad Ashraf, Lahore, 1963.

Here is a good example how our enemies employ the Marxist concept of cultural values being entirely dependent upon existing material conditions to undermine the whole foundation of Islamic institutions, in this case, the Islamic concept of “purdah,” or the segregation of the sexes:

“Take this question of the veil. It is not possible that we shall go back to it. Everything depends upon economic life and in Turkey, women are working in banks, as teachers, professors, judges, chemists, lawyers.

There are more than twenty women lawyers practising here in Ankara right now. And this applies to the provinces as well. The process has gone much too far for the old ideas to come back. Much has changed. As democracy advances, there will be more 121 change still. The religion of Islam is developing. We earnestly hope that it will continue to develop. But we have no need of a reformer; the life of society will take care of its reformation …. “

Islam in Modern History, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Princeton University Press, 1957, p. 203.

Since in this view, the Islamic way of life has been superseded by Western ideals, the best the Muslims can do is to accept the inevitable and re-interpret Islam accordingly:

If anyone identifies Islam strictly with its medieval version, he must know that he is rendering Islam static and isolating it from the current of time. For medieval Islam—the Islam that our doctors of law and scholars of theology constructed—is not the Islam. It is only one interpretation of it. It was an interpretation which suited the conditions of their own space and time. Now under changed circumstances, a new interpretation of Islam cannot help being different. “Islamic Research—its Scope and Justification,” Nasim Ahmad Jawed, Ummah—The Voice of the Community, published by the Central Institute of Islamic Research, Karachi, March 1965, p. 47. If the fate of Islam lies in the hands of those who profess these views, the inevitable consequences of this mania for “changing with the changing times” will lead to the same predicament as the Christian churches now find themselves in Europe and America.

More than 900 clergymen and students gathered last week at Harvard University Divinity School to ponder over the “new morality” and its significance for the Christian Church. They generally agreed that the “new morality” is a healthy advance as a genuine effort to take literally St. Paul’s teachings that “through Christ we are liberated from the Law.” “Lists of can’s and cannot’s are meaningless,” says Princeton’s 122 Paul Ramsey. Joseph Fletcher of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge asserted that no sexual relationship should be absolutely condemned by the church. The “new morality”, he said, would certainly approve of an Episcopal priest in New York City who provides contraceptives for a gang of delinquents he attempts to serve. The core proposition of the “new morality,” argued Fletcher, is that there is only one thing which is always good, regardless of circumstances and that is neighborly concern, social responsibility which is a Divine imperative. In the “new morality,” the ultimate criterion for right and wrong is not Divine command but the individual’s subjective perception of what is good for himself and his neighbor in each given situation.

Time Magazine, March 5, 1965, pp. 28-29. Such “progressive” morality cannot but lead to the following consequences:

In the stable world one’s environment stayed the same and so did the people who shaped one’s life.

But in today’s world, environments and friends flicker by in endless variety. Whirled along in all this change, individual men and women change too. Their attitudes and intentions are continuously being reshaped. This year’s passionate beliefs may be next year’s jokes. Vows sincerely and earnestly spoken may eventually get in the way and have to be trampled underfoot.

The Split-Level Trap: A Study of the Modern American Suburb, Richard E. Gordon, Katherine K. Gordon, and Max Gunther, Dell Publishing Company, New York, 1960, p. 114. In the view of Professor Wilfred Cantwell Smith, a “progressive” is one in active sympathy with this kind of social change and endeavors to do all he can to promote it while the “reactionary”, in order to avoid this “progress”, not only opposes it but reacts against the changes by seeking to reconstruct a previous social order so that instead of moving forward to a new 123 society, society shall retrogress back to an earlier stage.¹ Thus those who want a genuine Islamic way of life would be in this view “reactionaries” to the most intense degree.

Let those of us who love Islam and the way of life it represents not fear being maligned as “reactionaries” by our enemies.

Let us understand once and for all why it can do our cause nothing but harm to attempt to please the non-Muslim mind by eulogizing Islam as a “rational”, “enlightened”, “scientific”, “dynamic”, “liberal”, “modern” and “progressive” religion in the sense of being in harmony with the current social changes taking place under the patronage of materialist ideologies. If in seeking our salvation by obedience to Quran and Sunnah in its plain, literal meaning, modernists accuse us of glorifying the past rather than modern “progress”, let us have the courage to reply, “What is so wrong with this?” Let us have the moral courage to condemn modernist values as destructive to society and degrading to the individual personality. Islam is neither past, present nor future; it is timeless.

Good and evil are not mere subjective, relative terms limited to time, place and circumstance, but absolute eternal and transcendental Truth. Let us, above all, appreciate Islam as an independent way of life with its own unique standards and values which never need be compared with any man-made philosophy for their justification.