THE PHILOSOPHY OF TAHA HUSSAIN

Dr. Taha Hussain insists that the adoption of Islam and the Arabic language did not make Egypt any more “Eastern” than Europe when its people embraced Christianity.

How is it possible for fair-minded persons to see no harm coming to the European mind from reading the Gospel and at the same time to regard the Quran as purely Eastern even though it is proclaimed that the Qur’an was sent only to confirm and complete what is in the Gospel? They must explain what distinguishes Christianity from Islam for both stem from the same source.

Dr. Taha Hussain speaks as if Christianity were identical with Islam. He seems to forget that the Gospel the Christians regard as their scriptures is not the same Gospel to which the Qur’an refers.

The original message God revealed to Jesus has been lost. All that the Christians possess are four of the apocryphal biographies of Jesus which were not canonized until centuries after his so-called death. Although Jesus, like Muhammad, spoke a Semitic language the Christian scriptures were first recorded in Greek instead. Jesus did not know a word of Greek.

The doctrines of the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, original sin, and the vicarious atonement by his alleged death on the cross, originated with Paul—not Jesus. Paul was a thoroughly Hellenized, Greek-speaking Roman citizen who could not but be influenced by his pagan environment.

And it was Paul, rather than Jesus, who determined the subsequent history of Christianity. Yet Dr. Taha Hussain can still insist that:

58 The essence of Islam is the same essence of Christianity. The connection of Islam with Greek philosophy is identical to that of Christianity.

Whence then comes the difference in the effect of these two faiths on the creation of the mind that mankind inherited from Greece?

Why is Europe’s connection with Greek culture during the Renaissance one of the props of the European mind whereas her connection with this same Greek philosophy through Islam is not so regarded? Can we seriously maintain the existence of important differences between the peoples living on the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean? We have seen how the influence of Greece and Rome permeated the Christian faith from its inception. This was not true of Islam.

The Qur’an is in Arabic—not Greek—and unlike the Christian scriptures, has been preserved in its purity. No Muslim equivalent of Paul ever appeared to corrupt Islam.

Aristotelian philosophers like Ibn Rushd had a far greater impact on medieval Europe than the Islamic world.

Hellenism was effectively routed by al-Ghazzali and Ibn Taimiya.

Dr. Taha Hussain maintains that the common roots Muslims share with Christians make Islam far more spiritually compatible with the West than with oriental countries like India or China. Thus for Dr. Taha Hussain, Westernization is not a problem for the Islamic world, or for Egypt but an inevitable consequence of its innate characteristics.

Despite the incessant rivalry between European Christianity and Islam which reached its climax during the 59 Crusades, it is true that Muslims did have more in common with Christians than with the Hindus or Buddhists of the Far East. Here Taha Hussain is right. However, he fails to take into account the fact that since the French Revolution, the supremacy of secularism has made Western civilization deadly poison to every religion.

Europe today resembles the Abbasid Near East in the richness of its civilization which, like any human creation, has its good and bad aspects. > > Our religious life will not suffer from our adoption of Western civilization any more than it suffered when we took over the

Persian and Byzantine civilization

Here Taha Hussain contradicts himself. He has until now, exerted all his efforts to prove that Egypt is part of Europe, resisting all Oriental influences and then he admits that the acceptance of Persian and Byzantine culture did Islam no harm.

The adoption of ANY way of life, whether from the “East” or from the “West”, cannot fail to undermine the

moral strength of Islam if it is contrary to the teachings of

the Qur’an.

Persian and Byzantine culture was no exception.

Women enjoyed an honourable status until the Muslim rulers considered it fashionable to imitate the courts of the Persian and Byzantine kings.

Only then did the harem-system with its limitless concubines, eunuchs and slaves become the curse of Muslim society.

Homosexuality and sodomy, in which the Greeks shamelessly indulged, spread like a cancer. Such perversion was rare among the Arabs during the lifetime of the Prophet.

Government 60 during the first four Khalifs was remarkably democratic until Muawiya¹ in imitation of Persia and Byzantium, transformed the Khalifate into a despotic hereditary monarchy. This was the moral decadence that rotted Islamic society from within.

Although Dr. Taha Hussain admits that there is much materialism in Western civilization, he insists that it still contains considerable spiritual content.

He supports his argument by citing “those airplane test pilots who voluntarily expose themselves to horrible injury and even death in order to extend man’s mastery over nature.”

While there is nothing in the Qur’an opposing scientific research, (quite the contrary), its teachings regard the mastery of men over themselves more important than mastery over the physical forces of nature. In other words, to conquer one’s own lusts, pride, greed and selfishness is a far greater achievement than sending a rocket to the moon. Yet the assumption of the West is exactly the opposite.

If God had preserved us from Ottoman conquest

and rule, we should have remained in unbroken touch with Europe and shared in her renaissance.

As a matter of fact, the Europeans borrowed the methods that prevailed in the Islamic world during the Middle Ages.

They did just what we are doing now. It is only a matter of time.

These days it has become fashionable for Muslims to argue, as does Taha Hussain, that because Europe derived her spirit of scientific inquiry from the Arabs, in the process of Westernization, Muslims are only reclaiming their 61 rightful heritage. By this sort of sophistry, Muslims justify the abandonment of their faith. They forget that it is not science in itself which determines the quality of a civilization but rather the uses to which it is put and the consequences that result.

The transmission of Muslim learning to medieval Europe did not make her people part of Islamic civilization. The medieval Europeans never sought to adopt Arabian dress, Arabian customs and mode of living in place of their own.

Although medieval Europe eagerly welcomed the achievements of Muslim science and philosophy, it was never willing to sacrifice its cultural independence as the Muslim countries are doing now.

We Egyptians measure the progress of our nation solely in terms of the amount of our borrowing from the West. We have learned from Europe how to be civilized. Europeans have taught us to sit at the table, eat with knife and fork, sleep in beds instead of on the floor and to wear Western clothes.

We seek no guidance in our government from the Khalifate. Instead, we have set up national, secular courts and enacted laws in conformity to Western rather than Islamic codes.

The dominant and undeniable fact of our times is that day by day we are drawing closer to Europe and becoming an integral part of her literally and figuratively.

Dr. Taha Hussain asserts that Westernization would be much more difficult if the Egyptian mind were basically different from the European.

In the same breath he chides 62 his countrymen for lagging so far behind Japan in this respect. If Egypt were truly a cultural extension of Europe, Taha Hussain would have no need for these sophistries.

In all seriousness, do we wish to embrace the religion and philosophy of the Chinese just when they are rapidly Westernizing themselves?

Those Egyptians who deride Western civilization would be the last to want to live like Chinese or Hindus.

Why should Taha Hussain assume that his fellow countrymen must choose between these two alternatives? Why should Egyptians want to be either Chinese or Englishmen? Why should they not be proud to live as Muslims?

God has bestowed on us a boon to compensate for our calamities. The Western world has struggled for centuries to attain its present level of progress and now we have the opportunity to reach it within a generation. No power on earth is capable of preventing us Egyptians from enjoying life exactly the way they do. In order to become equal partners in civilization with the Europeans, we must literally and forthrightly do everything they do.

Whoever advises any other course of action is either a deceiver or is himself deceived. We must now raise the question as to whether Western civilization is superior to Islam as Taha Hussain so obviously believes. Certainly the Western world, by means of its technological efficiency, has promoted the general physical well-being and material prosperity of its people beyond the level of any preceding civilization. Yet no civilization can 63 be judged on the basis of its technology alone. What of the arts? Which architecture is superior in grace and symmetry—the mosque of Ibn Tulun or the United Nations building?

The decadence of modern art is the direct consequence of the loss of religious convictions.

Both the “non-objective” painting and the “socialist realism” of the Communist countries are a perfect expression of the rejection of all spiritual values. The source of emotional depth and warmth, of beauty and design is God.

Modern painting, sculpture and architecture are conspicuously lacking in all these attributes. The absence of God is equally reflected in such sordid dramas by the American playwright, Tennessee Williams, as “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” There is no God in modern jazz which caters to the crudest, most primitive instincts in man.

And once a human being is reduced to the level of the beast, he begins to act like one.

In the collective farm settlements in Israel, for example, free love is the rule.

Children are taken from their mothers when a week old and brought up in nurseries. Consequently, the formalities of marriage are dispensed with and family life eliminated.

In Sweden, sex instruction is begun in the first year of elementary school with the aim of preventing any taint of sin from being associated with the subject in the children’s minds.

Adolescents are taught that there is nothing wrong with sexual relations outside of marriage so long as the boy and girl love each other and are prepared to assume the responsibility for 64 the children.

Contraceptives are easily available to teenagers which, however, does not prevent at least a quarter of the babies born from being conceived out of wedlock. Swedes defend their moral standards by insisting that they are just as high as elsewhere!

Is western secularism superior to Islam? Which is the higher motive—to do good without thought of tangible gain for the love of God or to do right simply for the sake of social convention?

Which is the more advanced idea—the triumph of nationalism or the universal brotherhood of Islam? Which is the broader view—a purely this-worldly emphasis or the affirmation of the Hereafter?

Nationalism, secularism, the decay of the arts, the decline in moral standards, the rise of materialistic ideologies such as Fascism, Nazism and Communism combined with the mad rush to invent more and more deadly weapons of mass murder, are all signs of the approaching downfall of the West. In adopting its civilization, Muslims will not share in its progress but only in its doom.

Is that what Dr. Taha Hussain wants?