Why do traditional Muslims fall behind?
By Ahmed assid
A question that 100 years ago the Arabs asked the West with admiration in terms of technological progress and the development of the idea to facilitate the process of implementing their purposes at the beginning of the era of occupation and the European renaissance of industries, and today it is no longer asked, why?
It was reflected…
The question at first was of admiration in
Knowing its causes, and this is the Arabs’ recognition of sin/ backwardness, and discovering it by comparing existing achievements…
And curiosity got some of the pioneers at the time, such as Muhammad Abdo, Rashid Rida, Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi, Rifa’a al-Tahtawi and others, to know the secret of this progress…and they went, turned, studied and recorded these observations…
And they had a feeling and the reality of the backwardness of Muslims in terms of industries, education, civics, and the organization of governments, and they wrote down the reforming ideas …
The reasons for this backwardness is the abandonment of reason and holding on to tradition, as it was impossible to think of a new way without abandoning and changing the way of work in various areas of life and work, from factories to schools and even at the state level to armies that were regular armies with modern management…
At the same time, around the end of the nineteenth century, around 1890, both the Emperor of Japan and the King/Sultan of Morocco sent a mission of students to Europe to research the reasons for the progress of the West…
The Japanese mission returned with a summary that the modern curriculum system is the basis..and decided to work with it, but it was a fierce war and violent resistance by the samurai and the traditionalists who rejected progress and change,
and the emperor defeated them in the end, and Japan changed when it realized that it had to change its frozen idea to catch up Climbing civilization and everyone knows where Japan is today…
As for the mission of the King of Morocco… they brought back some sporadic projects in industries, structuring administration, agriculture and others, but they are not fundamental and radical…
They returned to production only on the basis that the Arab mind is able to manage it, and they did not understand that framing the mind and preparing it is more important than starting with anything else, and they did not refer to the tools of knowledge of how to invent and produce…
However, the forces of imitation and the clergy rejected this change and insertions, even though they are not like the radical changes in Japan…
The traditional religious forces and their followers objected with a strong rejection of any change, especially that the mission before leaving took on shaving their beards and wearing Western clothings, considering this grounds to demolish the religion …
The plan was foiled and the king was forced to abandon his plans under the pressure of the clergy…
Before that In the fourth century AH, Muslims separated two disciplines of science…
Forensic sciences, including jurisprudence, interpretation, hadith, the origins of jurisprudence, Arabic language sciences, and readings…
The mental sciences, which are mathematics, geometry, physics, algebra, and theology, which they call today metaphysics…
And Ibn Taymiyyah said, like Al-Ghazali in the definition of science, that knowledge is what evidence is established for, and what is beneficial from it is what the Messenger brought…
With this, he asserted that other sciences are not of his benefit because he linked them to the Messenger, and no one dares to say that there is something better than the Messenger.
(Ignoring that what the Messenger did in teaching them were rituals and not worldly sciences, because there was no time for them yet, and the mentality was not ready for it, and the materials were not available to build on it the worldly sciences, because the mentality of the Arabs at that time was Bedouin and they had no civilization.”
Thus, Muslims abandoned the opportunity of the beginning of the Renaissance, and when Ibn Rushd rose up, he urged them to use their minds because modern science stems from the Qur’an, but it was suppressed and his books were burned in support of the clergy, and they returned to their sleep until they woke up to the sounds of the cannons of the modern occupation on their countries…
Colonialism ended and the Arabs built modern countries, but with its mental weight of the past heritage in tow with the protection of governments. With the support of the clergy, the past came back to stand in the way of progress, and why?
Because they considered all manifestations of modernization to be an idea of foreign colonial project !
But at the same time, received and used planes, phones, television, computers, cars, ships, and others.
And they suffered from schizophrenia because they wanted to preserve and keep pace with this new good, but with the mentality of the old traditional heritage that does not expand and does not understand this modernity from its origins,
so they separated between modern technology and its scientific philosophical foundations, so the Arabs imported products without knowing how or knowing the scientific thought of production.
The Arabs sell raw materials and import products, and the missing link is how these things are produced… and if they build factories for these companies in their countries, they come with working minds from abroad, but there is no production from the citizens of the country other than the tradition…
We see spending on mosques and religious activities much more than spending on research in scientific fields…
The expenditure on scientific research in the Arab countries is 0.1% (zero point one percent), and the expenditure on scientific research in Israel is 4.7% (four point seven percent) !
Now imagine how the Arabs, with the results of their scientific research, will defeat Israel? be realistic !
Note that Israel holds three specializations, considered the first in the world. And the Arab countries have more than 600 universities and none of them are internationally recognized in scientific research.
And for the record, what the world and European countries spend on science is equal to the reserve ratio of the sleeping currency of Saudi Arabia alone, 800 billion dollars…
In any case …
Arabs or Muslims have become despising the West, and this is the opposite of what happened a century or more ago… Because ignorance deepened after the exit of colonialism, they built tyrannical regimes in various ways in the form of rule , all of them was able to remove colonialism and establish the same tyranny in a modern way.. .
And oil was discovered, and instead of joining the civilizational race and participation of the world in its renaissance, it did the exact opposite.
It was marketing its beginnings and secularizing it, marketing and spending millions of dollars to spread doctrines and build mosques, but to promote the mentality of the clergy, the other partner in power…
At the beginning of one of the Arab renaissances to renew the renaissance of the Arab movement, the forces of the Wahhabi clergy and the Brotherhood rose, on which those whom God blessed them with money spent…
These groups fought the Renaissance by contradicting and misunderstanding the people… The Renaissance is required to ignite the mind, research, and progress, and the clergy men with regard to the fated people and said, with personal impact, for example, that women will be stripped naked and will spoil indecency, prostitution and alcohol. The comparison is not comparable or equal, except that the Arab in particular is emotional and longs for the past,
which is activated like a photographic memory, when scholars trigger it, and they become weak between the hammer and the anvil. .
And everyone who objects is killed and displaced on a religious charge and defame until people are betrayed, and if they are educated, reading and writing, even those who read and hear this will jump like a slaughtered bull opposing, cursing and justifying the reason for the failure of the Arab nation… arguing that the scholars of the nation gathered and unanimously agreed on it, and that this consensus is eternal…
Although the consensus is for a group and for a period and according to the circumstances, time, circumstances and changes in the conditions of people, this consensus is not considered to include the Islamic nation, so it is not reasonable for scholars in one country , for example to gather on behalf of (all) the Islamic countries and impose others with its one opinion!
So change always change in each country differently, And by virtue of this imbalance and change, it must change and the consensus be modified according to what has changed on it…
The consensus is an opinion of circumstances, an accident or an issue that occurred and is not eternal and does not include all…
But blasphemy, terror, imprisonment and murder are used against any opponents of them & Their argument is why we Muslims change when we have the Qur’an and Hadith, and do we or should we change them to a Western language or culture ?
And the people succumbed to this thought and neglected that the maker of the history of humanity was change.
And stagnation is backwardness…
There is no freedom for Muslims except collective freedom, and this group is the clergy and jurists, and the exercise of guardianship, and this is the essence of slavery, and the concept of freedom for the individual citizen of the world is completely different. …
And we see the result is clear by comparing the lives between the two groups…
And these words are mostly intended for males, so what about the situation of women, and how bad do they have it ?
The way out of this crisis is first of all education on the principle of freedom of education that all sciences are human and absolute, on which the relative mind works and reveals the unseen of tomorrow day after day