Mohamad Fadhilah Zein

Islam and West, The Next Clash before Doomsday

Politik | 2023-10-23 20:46:11

Western civilization and Islam are sometimes seen as diametrically opposed. Even so, both grew due to the mutual influence of each other depending on the changing civilizations that came and went. Western civilization wouldn't exist without Islamic culture. Algebra, alchemy, artichoke, alcohol, and apricot all derived from Arabic words which came to the West during the age of Crusades.

The collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate become an interesting reason that Islam has regressed from all aspects of world civilization. The relationship between Islam and Politics was reflected historically from two basic angles, the first represented in the rise of the national Middle Eastern state as an artificial entity detached from the natural social interactions, in contrast to the Western model.

The second comes from the nature of the political regimes that governed those states from the 1920s and didn’t take into consideration the cultural and historical characteristics of this region.

In the 21st century, the Islamic world and the west appear to be mired in an intensifying cycle of political and cultural clash. The most significant source of rivalry is the profoundly unsetted of American/European relations with the Muslim world.

In Matters related to Iran-America revolutionary in 1979 (Persian Gulf geopolitics), Israeli occupation on Palestina, and the politics of Islamic revivalism, Western policy preferences for maintaining stability and control through a system of regional alliances are met with contrary regional preferences for dramatic change.

Frictions generated by conflicting interests and desires spill over into the cultural domain, resulting in the politicization of identities and an escalatory conflict dynamic in which the basic value commitments, beliefs and mores of the "other" are regarded as threatening and problematic.

The result is an atmosphere of doubt, distrust and disrespect in which efforts to dominate and coerce adversaries displace initiatives to collaborate in a search for intercultural understanding and means of mutual political accomodation.

On both sides of the troubled relationship between West and Muslim (especially in Middle East), there is deep estrangement and a growing belief in the futility of communication.

White Supremacy on Islamic World

Academics from leading universities have called for addressing “white supremacy” to deal with the rise of Islamophobia in the West.

According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), there was a 44 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crime last year.

Between the start of 2015 and the end of 2016, there had also been a 57 percent increase in incidents of anti-Muslim bias. There were 260 anti-Muslim hate crimes last year, according to CAIR, and 2,213 cases of anti-Muslim bias.

According to Tell MAMA, a U.K.-based group that monitors Islamophobic incidents, there has been a sharp rise in anti-Muslim attacks following the May 2013 murder of British soldier Lee Rigby in southeast London by two radicalized attackers.

Academics like Ebrahim Moosa, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of Notre Dame, told Anadolu Agency that “white supremacy” is at the heart of the problem. He asserted the west has a white supremacy problem that has to be addressed. It is white ethnographic-nationalism, mixed with strains of extremist, white Christian nationalism in the US.

Life under Islamic Worldview

The Islamic Worldview (IWV) is basically a theistic and ethical worldview which contrasts sharply with the secularist or atheistic alternatives. This worldview emanates from the fundamental belief that life and existence came into being as a result of the will, desire and design of the One and Only Creator. The Islamic conception of God has therefore to precede any discussions on the nature of the universe and man’s relation to it.

The Islamic World-View is a comprehensive conception of the universe and man’s relation to it from the Islamic perspective, thereby serving as a basis for one’s philosophy or outlook of life. The vision of reality and truth that appears before our mind’s eye revealing what existence is all about; for it is the world of existence in its totality that Islam is projecting. Thus by ‘worldview’ we must mean ru’yat al-Islam li’l wujûd.

Other ingredients of the Islamic Worldview are: Divine Revelation is the ultimate source of guidance. However, reason, as a gift of God, is an essential tool to understand what God expects of Muslims.

Hence, blind acceptance of ideas is not to be encouraged. Human beings should share peace and harmony to meet the expectation of God. Life is temporary, death is certain and there is afterlife where, on the Day of Judgment, one will account for the period of life on earth.

Religion must have public image not just to display spirituality for the sake of it, but to enable the individual and society as a whole to seek inspiration for day to day life. Thus, the Islamic Worldview guides man as a vicegerent of Allah to the correct belief system, sharȋ‘ah and the ethical system. (*)