Youth and the West: between original values And contemporary values
Youth and the West: between original values And contemporary values
Criticism of contemporary Islamic speech
The value of contemporary Islamic speech, especially for Islamic activists, is in Islam’s ability to face man’s different problems in a realistic way that does not get lost in abstractness. We study the Holy Quran and find that Allah the Most High, Who is so elevated that nothing is above Him, has come down to His creation so that nothing is below Him, and talked to them through His signs which are spread across the Universe, and through His bounties that are evident in the details of their lives, so that they can open up to the unknown as witnesses, and open up to the Creator through His creations.
Our belief in the unknown does not mean distancing ourselves from the reality around us; rather it strengthens and emphasizes it, and implies that is it not moving in vacuum, and (so) we should not fall in atmospheres of worry, puzzlement and emptiness when we face difficulties, cruel pressures, complicated problems and deep labyrinths, because we feel Allah’s discreet suppot, mercy, care for our lives, and supervision from the Lord’s position on high, which nurture man for all his life -in body and spirit -without removing his will and choice and practical responsibilities for building his self.
Thus, we want Islamists to fill Islamic speech with Allah, with the intellect’s spirituality and the dynamic movement’s reality. This is on the basis that Allah had -in His book-watched over the first Islamic movement in Prophet Muhammad’s mission: the verse observed the reality, and judged it, to provide -in the end -the revelation of the Islamic Message, in the Muslim’s peace and war, whether in success or failure, and to discover the truthful people and liars, and to guide the mission into the future with brave admission of error, if it erred, and heroism in changing the course, if it deviated.
The value of the Quran -the dynamic Divine Book -is that it proceeds in its style to deal with a reality that is mixed with the unknown; the reality does not become unrealistic when it merges with the unknown, neither does the unknown leave its world of the consciousness when it touches realistic issues. This is because (Quranic) speech is for man, who is alive in his bodily existence and unknown in his spiritual secrets and metaphysical aspirations.
Therefore, we must keep our Islamic speech subject to its peculiarities and its own elements when dealing with the human soul in the dynamics of reality. It should not be abstract, flying with the imagination, neither sensual, sinking into a materialistic world, but it should take one part from the former to being abstractness to reality, and one part from the latter to make reality open up to the unknown. I want to point out this vital point because I have seen that there are two extreme tendencies in Islamic speech: an abstract tendency towards the unknown, and so you do not sense your existence on earth, and a materialist tendency that pursues reality on eath and indulges in the affairs of the earth to the point of forgetting God and His Divine secrets that provide man with some unknown element in his movement in life through an unknown supply that watches over his movement, straightness his course and fills his spirit with confidence and hope.
We must recognize that Islam is a religion that desires its vital features and intellectual roots from a belief in God, His Messengers and the Day of Judgment, and (a belief) in the world of the unknown regarding belief and in the world of witnessing in regard to dynamic movement and life. Thus, Islamic speech must combine all of this so that we live out Islam in a way that is balanced in its elements and dynamic in its dimensions and aspirations.
Why the youth and the West?
This issue concerns one of the most sensitive ones, most real and most future -threatening questions. This is because it relates to the (current)youth, who represent the leading(element in) humanity, who have started their growth in life to become the basis of pioneering, leadingship and production in the future, succeeding to the generations of their fathers and forefather who endured their negative experiences in their past movement, which leans with all its weight on the present, and has its effect on developing the future.
It may be unrealistic to think that the youth can be subjected to ready moulds, produced by the generation amongst which it lives now or the one before that. This (past generation) will close its mind to new things in life, close its spirit to the development of reality and close its dynamic movement to changes in the arena, because the horizon that it opens up to is different from the horizons which people before it have opened up to: there are new conditions which impose themselves on human reality through the dominance of a certain intellectual school of thought or massive force, and there are complicated problems that challenge a lot of its causes and aspirations, and there are intellectual, political, social, economic and security labyrinths that (push) the contemporary person into striving to discover the signs which might guide him to the road to peace.
This reality of youth in its new world, which wants to produce a new reality, is perhaps what Imam Ali’s words imply. “Do not (try to) give your children your morals, for they have been created for a time other than yours.’ The meaning of this may be that for every era there are certain conditions which produce new morals for it, with all the meanings implied by the word ‘morals’ in respect of intellectual and practical behavior and the dynamic approach, means and the dynamics of goals and all dynamic issues in the arena of human ever searching anxiously for what is new in knowledge and reality.
I am not referring to this talk about youth that overindulges in every new thing that is produced by any intellectual school of though in its time, so that the youth deviates from its historic intellectual roots, and becomes empty in its Islamic belief, like a blank page in which nothing about the intellectual doctrine, approach or behavior is written. This cannot be what Imam Ali(a.s) intended in this pioneering words, for there are those Islamic issues of belief, legislation and approach that are considered unchangeable, since they represent the Divine truth which has been revealed to man to guide him through the Divine revelation to the Prophet Muhammad (sawa). These cannot be argued about, or changed, except through the Quranic or prophetic methods of change that the Islamic intellectual line allows in its interior dynamic circle.
Rather, I mean – in this extrapolation -that the older generation must not impose its own peculiarities on the younger generation. It is not essential that the youth understands from the traditional texts the Book and the Sunnah -(exactly) what their fathers and forefathers have understood, for they can use practical methods in understanding the text to understand from it something different to what they (the fathers and forefathers) have understood when using the text’s particulars in a different way to that which they (the fathers and forefathers) used to arrive at the ruling etc. (Moreover,) they may discover some error in their understanding due to the influence of some contemporary and cultural objective circumstances, which imposed on them certain ideas, owing to the fact that any Jurist or thinker, in any intellectual position, cannot rid himself from the peculiarities of his own culture.
It is not necessary that the Youth’s understanding of life -its styles means, relations and dynamics -is the same as that of the forefathers, ( as if) making their needs similar to those of their fathers, since development may produce new needs for man; nor that the youth’s social morals are the same as those of the past society.
Unchangeable things and changeable things
There are certain things in belief, the Islamic code (Shari’ab) and behavior that are unchangeable and which Muslims must adhere to, and there are things that can be flexible and which Muslims must adhere to, and there are things that can be flexible and which Muslims may deal with dynamically in their lives. This is the differentiating line between hat is unchangeable and what is changeable in the life and dynamics of the Muslim, when he wants to save himself and his life and make his history, and bear the responsibility for all that, as the past generation did in making its history. Allah the Most High says: “That was a people that passed away; they shall reap the fruit of what they did, and you of what you did; you shall not be questioned about their actions.’2:134. This generation has a choice in producing its intellectual and practical gain, and must face its responsibility before God who requires every soul to argue for itself on the Day of Judgment.
Western materialism
The West is a new world that is distinguished by its materialist philosophy, which is so much overwhelmed by its service to the realm of the senses that it strives to transform the unknown of its religious thoughts into a world subjected to sensual materialist atmospheres; it is also distinguished in its absolute thoughts regarding man’s freedom which places the moral value in behavior according to how much this value comes near or far from that freedom. In light of this, there is a very wide difference between Islamic thinking regarding God, man and life and Western thinking: the philosophy that imagines life as God’s creation which He wants His successor to it -man -to be in charge of, on the basis that he should not forget his portion of his materialist needs in this earth when he looks forward to the Hereafter which represents the dynamic element of values, making the link between the materialistic means and the spiritual goal, so that the material is “spiritualized’ while the spirit takes on a materialistic style in its reality dynamics, putting the created man, to whom He has given freedom, before his responsibilities in managing his life affairs, and the philosophy which does not see any role for God in man’s reality dynamics and in the process of making life.
We, at the same time, to do not deny that there are some points at which we meet with the West, we acknowledge the scientific and technical advancement that it has achieved, which covers some of our essential needs.
There is an important and vital point which is that our Islamic societies do not live up to a lot of Islamic concepts in terms of thinking, dynamics and relationships because they are sunk in atmosphere clouded with ignorance and backwardness as a result of years that were lost in the labyrinths of deviation. The result is that Islam lives like foreigner in society which has reason, objectivity, humanistic values, freedom etc, at both social and political reality levels.
On the other hand, we find that some of these (Islamic) values are present in the relationships between Western people and others, reducing the intensity of emotional reactions and of the overindulgence in individuality, an spite of some shortcomings in this or that side. This makes the picture in Islamic society, in some details of reality, darker and in Western society less do, in some places, something which leaves an impression on the youth when it starts comparing between their societies and Western societies, regardless of whether the impression is correct or not.
I would life, in this quick treatment, to concentrate briefly on two circles of my speech:
My speech to the youth
This is first circle my speech with the youth who might look forward to overindulgence in the Western world, as if is the promised paradise that will fulfil their greatest dreams. You have to think about your original intellectual and practical values as represented by your dynamic movement in life. I do not mean by original values that you should accept the past wholesale, in all its details, but what I mean is that you should emphasize your Islam in opening up to everything that is new in though and behavior. This is because the new is not the new of the age you live in; once can say to you that you should live in your times, in all its intellectual development so that you do not lag behind in contemporary reality in a way that makes you a foreigner amongst people. But old and new ideas are the product of man not time – people might submit to a certain intellectual school of though due to forces which control their reality, imposing it on life without any role for life to produce it as an outcome of development.
In light of this, it is essential that you engage in a comparison process -if you are in a position of intellectual objectivity -between the Islamic intellectual doctrine which you belong to in your adherence to Islam, and the intellectual doctrine prevalent among people due to factors of the force which has imposed it upon reality. You might find in Islam an advanced intellectual doctrine is backward and unable to realistically treat the problems of the multi-dimensional man, having both material and spirit.
Adopting contemporary values, in its vital human sense, is not -in essence -something related to time dynamics, but something that belongs to man’s dynamics in producing his humanity in his causes, problems and conditions. Give freedom to your own intellectual will in choosing the intellectual doctrine that you adhere to, with awareness and openness, away from all social emotional reactions that put pressure on you, due to emotional atmosphere, steal your thinking in the manner of the collective mind’, and which makes the person lose his intellectual independence and free choice in the practical direction.
Original values represent the deep roots of man’s humanity in the original though which proceeds from Allah and His Messenger, and which open up to all time and the whole of life, and are therefore not confind to the past, present or future in their time limitations.
Adopting contemporary values, on the other hand, means opening up to the times in the different dimensions of man’s needs and true causes. His life will, thus become balanced with regard to his adherence to Islam and his opening up to his times’ cause, through his awareness of both in his intellectual judgments and spiritual awareness, in what gifts he possesses for making judgments and awareness to enable him to engage in dialogue with other intellectual schools of though and other people.
And if the West represents a big practical force and wide technological advancement, we have to differentiate between the particulars of science in civilization’s dynamics and the particulars of intellectual and behavioral lines in man’s relationship with God, himself and life. We do not see knowledge and scientific growth as a proof of the correctness of an intellectual approach in issues of belief, morals, behavior, spirit and consciousness, but every issue will have to be studied according to its merits and vital influences on reality -in the (essence of) truth.
Moreover, we must study the issue of human freedom in more than one aspect, for we must not open up simply to the one dimension that represents the person’s individualistic case, but we must have an aware perceptiveness to both the individualistic and social sides and both the materialistic and spiritual sides. In addition, we must be clear about the fact of belief that man is God’s creation, and he must act from the position of God’s will in his dynamic movements in life and in managing his and the earth’s affairs. This links the matter of his relationship with his Lord, with himself, with the people around him, with the earth on which he moves in its environmental and development reality and with the living or growing creatures on its surface, to that freedom to become responsible for all this, since mans is not the only creature who suffers tragedy in limiting his freedom, for there is more than one position for tragedy in the particulars of the universal system. This imposes on him the necessity not to suffer the tragedy as a reaction within his self which weeps from self-impoverishment, but to live with it in an awareness of the needs, since the Universe is not a lone person, but comprises animals, plants, sea and land, plains and mountains and various other categories, each one of which requires the other to integrate with it in existence and not to disregard it, which would lead to collapse in all its individual and communal situations.
There are other aspects, but due to space limitations I shall summarize the speech in one or two words: youth is not pleasure, desire, emotional reaction and happy dreams, but rather, responsibility that is linked to the whole existence, humanity that is linked to man as a whole, spirituality that opens up to God and life and the Hereafter, to think about all this and to achieve a good fate in this life and in the dimensions of the after-life.
My speech to Islamic activists
This is the second circle: Islamic activists who follow the contemporary person’s reality to study all his situations, thoughts, dimensions, methods and goals to plan for the dynamic movement that combines all these in order to find the best measures for rescuing Muslims from their shortcomings and for guiding them to attain more positive achievements. It is natural that the youth-and the West question should be one of the greatest concerns of the Islamic movement in the fields of the call, culture and life,(pointing to the need) to study all intellectual, spiritual and practical influences – both negative and positive – and all intellectual anxiety, practical deviation and loss of conscience, and to confront it with practical deviation and loss of conscience, and to confront it with practical means that can provide the youth with the opportunity to express all queries, anxiety, rebellion and aimlessness that they have inside them, so that answers are provided, problems are treated or their effects minimized, all their feelings embraced and all objective circumstances surrounding their lives are appreciated through acknowledging their points or weakness and strength. We should not be limited to taking about the youth’s deviation and aimlessness, or accusing them or judging them in order to score points against them.
Workers in the way of Allah must attend to the youth of the Nation, know their intellectual and practical needs and explain to them all Islamic concepts and particulars, because, in their spiritual anxiety they (the youth) are looking for clarity in vision, awareness and knowledge.
And if we appreciate that the youth has its leisure and social needs, we must strive to establish sport and leisure clubs, which provide allowable leisure activities, so that they can fill their spare time, diverting them away from moving in other directions that provide the prohibited leisure that they will resort to when they do not find allowable leisure that they will resort to when they do not find allowable leisure that they will resort to when they do not find allowable leisure that they will resort to when they do not find allowable leisure to engage in their spare time. Perhaps, it is natural that we should abandon the idea of considering leisure to be something negative as far as practical needs are concerned, since the narration says: “The believer should have(divide his time into) three hours: one hour to worship his Lord, and one hour to work to earn a living, and one hour in which his soul engages in leisure in what is allowable and nice or something not prohibited, and this hour is a help for(attending to) the (first) two hours.’
Then we should provide Islamic ;incubators’: mosques, husainiyyabs, school, cultural clubs and social atmospheres. The integration of committees and societies in a must, so that neither group starts from square one, but each one proceeds with the other.
I notice that Islamic movements in the West are very diverse in their situations, from a movement that overindulges in politics, disregarding any dynamic dimension for culture or spiritual atmospheres, to another which overindulges in culture and worship, disregarding any role for politics or social issues, to a third which shrinks from the world into its own particulars and peculiarities, abandoning reality and living in cultural, spiritual and political seclusion.
Then, there are partisanship that abandon Islamic adherence to what is allowable and prohibited by God. Also, marginal and secondary problems can eat up fundamental and major issues, giving the youth a negative idea about Islamic work and making it reject the Islamic personalities who are loyal more to themselves than to Islam and their Lord, reject the Islamic groups -parties, movements and societies -each of which appear to work to bring down the temple over everyone unless the temple is for it alone, and are loyal only to the narrow framework inside which they imprison themselves and do not open up to Allah, the Nation, Islam – in the present or future.
These times we are facing are some of the most difficult in the movement and course of Islam: the arrogant world has started a world war against the whole of Islam and all Muslims in the name of war on fundamentalism which does not exist according to Western concepts, and on terrorism, of which there is no example in our Islamic movement. So, shouldn’t we proceed from this reality to face our responsibility at the level in which we can open a hole in the big arrogant wall that is erected as a partition between us and advancement in our Islamic positions, in the future of life and man?
Islamic unity between schools of thought, movement and groups is not a mere slogan that we raise for (easy) consumption, but a fateful and vital necessity for the whole of the Islamic reality, because the arrogant forces want the head of the whole of Islam. So, shouldn’t we understand the nature of the arrogant game as it affects our reality, dynamic movement and supreme goals?