Materialist consumerism has become one of the defining characteristics of western/modern societies. YUSUF AL-KHABBAZ discusses how the problem can be addressed by Islam’s ethical and moral framework.
US needs some one now, as it has needed in the past, to position as an "evil other" in opposition to its good self. The "evil other" in history has taken on many names and shapes, from despots, to pirates, to bandits, to terrorists. In Western civilization, which is ferociously dichotomous, there is a necessity to define through opposition, and therefore a "terrorist" or some other nefarious character -- real or imagined -- is actually necessary for the maintenance of a western self image.
In the past human beings lived very close to nature and it was unthinkable to be separate from nature, including animals, weather patterns, and other things that are rarely part of "human" life today. We have enveloped ourselves in cities and buildings, living in so many boxes, controlling every feature of temperature and light, in an artificial environment. We no longer have a sense of where our food comes from. If we have contact with animals, they are for the most part domesticated. I think the Qur'an presumed a kind of human existence that was somehow closer to nature than most of us are today.
The idea of "knowledge is power" has well served the Western world elite over the centuries, and some of the most brutal wars have been fought to protect its exclusivity. It still underwrites the international system of recolonization we are calling Western development. But this just makes it more difficult to see why Bacon's dictum is today splattered all over the mental environment.
Clashes occur within or between societies when ideological differences emerge. The pre-Islamic Makkan society was based on idol-worship; into this environment was introduced the message of tawheed, the Oneness of Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala, embodied in the kalimah.
Rogue States: the Rule of Force in World Affairs by Noam Chomsky. Pub: Pluto Press, London, 2000. Pp: 252. Pbk: UK£10.99.
Contending Images of World Politics edited by Greg Fry and Jacinta O’Hagan. Pub: Macmillan Press, Basingstoke, UK, and St Martin’s Press, New York, USA, 2000. Pp: 314. Pbk: UK£19.95.
The Uthmaniyyah sultanate, which claimed the legitimacy of khilafah, was as corrupt and rotten as any monarchy in Muslim history. This was a massive contributory factor in its decline and ultimate collapse.
One of the most remarkable facts about the massive pro-Israel bias at every level in the western media and establishment is that there is so much evidence to contradict the Zionists’ lies and propaganda easily available even from the west’s own reporters and other sources.
The US and Britain are engaged in aggressive and illegal technology-based spying, which enables them - among other things - to monitor telephone communications anywhere in the world.
The western media tends to focus on one major story at a time. While Kosova dominates the news, other international stories have been largely ignored. For Muslims, however, this is not good enough.
The topic of women in Islam has long been a favourite with modern writers, many of whom have advanced their careers on the backs of the ‘oppressed’ Muslim women whose cause they claim to champion.
Western civilization was built on the intersection of war and commerce. But since the seventies, in the wake of the unwinnable Vietnam War, increasing cold war tensions threatening the planet with nuclear immolation, there began a concerted effort by the trilateral ruling elite...
When a former senior bureaucrat in Pakistan was waylaid recently (this being the second time that this misfortune was befalling him and his family) his daughter-in-law who was sitting with him in his BMW asked one of the dacoits who had seized them as to why he had taken to this profession.
This collection of ten essays, written between October 1971 and August 1975, is intended for the English-speaking, modem-educated Muslim in Muslim lands specifically and for the intelligentsia in Asia and Africa generally, in order to warn them of the fatal pitfalls of modernization; that to copy the West blindly and uncritically in everything does not provide any remedy for the social problems of the so-called "under-developed," "poor" countries of the East but rather will only aggravate the predicament in which they now find themselves in addition to creating numerous new troubles exported by the West under the slogan of "modernity." Since in these chapters, there is much overlapping of the various aspects of the same subject dealt with here, repetition could not be avoided. I only hope that the effect of this repetition on the reader will serve the purpose of emphasis rather than monotony.
1Occidentosis is the best known and most influential work of the Iranian intellectual and writer, Jalal Al-i Ahmad. In a sense, it is the record of a personal journey to a new understanding of Iranian society and history, but since it aroused a widespread and enthusiastic response (to the degree that the coined word of its title permanently entered the Persian language), it may also be regarded as a document of the ideological ferment that ultimately led to revolution.To summarize, Gharbzadagi cannot be presented as a decisive and pioneering work of revolutionary thought, fully in tune with the historical forces that were to bring about revolution. Nonetheless, it has a solid if modest claim to lasting attention, as the record of an eloquent diagnosis of the major ill of Iranian society by one whose life was devoted to constant, sincere, and solicitous reflection on the state of his countrymen and who contributed to a partial reorientation of the Iranian intelligentsia.
1[Paper presented at the Muslim Institute's World Seminar on ‘State and Politics in Islam’ in London in August 1983. It was also published as the introduction to Kalim Siddiqui (ed), Issues in the Islamic Movement 1982-83, London and Toronto: The Open Press, 1984, and reprinted in Zafar Bangash (ed), In Pursuit of the Power of Islam: Major Writings of Kalim Siddiqui, London and Toronto: The Open Press, 1996.]
[This paper was written as the introduction to Issues in the Islamic Movement 1980-81, London and Toronto: The Open Press, 1982. This was the first volume of the ‘Issues books’, the anthologies of articles from the Crescent International and Muslimedia which were edited by Kalim Siddiqui and published annually from 1982-1988. It was reprinted in Zafar Bangash (ed), In Pursuit of the Power of Islam: Major Writings of Kalim Siddiqui, London and Toronto: The Open Press, 1996. This printing is based on the 1996 publication.]
[Kalim Siddiqui, The state of the Muslim world today, London: The Open Press, 1980. This is the text of a lecture given at the University of Manchester Islamic Society on December 8, 1979. It was reprinted in Zafar Bangash (ed), In Pursuit of the Power of Islam: Major Writings of Kalim Siddiqui (London and Toronto: The Open Press, 1996). This edition is based on the 1996 printing.]