The race of civilizations (I)

In the history of human civilizations, none has impacted on human life as much and in the complex manner western civilization did especially after the scientific revolution of the late seventeenth century when medieval view of the universe, or world-view, faded and was replaced by the modern scientific understanding of nature. The scientific revolution entailed […]

In the history of human civilizations, none has impacted on human life as much and in the complex manner western civilization did especially after the scientific revolution of the late seventeenth century when medieval view of the universe, or world-view, faded and was replaced by the modern scientific understanding of nature. The scientific revolution entailed a new, scientific methodology of “observation and experimentation”; arising from the successful experiments performed by scientists and natural philosophers such as Galileo Galilee, William Harvey, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton.
Passing through various stages of simple as well as intricate transformation, from westernization through to modernization, culminating today in a computer-driven-society; the modern world owes its scientific and technological progress to western civilization. The impact of western civilization which I once described on this page as a mental process is so overwhelming that the psyche of modern man is manipulated to remain incoherent as if there were no other civilizations (some of them flourishing for centuries) that ever existed.
Despite all the progress, however, there exists particularly in developing nations a contrary mood of pessimism. The bulk of humanity is still miserable; more people getting poorer with limited access to clean water and healthcare. This underfed, diseased, uneducated, and unskilled population perpetuates or even increases the already widespread poverty in developing societies. More disturbing, nonetheless, is the fact that non-western people, disabled by poverty, have to struggle with cultural disorientation. In most non-Western parts of the world, traditional and religious cultures have been subverted by western influence. Educated elite follows a western lifestyle sometimes with irresponsible extravagance. The mass of the non-western population is thus caught between tradition or religious and western ways; far closer in most cases to the global present than to the conservative past; a scenario Professor Ali Mazrui, the American-based Kenya scholar, would describe as “a clash of civilizations”.
The old ways, with their moral obligations justified by tradition and religion, are discredited by the influx of modernity from the west, which, however, teaches no effective alternative morality. The moral vacuum orchestrated by the new world order encourages corruption, violence, social injustice, and, all too often, utter inhumanity. Under these conditions, it may require camel to pass through the eye of a needle for credible and stable governments to emerge in many developing countries including ours, Nigeria.
With its very influential tools, western civilization prepared the cultural ground for the emergence and survival of many of today’s social ills and fiscal challenges that have continued to threaten man’s existence in the contemporary world including his traditional values, norms, language, culture and religion. The most critical consequence of western civilization as lamented above is the ethical crisis and moral aberration it has created around the world. This domineering civilization has created crimes that were never dreamt of especially in traditional human societies. It is already obvious that countries of the West are themselves not immune from the challenges of a morally troubled world.
Pushed to the defensive, western countries have increasingly become alarmed about their security and safety. They have ended up; as a result, creating weapons that can wipe out the human race altogether. Given the rising tide of hostility around the world in addition to the recent development between America and North Korea, is it possible to prevent these weapons from being used? Will the nuclear holocaust, which will not discriminate between non-westerners and westerners, be the culmination of western civilization? The answers to these questions, for now, are not our concern in this piece. They might though serve to advance this discourse further another time.
It is common for many to blame all the woes of modernity squarely on western civilization; acknowledging its intellectual mechanisms and technological devices. It may not be a fair judgment particularly for the Muslim world to hold western civilization responsible for its contemporary predicament entirely; believing that it was through Muslims that the West accessed modern science and technology. The golden age of Muslim Civilization reached its apogee in the ninth century under the Abbasid Caliphs. Unfortunately, the Muslim world which forged a towering civilization at a time when learning was at a low position in western Europe went in to hibernation after the first fall of Baghdad in 1258AD by abandoning the intellectual path unveiled by the Arab translators.
So, what then is the fault of the West, which took up the baton dumped by the Muslim world and thereafter unleashed a scientific revolution about eight centuries later? And ever since western civilization triumphed over other cultures in the world, why has the Muslim world failed to evolve its own version of technology, or at least, challenge it with corresponding innovations that could possibly reduce the effect of modernity on Muslim societies? The discourse continues next week insha Allah. May Allah (SWT) guide us to realize that “it is better to be late than never”, amin.