The Clash Of Civilizations – An Islamic View pdf download

THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS – AN ISLAMIC VIEW Book Sample

Contents in the book – THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS – AN ISLAMIC

• The Foundations of Western Culture
• Effects
• The Holy  Roman  Empire
• Darwinism   
• Secular Democracy
• Democracy  
• Cultural Islam: Traditionalism
• I Pre-Islamic Practices
• Adopted Practices
• Religious Innovation [ Sufism
• Religious Fanaticism or Factionalism  
• The Distinction
• The Islamic Renaissance
• Evolution of the Madh -habs        
• Four Madh-habs     
• Emergence of Taqlid
• Reformers    
• The Islamic Renaissance
• Modernism         
• Movement s
• “Fundamentalism”       
• The Solution  
• Islamic Culture
• The Foundation of Islam
• The Pillars oflslam
• I The Shahadatan (The Two Declarations of Faith)
• II Salah (Five Times Daily Prayer)
• III Zakah(Compulsory Charity)
• IV Sawm (Fasting)  
• V l-la;j (The Pilgrim age)     
• The Pillars of lman
• I Belief in Allah       
• II Belief in the Angels  
• III Belief in the Books
• IV Belief in the Messengers
• V Belief in the Last Day
• VI Belief in the Destiny          

Introduction

It is important to understand Islam from a cultural point of view because the basis of much of the current turmoil within Muslim countries and conflict with their neighbors can be attributed to cultural clashes. Consequently, a clear understanding of culture and its derivatives is necessary to comprehend the relevance of Islam to the civilisation of Muslim peoples in the twentieth century and beyond.

The word “culture” comes from the Latin cultural which 1s a derivative of the verb core meaning “tending” or “cultivation.” It was first recorded in the Oxford Dictionary of English in 1510 as meaning: “training of the mind” or “manners.” ((Colliers F:11cyclopedi11, vol. 7, Macmillan Educational Company, NY, 1989, p. 560.)) However, culture in anthropological usage, may be defined as “the way of life of a specific group.”((Ibid., p. 558. While virtually all students of man agree upon the indispensable importance of the concept of culture, no single definition has yet won universal acceptance.))

“Basically, the idea of culture arises from the observation that what human beings do and what they refrain from doing is, in part, a consequence of being brought up in one group as opposed to another. People have a social heredity as well as a biological heredity.”((ibid., p. 558.))

while social heredity refers to customs which usually vary from one society to the next. A simple definition of culture would then be ‘the man-made part of the human environment.’ “Members of the human species are trained in the family and in their education, formal and informal, to behave in ways that are conventional and fixed by tradition.” ((4 Colliers Encyclopedia, vol. 7, p. 558.))

The culture of most of the world today is that of Western Europe and America. It was exported to the remainder of the world during the period of European colonization and continued during the neo-colonial era by way of indirect rule. In the twentieth century, Western culture has been promoted on a massive scale through the far-reaching effects of the media. Today, it is not surprising to find in the pages of National Geographic pictures of South American Indian youths in loin cloth in the middle of the Amazon wearing baseball caps with a Nike logo or Mongolian horsemen in the middle of the Gobi Desert wearing striped Adidas sweat pants and Reebok trainers. Western culture now represents the dominant cultural influence in most countries, both non-Muslim and Muslim. And it is the natural conflict that arises from the clash of cultures, which dominate the social and political policies in both the West and the East. Harvard University Professor, Samuel P. Huntington summed up the essential issues of the cultural clash in his following observation:

THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS – AN ISLAMIC VIEW

“The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people e are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power. The problem for Islam is not CIA or the U.S. Department of defense. It is the West, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the universality of their culture and believe that their superior, if declining, power imposes on them the obligation to impose that culture throughout the world. These are the basic ingredients that fuel conflict between Islam and the West.”‘((The Clash of Civilization, pp. 217-8.))

In this statement, Professor Huntington dismisses the usual claims regarding Islamic fundamentalist terrorism as the major threat to the New World Order. Western media constantly reduces the world’s problems to this common denominator. The New York Times carried an article stating that:

“Muslim fundamentalism is fast becoming the chief threat to global peace and security as well as the cause of national and local disturbance through terrorism. It is akin to the menace posed by Nazism and fascism in the 1930’s and then by communism in the 50’s.”((The New York Times/ International Herald Tribune, 9/9/9.1))

THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS – AN ISLAMIC VIEW

However, Professor Huntington brushes such claims aside and identifies Islam itself as the main problem for the West because its civilization is fundamentally different from Western civilization. He also identified two distinct qualities of Muslims which, in his opinion, contribute to the problem. The first is that Muslims consider their culture superior to all other cultures.

Most Muslims will openly claim that Islam is better than all other religions and philosophies. This attitude is a natural consequence of their belief that the religion of Islam was revealed from God. It is only logical to assume that the culture created by practicing God’s religion must, of necessity, be superior to any culture resulting from human experiment.  The other quality is that Muslims desire that the laws that govern them be Islamic. Much of the turmoil in the Muslim world today, in Algeria, Egypt, Chechnya, Dagestan, etc., is a direct result of this desire. During the era of European colonization….

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