Beyond Modernity: Islam Between East and West - Part 1

By: Eco al Hollandi

The contemporary Muslim is characterized by a longing for a certain Islamic greatness that seems to exist only in the past. This rears its head most clearly in situations such as we have witnessed during the past 2 months, where it becomes painfully clear how weak we have become. Just as this will cause many Muslims to look back at those greater ages and lament our fall from grace, it will cause a perhaps even larger amount of them to look with furious anger at the Western world – seen as the embodiment of a crushing force under whose weight the Muslims are unable to escape, being the direct cause of our loss of greatness.

Hence, for many Muslims, the West becomes somewhat of an eternal other, seen as directly opposed to the Muslim world. We have seen this clearly with the discourse surrounding the situation in Palestine, being hijacked by leftists utilizing post-colonial language that focusses on the criminality of the Western white people. Although seemingly on the opposite end of the spectrum, extremists have also long since targeted the West and the Westerner.

What is interesting about these two groups, being two of the most prominent examples (although this issue has infiltrated Muslims outside of these two groups as well), is that in all their opposition they are utterly Westernized. For the leftist this is clear: his vision of the world and the values he adheres to are inherently shaped by the West.

Yet similarly, the extremist is not much less Western in his reaction, as his values can be traced to a panic reaction to the dominating forces of the West, resulting in a rigid interpretation of Islam, prescribing a “return to the sources” and foregoing much of Islamic scholarly tradition and traditional diversity. As much as the leftist, he is unable to escape that which he claims to oppose because in his reaction he severs his ties with Traditional Islam. Thus, while retaining a stance of maximum aggression towards the eternal other, the leftist and the extremist both take on the other’s ideas as part of their reaction.

Perhaps part of the problem is our perception of the West as the eternal other. Were we to analyze the forces which led us to this weak state and continue to dominate us, we would have to conclude that these forces are in fact not inherent to the West. That is to say, they only started with the onset of modernity and were thus absent in the pre-modern West. Simultaneously, modernity seems to be strongly tied to the Western geographical space and its people. As a phenomenon modernity finds its origin in the West and we see that those nations that champion it and push modern values on the rest of the world almost unequivocally are Western nations.

Modernity and its Processes

To understand the relation between the West and modernity better we should take a deeper look at these modern values, values which are related to several processes that, in my opinion, epitomize what exactly modernity is. When I say processes, I specifically denote several continuous ideas of modernity, ranging from Capitalism to Individualism and Liberalism, and the peculiar effects they have on society.

Most importantly, the effects these ideas have on material reality do not stay contained to the specific locality in which these ideas take root, rather, these ideas are inherently looking for growth, not just in an ideological sense but also in geographical space and number of adherents.

Take for example Capitalism. Inherently, Capitalist economies favor growth and innovation. While humans can attempt to limit these affects to a geographical space (for example the nation of a border), capital does not care for this space but rather wishes to grow indefinitely, and, as it benefits those with most power, will inevitably break out of this space. Capitalism’s preference for continuous and boundless growth and innovation leads to a feedback loop, where the accumulation of capital means the further growth of technology which means faster accumulation of capital etc.

This growth does not only lead to more adherents of Capitalist theory, but through its effects on material reality also leads to further globalization, as the free-market ties differing regions together and encourages the spread of technology, trade and contact between them. Capitalism thus takes shape as a process towards ever further spread and growth.

Modernity’s processes are also exclusivist in the strictest sense possible – they do not accept any other ideas to play a role in the material world. If we take Liberalism as an example, we see that after its global dominance, it dictates certain “universal ideas” such as human rights, draws the line for so called acceptable moral paradigms and fiercely attacks everyone that dares to overstep these boundaries, often leading either to a (proxy) war or to disastrous forms of sanctions and isolation.

These expansionist and exclusivist attitudes might be combined under the term, globalist: denoting a globalization of both ideology and of space. Modernity’s processes are furthermore interconnected. One only has to look at the IMF’s activity in the Middle East to realize the connection between Capitalism and Liberalism and the ways in which they strengthen the growth of one another (and thus of modernity at large).

What might seem to be a paradox is that modernity’s processes, besides leading to globalization, also lead to fragmentation. The explanation for this lies in modernity’s exclusivist nature. Because it accepts no countries to step outside the boundaries it has created, wherever its processes spread they will inevitably break down the social institutions that held together pre-modern societies, forcing every space it spreads to adhere to the uptake of these processes, allowing only a semblance of the old, and really only in name, so long as they don’t overstep the boundaries set by modernity itself.

This results in fragmentation because modernity does not prop up any new forms of social order but rather only destroys. It might set up semblances of structures, but these structures are built upon the ideology of modernity, which, as we have seen, only favors its own growth and are thus unable to recreate social order. The dialectic between fragmentation and globalization might be the most striking characteristic of modernity. Through it, it pushes the world towards a fragmented singular, in which nothing higher remains, traditions do not exist, and the world becomes a gray, drab, monotone whole.

Deterritorialization and Reterritorialization

Modernity’s processes conquering both ideological and geographical space, decimating the pre-existing social order, is what Deleuze & Guattari termed “deterritorialization”. Deterritorialization (or: globalizing fragmentation) is in fact all that modernity does if we realize that “what it does” is the result of its processes on societies. What Deleuze-Guattarian philosopher Nick Land says about Capitalism in his essay Machinic Desire can, in my opinion, then be seen as true for modernity in general:

“It is always on the move towards a terminal non-space and generating what is ’not a promised and pre-existing land, but a world created in the process of its tendency, its coming undone, its deterritorialization”.

D&G argue that deterritorialization that is not yet absolute is accompanied by a “reterritorialization”, where new structures, ideas, movements and norms arise to re- implement order. The problem here is that this reterritorialization will occur after tradition has been decimated and as such always must adhere to some form of modernity as it has nothing to build upon. In this sense, reterritorialization mainly becomes the political order’s attempt to control the process.

Through this attempt however, it automatically aligns itself with modernity and often becomes the entrenchment of these values in society, simply being the other side of the coin to deterritorialization. As such, similar panic reactions can never be a solution to modernity’s problems and in fact will often serve as the enforcement and normalization of destruction.

We see this best in Western society where, after the fall of all that is higher, people began to pick the self apart, after which politics both tried to limit its excesses but also normalized and enforces the acceptance of these ideas. We see in this both the gravity of deterritorialization, which after breaking down everything higher than the human begins breaking down the self, but also of reterritorialization, as these new norms become normalized and eventually spread around the world.

As we will come to see the Muslims that take either a leftist or an extremist opposition towards the West are in fact engaging in some attempt to reterritorialize what they perceive as a declining Islamic world, taking on a modern worldview in the process. it is exactly this adaptation to modernity that gives them a faulty understanding, both of the “other” and of Islam’s ability to oppose this other.

Modernity as the Other

Regardless of modernity’s origins in the West, Western countries have not exactly benefited from it. In fact, it has perhaps caused more damage in the geographical West than anywhere else. We have seen a severe loss of culture and identity, not only on a national level, with calls for border removal and increased mass-migration taking its toll, but increasingly on a personal level as well with the rejection of biological distinctions. Although modernity is then in a sense the “ideological West” and thus intermittently linked to the West as a geographical space and the people thereof, it is not in any sense for those people, rather it works against Westerners and their culture as well.

This becomes apparent to anyone who has studied the modern history of the West, throughout which there were consistent attempts to move beyond modernity and/or to advert its problems. In the early and mid-20th century, Fascism and various strands of Communism attempted to find a way beyond modernity while utilizing its processes to their benefit, seeing modernity as merely a step in the direction towards a promised land. As we now know, these attempts merely were an extreme form of reterritorialization that resulted in totalitarianism, an utterly modern phenomenon.

Post WW-2 we see the appearance of so-called post-modernism. While this name might suggest a departure from modernity, the “post-modern period” is in fact nothing more than a further intensification of modernity. It is after all opposition had failed and had led to horrors that the only viable alternative seemed to tear down, deconstruct and/or negate. But of course, if we argue that deterritorialization IS in fact what modernity does, then a further destruction is not a step towards a promised land but merely a further intensification of modernity.

Hence, the West was unable to create an actual post-modernity, nor was it able to defend itself against its ails. Nonetheless, the fact that Westerners have sought a way out shows us that modernity is in fact also the enemy of the geographical West and its people, even if the latter do not realize this. If we were to denote the West as our other, we would automatically position ourselves in the East, thus making Islam merely a religion of “Easterners”.

And although modernity is indeed an enemy of the Easterner, we have seen that it is just as well an enemy of the Westerner as it destroys the order of both in favor of its own growth. Just as Islam is not a religion of Easterners, modernity’s other cannot be merely the “Easterner” precisely because it decimates Western traditions as well.

Those that identify the West as Islam’s other limit themselves to a political scope, identifying the enemies as those nations who most vehemently pushed and drove this decline. Of course, the political dimension is indeed of the utmost importance but one should not conflate the political with the spiritual. While the Western nations have indeed been the defenders of modernity, if we understand the way in which modernity’s processes work and in some ways begin to control humanity through their constant push for expansion, we should also understand that these Western nations are merely a tool and that the underlying processes punish the West and its people as well.

Islamic Diversity as the way to Post-modernity

Just as modernity, Islam is inherently universal in its character. But as opposed to the fragmentary, globalizing monotony of modernity, Islam brings a unification of the world with all its diverse cultures, vowing to keep them separate while uniting them under pure monotheism. Islam’s unique ability to do so stems from the theological position that Islam is the fulfillment of all ancient religions.

We read in the Qur’an that every nation was sent a messenger. The famous poem, al Qasidatul Buridah tells us these other messengers came with a message which “was theirs by virtue of the Prophet’s ﷺ light alone, for he is the sun of virtue and they are its planets”. We see here that the messages of the other Prophets reflected the Prophet Muhammad’s ﷺ light.

These previous messages always retained the call towards pure monotheism but were also aimed at specific nations. Because these earlier messages were reflections of the final Prophet’s ﷺ light, Islam did not simply discard these earlier messages but rather came to perfect them. Thus, in the cyclical Prophetic nature, Islam comes as the final manifestation of the primordial religion, and as a call for a final return to monotheism after people had moved away from the message that was sent to them. With the arrival of this last Islamic law, the law becomes universal, with the Islamic tradition being the ultimate and universal expression of pure monotheism.

As Islam is the culmination of all the previous religions, it retains the uniqueness of their expressions while transcending them at the same time. Because of this, it is not only uniquely equipped to deal with the deterritorialization that stems from modernity, but it is the exact opposite of the fragmentation-globalization dialectic that we presented as that most striking of characteristics of modernity. Where modernity’s fragmentation leads to the destruction of cultures, of tribes, of traditions, all in the name of a destructive telos towards drab monotony, Islam unites different cultures, allowing them their own expression of Islam, based on their culture and on the particular people’s natural sensibilities.

We see this historically, as different expressions have always existed within Islam, showcased by the religion taking on vastly different forms in regions as far as Indonesia and Andalusia based on the local people’s sensibilities. In his writings, the 14th century Andalusian traveler ibn Battuta many a time discusses the anomalies of a people he encountered.

But no matter how exotic and strange he found them, you can always sense some elation when he ended his list of anomalies with the words “and they are a Muslim people”. The Indian and Chinese Muslims he encountered clearly hailed from radically different civilizations then his own and he would often be amazed by the way they prayed, or the rituals they ascribed to Islam, but nonetheless they were united under tawhid. Simultaneously, he recognized their differences and was always glad to return to his own land and be amongst his own people with their own distinct way of living.

Ibn Battuta’s travels perfectly capture Islam’s unique ability to unite differing civilizations, while refraining from them being forced to merge into one bland whole, or even worse: destroying these civilizations all together in name of the whole. Although this is a historic example, a call for traditional diverse Islam should not in any sense be seen as a plea for a simple return to the 14th century. Rather, if we understand that Islam retains both the universal and the particular and is the primordial religion, then a return to traditional Islam does not have to be reactionary, as it is a religion for eternity, one that can indeed exist in its traditional form in a post-modern world.

Better yet, in a globalized interconnected world where we do not have the luxury of staying within our own small world and evermore do not even have access to any semblance of tradition, Islam is the only answer to retain our cultures and even to revitalize lost cultures, precisely because it is the culmination of all previous messages that were sent to differing people and thus manages to retain a tie to peoples differing sensibilities. Where in the West Islam is often seen as a threat, if we combine the idea that the European way of life has itself been destroyed by Western modernity with the idea that Islam ultimately retains a link with all the previous laws, then Islam in fact is the only solution – even for the West if it wants to reclaim its culture.

Thus, we reiterate our point: modernity is indeed the other of Islam as the former fragmentizes and globalizes, where Islam unites all people while retaining their diversity. Because it is for all people it cannot be that Islam is merely “Eastern”. Rather, Islam stands between East and West as mentioned by the Bosnian statesman Alija Izetbegovic in the introduction to his famous work of the same name: “Islam, which occupies a central position between East and West, has to become conscious of its own mission… it must again today shoulder its role of intermediary nation in a divided world”.

The Prophet ﷺ came to us with an all-encompassing religion that manages to unite within itself all other nations without defacing their individuality but rather elevating their individuality to a universal, imperial breadth allowing for their diverse expressions under the banner of tawhid. What remains can only be a dualism between modernity and its alternative – traditional Islam. One aspiring to destroy the beautiful, the great, the worlds traditions, while the other is the (re)-affirmation of them. Only a return to a traditional expression of Islam can provide the world a way to retain that which makes us human.

The Road Ahead

While I hope this article has provided the reader with a somewhat deeper understanding of the relationship between the West, modernity and Islam, it is understandable if one thinks that this analysis does not bring any practical solutions to the problem we started with – the weakness of the Muslim world and our inability to return to a position of strength. Of course, the reason why we must anyhow begin with such an analysis is to not fall into the trap of modernity ourselves, by forgetting to have a foundation that is based upon eternal values.

Still, the idea of this writing: “a return to a traditional diverse Islam is the only way past that modernity”, leaves us with two problems. First: As I admitted in this article, while we should not confuse the political and the spiritual, the political is nonetheless of the utmost importance. Let me be clear that this article is in no way an attempt to downplay the problem of the West as a political entity. The Western political order plays a large part in the enforcement of modernity and even if we understand the importance of a return to traditional Islam, if we cannot break free under the political pressure of the Western order, we will not be able to regain our strength and offer traditional Islam as an alternative.

Second: I have attempted to show that modernity is the other to Islam and that only a return to traditional local forms of Islam can oppose modernity. While it follows that the necessary step is then the re-establishment of local forms of Islam, I have not yet given suggestions how we can possibly go about this process.

These two problems will be tackled in the next two parts. The next article will discuss the question on geopolitics and the third will look at the re-establishment of local forms of Islam. Both articles will build heavily upon the foundation in this one —- discussing the steps which Muslims should take to utilize Islam’s unique ability to move us past the modern world.