ISLAM VS WEST

West has a history of genocide, civil wars and colonialism which had brought a bad name to the Western culture an society, and downgraded them on every parameters of the humanity. The most parts of this era is historiographically known as Dark Ages. They, however, decidedly figured this out that they had been living in a culturally mediatized ignorance where religion had lots of interference in every spheres of human life, rather than it should have been a private affair.

There is no doubt that it’s almost impossible to come out of this ignorance, whether you’re among the commoners or the elite. It’s like Plato’s story of the cave. You don’t know that you don’t know. The only thing which shows you way out of it is through knowledge and wisdom. The moment you start acquiring knowledge and wisdom, you begin to see the truth of every things including where you are having shortcomings. This leads to self-introspection which is considered the needful foundation for purification of soul, thought, action and conduct.

The West, after figuring out where it was on wrong track, started living according to knowledge and bases its values and institutions on knowledge, limiting the myths of culture and religion to the private domain. This is the key aspect of Western ideals that are all culturally programmed from their childhood.

I am not projecting a sublime and exalted picture of the West. There is no doubt that West has a dark history which it ostentatiously acknowledges so that it can learn from its past mistakes. It's necessary to regain the lost confidence and to experience a moment of atonement for its past sins.

I think the West should not be seen as of having such a history of Dark Ages in human history. They, notwithstanding, should have been looked upon with admiration and appreciation that they have moved beyond their past lethal attitudes and they should feel themselves proud of doing so as well.

On the other, in spite of giving a lot to the humanity in term of knowledge, wisdom, culture, manner, education, stability, peace, economic prosperity and many more throughout its Golden Period, Islam had also encountered with an era of stagnation that is very much similar to the Dark Ages of the West. This era started when the Muslims indulged in pity nonproductive activities of polemize, nonsensical debate, intra-religious conflicts and wars, and closed the door of rational thinking and critical inquiry. With this, many defects and desolations occurred in Muslim society. This stagnation mainly affected the thought process of Muslims and their progress in domain of knowledge. Since then, Muslims are living a life where religion has turned out to be the sole factor in determining any aspect of human life. Subsequently religious education has become the prime focus and others has been thrown on the back burner.  And here, a division of knowledge happened between worldly and religious. Furthermore, Muslims started living in an illusion of cultural and religious superiority which has further deteriorated their position.

Sense of religious superiority is an opium. That’s why they are unable to self-introspect and figure out their own crises. A complete diagnosis is needed to figure out the crisis of the Muslim community.