Progress and Modernity

Before I begin on the meat of today's post, I want to thank Neil (the only Wordpress blogger from the sidebar) for supporting this blog with a message in his header (I'm not sure of my blogging terminology so I hope that's right). He called this blog "interesting", which is very generous. His blog is more than interesting to me and I highly recommend it. While I'm being self-conscious, I also want to remind anybody who comes to my blog that it may make more sense (hopefully) read as a serial from start to finish as I'm developing it somewhat narratively as a comprehensive (admittedly quite flawed, I expect) history of the Middle East, Islam and the Arab World and its relationship with the West. I'm now up to 59 posts of varying quality (with this one) so I quite understand if readers would prefer not to read them all, however.

I do want to renew my pledge that I am always keen to receive any comments, corrections or suggested improvements. I am aware of some of its flaws but I would love to hear what anyone thinks (please be kind). I would probably also do a lot more linking and include more images, which may improve its look, if I was more familiar with the medium. I'm not and I have a persistent wrist sprain so I am a little limited in my ability to edit and improve things at the moment. I still hope it is an informative read and may help to give context to debates that so often reveal, at the moment, the ignorance of the region's history and culture of otherwise intelligent and admirable Western men (usually). The best example of such a thing (that I regard ironically as irrationally Islamophobic given his general support for the practice of rationality) is the general attitude to Islam of Richard Dawkins, a man that I otherwise admire. For those who haven't read it in earlier posts, I am an atheist and actually want a post-religious world. I just dislike what I regard as bigotry from atheists I admire like Dawkins (who calls himself a cultural Anglican, which indicates roughly the issue I have with his attitude). That's my rant done for today. On back to the Nahda.

Having discussed freedom and the nation, then, it was natural (because its effects were all around) to also consider what modernity meant to a free Arab and a free Arab nation and whether progress and modernity were in keeping with being Arab and with being free. Was democracy progress, for example? Arabs had attemped it and found the form wanting. I've mentioned in another post that the idea that Arabs needed to be readied for democracy before it could be transplanted effectively to the Arab world (as Europeans were supposed to have been readied for it by various benevolent or enlightened despots) was considered. These were progressive ideas perhaps leaving the problem to be considered how could an Arab enlightened despot be enlightened without an Arab enlightenment (or was the Nahda it)?

The Arab proponents of progress visualised it as a forward movement (taqaddum) and an upward one (taraqqi or ruqiyy). It was also seen as a civilising process (tamaddun or hadara).

The idea of progress in knowledge and thus towards civilisation had earlier been considered in the classical Arab period before modernity became the multicultural idea it has since arguably become (whose modernity being the basis of the problem for many Arabs?) Major thinkers involved included al-Kindi and al-Mas’udi of the 9^th and 10^th Centuries and Ibn Khaldun of the 14^th Century.

The first problem for these theoreticians’ ideas taken up in the 19^th Century was how to account for an apparent ‘reverse progress’ from the 15^th to the 19^th Centuries. The next problem was how to achieve a re-reversal that was not dependent on external forces and this led thinkers to seek an internal cultural revival. Many of the thinkers, considering the society and progress produced in the early Islamic period, regarded ‘true’ Islam as the potential catalyst for this or at least not incompatible with the required revival.

Afghani, ‘Abduh and their followers discussed how to achieve this modernism within Islam by renewal of a ‘true’ Islam. Kawakibi, whose ideas about freedom I mentioned in the last post, viewed the political, economic and religious despotisms he discussed as obstacles to progress as well as to freedom.

Tahtawi, Bustani, ‘Abduh and Qasim Amin all discussed education (including of women - especially for Bustani and Amin) as necessary for progress. The putative links between education, reform, progress and freedom were naturally then examined by such thinkers as Bustani and Qasim Amin. The Ottoman Tanzimat reforms were naturally subject to discussion in the early part of the Arab Nahda as they were represented as progress but also arose from elements of Turkish nationalism and had impacts on freedoms (especially on the freedoms of non-Turks). Arab cultural nationalist societies played a significant role in these discussions.

The 19^th Century 'fashions' of so-called ‘social Darwinism’, science and socialism also played roles in the discussions concerning progress especially in the writings of Farah Antoun (1874 - 1922) and Shibli Shumayyil (1850 - 1917).

Ameen Rihani continued this new tradition of scientific emphasis and support for liberalism among progressive Arabs further into the 20^th Century. He linked science itself with moral progress rather than merely the 'material progress’ produced by technology. He argued against what he saw as the American form of progress (dependent upon the material advances produced by industrialisation and capitalism) as a legitimate goal. Nevertheless his experience of America and the Arab world convinced him of the value of some form of modernisation in the Arab world and suggested to him what obstacles to and resources of progress existed there. He pioneered the idea of progress based on a combination of Eastern and Western cultures between the two mono-cultural extremes until his time being the only two ‘options’ for progress under serious consideration. In this he can be said to have continued in and expanded on the tradition of the Egyptian, Tahtawi. Egyptian thinkers such as Ahmad Lutfi as-Sayyid (1872 - 1963), Taha Husayn (1889 - 1973) and Ahmad Amin (1886 - 1954) had arrived at similar conclusions by the early 20^th Century partly as a result of Egyptian thought already being so evidently the result of such a synthesis of cultures.

After the Second World War and the beginning of independent Arab states, the debates continued throughout the Arab world based on this variety of regional, religious and other perspectives.

The idea of Islam as a self-contained ‘system’ built for progress and as a solution for Arab social stagnation was reinforced against the secular tendency of most of the pre-war ideas for progress. The ideas of Sayyid Qutb, another Egyptian thinker and a Muslim Brother, constitute a most significant example of this trend of thought. His views are criticised as fundamentalist for their allegedly too-narrow and not sufficiently humanistic interpretation of the ‘correct’ traditions of Islam.

On the scientific side of the debate, thinkers such as the Syrian/Lebanese Constantine Zurayq (1909 - 2000) sought to rationally and scientifically (and self critically, where necessary) consider the reasons for the successive ‘disasters’ (beginning with the 1948 war against Israel) which continued to mar Arab history. He thus fell into the camp that regarded science and rationality (rather than religion) as the sources of progress for Arab society. Another advocate of Arab scientific awakening was Fu’ad Sarruf of Lebanon. Various liberal literary and intellectual journals were also significant supporters of this view (such as al-Adab and al-Mustaqbal al-‘Arabi in Beirut, al-Ma’rifah in Damascus, ‘Alam al-Fikr in Kuwait and Afaq in London).

The further disaster (Nakba) of the 1967 war against Israel produced yet more soul-searching among Arab thinkers. More radical measures were seen to be necessary than had previously been considered in the light of this further apparent humiliation. Sadiq Jalal al-‘Azm (b. 1934), a Syrian scion working in Lebanon, produced his Critique of Religious Thought. The Moroccan Mohammad ‘Abid al-Jabiri (b. 1936) viewed the Arab thinking of the past as a burden to be shrugged off by Arab thinkers of today. Hasan Hanafi (b. 1935) of Egypt saw rationality combined with an attitude of conciliation in approaching Arab-Islamic tradition as necessary for Arab-Islamic progress.

The feminist aspect of the new Arab Nahda thinking continued to be somewhat in evidence as it had been among earlier Nahda thinkers. For example, the idea that a special impediment to progress in Arab societies in particular was a thing he labelled “Neopatriarchy” was also propounded in this period by the Palestinian-American political sociologist, Hisham Sharabi.

Also a new range of journals and other mass media continued to play a role similar to that played by an earlier generation of print periodicals. Satellite television stations such as al-Jazeera, for example, played a greater and more balanced intellectual role than has been suggested by much Western criticism and today the role is beginning to be played by internet sites. The Arab daily press and literary supplements now play a role in introducing readers to the in-depth analysis of issues via columnists once played by a more intellectually specialised press. In Cairo, Al-Ahram and Al-Ahram weekly (also published in English) play this role, while An-Nahar and its weekly supplement play this role in Beirut. Two periodicals published in London, Al-Hayat and Al-Quds al-Arabi, also play this role. Today’s rather existential and post-modern debates concern whether change is possible without progress and whether progress is possible without change. Next post, is secularism the change that refreshes?