Death Of A Civilisation

The events in the Middle East have upset me no end: I see in these 'people's insurrections' the death of Muslim civilisation.

Over 1,400 years, Muslim thinkers from Ibn Hanbal to al-Ghazali to ibn-Jamma have painstakingly, bit by agonising bit, built up an edifice of political thought: the repeated injunction of that body of thought has been that one must not resist a leader.

In Bangladesh, a land of 140 million Muslims, it has become received wisdom to celebrate the overthrow of a military ruler. I know pious Muslims, who say their prayers five times a day and observe every fast during Ramadan, who accept calmly and casually an insurrection against a Muslim military ruler. These people have wholly, knowingly or otherwise, accepted the odious political philosophy of John Locke. Indeed, it is to be doubted if these people are Muslim at all.

It seems that the west has conquered us with its ideas, money and military might - the first copiously assisted by the latter two. We have been bought and bribed. I fear that the murder of Muslim civilisation by the west is not far distant.

However, recent events elsewhere give me pause and hope: China once embraced a disgusting western philosophy which led to the death of millions of Chinese. But today China is beginning to cast off its slavery to western ideas, and has happily rediscovered its Confucian roots. Will such a rebirth happen in the Muslim world?

Perhaps it will; perhaps it won't. Either way, by then, I will be six feet under the earth.