Western Modernity and Political Religious Ideology

The first thing that the proponents of the adoption of Western modernity introduce you to, or the first thing by which they define modernity, is the transition to the era of reason, rationality and scientific approach, and the move away from the religious, magical or mythical spirit. Some say that modernity is the human creator, not the magician or the believer in magic. There are those who start from secularism and civil citizenship that separate religion from the state, as in Western modernity.

However, this beginning, and this definition, do not take into account:

• First of all: There is a long history and Islamic civilization in which religion did not come into conflict with scientific thought or with science, life and its affairs, without erecting this barrier between belief in God and creation, the development of science and the revelation of the laws of humanity, nature and the universe.

For example: medicine, astronomy, chemistry, mathematics and algorithms were all built and developed under the Islamic civilization. Something similar certainly happened in other civilizations. Otherwise, how could one have fought against cold and heat and developed agriculture, navigation, means of transportation, animal husbandry and breeding over the ages, before Western modernity began its journey?

It is true that there are many myths, sorceries or mythological beliefs that exist, coexist and fight against believers in religion and science. It is like the Muslim scholars who adopted the scientific and inductive method centuries before Western modernity. They are considered the fathers of Copernicus and Galileo. (See George Saliba on science in Arab and Islamic civilization).

This is due to the lack of accuracy or precision in distinguishing modernity or Western civilization from previous civilizations, relying on reason and rationality. To say that reason, science and industry have priority, as opposed to a superstitious or imaginary mind, is in fact an accusation against the premodern Western mind and human being of moving away from objectivity and the laws of movement and life in the world. in the face of challenges.

• secondly: It is worth noting that it is incorrect to consider that what distinguishes modernity or Western civilization is the human creator and the secular cognitive world. This presents Western modernity as a civilization that began in the 16th century until today. There is nothing wrong with asking who wants to start with what he calls the Age of Enlightenment, or the Enlightenment, human rights, the modern state and democratic societies.

Indeed, the first thing that distinguishes contemporary Western civilization is its military, economic, political and cultural control over the world, and this began in the days of kings, feudalism and the Catholic Church in the 16th century.

The emphasis on characteristics related to reason, industry and scientific objectivity should not obscure the dimension related to global military control and global plunder. Let us leave behind the genocide of the Red Indians in the United States of America, and the injustices, massacres and plunders suffered by the indigenous peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America in the 16th century, before Europeans were considered the bearers of light, enlightenment and human rights (i.e. the white European modernist).

In other words, history must be read well and its steps must be followed. Were the Muslim sailors who led Columbus’ ship, the Gamma, to initiate European modernity the legendary religious man or the religious man who knew about navigation and its origins?

This historical dimension, whether we like it or not, you, defenders of Western modernity, cannot ignore it or push it aside in exchange for the introduction of Galileo, Descartes, Darwin or Newton.

• Third: The problem they highlight by defining Western modernity as the primacy of the rule of reason, science and human rights over what they consider (religion and religious ideologies). But what would they react if they were told that this separation or rupture with religion is known in France only by Western modernity, and that French secularism is only a modest part in the world of Western modernity dominated by Anglo-Saxon peoples and countries?

Great Britain, the United States of America and the countries where Protestantism predominated are the pillars of Western civilization or modernity.

Here we do not find a rupture between Western modernity and religion, but rather religion as an essential element in the formation of the state and in the ideology of Western peoples who adopt Protestantism. It is a modernity imbued with a reference to the Torah and to the most reactionary Protestant Zionist ideology. Even today we find Western modernity in the United States and the West in general declaring itself a Christian (Protestant)-Jewish civilization, which means that all the definitions that begin with reason, secularism, freedom, human rights and progress have been mixed with the Protestant-Zionist dimension, before and after the Enlightenment.

If there is one thought that can be accused of superstition and mythology, and which is far from secularism, globalization, the age of reason, the Enlightenment or human rights, it is the Protestant-Zionist dimension that animates Western modernity.

To deny and ignore this dimension is a fault, misleading or short-sighted.

Is it reasonable to ignore this ideological dimension organically integrated into Western modernity, led by the Anglo-Saxon countries (America and Great Britain) which have led and lead Western modernity, including the contemporary French tendency?

Is it correct to evaluate modernity differently from what it is? This is when we speak of reason, rationality, objectivity, science, secularism, human rights or universal moral values, while obscuring their relationship to religious ideology.

Thus, at a time when the West is recovering distorted myths of the Torah to place them at the heart of Western modernity, in contradiction with the spirit of its definition of modernity, it is necessary to reread Western modernity through its ideological dimension. This religious, ideological and Protestant Zionist dimension, in addition to the dimension of global military control and plunder, together constitutes the cement and the chain of Western modernity, and distances it from the definition that approaches it as a break with religion and non-Western civilizations.

If one wanted to add more poetry, one would ask: Is not “Israel” the pearl of this modernity? So, is not the massive human genocide taking place in the Gaza Strip being committed under the auspices of modern Western countries? Where are reason, enlightenment and human rights here?

Therefore, whoever wants to seek modernity should seek it far from Western modernity.