Mamdouh Bitar, George Banna:
Does any rational person doubt the backwardness of the Arabized Muhammadan world? Here, too, there is no doubt about the necessity of investigating the causes, and there is also no doubt about the significant role religion plays in the lives of these backward peoples. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the relationship of religion, especially its applications, with progress and backwardness. This research aims first and foremost for self-interest, and has nothing to do with disparaging or championing religion.
We are positioned between a trend that says adherence to certain applications of religion is the cause of backwardness, and a trend that says abandoning various religious applications is the cause of backwardness. Backwardness is linked to aversion to religion and a failure to apply its laws and rulings. According to the view of the late Sheikh al-Bouti, God, angry with those who reject His law, takes revenge on His misguided servants. The goal of thinking from the perspective of both the first and second currents is, in all cases, to protect the public interest. A calm, balanced, and rational response is also for the public interest, which is pulled between these currents. On the one hand, they represent the weight of modern human civilization, and on the other, the weight of a conservative, traditional, bygone civilization, sealed in a tightly sealed bottle of metaphysics. One current believes it is not valid for all times and places, and the other believes in its absolute validity for all times and places. There is much strangeness in the thesis of the current that claims to be a believer and valid for all times and places. What about the peoples who enjoy security but do not practice faith? …enjoy stability without rumination, and reason without transmission. Atheist and infidel societies in the view of the sheikhs, and it is infidelity to be contaminated by them because they are from the filth of Satan and his kind. How can a rational person explain the phenomenon of Afghanistan, Somalia, and Al-Bashir’s religious republic, then the Caliphate of Abu Bakr with its knives and machetes? All of them were the judge and executioner, and their rule was on behalf of God, who had no concern but to reject them and take revenge on them. He fed them the poverty that consumed them, the violence that killed them, and the ignorance that destroyed them. Was He, glory be to Him, just, or was He conspiring with the Americans, Italians, and Germans, who discuss, criticize, develop, and respect the other opinion, because the existence of the other opinion is the essence of creating a new outlook on life, an industry that does not allow the birth of oppression and dictatorship. This was one of the features of the Greco-Roman culture, which was replaced by the culture of Saqifah Bani Sa’idah, which defined the prevailing political and religious understanding in this region. The Arabized Bedouin Muhammadanism until now. Comparing the Arabized Bedouin region with other regions in the world, such as Malaysia and Singapore, leads to doubt that religion in itself is not a fundamental cause of backwardness, nor a fundamental party in the search for the causes of progress. With religion, countries and peoples have advanced, while others have lagged behind and been placed at the back of nations. Religion is essentially a definition of a personal relationship between two parties. It does not advance the state and its society, nor does it delay it, provided that it withdraws from the social space and is confined to the personal space, and thus commits to places of worship as a place for their practices. The progress of Malaysia and Singapore is due to the fact that they are secular civil states whose legislation has no connection to Sharia. In these countries, there are also believers, and because of their lack of knowledge of Arabic, they had no cultural relationship with the religious Bedouin of the Hijaz. Kemal Ataturk paid attention to this point, and said in his justification for banning the Arabic language, i.e. replacing its letters with Latin letters, that he did not want any cultural friction with the Bedouins and their Bedouinism. Contrary to his secularism, freedom and democracy. Seeking guidance from religion outside its scope and outside its responsibility and tasks, i.e. in projecting personal religion onto the general social situation, was the essence of the problem, and it led to falling into the trap of backwardness and fighting, which was the law before the call and continued in the new religion in the form of devastating wars that began before the wars of apostasy and did not end with Karbala. Despite that, things did not settle down, but rather became more complicated and catastrophic until the peoples of today reached a state of pre-complete extinction and a state of marginalization and isolation in the world and withdrawal from contributing to building global civilization, and thus exiting history. Whoever wants to remain in history must have a positive influence on its development, especially in areas that have no connection to wars and occupations. Wars and occupations and the looting and plundering that accompanied them (spoils of war) were an image of the dark, negative face of history. The conquests harmed all of humanity, so they were banned by a decision of the League of Nations in 1905. The greatest victims of the conquests were the conquerors. Since their domination over other peoples prevented them from learning the duality of production and living, the sword was not intended for production but for domination, killing, theft and plunder. All of this continued with the current violence that represents the culture of the sword and with the corruption that represents the culture of the spoils of war. It is no wonder here in this era that the word “looting” was invented to express the spoils of war and corruption,
Even those who looted Ghouta—Maher al-Assad, his partners, and his rivals—considered the looting of Ghouta as legitimate as the spoils of war, as lawful and pure as they are! There is no substitute for learning from history. This requires a sense of the need for lessons, which in turn requires an admission of inability, weakness, or error. Calling a defeat a “setback” is an expression of usurping a pseudonym for something other than its proper name. The concept of a “setback” diminishes the scope of personal responsibility and thus diminishes the need for learning. Thus, those who suffered setbacks failed to learn from history and benefit from its lessons. They subsequently allowed ignorance, lack of knowledge, and a lack of experience to occupy their minds! So of course there are reasons! The most important of which is the feeling that they possess the absolute truth of religious faith, then their reliance on divine promises of certain victory, even if after a while, then their unchangeable certainty that they are loved by God, who considered them the best nation, for their monopoly of the correct faith, that they are brothers of God, because God is Muslim…and Islam is the religion of God and God has no other religion. As a result, and for many other reasons, they did not learn and deserved the title of those who are difficult to learn and unable to learn. They remained in the religion of indoctrination and obedience. In the twenty-first century, the sheikh ascended the pulpit and tried to prove that reaching India by plane is not possible, if the earth rotated and was oval or spherical, so the earth must be flat. There are many examples of sheikhs penetrating the belly of the myth. The lesson was in the people who listened to the sheikh of Al-Munir, so by their silence they said to the sheikh, “We hear and obey” (one of the characteristics of oral culture), the earth is therefore flat, and the next day their children went To schools that taught them that the Earth is spherical, what is the fate of these minds exposed to destruction on the one hand and construction on the other? Then it is said that they suffer from schizophrenia. Isn’t what they learn schizophrenic? There is no unified or single definition of a people’s civilization. In general, civilization can be considered the sum total of what this people offers to humanity in terms of positives, services, innovations, achievements, etc. Therefore, acknowledging that these Arabized Bedouin peoples are backward is tantamount to acknowledging the absence of a civilization. Anyone who acknowledges backwardness and then speaks proudly of a civilization is a schizophrenic. No one who is not a schizophrenic can combine opposites. There is no logical concept that combines backwardness and civilization.
