Destruction and Deterioration, the Individual and Religious Thought

 Mamdouh Bitar, syriano

        Destruction and deterioration are born from the convergence of several factors, some of which we will mention. The first is the absence of criticism that exposes the hidden, rotten, backwardness perpetuated by some groups that have yet to transform into societies. Some members of the local community confronted the causes of destructiveness and deterioration. Among these, we mention Huda Shaarawi and Nawal El Saadawi, then Taha Hussein, Sadiq Jalal Al-Azm, Farag Foda, Antoun Saadeh, Muhammad Arkoun, Al-Afeef Al-Akhdar, and many others. Conversely, there were attempts to kill criticism and critics, in particular, by dictatorial and religious figures.

There is no escape from practicing criticism, which was one of the main reasons for the European Renaissance. Criticism is not limited to religious, political, and social thought in general, but rather includes details of religious, political, and social thought, such as polygamy, which we find in 30% of marriages in the Damascus countryside, then circumcision, which we see among 90% of Egyptian women to this day, despite the strict penalties for those who practice circumcision, whether they are doctors, midwives, or others. Among the diseases are the tendency toward monotheism, the rejection of differences, the imposition of homogeneity, and many others. The methods of confronting these and other diseases vary from one individual or group to another. There are practices that are not serious in criticism and analysis, such as those who point to the dangers of sedition and call for avoiding it when trying to implement educational changes in schools, such as canceling religious education, and then using the mentality of prohibition to avoid the wrath of God and other things. This group practices a veiled acceptance of the causes of religious decline in particular, and what this group does is nothing but anesthetizing attempts to keep the swamp stagnant. In practice, this group perpetuates decline by keeping perversion and deviance as it is! Serious criticism is a different matter. It dots the i’s and crosses the t’s, practices scientific analysis, and then suggests solutions when the critic is able to do so.

The possibility of feeling imbalance and deterioration is easier than the possibility of developing solutions to complex problems in a complex world. However, it is possible to practice some positive tasks, such as enlightenment in the narrow personal and social sphere, for example, in the family sphere. The task of enlightenment is to overcome what is forbidden and prohibited in culture, and to confront submission to the mentality of prohibition and taboos and the sanctification of evils and vices, represented by religious and political oppression and mythical, superstitious, occult delusions dedicated to backwardness and deterioration. What is now prevalent locally is irrational and has led to decadence and backwardness, which must be overcome, not consecrated. The fear of the threat of sedition, which has pre-Islamic origins, must be overcome. It is considered an internal religious concept, invented to describe situations that do not exist in this era. The issue of Uthman was a sedition. Siffin and the Camel were seditions. The individual cannot greatly influence them, but it is possible for the individual to reject them. Slaughter, revenge, jihad, paradise, wars, and even the refusal to participate in the activities of the   muslim Brotherhood’s fundamentalism, the solution to major economic problems remains relatively intractable to individual action. A person may complain of poverty, but the individual is generally incapable of providing an effective solution to major economic problems