Globalization is an interaction and integration between individuals and groups in most aspects of life, especially in the economic aspect, by turning the world into a single market through free trade, the elimination of customs and import and export restrictions, etc. There is also political globalization, which practically means the dominance of the policies of developed countries over the policies of underdeveloped countries, and then cultural globalization, which leads to the disappearance of weak cultures and their dissolution into strong cultures in the global cultural globalization mix!
Globalization leads to increased production, higher profits for the powerful, a greater degree of interaction and acquaintance among peoples, and the loss of what is called the cultural distinctiveness of some peoples, In this regard, the peoples of this region faced many intellectual, technological, and economic difficulties and challenges, Primitive groups were unable to benefit from globalization, as globalization embodies a stage of great development in production, marketing, technology, and science, and because Middle Eastern groups were unable to keep pace with the developments of advanced societies, Therefore, the gap between Middle Easterners and the rest of the world’s peoples widened, which is considered a relative backwardness that not everyone understood or realized, and no forces were able to identify its causes, which can be summarized as the inability of the peoples of this region to keep pace with other peoples in modern development, Among the reasons for this failure to keep pace were the mixing of religion with politics, and consequently the “mummification” of peoples and their transformation into idolatrous mummies closed in on themselves that do not speak, think, develop, or produce.
The reluctance to keep pace was not limited to the politicization of religion and the religiousization of politics and their derivatives, nor to the inability to confront the challenge that came with globalization, There are other reasons that hindered the penetration of globalization into the Middle East, including a lack of understanding of globalization in the first place,This lack of understanding was not limited to the ignorant, but included many intellectuals such as Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, who described globalization as “a culture that reflects the will to dominate,” and hegemony is logical when the strong meet the weak, Or the progressive Abdullah Belqaziz, who said that globalization is “an act of cultural rape and symbolic aggression against all cultures, and it is synonymous with penetration that takes place with armed cultural violence,” We do not find any rape in this case, Then Hassan Hanafi added that globalization is “an expression of a precise ethnocentrism in European consciousness based on racial racism and the desire for hegemony and control.” We do not find any rape in learning from others. If these intellectuals adopted such positions, what can we expect from the ignorant, who live in the backward and frozen Arab religious heritage and are held captive by sacred texts and fatwas? This is despite the mythical nature of the texts and the absurdity of the fatwas, which are castrated and afflicted with the impotence of being valid for all times and places.
Globalization revealed the prevailing intellectual direction of its reading from the Arabs and their reactions to it, and the predicament of the civilizational difference between the Arabs and other peoples of the world, The Arab cultural identity was unable to sweep through globalization and influence it, but rather demonstrated the inability to develop this identity in a manner that is appropriate to the historical requirements of this era, which included all fields of life. The society obsessed, worried and imprisoned in the past was unable to comprehend those transformations, keep pace with them and participate in making them, despite these changes penetrating and sweeping through its private and public life without its permission.
Preventing the sanctification of the rulings and legislations of jurists, subjecting the heritage to a rational and critical reading, and allowing the application of the rulings of this heritage to the current reality, has allowed these rulings to take root in minds, for example, regarding absolute truth, which exists only in religious texts that are not valid for all times and places. Worse than that was opening the doors to superstitions and myths that have settled inside minds, which are no longer able to distinguish between the beneficial and the harmful. Superstition is always harmful because it has no connection to reality. Therefore, it can be said that the Arab mind is no longer realistic, that is, it has become superstitious like the superstition that inhabits it. Globalization is a reality that must be understood and influenced, and influencing it is not done by denouncing it, cursing it, and isolating oneself from it, but rather by developing it in a way that allows us to benefit from it. Benefiting from it is not done by confronting it with fatwas, verses, and sacred things that have no connection to the worldly, while globalization is an absolutely worldly matter, and influencing it can only be done with worldly tools.
The peoples of the region are caught between earth and sky, and between the dictates of each, thus transforming their present into their past. Other peoples have done the opposite, benefiting from the past while avoiding certain aspects and distancing themselves from them. The Arabs, however, clung to a dark past, deeming it a glorious and enlightened ignorance and falsehood. This self-deception has only resulted in their falling into the inferno of oppressive darkness. No matter what that past may have been, it is impermissible to replicate it wholesale in the present, because the foundations of life today are the opposite of, or at least radically different from, those of the past. Engaging with the present is a fundamental condition for being able to influence it. The conditions for positively influencing the present have not been met, and the superstitious customs and traditions of the past continue to weigh heavily on minds, thus thwarting the initiatives of modernization in the early twentieth century. We see no new initiatives in the present; rather, the migration to the past continues unabated… To be continued
