George Banna, Mira Al-Bitar:

 Despite the tremendous scientific progress and intense communication between peoples thanks to modern technologies, it seems that the Arabists have decided to isolate themselves and step outside of history and be satisfied with what was produced in the past, despite the bitterness of what was made in this past, The Arabists are not interested in making the present and the future, but rather in remaining in the swamp of stagnation and surrendering to cultures that were, in their historical context, backward, and their relative backwardness increases with time despite some manifestations of modernization, which does not mean modernity, because modernization is bought with money, and money in this region is petroleum, which the Arabs did not make, they did not even discover it or extract it from the bowels of the earth, while modernity is not bought but is made in the mind and thought.

 The Arab reality can be described as a kind of culture that resides in the past, i.e. it is past-based, This past-based culture has features, causes, consequences and manifestations, The causes are not inborn and have no relation to the special membership of the person called Arab (Arabs are the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula only), This person was inborn like others, but his circumstances differed from the circumstances of others, Some of the circumstances are geographical, such as his presence in the desert, which he cannot change and which can change him. In other words, due to the overwhelming conditions of the desert, he must surrender.

   1440 years ago, a religion was born with a desert model, expressed by several features, including “Aslam Taslam” (surrender), and just as the desert is resistant to change, this religion had to be resistant to change and development, Therefore, a characteristic or description of “sacred” was attached to it, The description of sacred inherently thwarts reform and development, Failing reform and development requires neutralizing or paralyzing the mind and dealing with it as an unnecessary surplus, meaning that it is absent or has become absent, that is, putting it inside a prison, It is logical then for the mind to be guarded in its prison by the irrational in order to prevent the mind from escaping, that is, metaphorically, liberation, The irrational means superstition, faith, certainty, the unseen, myths, and living outside of time, The mind of the irrational refuses to bear responsibility for the miserable conditions it caused, Therefore, the accused must be the conspiracy, which was born from the Western womb and from Western interests, according to their claim, as if it is shameful for a person to have interests that he defends, Why then were the conquests? Do conquests really have anything to do with spreading the faith or with the spoils of war?

   The irrational surrender to absolute and schizophrenic metaphysics produced hostility to science and materialism,Hostility to science and materialism means hostility to the people of science and materialism, which was previously manifested in the killing of the overwhelming majority of men of science, who came from the colony of Persia, which had an advanced civilization and was very different from the decadent Bedouin culture of the Arabian Peninsula.

   The killing of Persian scholars in the context of rejecting science has backgrounds and motives that are no different from the mechanisms and motives that were able to thwart the Renaissance project in the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, The pioneers of the Renaissance tried almost a century ago to break the cycle of defective pastism inherited from a defective past, by preaching new Western methods in critical dealing with the sacred text to break the caves of the Stone Age and break the fossilization, but they failed for many reasons, including the inability of religious desertism to interact with their ideas and efforts, then accusing them of heresy and deviation from the text that was said to be correct and sacred, among them were Muhammad Abduh, Taha Hussein and others,In this attempt, rationalism lost the battle of civilization, but it regained some of its strength, especially during the First World War and immediately after the elimination of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of many countries at the hands of Sykes-Picot, These countries had many of the elements of success, but those countries fell into the clutches of regression, especially after 1928. The result was what we see now in The Sykes-Picot countries, which are floundering in the quagmire of tyranny and moving from one state of backwardness to another, and from criminal primitiveness to criminal religious nomadism.

 All of this can only be explained by the obsession with residing in the miserable past, which has obscured the vision of the world’s developments and keeping up with these developments. Despite this, these developments and changes have managed to penetrate the personal lives of many people in the Levant, especially Syria and Lebanon, without permission, As a result, society has been formed into an enlightened, educated, modern minority, and a majority that has remained in the Stone Age.

 Stone Age culture has led to unimaginable developments in the 21st century, for example the rule of the mullahs in Iran, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Al-Nusra Front in Syria, alongside the kings and princes, who have proven their superiority over the so-called republicans, It is a strange and astonishing matter that we did not expect, nor did we expect that the president of a republic would turn into a hereditary king, i.e., what is called “Jamluki”. Jammluki was keen on reviving the past, like the Baath and the Brotherhood, for example, He did not ask why the insistence on reviving the past and why this intrusion on the past? And was there any benefit from that past? Which prevailed for 1440 years and throughout 1440 years, and was primitive, degenerate, criminal, tribal, bloody (Red River), thief and rapist, and a liar regarding the spread of religion, Why should religion be spread by the sword? And if conquest was the pride of the past! Can conquest continue as a way and approach to life in the present? Is the morality of conquest worth preserving, reviving or revitalizing? Is renaissance possible after the conquest has completely destroyed the invaders humanly and morally, and curbed their development and progress, due to their reliance on tribute, plunder and spoils of war to finance their lives and needs? In other words, is there no need to adopt a culture of dual production – living! and be deceived by the culture of death cloaked in the culture of jihad and the culture of martyrdom in order to spend a luxurious life in paradise between the thighs and vaginas of hundreds of virgin houris? The superstitious religion that embraced all of that must answer all of these questions and provide a single proof of the truth of its promises and what truly caused the destruction of the lives of the mujahideen and the lives of their oppressed victims, i.e. everyone.

 The life of jihad, martyrdom, reliance on the unseen world of heaven and its houris, the myth of God’s victory for the believers, and then the concepts of fate and destiny, the faith that kills the mind, and the constants that hinder development, led to the defeat of the modernity project in this region, Heaven was a reality in modernity, not in the seventh heaven. Instead of increasing efforts to revive modernity on earth and adhere to it, there was a kind of dedication to addiction to backwardness, which was manifested in the tendency towards more worship and submission and the increasing presence of myths, legends, and the unseen, In short, Ibn Abdullah returned and the concept of heaven and hell, martyrdom, and glorification of God prevailed, Hordes of madness crept towards the chairs to sit on them and to change the concept of the state or the homeland to a state or a caliphate, not in service to the homeland, but to religion, Misguidance has become a name for enlightenment, and misguidance is an accusation in a religious state that considers the citizen a servant of religion and not of the homeland, to which it has hostility as it has hostility to idols,Therefore, the subject of national education was abolished from Teaching curricula and building mosques in universities, They thought that what unites people is religion, not homeland, What are non-Sunni Muhammadans doing in these countries? Here we return to the phrase mentioned at the beginning of the article: “Convert to Islam and you will be safe,” or emigrate!!! And those who believed that homeland, not religion, unite have emigrated.

 The defeat of modernity led to the birth of frustration and despair, and thus a sharp turn towards the unseen and a forced inclination towards the past, Whoever fails to produce a bright present searches for a savior they think exists in the past, Here, this past was mythologized and considered an illusion that it was glorious, For a glorious present, it is sufficient to resurrect the old anew, The old was plagued by a culture of evoking wonders and miracles, the presence of prophets, and stories of scientific miracles,Whoever could not manufacture medicine or even buy it turned to camel urine and sheikhs for salvation through prayer and writing legal incantations to confront the accursed devil, magic, the evil eye, envy, etc. All of this was an alternative to self-criticism and an objective reading of reality and the reasons for defeats and questioning the authorities about their policies and the results of these destructive policies, The authorities succeeded in preventing the raising of questions and succeeded in subjecting everyone to the principle of servility and practicing absolute silence regarding criticism, The markets of court poets flourished, even hunger could not By inciting people to revolt the hungry, it seems that the people of this country have actually died on earth  It is said that they are alive and well in heaven… God knows best!!