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Akmal Asghar | |
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In 1068, the judge of the Spanish city of Toledo published a book describing the ‘Categories of Nations’. In it, Qadi Said ibn Ahmad listed the nations he believed had most contributed to knowledge and to the cultivation of the sciences. They numbered eight: the Indians, Persians, Chaldaens, Greeks, Byzantines, Egyptians, Arabs and Jews, but he also emphasised contributions made by the Turks and Chinese. About the Europeans, however, he had this to say: "The other peoples of this group those who have not cultivated the sciences are more like animals than human beings… they lack a sharpness of the mind and clarity of intelligence, and they are overwhelmed by ignorance and apathy, a lacking power of judgment, and stupidity." Leaving aside the bluntness, his comments highlight that until the 11th century CE Europe had contributed little to learning or development and lay on the margins of the civilised world.
A millennia on from the age in which Qadi ibn Said undertook his study, the situation is now quite different. The ‘West’ - with Western Europe at its historical epicentre – now represents some the world’s most powerful and economically prosperous countries. Europe broke away from its pitiful ‘Dark Age’ and underwent a change that would afford it a period of global pre-eminence.
The story of how that was made possible has become a cornerstone of the west’s posture towards the rest of the world. Those spearheading the war on terror, for example, regularly repeat a mantra that projects the west’s historical path as a universal template for change. Tony Blair recently addressing the issue of Islamic extremism described how the ‘Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment’ lie at the heart of the west’s ascendancy. He concluded that the ‘clash’ before the world today was not ‘between’ civilisations but ‘about’ civilisation itself. His remarks reflect two basic beliefs that increasingly characterise the mindset of many western liberals. First, that the west is now the cradle of civilisation; second, to prosper, the west’s intellectual, political and economic models are necessary pre-requisites - they are inseparable from ‘progress’ itself.
This narrow proposition reduces the question of progress to one of imitating the west’s historical path. It discounts alternatives by assuming that the western model is the only path to a people’s salvation. But is that so? Is the western secular liberal model now the only proven way to progress: are there no alternatives? Whilst proponents point to the defeat of communism, fascism and more recently to the superiority over the Muslim world’s dictatorships as evidence, the answer is almost certainly ‘No’. Not only is the challenge to western liberalism’s presumptuousness from the past, but also from the present as global trends increasingly point to a new future.
Firstly, there are challenges to the west’s official narrative. What triggered the west’s rise out of its ‘Dark Age’ is a point of much dispute. Peter Watson, in his book ‘Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud’ maps some of the more well known theories. These are wide ranging and extend from challenging the idea of a western ascendancy itself (proponents instead believing that the rise of the west was relative to an eastern decline) through to those more familiar: the emergence of a secular domain of knowledge, the idea of the individual and the scientific method. The subject still divides academics and historians, with many choosing to believe a combination of external, economic, social and intellectual factors that drove change rather than the oft-repeated narrow monologue.
Secondly, how much of a role did the west’s liberal values play in its own historical change - where they the principal cause behind its progress or mere passengers in that process? Take the example of British democracy, it granted universal suffrage only after the first quarter of the twentieth century. In 1800, when the industrial revolution was already well underway, only 3% of Britain’s adult population had the right to vote. In 1867, when the British Empire had already secured a vital grip on key colonial territories such as India, only 13% of the adult population could vote. And by the time both men and women where given equal voting rights, it was 1928, ten years after the end of World War One. Democracy, it would appear, came at the end of - but didn’t drive - the trajectory that launched Britain as a global power.
The same is true for most liberal values, which are now hailed as hallmarks of civilisation but that have matured and come to fruition only in recent times, and certainly after the rise of the west’s rise was all but complete. Current attitudes towards women, race, minorities, liberty, government and human rights amongst others have only gained traction relatively recently, as they struggled historically against other pre/post-enlightenment trends to gain acceptability in government and society (and is why we’re regularly reminded how these values were ‘hard fought’ for). Liberalism may have won that battle in the west, but its victory came after the west had already established itself as a global power. Thus, although many of the world’s wealthiest countries are now liberal, was it liberalism that made them prosperous?
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