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Seventh century Arabia, like the eleventh century Europe that Qadi ibn Said’s study dismissed, too was in something of a ‘Dark Age’. It had contributed no scientific, intellectual or political achievements of note; regional superpowers, Persia and Byzantine, discounted Arabia’s importance, not even bothering to conquer it. It was a tribal society in a state of perpetual conflict; wars over honour, trading routes and tribal constituency kept its prevailing outlook insular.
Three centuries later, however, things were very different. Members of that largely irrelevant Arab society now ruled a vast territory that had consumed its regional powers. Its foremost cities led a revolution in scientific and intellectual learning, making huge strides in mathematics, medicine, astronomy and engineering. Alongside these technological and material achievements, strides in legal, cultural, spiritual, political and economic life now marked out a distinctly new and prosperous civilisation that attracted people from Europe to China to share in its prosperity, tolerance and learning, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
What triggered this transformation, however, differs fundamentally to the European story; the similarity ends at the ability of both to change their respective fortunes. Firstly, the trigger and source of that change is hard to dispute in the Arabian world. The arrival of Islam through the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century marked the point after which history witnesses an unparalleled overhaul of Arab society, and beyond.
Secondly, Islam produced a civilisation with an approach to economic, social and political life fundamentally different to that proposed by liberalism. There was no secular distinction between religion and society. Islamic sources defined law, the form of the political system, the nature of public institutions, the relationship between state and subject together with the rights and responsibilities of each. This non-secular political set-up imbued great feats of learning, scholarship and ijtihad in fields extending to all aspects of life. Socially, society was not individualistic. The health of the collective was as much a concern and guarded as much as protecting the rights of the individual; the object of legislation and the appropriation of rights were not exclusively centred on the individual but extended to community, family and society as a whole. A different philosophy governed relationships between men and women, one that produced a socially cohesive society providing an environment for mutual companionship between the sexes, raising and caring for children and a sustained moral pillar for producing an upright citizenry. Its economic philosophy was not skewed in favour of production alone or a reliance on market or on trickle-down to manage distribution, but on rules of ownership that provided an elaborated strategy for distributing wealth. Thus obliging the state to provide for the basic needs for all citizens by preventing the privatisation of materials that are required for basic livelihood from water to energy and fundamentally viewing resource as not scarce but sufficient for tackling the world’s economic challenges.
In all, society was quite different to one a liberal may recognise, or endorse. But it had driven a transformation that provided it unparalleled status economically, politically, socially and militarily. It undermines and renders narrow the belief that only a liberal order can produce progress, a belief that is historically inaccurate and intellectually questionable. The Islamic civilisation flourished on a set of values that fundamentally differ with liberalism, but Islam provides accountable and representative government, economic prosperity, social stability, ethnic, tribal and inter-religious stability and allowed a civilisation founded upon it to become a focal point of learning and knowledge the world over.
The challenge for those who have conveniently reduced history to a few hundreds years of European experience is to acknowledge that the trends before us have now undermined the formula the west so eagerly parades. Those who insist on a liberal model are increasingly failing to inspire non-western populations and may soon find the global trend is against them.
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