Through imperialism and war, western modes of thought penetrated Islamic lands, especially the Middle Eastern heartlands. The declining Ottoman empire had imported European cultural, political and military models, and colonised territories began to influence and redraw the mental and intellectual horizons of their new subjects. Western legal traditions that emphasised rules and systemic constructs replaced the discourse of sharia (which had allowed a lot of room for adaptation) as the constitutional backbone of new nation-states.
In this new era, the religious and political fluidity around the ummah gave way to codified institutions and territorial boundaries. The introduction of Western commercial, financial, and industrial methods did indeed bring great wealth, but it accrued to transplanted Westerners and members of Westernised minorities, and only a few among the mainstream Muslim population. In time these few became numerous, but they remained isolated from the masses, differing from them even in their dress and style of life. Inevitably they were seen as agents of and collaborators with what was once again regarded as a hostile world.
For vast numbers of Middle Easterners, Western-style economic methods brought poverty, Western-style political institutions brought tyranny, and even Western-style warfare brought defeat. It is hardly sur- prising that so many were willing to listen to voices telling them that the old Islamic ways were the best and that their only salvation was to throw aside the pagan innovations of the reformers and return to the true path that God had prescribed for his people. These Islamists see western practices and views regarding women as part of a Western cultural offensive, which accompanies political and economic offensives. For many believers, western gender practices are seen more as aggression than as liberation, and Islamic women can find some genuine advantages for themselves in their new interpretations of Islam. The sense of inferiority that the Muslim world suffered has magnified the importance of America and the West in its history. Islam ~ and the Ottoman Empire in particular ~ was plunged into a deep crisis from which it has never really recovered following the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.
For a long time, the Muslim world had become isolated and inward-looking and had had little contact with the outside world. The new epoch of European supremacy was trauma and injury to its psyche. Significantly this crisis in the middle of the nineteenth century was accompanied by the emergence of deep divisions in the Islamic world itself over how best to reassert its values.
Freedom of conscience has made a difference. In an old world where the knowledge came from libraries, and scientific experiments were rare, freedom would not be so important. But in the new world, knowledge and all that it can produce come from the sharp challenge of competing ideas tested by standards of objective evidence.
In Istanbul, Muslims printed no book until 1729, and thereafter only occasionally. By contrast, the West became a world in which books were published starting three centuries earlier. The revolution in printing technology revolutionised the world and information and knowledge flowed into homes and libraries like a deluge.
The lack of spread of achievement in the Islamic world has also weakened the Islamic world’s control. The distorted images of Islam stem partly from a lack of understanding of Islam among non-Muslims and partly from the failure of Muslims to explain themselves. The results are predictable ~ hatred feeds on hatred. Muslims have had a bad deal ever since the early eighteenth century. Of course, the decline of the Muslim hegemony of Europe began in the fifteenth century when they were thrown out of Spain. But at least the Ottoman Empire on the borders of Europe and Asia and the Mughal Empire in South and Central Asia gave Muslims something to be proud of between the sixteenth to late eighteenth centuries.
The Mughals began their decline in the early eighteenth century and the Ottomans began to fall behind the European Renaissance by the same time. It is this decline of political for- tunes, which coloured Muslim consciousness.
The pluralistic world created by the diffusion of the knowledge and logic behind the fundamental tenets of the world’s major faith traditions has made religion a vital resource in the task of building a good society, a world where all can live freely and pursue visions of the highest values. We face a constant struggle with the moral, material, social, cultural and political complexities and oddities of an ever- rapidly changing society. Spiritualism is truly a way of setting out and travelling the paths of the heart, mind and the imaginary.
The different spiritual paths lead to the same human heart. The vast spiritual heritage is a common treasure of all of mankind. Our civilisation’s spiritual prism provides a kaleidoscopic canvas of shimmering stars of wisdom.
The blazing radiance exuded by this constellation is what keeps the darkness of carnal impulses from overwhelming us. The spiritual quest is an internal journey; it is a psychic path. Very often, priests, rabbis, imams, and shamans are just as consumed by worldly ambition as regular seekers of material possessions. But all this is generally seen as an abuse of a sacred ideal. These power struggles are not what religion is really about, but an unworthy distraction from the life of the spirit, which is conducted far from the madding crowd, unseen, silent and unobtrusive.
Finding common ground among faiths can help us bridge needless divides at a time when unified action is more crucial than ever. As a species, we must embrace the oneness of humanity as we face global issues like pandemics and economic and ecological crises. At this scale, our response must be as one. Harmony among the major faiths is an essential ingredient for peaceful coexistence. From this perspective, mutual understand- ing among these traditions is not merely the business of religious believers. It matters for the welfare of the entire humanity.