Over the past fifty years the world has witnessed rapid economic and technical growth, and the communications revolution proved what the British philosopher Bertrand Russell said a few decades earlier. He was one the few who predicted globalization and called for a single global government to avert further wars. The world has become interwoven in a manner unprecedented in man s history as a result of interlocked business interests, heavy industry conglomerates and giant multinationals, and even disparate cultures intermingled in spite of national, religious and sectarian diversity.

Perhaps the clearest evidence which supports this hypothesis is the current global financial crisis which hit all corners of the world, regardless of the level of wellbeing and progress. As the American economy declined, so did the world s economies in record time.

Awakening or regression?

Did such a technological and intellectual revolution go parallel to the surge as represented by Islamic parties and organizations? Did the latter grasp and use the philosophy, aspects and results of this revolution for self-development and the adoption of modern Islamic rules, values and concepts in line with the spirit of the times and human progress?

As a matter of fact, the Islamic Awakening , which Dr. Abulmagd was optimistic about, did not progress, but on the contrary regressed, because it was hijacked by those who shut themselves off from the world and ignored human progress and the sense of history and found some Islamic currents and history in the most backward periods in the history of great Islam. There has been no Islamic project over the past fifty years to deal with the world and adapt to the level of civilization at all levels of science, technology, industry information and thought.

Due to the continuous deterioration in the development process, education deteriorated in the Arab world, which in turn affected the areas of intellect, science, humanities and all that promotes Muslims. Such a deterioration helped extremists penetrate a culturally, scientifically and socially poor environment and air their retrograde views, exploiting generations of poorly-educated, deprived generations as easy targets.

In addition, those factions with extremely retrograde views are keen to develop a culture of prohibition and intellectual intimidation as this enables them to deal with each writer or thinker individually, either through instigating his assassination or degrading him on unbelief charges (excommunication), as if they had the power to pardon and punish outside the country s laws and regulations.

Intellectual failure

Such a climate has undermined the Arab intellectual climate in general, as seen in poor influence of thinkers on the public, and poor contemporary Arab philosophy trends and intellectual and academic achievements in general. This negative effect is not limited to liberal thinking but reached religious academic institutions which are supposed to produce academically oriented generations able to link Islam to progress and the sources of power on which the Muslim state based its revival in its heyday. The drawbacks which Dr. Abulmagd referred to in his article as impediments to Islamic surge have intensified rather than receded. These include poor reformist religious thinking at religious educational institutions.

A key question

The other drawbacks are: failure to establish friendly relations and engage in dialogue with all sectors of society; (religious) scholars reluctance to give opinion, which means that major intellectual issues in Islamic thought and life are still pending; failure to present and call for Islam in order of priority. All these are represented in this question; Isn t it strange, e-g., that preachers talk at length about the prohibition of smoking and listening to music and songs, or about beard growth and imposing hijab on women, and show no such interest and enthusiasm when it comes to the issues of freedom, consultation and fair distribution of wealth?

That is a truly key question as it sums up the essential thinking of some religious parties who have used Islam as a banner in recent decades. They have never planned any reformist project, but only put forward superficial ideas, verbal advice, and frightening people of the hereafter, nor have they devised any development programmes in any area, particularly in view of the fact that many members of these parties represent a wide range of political trends in large parts of the Arab world and only promote nominal issues, with disregard to the major issues in Arab and Muslim societies, such as development, justice and keeping up with the spirit of the age and its achievements in science and technology.

These organizations found an ideal place in this fragile intellectual climate to win popularity and assert the legitimacy of their approaches, excluding others. This climate also led to further disagreements among different Islamic sects and among the Islamic organizations themselves in most countries with multiplicity of sects. In other words, such practices of extremist organizations in any religion hinder coexistence and multiplicity-related optimum development, and contradicts human progress which has become an undeniably globalized fact.

That led the former British prime minister Tony Blair to say One of the objectives of globalization is bringing people closer together. Under such circumstances, religious beliefs can either be a negative force that sets people apart i. e. religion becomes a means of neglecting understanding others or it can play a positive role through understanding and dialogue among religions and peaceful coexistence. I believe the best understanding of the basic religions is a significant individual contribution to peace. Only now have we begun to understand the importance to our future of understanding religions. This understanding among religions, with concomitant promotion of the concepts of tolerance and coexistence, requires a religious opinion movement which is almost non-existent today for several reasons, including the domination of retrograde trends in Islamic movements over any reformist movements, and charging most Islamic reformist projects with unbelief.

Internal disagreements

Despite bearing religious and Islamic slogans, some of these movements are in disagreement which sometimes amounts to in-fighting, as seen in internal Iranian disagreements over the concept of reform, or disagreements among the Islamic parties in a number of Arab countries, mainly the disagreements among warring factions in Iraq, or the attitude of Qaeda towards all these, which affirm that each movement has its own agenda and political objectives stated or otherwise alike though they bear the same religious slogans.

What the fundamentalist parties have succeeded in is presenting an image of Islam and Muslims which promotes bloodshed, fanaticism and rejection of life and tarnishes the true image of the tolerance of Islam and links its followers to mental stagnation, intolerance and rejection of coexistence. True, all religions and sects exercised fanaticism during certain periods of history; however, there is ample evidence that liberal and constitutional societies in the civilized world have overcome the concept of intolerance and imposed religious freedom, whereas less developed societies... have not yet entered the stage of quiet dialogue over religion state relationship or organized it on sound democratic bases.

Now, fifty years following the Islamic surge, which many Arab writers, such as Dr. Abulmagd, were optimistic about, we feel that such optimism has not been retained. One of Dr. Abulmagd s reasons for optimism was what he called self-criticism and internal correction. But the current results of this surge show that self-criticism has never materialized; the reverse is true: the surge has been drained of its value, civilized and human content and excluded all voices which call for linking Islam to modern civilization.

If these extremist religious movements are to go back to origins and investigate their past, they have to read history well and know that tyranny and retrograde views have only caused the collapse of societies, and that freedom of research, thinking and opinion is the only means of Islamic Arab revival and offers hope in the restoration of Arab civilization in the heyday of its glory and building for the future under all the current conditions.