Culture, Science, and Technology: How To Respond to Contemporary Challenges

AbdulHamid AbuSulayman

The Case

The Ummah was built on the foundation of tawhid,istikhlaf, the pursuit of knowledge, and personal and communal responsibility. Although it was once a leading creator of and contributor to human civilization, over the last few centuries it has become weak and backward to the point of crisis.

The awareness of the Ummah’s regression is almost 1,000 years old, dating back far beyond the challenges of European colonization and westernization. We can trace this back to Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s Ihya Ulum al-Din(Revival of the Knowledge and Sciences of Religion) and Tahafat al-Falasifah (The Incoherence of the Philosophers). Since then, the Ummah has produced dozens of revivalist personalities and movements, such as Ibn Hazm, Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn ‘Abd al-Salam, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, the Muwahiddun, the Murabitun, the Mahdis of Sudan, the Sanusis of Libya, the Ottoman sultan Salim III, Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi, Muhammad ‘Ali, Jamal al-Din al-Afgani, Rashid Rida, Muhammad ‘Abdu of Egypt, Shah Waliullah and Muhammad Iqbal of India, Amir ‘Abd al-Qadir and Ben Badis of Algeria, and many others.

All of these individual efforts and movements helped minimize and slow down the Ummah’s deterioration, and without them the Ummah’s condition and chances of survival could have been much worse. Despite these benefits, however, the Ummah’s desired successful revival, confrontation with the western challenge, and progress as a creator of and contributor to civilization has not been fully achieved.

We must ask why the goals were not achieved. What was missing? How can we restore the Ummah to its role as a creator of and contributor to a spiritually, morally, and materially balanced civilization?

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