For all its advancements, the 21st century has witnessed a stunting in our collective human consciousness. Don’t get me wrong, I am no embittered classicist with all-things-Tradition superiority complex in a grip of technophobia. The technological advancements we have witnessed in the past 50 years have ushered unprecedented levels of connectivity, convenience and innovation and they will continue to play an important and positive part in the still unfolding story of humanity.
However, the current broader narrative of humanity has simultaneously seen mass levels of egoism, greed, reactionary hysterics, cowardice and vitriol in global general discourse, lacking any semblance of transcendence, morality and meaning beyond one’s own narrow ideas, views, “identities” and experiences. It takes no philosopher, sage or genius to firmly look at the comment section of posts everywhere and say: things are ugly. We’ve lost our way. So where are we headed?
The nation state experiment, though alluring at the time of its inception, has failed us today. It has created more “isms”, constructs and borders than ever, so much so that humanity has lost its shape and purpose. Empires always murmur under the thin veneer of states. The current clash of old world titans will lead to the birth of a new age, a new collective that has shed the garb of ailing nationalisms and obsolete, senile governments, but are we prepared?
Liberalism has brought important advancements to conversations on racial justice, human rights, women’s rights and those of minorities. However, liberalism, like other ideologies, has become an end in of itself, parroting platitudes and becoming viciously insular and exclusionary. Even “Science” became a totalitarian political tool to be wielded against anyone who questions government policies as “ignorants" and “racists.” Everything is “Relative.” Nothing is “sacred” (except green juice and yoga). “Everything sucks, then you die.” “Manifest.” “Spiritual but not religious.” The end.
That is not to say that conservatives or neo-traditionalists hold the holy grail of Enlightenment. Partially, they are wholly on to something when they bemoan the death of the Virtues and Universal principles. However, classicists, traditionalists and conservatives have had an appalling track record of a masculine only world view, one that turns a painful blind eye to racial justice, the weak, the lowly and the disempowered.
This is no postmodernist attempt to be “balanced” and “nuanced” and leave it at that—the intellectual’s ever convenient cowardly copout. It would be all too easy to simply to say that both camps are “correct” in some ways and wrong in others. I do believe in Truth with a capital T. I do think one camp is closer to the core of Truth than the others. (However, I will leave you to guess which one ;) )
The twain (liberalism and conservatism) converge on one, glaring blindspot: Islam. Liberals are today slow to champion the recent “woke” cause of Islamophobia, but they don’t really know Islam and Muslims—and most importantly, the Prophet Muhammad—other than through the lens of “Muslim identity”, with things like the hijab ban in France. Christian and Jewish intellectuals have allied to build a morally and intellectually dishonest (not to mention shortsighted) worldview in which Islam preferably never existed, in which Muhammad was a false Arab prophet, and Muslims contributed nothing to the world except extremism terrorism. For any reader of human history, this is an egregious lie, and misses a real chance at understanding where the arc of the moral universe is bending towards.
If the “Judeo-Christian West” takes a good look at itself, it will find that it has sidelined Islam and kicked it to the civilizational curb, with great malice and intentionality for far too long. In my next blog post, I write what Muslim themselves are missing about Islam and what they can better do to be exemplars of the Universal message of Muhammad.