Colonists Bluffed Us, the Mozlems! Still Do!

That's a euraka! post that i want to share. I would rather allow Gai Eaton to shed a new light on the Muslim perception of West and ensuing self-pity and reactionism that harms Muslims alone:

The Muslims´ lack of self-confidence may be attributed in part to the experience of colonialism, but it still endures chiefly, I think, because the West has bluffed the Muslims into accepting it at its own valuation and has succeeded in hiding its weaknesses, its vulnerability. It seems to me that this was exemplified in the early 1970s, during the so called "oil crisis." The oil producers — the Saudis in particular — had what amounted to a stranglehold on the Western world; they had very great power, which might have been put to use to their own advantage and to the advantage of the Ummah. What they lacked was the self-confidence which would have enabled them to use that power wisely and effectively. They lacked also that spirit of daring which encourages the powerful to make full use of their power. The opportunity was missed and may not come again... When I talk with my fellow Muslims about the nature of Western dominance, one of my principal aims is to persuade them that this power rests upon very shaky foundations.

These shaky foundations and bogus pshyco-propaganda has to be exposed with so much academic sources available at our disposal. All these academic sources provide logical foundations to the truths already to be found in Islam. Dr Asad Zaman is doing a seminal job by persuading his research graduate students through lectures in this regard by making us realize that we've been bluffed by self-deception (freely available online here). His analyses draw from variety of sources: Islamic reasoning, "subaltern" history, empirical evidences, economics, philosophy, etc. One such introduction to his lectures asserts:

Mostly people believed that history is objective, factual but in fact history is always biased. West claim that they feel the white man burden that’s why they attack other nations to make them civilized but its not true, in this lecture we have tried to show the true picture of why west attack other nations.

Its the game of confidence which Muslims lack at individual level and societal level vis a vis West. The point is: Muslims/easterners are not inferior in any sense to Western men; guess is that they are more advanced. The latter guess has to be induced in the minds to arrive at the former truth, because the confidence level is abysmally low.

Disbelievers are mad, mad, mad

Mad not in the sense being suffering from some mental or biological disorder but not being reasonable and logical, and being contradictory. There are many living concepts, so to speak part of the world, which we recognize to be existent but we don't observe them, or know them by seeing, or, even, fully understand them. We don't know how such things as gravity, unconscious, invisible rays, etc., as work. We don't know how they make things behave, and on and on and on. We don't know their inner processes or reality through our senses, but know that these exist through their manifestations. Gravity exists because we its effects. Unconscious exists because we see its effects. Although these forces and entities are hidden and beyond our observations, their behavior, their 'products' are however observable.

Take the Freud's unconscious. Despite all criticisms made against him on purely scientific grounds (not that i believe in absolute truthiness of scientific methods), his idea of the "unconscious is intact," as per professor Bloom of Yale. Unconscious is fascinating. All the slip tongues, memory gaps, and other crazy stuff comes from unconscious of which we have no conscious trace or understanding. Still its there. A better example than this is gravity that we can feel but don't observe the way we want to observe God, which is impossible for our perceptions.

The simple logic behind believing in these unobservables is their fruits, to be poetic. Then how we deny the Creator? Dr Asad Zaman in his lecture on logical positivism [lecture # 7] shows how these atheistic scientific theories are so grounded and motivated by this urge of non-believing communities to deny the Maker of the Universe. This logically explains their consistent efforts to deny Allah despite their admission about existence of life and universe being nothing short of a miracle. Allah shows the disbelieving miracles but they deny, as their predecessors did. Allah knows best.

Sidi (late) Charles Gai Eaton shows difference between a Muslim-believer and modern agnostic/atheist western's approach towards faith:

"Formerly, this confrontation [b/w Muslims and Christians in middle ages] was between men of faith who had more in common than they could ever have acknowledged. That likeness, that shared devotion to an almighty and unseen God, no longer exists. The gulf has become infinitely wider and mutual comprehension has become far more difficult. The believer to whom the transcendent reality of God is the most compelling fact known to him cannot really understand unbelief or imagine its sterility. The unbeliever, try as he may, cannot even guess what the experience of faith is; his imagination is baffled by this strange, other-worldly phenomenon."

Heavenly Roots: Eternal Unworldiness of Islam & the Individual

From which 'modern' and 'post-modern' (i assume there are) angles we can approach this passage from Gai Eaton's autobiographical essay? I do not mean to disrespect French or Englishmen by means of opinions of this particular writer, but my soul gains fire from the message of it.

"Even so, I might at least have had a homeland. I had none. Although born in Switzerland, I was not Swiss. My mother had grown up in France and loved the French above all others, but I was not French. Was I English? I never felt so. My mother never tired of reminding me that the English were cold, stupid, sexless without intellect and without culture. I did not want to be like them. So where-if anywhere-did I belong? It seems to me in retrospect, that this strange childhood was a good preparation for adherence to Islam. Wherever he may have been born and whatever his race, the Muslim's homeland is the Dar-ul-islam, the House of Islam. His passport, here and in the Hereafter, is the simple confession of Faith, La ilaha illa 'Llah. He does not expect - or should not expect - security or stability in this world and must always keep in mind the fact that death may take him tomorrow. He has no firm roots here in this fragile earth. His roots are above in That which alone endures."

Story Of Early Life Of H. Gai Eaton (b. 1921) Sh. Hassan Abdul Hakeem