Appendix-III
Modernization and Islam
By Dr. Ali Shariati

Mankind is being driven into a new stronghold of slavery. Although we are not in physical slavery, our thoughts, hearts, and will powers are enslaved. In the name of sociology, education, art, sexual freedom, financial freedom, love of exploitation, and love of individuals, faith in goals, faith in humanitarian responsibilities and belief in one's own school of thought are entirely taken away from within our hearts.

The new so-called modern culture is built on the basis of "Western superiority and the superiority of it's civilization and it's people. The West made the world believe that the European was exceptionally talented mentally and technically, whereas the Easterner had strange emotional and gnostic talents.

These were the persons who convinced people to lay aside their orthodoxy, discard their religion, get rid of native culture (as these had kept them behind the modern European societies) and become Westernized from the tip of the toe to the top of their head!

Then thi s very way of thinking, which was introduced to the world to justify the need for modernizing the non-European nations, became the basis of thought for the non-European elites as well! Modernization in what? In consumption, not in mind. In the name of civilization, the campaign for modernization was carried on, and then for more than 100 years, the non-European societies themselves strove to become modernized under the leadership of their sophisticated intellectuals.

Let us consider the genesis and composition of this class of intellectuals. Jean Paul Sartre in the preface to "the Wretched of the Earth" points out: "We would bring a group of African or Asian youth to Amsterdam, Paris, London......for a few months, take them around, change their clothes and adornments, teach them etiquette and social manners as well as some fragment of language. In short, we would empty them of their own cultural values and then send them back to their own countries. They would no longer be the kind of pe rson to speak their own mind; rather they would be our mouthpieces. We would cry the slogans of humanity and equality and then they would echo our voice in Africa and Asia, "humanity", and "equality."

As Fanon says: "In order for Eastern countries to be the followers of Europe and imitate her like a monkey, they should have proven to the non-Europeans that they do not posses the same quality of human values as the Europeans do. They should have belittled their history, literature, religion and art to make them alienated from all of it. We can see that the Europeans did just that."

A real intellectual is one who knows his society, is aware of it's problems, can determine it's fate, is knowledgeable about it's past and who can decide for himself. These quasi-intellectuals, however, succeeded in influencing the people.

WHAT IS CULTURE?
AN ENLIGHTENED MUSLIM