The 20th century was one of the most important in the
history of mankind. As it drew to an end, advances in the scientific
and technological fields inevitably gave rise to questions as to the
shape of the century to follow.
At the end of the 1980s, the disappearance of a bi-polar world led to
attitudes to the likely course of history. That position was known as
"the new world order." In a short time, it was placed on a
number of theoretical foundations.
One of the new period's most important theoreticians, Francis Fukuyama,
claimed that liberal capitalist values were the highest which mankind
could attain. In his article "The End of History" that sparked
off a whole debate, he suggested that political systems and concepts
of living were coming to resemble one another in all parts of the world.
In his view, the defining characteristic of ideologies had disappeared,
and the world was falling into a competition based on economics. That
was not the first time such a claim had been made, of course. Even before
Fukuyama, the thesis that history developed by means of competition
and conflict had been suggested in the framework of a deterministic
and Darwinist concept of history.
Fukuyama's Claim of the End of History
According to the new thesis, mankind was about to reach the happiest
point in its history. In an article in the Wall Street Journal after
the Sept. 11 attacks, Francis Fukuyama adopted a Darwinist model of
the social sciences, and described the future of humanity in these words:
But the way in which I used
the word history was different: it referred to the progress over the
centuries toward modernity, characterised by institutions like democracy
and capitalism. My observation, made in 1989 on the eve of the collapse
of communism, was that this evolutionary process did seem to be bringing
ever larger parts of the world toward modernity. And if we looked
beyond liberal democracy and markets, there was nothing else towards
which we could expect to evolve; hence the end of history.1
Those who adopted a deterministic belief and claimed
that mankind had finally come to the end of its road were taken by
surprise by the instability and wars in Europe, the Middle East and
elsewhere in the world. The Middle East, the Balkans, the Caucasus
and parts of Africa, regions that had lived by Qur'anic morality up
to the 20th century and hosted very different cultures and ethnic
structures, were submerged in chaos.
Following
these developments, a number of theoreticians, led by Professor Samuel
P. Huntington from Princeton University, generally put forward an opposing
view and claimed that the next years would see a clash of civilisations.
According to these theoreticians, cultural differences between civilizations
would give rise to ideological conflict, and that these would polarize
and accelerate, becoming actual conflicts.
Samuel Huntington had put forward his thesis in a 23-page article
in 1993, called "The Clash of Civilizations." It received
a mixed reception when first proposed. Recent developments and statements
by some Western statesmen have again livened up the debate on the
thesis.
As the world entered a new age, ideologues such as Huntington, like
Fukuyama, suggested that ideologies had lost their defining characteristics
and that there had been a return to the times when civilizations sought
their inspiration from religion. According to Huntington's ideas,
the conflict between civilizations would grow. In the next century,
the world would turn into a place of conflict. Huntington expected
the greatest conflict to be between the Western and Islamic civilizations.
The Solution Revealed in the
Qur'an to the Conflict Between Civilizations View
In the Qur'an, mankind is promised peace and well-being, not conflict.
Allah says that even people of different religions need to come together
and display tolerance:
Say, "O People of the
Book! Let us rally to a common formula to be binding on both us and
you: That we worship none but Allah; that we associate no partners
with Him; that we erect not, from among ourselves, Lords and patrons
other than Allah." (Qur'an, 3:64)
That truth alone is enough to invalidate Huntington's
expectation of a clash between civilizations. In order for there to
be conflicts, both parties need to have an aggressive and hostile
mindset, whereas Islam is tolerant of and reconciliatory to other
civilizations.
The reasons for the tragedies experienced in the 20th century are
mainly the ideas put forward in the 19th. Ever since the earliest
times, ideologies which denied creation and claimed that matter was
all there was then drew strength from Darwin's theory of evolution
and began to spread ever wider. These twisted ideologies suddenly
became a philosophy of life for whole societies.
The implementation of materialist ideologies in society led to the
prevailing of a view in which only material things were seen as of
any importance, by raising generations that oppressed the weak, despised
family values, knew nothing of brotherhood or peace, were far removed
from such spiritual values as love, sacrifice and respect, had no
ethical values and took no pleasure in art or science. As a result
of the ideas imposed on society in the light of the materialist mentality,
it was intended to create communities that denied the existence of
Allah and believed they had no responsibilities to anyone. The way
the 20th century has gone down in history as a time of wars, disasters
and strife is the result of that materialist mentality.
We
have left the 20th century behind us. We are now in the 21st century,
a new age. People have now seen that in the 20th century materialist
philosophy, by whatever name it may have been known, brought nothing
but destruction with it, and they are now turning to Allah. This turning
to religion and spiritual values, particularly in the later part of
the century, has rapidly embraced the whole world.
These developments are all signs that the time of the promise that
the morality of Islam, that Allah has chosen for His servants, will
soon come to prevail on the Earth. As can be seen from many verses
in the Qur'an, Allah has given the glad tidings that the morality
of the Qur'an will come to prevail, by means of the people He has
chosen. Allah makes the following promise in the Qur'an:
Allah has promised those of
you who believe and do right actions that He will make them successors
in the land as He made those before them successors, and will firmly
establish for them their religion with which He is pleased and give
them, in place of their fear, security. They worship Me, not associating
anything with Me. Any who disbelieve after that, such people are deviators.
(Qur'an, 24:55)
No matter how much those who come up with theories about the future
of the world might appear to differ from one another, they all have
one point in common: that is pessimism. The events they evaluate
from a materialist perspective prevent them from being optimistic.
Even more important, they neglect to take into account that Allah
always wants good and pleasant things for those who believe in Him.
Allah is the Protector
of those who believe. He brings them out of the darkness
into the light...
(Qur’an, 2:257)
Following
these developments, a number of theoreticians, led by Professor Samuel
P. Huntington from Princeton University, generally put forward an opposing
view and claimed that the next years would see a clash of civilisations.
According to these theoreticians, cultural differences between civilizations
would give rise to ideological conflict, and that these would polarize
and accelerate, becoming actual conflicts.
We
have left the 20th century behind us. We are now in the 21st century,
a new age. People have now seen that in the 20th century materialist
philosophy, by whatever name it may have been known, brought nothing
but destruction with it, and they are now turning to Allah. This turning
to religion and spiritual values, particularly in the later part of
the century, has rapidly embraced the whole world. 
