Systematization of "the Thought"

Contemporary Muslim Thought will Create the “Ideology of the Future”

The fact is that Muslim Thought has made important progress in the last century while Western Thought is increasingly declining. Modernity has been experiencing a grave crisis since the second half of the twentieth century and the rise of postmodernity endorsed this. Western Thought created all the ideologies and worldviews as much as it could, and exhausted all the intellectual savings it accumulated in this century. So, eventually it has nothing else to do in terms of giving an ideal to humanity as it did in the past. It has lost its charm even though its discourse or its basic concepts such as freedom and human rights has still been mustering up support to lead the masses all over the world. It makes no sense for western people anymore to sacrifice their lives on behalf of an ideal or a “cause” because the “values” became almost meaningless due to the side-effects of postmodernism. Western people could not produce new ideas or break new grounds, but just consumes what has already been produced. This is true not only for the attempts of producing new ideas, but also for the other fields of life. Western people has not been working any more as it was in the past. If the trend goes on, Western civilization will someday wither away inescapably, given the fact that production, and even civilization is, in the final analysis, a result of “effort.”

Today there is no ideology or movement of thought identified with the “East” that could lead or attract the masses. Neither the philosophical systems like Confucianism nor the religions like Buddhism is not attractive anymore for people in terms of being a philosophy or style of life. For this reason, philosophies or religions of the East can not create the ideology of the future. Nationalism too has no potential to become the ideology of the future because it is, in essence, a “limited” ideology. And a limited ideology can not achieve a “universal” success. So, though some developments concerning the rise of nationalism can occasionally be seen here and there, they would not be able to be perpetual. In today’s world it lost its chance to become the ideology of the future.

What remains is Islam. Having looked at the course of current events, we can easily say that Islam will be the “unrivalled” ideology of the future. 

This is possible, but only under one condition. The success of Islam depends, undoubtedly, on Muslims’ effort. In other words, our commitment to the principles of “working” or striving restlessly for the sake of God will determine our future. If we, as Muslims, do not manage to create an ideology that could meet the ideological the needs of humanity, we can not reach our desired goals even if the conditions or course of events are suitable. Therefore, in order to create the ideology of the future, a scholarly effort is needed. And what is more, the end product of this effort should be the one that could meet the criterion of “massification.” In another saying, Contemporary Muslim Thought should be judged by the same standarts we used to judge other human ideologies. It is to pass through the stages of beginning, flourishing and declining, just like the others. We, as Muslims, are now approaching the end of the beginning stage. If we manage to go through this stage, then, we will obtain the opportunity of reaping the fruits of systematic thinking.