The assassinations of one resistance leader in Lebanon and Gaza after another by Israeli intelligence and military indicate one uncomfortable reality: Counter-violence is an extremely poor response to Western dominance. The Israeli defence industry is a derivative of the US military-industrial complex, though the Israelis themselves are no less innovative in this field. Israel is a first-rate military power in the region, with a domestic and self-sufficient defence industry, a fully motivated military, and a society whose social and political ideals are completely synchronised with the national objectives of the Jewish state. As a Western colonial outpost, Israel represents Western political and military dominance of the world.
Two trends are clearly visible in this regard. First, the West is militarily advanced; second, the West is making good use of its advanced military technology through the effective use of political organisation, which was established as part of a centuries-long process of modern state formation. The Muslim world has been technologically inferior and politically ineffective from day one. Muslims started forming political organisations during the colonial era, but deep fissures in Muslim societies kept these organisations from becoming effective both at the domestic and international levels. Militarily, countries like Egypt, Pakistan, Iraq and Turkey demonstrated the capacity to form modern militaries but essentially with the help of Western or European nations. These militaries were formed during the Cold War and essentially served the interests of one or other superpowers.
Deep fissures in Muslim societies were at the root of the militarisation of politics in these societies—the ideologies that were formed during the colonial period primarily adopted violence as a tool to achieve political objectives. This process was assisted greatly by the back-to-back defeats Muslim states like Egypt and Pakistan suffered in 1967 and 1971 at the hands of Israel and India respectively. The fundamentalist ideologies that were established primarily to fight against injustices within Muslim societies started to grow into purely militant organisations to wage armed struggle first against Israel and India and then, at later stages, against the Soviet Union and the United States.
After a brief period of fighting against individual infidel states, the Muslim fundamentalists started to develop an ideology to challenge the rule-based international system. Initially, little did they realise that any revolt against the rule-based international system dominated by the West would have to take the route of rebellion against the nation-states, which form the basis of this international system and in which any movement against the international system would be territorially located. Osama Bin Laden's revolt was such a revolt. His primary tool was violence. Even though he did not realise that he was rebelling against the international system, he had to first revolt against the Muslim state, in his case, Saudi Arabia, in which he was residing. He shifted to Sudan, from where he had to shift to the statelessness of Afghanistan in 1996. In his fight, he conducted terrorist attacks against the Saudi state, and later, he made the Pakistani state the target of his terrorist attacks. In the initial years, he set the strengthening of the Muslim world as his political objective. In his ambition of challenging the international system, he ended up destabilising the Muslim states he wanted to strengthen in the first place.
Chinese chose a different course as a response to Western dominance. They felt no shame in acquiring science and technology from the West. They embraced modernisation — inherently a Western concept — and transformed it into something different, something inherently Chinese in form and content
Any Muslim enthusiast who thus wants to challenge the international system must learn from the horrible example of Osama Bin Laden. Violence is not the right tool to challenge the rule-based international system. The West is the violence specialist in this system. Militarily, it is the West which dominates this system. Anyone who wants to have a clearer picture of this dominance must look at the ruins of Afghanistan, Iraq and Gaza. Recent history must make Muslim intellectuals realise that the technological backwardness of their societies makes them vulnerable to the West's technological dominance and modern political organisation that is meant to sustain this technological dominance. I am sure what happened in Gaza has sown the seed of a more violent response to Western dominance. But it will only mean more destruction in the Muslim world.
The problem of Muslim nation-states standing between any future challenge to Western dominance and the international system dominated by the West is itself an insurmountable obstacle for political, intellectual, and social forces in Muslim societies. Challenging Muslim nation-states with violence, as Osama Bin Laden and the company did, would bring anarchy to Muslim societies. Even recalling the terrible memories of Al Qaeda-led terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan is too painful. The perception that this rule-based international system is heavily tilted against Muslim interests is at the base of Muslim alienation from this system. Partly, this perception stems from what experts of the international system describe as the psychological problem of "overestimating your importance as a target."
Apart from Muslims, there are others who too have suffered at the hands of Western dominance, like the Chinese, who are no less victims of Western dominance over the course of history. But they chose a different course as a response to Western dominance. They felt no shame in acquiring science and technology from the West. They embraced modernisation — inherently a Western concept — and transformed it into something different, something inherently Chinese in form and content. Now, commentators talk about Chinese modernity. China has grown so powerful that now the West perceives it to be a threat to the rule-based, Western-dominated international system. Chinese are in the process of building new international structures that rival structures built by the West in the wake of the Second World War.
A brief comparison between the Muslim world's intellectual response to Western dominance and the Chinese response to the same kind of Western dominance will serve our purpose. China was never physically captured by the West, but it did suffer at the hands of Western nations' military power when the latter tried to open the Chinese market for Western products. They forced Chinese emperors to open the Chinese market for Western traders and Western products. Chinese still refer to this period as one of national humiliation. The Chinese adopted a Western philosophy of Marxism as an ideal to embark on the path of modernisation. In the 1980s, the Chinese leaders started a process of acquiring technology from the West, and within a short span of 30 years, they transformed their nation into the third-largest economy in the world. Today, it is on the path to becoming the largest economy in the world very soon.
Let's give the devil its due: the West, for more than 300 years, has been the source of innovative philosophical and scientific thinking worldwide
The Muslim World was a direct victim of Western colonialism. We also learned Western political and economic philosophies after our encounter with Western education that colonial governments in Muslim lands arranged for our societies. Different segments of our societies adopted Western political and economic philosophies as ideals for modernising Muslim societies. In the post-colonial period, political leaders in the nation-states that came into being embarked on secularising projects for their nations. The Cold War shaped Muslim societies and states under US influence. In this process, a shallow type of religiosity staged a bounce back in Muslim lands as the dominant power. The US, which had replaced Britain as the dominant influence, needed conservative religiosity to counter the Godless communism of the Soviet state. Curiously, none of the Muslim nation-states turned towards the acquisition of science and technology as the Chinese did. The Americans wanted Islam and its traditional establishments in Muslim countries to be their allies against Soviet communism. We obliged. A new form of religiosity, which was a product of the colonial era, was employed by the Muslim leaders and financed and trained by the US intelligence services to turn it into a monster.
Muslim fundamentalism, just like its Christian and Jewish counterparts, is a product of traditional religion's encounter with modernity. Its half-baked rationalism is enough to make its adherents use Western technology for destructive purposes, but internalising the West's revolutionary philosophical and scientific ideas that could lead to innovative thinking is beyond its capacity. Thus, the terror groups which Muslim fundamentalism spawned proved more destructive for Muslim societies—the terrorism and militancy that borrowed or purchased military technology from the West ensured that it sapped all creative energy from Muslim societies. Let's give the devil its due: the West, for more than 300 years, has been the source of innovative philosophical and scientific thinking worldwide.
The Chinese borrowed from the West and transformed their country into the most powerful nation in the world. Not only powerful but one of the most affluent as well. We also borrowed from the West, but we thought Western science was value-neutral and we could use it the way we liked it. We miserably failed. Instead of being value-neutral, we embraced its destructive potential. Our traditional values, mixed with the destructive potentials of Western scientific and philosophical ideas, created a monster. We are living with this monster in our society, and this monster has sapped our creative energies. More than the threat of military dominance, we are threatened by the rise of this monster in our midst.
The lesson of recent history clearly leads to the conclusion that the response to the West's military dominance is not hidden behind borrowed military technology. The Muslim world is devoid of any capacity to undertake any innovation in the scientific and military fields. In fact, we don't need innovative military technology. That will bring only more destruction to the world. Israel and the violence it has inflicted on Palestinians is itself an indication that it is not the leading power of the future. Any power that is building its future course on military strength is not the power of the future. The power of the future will be the one that will contribute to saving the world from climate disaster, which is imminent. Destruction through military power will be negligible in comparison to the disaster that climate change will cause. Military power is not the future. World-saving, climate-transforming technology is the future. Unfortunately, it will not be the Muslim world that will be the leader in this field, but we will be its victims.