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Journal Islam Today N° 20-1424H/2003

Islamic Culture and Modern Challenges

Mohamed Larbi Messari(*)

From the onset, I would like to underscore that I prefer the phrase  "Muslims’ culture" to "Islamic culture", given that cultural patterns are created by humans whose views and practices change according to eras and to societies. Another reason is that modern challenges are posed to Muslims and not to Islam as a creed standing firm regarding both contemporary and past challenges. To make things easier for me, I will probe the relative and leave the absolute to other perspectives.

After this clarification, one could argue that the forms and styles of Muslims culture have changed since the early era of the Prophet when the creed was pure and when were built the essential rules regulating the relationships between God and humans and governing their life on earth, in preparation for the hereafter.

After the elapse of that short period of time during which the Message was transmitted, the trends and jurisprudence of Muslims grew diversified. Likewise, their living modes and practices and even the way they view themselves and they view others changed.

This process went through several stages. A Moroccan thinker(1) singled out a particular period of these stages of change. He considers that it constitutes a turning point in the history of Muslims in their interaction with the other.

Omar Ibn Al-Khattab, the second Caliph in Islam, was unhappy to see Mouaouya, his Governor in the Levant, dressed up like a king. The latter answered: “Oh! Commander of the faithful, we are confronting the enemy and we need to show off donning war attire”. Omar kept silent.

Knowing that the Caliph Omar had a strong personality, rigorous stands and was scrupulously observing the original teachings of Mohammed (PBUH), his silence can be understood as an indication that things were starting to usher in relativism.

Throughout 14 centuries, Muslims went through changing conditions and distinct conditions. They have been endeavoring in each society and in all periods to find formulas to reconcile between their creed and the requirements of adaptation. Sometimes, they would ignore their religious teachings and sometimes they would be so weak that they would fall into decline. In several instances, they were extremely self-confident and would open onto others without any complex. They would also match the loftiness of the message they bore and would, then, be tolerant and adhere to justice.

In the contemporary era, they find themselves confronted with a great deal of challenges that require the adoption of stands that conform to their status and to their standing on the balance of power.

In the beginning: resistance to occupation

If we are to trace back the beginning of the “present era”, we could say that it started with the start of European colonization. When the invasion reached North Africa and the Middle East and several Asian countries  in the Indian peninsula, Indonesia and the Philippines(2), they found that most of the population in these regions were Muslims.

We have to make two remarks: the first one is that the western colonization confronted Islam in four fifths of the region it invaded; the second remark is that the anti-occupation resistance that emerged in the colonized countries drew its foundations from Islam as an essence for patriotism.

In their resistance movement, African and Asian people sought two objectives: emancipation from colonization and achieving scientific, economic and political development.

Opposing occupation in countries populated by Muslims took place at an early time and it is not exaggerated to say that these peoples were pioneers in opposing colonization, given that Christian people and populations were close enough to the Europeans to remain passive.

The start of self-questioning

In this context, people fond of emancipation started to wonder on their weaknesses that caused occupation. One of the landmarks of this self-questioning is a book by Shakib Arsalane, a reputed Arab-Islamic thinker of the 30’s who chose a provocative title for his book: “why are Muslims lagging behind and why are the others progressing?”(3)

Shakib Arsalane argues that the causes behind Muslims under-development are: ignorance, the debauchery of Emirs and Ulema and the alliance of the passives and the ungrateful. He explains to the ungrateful how Islam is able to produce answers to various contemporary questions, stressing that despite a widespread belief that western people are shying away from their religion, they are in fact observing their religious values. He also strongly criticizes the passives saying that a passive Muslim is not less harmful than an ungrateful Muslim(4), because a passive Muslim “regards Islam as a religion for the hereafter only” while passive Muslims are fiercely opposing natural sciences, mathematics and philosophy, their techniques and industries, considering them as a deed of the unfaithful. In responding to the passive Muslims, he quotes verses from the Koran that advocates thinking and rejects reliance on others as well as laziness.

There was also an outstanding Egyptian thinker in the 40’s and 50’s, the Christian Salama Mussa who set out to answer a simple question: “why are they strong?” referring to western countries.

From time to time, the way that Muslims viewed themselves and the others, especially Europe with which they interacted directly though occupation was shaken. Since the 20’s up to the eighties when Abdelkebir Khatibi, from Morocco, published a book on Japan, there was a striking recurrence in the Arab intellectual and political literature of the example of the Japanese renaissance, an eastern country that achieved a strong industrial and technical progress. Likewise, the historian Abdellah Laroui followed suit to explain that Japan reached that level of progress and “vanquished in a short period of time the white and the yellow because it followed a straight path to fathom the secret of the west”(5).

There were different reactions to the challenge embodied by the West. Taha Hussein, the Al-Azhar graduate well-versed in French, adopted  methodological skepticism in dealing with the cultural heritage. But he was harshly decried when he touched taboos in his book. He later on retracted his views in an edited version of his book “the pre-Islamic poetry”. Another Al-Azhar university graduate, Sheik Ali Abderrazak, who wrote about “Islam and the foundations of government” tackled  the issue of Khilafa and the system of government in Islam.

On his part, Laroui(6) summarized the development that accompanied the effects of modernity in three models: the model of a sheik who was reassured that Islam was fit for the era and that Christianity in Europe shied away from rationalism and was, consequently, criticized by reformists. The second model is the political leader -who led the liberation war- and concludes that the reasons of decline lie in subjugation. The third model is the technocrat who wonders ”we have obtained emancipation, where is the ability?” In his deep probe of the three models, Laroui finds that there are loopholes in all of them as they only considered the West from a materialistic point of view. He also frustrates the “Salafyine” who take pride in saying that Arabs have reconciled with rationalism. He says that rationalism had often to trick here and there to defend its right to exist and its battles were not free of losses for all.

Modernity, How?

Modernity sparked a heated debate that varied according to levels. There were also several misunderstandings leading to confusions that still exist. One of the strongest factors of these confusions is that modernity appeared as a literal equivalent of the west. Indeed, the West remained, for Muslims, the object of challenges just like modernity was the object of an ever-growing and ever-enriched jurisprudence.

Kamal Ataturk saw in the European model the key to development, by breaking totally and entirely with the past. His opinion did not find a wide echo in most of the Islamic world countries while in the west he continues to be considered as a mere experience. The recent victory of the Justice and Development Party in the election in Turkey shows that Ataturk’s opinion did not take roots and that his view of modernity can be re-considered. Ataturk did not only follow the European example in considering secularism as a methodology to obtain the neutrality of the clergy and get them far from state affairs, but he adopted a forceful secularism that proved not well-engrained in society, while for Islamic peoples, it appeared as a synonym for Turkish nationalism and as an ethnic extremism.

In the Arab regions, the mindset was prepared to reject Ataturk’s view, given the opposition to his governing, especially in the Levant provinces. While in the Maghreb, the poet Mohamed Al-Jazuli praised in two poems the battles waged by Ataturk against the Greeks. But when his anti-religion ideas became evident, there were no longer any signs of adherence to Ataturk’s trends in the Maghreban thought.

As a reaction to the Turkish nationalism, a new trend advocating an Arab interpretation of history appeared in the Mashreq. The Syrian nationalists called for arabizing the region’s history in a way that puts Islam as a period between parentheses and lays strong ties with the Phoenicians. But, this extremist intellectual endeavors remained mere words on paper because Islamic peoples, and especially Arabs, were busy with the liberation wars where Islam played the leading motivating role even in societies where the liberation movements advocated that “religion is for God and the homeland is for all”, given the religious plurality.

In parallel to Arabity, Egypt witnessed the emergence of Mediterranean belonging, after the idea that Egypt is part of Europe. In the Arab Maghreb where the creed is unified, there was no need to justify why the national resistance to colonization was based on factors other than the Islamic religion. Meanwhile, Arabity was not understood as an ethnic belonging but rather as the adoption of militating identity against colonization and as a cultural belonging.

Patriotic sentiments were combined with, or rather inspired from, Salafism which Jamal Eddine Al-Afghani, Mohammad Abduh and Rashid Reda, spread in the Mashrek. Given the human structure (Arabs and Berbers) and the diversity of the backgrounds of the national liberation leaders (Al Qarawyine, modern schools), the Moroccan patriotism, from the onset, combined the religious, the social and the political. Demonstrations set out from mosques and from political parties offices, while the political program comprised such various claims as limiting working hours, equal wages for Moroccans and Europeans, trade unions grievances, civil freedoms and elected councils.

Throughout the years, the Moroccan nationalism became a modern democratic endeavor seeking to remedy the under-development left by occupation and to create an independent national and modern state. The writings of Allal El Fassi(7) conveys a discourse that considers that Islam does not contradict development and upholds that Islam was pioneer in proposing solutions to organizing the state and the society. This underscores that Moroccan nationalism is the appropriate answer to the challenge posed by colonization. Besides the discourse, there was an organizing and inciting endeavor which made the Moroccan nationalism adopt the cause of development so that this cause be not restricted to Europeans, be they Marxists or Liberals. This means that development is not an imitation of the west but rather an expression of a self-emanating necessity that is adapted to legacy. For the same purpose, there was keenness to get Moroccan trade unions far from Marxism.

Despite all this, Moroccan nationalists insisted that Islam is not in war against Christianity but against colonization as an exploitation system. Thanks to these theses, the Church in Morocco supported the Moroccan national movement and condemned repression. Likewise, the first friends of the Moroccan national movement were democrats, mostly Socialists, who backed, on the basis of religious freedom, the Moroccan nationalists’ fight against Christian proselytism that was supported by the colonial power and encouraged through the Berber Dahir issued in the thirties.

Contemporary challenges

After the independence, relationships between the Islamic peoples and the West took new forms, as the fight against occupation crowned in 1960 with the international declaration on de-colonization. Africa, Asia and some Latin American countries entered a new stage of development that took universal dimensions, when these peoples focused their action, since the Bandoeng conference (April 1954), on solidarity among the three continents.

New and strong challenges started to be posed around three major axes: national liberation, an independent development system and the right to a specific identity.

The problematic posed by the three axes coincided in time, as liberation from colonial dominion was intrinsically linked to the quest of an independent development system, or what was known in the 60’s as economic independence that imposed on the agenda of the newly-independent peoples emancipation from the dominion of the Latin west, and subsequently from its Anglo-Saxon branch, after the United States entered with much contempt world war II.

Meanwhile, the newly independent countries were keen to stay away from both capitalism and communism and to adhere to a third path which was politically embodied in the non-aligned Movement. Eventually, liberation and the quest of an independent development led to a tendency to break ties with western values and concepts which used to appear as the unique and highest system. This is what Fukuyama justified with his reputed saying “the end of history”. Before, there were the World bank’s remarks on the market economy, the reality of prices and the appearance of globalization with the dismantling of barriers between markets.

The status of Muslims in all this is symbolized by their demographic weight (more than one and quarter billion) and their existence in political and militarily vital locations for Western strategies (60% of the world oil reserves).

National liberation

The issue of liberation focused the attention of Islamic peoples all along the 20th century. While the occupied countries achieved with the UN General Assembly Resolution n° 1514 a great victory, a new colonialism appeared with its economic and military aspects amidst the cold war.

This trend was further exacerbated by developments of the Palestinian issue, which is the longest liberation movement and which represents, especially for Arab peoples and for all Muslims, a clear illustration of injustice. It was crystal clear that international legality was applied in a double-standard way, leading to a frustration that is still felt in a way heralding the continuation of tension and unpredictable explosions.

The major turning points experienced by the Palestinian issue are the 1967 war and the October 1973 war. The first one resulted in two consequences: the inaccuracy of the thesis that Israel is a weak state threatened by its Arab neighbors. It became clear, as it was deplored by General De Gaulle, that it was Israel that started the war in order to achieve expansion. The second consequence is that the cruel defeat sustained by Arabs attracted the concerned countries’ attention to the need to proceed to a bitter reconsideration of the situation, especially regarding the political and religious trends that dominated in the region and to revise the balance of powers inside the Arab fold and in the world. This is still affecting the present period. The only positive impact is the emergence of a specific identity to the Palestinian people, although this was also laden with personal considerations of a given Arab government. The Palestinian cause was equally marked by some ideologies and policies that are still embodied in several forms.

The October war revealed to Arabs their inner strength and helped them get rid of the complex that “Israel was an invincible power”. It equally unveiled the superficiality and shallowness of the religious contradictions in which the Arab thought imprisoned itself. The weapon of oil was tested in that war and, since then, moderate Arabs have been playing a central role.

While the Palestinian issue played a major role in shaping up the Arab landscape for more than fifty years, it is also true that the failure of national independence movements to distribute roles among the elite and to ensure a wide distribution of independence benefits and the intensification of disputes over power, have led to incessant tensions, reflected in internal strives and  disputes among regimes. All this is a result of poor democratic practices.

In the midst of all of this, there was a succession of military coups to stop corruption and heal the disappointments inflicted on peoples. As a result, liberalism was halted as new theses evolving around revolution and ideology started to appear with an inclination towards a type of “Kamelism” reflected particularly in marginalizing religion.

In the 70’s and as a result of the 1967 defeat, there was a kind of return to religion, at the initiative of some regimes in an attempt to confront the progressist trend with the advocates of religion. The ideas upheld by Abi Al-Ala Al Mawdoudi joined those of Sayed Qotb, creating an Islamic awakening that evolved under several forms which are still noticeable today.

This led to troubles in the general situation and failure to guarantee collective security, especially in the Arab region with the appearance of new unification ideas and experiences that all failed. The worst of these events was Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait which represented the most dangerous result of blind compliance with slogans without due consideration for results.

Countries in the Arab region failed in all the approaches they adopted to achieve inter-Arab solidarity and in their experiences of political unity or economic coordination. Eventually, they opted for the nation-state as a structure that cannot be ignored. This is similar to what happened in Latin-American countries where Bolivar’s discourses spread at a dizzying speed, against a backdrop of national structures that never run short of reasons to defend the existing entities. The issue of Arab economic unity is still kept in the drawers of the Arab League since 1957. Even the modest endeavor pursued by Jordan to separate economic action from political conflicts among Arab states and that was agreed upon by the Amman Arab summit was fruitless.

Independent development

What we have presented above is linked to independent development for which Islamic countries, each one with its own methods, conducted various experiences that remained, in most cases, unable to reach the expected results, that is to become developed countries.

Out of 57 member-countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, only 5 are ranked by the UNPD (2001 report) as countries with a high indicator of human development: Brunei, Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE and Qatar. The indicator ranges between 0.801 and 0.931.

There are among countries with a medium human development indicator -ranging between 0.502 and 0.798- 20 countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference while the remaining member-countries are ranked among those with a weak human development indicator.

During the 40 years that followed independence, our countries achieved five times, and sometimes more, than what was achieved during colonization that lasted for decades and in some cases hundreds of years, as far as education, health services and economic development are concerned. However, economic performance is still weak, and the figures related to food security and scientific development are still low, whether compared to the needs of populations, to developed countries, to the average in developing countries, or to Latin-American countries (8).

Only a few Islamic countries have succeeded in reforming their education system and enforcing good economic programs like Malaysia that managed to narrow the gap with developed countries. Some experts ascribe the problems in Islamic countries to the development choices made by these countries. At a time of troubled situation, came the winds of globalization to threaten fragile economies, like those of most countries of the South.

The Islamic declaration on sustainable development – adopted by the environment ministers of member-countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (June 2002) – insisted that poverty, debts, wars and armed conflicts were the major obstacles to development. The conference requested industrialized countries to allocate 1.5% of their GDP to support developing countries. This is a clear indication that the internationally-agreed upon rate of 0.7% is not enough in addition to the fact that many countries did not respect this rate. Islamic countries with a high income reserved no less than 2% of their GDP to help developing countries without tying their assistance to purchasing goods from donor countries, like industrialized countries do.

Modernity

The third level of challenges -which is a problem related to identity- deserves a long study. The crises experienced by the Islamic countries are related to the cultural identity and to difficulties to combine authenticity and modernity. In the core of this quest for blending authenticity and modernity lies the issue of confronting the West – which was until recently the direct enemy and it is at the same time a model with which relations are concurrently political, economic and cultural.

Here, we should address a widespread confusion. Paul Kennedy(9) gives the striking example of Ghana and South Korea which had a similar GDP in the 60’s (around 630 dollars). Then a wide gap separated them. Kennedy says that these countries which, used to depend on agriculture and spent more that half a century under occupation, had to choose their way to join the West. The result is the present situation.

This example shows that everything depends on will and planning. We cannot always argue that the West is standing in the way of development. The list of winners and losers in the battle of development is not drawn by a secret hand. Often, it is a question of missed opportunity.

With its superiority in many a field, the West is a model that should be followed while dismissing aspects that seem laden with threats. Islamic countries have a strong personality derived from their Islamic religion. Seventy years of Soviet government have not erased Muslims’ attachment to their religion. For example, the Chechens faced several campaigns of extermination and deportation in the last 20 years but kept a strong will to live.

Total integration in modernity was often presented as going hand in hand with total integration in the West. It was in several instances difficult for Muslims to reach a sound equation. Their stand varied from categorical refusal to attempts to reach consensus and adopt mid-way stands, or a kind of selection- spurred by a strong obsession to reach the truth in building a specific identity. The French researcher Bruno Etienne in his book “Radical Islam” summarized the situation in the following question: “Is it possible to islamize modernity or modernize Islam”? The situation is, however, by far more complex than that (10).

The first difficulty faced by Muslims over the last century was how to take a clear stand toward technological innovations. Chakib Arsalane recounts (11) that King Saud, the founding-father, asked the theologians about their opinion on inventions such as telecommunications, the phone, the car. They answered that they were useful innovations and that there was nothing in the Quran nor in the Prophet’s Sayings that forbade them, neither explicitly nor implicitly. Arsalane also says that one of these theologians said: “This is evident and it is clear that it is allowed by the Sharia’ (Islamic law)”.

Muslims who were, and still are, impressed by the sensational progress taking place in the West, were insistently wondering whether they should imitate the West. Iranian Shiite researcher, Ali Shariati(12), took a broader view at the issue and said that civilization should not be imitated in all its details and likened importing civilization to “a ball, that once it is pierced, blows up”. He also addressed the issue of secularism – which he considered as the most outstanding feature of western civilization – and said that Islam does not oppose progress, as the Church did in Europe, and that is why secularism should not be applied in Islamic countries. He urged for renewal and called Shiism “the Islamic Protestantism”. This view is not shared by everyone.

Ernest Gellener underscored in a book on Islam an essential issue that “Islam was a state from the onset and that the executive power is ruled by the project of Allah”. Bernard Lewis tackled another problem which is the life of Muslims in a non-Islamic country. He says that minorities living in Europe perform their rituals without hurdles and without any problems with the regimes while Muslims want to live under their own sacred laws. With this assertion, he rings the alarm bell over risks of confrontation. This is denied by the situation of North African emigrants in France living under the laws and customs that they respect. Today, there is a process to organize the situation of Muslims who obtained the French citizenship in order to manage the affairs of the Muslim community under the Republic’s laws.

Actually, the issue is Islam and how Muslims are living in their original environment. Generally, the type of regime in the Islamic world is modeled after the western one. The newly independent nation-state has rejected the old type of administrative hierarchy and decision-making system and introduced some changes on the regime inherited from colonization in a bid to apply the Islamic reference to their laws, especially regarding the personal statute. An example of this is Morocco where they cancelled a law inherited from colonization that forbids women from managing their money. In this case, there was a return to Islam in order to achieve a comprehensive reform by canceling a retrograde French law. Efforts are going on in several fields to introduce amendments required by progress, depending on the historical experience of each society and the balance of power between the reform forces and the conservative forces.

In this process, women were elected prime ministers in some Islamic countries while in other countries women still do not enjoy the right to vote. This is no indicator to the degree of Islam observance. It rather depends on the social and political development that differs from one country to another.

There were also some efforts to avoid initiating economic rules applied in the West, such as Islamic banks that do not carry interests. Most Islamic countries have, however, adopted the Western banking system without considering that they are less Islamic than the others.

In another manifestation of the intellectual dynamism in our societies, there was a controversy over the nationalization of some sources of richness. A heated debate accompanied agricultural reforms endeavors. Muslim theologians had different opinions(13), each one quoted its own Islamic reference. This implies that there was a strong tendency to adapt laws and regulations to the Islamic reference.

Most countries accept to refer to positive laws which are alone quoted in courts. For example, it was thanks to a positive law, a decree enacted during the protectorate, that slave trading was forbidden.

The notion of citizenship is steadily developing and the right to choose representatives to control the executive power action is enshrined. For example, the 1992 Moroccan constitution proclaims that Morocco applies human rights as they are universally recognized. The Moroccan practice gives the preeminence to the international laws endorsed by Morocco over the national law. International laws approved by Morocco are published in the official gazette and the Moroccan government submits to international organizations regular reports on the enforcement of laws it has adhered to.

Attitudes also vary regarding global concepts engrained by modern political practice from one country to another. Consequently, there is a growing tendency to adopt the inevitable reforms. For example, Islamic countries have successively adopted one after the other six international declarations and conventions on human rights. 

According to the 2001 report of human development, 35 member countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference have approved the six conventions, five have adopted two of them, six countries approved four of them, five countries adopted three convention and only two countries have only approved one.

The conventions are as follows: the convention against racism (approved by 53 countries), the international convention on political and civil rights (approved by 42 countries), the international convention of economic, social and cultural rights (approved by 41 countries), the international convention for the eradication of segregation against women (approved by 45 countries), the international treaty against torture (approved by 43 countries) and the international convention on children rights (approved by 54 countries).

This divergence in attitudes is not helpful, but Muslims come from different origins and they live in the five continents where different weathers might tolerate lighter dresses for women and for men. Likewise, different historical experiences might generate a difference in the acceptance of some practices and different social structures might tolerate that males and females attend the same schools or work side by side in factories. Conditions differ from an environment prone to openness and an isolated one. In all cases, there is a general interest that the circumstances tolerated by the difference in weather, historical experience and social environment be conform to teachings stemming from the same origin.

The discrepancy among Muslims depends on what the community accepts. There is no justification to confusing all Muslims with Ben Laden or the Talibans. However, the west does not have the right to refuse some practices and consider as universal legacy only practices that it accepts. Meanwhile, some values of the West are worth being adopted, like democratic values, and are indeed an acceptable model.

In short, the pending problem in the Islamic world is the adoption of democracy. In the report on human development in the Arab world, the democracy indicator was modest and often contradicted the income level and the education level. According to the report released by the United Nations Development Program in 2002, only three Arab countries had democracy indicators that ranged between 0.35 and 0.48 while in the other Arab countries, the indicator did not exceed 0.17. This shows the wide gap between the three first best-ranking Arab countries and the internationally-adopted criteria and it is even wider with the other countries.

On 5/11/2001, as the world was still stunned by the 9/11 events in New York, the French “Le Monde” published an interesting article by Daniel Cohen who discusses Islam’s ability to progress. In the beginning, he wonders whether Islam should be held responsible for the poverty of Muslims. He refuses this thesis, arguing that this would be tantamount to saying that Confucianism is the reason for the poverty of the Chinese. Given that China’s growth rate is estimated at 10% annually, the reason for economic performance should be found outside religious considerations. Likewise, Ireland, Spain and Portugal which are all catholic countries had different economic development levels. He also rejected the drive to tie economic development with genes, drawing a comparison between north and south Korea and between Czechoslovakia and Austria, between China and Taiwan. He also draws the comparison between a group of Muslim countries with countries of the same race (Malaysia and Thailand, Senegal and Cote D’Ivoire, India and Pakistan). He also wonders whether religion has any role in demographic growth and said Indonesia and Thailand have the lowest birth rates in the region (2.6 children per woman) while the Philippines which is a catholic country has a birth rate of 3.6 and India has a birth rate of 3. The analyst expect the Middle East to take off if Egypt and Iran could mamange to achieve an economic renaissance.

(*) Former Information Minister in Morocco. He was commissioned by ISESCO to write this paper which he presented before the international symposium on Arab-Iberian-American dialogue (Tunis, 9-13 December 2002).

(1) Abdullah Ibrahim “Islam in the horizon of the year 2000", p. 32, Casablanca, 1977.

(2) Resistance facing the Spaniards and the Portuguese in the Philippines was led by Muslim leaders.

(3) Series of articles published by Cairo-based “Al-Manar”, magazine, issued by Rachid Redha, Banned in the 30s in Morocco, it was republished in Beirut, in 1976.

(4) Page 101 and after in the book.

(5) Page 55 of “Arab contemporary ideology”.

(6) “Arab contemporary ideology” translated to Arabic by Mohamed Aitani. Published by Dar Al-Hakika, Beirut 1970.

(7) A Moroccan thinker and political leader (1910-1974).

(8) In a research by the author comparing Latin American countries to Arab countries, it appears that the level of education generalization or the funds allocated to scientific research in the countries of the first group is reached by the second group countries 10 years, and in some cases 15 years, after. In the last decade, the gap has started to narrow.

(9) Paul Kennedy in “Preparing the 21st Century”, p. 237.

(10) Bruno Etienne, “Radical Islam”.

(11) Page 116 in “Why”.

(12) Ali Shriati, in “intellectuals and their role in society”, page 49 and consecutive pages in “Islamic left”, published in Cairo, January 1981.

(13) When agricultural reform in Morocco started, Allal Al Fassi who advocated socialist ideas confronted Moroccan theologians who quoted references from the Islamic Fiqh.