What the West is aware of and is trying to change

“In the past, the European Union had preferred to deal with the secular intellectual level in the Arab civil society over the more represented Islamist organisations.”

This was stated in the document issued on Saturday April 16, 2005 by the EU Foreign Ministers meeting in Luxembourg. Although the foreign ministers acknowledged the sensitive nature of the dealings between Europe and traditional Islamist groups, the report, which Javier Solana, the European Union’s High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy, helped in preparing, posed the question, “Has the time come for the EU to be more connected to the Islamist civil society in these countries?”

This Western vision did not emerge suddenly. It has had many roots and phases of development. The Berkley conference held by the University of California in June 1981 is one of the main stages of this. One of the papers submitted in the conference studied the history of the Islamic societies’ response to the developments that occurred since the mid-18th century. It was from this paper that the idea for the book Islam, Politics, and Social Movements by Edmund Burke was taken. In the book, Burke says, “By the 1950’s, the study of nationalism became the dominant ideology throughout the region. Today, in the wake of the Islamic revival, we are inclined to wonder if the concern with secular nationalism was all a mirage.”

Peter von Sivers’s research in the book monitors the role of the “Imam” in the popular movements and revolutions that erupted against European colonialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He also noted the “idea of liberating Islam from the control of nonbelievers; an idea that was part of the complete set of ideas inherited from the classic morals and sharia”. In fact, these religious figures may use a worldly argument as a starting point for these movements in order to have the freedom for political action. Moreover, these religious organisers and leaders had aspired to achieve a lot; they clearly sought to achieve a comprehensive and coherent goal. This goal is “freedom for Islam”, which, since it did not recognise any other god that Allah, was considered susceptible to being distorted by the colonial infidels.

This same vision was noted in the research of Ellis Goldberg on the “origins of the post-colonial trade union movement in Egypt”, but from another aspect, as he says “The Muslim brotherhood newspaper was different to the left-wing newspapers, and even the nationalist newspapers, as the workers and union members read it. It spent a long time defining the colonialism as a cultural attack and considering it discriminatory. They suggested solutions that were based on cultural unity and personal dignity.”

This is what the West is aware of and trying to change. The West knows we are fighting a battle against “colonialism” for “freedom” and “dignity”. This battle is fuelled by the “Islamic culture” and is led by “imams”, despite what others claim.

Translated from Al-Sharq, 15 May, 2015

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.