Thread by @HusseinAboubak

This is a treasure tweet that I would like you to invest some time reading along with my analysis if you would maybe get a new insight on the ME. The tweet tells an all too common narrative about the story of Islam and the West, a story of how the advance of the Western /1

https://twitter.com/iyad_elbaghdadi/status/1427929875588030468

colonialism and modernity in the Muslim world created a huge schism between Muslims and their past and alienated them from their authentic history and culture to which Islamism and terrorism are a response. This basic narrative is the foundation of the way humanity sees that /2

part of history. It's the narrative shared by Islamists, history books of Arab govs, post-colonialism, Bernard Lewis, and almost everyone. The narrative is so solid that it's a matter of consensus between combatants and rivals. Even this former Islamist, the original retweet, /3

after leaving Islamism, he still holds the narrative dearly. This is the story of so many liberal Muslims and even atheist Muslims that I know. Despite leaving the faith they can't let go of the story of enforced alienation from both the authentic Islamic past and the modern /4

present. This is the reason that so many educated secular Muslims wholly endorse pos-modernism as it combines a safe elegy of pre-modernity and a blanket condemnation of modernity. It is really hard for me to emphasize to you how big this narrative is. Even right-wing /5

fanatics who fear "jihad" and "shariah" see history this same way. Muslim intellectuals, from Indonesia to Morocco, lament, mourn and despair this crisis. In Arabic, the now inseparable dichotomous pair modernity and authenticity "alhadatha wal turath," are no longer words /6

but a mythical state of perpetual inescapable alienation, a divine tragedy of cosmic proportion for the Arab-Muslim protagnist. Every year for the past 70 years, hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on books, workshops, conferences, research, journals, and more all /7

dedicated to the question of "modernity vs. authenticity." As the guy said in his tweet, Arab thinkers and intellectuals waste their lives digging in classical Islamic literature trying to discover who they were before modernity. Here is the twist, this never happened! The /8

entire narrative is fictitious and has its origins in the early influences of 19th-century German political thought, Hegelian thought to be specific, on Arabs and Muslims. /8The cult of the eternal authentic self to be found in some essence represented in the original idea is /9

a modern idea of German idealism. There was never something called an authentic Islamic essence. The Muslims in the Middle East easily transformed many times as they were invaded by different Turkic nations without trouble. Even in early years of colonialism, people fairly /10

quickly adopted European products, clothes, and even languages. Those classic books that those hopeless Muslim romantics are pouring on, were buried in dust and oblivion and no one knew of them. Ironically, it was the Orientalist who re-discovered the Islamic past. A lot of /11

what we tend to think off today as Islamic history and Islamic concepts was pretty much unknown in Muslim societies in the Middle East. The mythical Islam that is deeply humiliated and alienated from itself because of a mythical all-mighty West is sadly a German fantasy. /12

This is actually hilarious and tragic and the same time! Hundreds of millions of humans think that human history happened this way. Research institutions, PhDs, university curricula, online content, documentary videos, school text books, history books in all world languages, /13

pass this fantasy as a history. This is so sad that it is so funny!

Yes, it also became a self-image for entire societies that went ahead and produced its political ideologies, Islamism, on that foundation. Like whole societies thinking of their human existence in terms of 19th-century German fantasy!! This is how legal concepts from medieval /

government manuals, such as jihad, were revived and brought back to the humiliated alienated protagonist on the path of self-realization.

Just a follow up: none of what i said should be construed to mean that i endorse any of post-colonial studies and Ed Said garbage, like the idiotic language of coloniality/decoloniality, or blame the "West" and demonize Westerners. History is basically unintended consequences

This thread is for those who are interested in the ME, not narcissistic young Americans who are playing social games.

@threadreaderapp please unroll