Thread by @islamicize

Many Muslims today view discussions about the West, its technology, culture, or global power structures, through a strict binary lens: either you accept it entirely, or you reject all progress and return to “cave-man” living. This binary mindset is the product of colonial and…+

…postcolonial conditioning, where the West successfully framed itself as the only definition of civilization and advancement. For decades, Western powers and their local collaborators presented their systems as the sole pathway out of poverty, ignorance, and weakness. Over…+

…time, this left many Muslims unable to imagine any alternative models of progress. So when the West is critiqued, whether for its destructive environmental practices, cultural corruption, or violent interventions, these critiques are misinterpreted as wholesale rejection…+

…of progress itself. The binary prevents Muslims from recognizing that one can challenge Western hegemony without abandoning the very idea of development.

This binary also emerges because many Muslims have been cut off from their own intellectual tradition, which…+

…historically provided nuanced ways to evaluate and adapt knowledge and technology without losing moral grounding. Without this framework, the debate collapses into a false choice: embrace the West’s vision in totality or fall into backwardness. In reality, Islam offers a…+

…different paradigm that does not operate within this binary, one that embraces beneficial knowledge and tools while remaining anchored in divine guidance and ethical limits. The knee-jerk reaction to critique, then, is not a defense of progress but a symptom of an…+

… internalized inferiority complex, where Muslims feel trapped in a world where the West sets all the terms. Escaping this binary requires recovering the confidence to define progress on Islamic terms, rather than accepting the West’s monopoly over what counts as “civilized.”