Opinion

Understanding ‘The End of History’ through the shifting sands of World Order

Wikipedia defines The End of History as a political and philosophical concept which supposes that a political, economic, or social system may develop that would constitute the end-point of humanity’s sociocultural evolution and the final form of human government. It became a point of discussion after Pakistan’s new premier Imran Khan lately vowed to lodge a strong and collective Muslim protest at the international fora against blasphemous caricatures.

In the early 1990s, American political economist, Francis Fukuyama boasted that the liberal democracy and market capitalism were the final destinations of the human society.

The outlandish reading of the events almost nullified the role of the Marxist heaven, buried in the mountains of Afghanistan — that inspired millions to give blood and take blood, and blanket and envelope the entire planet in the red wave.

Fukuyama’s boasting also brushed aside the religions that ruled human mind for centuries, and other ideologies that had motivated human beings to replace idols in their temples and crosses in their churches, and faith in their bosoms.

But this liberal idea resting upon the popular sovereignty and economic life was governed by freedom, rather than the whip of bureaucracy.

To use the Orwellian metaphor, “sugar candy mountain” and final realization of Kant’s dream, “if God can become, man too can become God”, the final synthesis of human civilization in this universal project of mankind is the final bus stop where the human civilization was going to rest and enjoy for eternity.

The appeal of Islam, Fukuyama argued, was potentially universal, reaching out to all men as—and Islam has indeed defeated liberal democracy in many parts of the Islamic world, posing a grave threat to liberal practices even in countries where it has not achieved political power directly—despite the power demonstrated by Islam in its current revival, however, it remains the case that this religion has virtually no appeal outside those areas that were culturally Islamic to begin with.

Francis Fukuyama.

The days of Islam’s cultural conquests, it would seem, are over. It can win back lapsed adherents, but has no resonance for the young people of the Berlin, Tokyo or Moscow. And a nearly billion are culturally Islamic—one fifth of the world’s population, they cannot challenge the liberal democracy on its own territory on the level of ideas. Indeed the Islamic world would seem more vulnerable to liberal ideas in the long run, than the reverse.

These words written back in 1990s would seem nothing more than a comedy in today’s world—when Islam isn’t limited to a burka-clad tormented soul, submissive to the “patriarchal dictates” of religion or interpretation, but a woman born and bred in the western culture and education who proudly drives a Mercedes on the New York streets with Islamic Nasheed playing on the tape with the burqa-clad friends who all converted to Islam sometime back.

Today, like always, the religion of peace’s beauty is when the Muslim academics with the western world passionately aim at producing the community leaders for Muslim population all around the world — trained in both traditional, and modern sciences.

And it’s equally when Rumi becomes the best-selling poet in the United States, and an Islamic rap song in the English language by a Muslim rapper gets millions of views on Youtube.

It’s also when a communist ideologue of Europe comes out to say that the economy built on the Islamic principles is neither akin to capitalism or socialism, but provides a unique alternative to both the systems.

Fukuyama’s assertion becomes equally ridiculous when you would find a young Islamic activist in every city of the world and when most of the analysts of the region accept the contention that Islam will be the most potent force, a main player in the politics of the region in the coming years which holds coup plotters by their neck in Turkey and bleeds the empires of the world in Afghanistan—like what a western scholar said, “Islam has come to the fore as a confident sailor”.

And yes, it’s when Turkey under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan emerges on the scene as a supreme economic and military power with an unimpeachable moral standing in the world, and when the only Islamic Nuclear power clears off almost all the mess dumped in their courtyard by foreign powers.

It’s also when Imran Khan as the new premier of Islamic Republic of Pakistan resets the button: “Pakistan will only be ally with US for peace.”

Imran Khan.

In turn, it’s the western civilization—built on the edifice of Roman materialism, Greek logic, and Islamic science—which in the words of Syed Abul Ala Maududi “born in crass materialism” suffers from multitudes of crisis cancerous to its very existence, whose skin melts like a leper which, unlike Jesus, Paul cannot cure.

Today in the prison of Morsi, liberal democracy is the criminal hangman. In the coup of Turkey market capitalism is a murderer. In the killing fields of Afghanistan, western civilization is the monster. And in the streets of London, Washington and Paris, while it’s dying, it threatens to cause a nuclear holocaust.

Interestingly, what Fareed Zakaria called USA has been sacrificing its ideals for its interests, has infact turned deadly for its own existence. The bastion of liberal capitalism is the bastion of bastards, given the crumbled family structure which in the words of its own former president, is “becoming a nation of bastards”.

Just savour this: The incumbent head of the same nation would’ve loved to marry his own daughter, had she not been his own daughter!

Scientists no longer need to make robots in the west. They already have a lot of them in the form of a heartless population that serve like cogs in the huge giant global machine of imperialist project, an instrument to terrorize and enslave, loot and plunder, maim and destroy.

In the words of Erdogan, “Europe died in Bosnia and was buried in Syria. And the bodies of the innocent children washing up ashore are the tombstones of western civilization.” And to quote Alija Izzat Begovic, “West was never a civilization.”

Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Earlier, India had East India Company. Later it achieved freedom. Today, it has East India companies.

Today in the streets of Delhi, a rickshaw driver would carelessly walk past a dying man and steal a mobile phone. And a “mentally-sound” person rapes a mentally-unsound woman on the streets while dogs and humans look on, together. And the television channels—the mouthpieces of the exploitation whose masters have tried to put their clutches on every grain from every soil and tried to uproot every grain of decency and nobility—would feign ignorance, and speak morality at the Samadhi of dying humanity.

So what do the “old wise men of Europe” that had been spotted by Allama Iqbal after World War-I depressed, do to cure the crisis?

So far, they’ve tried to feed the hungry population with rightwing populism. And their media and movies have tried to demonize Islam and Muslims—bomb nations to the Stone Age and dub resistance as terrorism. Demonize the reaction as inherent fault within the fold of Islam what a western writer called, “casting its own contradictions on the Muslim screen”.

And also, come up with the provocative and blasphemous cartoons and caricatures, and justify them as a liberal art—sans considering the sensibility of over 1.8 billion adherents of Islam, making up about 24% of the world population.

Like Imran Khan rightly said, Muslims need to rake up these offenses at the global fora like OIC and UN, to make their western counterparts understand that our religious sensibilities are different from yours.

However, despite this offensive, the sure thing is—they’re running out of options.

The elite class that they planted in the entire Muslim world has nothing to sell except the failures of capitalism and socialism, or that it has to control the population with a rusted melting iron fist, or invent radicals to defame Islam.

Commenting on the worldwide grim situation years back, Will Durant wrote in his book The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time, that modern life is unhappy compared to the ancient or medieval because problems all around the seven continents are bundled in a single newspaper on a single breakfast table.

But day by day, given the savagery mankind is getting soaked into, one wonders if there’ll be any breakfast table or any newspaper or any person to read it!

Years back, Arnold Toynbee had predicted that the war in the 21st century will not be between capitalists and communists. It’ll be between Christians and Muslims. And there is a chance that the future belongs to “them”, Will Durant had felt.

Had Karl Marx observed and analyzed the situation today, he would’ve started his magnum opus, Manifesto of Communist Party, afresh.

The bottom-line is, the spectre of Islam is today haunting the global white supremacist imperialism, and its local lackeys.

 

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