Heritage values ​​as an entry point to building a culture of self – Ali Muhammad Fakhro

I believe that to build our own, independent Arab culture, capable of balanced, united interaction with other cultures, it is first necessary to understand and, if necessary, update our knowledge, values ​​and behavioral foundations. Traditional cultures were created to judge, positively or negatively, the ideas, values ​​and behaviors of our time.

Here we will be forced to select some of what the late thinker Abdullah Abdul Dayem presented in detail in his book “For the Individual Arab Culture”, which we believe is detailed and represents the main intellectual and value-based approach if it has not been implemented in real life in many periods of our history.

First: let’s look at the problem of individualism, which has taken root in our time as a set of values ​​and behaviors characterized by excessive selfishness and a focus on serving the self rather than the group, society or humanity. At the same time, our cultural heritage places great emphasis on personal responsibility. The individual commands himself and those around him to do good and prohibits himself and others from doing evil. This responsibility is first determined by morality and then by law. Her motivation is inner transcendence and self-respect, not selfish personal interests. Even if the judiciary declares him innocent or society turns a blind eye, a person continues to feel the burden of guilt and psychological anxiety.

Perhaps the Holy Qur’an’s insistence on linking the validity and permanence of faith with good deeds is intended to emphasize that a person’s thoughts and words have no value unless they are transformed into actual actions.

Second: This responsibility of individual values ​​that we demonstrate can only achieve its moral or chivalrous sublimity in the context of a shared social and solidaristic coexistence in which individuals contribute and bear their burdens in a thousand ways and forms. It is also completely contrary to the principles and practices of neoliberalism that the world is experiencing today, which requires the disappearance of the social welfare state and the lack of individual responsibility towards any group, including family, political parties, alliances, sects and social humanitarian institutions in their many forms.

People need not be reminded that global society has reached a point where it lacks compassion and empathy, preferring instead to satisfy all kinds of personal desires through crazy, greedy consumption, which makes a person live in social and psychological misery. Isolation can lead to madness or suicide. All this leads, logically, to the phenomenon of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, the shrinking of the size and effectiveness of the middle class, and the madness of commercial competition among countries, which alienates interpersonal relationships.

Third: With the obsession with individual freedom and the call for full freedom for individuals without any restrictions or consideration for the freedom of others and social institutions, the extreme importance of a reasonable balance becomes evident in our intellectual heritage between the freedom and rights of individuals on the one hand and the freedom of society and the rights of people on the other. With his strong call for the liberation of humanity from any exploitation, especially economic exploitation, he also put great emphasis on the individual freedom of humanity: freedom of belief, thought and expression, and equated an attack on the individual with an attack on all humanity. These values ​​of freedom are summarized by a famous saying of Umar Ibn Khattab: “When did you enslave people when their mothers gave birth to them free?” And its spirit is confirmed and clarified by the verses “There is no compulsion in religion” and the verses “Invite your Lord to the path of your Lord with wisdom and good guidance, and argue with them in the best way.” In all its manifestations, it is a peaceful, serious democracy, not controlled by the deep state or controlled by the stakeholders behind the scenes.

Fourth: The picture of a democratic and liberal scenario is complete in the values ​​of the Shura. Despite all the disputes about the meaning and determinants of the Shura principle, it still has a key value that allows the affairs of peoples and societies to be conducted in depth, spiritually and symbolically in accordance with the will and interests of peoples and societies, rather than any party claiming the right to act in accordance with the practices prescribed by these values.

The greatness of this value is obvious, it made Shura the principle not only in matters of politics and governance, but also in all social institutions, with the famous instruction: “You are all shepherds, and you are all responsible for your own flock.”

Fifth: These value-based principles in the Arab-Islamic heritage reach their splendor and magnificence in the values ​​of fairness and balance, i.e., justice. This is a very important topic if we know that the spirit of the Islamic message conveyed by the Arabs is related to the paramount importance of practicing fairness, balance, justice and staying away from all types of injustice in conscience, morality, behavior and law. All the values ​​we mentioned before are incompatible and do not coexist with injustice, which makes them invalid or distorted. The sensitivity of our intellectual, moral and religious traditions to the issues of justice and equality and their opposite, i.e., injustice, will return again and again when we speak of the Arab Renaissance project and its future articulation.