The meanings of culture revolve around intellectual adequacy and moral richness, including customs and traditions, and practical behavior that provides normative values ​​for humanity. The degree to which these elements blend and are consistent determines the cultural distinctiveness of a civilization and its ability to produce its own distinctive civil and practical contributions. The combination of these two aspects—culture and civilization—forms the civilizational character of a nation.

Pure Monotheism

Anyone who examines Islamic culture since its emergence with the advent of the message will be convinced of the consistency between its components and their emergence from a single source: pure monotheism, which governs the vision of its people in the past, present, and future, and their view of the universe, life, the Creator, and creation. Thus, any discord between faith, legislation, worship, and behavior is eliminated. All are formed from a single source and move toward a single goal throughout history.

Culture Embodies Common Humanity

The culture of Muslims and conquered peoples have continued to intermingle, producing a culture that embodies common humanity and does not conflict with the tenets of Islam.

God Almighty was angry with people whose actions were disconnected from their knowledge and the requirements of their beliefs. He said: "O you who have believed, why do you say that which you do not do? {2} It is most hateful to Allah that you say that which you do not do." (Al-Saff). Some of our ancestors said: "Knowledge calls out to action; if it responds, then it departs." Knowledge and action are linked to intentions and objectives. There is no action without intention; "Actions are only by intentions." There is no intention without sincere belief. (So ​​whoever should hope for the meeting with his Lord - let him do righteous work and not associate in the worship of his Lord anyone.) (Al-Kahf: 110)

The Message of Islamic Culture

God Almighty said, clearly stating the purpose and mission of the message: "Indeed, I will place upon the earth a successive authority." (Al-Baqarah: 60), and He said: "You are the best nation produced for mankind. You enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong and believe in God." (Al-Imran: 110). This is a very clear command in the lives of the early Muslims of this nation, as expressed by Rab'i ibn Amir in his address to Rustam, the Persian leader: "God has sent us to bring whomever He wills out of the worship of servants to the worship of the Lord of servants."

Guiding Humanity

Muslims traveled east and west with this message, carrying that culture. Guiding humanity represented their goal and defined the contours of their journey. The pioneering Muslim intellectual, in his early days, did not intend to exclude the culture of others or annihilate their identity. Rather, he aimed to liberate them from the filth of polytheism, guide them to the worlds of truth, and lead them into a human horizon broader than the boundaries of the earth and loftier than the desires of the soul and the lusts of the body. Thus, the faith and culture of Muslims coexisted with the faith and cultures of others, and peaceful competition continued to proceed according to its laws. Survival was for the fittest, the fittest was the strongest, and the strongest was the most just and wise. This is one of the glories of Islamic culture throughout history, during its heyday. It refused to be forced by the force of reality, the reality of power, or the authority of conquering dominant politics. Muslim culture and the cultures of conquered peoples have always coexisted, intermingled, coexisted, and interacted, producing a culture that embodies human commonalities that do not conflict with Islamic doctrines and expresses a just and guiding cultural globalization.

Broad Encyclopedic Understanding

Islamic culture has not been closed off to claims of narrow specialization but rather has sought a broad encyclopedic understanding of both the sciences of Islamic law and life.

We say this despite historical evidence that recounts the statements of some religious or ethnic zealots who complained about their people's and scholars' rush to learn Arab sciences and adopt their customs in life. This is echoed by the complaint of the Cordovan priest Alvaro about the young Christians of Andalusia, who said: "The Christians have forgotten their language, and there is hardly one in a thousand of them capable of writing a letter to a friend in straight Latin!" But if it is necessary to write Arabic, how many of them can express themselves in that language with the greatest elegance! Indeed, they compose poetry that surpasses in its versatility the poetry of the Arabs themselves (1).

Human Culture

Indeed, the conquered peoples did not remain long in contributing to the flow of Islamic culture. Al-Bukhari, Muslim, Al-Nasa'i, Al-Tirmidhi, Ibn Majah, Abu Dawud, Al-Bayhaqi, and other scholars of hadith emerged. Ibn Jurayj, Abu Hanifa, Al-Layth ibn Sa'd, Al-Tabari, Al-Ghazali, Abu Ishaq Al-Shirazi, and others excelled in jurisprudence, while their peers excelled in exegesis, creeds, history, and other fields.

Translations from other Cultures

Islamic culture expanded to include translations from the Greeks, Persians, Indians, and others. The Muslim caliphs encouraged this vibrant translation movement and the embrace of the intellectual essence of the civilizations of those peoples. Islamic culture did not fear the cultures of others; rather, it was confident in the soundness of its logic and premise, and the wisdom of its purpose and intent.

Not Confined Culture

Islamic culture, in its vastness, was not confined to claims of narrow specialization. Rather, it sought a broad encyclopedia. The Islamic mind embraced both the sciences of Sharia and life. Those who were knowledgeable in interpretation were also knowledgeable in creed, Prophetic hadith, jurisprudence, history, geography, politics, religions and sects, wisdom, Sufism, and other fields. This did not prevent them from exploring the material and life sciences.

The imams of the major schools of jurisprudence were highly educated and knowledgeable in hadith, exegesis, and history. They had their own political engagements and verbal and practical struggles. This is true of Abu Hanifa, Malik, al-Shafi'i, and Ahmad, as well as of al-Awza'i, Ibn Sa'd, and Ibn Hazm, and in later eras, of Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn al-Qayyim, Ibn Hajar, Ibn Khaldun, and others.

This does not negate scientific specialization entirely, but it meant that the most prominent aspect of the Muslim intellectual prevailed alongside other aspects that reconciled with it and benefited from it, such as the prominence of the description of the hadith scholar in Al-Bukhari despite his jurisprudential brilliance, and the historical aspect in Ibn Khaldun alongside his being a sociologist and a Maliki judge.

A Culture Intertwined with Life

In times of power, it never occurred to the Muslim intellectual to isolate himself from the thriving flow of life, or even from the making of life itself. Their monasticism was a pursuit of knowledge, a struggle for religion, a mingling with people, a representation of them, and a boldness in advocating and defending the truth.

As time turned, and weakness descended upon Muslims after strength, the most prominent features of this weakness were the atrophy of culture, the stagnation of its flow, its inability to keep pace with the progress of the age, its inability to answer the questions of the present, the decline of the role of the intellectual and his value in the nation's social peace, and the advancement of the rabble, all within a state of comprehensive civilizational weakness.

The cultural conflict has become imposed on our contemporary world and is part of a larger struggle from which there is no escape except through a return to Islamic identity.

This has left room for Western intellectual invasion and tyrannical globalization, which aims to erase the cultural specificity of dissenting nations—especially the Islamic nation, with its heritage of resistance and resilience—and to paint the world with a single image, subjecting it to the incoming colonizer armed with brute and soft power, and the institutionalized international hegemony that has yielded to it.

Fierce Attacks

Unfortunately, this fierce attack has seized control of the leading elites of our Islamic world, in both the spheres of politics and thought. We find some saying that the path to renaissance is to "follow the example of the Europeans and take their path, to be their equals and partners in civilization; its good and evil, its sweet and bitter, its praiseworthy and reprehensible aspects... Whoever claims otherwise is deceitful or deluded" (2).

Cultural Conflict

The cultural conflict has become imposed on our world. It is part of a larger struggle, from which there is no escape except by returning to the dominant Islamic identity and embarking on a new civilizational takeoff. This takes its cue from the sources of acceptance and abandonment from others, honors the sources of its civilizational self, and recognizes that conflict is a bygone tradition, one in which the weak cannot withstand!

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(1) Grunbaum: The Civilization of Islam, translated by Abdel Aziz Tawfiq, Egyptian General Book Authority, Family Library, 1997, pp. 81-82.

(2) Taha Hussein: The Future of Culture in Egypt, Dar Al-Maaref (n.d.), 2nd ed., p. 39.