Islam and Peace
Asian Muslims And Modern Challenges
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that where their domination had earlier been a
direct one, it now became indirect.
Given the negative results of their struggles, certain
Muslim intellectuals have attributed their failure to
solve their
problems to their industrial
backwardness. They hold that only by the
acquisition of industrial power similar to that of the
developed nations can their destiny be changed.
This, however, is not the solution to our problems.
Time does not standstill. New developments are
constantly taking place. This means that, even if, by
a supreme effort, we managed to enter the
industrial age, by the time we did so, the western
nations, in the words of Elvin Toffler, would have
entered the ‘super industrial age.’ In this way we
would continue to lag behind, and our actual
problems would continue to remain unsolved.
The kind of problems and challenges Muslims are
faced with today, at political, economic and cultural
levels, is in no way a new state of affairs never
before encountered.
