Western Evolutionism in the Muslim World

Abstract

As a general system of thought, evolutionism is the most powerful ideology
in modem Western secularist civilization. It arose in the West over a century
ago and spread there first, gradually reducing the Christian culture of the
West until it became a residual influence. Because Western nations such as
England, France, and the Soviet Union imposed themselves on Muslim lands
in the form of colonialist regimes, we should not be surprised to find within
the Muslim world the echoes of evolutionary thdang in many of the modernist,
or Westernized, Muslims, and even amongst their opponents, the Muslim
fundamentalists. This was perhaps inevitable, given that the educational system
of the Muslim world has been patterned on that of the West.
In the West, evolutionary modes of thought have gradually created a
secularized world devoid of religious attachments. In the Muslim world, it
is only natural that modernist Muslims, the so-called Westernized Muslims
who take their bearings from Western as opposed to Islamic thinking, should
have sought to create within Islam a similarly secularized culture, likewise
cut off from its religious mots. Such Muslims have been the dominant influence
in the Muslim world from the nineteenth century up to the Second World
War, ample time in which to realize their ambitions. In this fashion,
evolutionism, an ideology that arose in the West and succeeded in utterly
de-Christianizing the West, has now penetrated into the Muslim world like
a Trojan horse.
That being so, we would do well to examine the origins of evolutionary
thinking in the West to discern both its nature and to see how it displaced
Christian beliefs and institutions. The secularist civilization it produced is
now sweeping the entire globe and threatening to destroy the lingering elements
of traditional Islamic civilization. By first examining what happened in the
Christian world, we are in a better position to grasp what has been going
on within the domains of Islam in the recent past. That understanding should
have a direct bearing on the question of whether the traditional culture of
Islam can be preserved. Indeed, the world of Islam may very well be the ...