The Challenge Facing Humanity
The challenge that Arabs face today is, in reality, their share of the challenge confronting all of contemporary humanity. The challenge humanity faces is that the world we live in - this planet we inhabit - has shrunk and become smaller, thanks to God and the rapid advancements in transportation. People, all people, have become neighbors to one another, and it has become necessary for them to coexist with good manners, kindness, and in peace. Otherwise, there can be no peaceful life for neighbors who bicker every new morning.
In brief, the challenge facing humanity today is that the planet we live on has achieved spatial unity, and it now requires humanity to achieve intellectual unity among its members so that they can coexist peacefully - if not live in peace - despite their differences in color, language, customs, and beliefs. If they fail to do so, they will meet the same fate as all living beings that failed to adapt to their environment - as has been the way of those who came before.
Unifying humanity through thought - there is no other path - requires a civilization that grants preeminence to thought. However, this is not the case with contemporary Western civilization, neither in its capitalist Western branch nor its communist Eastern branch. In fact, modern Western civilization is fundamentally built on the denial of thought. It is a materialistic civilization in both its communist and capitalist forms. The difference between communism and capitalism is merely one of degree. It is particularly evident in communism’s disdain for thought and its suppression of intellectual freedom.
Western civilization has declared its bankruptcy and reached the limits of its evolutionary capacity. Western civilization has declared its bankruptcy and reached the limits of its evolutionary capacity. It has failed to accommodate the energy of contemporary humanity and its aspiration to unite socialism and democracy within a single governmental system. This is because modern individuals desire freedom and view socialism as their natural right and an essential means to achieve that freedom.
It is a grave misjudgment to ask individuals to relinquish their freedom in exchange for the rights guaranteed by socialism, as Marxist communism now demands. Similarly, it is unreasonable to expect them to achieve democratic freedom under a capitalist economic system that barely meets the needs of the body and sustenance, as Western capitalism proposes.
The challenge humanity faces today, posed by its new environment, calls for the dawn of a new civilization - a civilization that fertilizes the present mechanized Western civilization and breathes into it a new spirit, granting it the ability to reconcile the individual's need for absolute personal freedom with the community's need for comprehensive social justice.
A civilization that places the individual's needs at the center of its organization, then branches out its legislation into socialism, democracy, and social justice on the basis that the human society is the legitimate parent of the fully realized human individual - an individual who has achieved the perfection of intellectual life and emotional life.
We do not wish to elaborate further here on the failure of Western civilization, as we have detailed this topic extensively in our book The Second Message of Islam.
