(Source: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/EG11Ad01.htm)

Editor’s Note: This is a condensed text of the first 1/3 of Part 2 (entitled “That old time religion”) of the author’s 8-part series of articles under the general title of “THE ABDUCTION OF MODERNITY” The title and subheads of this text are ours.

The author reveals in this text the imperialist nature of mainstream Western discourse on modernization against the broad background of world history.

Rejection of Westernization ≠ Hatred of Modernity

From the fall of the Roman Empire to the 15th century, Islam was the dominant civilization outside of China. The Islamic world of this period was more advanced, with greater wealth and a higher level of culture than the Christian West. Islamic scholars preserved the texts of the ancient Greek philosophers and scientists by translating them into Arabic and Latin, which Renaissance scholars emerging from the Dark Ages relied on for sources and scholarship on antiquity. Arabs made path-breaking advances in mathematics, astronomy, medicine and philosophy, and transmitted to the West much of what they had learned from China. The West through the interpretation of Arab eyes rediscovered much of Western antiquity.

Mohammed the Prophet entered Mecca in AD 630 and established Islamic rule. The growing forces of Muslim, 121 years from that date, after having conquered Spain, North Africa, Egypt, Persia and much of Byzantium, decisively defeated the Tang Chinese army in 751 at the famous Battle of Talas, between modern-day Tashkent and Lake Balkhash. The Arab victory was aided by a branch of Muslim Tujue (Turkic) tribes known as Karluks, who launched a surprised attack on Tang forces from the rear. The Battle of Talas halted Chinese expansion into Central Asia.

The Chinese refer to Arabs as Dashi, from the Syrian word Tayi or the Persian word T'cyk. The Arabs conquered Samarkand in the 8th century. For five centuries thereafter, Samarkand flourished under the Omayyad Arabs as a trade center between Baghdad and Changan, the capital of dynastic China, until advances in sea transport in the 13th century finally rendered the Silk Route economically obsolete. Chinese prisoners captured by Arab forces at the Battle of Talas in 751 eventually introduced the art of paper-making to Arab lands and subsequently to Europe, but only after Arab paper-makers, jealously guarding the secret from Europeans for five more centuries, had sold paper to Europe at handsome profits in the interim. A process to make paper from vegetable fiber had first been invented by Cailun in China during the Han Dynasty in 105. The first paper mill outside of China was established by Arabs in Samarkand six-and-a-half centuries later in 751. The invention of paper greatly facilitated the development of language, graphic arts and culture, first in China, then in the Arab world, and then in the West.

The scientific and industrial revolutions vastly increased the wealth and power of the West from the middle of the 19th century. After the defeat of the Islamic Ottoman Empire in World War I, the Middle East was taken over by European powers and broken up into colonies and protectorates. Today, despite decolonization, nationalism and oil riches, this region remains poor and underdeveloped, not because modernity bypassed it, but because modernity arrived in the form of neo-colonialism. Westernization in these lands has produced miserable results, forcing the Islamic world to the conclusion that the solution may be a renewal of the Islamic faith that reigned in the days of their former greatness. The West derides this view as a rejection of modernity, notwithstanding historical evidence of the Arab world having embraced science and technology at a time when the best minds in the West were still prisoners of the flat-Earth doctrine.

The clash-of-civilizations theme exaggerates unity in outlook, values, ideas, and loyalties among people who share the common history and culture that define a civilization. Modern wars have been fought mostly within Western civilization, while easy imperialistic conquests have been the order of the day between Western and non-Western civilizations. Samuel P Huntington wrote: "The central characteristics of the West, those which distinguish it from other civilizations, antedate the modernization of the West." Thus the modernization of other civilizations is not in conflict with rejection of Westernization. The scholar Bernard Lewis, in seeing hatred of modernity as the main driving force in the wider context of Islamic terrorism, is confusing modernity with Western culture.

Cultural Imperialism for Political and Social control

Modernity is defined by the West as a collection of Western values arbitrarily deemed universal - the secular culture of circular rationality, materialist science, alienating individualism, technical innovation, amoral legalism, selective democracy and exploitative capitalism that Western imperialism has spread worldwide in different forms and to varying degrees.

In this view, non-European cultures are seen as childlike and devilish, with people of European descent having a sacred and selfless obligation to dominate them in perpetuity for their own good and salvation.

Cultural imperialism is the practice of promoting the culture and language of one national civilization in another for the purpose of political and social control. This can take the form of active, formal policy, such as in education and job opportunities, or a general attitude of superiority complex.

Empires throughout history have been established using war and physical compulsion. In the long term, the invading population tended to become absorbed into the dominant local culture, or acquire its attributes indirectly. Cultural imperialism reverses this trend by imposing an alien culture on the conquered.

As exploration of the Americas increased, European nations including Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal all raced to claim territory in hopes of generating increased economic wealth for themselves. In these new colonies, the European conquerors imposed their languages and cultures on lands whose indigenous population was too large or too established to annihilate. The same took place in Africa and Asia. The record of US policy and abuse of Native Americans is atrocious, going beyond cultural imperialism to genocide.

Cultural imperialism since World War II has primarily been connected with the US. Most countries outside the United States view the pervasive US cultural export through business and popular culture as threatening to their traditional ways of life or moral values. Some countries, including France and Canada, have adopted official policies that actively oppose "Americanization". Representatives of al-Qaeda stated that their attacks on US interests were motivated in part by a reaction to perceived US cultural imperialism.

Colonialism, the political theory governing imperialism, is based on a belief that the mores of the colonizer are superior to those of the colonized on the basis of power. This colonial mentality explains why former colonies such as Hong Kong cling to the myth of the superiority of their colonial culture.

As the West grows stronger, tolerance of other cultures and of those within the West itself who refuse to participate is viewed increasingly as a sign of weakness. Domination takes on sophisticated, less visible forms. National sovereignty is pushed aside in the name of replacing command economies with markets, warfare with trade, and rule by king or commissar with token democracy. To resist neo-imperialism is to resist modernity. This view justifies the new empire of the sole superpower, self-proclaimed inheritor of Western civilization.

Henry C K Liu is chairman of the New York-based Liu Investment Group.

(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.)