What are Civilizational Liberalism and Civilizational Determinism?

By, Spahic Omer

In Islam, all guidance is in the Hand of Allah. He guides whomever He wills and leads astray whomever He wills. The Muslims regularly pray to Allah to guide them to the right path (al-Nahl 93; al-Fatihah 6).

At the same time, however, the Qur’an on more than one occasion explicitly affirms that man has free will and so, chooses to believe and be guided, and chooses to disbelieve and not to be guided. On the Day of Judgment, people will be rewarded and punished solely on the basis of what they have done freely and willingly in this world.

Man between freedom and predestination

This means that Allah as the Absolute Creator and Master of the universe knows everything and acts wisely and justly. Nothing escapes His infinite knowledge, will and power. Accordingly, He knows what man freely chooses and willingly does. He thus guides only those who want and deserve to be guided, and leads astray only those who want and deserve to be sent astray.

In His capacity as the Creator of everything, Allah creates our chosen deeds as well. He is explicit that He has created man and everything he does (al-Saffat 96), and that He has created all things in proportion and measure (with qadar or predestination) (al-Qamar 49). These creational acts of Allah originate from His unbounded knowledge, which also encompasses the free choices of man.

That is to say that Allah knows the chosen deeds of a person before they take place. They have been recorded as such in the heavenly records, and when the time comes for them to occur, it is Allah who creates them, not man, based on His foreknowledge.

The problem is that man is constrained by time and space, both of which have been created, dictating his thoughts and actions.  On the contrary, Allah as the Creator is free from any deficiencies and limitations present in creation; as a result, His judgments and actions are not impacted by them.

Al-Qurtubi observed in his tafsir (commentary) of the Qur’anic verse: “Indeed, all things We created with predestination” (al-Qamar 49): “The view of the ahl al-sunnah is that Allah Almighty predestined things, that is, He knew their destinies, conditions and times before creating them. He then created them in accordance with His foreknowledge. No event occurs in the upper and lower world unless it comes exclusively from His knowledge, power and will. In all that, the created world contributes nothing except the type of acquisition, effort, conformity and appendage. All that happens to the world only with the facilitation of Allah Almighty and with His power, affinity and inspiration.”

Man chooses what to do, while Allah accepts, endorses facilitates and rewards for the choices made and deeds performed. Man’s life is a subtle blend and interplay of personal freedom and divine providence. As a sign of His absolute Sovereignty, Allah reiterates that although free, man is subjected to His Will and Authority. If He so wills, Allah can always overrule man’s freedom, choices and intended actions. He does what He absolutely wants, while man does what he relatively needs – then wills – within the prescribed range, as well as framework, of prospects.

Moreover, that Allah is the only one who guides means that man cannot be guided – or cannot guide himself – except through and by the prophets and the heavenly messages revealed to them. Without them, man will struggle to uncover countless existential secrets and mysteries. In the absence of divine help, the intellect and senses of man are verified inept to guide him to all truth. They are good only as far as they can go. Still, they hold enough potential to lead – or “pilot” – people towards the threshold of realizing and embracing the revelation as the highest source of guidance and certainty.

Man’s efforts to rival the revelation and Heaven are destined to fall flat. This highlights that the only true guidance comes from Allah, and if He does not provide it, no one else can. All other options are inadequate. Seeking guidance through prayer signifies a commitment to strengthen the bond with Allah, who is the ultimate source of all guidance. It involves recognizing Allah as the Creator, Master and self-sufficient Being, while acknowledging humans as mere creations, servants and dependent beings. It also involves a willingness to be productive, patient and steadfast in following the path of righteousness, making the most of the gifts of free will and sound reasoning bestowed upon humanity.

Civilization as a collective output

Civilization, by and large, is a collective output resulting from a systematic and sustained collective thought, decision-making and performance. Besides being collective, the output is also comprehensive, encompassing all aspects and dimensions of life. In other words, the civilization of a people signifies the outcome of those people’s both qualitative and quantitative interactions with the multitiered realities of life.

Civilization is comparable to a grand edifice constructed from a multitude of elements and by a multitude of experts with diverse specializations. Thus, while civilizations are the embodiments of shared visions and collectively undertaken missions, the lives of individuals represent the microcosms of their civilizational trajectories and ultimate destinies. The two: civilizations and their affiliates, are essentially one, sharing the same existential origins, laws and eventual (mis)fortunes.

The ways the lives of both people and their civilizations unfold are liable and controlled, yet predictable to some extent, in that they all conform to a set of permanent rules which, in turn, are not an end in themselves but connote a segment of a bigger ontological picture. Matched up with a higher purpose and its grand order of things, meanings and experiences, civilizations are not irregular or strictly developmental (evolutionary). They do not evolve in a linear or spiral manner towards a highpoint after which they still could be revived, reformed, or regenerated.

Debates continue about the relationship between man and civilization: does man control civilization, or is it the other way around? The likely truth is that they are closely connected and influence each other, with neither having complete control over the other. Engaged in a mutual and constantly changing cycle of growth, (in)stability and decline, both man and civilization are guided by a more intricate and advanced system, leading to correspondingly momentous outcomes.

Civilization is man-centric revolving around humanity, as individuals are shaped by the civilization they belong to. Similarly, one can understand a person by examining his civilization, just as a civilization can be assessed by studying its people. The rise of a civilization means the rise of its people, while the fall of the former means the fall of the latter.

If Winston Churchill once said that “we shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us”, a similar truism can be articulated about civilization, in the sense that man creates or shapes it, after which civilization shapes him. The exact nature and extent of the reciprocal relationship between man and his civilization notwithstanding, they are bound to rise and fall together. For man, it can be deduced, his civilization is as much his raison d’etre and holy grail, as his poisoned cup and, ultimately, necropolis.

Different theories of the rise and fall of civilizations

It was due to this that Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) famously said that dynasties and their civilizations (‘umran) have a natural life span like individuals. Though their durations may differ according to the conjunctions, “as a rule no dynasty lasts beyond the life (span) of three generations,” with the duration of the life of an individual being identical with the duration of a generation, which is forty years. The rise and fall of dynasties and their civilizational yield can generally be forecast and even followed, based on the implications of their overall conditions associable with each stage of the anatomy of the processes of history-making and civilization-building.

Influenced by Ibn Khaldun’s historical-cum-civilizational thought, Oswald Spengler (d. 1936) later also propagated the cyclical pattern of the progression of history and the advancement of civilizations, laying emphasis on the concept of a morphology of world history and culture. Civilizations are akin to biological entities.

Oswald Spengler was a firm believer in historical and civilizational determinism. He thought that “by means of morphological connexions – in much the same way as modern paleontology deduces far-reaching and trustworthy conclusions as to skeletal structure and species from a single unearthed skull-fragment – it is possible, given the physiognomic rhythm, to recover from scattered details of ornament, building, script, or from odd political, economic and religious data, the organic characters of whole centuries of history.”

Such was possible because of a unique methodology that entailed “predetermining the spiritual form, duration, rhythm, meaning and product of the still unaccomplished stages of our Western history.” Hence, in the “Introduction” of Oswald Spengler’s magnum opus “The Decline of the West” it is observed that in his book for the first time the venture of predetermining history has been attempted.

On the other hand, Arnold Toynbee (d. 1975) did not agree that civilizations were fated to break down. Consequently, he not only rejected but also tried to expose the fallacious arguments of the determinists. He then put forth the idea that civilizations rise because of the creative ways with which the leaderships of creative minorities composed of elite leaders effectively address the challenges confronting the geneses and growths of societies and their civilizational curves.

The breakdowns and eventual disintegrations of civilizations are not inevitable outcomes, but rather contingencies which may or may not happen, subject to the challenge-and-response dynamics. Civilizations decline only when their trailblazers stop responding creatively to the challenges standing in the way of civilizational progress, and collapse not owing to any causal unavoidability but as a result of the sins of “nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority” which are incompatible with the nature of civilization.

It stands to reason that Arnold Toynbee’s philosophy of history and of the rise-fall dynamism of civilizations marked the pinnacle of an evolving historical perspective, whose scientific proclivity was reinforced by dominant theories about progressive social – and biological – evolution.  The seeds of this philosophy could be traced back to Thucydides (d. 400 BC), an ancient Greek historian.

Thucydides was the first to propose a departure from explaining historical events through divine intervention, emphasizing the importance of human factors. He suggested that a new historical methodology rooted in the criteria of impartiality, evidence-gathering and analysis of cause and effect, should be pursued. In other words, the authority over history was to be transferred from the realm of gods and into the hands of man, which was an unmistaken trait of the emerging philosophy of humanism whose credo was to the effect that man is the measure of all things. It is not surprising, therefore, that Thucydides was dubbed the “father of scientific history.”

Accordingly, as a believer in historical freedom and autonomy, Arnold Toynbee – though still promoting a degree of the cyclical movement of history, controlled by certain uniform laws of growth and decay (a form of determinism), which characterized Greek and Roman historiography, as claimed by Francis Fukuyama – was able to propose the idea that, in principle at least, the challenge-and-response dynamics can be converted into a movement, which in turn can become a repetitive, recurrent rhythm. The rhythm can then grow into a progression that is potentially infinite.

An insinuation to the prospective infinity of a civilization Arnold Toynbee found in the following two citations of Goethe (d. 1832). The first one is in “earthly language” and the second in “heavenly language.”

First, in earthly language, “From appetite I flounder to enjoyment / And, in enjoyment, crave for appetite.”

Second, in heavenly language, “Come, raise thyself to higher spheres! / Lead! He will follow heeding thee” (Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History).

Regardless of Francis Fukuyama’s criticism – who criticized Arnold Toynbee, bracketing him together with Oswald Spengler, yet claiming that he drew his inspiration from the latter’s work, after which he contended that they both suffered from an organicist flaw by drawing a questionable analogy between a culture or society and a biological organism – Arnold Toynbee could still be regarded as one of the pioneers of a modernization theory in historiography.

The new theory posited that history was directional and that the liberal democracy of the advanced industrial nations lay at its end. The only disagreements among the proponents of this theory revolved around how unilinear historical evolution would be, and whether there were alternative paths to modernity.

Indeed, while Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history and the last man” could be perceived as the latest and perhaps most complete phase in the modernization theory, Arnold Toynbee’s ideas, which in fact aimed to break the rigid organicist cyclic movement of history and align it as much as possible with the exigencies of human freedom, creative power and unavoidable biological determinants, were, in a way, its precursor. Arnold Toynbee’s thought was multipatterned, not strictly cyclical, unitary, or unilinear (evolutionary). It straddled the line between traditional and modern approaches to historiography.

Be that as it may, Arnold Toynbee strongly believed in the pivotal role of human freedom in driving the course of history and the development of civilizations. He believed that, as his own master, man is at the center of the universe. He is free to make his choices regarding anything in life and is prepared to live or die by them.

Civilization mirrors human freedom, independence and creative aspirations. Just as there is no boundary to his freedom, creativity, drive and aspirations, there should be no boundary to his achievements in civilization. Everything man does is a result of his own choices; he brought it upon himself. Man governs; he is not meant to be governed, neither by the constraints of his immediate environment nor by the infinitude of what lies beyond. The footprint of civilization is the defining legacy that shapes how man is ultimately judged. This is the reason why Arnold Toynbee concluded that civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.

According to Theodore Sumberg in his article “Toynbee and the Decline of Western Civilization,” Arnold Toynbee believed that the decline of civilization is not comparable to “the running down of the clockwork of the physical universe; it is not the inescapable fate of the organism; it is not the consequence of racial degeneration; and it is no classical cosmic law of a perpetually recurring cycle of alternating birth and death. All predestinarian and deterministic hypotheses are rejected. Man is free to make his own history, out of materials of his environment to be sure, but not in coerced conformity with any single pressure from this environment. There is a breath of freedom as well as a net of necessity in this man-environment transaction. An important consequence of the dethronement of necessity as an absolute monarch in historical causation is that history’s horoscope can never be cast. Historical knowledge is only after the fact. Another consequence is to fix man as the central locus of responsibility in the historical process. Each civilization is a precarious experiment in man’s choices. The destruction that has been the common lot of man in past civilizations is self-inflicted. The journey of civilization is basically conceived as a successive series of encounters between man and the totality of his environment, both physical environment and human in the sense of the weight of the results of earlier encounters. The response of man to the successive challenges of this environment constitutes the elemental rhythm in the forward movement of civilization.”

The idea of “civilizational liberalism”

Indeed, with the spread of social, political, economic and moral liberalism, there inevitably emerged what could be called a form of “civilizational liberalism”, in that the former constituted the quintessence of civilization, including its philosophical, epistemological, scientific and everyday operational dimensions. Which means that man’s freedom and rights pertained not only to what man wanted and did and how he organized and enjoyed his life within the context of his relationships with his own people, but also in the context of his relationships with the rest of humankind, the natural world and whatever might exist “out there” in an otherworldly realm.

To put it differently, man’s freedom and rights ought to be based on a holistic worldview and ought to contain the totality of man: his complete being, interests, ambitions and endeavors. A civilization either fulfils those responsibilities, or fails, and so, betrays its trust. “Civilizational liberalism” is a mold inside which other forms of liberalism are cast.

As the term suggests, “civilizational liberalism” is about thinking, living, civilizing, un-civilizing and dying freely without imposed restrictions. Man is to be left alone and to his own devices. He is to be regulated only by his own laws and rules, but exempt from control by any higher authority or divine laws. What is more, the mortal wisdom and guidance of man are set to never stop striving to conceptualize and then catalogue whatever may fall outside the tiny human-qua-terrestrial scope of man.

However, by rejecting any potential forms of predestination, whether individual, collective, or societal, humans have not made themselves free, but rather untamed, chaotic and irresponsible. This unavoidably leads to a state of unlimited lawlessness, spiritual and moral self-doubt, and a lack of cultural richness in humanity. As a result, liberty became a cliché and championing it self-delusional. Civilization became a trap, authenticating that such was not the way man was supposed to be and behave.

This precarious stage signifies a struggle where man may find it challenging to grasp even the most basic aspects of the finesse and subtlety of life, where, more often than not, civilization is bartered for barbarism and refinement for vulgarity. Civilization is likewise bound to compromise its core principles just as its man has compromised his moral compass and also guiding light. Since it does not have a clear authoritative source, such a civilization does not have clear and authoritative goals either. Rejecting determinism – in the sense of being defined, guided and governed by a more powerful agency than man – man and his civilizational trajectory are destined to gradually drift towards the black hole of agnosticism and nihilism, and into the oblivion of existential relativism.

It is because of this that today, in the name of civilization and progress, people are talking more and more about issues that are not closely related to the truth and the genuine terrestrial purpose of humanity. These topics only add to the confusion, distraction and misleading of the individuals who are already disoriented, puzzled and lacking enlightenment. One may question the constructive nature of these new developments. One also wonders if, by rejecting the notion of true personal and civilizational determinism, man has inadvertently created for himself and by himself a new determinism snare in which he is already entangled.

Some of those prominent issues include exploring and attempting to reach (conquer) outer space to discover new resources with the intention of feeding the insatiable materialism down on earth, investigate the existence of alien life forms or civilizations, make life multi-planetary, and to seek answers to fundamental questions about life which are either rejected or ignored down on earth. There are also numerous (un)ethical concerns in biomedical research and in the fields of science and technology. Arising from this, the whole idea of “scientism” is developing into one of the biggest conundrums because it is perceived as a creed and even a measure of “deity.” Additionally, challenges arise in defining genders and their respective roles, the institution of marriage, and addressing issues like colonization, exploitation, endless wars, nationalism, racism, tyranny and oppression.

All these issues and problems have been generated, nurtured, exacerbated, and in the end simply disregarded by the bane of “civilizational liberalism” as the apex of liberalism as a comprehensive philosophy and life paradigm.

It seems that humankind’s inclination to a sort of “civilizational liberalism” was and remained its Achilles heel. Seeking immortality, absolute power, self-indulgence and satanic perfection will regularly top humankind’s list of either civilizational or quasi-civilizational preferences. Let’s just recall that the innocent Prophet Adam and his wife Hawwa’ were expelled from Jannah (Paradise) because Satan succeeded in seducing them with the baits of eternal life, becoming angel-like beings, and a kingdom that will never waste away (Ta Ha 120; al-A’raf 22). Consequently, they were stripped of their clothes (of their defenses, immunity and protective shields) and were left naked (were exposed to the ugly deficiencies of man, when given to sin, and of this world, when taken as the locus of noncompliance and sin).

Later down on earth, most civilizations were given to such excesses, adopting such unconscionably wayward lifestyles, that they in the end were responsible for their own demise. With that said, the writing is on the wall that the modern West-driven godless civilization, representing the peak of “civilizational liberalism”, is destined to crumble like civilizations before it. No doubt, when mistakes are repeated, history follows suit.

Islam on civilizational determinism

The idea of civilizational determinism in Islam should be understood in light of its belief in personal predestination, known as qadr, which has been presented briefly at the beginning of this article. Civilizational determinism, it follows, is an extension and evidence of personal predetermination. Civilizational determinism furthermore affirms and facilitates the latter, acting as its locus and therefore, maintaining control over it.

Civilizational determinism is an amalgam of people’s free will, creative exertion and persistent work within the determined circumstances, on the one hand, and Allah’s infinite foreknowledge, pre-registration of all events, creation of those events at the time of their happening consistent with the choices and strivings of people and Allah’s foreknowledge of them, and Allah’s decisions concerning man’s abilities, facilities and overall life conditions, on the other.

This implies a four-pronged philosophy.

First: human freedom and accountability

People are free to conceive, plan and accomplish things, warranting thus praise for successes and censure for failures. A degree of collective responsibility on the Day of Judgment is suggested in the following words of the Qur’an: “And you will see every nation kneeling (from fear). Every nation will be called to its record (and told): ‘Today you will be recompensed for what you used to do’” (al-Jathiyah 28).

In the same vein, the Qur’anic discourses often target entire nations and their collective performances, which certainly complement and put into perspective the performances of their individuals. In line with the ways the Qur’an views the concept of civilization, against the backdrop of the context of man’s honorable earthly cause, this can be referred to as collective civilizational accountability.

The Qur’an also says: “And how many cities (and their communities) have We destroyed, and Our punishment came to them at night or while they were sleeping at noon” (al-A’raf 4).

“How many cities and their populations have We destroyed, which were given to wrong-doing? They tumbled down on their roofs. And how many wells are lying idle and neglected, and castles lofty and well-built?” (al-Hajj 45).

In these and many other verses, the Qur’an alludes to the dynamics of the rise and fall of nations and their civilizational yields. The roles of freedom, wherewith comes huge responsibility, and the divine intervention if that freedom is abused, are clearly evident.

Second: Allah’s foreknowledge, registration and creation of human deeds

Since, based on His infinite foreknowledge, Allah knows all things, including human individual and collective actions in the future, recording them before they happen and creating them whenever people accomplish them based on their free will – it can safely be said that, in this sense, a nation’s collective civilizational performance is predestined. This indicates that things are preordained and prerecorded because of Allah’s transcendent foreknowledge and forewisdom, rather than because they are imposed or enforced on someone.

This affirmative form of predestination is part of the Islamic concept of qadr, which is a fundamental article of the Islamic faith. Qadr is the most potent illustration of the essence of man and his Creator, and what relationship exists between them. The message is that although they are closely linked, and regardless of what occurs as man fulfills his splendid vicegerency mission on earth, the Master must remain master and the servant must remain servant, and the Creator must remain creator and creation nothing more. Without a doubt, under no circumstances can there be an exchange of titles.

Third: a nuanced relationship between freedom and predetermination

Human freedom is constrained by the life boundaries set by the Creator, which are constant. In essence, human life is a balance between the consequences of our freedom and the outcomes of our predetermined fate. People will be held accountable on the Day of Judgment for how they utilized the former and whether they had faith in and honored the latter.

Definitely, just as people are both free and predestined, their civilizational behavioral patterns are also free and predestined. Many aspects of existence, strictly defined by the Creator’s limits, are relevant to civilization. These include civilization’s impermanence, earthly nature, the patterns of growth and decline, lifespan and the eventual end. Despite this, human freedom, creativity and ingenuity can improve a civilization’s quality, reforming its trajectory and potentially prolonging its worth, which nonetheless might be mistaken for prolonging its actual lifespan.

There is nothing wrong in trying to understand the created limits or boundaries that represent a civilization’s virtually cast-iron framework along the lines of the laws that govern the rise, continuity and fall of civilizations. Ibn Khaldun certainly was one who did thus. Having been inspired as much by historical realities as the Qur’anic narratives, Ibn Khaldun came up with a cyclical theory of the rise and fall of dynasties and their civilizational (‘umran) productivity, revolutionizing how people perceived the unfolding of history and the processes involved in creating and dismantling civilizations.

Hence, it can be said that Islam promotes a type of civilizational determinism but whose vitality is human freedom and human productivity penchant. There is ample room for personal freedom in this understanding of civilization, allowing individuals and groups to express their true selves. Similarly, there is enough space for divine providence, helping individuals stay grounded and manage their ambitions. The aim is to avoid leaning too heavily towards either absolute fatalism or unrestrained freedom, thus preventing extreme views both in civilizational determinism and “civilizational liberalism.”

The realistic goal of human life on earth is to concentrate on what can be accomplished within the confines of our existence, rather than getting caught up in fantasies about, or attempting to explore, what lies beyond our reach and has no meaningful impact on the prospects of humanity. Civilization is fundamentally about identifying and solving problems, thereby propelling mankind forward and enhancing the consequentiality, plus quality, of life. It is not about being naive or impractical, nor about internal uncertainties and chaos that can spill over and dominate the external world. Civilization should not revolve around asking questions that deepen disorientation and confusion, as this would contribute to the problems at hand rather than solving them. Therefore, a successful civilization aligns closely with the truth, while a failing one drifts further away from the truth towards its opposite.

This idea of Islamic civilizational determinism is touched upon in a number of verses of the Qur’an. Some such verses are as follows: “O company of jinn and mankind, if you are able to pass beyond the regions of the heavens and the earth, then pass. You will not pass except by authority (from Allah)” (al-Rahman 33).

“O people, an example is presented, so listen to it. Indeed, those you invoke besides Allah will never create (as much as) a fly, even if they gathered together for that purpose. And if the fly should steal away from them a (tiny) thing, they could not recover it from him. Weak are the pursuer and pursued” (al-Hajj 73).

“Have they not traveled through the land and observed how was the end of those before them? They were more numerous than themselves and greater in strength and in impression on the land, but they were not availed by what they used to earn. And when their messengers came to them with clear proofs, they (merely) rejoiced in what they had of knowledge, but they were enveloped by what they used to ridicule” (Ghafir 82-83).

“That is because Allah would not change a favor which He had bestowed upon a people until they change what is within themselves. And indeed, Allah is Hearing and Knowing” (al-Anfal 53).

“Say: ‘If mankind and the jinn gathered in order to produce the like of this Qur’an, they could not produce the like of it, even if they were to each other assistants’” (al-Isra’ 88).

“But you cannot will, unless Allah wills. Verily, Allah is ever All-knowing, All-wise” (al-Insan 30).

“He said: ‘Do you worship that which you (yourselves) carve, while Allah created you and that which you make (do)?’” (al-Saffat 95-96).

Guided by their belief in regulated freedom and sensible predestination, the true Muslims avoid dwelling on issues that could compromise their freedom or destiny. They know that doing so is both wrong and unviable. It is unethical. For example, the true Muslims do not entertain the absurd ideas like seeking immortality, seeking super-humanness, believing in extraterrestrial intelligence and extraterrestrial civilizations, making humans a multiplanetary species, viewing science as the only or the best way to understand and deal with reality (scientism or science-worship), believing that nothing exists except matter (materialism or matter-worship), relativism, atheism and desacralization of life in all its essential aspects.

Indeed, life is too short and too meaningful to be wasted on trivial matters that do not contribute to civilization, regardless of any scientific veneer they may have. Civilization is more profound and more consequential than that, being a valuable asset rather than a liability. That said, excessive “civilizational liberalism” can be detrimental, but a balanced civilizational determinism is the way to go.

Fourth: civilizational determinism necessitates setting life priorities right

Another aspect of the Islamic civilizational determinism is that – since Allah created the universe, endowing it with extraordinary potentials and resources, and appointing man as the vicegerent with everything on earth and in the heavens being subjected to his vicegerency office – the presence of a civilization, whereby the potentials and resources of the created world are optimized and placed at the disposal of man, is an inevitability. It is within humanity’s reach and is their right, as it were. As a consequence, throughout history, man has never stopped using, probing, discovering and utilizing the bounties granted to him by his Creator.

However, it must be emphasized that doing so is not something that should be placed on the pedestal and should unduly preoccupy man, simply because the discovery, utilization and consumption of the bounties bestowed by God are certain and imminent. Hence, there is nothing special in performing the inevitable (predetermined), no matter how spectacularly and auspiciously that may be done. By way of illustration, if significant discoveries and inventions like DNA, electricity, gravity, medications, vaccines, the wheel, the compass, calendar, clock, printing, computer, refrigerator, engine, steel, concrete, etc., were not made by their original discoverers and inventors, they would have been made by others at different times. The way the creation realm has been configured and predetermined meant that all discoveries and inventions were bound to happen, dormant until their moment arrived.

This is so because as far as the life mission of man is concerned, those things play second fiddle to the actualization of the God-revealed truth. As accidents, not substances, they assume a subsidiary role. In its function as the only real thing and the end of all ends, the truth should preoccupy man and his endeavors. Everything else is secondary and based on its temporary life objective and serviceability. It follows that civilization, too, ought to be concerned merely about the truth, with the validity of other issues being measured exclusively against it.

The world, restless human intelligence and divine providence are in a constant motion, drawing one another towards prolific alliances. Man should understand that his discoveries and inventions simply reflect his newfound awareness of things and events that have existed since time immemorial. Those are by no means new or independently critical in the ambit of the truth and its uninhibited operations. For that reason, man should not be carried away by his discoveries and inventions, not least if they come between him and the world of the truth. Those discoveries and inventions are gifts. They should humble man and incite in him a sense of gratitude. They demonstrate the greatness of the Creator, who alone has the power to create from nothing (ex nihilo), and the smallness of man, who neither does nor can create; his task is but to conceptualize, use, reuse, mix and manipulate in whatever creative ways the given gifts.

Stemming from all this is a contention that, for example, a farmer guided by the truth, who recognizes and serves the truth through his work, is more civilized and a more positive life force than a scientist who is misguided and egotistical, seeking to undermine spiritual values and moral standards. The farmer is a source of peace and felicity, while the scientist is a source of infectious confusion and inner mayhem. The guided farmer furthermore is a source of unpretentious but genuine well-being, while the deluded scientist is a source of an alluring but, in reality, destructive life model. The farmer offers little, but his little is everything he has and is true, whereas the scientist offers much, but his much is hollow and behaves like a venomous goblet.

The farmer represents a true example of civilizational determinism, where a combination of human hard-cum-creative work and divine interventions governs. In contrast, the deceived scientist symbolizes “civilizational liberalism,” focusing solely on human efforts which are given a license to explore the unexplorable, seek the unfindable, and appreciate the inappreciable. For the claimed benefit of advancing freedom and civilization, such a scientist – without doubt – abuses both freedom and civilization, his intelligence, his very self and life as a whole.

Finally, it cannot be said enough that the rise of civilization depends on human choices, but its longevity and decline are influenced by a mix of choices and predetermination (fate). In civilization, the relationships between God and humanity are most distinctly defined. The advancement of civilizations reflects the advancement of these relationships, while the decline of civilizations indicates a decline in these same relationships.

(Dr. Spahic Omer is Associate Professor in the Department of History and Civilisation of the AbdulHamid AbuSulayman Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences at the International Islamic University Malaysia.)