The Road To Mecca

by Muhammad Asad

And yet, in the arrogance of their blindness, the people of the West are convinced that it is their civilization that will bring light and happiness to the world ... In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries they thought of spreading the gospel of Christianity all over the world; but now that their religious ardour has cooled so much that they consider religion no more than soothing background music - allowed to accompany, but not to influence, 'real' life - they have begun to spread instead the materialistic gospel of the 'Western way of life': the belief that all human problems can be solved in factories, laboratories and on the desks of statisticians.

'How has it come about that you Muslims have lost your self-confidence - that self-confidence which once enabled you to spread your faith, in less than a hundred years, from Arabia westward as far as the Atlantic and eastward deep into China - and now surrender yourselves so easily, so weakly, to the thoughts and customs of the West? Why can't you, whose forefathers illumined the world with science and art at a time when Europe lay in deep barbarism and ignorance, summon forth the courage to go back to your own progressive, radiant faith? How is it that Ataturk, that petty masquerader who denies all value to Islam, has become to you Muslims a symbol of "Muslim revival"?'