What is actually happening is that the Islamic world has been undergoing a painful experience for half a century. To be more precise, since the mid-19th century. This society has been engaged—ever since it awoke to the blows of colonialism and the calls of men like Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Sheikh Muhammad Abduh—in a movement of (revival). This period has commonly been referred to as the “Nahda” (renaissance), which began with the society’s initial awakening around the year 1858 and continues to its present state. However, if we analyze this phase to highlight the characteristics of Islamic thought throughout this century of its development, we find that it is divided into three distinct periods:

A - The Age of Sleep, which lasted for many centuries.

B - The Age of Awakening or Regaining Consciousness.

C - The Age of Chaos and Current Instability.

These three ages precisely correspond to the three stages of a child's experience:

A - The Maternal Stage: In which the infant, clinging to its mother's breast, has no concept of the world of objects.

B - The Pre-Social Stage: Where the child begins to enter the world of objects but still knows nothing about the world of ideas.

C - The Social Stage (School and Post-School): Where the child attempts to establish within himself the connection between the world of objects and the world of ideas.

If the leaders and guides of the Islamic world were to reflect on this simple framework, they would certainly gain a better understanding of the psychological mechanism governing the experience of the current Islamic generation, the difficulties this generation must overcome, and the problems arising from these difficulties in the political and social spheres.

Nevertheless, if we apply our entire study to the framework related to the psychology of the child, we find that the child undergoes a phase of imitation, during which he behaves like the grown-ups around him—his mother, father, and older siblings—without understanding them. He imitates them, and that is all. He imitates them first in language, and by mimicking sounds he does not comprehend, he learns to speak.

However, let us suppose that for some reason he continued to imitate these sounds until the ages of eight or ten. This would certainly be seen as an abnormal case, specifically, a pathological condition that would leave the child’s parents bewildered, with every right to seek the help of a specialist.

Another important observation about child psychology must also be considered before applying it to the Islamic world: parents are well aware, with sufficient precision, of the danger of bad role models due to the phenomenon of imitation. That is why they enforce a certain level of supervision at home, in school, and on the streets. They do not see it as necessary or beneficial for the child to experiment with everything he sees. Some experiences can be harmful and may hinder his moral and intellectual progress.

For this very reason, psychoanalysis, since Freud, has sought in the case of deviant adults the pathological causes in the distant experiences of the same individuals when they were children.

Now, let us transfer this double observation—concerning the child with delayed language development and the adult whose behavior has been disrupted due to past experiences—over to our subject in order to better understand the problems currently facing Islamic society. To further understand the first issue, that of imitation, let us consider it in the light of a tangible example that gives it full social significance; the Japanese example.

We have dated the infancy of the contemporary Islamic world to the year 1858 in order to track its development with a certain degree of precision. Let us take another date, 1868, which marks the birth of another society—the modern Japanese society.

Here we are, then, with a difference of approximately ten years—an insignificant gap in the lifespan of human societies—facing two simultaneous phenomena of twin children. But what is astonishing is how quickly the Japanese child was able to move past the stage we called the (pre-social stage) in child psychology.

Like all children, the Japanese chile imitated the “adults” in order to learn to form words. Naturally, he imitated Europe in this regard and acquired (objects) without understanding the (ideas) they represented.

However, what is truly remarkable is the speed with which this Japanese child became accustomed to the language of grown-ups, to the extent that he was recognized, in 1905, as having mastered speech—by the firing of cannons in the Battle of Port Arthur. It is, of course, a bad language, but we are studying a social phenomenon here, not a moral one!

This phenomenon sharply reflects our own condition: even after a century has passed, we have not yet grown accustomed to the language of adults.

Japan has assimilated (ideas), while the Islamic world still merely purchases (objects)!

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Taken from the book: “The Idea of an Islamic Commonwealth.”