Unprecedented destruction and thousands of martyrs rose in Israel's massacres in Gaza under the eyes of the world (Reuters)

"The blood of one man is more precious than the freedom of all mankind", is one of the famous phrases of the famous French philosopher of Swiss origin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), whose thought is keen to be taught by many schools and universities in Arab countries, in addition to what was produced by European philosophers whose production formed the basis of the "philosophy of enlightenment" that founded Western modernity.

In his letters and books, Rousseau continued to exalt the thought of freedom and liberation, saying, "Man is born free, and he is shackled everywhere," and more, "To give up one's freedom is to renounce one's qualities as a man," and it was not surprising that his thought contributed to the foundation of the French Revolution that broke out in 1789, a few years after his death.

Rousseau was not alone singing this path in Europe, but many chanted these slogans even in the United States, whose great revolution against British colonialism (1775-1783) succeeded, with the support of the French: intellectually, financed and soldiers.

Destruction hit the entire Gaza Strip with continued US and Western support (Reuters)

This is the first president of the nascent American state, George Washington (in office: 1789-1797), to say that "when freedom takes root, it becomes a fast-growing plant," and Abigail Adams (1744-1818), the wife of the second president of the nascent American state, John Adams (in office: 1797-1801), says that "the spirit that reigns among men of all degrees, all ages, and races, is the spirit of freedom," and her ideas were so influential that she is described as one of the early founders of the United States.

A path asserted by one of America's first presidents, Abraham Lincoln (in office: 1861–1865), that "those who deny freedom to others do not deserve it for themselves."

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), philosopher, inventor, one of the founding fathers of the United States, and its first ambassador to revolutionary France, shouts, "Those who give up basic freedom to buy a little temporary security deserve neither freedom nor security."


Combustion of modernity

But the ideas imbued with freedom and the foundation of "Western modernity" burned – in the eyes of many – with the explosion of the first Israeli rockets on the ground of Gaza with clear American and Western support, and a clear inability of UN institutions.

Immediately after the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa flood, the West, led by the United States, opened a line of military, intelligence, financial and political support for the occupation, and Abraham Lincoln's country rushed to send two aircraft carriers to the region, pledging $14.3 billion in weapons and aid to Israel, in addition to the $3.4 billion in traditional annual aid.

This is despite the fact that everyone knows the details of the daily massacres committed against civilians in Gaza, the occupation targeting hospitals, ambulances, mosques and churches, the rise of thousands of martyrs, most of them children, and the fall of thousands of wounded, in addition to the displacement of hundreds of thousands from their homes, which collapsed with American bombs weighing one ton.

The support of the countries of the "Revolution of Freedom, Humanity and Lights" came quickly and directly to an occupation that publicly described Palestinians as "animals", threatened them with extermination, used its military, media, and social media to obscure the genocide, promote the Israeli narrative, and fight against any dissenting opinion even within a country like the United States, which prides itself on revering freedom of expression.

Ayad Abelal said that Israel's massacres revealed that the West with its lights is just a mask of brutality and injustice (Al Jazeera)

The Shock

Moroccan university professor Ayad Abelal, a researcher in sociology and cultural anthropology, was one of the first to express their shock at the position of representatives of "Western modernity" on the massacres in Gaza, and published a post on his Facebook page – shortly after the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa flood – in which he said, "I was a victim of Western modernity and the philosophy of lights, and I defended them in every forum and platform, but I discovered that the West with its lights and modernity is just a mask of brutality, barbarism and injustice."

Moroccan university professor Mohamed Ablagh, who studied philosophy and published a blog post that coincided with the Gaza massacres, did not differ from him, saying, "It is time for illusions to fall in order to deal critically with an ideology that promises others the same lives or deaths."

Not far from them, Mauritanian university professor Mustafa Ould Aklib wrote bitterly on his Facebook page, "The West is the biggest lie known to history," and said, "I became ashamed of my students, whom I studied over decades the philosophy of enlightenment and the subsequent modern and contemporary Western philosophies that glorify the concepts of truth, rationality, humanity, values, ethics, progress, justice, fairness, human rights, freedom, criticism, ... I apologize to you, dear students, because I was involved in your deception."

Positions that hardly differ from large segments of the peoples of the world in general – not just Arab and Islamic – who were surprised by the Western response in support of the extermination of an unarmed people, contrary to the values and principles that the West has been seeking for decades to establish in minds.

Most of the victims of the daily Israeli massacres in Gaza were children (Reuters)

And the fog was revealed.

Anthropologist Ayad Abelal, said to Al Jazeera Net "Gaza massacres revealed the blurry scene, and took me out of the shock of modernity as I received in my university education, and as practiced in my writings and in my lectures with unparalleled admiration for the West, as if the blur was above my eyes."
According to Ayad, the West has worked hard for centuries to convey the "philosophy of the Enlightenment" to the whole world, "until we see no path to development and progress except by following the path of the West," a state that resembles "hypnosis."

This is despite the fact that reality has proven for decades that the slogans of freedom, right, fraternity and equality are nothing more than means of justifying neo-colonialism, killing and starving the peoples of the region, and overturning meanings, as in the Palestinian case, so that the benevolent actors have become absolute evil, barbarism and terrorism, and terrorism has turned into effective forces.

Ayad Abelal continues, saying that the inversion of meanings in this way refers to the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who tried unsuccessfully to transfer Western philosophy from the logic of reason to the logic of the body, a logic that shows that the values of freedom, equality and justice, especially in the Western context, "have been magnified to the point that it sees progress, development and civilization as its share, while the rest of the world, especially Arabs and Muslims, is just backwardness, barbarism and savagery."

Professor of philosophy at the University of Mauritania, Mustafa Ould Aklib, called for overcoming the idea that Western civilization is a universal civilization (social media)

Infatuation but

Mustafa Ould Aklib, who studied philosophy in Mauritania 34 years at the university, confirmed to Al Jazeera Net that he did not regret teaching, and the reason for his apology to his students in the famous post, saying, "I was following in teaching Western philosophies a path that made me admire those philosophies to the point of fascination and identification with theses as they represent the maturity of the human mind and the fullness of his senses."

He added, "I did not mean to apologize for teaching philosophy because there is no meaning to that apology, philosophy makes the mind awake and the thought conscious, and it was not intended not to believe in the values referred to in the post as a hint not in detail and clarification, but rather apologized for linking those values to Western civilization and philosophies exclusively and specifically."

This opinion is hardly different from the position of the researcher Muhammad Ablagh, who explained that the Latin European civilization captured the torch of philosophy from Arab philosophers and scientists, and began a new stage in the history of human thought in which European philosophers and scientists inherited science and philosophy through translation, stressing the need to pay attention to the "ownership" that Europe carried out starting from the 19th century for science and philosophy and considered them a pure Western thought to which other civilizations did not contribute anything, because the mentality of the European white man is an Aryan mentality. Only it is qualified to innovate in these areas.

Therefore, for that civilization, humanity belongs to only one "race", the European man, or the one of European origin, which is what we call Western civilization today, and this mentality generated indifference to what happens to others.


The guilt of politics

Some people may argue that the ideology is oppressed in this case, because it bears the guilt of decisions taken by politicians, to which Ayad Abelal responds, saying that the basis of aggression and its support is purely intellectual, but it is colored in the colors of different contexts from Tora Bora, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo to Gaza.

He adds that the media war that supports the barbaric Western war on Gaza is based on false concepts and values, so when one looks at the discourse about Israel, one will inevitably find the intellectual basis of Western modernity in its enlightenment dimension, as Hamas represents terrorism, oppression and the killing of children, while Israel, which is supported by the West, represents freedom, light, democracy and progress.

He goes on to say that the Zionist lobby was founded on myths and myths, as explained by the French thinker Roger Garaudy, for example, so how can this West believe in Solomon's Temple, the promised land, and other mythical concepts that modernity is supposed to have come on its heels and its destruction? "Where is the authority of reason, wisdom and philosophy in what Zionism knows today in the world? Where is modernity from Islamophobia, which has become a new doctrine for post-secular societies in the words of Dustin Bord (professor of philosophy, religions and Arabic at Olivet University in Michigan)?"

Mustafa Ould Aklib makes it clearer that the separation between politics and thought is no longer possible at the cognitive level, because the relationship between them is a dialectical relationship, stressing that the policy of countries is an expression of their values and the extent of their respect for the human being, whether he is a citizen within their borders, or a different human being.

According to Al-Mustafa, this is evident during wars and crises, where politics should remain disciplined by the controls of thought, values and wisdom, and "politics means wise leadership," the spokesman added.

For his part, Dr. Muhammad Abal confirms that thought also has a role in the conflict along with political and economic interests, and the way in which Islam and the Arab person are promoted in the West, which is a completely false picture, illustrates this, knowing that the power of the media is what makes Western public opinion, not thought.

"If we want to talk about the role of thought in this conflict, we must question the image of the Arab person in the Western media, as well as the current school curricula in the West, most of which are still influenced by the image inherited from the Crusades, and the conflict between Islam, Christianity and others," he said.

Despite the death of thousands of martyrs and the bombing of hospitals, mosques and churches, the West still refuses to call for a ceasefire (Reuters)

Scale

For Dr. Mustafa Ould Ekleib, the time has come to move beyond the idea that Western civilization is a universal civilization, that its values are universal values, that it is the highest civilization, that it is a civilization of complete rationality and compassionate humanity.

He stressed in his interview with Al Jazeera Net that the reality of Western civilization says something different from that beautiful image that the West sought over the centuries to draw for itself, and impose it on others, explaining that the history of that civilization is a stock of violence against its peoples and against the other who disagree with it, and from its womb appeared irrational currents in thought and practice, such as: Nazism, fascism, Zionism and racist extremism groups.

Al-Mustafa Ould Aklib called for reducing Western civilization and returning it to its geographical and historical borders, and this is the content of the intellectual project of the Egyptian thinker Dr. Hassan Hanafi, who called it Al-Istarab, explaining in return that Western thought should not be excluded and cannot be excluded, because it has become a tributary of our contemporary Arab thought, but we should stay away from blind imitation and absolute dependence.

"Since we met the civilization of the West with Napoleon's campaign – explains Al-Mustafa – we sit from the West with the student council from his teacher, impressed admirers, translating, transmitting and imitating, so that some of us have become more Western than the West itself, and here we should distinguish between the purely scientific and technical aspect, which represents a general human commonality, and the intellectual and value aspect, which differs from one civilization to another."

Mohamed Ablak said the way out lies in understanding that our planet is one planet that can accommodate everyone (Al Jazeera)

Expiration

As for Ayad Abelal, he asserted that the peoples of the West themselves were deceived by modernity and the philosophy of enlightenment after neoliberalism accelerated the expiration of the validity of Western modernity, and this was confirmed by postmodern currents that ended up being harshly criticized, but while retaining the foundations on which it was based.

Accordingly, the teaching of "philosophy of modernity" in Arab and Western universities alike is more indoctrination than teaching, more embrace than questioning, and embalming a corpse rather than reviving a corpse.

He explains that what is required today is to dismantle the foundations of Western philosophy, and to direct the necessary criticism of the separation between law and morality, which formed the basis of the Western positivist cognitive system, pointing out that this separation has killed the concept of freedom.


Therefore, the alternative – in the eyes of Dr. Muhammad Abelal – is not to exclude all Western thought, but to get out of the circles and orbits of surprise and emotional admiration for the glass façade of modernity, provided that this "exit" is based on a theoretical base and a new system of knowledge, based on the ruins of positivism on the one hand, and modernity on the other, especially since "we have in our Arab-Islamic heritage what meets the purpose."

For Dr. Mohamed Ablagh, the way in which Western thought is taught in Arab universities is not the best way, as it is necessary to deal critically with European thought, "meaning when we study Rousseau, Voltaire or others, it is necessary to expose their thought to critical treatment, to know right from wrong in their thought, especially in what can be considered that mental thought is European thought, and that the rest of humanity has no role in its achievements."

He went on to emphasize that every thought, whatever it is, passes from the local to the universal, contrary to what "Western modernity" is trying to devote by trying to acquire philosophical thought, saying, that philosophy is the miracle of the Greeks, and this claim is the basis of European superiority and the inferior view by them to others, especially Arabs and Muslims.

The way out, he said, lies in "all of us defending the idea that man is one in essence, that all people are equal, regardless of their color or affiliation, and that our planet is one planet, in which we all live, or in which we all perish."

It is a logic that is clear that large segments of the peoples of the West believe in it, and have come out condemning the massacres of Gaza and calling for freedom for the people of Palestine, unlike their regimes that fight and work against it, and believe the words of the late Algerian philosopher Malik Bennabi "The West does not carry with it its values outside its borders", they are - first and foremost - values for people with white skin and blue eyes.

Source : Al Jazeera