Colonialism, National Movements, and Authoritarian Regimes

Formulation of the Claim

Colonialism, national movements, and post-independence regimes gave rise to forms of political and epistemic distortion.

Explanation

Colonialism is presented as having legitimized its violence in the name of civilizing, while national movements responded with a doctrine that made colonialism the sole cause of underdevelopment. The text continues by arguing that authoritarian regimes deepened this course instead of addressing it.

Its Place in the Book’s Argument

This idea appears within a historical reading that links the colonial moment and the period after it, in order to show that the end of colonial domination did not automatically lead to political or intellectual liberation. It is used to explain the persistence of dysfunction after independence.

What the Atom Does Not Say

It does not place responsibility solely on colonialism, nor does it treat national movements or later regimes as mere direct continuations of it without distinction.

Brief Evidence Passage

I had already pointed out in the 1970s the extent of the disparity between knowledge in Western societies and knowledge in Islamic societies, but this disparity has become even sharper and greater in our own time. French intellectuals have come to speak of leaving religion behind and of Europe entering a post-Christian age; since 1985 they have also spoken of Christianity as the only religion that brought about this leaving of religion. In parallel, what has happened in the Arab or Islamic world? The presence of religion has grown ever larger and has not diminished, unlike what happened in Europe. Rather, they declared Islam the state religion in a number of constitutions of the so-called Islamic world, and then the wave of closed fundamentalist Islam rose up, not only against modernity but even against its own heritage of

Nearby Links

Critical Islamic Thought and Ijtihad