But when we look at it from a different perspective, we can say that the heritage in question actually offers great opportunities to overcome the crisis we currently find ourselves in.As everyone can easily observe, there is a general and broad-scale Muslimization movement in the Muslim world that needs to be analyzed from several different angles. Developing a proper understanding of the dynamics and targets of this new phenomenon will help in providing explanatory information on how the world will be shaped in the near future. Social scientists, researchers and experts highly interested in this issue are trying to explain this phenomenon. While this is a very beneficial effort, it is critical for the issue to be properly analyzed, for an inaccurate explanation has the potential to lead the public and especially those who work on this issue to incorrect results.
To link this Islamic phenomenon strictly to geopolitical developments and the deep social and economic injustices in the Muslim world would be misleading.
The biased stance of international politics and the double standards big states apply to other countries does cause the Muslim world to develop a sentiment that “Muslims are being oppressed by the Christian West and their rights and legitimate demands are not being taken seriously.” While analyzing this sentiment on a calmer platform is necessary, what's important is image and perception and not necessarily reality.
The wide-scale social migration in the Muslim world, the rapid transformation of traditional cities into major metropolises and the continuous disappointment of millions of people that have migrated from rural areas to big cities are also important factors that need to be taken into consideration.
Schizophrenics in the cultural world and an extensive search for identity should also be added to these factors. There are segments of the society that have neither become Western nor stayed Eastern because they are stuck between their traditions and authoritarian political regimes that impose modernism on them with official cultural policies.
In this respect and in the context of foreign factors, the Muslim revival movement developed not only as a response to poverty, social injustice and the unequal international order but also as a search for identity against mandatory modernization policies.
Although all these factors had an “effective” role, they are not enough to explain the general phenomenon because the return to religion that is becoming concrete in Islam is not only happening in Muslim countries but also in the Jewish and Christian worlds and even in the cultural worlds of Buddhism, Brahmanism and Taoism at different levels.
These observations indicate that as humans on this earth we are experiencing a general return to religion. There are common issues shared by the three Abrahamic religions.
1. The modern point of view (modernity), founded on the Enlightenment and the principle of detaching man from God and weakening or marginalizing high ethical virtues, has depleted its own abilities and has reached the end of its lifespan.
2. Man cannot live without God and without the ethical virtues of religion. A completely secular lifestyle is not possible. Mentally denying the transcendent, spiritual and other dimensions of existence does not separate existence from those dimensions.
3. Regardless of what religion we believe in, we must respond to the call of holy books and plan a new lifestyle that is appropriate to these callings. Uncontrollable ambitions and desires to win power have made the earth an unlivable place. When our planet was under the control of religion and holy books, some 500 years ago, it was a healthy place; today life itself is under threat.
These are three main points shared by Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is this way because the holy books of all three religions came from one source. They are revelations from God.
It is at this point that we need to take a look at what Islam recommends and what dynamics it seeks we put into play to be able to live in peace with people from other cultures. And it seems the only way we can do this is by foregoing the habit of looking at everything within the frame of political, geo-strategic and economic self-interest relations.
