This is a continuation of my previous post on “A Journey of a Thousand Miles“, which explains how I acquired an inner conviction in my heart that Islamic teachings are just as revolutionary today as they were 1440 years ago, even though this idea did not make sense to my head. The strong empirical evidence of the power and glory of the West which surrounds us, also suggests that the necessity of learning essential lessons from the West.  But this does create a mystery: If western teachings are necessary for progress, then how did the early Muslims create a spectacular civilization which led the world for a thousand years without these teachings?

The first major clue towards the solution of the mystery came from the brilliant book on “Orientalism” by Edward Said (A Palestinian Christian, Said is actually Sa’eed), my ex-colleague at Columbia University. This book was amazingly influential in discrediting an entire field of study. Departments of “Oriental Studies” shut down, and scholars discreetly dropped the label “orientalist”, replacing it by “area studies” and “regional experts”. The basic thesis of “Orientalism” was stark and simple. The European conquest of 85% of the globe by the means of incredible brutality, ruthless violence, and unbelievable atrocities inflicted on millions of people required an intellectual justification. The “Orient” was invented as a creation of European scholars to provide such a justification. Deep and serious scholars have proposed explanations of the “Rise of the West” by many distinguishing characteristics: honesty, thrift, initiative, respect for property rights, and openness to new ideas. rationality, science, technology, etc. The “Orient” is defined by the opposite characteristics — orientals, all the billions, are incapable of rational thought, science is beyond their mental capabilities, they are lazy, spendthrifts, lack initiative and originality, are born thieves with no respect for property rights, and so on. One might think that this is a gross exaggeration which no respectable scholar could make. James Blaut’s book on “Eight Eurocentric Historians” documents contemporary and influential historians who have propounded such absurd theses, characterizing billions of people via shallow stereotypes.

The idea that all good things known to man were invented by Europeans, and that human history is really European history because no one else on living on the planet ever did anything significant is such a wild exaggeration that it is unnecessary to produce empirical evidence to prove that it is false – there is simply too much evidence that can be used for this purpose. Despite the fact that these ideas are patently false, why are they so widespread and widely believed all over the world, in the West and in the East? In the long-run, this line of thought proved to be very fruitful, although at that time this was not at all clear to me. This is Meta-Theoretical thinking — or Meta-Thought. That is, we need to think about the nature of thinking itself. Why do people think like they do? Why do people disagree, especially on things which seem obvious? Why does person X believe belief B and person Y believe belief C? My education at MIT in Mathematics and logic had trained me to believe in Binary logic. Thoughts are ideas which are either true or false. If thought T is true than everyone should believe it, and if it is false than no one should believe it. If there is a disagreement between beliefs B and C, then one person is right and the other one is wrong. Our goal is to discover the truth – find out who is wrong and who is right.

Meta-Thinking rejects this way of looking at the problem. Instead of trying to find what is true and what is false, we think about how the idea B became the belief of X, and how the idea C became the belief of Y. This requires looking at the experiences of X and Y, and the kind of education and training they received.  Orientalism is Meta-Thinking at a very high level. Edward Said is examining the ways of thinking for all scholars trained in “Oriental Studies” and called Orientalists. He argued that these ways of thinking were created by the need to justify and rationalize the conquest of the globe by the European powers. Examining whether the thoughts were “true” or “false” was not a very interesting question from the historical perspective taken by Edward Said.

The dramatically ambitious scope of the Edward Said’s project was breathtaking and inspiring. Single-handedly, he successfully attacked an entire discipline. Scholars stopped calling themselves “Orientalists” because Said had shown that this was just a name for a prejudiced European way of looking at the world. The words “Developed” and “Under-Developed” and Modern versus Traditional societies reflected this prejudice and bias of Western superiority and Eastern inferiority.

For me, the work of Said created the hope and the dream that perhaps I could do something similar in Economics. That is, perhaps I could show that Economic Theory was also an Orientalist project, a way for the West to control and dominate the East. This was a very plausible conjecture. The field of “Development Economics” had its roots in “Colonial Economics” which was designed to teach the ruling classes how to govern the colonies in such a way as to create maximum revenue for the colonizers at minimum cost, while preventing revolutions or costly disturbances in the colonies. I did not think that “economics” was wrong (that thought came later). Initially, I just thought that it was the theory of the colonizer, and would not be helpful to the colonized in developing an independent economy.

An attack on Economics was just part of a larger project of showing that Western knowledge was not as all important and useful as it appears to be, and that Islamic ideas could help us develop alternatives which would allow us to achieve freedom from colonial influence. Edward Said’s book covered a vast range of literature spanning many centuries and covering many disciplines. It was clear to me that this was HUGE project. Attacking the entire discipline of Economics constructed over the past few centuries in the West could be a lifetime effort. I was encouraged by the example of Imam Ghazali who said that he took out ten years to examine the claims of the Sufi’s. Devoting large chunks of life to acquire expertise on a whole field of knowledge was justified by the importance of the project.

PRACTICAL ADVICE: As a practical matter of work-discipline, it is essential to break down huge projects into small bite-size pieces. I could not take down the entire discipline of Economics in one day. Instead, I would focus on very small manageable pieces, one at a time. Furthermore, even on a small piece, it is important to focus on subtasks which can be completed in one day. Organize the tasks – which involve reading, absorbing and understanding the material, and writing up an expression of your understanding – into units which are small enough. Then reward yourself for completing one small step. Count each completion of a very very small piece of the task as success, one step forward towards a grand goal. And make sure that you achieve at least one success every day. Give thanks to Allah for opening your heart to knowledge, and for whatever progress you are making, so that He will increase your blessings. Most students tend to do the opposite — instead of counting the small number of steps successfully completed, they look at the huge distance remaining to the goal, and get discouraged. Working in this way is essential for students engaged in research, especially Ph.D. research. The task of finishing up a Ph.D. thesis is dauntingly large. To do it, you should break it down into small parts, and make sure to make progress on one small part every day. This is a very important skill that must be learnt: how to break up a large task into small and manageable pieces. Slow and steady wins the race. For more details, see my post on Guidance for Research for M.Phil/Ph.D. 

RELATED MATERIALS: “Orientalism” is an illustration of an extremely important idea of Michel Foucault: Power/Knowledge. In dramatic contrast to the binary theory of knowledge as being (true/false) which I had learnt at MIT and Stanford, Foucault shows that knowledge is a manifestation of power. The powerful do not control the world by brute force. At their maximum, there were only about a thousand Englishman who were physically present in India to control and dominate a population of millions. The controls exerted is psychological. Colonization is really a conquest of knowledge. Our minds are shaped by theories which inform us that being colonized is better for us than being free. This is done by creating a Deep Seated Inferiority Complex, which is the counterpart of the superiority complex created among the Europeans by their global conquest. This complex was created by a deliberate policy which destroyed the excellent indigenous systems of education, and replaced them with a system designed to create admiration and respect for the West, and hatred and contempt for our own heritage and culture. This system, designed by Lord Macaulay, continues to function with the same results today, creating an elite class which identifies with the West, and holds the “natives” in contempt. For more details see “The British Educated and Civlized Us?”

Postscript: To get automatic notifications about later posts in this sequence, scroll up to the top of this post. A button marked “Follow” will appear somewhere near the lower part of the right hand side. Click on it and follow instructions register for automatic notifications about posts on this blog.