This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on March 1, 2021 - March 7, 2021

Modern civilisation is problematic. While many advances have been made in science and technology, the development of civil rights and the provision of material needs, many thinkers, artists and lay people have noted the loss of meaning in life, a sense of alienation, the impersonalness of human relations, the destruction of the ecology and the utter selfishness and lack of caring of politics.

Here, I wish to look at the various critiques of modern society in the context of the idea of erring modernisation, while reflecting on the Muslim world.

What intellectual resources may we make use of to reflect on the state and nature of modernity — the dominant ideas of our age belong to the Western tradition. The major thinkers who thought critically about modernity from the Western tradition include Harriet Martineau, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Among contemporary Muslim intellectual resources that can help us to think about modern life include Said Nursi, Malik Bennabi, Ali Shari’ati, Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, Syed Hussein Alatas and Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas. These thinkers reflected on the conditions of modernity with original ideas rooted in their own religious and philosophical traditions. At the same time, they were more than familiar with Western discourses in their respective fields and did not fail to engage with the seminal ideas of the time.

From the 19th century on, social thinkers and theorists paid attention to the big problems of modernity. Scholars such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Martineau brought attention to the manner in which modernity had failed to make good on the promises of the Enlightenment.

They highlighted how modern humans remained unfree in a variety of ways. For Marx, humans were not free to fully realise their potential as human beings and were alienated, while Durkheim understood humans as having been enslaved by desire and fallen into a state of anomie. This critical attitude is also found among some Muslim thinkers. This brings us to the idea of erring modernisation.

Modernisation refers to a process that involves “the introduction of modern science and technology. Modernisation, at present, has been associated with a number of traits of developed societies, such as secularisation, industrialisation, commercialisation, increased social mobility, increased material standard of living and increased education and literacy. The list of traits can be further increased to include such things as the high consumption of inanimate energy, the smaller agricultural population compared to the industrial, and the widespread social security network” (Syed Hussein Alatas, “Erring Modernization: The Dilemma of Developing Societies”, paper presented at the Symposium on the Developmental Aims 1996, pp 70-71).

These can be said to be among the essential characteristics of modernisation. The essence of modernisation should not be confused with those aspects that accompanied or were consequences of the process that took place in the West but which can properly be said to be accidental properties of modernisation. These include the form of economic and political arrangements that began in the West and various aspects of modernity such as individualism, modern art, the conception of the family and so on. Here, the failure is to distinguish the universal process of modernisation from the particular form it took in the West.

The process of modernisation began in the West with the rise of capitalism. The result was the creation of a society, now global, in which people are less governed by a religious ethic and more by bureaucratic norms of efficiency and calculability. Bureaucracies have developed to the extent that they encompass almost all areas of life. As a result, the impact on life is problematic. This has been studied by sociologists and psychologists and has been accepted as a reality about which there is little that we can do.

An example is overspecialisation. Jobs are fragmented, limiting activities and requiring the use of little of our total abilities. There is also little variation in performance and limited scope for initiative. There is a sense of dehumanisation, a decline in enthusiasm for work and, eventually, a drop in productivity.

There is also the problem of hierarchy. While there are obvious benefits of hierarchy, excessive hierarchy leads to irresponsibility. At each layer of the hierarchy, there is a fixed jurisdiction. Everyone is concerned with their own area of jurisdiction and careful not to invade another’s territory.

Yet another problem is that of the impersonal nature of work. Impersonality is good because it means impartiality. But it can be carried too far, especially when it reduces humans to cases, cards, files and numbers. Anonymity and impartiality reinforce fears among employees of victimisation or unkind treatment from impersonal bureaucrats. In other words, bureaucracy can be irrational and dehumanising when it pervades all spheres of life.

Commenting on the problem of modernity, Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas says modern civilisation is centred around the problem of secularisation, that is, the freeing of humans from the religious and metaphysical control over reason. This liberation of humans is a process that entails the disenchantment of nature, ultimately the removal of the divine from the scheme of things (Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas, Islam and Secularism, Kuala Lumpur: ABIM, 197, pp 15-16).

Syed Hussein Alatas’ critique of modernisation, on the other hand, is not directed to its religious or metaphysical foundations but at the process of modernisation itself and the role of intellectuals in that process. According to him, the phenomenon that directly challenges much of the developing world is erring modernisation, or modernisation gone wrong.

Its characteristics as listed by Alatas are as follows:

•    The mere introduction of science and technology without the necessary related elements such as scientific reasoning, research and the proper concept of relevance.

•    The gearing of science and technology towards aims that violate the values of modernisation such as increased standard of living, social justice, human well-being and the respect for the individual personality.

•    Negative imitation in the planning of development projects.

•    Acceptance of perpetual dependence on foreign knowledge and skill beyond that dictated by the need of the moment.

•    The isolation of the modernisation process from a philosophy collectively and consciously upheld by the elites constructed with reference to modern scientific knowledge.

•    The prevalence of a fragmented outlook on the function of science.

•    The acceptance of disintegrative practices such as corruption and maladministration.

•    Indifference towards the rule of law.

•    The presence, side by side with science and technology, of archaic modes of thought and beliefs to a degree that stifles the growth of a scientific outlook.

(Alatas, “Erring Modernization: The Dilemma of Developing Societies”, paper presented at the Symposium on the Developmental Aims and Socio-Cultural Values in Asian Society, Asian Institute for Economic Development and Planning, Bangkok, Nov 3 to 7, 1975)

It is the pervasiveness of these traits that explains the erring nature of modernisation in many Muslim and other developing societies.

It was during the 19th century that Muslims across Asia and Africa came to be aware of the changing nature of the society and political economy of the times. The process of modernisation that had taken off in Europe earlier had already been spreading in the Muslim world and presented opportunities and challenges to people there.

Among the problems identified by Muslim thinkers from the 19th century on are those that can be placed under the category of Westernisation. But many Muslim critics of Westernisation were not xenophobic. They were critical of certain aspects of Western, European or modern civilisation. Their criticisms of European civilisation can be divided into structural and cultural criticism.

Many of the problems they identified in Western, and therefore modern, civilisation remain valid for today and can be captured under the concept of erring modernisation. Erring modernisation is a term that emerged in the 1970s amid concerns about the problem of modernisation having gone wrong in the Third World.

The problems of modern society in the Muslim world do not only lie at the metaphysical or spiritual level. Even if Muslim societies were able to sacralise their economies and polities, this does not mean the problem of erring modernisation would be addressed.

Discussions on development in the Muslim world tend to be preoccupied more with economic growth and less with other issues that have implications for long-term development. Many Muslim economies grow as a reflection of economic expansion of advanced industrialised countries. There is, therefore, the problem of economic dependence. This dependence is manifested in the areas of trade, debt, technology and foreign investment.

These problems are not going to disappear in the near future. Attention to the problem of erring modernisation is necessary if development in the Muslim world is to be self-directed and comprehensive.

Syed Farid Alatas is professor of sociology at the National University of Singapore

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