The Moroccan thinker Saeed Bensaïd Al-Alawi asserts that values mean a set of perceptions represented by the collective consciousness of individuals, and are related to ethics, truth, beauty, art, economy, politics, education and literature. aspect, or influenced by places, social organization, and regional literature. Pointing out that, although values are absolute and immortal, or aspire to that, due to their association with humans, they change according to the changes in the conditions and forms of their existence.
Bensaïd believes that values are also subject to relativism, tracing its paths through historical scrutiny. The first phase is related to the Arab-Islamic cultural field in the classical era, i.e. the reference time that permits talking about the righteous predecessors and the golden age, which is the time of power and deduction, as Ibn Khaldun put it, referring to That the culture in this era was dialogue.
While the second phase was considered the era of decline and stagnation, the third was the time of renaissance and uprising, and the restoration of awareness, and the fourth was the era of building the modern Arab-Islamic state, or what is known as the state of independence, and the fifth, the space of turmoil and globalization, which is a stage of crisis par excellence, and an era of mixing papers related to consumption and following the authority of trade, Without any considerations, nor giving weight to geographical borders, nor local peculiarities, nor legal sovereignty.
And he goes to the fact that the first (classical) era adopted purely Islamic values, and others he inherited from previous eras, including the values of: chivalry, wisdom, justice, piety, truth, and reason. He concluded that the basic value that prevailed in the classical era was the value of the mind, while the age of decadence witnessed the stifling of ijtihad, the absence of wisdom, and the arrogance of justice.
Bensaïd stressed that during the period of building the state, there was no change in the level of values, except that in the era of globalization and turmoil, definitions abounded, which produced a new pattern of social, political, economic and cultural relations that transcend borders and shorten distances, which led to the abolition of all borders, and to the revolution. technology in the world.
He explained that the Arab-Islamic world, in the shadow of globalization, experienced conflicts between: the system of modernity and thought that believes in the values of freedom and human rights, and the claim of self-sufficiency, and the system of globalization and the values of one culture and consumption imposed on the Arab-Islamic world from abroad. And an Islamic system, within which fragmented, reproductive systems tear it apart, which created a major crisis, and produced a discourse: identity, true Islam, and atonement, which resulted in the setback and apostasy that we are experiencing in the Arab-Islamic world.
He pointed out that in light of the first system of values, the system of "globalization", the Islamic cultural field is equal to other cultural fields. We do not lack many texts from the European West in which their authors express great concern and fear of the will of hegemony on the part of the “global” model, and of the direct danger to the national cultural identity.
While the second system, the one about which it is correct to say, is that the Arab-Islamic world is still living its influence since the beginning of the Renaissance, and is disturbed by the tension it causes in the contemporary Islamic cultural field, and takes multiple forms of expression since the “discovery of the West” that differ between the complete rejection of the values that It was carried by modern social and political thought and the demand for it. Between the complete rejection of every modernization project under the pretext of preserving originality, and diligence in taking between parties from this side and parties from the other, so that the doors of the conflict of modernity and modernization remain open, and the struggle between the supporters of this or that side rages, while the problems continue and fall apart under the umbrella of the third system.
Presented by: Ali Al-Rubai @Al_ARobai
