In more recent times a large number of Western scholars...

In more recent times a large number of Western scholars, together with Muslim scholars writing in Western languages, have been bringing out the diffusion of Islamic science, philosophy, and other aspects of Islamic culture in medieval West. However, such researches have not been incorporated in the Western education system and culture, in the manner and to the extent necessary for fostering the proper appreciation of the ideal and historical patterns of Islamic culture.

Therefore the West portends and strives for Westernization of the Muslim world because of what is considered to be the backwardness of contemporary Muslim behavioral culture pattern and the denyial of the existence and validity of ideal Islamic culture pattern. Therefore we can see the reactionary Muslim responses through polemics, xenophobia, historical romanticism, zealotism, fanaticism, extremism, even terrorism.

Which are in fact a far cry from the creative adaptation indispensable for contemporary rejuvenation.

The consequences of the denial, falsification and neglect of this historical fact have been extremely serious: the denigration of Islam in the eyes of Muslims and non-Muslims; the identification of Islam and its culture with ignorance and backwardness and of “modernity” and progress with Western civilization; the creation of xenophobia and arrogance in Western mind, and the perpetration of ideological and politico- economic Western imperialism against Muslim people; the imposition of an inferiority complex among Western educated “modern” Muslims, and the bitter social and political cleavages between the “modern” and the “traditional” Muslim elites.

This fact of medieval Islamicization of the West needs to be fully researched, accepted and incorporated in specialized works and in the teaching materials of schools and colleges around the world.

The consequences of this will be far reaching in understanding the socio-cultural rejuvenation and modernization of the developing nations, in building up a genuine and universally acceptable theory of social action, and in ridding sociology of ethnocentrism; in removing the burdens of historical romanticism and apologetics imposed upon the underdeveloped nations and suppressed minorities as a reaction to the cultural arrogance of nations and ethnic groups which are highly developed today but had their own dark ages at some other time and in promoting international understanding and co-operation for development and world peace.