But the fact that the golden age of Islamic civilization has...

But the fact that the golden age of Islamic civilization has passed does not mean that the Qur’an and Islam have withered too. We Muslims believe that we must maintain our faith in the Qur’an and authentic Islam while searching for new answers to today's questions on the basis of religion. The products of Western civilization are everywhere; but I believe that this civilization, too, is not ultimate because it is a human construct.

All human achievements must be utilized by new generations, j just as Western civilization borrowed heavily from the Islamic world, which in turn had been enriched in its golden age by Persian and Greek culture. My main question is, what should we Muslims do now that Western civilization is dominant and we have lost our previous civilization?

If we want to be instrumental in today's world, should we return to the West's past-which would be regressive-or do we want to transcend Western civilization, or do we merely want to dissolve into the West? The rigidly traditional want us to return to the past.

The Westernized prescribe that we melt into the West, but those who really care about the well-being of their national and religious culture believe that we must incorporate the West to be able to transcend it, remaining aware of our own religious sources, as well as the questions and puzzles of today's world. We must adopt all of the positive achievements of the West, but see them in relation to our own heritage so we can fill in its deficiencies.

That is why we must place greater focus on the future of the West than on its past. Rectitude is one of the pillars of all religions, especially Islam, and we need a specific interpretation of the term. Unfortunately the idea of rectitude in the history of Islam has been limited to the realm of the individual, because the truly pious of the Shiite faith have never governed society.

This has also been true of the Sunnis; the only people who were allowed to govern were the powerful, while the people were kept away from the reins of power. Social rectitude has no precedent in our history. The same Muslims who believed in rectitude committed many social injustices in the Muslim world, and individual rectitude has not been able to overturn these inequities. Thus if we say that we possess rectitude and the West does not, we have to know exactly what we mean by rectitude.