Rejected Modernity

Abstract

'Modernity' originally meant Euromodernity, and only now are historians freeing themselves from Eurocentric perspective, adopting a new periodisation under the rubric of 'globalisation'. The belief in 'Progress', associated with secularisation and advancing science and technology, underlies Western imperialism. This in turn fuels the imposition of 'Modernity' upon all other countries in the world, and challenges them to adopt it or remain inferior – and often humiliated. Brief discussions follow of case studies of the largely successful adoption of 'Modernity' by Japan, China and Turkey, and its substantial rejection in the Arab Middle East. There, since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, 'modernity' and its attributes have always been tainted by associated with humiliation and loss of honour and dignity. The Islamic rejection of 'Modernity', entailing weak state power, created a void into which global 'Jihadism' stepped. The exaggerated response to it, in Bush's 'War on Terror', has led in the direction of the national security state and a threat to the core principles of American democracy.