'To be modern did not mean we must ape the west'

Historian Salman Sayyid feels that in order to develop Islamic identity the Muslims must learn to shed inferiority complex as well as the notion to be modern one must behave like western people.
Salman Sayyid, a scholar at the Leeds University, UK, gave a lecture on Islam and the decentred west at the International Islamic University (IIU) here on Tuesday.
He said it was an error to think of the west as a contiguous geographical European land mass. In fact west was an attitude of mind, and even countries like Japan and the Philippines may belong to fold of the west because they had that particular attitude of mind.
The western notion of superiority also overwhelms us with its phenomenal power.
However, in Salman Sayyid's configuration, there is no moral element in that power and the west often exercises that power with violence on people and countries that did not belong to their category. He cited the example of the Holocaust where death was a product of industry assembly lines. No one cared for the niceties of Geneva Convention while mistreating prisoners in Jewish concentration camps of Germany.
The idea is that the terms of Geneva Convention should be applicable for European prisoners with in case of prisoners from other countries.
He said the beginning of decolonisation of Muslim lands had broken the myth of western hegemony but we were still groping for writing Islamic history that would be construct of the sweep of our civilisation, and not a fragmented study.
Citing an example of what constituted western history; he said it encompassed the stream of times from the Greeks until Nato.
On the other hand, Muslim historians had written from the standpoint of their respective countries, and Muslims generally went to sleep after returning the gifts they inherited from the Greeks. In looking forward to the renaissance of Islamic countries he did not mean that Muslim countries should attain the substance of hegemonic powers. 'I have no intention of substituting one hegemonic power with another,' he remarked.