Determinist Theory of History

Our method of Islamization has to be based on our concept of social causation and historical explanation, i.e. on our view of the process whereby nations and civilizations rise and fall. To identify the Islamic explanation of this important type of social change, it might help to contrast it with a contemporary philosophy of history which, though influential, is misguided. According to this philosophy, history is a movement which follows a single and definite path that leads progressively and inevitably from one stage to a more developed one. Men can influence this movement by either increasing or decreasing its tempo but they do not have the power to arrest it or change its direction. Those who try to stop it or change its direction and thus slow it down are the reactionaries; those who give it a push and accelerate it are the progressives. If one's efforts are to materialize one has to find out this historical movement, see to what future state it is leading and identify his aims and ideals with that stage and direct all his efforts to the goal to which that historical movement is inevitably leading; otherwise his days will be lost in futile reactionary efforts.

We know that the Communists subscribe to such a view, but it is not they alone who do so. Many staunch enemies of Communism unwittingly assume the truth of such a view. Among them are Western and Westernized men and women who believe that the stage which the West, and especially the United States, has now reached is , in its entirety, a more developed stage both materially and culturally. More over if it is the stage towards which all nations that aspire to be both industrialized and civilized must inevitably move. This position, which has many adherents in the Muslim world both in its Communistic form and Western cloak, takes the endeavor to Islamize society to be a futile one because it goes against the historical trend. For the Communists the historical trend leads toward the Soviet Union and to the ideal Communist state; and for the agents of Westernization it moves toward the United States and thence to what will become of the United States.