Question: As an expert in the field of civilizational studies, how would you analyze the present state of Western Civilization in regard to the recent bombardments and massacres of the Palestinians by the Zionist Israeli regime?
H. Babaei: Despite all the criticisms that have been made against Western civilization, it can be said that it has made a number of contributions in human history. And based on those contributions, it has been able to gain prestige and a reputation for itself across the world. I believe this is an important discussion. Not only in North America or Western Europe, but also in Eastern countries, and in some South American countries, modernity and the pursuit for modernity are associated with a kind of prestige, or a kind of branding.
And to some extent it is true that different universities and governments measure their efficiency and basically their progress according to Western and modern standards. They determine and organize their programs based on these standards. In any case, this issue is true to a certain extent and cannot be denied.
In civilizational studies, there is a term called "realm of civilizational prestige”. In short, realm of civilizational prestige is basically talking about the extent to which civilizations have credit or prestige. For example, is the credit/prestige of US civilization only in America? Or has this prestige and credit extended outside the US, for example, in Japan as well? Is Iranian civilization or Islamic civilization confined only in Islamic countries or only in Iran itself? Or has it basically extended to other places where they study Islamic values, Islamic religious texts, or the Islamic language in a sense and accept those values as a basis for their daily lives? In the field of civilizational studies, this field is called realm of civilizational prestige.
Now, the question at hand is, basically, where is the realm of Western civilizational prestige? Well, this realm of Western civilizational prestige is not only in the US or Europe, but many Islamic countries and many countries of the Eastern world look to the US for modern values and American values, considering it to be effective in their daily lives. That is the first point.
The second point that I would like to address after this is, what constitutes the prestige of the Western civilization? The prestige of the Western civilization is basically defined by the indicators of Western civilization. Now, the point that should be taken into consideration is that at present, considering what is happening in Gaza, what is the state of these civilizational indicators in the Western world (centered on the US and Europe)? And why aren’t they being implemented? As a matter of fact, if we were to look at the current state of the world through the lens of civilization, what’s happening is a great paradox that cannot be overlooked.
The US and most of the European countries that belong to the Western civilization are openly and fully supporting the Zionist regime’s inhumane bombings. It should be noted that this is not just military and logistical support, but also "ideological support". With this ideological support in relation to what is happening in Gaza, we are practically facing a new contradiction within the modern ideology of the West. What this means is that the Western civilizational structure, which has always defined itself with values such as protecting human rights, children's and women's rights, and establishing justice, is suddenly up in the air.
This paradox that exists with regard to the nature of the claimed values, which clearly emerged as the Western world faced the issue of the Zionist regime's brutal attack on the people of Gaza, practically calls its own ideology and worldview into question. And this civilization is, in a sense, being bargained to serve the interests of the Zionists in Israel.
This issue will undoubtedly have heavy costs for the Western civilization. One of these costs will probably be that in the era after the Gaza massacre, with what prestige, with what credit, with what philosophy and with what model does the Western world plan on maintaining its realm of prestige? There is no doubt that many university professors, intellectuals, freedom and justice-seeking students around the world, especially in the Islamic world, will lose interest in Western civilization after seeing how it has inhumanely supported the crimes of the Zionist regime. They will criticize it.
Furthermore, today we see that a wide range of open-minded movements are taking a stand against Israel on the issue of Gaza. Now the stances are both hard and mild. They are either very broad or very limited. Nevertheless, they are all signs of the collapse of the global trust in the secular, conventional Western discourse.
And another group has chosen to remain silent now and they are actually adopting a neutral position with regard to the West and the terrorists in Islamic countries. The fact of the matter is that this group is also facing an identity crisis. It truly is failing to respond to what it is seeing in the Gaza crisis or the Gaza Holocaust. It is currently looking for a way to justify Israel's attack on Gaza, or in a way, it is attempting to justify the US’s support for the attacks on Gaza. But well, these justifications will not last.
This crisis for the Western civilization is expanding, and I imagine that in a sense, the world of Western civilization is falling into the Zionist trap in Israel. And this is actually accelerating not only the clash of civilizations, but also the decline of a civilization in this clash of civilizations. It seems that in today's world, which is dominated by the media and the media is revealing everything everywhere now, the decline of Western civilization will probably accelerate.
If the Western elites and compassionate thinkers pay attention, they might be able to take a step to prevent the disintegration and decline of Western civilization from within (at this rapid rate) during the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Dr. Habibollah Babaei is a professor at Baqir al-Olum University. He received his PhD in The History and Civilization of Islamic Nations from Tehran University. He has published extensively in English and Farsi and has been the Director of “Islamic Studies of Society and Civilization” at the Islamic Science and Culture Academy since 2016.
(The views expressed in this interview are interviewee’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Khamenei.ir.)
