While the Muslim world is facing its severest test, a thoughtful and imaginative strategy to counter the negativity against Islam has not yet emerged. Instead, sanctuary is sought in conspiracy theories, which overly inflate the strength of imagined foes while downplaying the potential of Muslims to put up an innovative resistance. Often, the task is depicted as too uphill and the challenges overly fraught with perils. This defeatist mentality is used to bolster the rationale against taking action. In effect, it is a pretext for not doing anything - an alibi for inaction and inertia.
In the West, top leadership seeks out top thinkers and consultants, paying them handsomely for their efforts. It is an eye-opener to examine the scale and scope of endowments given to universities, research institutes, and for media development in the West. In the Muslim world, the thinkers, the “idea men”, and the institutions of learning and analysis - strapped for cash and struggling merely to remain afloat - are all too often unsupported and ignored.
From its genesis, Islam was noted for its emphasis on Fikr (reflection) and on Aql (intellect). But its precepts are not reflected by action on the ground. The Islamic value of ceaseless pursuit of knowledge, it seems, has been taken up by other cultures.
Shockingly, after 14 centuries from the founding of Islam, the importance of meeting the intellectual challenge, the `war of ideas’, is yet to be properly grasped by present-day Muslim elites. They have sought affluence without influence. Advocacy think-tanks linked to specific objectives can be significant tools in winning the ‘war of ideas’. But they need to be staffed with talented, committed, and innovative individuals. And they need funding.
Assiduously and painstakingly, the proponents of competing in the battlefield of ideas build and present a case before mostly uncomprehending Muslim donors - who neither have the will nor the vision to instill a fighting thinking culture - to offset the deluge of negativity against Islam.
The incapacity for promoting serious thinking and developing think-tanks is already taking its toll on Muslim communities worldwide. Not rising to the challenge has its own costs. Basically, the intellectual failure is a moral failure.
