The Mediterranean basin, culturally and geographically, is a matrix for the collective memory of both ancient and modern civilisation. The peoples of this region held a virtual monopoly on human ingenuity and innovativeness, which radiated outwards from the south to the north, for over 4,000 years, or for an epoch many times longer than the modern era. This geographical proximity between the north and the south, in spite of the Mediterranean barrier, facilitated the processes of transition, exchange and influence. The Hellenic culture that emerged in the north was clearly influenced by Pharaonic civilisation in the south, which preceded Hellenic civilisation not by a century or two but by 3,000 years. Indeed, ancient Egypt launched many civilisational foundations, most notably the concept of the central state with all its attendant repercussions on social, political and economic systems. These systems found expression in culture and the arts that were another face of the life of ancient Egyptians and around which coalesced the monotheistic creed under the pharaoh Akhenaten in the 18th Century BC, which is to say before the divinely revealed religions. The Hellenic civilisation that followed sustained the continuity for another millennium, shifting its centre from Greece to Rome, but all the while retaining intimate contact with the south that occupied and intermarried in various eras. The most famous is the Ptolemaic era launched by Alexander the Great (322 BC) and sustained by his successors who turned the city of Alexandria, in the south, into a renowned political, social and cultural capital of the Hellenic world. This city, moreover, retained its civilisational centrality after the centre of political gravity in the north shifted to Rome, unlike the civilisations of the Tigris-Euphrates valley that had been contemporaneous with the Pharaonic civilisation and to which human civilisation is indebted for other contributions such as the invention of law and writing. The emergence of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century AD precipitated the burgeoning of a new civilisation that, like its predecessors, learned from them and built on what it learned and spread across the Mediterranean physically through military conquests, and morally through the dissemination of ideas. The process was manifested in Andalusia where Arab Islamic civilisation flourished for eight centuries or a period roughly equivalent to the heights of Hellenic/Roman civilisation. Andalusian cities such as Cordoba and Granada developed into vibrant centres for intellectual and cultural innovation and dissemination in the northwestern Mediterranean, confirming the rule of cultural capitals in the history of the evolution of human civilisation. These and other Islamic capitals continued to exert a powerful cultural and civilisation influence in the manner of their predecessors, such as Alexandria, Rome and Athens in the eras of Hellenic/Roman civilisation or the cities of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in their heyday. As a result, they had an impact on the peoples of Spain, France and elsewhere in the northern Mediterranean whose renaissance proceeded from the civilisation legacy bequeathed by Arab Islamic civilisation. Launched almost immediately in the wake of the decline of Andalusian civilisation, the Spanish and Portuguese expeditions discovered new worlds beyond the seas, in the Americas and in Asia. At the same time, the modern Renaissance was set into motion, unleashing the powers of systematic scientific and rational thought and culminating in modern civilisation and the unprecedented leaps and bounds in ideas, scientific theories, technological applications and cultural and social development. What is surprising about this approximately 4,000 year old civilisational cycle in the Mediterranean basin is that instead of remaining within this sphere, with the transmission process shifting back and forth between the south and north, it turned — or branched out — horizontally to the east and west, neglecting that south which had given birth to this civilisational cycle. Thus, Western civilisation crossed the Atlantic to acquire greater brilliance and progress in the American continent at the hands of European immigrants and it spread eastwards to Japan and other Asian nations where it has a tangible influence in spite of the vast distances between those countries and Europe, the last incubating station for this civilisational memory or process. But why did the cycle not complete itself so that the civilisational drive and impetus could resume in the southern Mediterranean again? Why, in spite of the proximity between the south and north of the Mediterranean has the former remained a civilisational backwater? Are there reasons connected with the colonial era and the impact of the policies of colonial powers during the 19th Century? Or is that the cultures of the southern Mediterranean countries refuse to interact positively with modern civilisation in spite of their own legacies of progress and innovation from the Pharaonic and Arab Islamic civilisations? The gap between north and south in the processes of development and modernisation generates numerous problems. Geographic proximity combined with the economic and knowledge gaps has given rise to such phenomena as illegal migration, on the one hand, and the rise of radical ideas hostile to Western civilisation and conducive to terrorism and other social ills, on the other. But what accounts for this gap in the first place? There are many possible answers. One may indeed reside in the colonialist policies of the countries of the north in the 19th and 20th centuries and the attitude of superiority that led those nations to look down on societies of the south and to deliberately keep them underdeveloped so as to facilitate the exploitation of their resources. Nevertheless, there are indigenous factors connected with the processes of decline of societies of the south. Prime among them is the prevalence of narrow-minded radical religious mind-sets that contrast starkly with the outlooks that made the first bourgeoning of Arab Islamic civilisation possible. That flowering was the product of a thirst for scientific inquiry and knowledge that led to an unprecedented boon in the natural sciences, medicine, engineering, astronomy and the humanities. The tangible results of this were felt westwards in North Africa and Andalusia, as mentioned above, as well as eastwards in the Indian subcontinent where, in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries that spirit tamed and then refined the Mongolian tribes, which then built up the glorious Mogul empire that lasted until the British occupation in the 19th Century. In other words, the problem is not in Islamic culture per se. It is in the mind-sets that began to prevail in Muslim societies after their civilisations collapsed. As they began to prevail, their societies stopped benefiting from the civilisational heritage even as that heritage began to have an impact on European societies. The writings of Ibn Rushd, known in Europe as Averroes, and other such scholastic luminaries would continue stimulate progress in medicine, engineering, astronomy and other sciences. The European translation movement at the time was highly instrumental in the transmission of that civilisational heritage. In so doing, they were following in the footsteps of the Arabs who translated the works of Aristotle, Plato, Ptolemy, Archimedes and other such Greek scientists and philosophers into Arabic, thus stimulating the Arab Islamic civilisational rise. The famous Abbasid caliph Harun Al-Rashid succeeded, with the aid of an army of scribes and translators, in transforming the Dar Al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) into a world-renowned library and mecca for scholars. The Library of Cordoba, created by Umayyad rulers in Andalusia, was reputed to contain hundreds of thousands of books and scrolls. The Arabs may have come from the desert but, as the foregoing proves, they were perfectly adept at grasping, interacting with and building on legacies of ideas and conveying them to Africa, Asia and southern Europe. Therefore, to charge that Arab Islamic culture is incapable of sustaining civilisation is clearly unjust. Perhaps the key to the problem as to why this part of the world lags so far behind is to frame the question in another way. Why has this culture fallen into decline and become prey to radical ideas? There are many causes, prime among them being religious and political tyranny. The Arab Islamic intellect is no longer what it once was: free and independent, especially in the realms of ideas and innovation. It has become encumbered by the chains of extremist religious thought that fundamentally rejects the ideas of modern civilisation. It was not odd that, in 1928, there would emerge a radical religious movement that was opposed to modernisation. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded at a time when Egyptian society was taking serious steps in the modernisation process. There was political party plurality and a vibrant democratic parliamentary life. Socially, an educated and cosmopolitan middle class had begun to emerge. The two sides or antitheses — the bigoted religious radicals and the open-minded modernists — would inevitably clash in their rivalry over Egyptian society. Ultimately, the latter was forced to retreat because the former found an appropriate soil in which to sow their ideas, this being ignorance and lack of education and then the shift to dictatorial rule in the second half of the 20th Century. That political climate worked to stimulate radical movements and organisations that recruited disaffected youth and indoctrinated them with an insular and narrow-minded ideology that was hostile to the acquisition of knowledge and the process of progress. We thus had social mentalities that were weak with respect to religion and religiosity and backwards with respect to knowledge and progress. It follows that the key to the re-awakening of the south begins not by turning against religion but rather by putting it in its natural framework. Towards this end, we need to reconsider the theological interpretations that inform the memory of this people, distance religion from ideological and political exploitations so as to free the minds of the young and enable them to take advantage of modern knowledge and ideas, thereby enabling that generation to form a new nucleus of growth and progress for our societies. The Arab Spring shed much light on the two forms of tyranny. Its temporary victory over them in a struggle that proved to require continuity and perseverance demonstrated both the tenacity of old dictatorial regimes and the true nature of the mentality and ideas of radical Islamist groups. Unable to tolerate conditions under Muslim Brotherhood rule for more than a year, the Egyptian people launched a second revolution on 30 June 2013, just over two years after their first revolution on 25 January 2011. The developments over the past three years in Egypt suggest that the overthrow of political tyranny is an important avenue to ending religious and social tyranny and, hence, the prevalence of the ideas that perpetuate underdevelopment. Although we are still at the beginning of the road, it is extremely important to learn the lesson from the developments and socio-political interactions in the societies of the south. The processes of reform must be pursued gradually and with caution. Democracy will not appear from one day to the next. To attempt to impose it ignores realities. For example, imposing democracy in an environment characterised by the lack of a mentality capable of grasping democratic values can be counterproductive, as can be seen in Libya where militias now dominate and the control of the state is weak. This raises the question as to the appropriate approach to reform. Is it to adopt democratic ideas or is it best promoted by creating conditions for democratic values to take root in a culture? The process is not just about extracting a rotten substance from the body, but how to do that without creating greater damage and possibly jeopardising the life of that body. The situations in Libya, Syria and Iraq before that show that democracy is not merely a set of abstract ideas or electoral processes; there need to be institutions to embody them and a strong government in order to translate them into meaningful realities on the ground. It follows that the route to reform in the countries of the south is to support the state and its institutions, not to tear them down regardless of their degree of commitment to democracy and rule of law. What is happening on the ground is proof that democracy without institutions and a strong state means civil warfare, the promotion of the religious extremism industry and fuelling terrorism fed by the notions of holy war and battles against windmills. The absence of the state and political vacuum in Libya, that like Syria has become a pole for religious extremism and its proponents, threatens to generate another Afghanistan. The gravity of this prospect, and perhaps elsewhere in the region, is greater when we consider that these countries are neighbours of the north, which is to say Europe. Otherwise put, the damage that occurs in the south can spread to all, if not seriously and appropriately handled. Both the obstacles and the keys to the renaissance of the south exist in the societies of the south. Lifting the fog that clouds the minds of these societies by eliminating the chains of tyranny in their political and religious forms will generate the openness needed to benefit from new ideas and innovative ways of thinking. In this manner, the way will be cleared to the revival of the south as a source of human civilisation and to the resumption of the south-north civilisational cycle. The writer is managing editor of the quarterly journal Al-Demoqrateya published by Al-Ahram.
