CAIRO: Arab youth are undeniably at a crossroads. On the one hand they are dealing with modernism and western standards introduced into conservative societies. Meanwhile, Arab culture has become engrossed in appearances - the cosmetic - rather than the core issues. This has in turn created a discrepancy between the spoken intent and incentive action, a politically and religiously-charged atmosphere where judgments are based on emotion rather than reason. According to Fouad Al-Bana of Yemen's Taauz University, Arab youth are today threatened by a high level of intellectual illiteracy. At last month's Al Nadwa Al Alamiya L-Al Shabab Al Islami (World Seminar for Muslim Youth) Al-Bana bemoaned the fact that 50 percent of Muslims are illiterate while the other half are "stigmatized by intellectual illiteracy that widens as we speak of the large majority of educated people . Held every four years in a different Arab country, the seminar hosted 300 Islamic intellectuals including luminaries like Sheikh Youssef Al Qaradawi and focused on youth and the future. Al-Bana maintained that the Arab world suffers from a failure to understand the physical reality due to lack of proper channels and guidance needed to conduct research and acquire knowledge. He added: "This is why many young people are molded in threadbare traditions and remain change-resistant for fear new knowledge would endanger their long-established religious and social values. The Arab scholar cited two examples of youth resistant to reform of age-old traditions. In Yemen, following Friday prayers, worshippers took to the streets in angry protest when the imam delivered his sermon dressed in a suit and tie. Why the outrage? Is the essence of the sermon not the focal point? Al-Bana said such an example points to the phenomenon that such youth are primarily nourished by self-imposed restrictions that confine knowledge and practices to certain tried and tested norms. He referred to Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad Al-Ghazali, an 11th century scholar and philosopher of a more orthodox form of Islam, who insisted that all occurrences and their impacts were derived of the will of God. "Imam Ghazali came to draw a line between religious studies and mundane knowledge. Since then, sciences like politics and sociology, that are based on collective effort and accumulated research, had become a review of what was rather than predictions about what will happen, Al-Bana said. The move had, unfortunately, crippled political thought and triggered a scarcity of collective research. As a result religion has become primarily the study of Fiqh and an individualistic practice aimed at harmonizing the rapport between God and the worshipper, taking the Quranic text for its face value. "This is why many of the religious youth tend to lock up themselves in narrow circles thinking they are adhering to the preaching of the Quran and Sunna, he added. This theological narrow-mindedness inevitably leads to a sector of society that has removed itself from this world with an exclusive eye on the afterlife. This school of thought, therefore, adheres to the notions that spending of monies must be channeled through charity organizations which cater to the construction of mosques and alms-giving. "The value system is then restricted to religious duties like telling one s prayers and fasting; allegiance is for the most part expressed for one s tribe, country, religious sect; interest is taken in position-holding persons and not in their constructive ideas or words, Al-Bana said. The Yemeni scholar believes the answer to the intellectual impasse lies in reforming education systems, stressing analysis rather than memorization for young minds, and always stating the importance of scientific research and achievement. His solutions to the problem also came in conventional arguments consisting of reforming education systems, stressing analysis rather than memorization, encouraging scientific research.
