Protecting the Project “Islamic Humanities: A Prelude to the Coming Bright Global Civilization” from Misunderstanding
Mohammad Kourani — 2026.09.14
It is useful, from the outset, to set out a number of “potential misconceptions and responses to them”, because some objections may arise from confusing the project itself with historical or political models that it does not endorse.
Potential Misconceptions and Responses
1. Misconception: “Global civilization” means imposing Islam on the world.
Response: What is meant is a civilization based on universal human values, presented through reasoned argument, free choice, and a civilizational model that can serve as a point of reference and dialogue among civilizations—not through religious coercion or the imposition of beliefs.
2. Misconception: “The coming civilization” means claiming knowledge of the unseen.
Response: The discussion of the future here is a civilizational vision and a form of historical foresight. It does not mean specifying a date or unseen details. As for the unseen, its ultimate knowledge belongs to God.
3. Misconception: “Civilizational determinism” means that the future is guaranteed regardless of what human beings do.
Response: What is meant is that there is a civilizational direction that we consider possible and promising, not that human beings are deprived of free will. The realization of such a civilization depends on action, choice, sacrifice, and the laws and patterns governing history.
4. Misconception: “Islamic humanities” means placing a Qur’anic verse or hadith alongside every scientific theory.
Response: The project does not seek to “religionize” scientific findings. Rather, it seeks to examine the philosophical, human, and ethical foundations of the sciences, benefit from what is sound within them, and reconstruct what requires reconsideration.
5. Misconception: The project is opposed to modern science.
Response: The opposite is the case. The project distinguishes between science as a means of discovering the laws and patterns of creation and some of the philosophies that may be constructed around science. It benefits from science without deifying its philosophy.
6. Misconception: The project is opposed to Western civilization.
Response: The critique is not a rejection of a people or a civilization, but a critique of certain philosophical, economic, and social models. The coming civilization can benefit from the greatest achievements of both the West and the East.
7. Misconception: Islam here is presented as an alternative to reason.
Response: The project is based on an integration of revelation, reason, experience, and science. Revelation does not abolish reason, and reason does not abolish revelation.
8. Misconception: Divine authority means abolishing human freedom.
Response: In the Islamic conception, the human being possesses free will and is responsible for his choices. Divine guidance does not abolish human agency; rather, it provides it with an ethical standard and a purpose.
9. Misconception: Divine law means that all human laws and institutions must disappear.
Response: Divine rulings and principles require understanding, interpretation, ijtihad (juristic reasoning), implementation, and human institutions. Therefore, a substantial part of a civilizational system is, by its nature, a changing product of human reasoning and judgment.
10. Misconception: Every catastrophe occurs because of a direct human sin.
Response: No. There are natural, biological, geological, and social causes, and there are trials and events that we cannot explain in detail. What is required is to study their scientific causes while not eliminating the ethical and law-of-history dimensions.
11. Misconception: The project is theocratic, meaning rule by religious clerics in the name of God.
Response: A distinction must be made between the authority of revelation and the claim by an individual or institution to possess the divine will absolutely. Human beings can make mistakes in understanding revelation and applying it.
12. Misconception: “The Perfect Human Being” means looking down upon ordinary human beings.
Response: The purpose is to elevate the human being, not to abolish his dignity. The same material, weak, and desire-driven human being is capable of education, transformation, and movement toward perfection.
13. Misconception: The project seeks to return the world to the past.
Response: The project looks toward the future, while drawing from revelation and the intellectual heritage the principles capable of building that future—not in order to reproduce the political and social forms of the past.
14. Misconception: The coming Islamic civilization means Muslim domination over other peoples.
Response: The criterion of civilization is not the domination of one people over another, but justice, dignity, mercy, knowledge, peace, and the protection of human beings and the universe. It is therefore universal in its values, not ethnic or racial.
15. Misconception: The “universality” of the project means eliminating cultural particularities.
Response: Universality does not mean uniformity. Humanity can unite around higher values while preserving its languages, cultures, traditions, and civilizational diversity.
16. Misconception: The project monopolizes truth and regards its opponents as enemies of civilization.
Response: An intellectual project must be tested through argument, criticism, and dialogue. Intellectual disagreement is not hostility, and its proponents do not possess a divine mandate to judge the intentions of others. This is why we have expressed the project through the concept of “Authentic Muhammadan Islam.”
17. Misconception: Criticizing liberalism or secularism means rejecting democracy and human rights.
Response: Many principles of participation, rights, and justice can be accepted while still discussing the philosophical foundations that treat freedom, the human being, or the state as an absolute reference.
18. Misconception: Islamic human rights mean fewer rights than modern human rights.
Response: The project proposes to re-establish human dignity on a deeper foundation: the human being is honored because he is created by God, not because a state, a majority, or international institutions have granted him dignity.
19. Misconception: Islamic economics means poverty, austerity, and rejection of development.
Response: The aim is not poverty, but liberation from the enslavement of consumption and greed, alongside production, science, innovation, justice, and the provision of a dignified life.
20. Misconception: The coming bright civilization is a political project affiliated with a contemporary axis or state.
Response: The civilizational project is broader than states, geopolitical axes, and political parties. Any state or people can contribute to it, and it cannot be reduced to any contemporary political experience.
21. Misconception: The project is an alternative to religious and cultural pluralism.
Response: Civilizational universality does not require eliminating the other. Rather, it can be based on coexistence, justice, and preserving the dignity of those who differ, while keeping intellectual and theological dialogue open.
22. Misconception: “Saving the universe” is emotional religious language with no scientific basis.
Response: What is meant is a multidimensional project—environmental, economic, social, ethical, psychological, and spiritual—that benefits from the empirical sciences while adding questions of purpose, value, and responsibility.
23. Misconception: The project believes that everything in modern civilization is evil.
Response: The approach is neither “total rejection nor total acceptance,” but rather distinction, critique, selection, and redirection.
24. Misconception: “Islamic” means that non-Muslims cannot participate in the coming civilization.
Response: If the values in question are justice, mercy, dignity, knowledge, and peace, then every human being can contribute to them, whether Muslim or non-Muslim.
25. Misconception: The project claims to possess the final detailed model of society.
Response: Broad principles are one thing, while historical applications are another. The project offers a vision, principles, and a civilizational direction; it is not a closed blueprint for every detail of the future.
Conclusion
The most important misunderstandings can be reduced to three major misconceptions:
“Universality = domination”
The response: Universality means universal values, not the domination of one people over another.
“Islamic = abolishing reason, humanity, and science”
The response: Islamic means directing reason, science, and the human being toward truth, dignity, and responsibility.
“The coming civilization = an unseen inevitability”
The response: The coming civilization is a civilizational horizon and a form of foresight grounded in historical patterns and laws; it will be realized to the extent that human beings choose to work toward it.
Thus, the methodological motto of the project can be:
The issue is not to place Islam against the human being, nor the human being against God; rather, it is to rebuild the human being, science, and civilization in light of the relationship between revelation and reason, between freedom and responsibility, and between progress and mercy.
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