By Salim Nazzal
We in the East possess a religious mind, and even the most secular among us carries something of this mindset. Our everyday expressions Inshallah (God willing) and if God wills reflect this mentality. For this reason, many of our interpretations of events come from a religious perspective. What the criminal Zionist Jews are doing in Palestine, for example, we often explain as a test from God.
I believe this kind of interpretation also existed in medieval Europe .My grandmother used to say, whenever she heard news that contradicted traditions and what was considered normal:
“We are living in the end of times.”
My grandmother died in 1988. That means she did not live to see the age of the internet, or the globalization that came with it, and the limitless moral decline we now witness and hear about.
My grandmother passed away, and with her passed her simple world.
And I remember something a retired Danish doctor once told me. He was sitting next to me on the train to Copenhagen. As I spoke about freedom and scientific progress in the West, he said:
“All of this has come at a very high price.”
I asked him: What price?
He answered:
“Our value system is collapsing, and it has become difficult to stop this collapse.”
Then he gave me a sincere piece of advice:
“Remain Eastern, and do not imitate us.”
I explained to him that I do believe in progress, but through Eastern cultural references, not necessarily Western ones.
At the beginning of the Arab Renaissance in the late nineteenth century, the idea of progress became closely linked to adopting all Western values and models. This, in turn, contributed to the failure and abortion of the project of genuine progress in the Arab world, because modernization was detached from its own cultural and civilizational foundations.
I do not agree with this interpretation, because it is necessary to understand the causes of weakness and to confront and address them.
Absolute fatalistic belief, although I can understand the historical and social reasons behind its emergence, does not help in building inner strength or restoring the capacity for independent action.
Surrendering to the idea that everything is an unavoidable destiny may provide a certain psychological comfort, but at the same time it paralyzes the will, weakens responsibility, and postpones a true engagement with reality.
The real path toward renewal and progress lies in recognizing the sources of failure and working consciously to overcome them through knowledge, action, and confidence in one’s own strength.
I believe that one of the most important reasons behind the moral and civilizational collapse we are witnessing in the West today lies in the fact that Western Christianity was built upon the Christianity of the Roman Empire a form of Christianity that became almost completely separated from the original Palestinian Christianity.
That early Christianity was a simple, spiritual faith, born among peasants and ordinary people in Palestine, before it was transferred to the West and transformed into an imperial institution, far removed from its initial roots.
Salim Nazzal is a Palestinian Norwegian researcher, lecturer playwright and poet, wrote more than 17 books such as Perspectives on thought, culture and political sociology, in thought, culture and ideology, the road to Baghdad
4 February 2026
Source: countercurrents.org