An effect of the Westernization is a loss of humility and dignity
and a rise of a sense of egotism and wordliness among many modern Muslims.



Islam In The Modern World*, S. H. Nasr

Effects Of Westernization Upon Muslims

With Relation To Arts And Architecture

  1. ”The 1st effect of Westernization upon Muslims is the spread of secularization, esp. the desacralization** of life, thought, and art.” 228
  2. The 2nd effect of Westernization upon Muslims ”is the narrowing of the tradition (ad-dīn ) to include only the principles of human action as embodied in the Sharīʿah, not the principles of wisdom (ḥikmah ) … ”
  3. ”Another aspect of contact with the modern world has been, by way of reaction, the narrowing of the concerns of religion among some Muslims to only the laws pertaining to human action.” 236
  4. ”These movements, in their attempt to revive the Shariah and Islamic practices associated with daily life, have for the most part neglected Islamic art and architecture and the metaphysical and philosophical principles underlying them. Moreover, they have made possible the appearance of later the forms of violent "fundamentalism" which are as indifferent and even opposed to traditional Islamic art as are the partisans of modernism.” 237
  5. Modern Western thought is (primarily) ”the source of doubt and skepticism for educated Muslims…” 172
  6. ”At best, God is remembered as Truth, at least on a certain level, but He is forgotten as Presence.” 237
  7. ** c/f secularization or desacralization, ”the effect of Westernization has been to reduce the Islamic conception of ʿīlm, according to which all knowledge, including mathematics, is considered sacred, to the conception of science as a purely profane form of knowledge…” 229
  8. ”Often notable exceptions notwithstanding the change also implies a loss of humility and dignity that one sees so commonly among traditional architects and in contrast the rise of a sense of egotism and wordliness among many modern Muslim architects that is usually associated with the "international architect" and businessman.” 229
  9. ”These intellectual and mental changes have also been depleting, in the minds of modernized Muslimsfn2, the sacred content of such fundamental realities and concepts as space, light, rythm, form and matter…” 230
  10. ”In Islamic art [as in almost every other human domain] beauty is considered a reflection of the Divine Beauty, as the famous prophetic hadith asserts, ’God is beautiful and loves beauty.’ Moreover beauty is an intrinsic dimension of the Truth and its manifestations…” 234
  11. ”Despite the religious character of this type of reform movement and its reactions to many Western elements on the level of ideas and laws, the transformations it brings about in the minds and souls of contemporary Muslims fortify the secularizing tendencies in the Islamic world especially as they affect art, architectures and city planning. These factors alienate Muslims from those aspects of the Islamic tradition that bear most directly upon art and architecture; that is, the wisdom (ḥikmah ), or sapientia, always associated with Islamic esoterism, the cosmology that issues from it, and the principles governing Islamic art itself. This secularizing tendency causes certain Muslims to become completely indifferent to their own religion, whether reflected in the Sharīʿah itself or in its sapientialfn3 teachings. The reformists try to combat this effect and to resuscitate religion, but they reduce it for the most part to just its juridical and political aspects. Through the belittling of and even disdain for wisdom (ḥikmah ), they accept the securarization of both art and nature and make inaccessible those very elements of the Islamic tradition of which Muslims are most direly in need in order to recreate an authentic Islamic ambience. The atrocious destruction of so much Islamic architecture and even of sanctuaries and holy cities by apparently devout Muslims is proof, if proof is necessary, of the significance of the loss of that Divine wisdom that contains the principles of Islamic art. This is true whether the loss comes from a lack of interest in religion as such caused by secularism or by means of the narrowing of religion to only one of its dimensions and the consequent loss of the sacramental character of traditional Islamic art as an integral aspect of the manifestations of the Islamic revelation.” 239

fn1: Quoted from: Islam In The Modern World, S. H. Nasr;
fn2: see: Modernized Muslims And Architecture
fn2: desacralization of life: That everything is reduced to a materialist, positivistic outlook on life, or worse to political theories, devoid of any spiritual dimension.
fn3: sapiential: of or relating to wisdom.