المفكر الأزهري محمد البهي : ناقدا أصيلا لمذاهب الغرب و داعية استقلال

Abstract EN

Mohammad Al-Bahiy (19051982-) is considered one of the most prominent intellectuals in the field of modern Arabic thought who have confronted incoming western ideas without falling prey to intellectual bigotry.

Al-Bahiy focused on Islamic solutions as the most appropriate solutions for our current dilemmas.

He denounced western trends, considering them not to be intellectual and logical trends which aim to protect humans from deception and ambiguity, but trends which actually lead to deception, ambiguity and heedlessness.

Most of these destructive trends call for globalism, while in its essence globalism is only a call for Muslims to depart from their system of values -the framework which brings them together and preserves their unity- in an attempt to dissolve them in other identities and make them submit to western values.

Mohammad Al-Bahiy directed the arrows of his criticism to western thought by calling for the full political and intellectual independence of the Islamic Ummah in his valuable and important book Modern Islamic Thought and Its Connection to Western Colonialism.

In this book, he spoke in detail regarding the desired course of action for any individual among Muslim intellectuals and political figures in the Muslim East keen on independence in thought and politics.

This course differs from a reality the West desires, a Muslim world which accepts colonialism and subservience and is submerged in backwardness and subordination.

The true course is that of an Islamic East which desires to free itself from the West’s colonialism, from its enforcement of humiliation, and from its keenness on the endurance of underdevelopment in the Islamic East.

Al-Bahiy devoted special attention to the criticism of materialistic ideas which dominate Western thought in its different forms.