The Root Causes o Rise and Fall of Civilization: A QuranicPerspective

The Quranic way of presenting the root causes of the rise and fall of civilization is distinguished by ethical, empirical, spiritual, moral, universal and people-oriented characteristics. It does not proclaim religious faith-based dogmatic conclusive judgements. Its approach is quite different from modern Western perspective on civilization. At the very outset it is clearly asserted in the Quran that the rise and fall of civilization depends mainly on the attitude of people, on one side, towards the use and application of the True, Authentic and Universal Knowledge and on the other, True and Authentic Worldview. Hence, in this paper, it is contended that there is a link between True, Authentic and Universal Knowledge and the ethical, empirical, spiritual, moral, universal and people-oriented characteristics. Both are considered indispensable for the rise of a civilization. Lack of these two variables becomes the cause of fall of a civilization. It is argued in this paper that the major trends in contemporary Islamic thought, no doubt, have been developed based on True, Authentic and Universal Knowledge but unfortunately it lacks the ethical, empirical, spiritual, moral, universal and people-oriented characteristics. Consequently, the contemporary Islamic thought, as a whole, has failed to arrest the fall of civilization in the Muslim world instead of guaranteeing the rise and development of a civilization.