Now is the Middle East's Chance for Rediscovery

The Arabs have lost sight of their history. This is something true of myself, and true of other Arabs of my generation. My own understanding of Middle Eastern history only began about a year ago, when I began reading up on it for lack of formal education. The more I learn of my history, the more aggravated I am by my education. I know my own story - though it is the exception in some respects - is true of many Arabs of my generation.

The problem with the education of Arabs - and Muslim Arabs, as most of us are - is its love affair with the origin story of Islam. Any Muslim with even a modicum of Islamic knowledge can rattle off the story to you: how the Prophet was visited by Gabriel, how he kept God's word a secret between himself and his wife at first, then revealed it to his family, and then to the greater Meccan public. They can tell you of the migration to Madina - the hijra from which the Muslim calender begins; the conflicts between the Jewish tribes and the glorious victories against great odds; the return to Mecca, where no blood was shed in a peaceful takeover; the Prophet's death, and the subsequent era of the four 'rightly guided' Caliphs. They will tell you that this era ended with the assassination of Ali Ibn Abi Talib.

That story is drilled into our heads from the first moments of our lives, and retold again and again by parents and teachers. It was the Golden Age of Islam, we are told, before Muslim society was corrupted. The Golden Age, before divergent sects evolved. The Golden Age, when Islam was most triumphant.

But little else is taught. Oh, sure, you get some knowledge - about the greatest heights of the Muslim empire in the 9th and 10th centuries and the Israel/Palestine conflict. But all this is in the shadow of the Golden Age. Saudi Arabia is perhaps the greatest testament to how revered the Golden Age is, where, despite all its potential to be a major Middle Eastern and world player, the monarchy chooses instead to rule as though they still lived in the 7th century.

It says a lot that the greatest testament to the Golden Age is the cultural failure that is Saudi Arabia. The royal family is morally corrupt, not just by Islamic standards but by broader, universal standards, as evidenced by stories such as this, where a prince battered to death his manservant. Women's rights have barely penetrated the country, where men and women are segregated and female independence is denied in almost all aspects of life. Every weekend, hordes of Saudis visit Bahrain to enjoy its more liberal values - from being able to enjoy their day without it being dictated rigorously by prayer times, to going out clubbing and drinking.

Perhaps you see where I'm going with this. The Golden Age, if it even existed, has today eclipsed the history of the Arabs, and the 1400 years between the mythical Golden Age and the present day take a back seat - if they aren't completely wiped out of memory.

And so we come back to my original point: that Arabs have lost sight of their history. The irony perhaps is that all our history has been discarded for a single slice of it - the Golden Age. More a myth now than reality, we are bludgeoned by retellings of this tale, until it is the only truth we believe in. People yearn for its impossible purity and mourn how very far away it is from modern corruption.

This thinking is poison. It fundamentally rejects all the progress that Arabs have made in their history as a people. What of the contributions to the sciences, philosophy and history, most notably those of Ibn Khaldun, the medieval thinker, father of economics and social sciences? What of the preservation of the ancient Greek literature that would later fuel the Renaissance? In more recent times, what of the cultural renaissance of the Arabs, Al-Nahda, when the Arabic language evolved and literature, poetry, music, theatre, cinema and modernity blossomed?

Nothing is said of these things because, by the way of thought that places the Golden Age of Islam as the single greatest era in the history of humanity, all progress since then becomes impure and worthless. Perhaps the greatest atrocity of this philosophy is how quickly the people have forgotten Al-Nahda which began in the 1820s in Ali Pasha's Egypt and, though it waned over the years, only really died with the rise of political Islam - the Iranian Revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda and their ilk. The more I continue my independent studies of the Middle East, the more astonishing it is to me that I was completely unaware of the cultural revolution that was still in motion only two generations before me. I know that my education in Bahrain was unorthodox - I was only in the system for 3 years, between the ages of 10 and 13. But I lived in Bahrain for 7 years, and yet I had no clue. I'm sure, if I were to ask my cousins, the most average Bahrainis, they wouldn't be able to give me a concrete answer about Al-Nahda.

So I say it again: this thinking is poison. Not only does this glorified myth discard all Arab achievement, it also justifies Arab victimhood. The people mourn for the days long gone - they see Saudi Arabia, and it is a caricature of the Golden Age of Islam. And yet so desperate are the people for this farce that they either become victims powerlessly trapped in the wrong time, or, in an effort to restore that time, resort to terrorism - as Al-Qaeda does.

How did we reach this point, where political Islam has sent to oblivion so much of Arab culture and history? I would say that it's due to the nigh-constant state of war the region has been in. Lebanon's bloodly civil war, coupled with the Israeli invasion, decimated one of the intellectual and cultural centres of the Middle East. Iraq, historically another hub of Arab thought, has been ruined by dictatorship and war. Even Egypt, where Al-Nahda began, started decaying after Nasser's death, war with Israel and the assassination of Anwar Sadat.

Compounding this, the Middle East is humiliated time and again by the West - Kuwait owes its existence today to American intervention, America destroyed Saddam's feared dictatorship, and Israel, blindly backed by America even as recently as ten days ago and a thorn in its neighbours' side, is a constant reminder of our governments' ineptitude. This only further severs the people from their history and drives them further into fantasising of a time that, while no doubt of great importance to the Middle East, is enlarged beyond realistic proportions.

But there is hope. Times are changing. The Arabs are hopeful, and for the first time in decades are empowered. Nothing now will stop the wave of revolutions. In Libya, we find Ghaddafi is isolated in Tripoli. In Oman, the protests have begun. In Tunisia and Egypt, only the first battle has been won, and the protests for reform continue. America has never seemed more powerless, facing condemnation for their veto. Germany, whose guilty conscience created an unwavering ally for Israel, saw Angela Merkel snap at Benjamin Netanyahu for failing to further the cause for peace with Palestine.

And, where democracy in the Middle East was something to fear for the strikingly large possibility of Islamism spreading, now the world is seeing that, above all else, what the people want is equality, respect for human rights and freedom of expression.

So in light of this pivotal moment in Arab history, it is time to cast away the shadow of political Islam and the adulation of the mythical Golden Age we have been gripped by. It is time that we Arabs rediscover what was lost to repression, defeat and victimhood: our scientific traditions and literary contributions, and revive the cultural movement which died only in living memory. Our future is tied to our past, and it is not beyond our reach to grasp it.