The Meaning of History

Contrary to what is widely believed, our history is not etched in stone and unchangeable. Rather, we choose our history (for instance, by identifying with the Muslim immigrants, rather than the Hindu residents), and these choices have dramatic implications for our future. This is explained in the following excerpt from my longer essay: Is Development the Accumulation of Wealth? Islamic Views. The essay explores 10 different widely believed myths, and provides alternatives. See also the following related links:

Articles on Islamic Economics

My main website: asadzaman.net

See my newspaper article: The Myth of Objective History, published in Express Tribune on Aug 9th, 2015

Myth #3: Objective History is Possible

Another important way in which our mental models influence our lives is in our choice of history, which shapes our identities. The materialist view holds that there is only one unique objective history. In contrast, I would like to argue that history cannot be understood without a point of view. All points of view are automatically biased, and there is no such thing as an unbiased point of view. As a Muslim, I identify with Muslims who came to India to spread the benefits of the religion of Islam to the people living here. However, this same history could be entirely different if told from the point of view of the Hindus, Buddhists, or neutral third parties. What Indians call the war of independence of 1857 was a rebellion from the British viewpoint, and it could be called a battle between British and Indians from the Chinese viewpoint. The crucial point here is that there are no neutral, objective, and factual standpoints available. To minimize or legitimize British atrocities committed during the war is to deny validity to the native point of view. To fail to understand that exigencies of war necessitated harsh measures is to deny validity to the British point of view. Understanding requires simultaneous comprehension of alternative conflicting and contradictory narratives, and not that of a single unbiased and objective history. This is radically different from the conventional perspective that there is only one “true” and objective history.

History can never be objective because of many reasons. The complete historical record of all events that have occurred since the dawn of time is beyond the capacity of any human being to absorb and comprehend. Only a tiny portion of this history has been recorded, and there is strong evidence that only partisans record historical events – those to whom it matters. Even if we select and learn a hundred thousand facts, these will be a small and insignificant portion of the available historical record. There is no chance that such a small collection of facts will be representative, or provide some sort of an objective picture of the totality, which will remain forever inaccessible to humans. Typically we can know or learn only a very tiny percentage of relevant historical facts within the span of a lifetime. As a result, our knowledge of history is automatically biased, and this is a problem which cannot be remedied.

Truth #3: We Choose Our Past, which Shapes Our Future

It is only after giving up hope of achieving a perfect, objective and complete record of history that it becomes possible to understand what history is about. Our past is not engraved in stone and unchangeable, as we imagine it to be. Rather, we choose the stories we will tell about our past. There are so many stories that it is impossible to tell them all. We are free to choose the stories we tell about our past, and our choices create the world we live in – they become part of our mental representation of the world. The vast majority of what I consider my history is events that I have read about, not ones I have experienced. So we choose our past by choosing what to learn about our past. The stories we tell about our past will determine what we consider worth striving for, and also delineate the space of actions open to us.

We find three different schools of thought regarding Islamic history – all three believe in the possibility of objective history, and hence dispute among themselves as to which is the “true” history. One school of thought projects the past glories of Islamic civilization, and refuses to look at the dark side. Another school of thought finds only darkness, and virtually no saving grace. A third school believes that objectivity requires that every time we tell a good story about the Islamic past, we must balance it by telling a bad story. Which is the right approach? To answer this question we must consider why we want to tell stories about our past.

A naïve answer is that we want to tell the “true” story of the Islamic civilization. As already discussed, this is impossible. It is not humanly possible to present the true story of fourteen centuries of an infinitely diverse and complex set of social, cultural, economic and political interactions within the vast Islamic empires. The available materials are too vast to be studied within a lifetime of any human being, and what is not known is far greater than what is known.

Going beyond the simplistic “search for truth,” history serves a varied and complex set of purposes which we cannot adequately summarize in a few paragraphs. Instead, we will just focus on a few points of relevance to what follows. History serves to define our relation to other human beings, and to the large scale human projects and visions which shape the world we live in. It provides meaning to our lives, by putting them in the context of a bigger picture. It provides a purpose and direction for our struggles.

Lesson #3: History as a Tool and Weapon

To understand the functions of history, imagine forgetting our history for a moment. Then we become just one anonymous individual, a drop in the ocean. History is what ties us to the past and connects us to the future, giving our life meaning beyond its finite span. To give a concrete illustration, consider the following summary of Islamic history by Marshall Hodgson (1977, p.71 ):

Muslims are assured in the Quran, ‘You have become the best community ever raised up for mankind, enjoining the right and forbidding the wrong, and having faith in God.’ Earnest men have taken this prophecy seriously to the point of trying to mould the history of the whole world in accordance with it. Soon after the founding of the faith, Muslims succeeded in building a new form of society, which in time carried with it its own distinctive institutions, its art and literature, its science and scholarship, its political and social forms, as well as its cult and creed, all bearing an unmistakable Islamic impress. In the course of centuries, this new society spread over widely diverse climes, throughout most of the Old World. It came closer than any had ever come to uniting all mankind under its ideals.

… Those who have undertaken to rebuild life in Islamic terms have ventured on an enterprise with a high potential reward – that of winning through to the best that is open to mankind; but with correspondingly great risks of error and failure.

Understanding and absorbing this history makes us a part of an enormous enterprise to spread the good to the entire human race. This enterprise has spanned centuries and taken billions of people within its fold. We can identify with its successes and feel sorrow at its failures. Such a history provides courage, vision, perspective, and allows us to be philosophical, put up with short term defeats without losing hope. This is radically different from the bleak perspective of the single individual without history, who is necessarily confined to a single lifetime of experiences with no past and no future.

This is why we must tell stories of heroism and valor, instead of despair and defeat, so that our generations have the courage to face adverse circumstances. We must tie in our lives to bigger projects of mankind so that they acquire meaning. To select exceptional stories from our past, extraordinary examples of good behavior, is not “biased” history. This must be done to create inspiring role models; to allow us to persist in enjoining the good even against overwhelming odds. It is our tremendous good fortune that Islamic history has such extraordinary events. Our ancestors have done things which no other civilization can match. We just give one example, out of a thousand and one possibilities. The way that our Prophet Mohammad S.A.W. forgave bitter enemies, and celebrated the conquest of Mecca with humility, and a night of worship at Ka’ba, has been an inspiration for all Muslim conquerors. It stands in stark contrast with the idea that “all is fair in love and war,” and the rapine and loot associated with conquest that is considered part of human nature by some writers.