Between Past Glory and Present Reality

Between Past Glory and Present Reality Moshe Dayan’s statement is deeply meaningful—that Muslims see themselves in light of their past, while we see them in light of their present. A Western observer expressed the same idea differently: that the case of Muslims today has become a case of paranoia. A paranoid character is one who begins to live by the psychology of “My father was a king.” Such people are always absorbed in self-pride. But others experience the opposite, for they see them according to their present condition and deal with them accordingly. Thus such people fall prey to hatred and frustration, feeling that others do not acknowledge them according to the status they imagine for themselves. Living in the greatness of bygone people, in its outcome, is nothing but destruction. It gives rise to two major disadvantages. First, those who fall into this psychology lose the capacity for independent thought and action. Their minds move only within the circles of their predecessors’ thinking. They take exaggerated praise of past achievements as a substitute for real work. Such people can never become people of action themselves. Second, they form entirely false opinions about the people around them. Since others see them according to their present, they do not give them great importance. This attitude, though fully based on truth, is taken as belittlement by those living in the tales of their forefathers. As a result, they wrongly come to believe that everyone else is their enemy.