Editor's Note: With the rise of the Global South, a new wave of decolonization is accelerating. However, in the field of social sciences, the knowledge framework of the Global South has been severely impacted since the global colonial wave of the 19th century and has yet to recover. This has led to the cultivation of intellectuals and the thinking logic of the Global South still being unconsciously based on a Western-centric framework or even colonial logic.

At the "Global South and Southeast Asia" academic conference hosted by the Global South Network (GSN) from June 10 to 12, 2025, Professor Syed Alatas from the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore, Malaysia, held a profound discussion on the issue of decolonizing the knowledge system of the Global South. With authorization, Guancha Observer Network has fully translated and organized his speech at the conference.

Speech/Syed Alatas, Translated by Guancha Observer Network/Tang Xiaofu

Thank you very much for the invitation from the organizers, which gives me this opportunity to speak on this topic. However, 15 minutes is very limited, and it will be difficult for me to fully discuss the importance of establishing a decolonized knowledge system within this time. Therefore, I want to spend these 15 minutes talking about why we need to take the issue of decolonizing knowledge systems seriously.

Here, I would like to emphasize a fact: our knowledge, especially in the fields of social sciences and humanities, is largely characterized by an inherent colonial trait, or an inherent Eurocentric trait. In some cases, this characteristic is very obvious, but in more cases, it is not so apparent.

Let me give you an example. Between the 11th and 13th centuries, there were a series of wars between Europeans and Muslims over the ownership of Palestine. How do we refer to this series of wars?

If we use Indonesian, how would we describe the event where Europeans went on a crusade to Palestine and waged war with local Muslims? Some might say "Perang Salib"—"Perang Salib" means "Crusade," right?

Syed Alatas GSN

Now, let's describe this event in Chinese. Who can tell me what the term used in Mandarin for this meaning is? "Crusade," which refers to the Christian "cross," right?

This event now has a specific term globally, which is very interesting. It is "Perang Salib" in Indonesian, "الحروب الصليبية" (al-ḥurūb aṣ-Ṣalībiyya) in Arabic, and "جنگ‌های صلیبی" (janghāye salībī) in Persian. It is called the "Crusade" in almost all languages. But many people are unaware that the term "Crusade" reflects the European experience rather than a universal human experience.

For Europeans, they described it as a war between Christianity and Islam, which is why they call it the "Crusade." However, this was not how Muslims viewed these wars at the time. Muslims did not see it as a war between Christianity and Islam. One reason is that there were many Arab Christians living peacefully under Islamic rule in Palestine, and when European Christians went to Palestine, they also looted and killed Orthodox Christians.

So until the rapid expansion of European colonial power in the 19th century, Muslims began using the term "Crusade." That is to say, with the spread of European education worldwide, Muslims began using the term "Crusade" in Arabic, Persian, or Malay. This is very interesting.

In the same way, we can study how China understood this series of wars before the 12th to 15th centuries, when they were influenced by Western education. What concepts and terms did they use to describe the events during this period? The use of these terms actually reflects their understanding of the world at that time. I am quite sure that 15th-century Chinese would not have seen these wars as a conflict between Christianity and Islam.

I can give another example. From 2019 to 2022, many places around the world celebrated and commemorated Ferdinand Magellan's great feat of circumnavigation. Ferdinand Magellan left Morocco, went to Portugal and Spain, and then began his westward voyage in 1519, arriving at Mactan Island in the Philippines in 1521 and dying there. He almost completed a circumnavigation. This European experience gradually came to be seen as an event of global and universal significance. This achievement is remembered in many regions of the world represented by Europe, and even in some countries of the Global South, this circumnavigation is considered a great human accomplishment.

Magellan's team's route around the world

Of course, I do not doubt the significance of Magellan's first circumnavigation for human development. But what was the reality like for people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America? How would Indonesians, Filipinos, or Malays view Magellan's circumnavigation? Simply put, for them, this was a disaster, a terrible thing.

Marked by Columbus' arrival in America in 1492, Europe began the era of global colonization. Thirty years later in 1521, Magellan found the route for circumnavigation. And between these two events in 1497, Vasco da Gama found the route via the Cape of Good Hope to India. The thirty years between Columbus discovering the Americas (the beginning of European colonization) and Magellan completing his circumnavigation in 1521 saw Europeans begin to understand the entire world and embark on bloody colonization.

Therefore, for non-European peoples like us, these discoveries were catastrophic because they paved the way for Europe's complete colonial domination, a process that lasted for hundreds of years. For us, Columbus discovering the New World and Magellan's circumnavigation are not things we should celebrate. In fact, if viewed from the perspective of Asian, African, and Latin American peoples, we should not celebrate these events at all.

And this is one of the main characteristics of Eurocentrism that I mentioned: the universalization of European experiences.

Even today, we still use the term "discovery of America," which is actually a very offensive and incorrect statement because it was only the Europeans who discovered America, not the first humans to discover America. People were already living in America before Columbus arrived. Africans may have known of America's existence and even landed there before Columbus, but the European experience of going to America has been generalized as a universal human experience.

So even today, a common problem in the social sciences and humanities is that these disciplines exhibit a false universalism—generalizing European experiences as universal experiences.

Eurocentrism has several distinct features. First is the false universalism, which directly leads to the distortion of real events in order to support this false universalism in related disciplines. For example, some people research that Native Americans lacked state governance capabilities, they had no complex political theories, no religions, and even no civilization in America.

By the way, these views are strikingly similar to those about Palestine when Jewish Zionism emerged in the 19th century. At that time, Jewish Zionists also said that Palestine had no civilization, that it was just inhabited by Bedouins, basically an unowned land. Thus arose the famous phrase: "A land without a people for a people without a land."

Smoke rising over Gaza City after Israeli strikes

The false universalism is particularly evident in Zionist propaganda, which clearly declares: a Palestine controlled by Arabs will be a disaster for humanity, while a Palestine controlled by Jews will bless humanity. Similarly, they generalize views and experiences with a distinct European Jewish Zionist hue as universal truths.

But the spread of this false universalism relies on the distortion of reality and history, and it also requires the suppression of native voices, the suppression of indigenous voices, and the voices of the Global South. Many of our social science studies are built on this suppression.

Here, I would like to give an example of this kind of suppression. In the Malay-speaking world of Malaysia and Indonesia, there is a famous Indonesian anthropologist. In one of his introductory anthropology works written in Indonesian, there is a chapter about "society" (masyarakat). However, his definition of "masyarakat" is actually completely borrowed from Western definitions, such as the definition of "société" in French ("society"), rather than defining "masyarakat" itself.

Of course, I am not saying he did this intentionally, but this is a form of suppression of native concepts. The original meaning and connotations of the word "masyarakat" are not discussed in the book: what is its etymology? Why was "masyarakat" incorporated into Indonesian in the early 20th century to represent what we understand as "society"? None of these are discussed. So although he thought and wrote in Indonesian, he borrowed Western sociological concept vocabulary to think about problems.

So I want to say: contemporary social sciences are largely built on Eurocentrism, a product of false universalism, the suppression of native voices, and the distortion of reality.

Moreover, I want to emphasize that not only the social sciences have the characteristic of Eurocentrism, but the whole world itself has the characteristic of Eurocentrism. In fact, the world remains in a state of colonization to this day. Modern European colonization began with Europeans colonizing the Americas, and we are still suffering from its effects to this day.

This is particularly evident in the case of Palestine, because Palestine is a classic example of European colonialism. We should stop using the term "occupation" in the Palestinian issue because the problems go far beyond simple occupation.

Today, Palestine simultaneously exists in four forms of colonialism: settler colonialism exists within Israel proper and parts of the West Bank; indirect rule, where Israel indirectly governs the remaining areas of the West Bank through the Palestinian Authority; semi-colonialism, seen in the Gaza Strip, where although it is not legally under Israeli control, it is subject to external Israeli control in many aspects; and occupation, such as Israel's occupation of southern Syria and parts of Palestine.

Therefore, colonialism and coloniality are not just epistemological issues, but major issues in the real world. My speech is finished, thank you all.

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