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A paranoid, abhorrent obsession
It was a pleasure to have read Pankaj Mishra in the Guardian:
Last week Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch polemicist, spoke to a gathering of what The Spectator called “Britain’s biggest brains - politicians, editors, academics”. She told them that they were “actually at war, not just with Islamism, but with Islam itself”. Apparently, a good Muslim has no choice but to strive “to establish Sharia law”. Martin Amis, too, has recently informed us that moderate Muslims, if they ever existed, have lost out to radicals in Islam’s civil war. In any case, Islam is “totalist”: “There is no individual; there is only the umma - the community of believers.”
Never perhaps in history has so much nonsense been so confidently peddled about a population as large and diverse as this planet’s billion-plus Muslims. Within the past decade an Islamic movement has led Indonesia towards democracy, while market reforms in Turkey have created a new and religious middle class that now challenges the power of a secular elite.
Each one of the national realities Muslims inhabit is prodigiously complex and ceaselessly evolving, shaped as much by geopolitics - imperial conquest, the cold war, the war on terror - as by internal conflicts of class, religion and ethnicity. Closely examined, Muslim societies briskly dissolve our complacent, parochial notions about religion, democracy, secularism and capitalism. They expose, too, the notion of a monolithic Islam pressing down uniformly on all believers everywhere as a crude caricature.
Read the full article here
December 17th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Raza, and anyone else, here’s Pankaj Mishra’s great article on Revolutionary violence
December 17th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
To anyone interested, Pankaj Mishra is a visiting fellow at UCL ( University College London) 2007-8 and will be giving lectures this spring.
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/english/about/visiting-fellow.htm
Thanks for a fantastic blog Raza.
December 22nd, 2007 at 5:11 pm
With all due respect to Mr Mishra, i think it has just become “fashionable” in the progressive and Left-liberal circles to dismiss any one who appears to be close to George Bush’s war. The tragedy of Miss Ali is exactly the case! Because of her provocative tone, and the love showered on her by the NeoCons she has just become the “new target” of progressives. No one thinks for a second what is she “saying”.
When she talks against “Islam”, it is immediately condemned as a “race-crime” against an “oppressed minority” [the moslems in west]. Islam is not “moslims”. Islam as a philosophy, doctrine, religion cannot claim to be above criticism. That is the only lesson we can draw from enlightenment. From Bertrand Russel to Sartre if “feelings” of believers were to be considered by thinkers. nothing could have been possible
The status of Christianity in Europe is a clear parameter to the case of Islam in future, it has to be criticized in order to break its intellectual hegemony.
I believe that “moderate moslems” are in majority, but let me put in front of you the case of Ahmedis in Pakistan, where Islamists created an apartheid like system but “moderates” are just accomplices because the “excuse” the islamists made was too sacred for even the most moderates to question in words of Miss Ali , Islamic doctrine of Sheria is responsible [for the majority at least]
If European progressive elements fought with Catholic church and created secular democracy, the progressive moslem states cannot be created without questioning islamic doctrine
The plight of women in moslem societies which Miss Ali talks about is a FACT , neo con or Not, to what extant “Islam” is responsible, “progressive moslems” might not agree , it is. Another fact remains “those who have enslaved women have justified this through Islam”
Miss Ali cant be accused of defaming Islam as such an Islam exist. A progressive Islam exist too but she is not bound to read Koran as libertarian moslem does. Why cant she read Koran as a Suicide bomber reads it
There is no one Islam, i agree but One Islam is in control, it controls all the text, all the universities and media . How many voices came out in support of Salman Rushdie’s right of expression, i can only think of 5 , one being Eqbal Ahmad. Most moderates of the progressive moslem writers failed to oppose censorship, which is usually a Knee jerk response of writers .
One can disagree and I do with Miss Ali on the solution or the tactic but the question she raises are valid question. Islam cant claim “submission” from the thinkers community whose job is to question doctrine. If Bertrand Russel can question Christianity , Miss Ali can question Islam. If Bertrand Russel could see violence and genocide in Bible, She can see it in Koran too—–
January 14th, 2008 at 11:05 am
There may not be a very direct link here, but I am most impressed by the kind of philanthropic work done by the Agha Khan Development Network ( http://www.akdn.org/ ).
To distinguish Islamism from Islam is of utmost significance, I believe, especially for Western governments now engaged in a self-proclaimed ‘war on terror’. Simply put, it is the distinction between politics (Islamism) and religion (Islam), as far as I can understand.
January 24th, 2008 at 6:58 am