GLOBALIZATION SIMPLY SUBMITS FANTASY TO THE PRESSURE OF REALITY:

REMARKS AT DEBATE ON "ISLAM AND DEMOCRACY" (David Pryce-Jones, May 18, 2004, Benador Online)

Classical Islam posits three unequal relationships which have shaped, and still shape the culture - the believer is superior to the infidel, the master superior to the slave, and man superior to woman. [...]

The third unequal relationship, between believer and infidel, is driving Muslims today to attack all around the boundaries of Islam - Animists in Africa - Buddhists in Thailand and China (unless that's considered Communist) - Christians of all denominations, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant, in America, the Philippines, Russia and former Yugoslavia - Hindus in Kashmir and India - Jews in the conflict over Palestine.

But wait a moment, aren't they killing as many of themselves as unbelievers ? What about the civil wars in Algeria, Lebanon, Yemen, Oman, what about the suppression of the Muslim Brothers in Syria or Egypt, what about the war between Iraq and Iran with its million dead ? What about the victims of the Taliban and the mullahs of Iran ?

The reason for this violence, it seems to me, is that the course of history has willy-nilly challenged the inherited assumption of Muslim superiority, and this has unsettled the core of self-identity. It's a crisis that's been long building. There's a celebrated debate in the 1880s between Renan, father of the study of comparative religion, and Jamal al-Afghani, arguably the most influential of Muslim thinker in our age. The dogmas of Islam, Renan said, are "the heaviest chains which have ever shackled humanity." Afghani agreed, he readily accepted that Muslims were backward, and this was a humiliation not to be borne. Honour and status were at stake. Muslims had to imitate the West , until they were superior once more as they deserved to be. This meant borrowing science, armaments technology and so on, but didn't include democracy, never mind accountability.

In general terms, Muslim rulers have followed Afghani's prescription. Kemal Ataturk and Reza Shah Pahlavi did their level best to westernize Turkey and Iran respectively. They were quite prepared to break Islam. Stories are told about both of them doing physical injury to mullahs, and knocking down mosques. In Arab countries, Pakistan and the Muslim Far East a succession of strongarm men, usually military officers, seized power. In their heads was a witches' brew of nationalism, Nazism and Communism, all Western imports. As it turns out, Afghani's prescription didn't do the trick of restoring the supremacy of the faithful, but serves only to perpetuate the waste and misery spawned by tyranny. In such regimes the creative energies of Muslims remain thwarted. It's no surprise that so many have come to resent their impotence and humiliation, and turn to the alternative summed up in the slogan, Islam is the Solution. Seizing power, Ayatollah Khomeini was the first to internationalise this resentment - he deliberately whipped up hate in order to demarcate believers and unbelievers, Muslims and Westerners. Osama bin Laden says, " The rule to kill Americans and their allies - civilian and military - is a sacred duty for any Muslim." Or again, "It is jihad until victory or martyrdom." Khalid Khawaja, an al-Qaeda propagandist, trumpets, "We would certainly like to send you back into the Stone Age." A Hizbollah sheikh in Lebanon says he is not interested in negotiating with people he proposes to eliminate. The imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, appointed by the Saudi ruler, preaches consistently and in violent language for "Muslims to humiliate the infidels, and destroy them." After the words, bombs.

I don't hold Islam as a faith responsible for these fantasies, but fantasies they are, purveyed by people who draw on Islamic tradition and culture to justify un-Islamic ends. Saddam Hussein put Allahu Akhbar on the Iraqi flag, and those who cut off Nicholas Berg's head on television shouted Allahu Akhbar as they did so. Muslim women are taking to wearing a head-covering in the belief that the Qur'an demands it, but Amir Taheri has shown that in fact this head-covering business is a by-product of Khomeini's revolution. Actions of the kind aren't Islamic in any religious sense, but the culture is conditioning and encouraging them.

Here's an article from the Jordan Times a few days ago concerning Turkey which begins : "Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamic-rooted governing party says it has a mission : ‘To prove that Islam is compatible with democracy.'" The article goes on to quote his government's spokesman and justice minister, "Democracy, human rights and the rule of law are very urgent needs for the Islamic community." They are indeed, and they will all fall into place as they did in the West, I am confident, but not until the religious dimension disappears from politics.

Islamicism is best viewed as merely the third great totalitarian fantasy ideology--following Nazism and Communism. It can't be any more successful and the only question now is how quickly it evolves towards liberal democratic protestant capitalism. The current combination of consistent military and moral force being applied by President Bush is causing rather rapid change at far less cost in men and material than in either WWII or the Cold War.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 13, 2004 8:08 AM