It
is not sufficient to say that we must return to Islam. We must specify
which Islam: That of Abu Dharr or that of Marwan, the ruler […]
One is the Islam of Caliphate, of the palace, and of rulers. The other
is the Islam of the people, of the exploited, and of the poor. (`Ali
Shari`ati cited Abrahimian, 1982, pp. 14-15)
They
may prefer to burn the temple down, rather than succumb to the worship
of a foreign god. (Paul Salem, 1993, 364)
Defining
Progressive Islam
In some
ways all attempts at definitions are authoritarian. Like any social
movement progressive Islam has a contingent nature and is likely to
be interpreted in a variety of different ways. What Moghissi said about
Islamic feminism is equally applicable to Progressive Islam: “There
is no coherent, self-identified and or easily identifiable Islamic feminist
ideology and movement operating within the boundaries of Islamic societies”
(1999, 126) While there is – or aught to be – a dynamism
with any phenomenon described as ‘progressive’ there may
be certain parameters beyond which one cannot stretch the application
of the term and still make any claims to coherence. As Terry Eagleton
has pointed out, “any term which tries to cover everything would
end up meaning nothing in particular, since signs work by virtue of
their differences” (1996, 103). The Shorter Oxford Dictionary
defines “progressive” as “moving forward, advocating
progress or reform”. In a political or ideological context the
term has decidedly leftist overtones and is usually juxtaposed with
“reactionary”, i.e., being wedded to the status quo or to
conservative political ideas. In critical discourse the term “progressive”
also denotes an affinity with some form of communitarianism as opposed
to liberalism which espouses greater individualism. Many leftists use
the terms exclusively in relation to them as an ideological group engaging
in a radical critique of society and challenging the structural basis
of various injustices such as class and gender rather than opting for
simple reformism that leaves the structural basis of such injustices
intact. While others would, for example, be content with asking why
men cannot create more social space for women or present systematic
charity such as zakah as a response to poverty, progressives attempt
to go beyond this and challenge the patriarchal nature of social reality
and an economic system that, in their reasoning, must lead to a society
where the poor will forever be dependent on the rich. The term is also
used in opposition to liberalism with its emphasis on individual liberties
within a societal framework in which all have equal opportunity regardless
of the starting points of various classes within a society. While liberals
would advocate social change, progressives would additionally interrogate
the nature of change and ask which socio-economic class stand to benefit
from these changes. Within the broader socio-economic context, liberalism
with its commitment to minimalist universal ethics (and minimum state
intervention in the market) is often seen as merely a set of ideas advocating
greater individual liberties while it is actually inextricably interwoven
with the free market ideology. Progressive ideologues have, in fact,
argued that the North – or the developed countries - with its
stress on an individualistic competitive system causes social dislocation
and injustice and that while it has the outward forms of freedom and
human rights but that, in reality, there are subtle forms of violation
which are even more repressive and unjust. An example of this would
be the emphasis on the right to complain about unemployment while structuring
one’s economy in such a way that there will always be unemployment.
In Muslim
discourse the term is usually used in a variety of contexts and for
many it often represents a simply anti-authoritarian or anti-conservative
Muslim discourse. The expression “progressive Islam” was
first popularized by Sorush Irfani with his Revolutionary Islam in Iran
– Popular Liberation or Religious Dictatorship? (London: Zed),
published in 1983. Prior to that the term had a few sporadic appearances
in some articles where it was really employed as a synonym for Modernist
or Liberal Islam. Irfani’s work was the first to employ the term
in the way that it was used in leftist ideological circles although
his broad sweep minimizes differences between earlier Muslim reformers
such as the decidedly pro-British Indian scholar, Sir Sayed Ahmed Khan
(1817-1898) and Sayed Jamaluddin Al-Afghani (1838-1897) – the
quintessential representatives of early expressions of Liberal and Progressive
Islam respectively. Irfani utilized the life and ideas of Dr `Ali Shari’ati
(1933-1977) and the tendency in activist Islam then represented by the
… [the] progressive Islamic movement is anti-imperialist, and
in the economic domain, its opposition to capitalism and the exploitative
system on which capitalism rests is unequivocal. It believes that Islam
as an ideology can mobilize the Muslim masses by its appeal to social
justice and the challenge it poses to the status quo (1985, 33)
A
Definition and Declaration
The only
systematic attempt to define Progressive Islam hitherto was the initiative
undertaken by the Progressive Muslim Network (hereinafter “PMN”)
late in 1998 on the internet by a number of activists and scholars,
including the present author, from various parts of the Muslim world.
After several drafts consensus was reached on a final document titled
“Progressive Islam - A Definition and Declaration”. This
declaration (hereinafter “the Declaration”) continues to
form the basis of membership to the Progressive Muslim Network and is
the framework against which I want to reflect on Liberal Muslim responses
to the events of 11th of September and offer an alternative progressive
Muslim view. The following definition is offered in this Declaration:
Progressive
Islam is that understanding of Islam and its sources which comes from
and is shaped within a commitment to transform society from an unjust
one where people are mere objects of exploitation by governments, socio-economic
institutions and unequal relationships. The new society will be a just
one where people are the subjects of history, the shapers of their own
destiny in the full awareness that all of humankind is in a state of
returning to God and that the universe was created as a sign of God’s
presence (PMN).
There are
several pertinent issues here that frame my discussion on a Progressive
Muslim perspective of the events of 11th September 2002. Some of these
are specifically outlined in the document when it elaborates on the
definition:
First,
while there is a commitment to “understanding”, the locus
of progressive Islam is the terrain of the struggle for justice –
or praxis - rather than the arenas of critical thinking for its own
sake. Understanding is viewed as the product of engagement for justice
combined with reflection rather than the product of a disemboweled critical
enquiry. In the words of Rebecca Chopp who has done much to examine
the tensions between modernist and liberation theology, the “turn
to praxis [is] a way of making theology less a false theology, less
an academic illusion and less an incoherent abstraction (1989, 38).
“Understanding” or “critical enquiry” is thus
secondary to the task of working for justice and an extension of “an
expression of Islam that places socio-economic, gender and environmental
justice at its core” (PMN).
Second,
the concerns of the privileged or the dominant classes are not the primary
subject of progressive Islam; its focus is on those who have become
“objects of exploitation by governments, socio-economic institutions
and unequal relationships”, in the words of the Qur’an;
those who had been marginalized (aradhil, Q. 11:27; 26:70; 22:5) or
downtrodden in the earth (mustad`afun fi’l-ard, Q. 4:97; 8:26).
The declaration describes the mustad`afun fi’l-ard as “those
individuals and groups who, for no wilful reason of their own, find
themselves pushed to the edges of society to live in conditions of social,
political and economic oppression.”
Third,
humankind is located within their dual position of being simultaneously
autonomous beings with full agency and as returning to God. Agency implies
power over one’s life and one’s status as a returnee to
God implies both a sacredness beyond one’s commodity value as
well as defining the limits of that agency. “In other words, our
struggle to experience a personally and socially meaningful Islam is
rooted in praxis geared towards creating a more humane society as part
of a sustainable eco-system in the service of the Transcendent”
(PMN).
Fourth,
there is an ‘intolerance’ toward those who are viewed as
responsible for exploitation; The document covers three elements that
may be ‘blameworthy’: governments, socio-economic institutions
and unequal (personal?) relationships. This seems to be an attempt to
reflect comprehensively on how, not only governments or obviously political
institutions, but also those who play more covert political roles such
as large corporations, the international monetary institutions as well
personal relationships can militate against human dignity. In opposition
to the mustad`afun fi’l ard, the Qur’an does present –
and demonizes - the “mustakbirun” (those who exalt themselves
above others. (Q. 16:22).
Finally,
the declaration significantly omits any mention of ‘peace’
or ‘tolerance’ and outlines the following as tendencies
that must be opposed: a) The projection of an inevitable of Pax Americana
and the unfettered march of globalization in the service of the market.
b) The relentless promotion of corporate culture and consumerism which
results in the exploitation of our natural environment, deforestation,
the destruction of local communities and the eco-system and cruelty
to animals. c) Racism, sexism, homophobia and all other forms of socio-economic
injustices, both within and outside of Muslim societies and communities.
“These injustices”, the declaration says, “detracts
from the sacredness of all humankind imbued when God blew of His own
spirit into the first created person.” d) Intolerance and fascist
tendencies which insist on and seeks to enforce a single and absolute
appreciation of truth in all religious and cultural communities including
Islam.
From the
“Major Jihad” to the “Superior Jihad” - Liberal
Islam’s Response to 9/11
In the media frenzy which followed 11th of September numerous Muslims
were interviewed in the media and a large number offered editorial pieces
or had their own thoughts circulated on the internet. While it was a
time for conservatives to go into hiding or re-invent themselves as
liberal apologists for the faith and for the fundamentalists to quietly
vent their glee as they dispersed in order to regroup for another battle
at a later stage, the more authentic liberals dominated the media as
spokespersons for the Muslim community. Large sectors of the media wanted
to allay the fears of the western public that the “majority of
Muslims, unlike those Afghanistan-based barbarians or the fanatical
Wahabis, are really decent folk with whom we can do business.”
"It's a bad analogy, said Emran Qureshi, an independent scholar
and software designer who lives in Ottawa, “but I feel like I
can come out of the closet and criticize these guys," (New York
Times, 28th October, 2001) Several of these liberal Muslims, as Qureshi’s
response suggests, were also the victims of past or ongoing persecution
by the conservative or fundamentalist elements in the Muslim communities
and the ravages of those injuries clearly showed in their responses.
It was one of the rare opportunities when liberals emerged as publicly
recognized – even if grudgingly - saviours by and of the Muslim
community.
From a
perusal of more than a hundred articles circulated on the Internet the
following salient features may describe the liberal Muslim response:
First,
there was the widespread acknowledgement that Muslims and or certain
tendencies in Islam are “the problem”. Tendencies singled
out for criticism or condemnation included intra-Muslim intolerance;
Wahabism, Muslim fundamentalism, stagnation in Islamic jurisprudence
and a refusal to recognize the religious legitimacy of Christians and
Jews. While most commentators dealt at length and exclusively with these,
a few suggested that attention also need to be paid to other broader
political or ideological concerns which either breeds fundamentalism
or are invoked to fire it among Muslims.
Second;
liberal Muslim responded from the premise that ‘fundamentalism’
was perhaps the single-most important issue facing the world and the
events of September the single-most important ‘event’ that
required a radical shift in Muslim responses to modernity and being
in the world. ”I am a Muslim” wrote Mona Eltahawy. “The
terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 shook my faith to its foundation. I am
angry and ashamed that Muslims will forever be remembered for such horror.
(Washington Post, 3rd January, 2002, p. 17) While the way the North,
particularly the USA, responded to those events ensured that it was
going to be decisive moment in world history, liberal Muslims did nothing
to challenge to the idea that this was inevitable and that the USA’s
pain is not - or not to be - the axis around which the earth rotates.
With few exceptions, the frightening and calculatedly “short-termism”
of the US was embraced with a fury. The death of millions of people
through lack of access to clean water or due to HIV/Aids and the insistence
of the pharmaceutical industry on placing patent rights ahead of the
lives of patients, the thousands killed by a Christian equivalent of
the Taliban – The Lord’s Army – in Northern Uganda,
and environmental degradation did not count for much in liberal responses
to 11th of September. One has no desire to engage in maleficent calculus
but to the challenge implicit assumption that everyone must redefine
their existences and struggles in terms of the demands of the USA. The
head of the Empire was bleeding and all efforts concentrated on those
wounds – even as the wounded Goliath, “armed to the teeth,
adored by the polls, unfettered by law, [and] answering to no-one”
(Neville, 2001, 3) was readying itself to inflict collateral damages
on greater numbers of innocent civilian Afghanis than those who perished
in the attacks of 11th September.
Third;
there was desperation to distance Islam from ‘terrorism’
and while some attempted to reflect on the underlying causes of terrorism
there was little or no attempt at defining it.’ When it was discussed
at all, it was presented as “the result of long-standing and cumulative
cultural and rhetorical dynamics” rather than concrete historical
conditions of political marginalization or dispossession. Demands for
clarity were usually dismissed as “fudging the issue” or
unhelpful in the attempt to prove that Islam is a peaceful religion.
In this desperation the hadith of the Prophet Muhammad – acknowledged
by all hadith scholars as “weak” – that armed combat
was a lesser (asghar) jihad compared to the greater (akbar) jihad against
one lower self was elevated to canonical status and one liberal commentator
even rendered ‘asghar’ as ‘inferior’ and ‘akbar’
as superior. While jihad was critiqued and repackaged as entirely non-threatening,
an uncritiqued ‘peace’ was presented as an absolute pillar
of faith. Islam was persistently and erroneously declared to mean ‘peace’.
Fourth,
most Muslim liberals commentators presented themselves as the ‘authentic’
interpreters of Islam and engaged in the decidedly non-liberal tendency
to essentialize Islam; “Osama bin Ladin was not a Muslim”,
“Wahabism and fundamentalism have nothing to do with “true
Islam” and “true Islam” was presented as a concrete
immutable of set of idea and beliefs while others became the “inauthentic
usurpers” of this set of beliefs: “Why have we allowed the
sacred terms of Islam, such as fatwa and jihad, to be hijacked by obscurantist,
fanatic extremists?” asked Ziauddin Sardar (The Observer, September
23, 2001).
Finally
none of the liberal Muslim response suggested any awareness of the larger
context wherein the tragedy of 11th September was unfolding; it sadly
appeared as if issues of globalization, the rise of the new empire and
corporate power, the unbridled exploitation of the earth’s limited
resources, global warming, consumerism and its twin sister, poverty,
as well as HIV/Aids seem to belong to another planet. Flushed away were
all memories of the co-operative relationship between the Taliban and
the USA administration-oil industry nexus. While progressive intellectuals
such as Edward Said and Noam Chomsky and journalists such as Robert
Fisk remained useful sources to invoke in a limited anti-Isreal and
anti-Zionist rhetoric, their broader critique of power and powerlessness
escaped liberal Islam.
A
Progressive Critique of Liberal Islam
The most
important underlying distinction the progressive and liberal responses
were the primary subject of discourse In owing the obsession of the
powerful their own, liberal Muslims made the powerful their own primary
subject and issues of authenticity and meaning the central crisis for
their understanding of Islam. Progressive Muslims insisted that the
primary subject and focus of their Islam were the “non-subjects
of history”. In effect, Liberal Islam has functioned as an ideology
of and for the bourgeois, struggling to secure freedom as individual
and ahistorical. Elsewhere I have argued that there is no objective
theory unaffected by each person’s socio-historical particularity
and for Islam to be self-consciously grounded in praxis (Esack 1977).
“When scholars or commentators deny their social location or base
their responses entirely on personal negative encounters with their
communities then they end up effectively being extensions of the structures
of the powerful. The current “Islam means Peace” and “The
basic message of the Qur’an is really identical to the USA constitution”
discourse, within the context of the rise of the New Empire and all
the concomitant injustices is really the beginnings of what the Kairos
theologians operating in the South African context described as a “theology
of accommodation”. In this theology religion is used to buttress
the often unstated ideological assumptions of the dominant classes and
corporate interest on the one hand and to placate those who are marginalized
by siphoning of “any critical energy through charitable goodwill”
on the other (Chopp, 1989, 34).
While Progressive
Muslim shared the revulsion of others at the death of innocents they
display a much more cynical attitude towards an uncritiqued peace discourse.
For Progressive Muslims, “real peace” seems to be one that
follows the creation of a just world. In contrast, a seemingly ideologyless
peace which, uncritiqued, translates into acquiescence to a new corporate
dominated world most starkly represented by the United States of America
- is not only one to be avoided but also opposed. Dominant empires develop
an ideological rooted interest in peace which reinforces a status quo
that may very well be an unjust one as Paul Salem points out: ”Conflict
and bellicosity is useful – indeed essential – in building
empires, but an ideology of peace and conflict resolution is clearly
more appropriate for its maintenance.” (1993, 364) When we fail
to raise critical questions about the status quo that requires peace
then we run the risk of becoming a part of the problem.
In a more
local context, this was certainly true for all the progressive forces
in South Africa where “making the state ungovernable” was
a necessary first step towards the creation of just society. South Africa
had for long been a deeply conflict ridden society. This conflict assumed
a structural nature under colonialism with more pronounced racial undertones
during apartheid. The apartheid regime, attempting to obscure its own
violent nature, consistently presented any opposition to it as an affront
to peace and stability. A series of laws criminalizing opposition to
apartheid were presented as peace-keeping and stability ensuring measures.
As is the case of any most totalitarian states in the world “law
and order” were the watchwords. When peace comes to mean the absence
of conflict on the one hand, and when conflict with an unjust and racist
political order is a moral imperative on the other, then it is not difficult
to understand that the better class of human beings are, in fact, deeply
committed to disturbing the peace and creating conflict. Along with
other progressive forces in South Africa I affirmed the value of revolutionary
insurrection against the apartheid state and conflict as a means to
disturbing an unjust peace and a path to just peace; In other words;
peace, law and order were of no substantive consequence to us; the fundamental
question was “Stability and peace to what end?” Our response
to the regime’s call for peace and stability was to call on people
to wage a jihad against the apartheid state.
A
Progressive Muslim Response to 9/11
In the
immediate aftermath of 9/11 and the ‘war against terrorism’
the progressive Islam response was perhaps best captured in a khutbah
(sermon) delivered in Johannesburg by Naeem Jeenah, a leading figure
among Progressive Muslims. Jeenah dealt with the crisis at two levels
of responsibilities – that of the USA and that of Muslims. He
described the “war against terrorism as “what Allah calls
istikbar – arrogance’ which is most evident in Bush's "dead
or alive" statement and his assertion that "you are either
with us or with the terrorists".
So without
asking the world where it stands or what its options are, Bush has made
the decision for us. There is really no need for us to even think about
it; he has decided: you either shout "Viva America" or you
are a terrorist! It is the kind of pharaonic arrogance that has seen
the downfall of dictators all through time. Because, all through time,
the arrogant – mustakbireen - have been opposed by the oppressed
- mustad'afeen. It is the Sunnah of history.”
Unlike
most traditional and liberal Muslims, Jeenah locates the ‘problem
with the USA” beyond the Middle East and ‘our suffering
Muslim brothers in Palestine/Kashmir/Chechnya/Azerbhaijan.
In their
arrogance and their cynicism the US has forgotten the most crucial response
to September 11. They have forgotten to ask "Why?". Why did
such an attack against the symbols of American economy and military
happen? Why is the US so hated that such a heinous act is not only contemplated
but actually executed? The Americans seem keen not to learn! They should
have learnt some lesson after Vietnam; they should have learnt some
lesson after the Gulf Massacre; they should have asked how endearing
they have made themselves to people of the Third World. It seems the
only thing they are willing to learn is that they are able to attack
and massacre foreign populations with impunity; and they will do it
repeatedly - with no regard for the consequences. If Americans were
serious about the "why?"question they could easily find the
answers. The answers are in the occupation and dispossession in Palestine;
in the murder of one million Iraqi children; in the blockade of Cuba;
in the carpet bombing of Colombia; in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba;
in the terrorist dictatorships supported by the US government: Saddam
Hussain, Manuel Noriega, Mobutu Sese Seko, the Shah of Iran, Suharto,
successive apartheid governments in South Africa and Israel. All of
these, too, are acts of terrorism.
Jeenah
looks beyond the drama of TV and the grand events of the moment:
The World
Trade Centre slaughter was despicable. We can say it a million times.
But on that same day (and every day recently), 35000 children in the
Third World starved to death because of a global capitalist system that
comforts the rich and causes misery for the poor and dispossessed. These
children did not (do not) get minutes of silence, lowering of flags
or thousands of action replays on TV.
The Islamic
religious inspiration of the terrorist of 11th September was acknowledged
as well as their culpability. Furthermore, the painful reality of people
rejoicing at the collapse of Twin Towers and the Pentagon as well as
widespread Two Third World support for Osama bin Laden was acknowledged
and challenged:
Then there
are those of us who have suddenly become pro-Usama and pro-Taliban without
necessarily understanding what that means. We extend our support to
those who deserve it. In this case we extend our unqualified support
to the Afghan people who have been victimised for more than two decades.
But the Taliban? […] whose intolerance against people of other
faiths is legend and whose intolerance against other Muslims is often
violent? […] if the Taliban or their local supporters were ruling
this country, I probably wouldn't be allowed to deliver this sermon
in English (if I would be allowed to deliver it at all), the women upstairs
would not be allowed to attend the mosque, we probably would know very
little of what's happening in Afghanistan because our TVs would be smashed
and our access to information restricted.
The
Clash of Twin Fundamentalisms
In the
wake of the terrorist attack several observers began commenting on the
similarity between the style and rhetoric of Osama bin Laden and the
USA President, George W. Bush, and, indeed, at times it appeared as
if the were in competition to out-evil each other with each referring
to the other as the “head of a snake”. This self as other,
captured on the cover of Tarek Ali’s “Clash of Fundamentalisms”
(London, Verso, 2002) where Bush appears fully bearded and wearing a
turban, was also reflected in the comments of several leftist writers.
Arundhati Roy wrote:
Both invoke
God and use the loose millenarian currency of good and evil as their
terms of reference. Both are engaged in unequivocal political crimes.
Both are dangerously armed - one with the nuclear arsenal of the obscenely
powerful, the other with the incandescent, destructive power of the
utterly hopeless. The fireball and the ice pick. The bludgeon and the
axe. The important thing to keep in mind is that neither is an acceptable
alternative to the other.
Both Bin
Laden and Bush were being singled out as the “bad king”
by some and the “good king” by others, and vice versa, all
of this in some ways reflecting a very inadequate view of how history
unfolds. Individuals certainly contribute immensely to the shaping of
history. However, reducing the problem to a “bad king versus good
king” ignores the fundamental tensions in the world, the class
and gender interests of some and the way these are only represented
by ‘good kings’ and ‘bad kings’. The liberal
rhetoric of ‘if only we get rid of Saddam/Gaddhafi/Bush/Sharon/Arafat
usually prevents or at least impedes any serious analysis of a problem
– and indeed, one sometimes gets the impression that this is intentional.
Roy, however, takes the analogy of the terrible twins further to actually
embrace issues much wider than the persons of Bush and Bin Laden:
But who is Osama bin Laden really? Let me rephrase that. What is Osama
bin Laden? He's America's family secret. He is the American president's
dark doppelgänger. The savage twin of all that purports to be beautiful
and civilised. He has been sculpted from the spare rib of a world laid
to waste by America's foreign policy: its gunboat diplomacy, its nuclear
arsenal, its vulgarly stated policy of "full-spectrum dominance",
its chilling disregard for non-American lives, its barbarous military
interventions, its support for despotic and dictatorial regimes, its
merciless economic agenda that has munched through the economies of
poor countries like a cloud of locusts. Its marauding multinationals
who are taking over the air we breathe, the ground we stand on, the
water we drink, the thoughts we think. Now that the family secret has
been spilled, the twins are blurring into one another and gradually
becoming interchangeable. Their guns, bombs, money and drugs have been
going around in the loop for a while. (The Stinger missiles that will
greet US helicopters were supplied by the CIA. The heroin used by America's
drug addicts comes from Afghanistan. The Bush administration recently
gave Afghanistan a $43m subsidy for a "war on drugs"....)
The attack
on Twin Towers and the Pentagon represents the collision of two forms
of religious fundamentalism; the one only cruder than the other. The
fundamentalism of the Market was attacked, not by Islam but by a particular
manifestation of it - a fierce, angry and vicious fundamentalism driven
by pathological and deluded but nevertheless religious, individuals.
David Loy, the Buddhist thinker and Harvey Cox, the Harvard based Christian
scholar, have both provided valuable insights into how the Market is
becoming “the first truly world religion, binding all corners
of the globe into a world-view and set of values whose religious role
we overlook only because we insist on seeing them as “secular”.
(Loy) Cox writes about his trepidation when he first ventured into reading
about economics – deviating from his more familiar theological
terrain. He was surprised by the familiarity of all the concepts that
he encountered:
Expecting
a terra incognita, I found myself instead in the land of déjà
vu. The lexicon of The Wall Street Journal and the business sections
of Time and Newsweek turned out to bear a striking resemblance to Genesis,
the Epistle to the Romans, and Saint Augustine's City of God. Behind
descriptions of market reforms, monetary policy, and the convolutions
of the Dow, I gradually made out the pieces of a grand narrative about
the inner meaning of human history, why things had gone wrong, and how
to put them right. Theologians call these myths of origin, legends of
the fall, and doctrines of sin and redemption. But here they were again,
and in only thin disguise: chronicles about the creation of wealth,
the seductive temptations of statism, captivity to faceless economic
cycles, and, ultimately, salvation through the advent of free markets,
with a small dose of ascetic belt tightening along the way, especially
for the East Asian economies. (Cox)
Definitions
of religion have constantly eluded scholars of religion. In a general
sense a Transcendent, usually called ‘God’, or an “Ultimate
Concern” is at the core of religion and the focus of the believer's
life and physical death is a an attempt at moving closer towards that
or concretizing that in his or her life. Religions in general have a
theology of selfhood and otherness, temples that are abodes where a
‘purer’ form of that attempt to connect with the Transcendent
is expressed. Being religious is a way of being in the world with its
unique and often competing symbols - e.g., the Cross and the Crescent.
For many religious believers there is also a paradise or nirvana for
the faithful adherents and a hell for those who refuse to join them
or who failed to do so because of their “essentially evil nature.”
The term ‘fundamentalism’ is also used in a variety of different
ways. It has a peculiar history in 20th Century North American Protestantism
with its insistence on adherence to the literal inerrancy of the Bible
and many have argued that its imposition by journalism on to Islam and
Muslims is an unfair one that does little to advance any understanding
of contemporary developments in the Muslim world. Whatever its origins,
fundamentalism is today widely regarded as a combination of several
attitudes: a) an obsession with a single truth as understood by the
believer or the believer’s group b) a sense of chosenness tied
to the demonizing or damnation of all others who refuse to get behind
this 'truth' c) the willingness to destroy those who offer alternatives
in a “holy war” where innocent victims are referred to as
'collaterals' and d), the conflation of ideals with one's personal being.
("Islam is a perfect religion, therefore I am beyond questioning",
“The American Dream is perfect, therefore trust me”).
While the
Taliban and Al-Qaida represented the worst of Muslim fundamentalism,
in the larger scheme of things though, their reach was and remains rather
limited. This is particularly true if one does not embrace the growing
tendency of many states to utilize the new anti-terrorist orthodoxy
as a way of dealing with all forms of internal dissent and resistance
to foreign occupation ranging from the Uighur Chinese, to the Tibetans
and Chechens. Far more extensive in its actual - as opposed to perceived
reach - is the fundamentalism of the Market. As Loy argues, because
we have failed to recognize the Market Capitalism as a religion, let
alone a fundamentalist one, we have failed to offer “what is most
needed, a meaningful challenge to the aggressive proselytizing of market
capitalism, which has already become the most successful religion of
all time, winning more converts more quickly than any previous belief
system in human history.” (Loy, p.1)
Harvey
Cox has detailed the way the remarkable similarities between the description
of God and the Market as omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. Here
I want to briefly deal with the way we relate to the Market as God and
to Market Capitalism as religion. Adherents of the Free Market see their
lives driven to the worship of the One All-Powerful and Jealous God
- Capital. Underpinned by its theology - economics - it has numerous
huge temples in the form of shopping malls where people are increasingly
being drawn to by deeply unfilled inner needs; for which the temple,
church or mosque were earlier viewed as adequate. (“I shop to
feel good”, “I go to the Mall to hang out”). The connectedness
with both God and community provided by the temple has now been supplanted
by the highly individualized and anonymous encounters between cashier
and consumer; These temples of consumerism often display a determination
to drive out all the smaller little corner churches propounding insignificant
little heresies such as “the humanness of chatting to your own
friendly butcher”. The major symbol of this religion, that M arch
of McDonalds, has driven out that other symbol of a now old-fashion
religion, the crucifix of Christianity, as the most widely recognized
symbol in the World. The arch is telling the crucifix: "The Lord,
Your God is One; You shall have none others in my presence.”
Many who have remained nominal religionists find their lives rotating
around the worship of Capital and like suicide bombers drive themselves
to death as sacrificial lambs (or martyrs) at the altar of “success”
in its service. “Shop till you drop” is a basic creed of
faith. It is difficult to leave one’s home or switch on one’s
TV without being confronted by its missionaries or having a pamphlet
thrust in one’s hand (“Convert Now Or You Will Lose Out!”
“Buy Now - The Sale Ends Today!”) So successful, however,
have their missionary activities been that people restrain their annoyance
at these intrusions to the Jehovah's Witnesses. The Religion of the
Market also has an eschatology, even a theory of the “End of History”;
Paradise awaits those who believe and hell those who reject or who fail
- or have failure written in their destiny. ("The unemployed are
just lazy", "The poor shall always be with us."). Images
of the ideal of “the Glorious Lounge”, “The Perfect
Toilet for you!”, “The BMW accompanied by your very own
sex-bomb”, correspond to images of paradise presented by other
religions that sometimes have their own sex-bombs, Houris - or a few
- thrown in as an added incentive for martyrdom. While very few can
ever hope to “possess” the ‘Houri’ accompanying
the picture of the BMW, hope springs eternal.
The struggle
against countries which choose an independent economic path is unashamedly
described as a “crusade” with collateral damage ("There
are no innocent victims in our crusade against Cuba; their children
dying under our sanctions are either the offspring of infidels so who
cares or we are doing it for the Greater Good). Damnation awaits those
who do not share the beliefs of its adherents. Belief is important;
for believers will always fall short as practitioners. The vast majority
of believers in the Market are destined to be failures simply because
the market economy success can only come to a minority; Its paradise,
after all is founded on an earth that has limited resources. This fundamentalism
of the Market seeks to convert all other cultures in its image, utilizing
them for consolidating the system. In the aftermath of 9/11 several
spokespersons for the USA, including Colin Powell, have linked ‘anti-terrorism’
to the adoption of “free trade” policies as the dual requirements
of allies in the “you’re either with us or against us”
doctrine of the Bush Administration. The Market is thus being openly
presented as the only way with the assertion that outside its pale there
is no salvation for the world, only hell-fire of destruction, or the
limbo of ‘primitivism.’
Beyond
the public drama of religious fundamentalism and more covert forms of
religiously justified political violence are realities which impact
on a much larger amount of people and on the only home of humankind,
the earth. The obsession with Muslim fundamentalism may, in fact, serve
to detract from this. (Regardless of whether there is a causal relationship
between Muslim fundamentalism and these realities). There may indeed
be a relationship between the war on terrorism and the decision of the
Bush administration to open the Alaskan wilderness to oil drilling exploration.
The United Nations Development Program’s statistics that indicate
that in 1960 countries of the North were about twenty times richer than
those of the South. In 1990 North countries had become fifty times richer.
The richest twenty percent of the world’s population now have
an income about 150 times than that of the poorest twenty percent, a
gap that has continued to grow. According to the UN Development Report
for 1996, the world’s 358 billionaires are wealthier than the
combined annual income of countries with 45% of the world’s people.
As a result, a quarter million children die of malnutrition or infection
every week, while hundreds of millions more survive in a limbo of hunger
and deteriorating health. For the mustad `afun fil’ard Bin Laden
is distant figure or, sadly, a hope as some many demonstrators at the
World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg seem to think
with their t-shirts displaying his smiling face. For those the 2.8 billion
who “live” on less than $2 a day and who confront death
by starvation or half an existence under foreign occupation the realities
cited above may well be the terrorism of our age. When Muslim liberals
suggested any relationship between 9/11 and political grievances then
it was confined to USA foreign policy on the Middle East. One searches
in vain for any critique on the problems of domestic wealth, domestic
consumption, domestic corporate greed, domestic homelessness and domestic
racism – all issues which drive foreign policy considerations.
It’s as if the only tragedy was one of exclusion from the table
of the New Empire leading to sadly misguided yearnings of “if
only our lobby could be as powerful as the Jewish lobby”. A progressive
rereading of our theological heritage does not take its point of departure
the concerns of dominant and dominating classes nor of the yearnings
to join “the club” but “in a perception of the real
situation of the poor, and, with new eyes, bestowed by this experience,
it rereads the foundational texts of the faith. (Boff, 1985, 25-6).
The location of the Progressive Muslims amongst the marginalized of
the world is the sunnah (precedent) of the all the Prophets of God and
the choice that God himself exercises. (Q. 7:136-7, 34:31-33)
Conclusion
There is
nothing in this clash of fundamentalisms that is intrinsically Islamic
in the same way that there is nothing intrinsically Christian about
the religion of the Market or of the ideology of apartheid. That the
Muslims responsible for this attack may have been inspired by Islam
is plausible; that they used Islam as justification for their deeds
is apparent for the Qur'an is as open to diverse readings as any other
text. There is thus some responsibility on the part of Muslim thinkers
to expose and oppose the theological and textual basis of their arguments.
To confine oneself to combat with those tendencies, however, is inadequate
from both a South perspective as well as an Islamic one. To do so also
risks being co-opted in an uncritical peace discourse that has a name:
Pax Americana; peace on the terms of the United States and with an ideology
incompatible with social, economic, political and environmental justice.
A progressive
commitment to destabilizing the current world order – and destabilization
is not to be conflated with political violence as numerous activists
in the global justice movement are increasingly demonstrating - is not
an option because of a blind hatred. Rather, unlike the Market fundamentalists,
we actually believe that an alternative vision of the world and being
in it is possible. Humankind, as the Progressive Muslim Network Declaration
affirms, are not only consumers or the objects of greed; we are in a
state of returning to God. Islam is, indeed, a religion of peace, but
not exclusively that. It also calls upon people to destabilize the peace
when it hides the demons of injustice. In addition to confronting the
fundamentalism of the Market and the havoc that it has played with we
also have to the problem of Muslim brokenness, fragile egos and delusions
of grandeur involving our power and control over a world governed by
the shar’iah. The problem with Muslim fundamentalism is that is
as totalitarian and exclusive as the order that it seeks to displace.
It seeks to create an order wherein they are the sole spokespersons
for a rather vengeful, patriarchal and chauvinistic God – a God
that incidentally resembles that of George Bush and his fellow travelers
in the religious right wing. The Taliban represent the logical consequence
of a literalist and misogynistic reading of our earlier Islamic heritage;
a reading that is far from an aberration. They have, for example, always
insisted that women will also have access to medical treatment if the
government can afford it. How different is this from the Wahabi regime
in Saudi regime where they do enforce this segregation because they
have the financial resources to do so. When we see Osama sitting cross-legged
surrounded by hundred of books on Islamic jurisprudence and theology,
we are seeing one of the strands in the Islamic. Arguing that the Taliban
and the Wahabis do not “really” represent Islam is unhelpful
for we fall into the trap of setting ourselves up as the sole authentic
spokespersons – the same weapon that is being used against liberal
and progressive Muslims, we can insist on asking, along with `Ali Shari’ati,:
“Whose Islam? Whose lives and interest are being advanced by our
understanding and interpretation of Islam”
Which Islam is that the Shah refers to? Is it the Islam of imperialism?;
an Islam which is made for the next world and says nothing about this
world. The imperialist brand of Islam dictates that Islamic nations
be their colonies and allows then to loot the wealth, resources and
productivity of Muslim lands.
People
concerned about other people and aware that the earth is our only home
with finite resources need to find each other and collectively work
for socio-economic alternatives before these fanatics led by Corporate
America under the flag of the M arch and Bush as its spokesperson or
Al-Qa'idah under the crescent with Osama bin Ladin as its spokesperson
- destroy all of us.
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