Earlier this year, the words 'Muslim Rage' were splashed out in bold print on the cover of Newsweek magazine. The article, written by the self proclaimed feminist, 'Muslim dissident', argued that acts of angry protest in the 'Muslim world' against a short, anti-Islamic film, actually indicated a wider deficit of modernity. Accompanied by the almost cartoon-like image of an angry Arab man, naturally boasting a beard and turban, the article followed an almost identical line of argument to that of Bernard Lewis' essay, 'The Roots of Muslim Rage'; That the Muslims, despite all Western optimism, are inherently incapable of transitioning into modernity.
The fashioning of such rhetoric is far from novel. As Edward Said argued in his seminal 'Orientalism', western observeration since the eighteenth century commonly tended to place it's own comparative constructions on what is deemed to be the 'Orient'. Such a construction, which includes the Middle East, is characterised as a completely adverse world, occupied by despotic rulers, savage practices and men with uncontrollable libido. Today however, an increasingly volatile region continues to be ravaged by conflict, the Western world finds itself facing renewed temptations to 'reconstruct' the orient. Yet, in contrast to Said's Orientalism through power relationships, the seduction of a 'new orientalism' is founded on the premise of establishing modern institutions designed to 'liberate' people from medieval tyranny.
It is therefore worth considering the underlying framework that conceptualises 'modernity'. On a superficial level, one could argue that such a notion would entail democratic institutions, freedom of speech and minority rights- particularly potent in the case of women and homosexuals. Much broader, is the suggestion that modernity necessitates pluralism, meritocracy and the acceptance of dissidence. Certainly, such a conceptualisation has been examined and developed by a great number of scholars and cultural commentators. Max Weber notoriously coined the 'Protestant work ethic' in 1905, in which he argued that European productivity was the eventual result of an amalgamation between individualism and the translation of labor as a mode of worship. The philosopher John Locke, argued that successful societies require laws that provide safeguards to private property, alongside the human rights of life and liberty. Even today, the composition of 'modern' societies seem to be primarily understood through the existence of western orientated institutions, not least by historians like Niall Ferguson, whose latest book 'Civilization : The West and the Rest', associates the rapid development of the East with the imitation and adoption of western practices. In such cases as these, the idea of modernity seems not to be one that exists upon an axiom subject to time and space, nor on alternative understandings of rights and duties. Rather, the conception is framed in a way that can only be examined as a comparative to western counterparts.
The appeal of such narratives lies in it's inherent simplicity- one which placed the 'modern' western world on a higher moral ground than it's 'uncivilised counterparts'. Moving toward the end of the twentieth century, the United States occupied the position of the most powerful nation on earth; it had supposedly 'defeated' communism, attained the greatest financial system in recorded history, and proclaimed itself once more as the 'leaders of the free world'. In the spirit of this triumphalism, emerged a new group of self-proclaimed liberators, who we now refer to as the neo-conservative movement. The movement, built by policy makers, think tanks, businessmen and disenfranchised academics, sought to revive the old imperial traditions of 'bringing modernity to the savage'. So, as the World Trade Centre fell to ashes in 2001, what rose, was a phoenix of opportunism. The neoconservatives that were occupying the Bush whitehouse helped to construct a narrative that claimed the moral imperative to destroy the backward, despotic enemy of modernity, and in so doing, liberate those who were deemed helpless.
In retrospect, it seems clear that the agents of modernity had failed to understand the nature of the force they challenged. For, despite the Leo Straussian inspired moral crusade, and the imaginings of the East through the lens of Bernard Lewis, the 'oriental menace' was ironically, forged in modernity. Far from the origins of Islamic thought espoused by the the early Arabian philosophers such as Ibn Khaladun and Ibn Rushd (both profound contributors to the development of later European intellectual thought). Instead, the ideologies espoused by many of the militant groups, derived from modern writers, such as Sayyid Qutb. In a series of books, Qutb had redisgned the Islamic concept of 'Jahilliyah ', a state of being which suggested a state of ignorance and promiscuity. According to Qutb, it was the duty of the Islamic community to rise up and overthrow the anti-Islamic institutions that had constructed this state, targeting the American consumer society, as well as concepts of 'unholy' rule. Following such a mode, other revolutionary Islamic thinkers, including the Iranian revolutionary, Ali Shariati, assisted in developing new conceptions of philosophical thought. Islamic liberation theology augmented through incorporating ideas of individual emancipation, evident in the thought of Frantz Fanon, amongst other prominent intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Satre. These new ideas, were ultimately built around the idea that through a revolutionary mode of Islam, one would be able to liberate himself from the effects of 'psychological opression', inherent in the moderninising efforts of self proclaimed western 'liberators'.
Thus, the past decade had vidly portrayed a region far more complex and vivacious than may have ever been imagined. paradigms suggesting a conflicting battles of 'good versus evil', or 'civility and barbarianism' prove not only be be drastically distorted, but ultimately unhelpful in the long term. Instead, what is clear in a post-Arab Spring world, is the renewal of dignity and respect, from classes who have long been denied such rights. Understanding this in relation to where we are now, it seems clear that the western world may find it essential to 'modernise' the foundational understandings of modernity itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment