We are often told (by Islamists here in Britain) that there is no such thing as Islamism. It is just “politically active sincere Muslims”. Right, tell that to your Islamist buddies overseas.
The Moroccan security services also say Belliraj was the author of six assassinations in Belgium between 1986 and 1989, cases which the Belgian police failed to solve.
“I lived in Belgium for more than 40 years and no policeman came knocking at my door to accuse me of trafficking weapons or killing anyone,” Belliraj said during the trial. “I am an Islamist, but I have no plan to overthrow the regime.”
And:
Sarsur told journalists at a press conference recently that, “From an ideological perspective, we believe that government on earth, at least on Muslim and Arab lands, needs to be an Islamist government led by a Khalif (heir of Muhammad).”
Hamid Gul being interviewed:
How do you define your own ideology?
I am an Islamist.
We are Islamists, believing in the religion of Mohamed (peace be upon him), but we can still cooperate with a Marxist believing in Marx or Lenin. Within the order of priorities we established, we cooperated with Lebanese communists in any place where there was struggle against the Israeli occupation, and we cooperated with everybody in confronting the Zionist project.
Finally, in Morocco:
The PJD leader, Abdelilah Benkiran, said his party was taking a softly-softly approach to winning power. It had decided to stand in only half the constituencies in order to avoid winning so many seats that it might provoke an Algerian-style bloodbath.
“We want calm change, not like in Algeria. We are Islamists. That means we must go slowly, be careful and not rock the boat so much that it sinks,” said Mr Benkiran, one of Morocco’s few charismatic political leaders.
The point is that, unlike their bedfellows in Britain, Islamists in Muslim majority countries cannot play the game of saying that they are simply “politically active Muslims” because all politically active people there are Muslims, of which very few are Islamists.
39 Comments
Define Islamism? Are all Islamists the same?
—
Is the sky blue, or are we all just colour blind?
How profound, Hassan!
That’s how I roll, Belzebub. Stick with me, and you’ll go far in life.
Nasrallah is an employee of the Iranian regime, so he would say whatever he is told to say to keep getting funds from the Iranian regime for his militia.
The Moroccan case written above is interesting because of what is left out from the original article itself:
“Human rights campaigners said the trial had been politically-motivated and that the convictions were suspect….Human rights campaigners (also) accused the police of torture and falsifying key documents used as evidence.
“This verdict shows that the Moroccan judicial system is under orders,” said Khadija Riyadi, head of Morocco’s leading independent human rights group AMDH. “This had NOTHING to do with a fair trial.”
——————————————-
Given that Morocco, like most regimes in North Africa is a family run dictatorship invoking Arab socialism and that makes no bones about openly torturing its citizens (as well as those from other countries including the U.S. and Britian for “renditions”):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/dec/11/politics.alqaida
not to mention that there is a new CIA “black site” prison being built there as well:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article729946.ece
all of which seems to have conveniently escaped the mind and of the writer of this sorry piece.
If the above is not a problem, I am sure that future articles on this blog should fully support and endorse keeping Guantanimo open as there should be NO problems extracting “evidence” under torture since it is openly practiced in Morocco at the state level and endorsed by the UK/US govts who outsource captured prisoners there.
It goes much further then that – the Ikhwan in Egypt call themselves Islamists too.
Citing somebody as saying “I am an Islamist” is in no way an endorsement of politically motivated show trials nor of torture. As a rule we believe in challenging Islamism, not criminalising it – and the occupants of Guantanamo (and, indeed, all prisoners held without trial anywhere in the world) should be charged with a recognisable offence or released. See Faisal’s piece on this topic above.
Khalid
Eh????
Morocco is a semi-authoritarian monarchy and long-time US ally in the North African region.
It has never invoked so-called Arab socialism, nor any other socialism for that matter.
Yahya Birt, responding to comments on his review of Ed Hussein’s The Islamist makes the following comment:
http://www.yahyabirt.com/?p=71
Where I would disagree with Birt is in his concluding, final paragraph. He himself comments that the origins of the term Islamism are set in a polemical (pace, Birt – his allegedly “analytical” depiction of Islamism is too broad and confuses rather than enlightens) frame of reference contra Marxism, socialism and – this is telling – other Muslims. This is a fairly frank admission of that takfiri tendency and totalitarian mind-set identifiable in much Islamist discourse. In all, Birt (perhaps obliviously) admits that Islamism was, from the inception of the term used to define those who worked work actively to uplift the cause of a politicised, narrow-minded brand of Islam against those who did not believe in its medievalist ideological discourses and authoritarian politics.
Here is the nub – the cause of Islam is taken by Birt to be something inextricably linked to a political agenda – and implicitly Islamism is identified with Islam as a whole.
I reject both these underlying assertions and thus reject Birt’s whole thesis of the legitimacy of Islamism to represent Islam as a whole and the desirability of engaging with such totalitarian, anti-democratic political forces here or in the MENA region as elsewhere.
Ya, Abu Faris, yes, the genealogy of “Islamism” was set out in a polemical context, but I would reject the inference that there isonly one true way of Islam and politics in the modern age that would seek to create a vanguard (of the somehow divinely mandated) to pursue the interests of “Islam” while Muslims couldn’t.
However, unlike genealogy, an analytical defintion of “Islamism” would recognise that there are multiple readings of Islam and politics in the modern age which compete for the support and attention of Muslims. The perplexity of our situation is that liberalism, separation of powers, constitutionalism, democracy are just as novel to classical Islamic political thought as are totalitarianism, nationalism, fascism and communism. Pretending that shura in a simple, naive way equals modern democracy is fairly hopeless. Even democracy in the ancient city-state of Athens would hardly meet our standards of democracy today. Equally, what I would view (and many ulema and Muslim liberals have viewed) as the categorical error of adducing God’s omnipotence with an argument for a modern totalitarian state under a singular idea of “sovereignty” (hakimiyya), nonetheless involves many of the same hermeneutical tools that might be adduced for democratic constitutionalism. They are basically similar language games — how to adduce various forms of modern politics with reference to a scriptural tradition, and this is what links them in the development of such ideas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I don’t share the conclusions of religious totalitarians, but I still recognise that they are involved in a similar process, and that recognition leaves open the possibility of meaningful exchange and perhaps of persuasion.
I am basically a left-leaning communitarian liberal and a democrat, rather than a republican liberal and a libertarian, and I support a moderate secularism committed to democratic process rather than a secularism with anti-democratic undertones, to nail my colours to the mast, but the idea that faith only becomes true faith when divorced from politics seems naive to me. It is politics for instance when the Prophet told believers that to speak truth to a tyrant was the highest form of struggle (i.e. jihad). The world is such that sometimes even if we just want a quiet life — I know I certainly do — but nonetheless politics and life and its tribulations don’t leave you alone! The question is how do I or you respond to the challenge?
Perhaps this is all another way of saying that we could pay more attention to another political tradition in Islam — the genre of political realism — to be found in the mirror for princes genre from the times of Ibn Miskawayh down to something like al-Allawi’s Crisis of Islamic Civilisation today. Better to start from a frank assessment of political realities and challenges, rather than work from the top downwards with a theory of justice and a perfect political order that instantiaties our most dearly held values. Amartya Sen hints at this when he says there are two traditions of justice in liberal theory — one that starts from defining what a just society would be like and another that starts out by pointing to all that is wrong with the world and seeks to correct it.
I cannot agree with you. Politics and its various ideological perspectives are, to borrow Wittgenstein’s formulation, a form of life [lebensform] – a something we do and have always done. Indeed, granted Aristotle’s philosophical anthropological depiction of humans as zoon politikon, with all the convergence of politics and urbanity that this implies, I would suggest that politics and its ideologies as a form of life is not an especially original thought. In fact, one might want to say that people cannot help but be political and politically-minded. As such, it would be rather odd to culturally delimited ideologies – as if democracy, or totalitarianism were the sole preserve of European societies, for example – when they most clearly have not been, nor are they. In response, then, I would want to say that no political forms, nor ideological positions are alien to any culture or society – but are shared by all. It is not only counter-intuitive, but historically jarring to suggest that the notions of democracy and secularism are somehow alien to Arab society, for example. At the same time, I find the notion of a religion as definitional of a culture – as you seem to want (for example Arab culture) telling.
Hmmph. I have long had a problem with the thesis that argues that modern liberal democratic constitutionalism has its roots in (usually expressed as) radical religious dissenting movements., as it happens. Kant (most clearly) depicted the final breach that was opening between religious belief (as doxa) and (for example) scientific knowledge(as episteme – to borrow Platonic descriptors) during his lifetime. This also presages the clearing opening up between politics and religion that was simultaneously emerging towards the end of the 18th Century in Europe. I would suggest that the development of modernism is in part this radical breach with traditions of religion as politics and politics as articulated in the language games of religion. Indeed I would suggest that this crisis is actually the crisis of politics and ideology in, for example, the MENA region – not some putative novelty of “Western” political ideas in those cultures.
I hope I did not lead you to believe that I thought you did share the conclusions of religious totalitarians. I have read enough of your work to know that this is very far from your positions. Where I take issue with you is the belief that there is any “possibility of meaningful exchange and perhaps of persuasion”. With this I cannot agree – at all. The people with whom you would debate are – in general – entirely closed-minded and unwilling to concede a single point. The totalitarian mind-set is also the authoritarian mind-set. These people are utter bigots, to be frank – and we surely must take some notice of the calamitous history of the appeasement of such fascists (and fascism is a very good description of their basic ideological position).
Yet there are more ways of negotiating the manifold and subtle relationships between religion and politics than simple identification of the one with the other that is at the heart of Islamism (and the identification of its own political agenda and ideological positions with Islam in toto, that is Islamism’s method). Indeed such a crude equation divests both of any force.
See my comment directly above.
On a point:
Yahya’s view that the idea that various ideological positions and political forms are somehow alien to classical Islamic political thought strikes me as peculiar given, for example, al-Farabi’s predilection for discussing Classical political forms in Islamic contexts in his al-Madina al-Fadil… and that was written in the 9th Century CE!
Truly pathethic. There isnt such a thing as “Islamism” or “Islamists”. You wont find the word anywhere in classical Islamic texts or even by modern groups when describing themselves. Communist and fascists readily identify themselves as such : Islamic groups do not identify themselves as “Islamist” -so essentially its imposing on Muslims a perjorative name they dont accept for themselves. Its like instead of calling them “zionists” you called them “zionazis” (and of course Spitoons fellow travellers do use supremely offensive terms such as “Islamo facists”
“Islamist” was invented by hostile non-Muslims -to use of the suffix “-ist” intended to encourage comparisons with communist or fascist. Muslims dont accept definitions in our deen from non Muslims.
In any case “-ist” means “One who follows a principle or system of belief. ” meaning Islamist means any person who follows and believes in Islam i.e a meaningless definintion which would cover all Muslims
This is shown by Yossarians pathethic article above. Of the 5 quotes 4 are in Arabic so the word “Islamist” wasnt used -its just been translated as such by a biased translator.
Which leaves us with Hamid Gul (that giant of Islamic law) . Asuming the interview was in English it was in an Indian paper (not an unbiased source). Its further undermined by him saying “Islam is the final destiny of mankind. Islam is moderate, Islam is progressive. Islam is everything that man needs. It is not necessary to become a Muslim but it is necessary to adopt the principles of Islam. Naseem Azavi and Iqbal’s writings have influenced my thinking.”
Apparently according to Spitton Mohammed Iqbal was an Islamist!!!
Abu Faris
This is the best definition of Spittoon and the zionist movement I have read
Ali = Muslim = Munir = blah = anti Muslim bigot = deranged paranoid troll
Ya Abu Faris,
1. I take it from you’ve said you agree that politics as a form of life forces us in some measure all to be entangled in politics. We can have political opinions even if we aren’t especially active in politics and it is reasonable to suggest that in most cases our politics are not divorced from our most dearly held values, whether they have a religious basis or not. So you would agree then that it is naive to hold that faith is only true faith when it is divorced from politics.
It seems to me your objection is not to a relation between faith and politics per se but to authoritarian acceptations or understandings of it. An over-ideologization, an intolerance, a rigidity. Then I am with you.
2. I think you misunderstood my argument. Yes, a reasonably well-read person would not doubt be aware of the faylasuf and their innovative readings of Plato and Aristotle, but that is not my point. And it indeed it would be naive to suggest that in history Muslim peoples did not yearn for justice, were troubled by tyranny or anarachy and didn’t want fairness and greater security and peace, and that likewise their intellectuals were concerned with these ideas in politics.
In the premodern period we do find positions/arguments that one might classify as authoritarian, i.e. justifications of hereditary dynastic rule, or anti-authoritarian, i.e. arguments against arbitrary government, the rule of law, the refusal to codify one school of law, stands made against official state inquisitions and so on. Why not? This is the stuff of politics, ancient or modern.
So yes we can analogise from principles, from the outlines of discussions held by the religious authorities of the past, but only consistently if we are clear about what were the defining features of modern politics: bounded territories, codification of law, the universal franchise, the expansion of the bureaucratic modern state into what were formerly private areas or unregulated civic areas of life, the modern notion of the citizen, and so on. The keep point about any modern politics, it seems to me, is the recognition that the reach of the modern state, democratic or non-democratic, is much greater than any pre-modern polity. Muslim totalitarians want to use that to remake society from above in their own image; Muslim democrats want to limit the powers of the state through rule of law, human rights etc. Whole new areas of life became formally politicized in ways that were not possible before, so let’s just recognise that the circumstances are wholly different which is why reading off fatwas from Ibn Taymiya, meditations from al-Kindi, or whoever, is not very helpful.
3. The issue is not really one of separation between religion and politics, but a balance of powers at the state level, formal and universal rights and an inclusive but robust political culture. In Britain, even theocrats can organise collectively, lobby, vote etc, but unless they can come up with a more appealing argument, they are doomed to remain on the margins. Plato recognised that democracy is based on opinions, not truth. So in democracy theocrats have opinions like anyone else.
4. The why political decline in the MENA region (MENA is a very modern “area studies” designation and quite anarchonistic by the way) is a very long debate and can be had at some other juncture.
5. Aren’t (some) anti-Islamists also making the same claim: to identify their interpretation with Islam in total, just like Islamists? I shy away from that. I prefer the tradition formula: wa’Llahi a`lam, and God knows best. I have a conviction that my view is more faithful to the Tradition, but I concede the possibility that I may be wrong. A bit more realism and humility in the debate can, in my experience of twenty years in this field, even get those whom you think are bigots beyond the pale to listen. They are not one-dimensional bogeymen as such: more likely, ya Abu Faris, that they are your brothers, cousins, neighbours, felow community members. Which brings me to my final point.
6. I don’t know your real name or what else you do in your free time: perhaps you are doing things in this direction. We British Muslims have a direct interest in fostering an honest, reflective and patient civic culture. With perhaps limited success, I have been involved in an initiative at City Circle along these lines. Zia Sardar and others I think helped to articulate this in a lecture a couple of years ago, “Bringing Sufis, Salafis and Secularists Together: Rearticulating Civil Society in Islam”.
http://www.thecitycircle.com/events_full_text2.php?id=412
Building respect, trust, a listening ear, and an ability to take criticism is not an overnight project. Sectarian, ethnic, class differences won’t be erased in some new shiny British Islam; it is not uniformity that is striven for, but amity. Getting rid of the know-it-all mentality, “the unite but follow me” tendency, the control freakery, the invoking of Islamic unity while moving your clan/ethnic group/sectarian group into pole position etc. We can have sharp differences sometimes, but always breaking bread together (more likely kebabs) afterwards remains a feature. I’m not that much into labels and ideological checklists. I look at individuals, their character and their track record of service (to their own community and to this country). We are a young community; our elders struggled to translate their traditions into the British context; our activists made great whopping mistakes in the limelight; we don’t know yet what the balance should be between khidma and public sector encapsulation, between community upliftment and the common and public good. All these are still to play for and are aspirations. “Islamists” are part of all this, but they are not labels but people. Half the time they don’t really believe in Mawdudi’s anti-colonial diatribes from the 1930s either; it’s a thin tribal loyalty. And a simple wish not be publicly humiliated; people dig their heels in basically.
We might want to press a case, and have legitimate reasons for so doing, but only under the watchword of this piece of advice from the Prophet on how to go about it:
“The Muslim is a brother to the Muslim. He neither oppresses him nor humiliates him.”
This applies to everyone of course, but the particular issue here in the UK at the moment is a very public politics of humiliation. It may be psychologically satisfying for erstwhile sectarian rivals, embittered Muslim ex-totalitarians seeking revenge on those who screwed up their lives, self-proclaimed champions of the national interest and universal values, but there are laws of unintended consequence here. You may indeed think the Islamism/Islam distinction may hold at some intellectual level, but all I can see at the popular level is that some people just begin to see that Islam in the problem.
If we spent less time on anonymous internet attacks and were more invested in building viable alternatives, things might be better all around.
This is all probably all hopelessly old fashioned, naive and idealistic, and if digital pariah politics is the only brave new world we have to look forward to then I will leave it to more intrepid souls than myself to pursue.
And as regards all the above, wa’Llahi a`lam.
1.
You are quite right, this is my position too. I am not sure sure why you assumed that I somehow accorded to some privacy of faith argument; perhaps I was not clear enough. It strikes me that the assumption is that my arguments against the overt politicisation of religion have been taken by you to mean that I fail to grasp the interconnectedness of these forms of life – politics and religion. My issue is with Islamism as the capture of politics by religion, or rather by a a deeply intolerant and authoritarian branding of a particular faith. I would rather we had dealings with those in the Faith caoncerned with developing a truly liberatory theology and not those Islamists engaged (for often highly mundane motivations) in a totalitarian project that ultimately strips the Faith of any common humanity and moral worth.
2. I think I am in agreement with you in this section.
3.
Actually doxa is more than simply “opinion”, it has a wider scope better trnaslated into English as “belief”. I am sure you will agree belief is wider in scope than opinion. Plato’s target in his political philosophy is bounded by his epistemology and ultimately his mystical metaphysics. He certainly did not believe in some sort of equality of opinions. indeed this worry was one of his arguments against democracy.
Yes, theocrats have their opinions and beliefs under any system of rule. This is to miss the point. It is their practices, both political and social, that concern me. The practical evidence is that they are deeply detrimental to the well-being of the body social and political.
4. I am sorry you do not like the acronym MENA – perhaps I should state the Middle East and North Africa? Is that better? Really a rather silly spot of point-scoring. I happen to live and work in that region, incidentally… which leads me on to my next point:
5.
Yes, I know they are not one-dimensional bogeymen. Please try to avoid patronising me, ya rajul. I happen to live under their rule – and the one thing they are not, God be praised, are my brothers or cousins – not literally, nor figuratively. They are a bunch of mass-murdering, thieving bullies, who have bought nothing but pain and misery to the people of this region – excuse me if I rely upon my own and my wife’s experience of these criminals and hypocrites rather than viewing them from afar via the rosiest of tinted spectacles.
I use a pseudonym because I am constant critic of a deeply authoritarian state (in which I work and live and have family resident within) run by Islamists. If you want to communicate directly with me, then I am sure the editors of this website will furnish you with my email address – however I am not foolhardy enough to desire an evening or many in the company of the local Gestapo by giving out such data in the open.
So I see evil being committed by Islamists, and I do nothing, I say nothing? Because it might encourage Islamophobia? Oh, do give over.
Muslim
So you didn’t read what Yahya Birt wrote above and which I blockquoted?
Fascinating.
ya Abu Faris,
1,2: fine
3. Interesting on Plato and doxa, thanks. Sometimes it works the other way: the non-liberal’s fundamental rights get screwed over, given enough provocation on their part and the right kind of polarised political environment. Things like the suspension of habeas corpus, etc.
4. fair enough, it was a pedantic but nonetheless true quibble that an historian would make.
5. I’m not patronising you; I’m speaking from my own experience in the UK. I assumed, given the UK focus of this blog, that you were writing from here as well. You have given me reasons for your anonymity that seem reasonable, so I understand your extra-UK context better. I’m less uninformed or sentimental about matters outside the UK than you seem to imply, but then I don’t regularly stray into areas about which I don’t know that much. I’m not into making this exchange personal.
6. I don’t hold to the position that any criticism of Islam = Islamophobia and/or anti-Muslim prejudice/bigotry. Or that any public critism of Muslims by Muslims is political/cultural betrayal. That’s a reduction of my position, but I still hold to the view that the distinction is getting blurred at a popular level here in the UK at the moment.
And that is a reductive distortion of my criticism of your position, actually.
My objection was to this:
First of all, there is the amazing assumption that I am an erstwhile sectarian rival, or an embittered Muslim ex-totalitarian. Nor am I a self-proclaimed champion of the national interest, let alone universal values. You are projecting your assumptions about the people who blog here onto me… and you don’t want to get personal? Such ad homina hardly suits you.
However, let’ it pass… this is the real source of my objection: the alleged “laws of un intentional consequence”. Your argument is that a doing of the dirty laundry in public, the overt targeting of Islamist political practice and ideological position encourages the anti-Muslims:
Is this not what you wrote? I think this is off-the-wall; and, frankly, reaching for an argument to do nothing about an abusive and parasitical accretion (Islamism) that is harming the ‘ummah in ways before unknown.
It is not hammering the Islamists that is causing or inciting Islamophobia, it is Islamism’s hateful bigotry and its constant identification of itself with Islam in total that is contributing to a rising anti-Muslim mood in the West.
This is a fight for the soul of Islam, a soul about which I care very much – and I will not be silenced on the dubious grounds of alleged expediency.
I should also like to object to a depiction of my position as “intellectualist” or intellectualising. If anyone is caught up in a very tall ivory tower deep, deep within the Groves of Academe, it isn’t me, sunbeam.
Ya Abu Faris,
Well we both obviously care and have scars to show for it, but we can agree to differ on how best to carry on. The reading of context and the adab of engagement are matters of difference in themselves after all. None of those descriptors were directly at you personally, but they are common enough nowadays. I’m glad alhamdulillah for you to confirm that none of them remotely fit you. As I said before, I’m not interested in ratcheting the discussion up into a frenzy of insult. I wish I was in an ivory tower, but sadly am not.
Sad to say, this is still not a fair characterisation of my position.
Wa s-salam, Yahya
Sorry if you thought I was implying that you were in an ivory tower. It was as little aimed at you as, it seems, your presumptions about the motivations of anti-Islamists were at me.
I do think that the term adab is bandied about far too much as a means of closing down trenchant discussion, don’t you?
Perhaps you could rephrase your views on the inadvisability of confronting Islamism so I could appreciate them more accurately – especially as I have seemingly misunderstood your clearly very subtle and nuanced position. A position, I am sad to write, that still escapes me.
Many thanks in advance.
Yahya – just a polite request. Most of us are not as intellectual as you so could you please present you points in more easy to understand language because so far you have completely lost me.
perhaps if the two of you stop summarising each other’s arguments and then refuting the summaries in a slightly chilly way, you might come to a rather better common understanding. you both seem like pretty sensible people. why don’t i summarise both of your positions and then you can both tell me i don’t understand instead, if it would help?
basically, it seems, yahya, that you believe islamists can be co-opted and thus defanged. it seems, abu faris, that you think otherwise. *ducks*.
my favourite rabbi once told me that it is particularly hard to be passionate about being moderate, particularly when extremism is far easier to be passionate about. i would say, personally, that as attractive as the via negativa is, theologically speaking, it doesn’t cut it as a methodology for developing political ideology. anyway, at the risk of offending you both (which i have no wish to do) i could suggest that it might be more productive for you both to look at more subtle and complex metaphors for change – i have for some time been pushing the concept of the “biodiversity of judaism” – as a sort of cultural ecology, if you like. thus, “klal yisrael” (our closest equivalent to the concept of “‘ummah” can be in dynamic equilibrium, with all contributing positively and sustainably, or it can be horribly out of whack, polarised and rife with infighting. a useful model to look at in this context is the model of emergent bio-psycho-social development developed by prof. clare graves which is popularly known as “spiral dynamics”. i think you’d both find it illuminating.
b’shalom
bananabrain
Basically that care and discernment is needed in taking on totalitarian or authoritarian readings of Islam such that the outcome (i) prevents the effective playing of the ummatic loyalty card against the critic, (ii) doesn’t ignore real grievances laying underneath that generates support for this totalitarian view, (iii) is convincingly rooted with respect for the transformational nature of modern politics while seeking inspiration from Tradition, (iv) is committed to an open-ended discussion of positive alternatives, (v) is rooted in a practical ethic of servic (khidma), (vi) is open and accountable, (vii) is hermeneutically modest, i.e. it doesn’t repeat the error of totalitarians in its own anti-totalitarianism by claiming to speak for Islam per se, and (viii) is committed to process of dialouge and rapproachment where and wherenver feasible. There could be more points added probably. I don’t view any of this as appeasement, and these points are related to the UK only: everyone is the mujtahid of their own context. As Dumas said, “All generalizations are dangerous, even this one.”(!)
bananabrain, in peace,
I still have a problem with this format of anonymous musing on the internet with such difficult, and obviously contested, issues. If I was in a room with someone, if I was accountable and they were accountable, I might be able to figure out how we could have a reasonable discussion on this. Otherwise, it just feels alike unproductive sparing, and the temptations to have the last word when you feel misrepresented hardly brings out the best in me, let alone anyone else. People can give some quite valid reasons for remaining anonymous, some of them valid, but for it can’t be the start of an equal and respectful beautiful relationship. I think it corrodes civic trust and is not dialogical in spirit at the end of the day.
If either you or Abu Faris or anyone else wants to take this offline and talk in a more contextualised and productive way then fine. Basically I do have problems with the Spittoon’s approach; but the suggestion that any criticism of its approach is naivity, appeasement or worse is only symptomatic of the problems I have with the approach in the first place.
in peace, Yahya
Abu Wannabe, sorry, it’s not deliberate, it’s just a result of reading the wrong kind of book. A real intellectual wouldn’t have to rely on jargon anyway!
Patriotism of any brand, including the “ummatic loyalty” variety is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Bandy not with the scoundrel.
Anti-Islamism is not to ignore the “real grievances” underlying Islamism – rather it is to point out that Islamism is no solution to these grievances.
Alternatively, it suggests that Islamism is a falsifying, novel and deeply modern account of Tradition and that politics “transforms” to the extent that debate is not stifled by appeals to fictional Tradition.
Fine – but Islamism is not a positive alternative and has no interest in debate (save as a delaying tactic)
And anti-Islamism is not so rooted? – I would have thought that a very high form of khidma was helping to deliver the Street from the latest brand of elitist, anti-democratic, inhumane trash (this time with added God-bothering) to be inflicted upon the Arab and other Muslim peoples.
Islamism is not open and accountable. Islamism is conspiratorial, delinquent in its responsibilities to both the structures of state and society, corrupt and most often irresponsible to the needs and expressed interests its supposed constituency. I assure you, your average al-Ikhwaan member sees your talk of openess and accountability as a weakness he will exploit.
I don’t so speak – nor do the vast majority of anti-Islamists in the Arab world. We object to the totalitarianism of Islamism – and in so doing we too are totalitarians? No. Honestly!
I couldn’t agree more. However, Islamism is not interested in rapprochement, nor dialogue; thus it is not a feasible project.
Well at least we have a better idea about what we disagree on. That concludes this exchange for me. Wa s-salam, Yahya
Actually, you have consistently failed to express your disagreements – instead you have relied upon a series of prejudices against anti-Islamism, appeals to the failings of internet anonymity and side-steps into “Tradition” (including the infamous show-stopper “adab”).
Apologies for being brusque – but this gets my goat.
This is a strawman. No-one has suggested that this is your position; yet you keep raising such in an increasingly aggrieved manner as a way of countering criticisms of your position. Now you scoot off because people don’t agree with you? Odd that, granted your alleged addictions to rapprochement and dialogue.
It’s not a strawman: I do think this is quite symptomatic of Spittoon-like approaches at present. It’s something like “liberals have to be muscular liberals”, otherwise they naive, appeasing or worse. And for Muslims, it’s something as spectacularly simplistic as six degrees of separation, the pseudo science of “linkology” by Google, scriptural robotics (For Muslims, read the Qur’an and that will tell you how Muslims will think and behave; for “Islamists”, read “Milestones” and this will tell you how they will think and behave) and an ideological checklist for the purposes of identifications (as they don’t all have beards or hijabs). I don’t think the approach is much more sophisticated than that. You believe all those designated as “Islamists” are paragons of evil; I think some are genuinely evil, some are clueless, some are merely pious, some are persuadable of alternatives, some are not, etc. You advocate a categorical definition; I advocate for a process of engagement, but not an unconditional one. “Islamists” don’t live outside of history and circumstance and change, and neither do we.
I don’t have problems with argument, Abu Faris, but I do with problems with rudeness and, yes, lack of transparency. “Adab” is not censorship; it’s part of our Tradition. These are not distractions, but values that are rather important to me, and your disparagement of them, in my view, is disappointing.
Values that lack moral compass are not values, they are millstones that need to be unchained from around our necks.
There is a rather fine medieval Persian poet, who wrote:
Get drunk at prayer, or destroy the Holy Book, burn the Ka’aba to the ground… but never, ever hurt anyone.
It all rather depends what you want from Faith, I suppose. Addiction to form is rather disappointing when it is not defended by anything other than appeal to the wider (other) form of Tradition.
Adab is part of our tradition (why the need for a capital letter?) – but it does not mean what you want, I am afraid.
Again you misrepresent others whilst complaining that others misrepresent you. Intriguing that. Are you sure you actually approve of debate at all?
Why should I apologise to someone who finds it so clearly difficult to distinguish between honesty and rudeness (or conveniently claims that those who disagree with him are being rude)?
Lack of transparency? Perhaps you would care to explain this rather puzzling allegation? That is, without appeal to “Tradition” [sic], circularity of argument, or veiled implications that others do not Islamically come up to scratch?
What next, takfir?
abu faris:
i do sympathise, but i think you’re being unnecessarily confrontational here. perhaps the two of you might like to get in email contact? if this was a F2F thing, i’d be offering to moderate right about now.
b’shalom
bananabrain
To the extent that I find the sort of faux humility, reference to “Tradition” as a means of closing down discussion (when, at least tangentially, we are discussing the interpretations of tradition, FFS), mock affront and taking-one’s-bat-home when in receipt of more-or-less trenchant disagreement infinitely annoying – then, yes, I suppose I do get a bit uppity and confrontational.
I’ll be quiet now.
Sorry I don’t do takfir or political takfir. Nor, I hope, mistake rudeness for honesty. Nor would I confine religion to just “form” or to just “essence”; it is both. But i do sometimes make typos as in “Tradition”. But then, as I said before, what do these exchanges achieve? Happy to take offline as bananabrain suggest, emails either through my website or on facebook.
Wa s-salam, Yahya
I don’t “do” Facebook for the very reasons of basic personal security I mentioned above, Yahya.
If you do not mistake rudeness for honesty, then I also hope you do not confuse honesty for dishonesty. It would simply be very rude if you did, as I am sure you would agree.
I am contactable via the editors here, who have my email address, and I will allow to pass on to you my email address, if you want and they will allow – although I am taking liberties here with their time and patience.
yahya:
these exchanges may not achieve the desired result (whatever that is) straight away, but they are at least a start. as our tradition has it in various places in the “Pirqei ‘Aboth”:
off you go, then.
b’shalom
bananabrain
Thank God for that
Just out of interest – did Yahya Birt ever write anything in response to that Spittoon article about City Circle that he was deeply unimpressed with on Pickled Politics? No?
So much for dialogue and rapprochement, then.