Arabs doin' it for themselves

Photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zarwan/4486130923/



At the present time the whole world is closely following the events in the Arab world, especially Egypt at the moment, that have transpired as a revolt of the Tunisian uprising. Browsing through English-language blogs and comments left on online news sites, one may detect a popular pattern of thought. It is quite common to find comments in support of the Mubarak government, which range from expressions of strong backing to grudging tolerance. However, what these opinions have in common is a view that ultimately, the fate of Egypt and other Arab countries caught in the political storm must either be harsh but stable rule by the existing pro-Western strongmen, or a slide into backwards/hostile/violent (insert your adjective of choice here) Islamic theocracy.

The vehemence with which such persons uphold this blindingly misleading false dichotomy is astounding. It is asserted that incumbent governments are essentially the lesser of two evils. According to this viewpoint, the choice is between the West or Islam. West good, Islam bad. According to them, governments which have already demonstrated their corruption and cruelty, but are allied to the West, may be bad but are better than prospective Islamist governments which don't even exist yet.

Well, I can tell you one thing. People can wet their pants over how we're all in danger from folks like the Muslim Brotherhood, but believe it or not there's a huge gulf between political parties which seek to increase the prominence of their traditional religion in society (and follow policies of non-violence like the MB), and gun-toting fanatics hell-bent on killing the 'infidels'. The attempt to paint each and every political and social movement with the slightest thing to do with Islam as parts of a single monolithic anti-all-things-good juggernaut is a horribly trite slander which we don't even need to bother debunking here.

As well as this egregious reductionism, such attitudes also betray a deep historical amnesia, and a misuse of the term 'theocratic'. Sunni Islam - 90% of the Muslim demographic, and dominant in the Arab world - doesn't even have a religious hierachy. These people are in effect transplanting the European historical experience onto a completely different context, where the religous scholars were not rulers themselves, but frequently acted as a buffer against government oppression. The current social and political situation in the Middle East, as any academic worth his salt would tell you, is inextricably linked to the experience of colonialism by the Western powers. The environments which violent nationalist and religious groups grow out of are a direct consequence of the destruction of traditional institutions and civil society, the haphazard manipulation of borders and creation of artificial states and the imposition of secular dictatorships completely at odds with the interests of the common people - just like Mubarak's mob. 

It is precisely the status quo which feeds the resentment which leads to political violence. It provides extremist groups of both secular and religious persuasion with the demagogic ammunition for promoting a sense of hostility against foreign entities.  To unconditionally continue to support Arab dictatorships is to essentially prove that you are an imperialist power!

When we express alarm at the prospect of more 'Islamic' governments, we are merely demonstrating our intellectual hypocrisy and adherence to the classic 'Fukuyama fallacy' that 'liberal democracy' is the natural and normative end-point of human government. But by taking a world-view that developed in a very specific historical context and attributing universal relevance to it, we only express our own ideological totaliatarianism and intolerance for alternative points of view. 'Democracy' is a loaded term anyway - nobody (apart from the dictators themselves) seriously denies the desirablity of public consultation in matters of governance. However, if we use the term 'democracy' to describe the specific systems and institutions which developed in the West, we can imagine how people may very legitimately come to be opposed to it.

Western societies are extremely priviliged in that, in the modern age, they were more or less free to develop their political systems according to their own internal dynamics. The Arab world has not benefited from that luxury. So we should shut up and stop spouting the usual cliched, paternalistic tripe. The Egyptians, Tunisians and other Arab peoples are perfectly capable of deciding their own destinies, and we should let them get on with it, no matter what the end result may be.

I don't agree with this dude on everything but....

.....he hits the nail on the head on this one.

 

Rationality, religion and atheism

Uthman Badar (4 January 2011)

Religious teaching, insofar as it seeks to influence the political sphere, should be subject to rational scrutiny, argues Russell Blackford.

For those of us cultured upon the understanding that all teachings must be subject to rational scrutiny this may not be a ground-breaking thesis. It is nevertheless an argument increasingly made by advocates of a ‘new’ atheism.

Applying scrutiny to the argument itself however reveals that behind the innocent promotion of rationality lie many cobwebs that betray such an advocacy.

All truth-claims, religious or otherwise, should be subject to rational scrutiny. Rationality in its true broad sense, not in the narrow self-serving sense all too common from atheist circles.

The Atheist Foundation of Australia, for example, defines atheism as: “the acceptance that there is no credible scientific or factually reliable evidence for the existence of a god, gods or the supernatural.”

This definition makes the conflation, intentionally or ignorantly, between rational evidence and scientific evidence, such that the former is restricted to the latter. In reality scientific (empirical) evidence is one type of rational evidence, but not the only type. Other types include the likes of logic, reports and conceptual analysis.

Logical syllogisms based on sound premises and a valid structure are entirely rational. The proposition that all men are mortal combined with the observation that Tom is a man establishes rationally and necessarily that Tom is mortal.

Numerous unrelated people informing Dick that they’ve been to Canada and that it’s a wonderful place proves rationally even for him (who has never sensorially-perceived the existence of Canada) that it exists.

Our acceptance of the concept that human beings are the product of a mother and father, allows us to establish, on analysis of this concept and its rational extension, that Harry had a great great grandfather.

None of these conclusions are scientific, for they do not involve the application of the scientific method. Yet all of them are rational.

So why do atheists persist in wanting scientific evidence for theist assertions? It seems the convenience of a straw man is appealing. Theists, by and large, readily admit that science cannot prove the existence of God. Not because it requires ‘faith’ (unless you’re an adherent of fideism, an untenable position in our view) but because of the limitations of the scientific method itself.

As for rational evidence for the existence of God, that has been furnished, debated, refined and presented centuries ago. Arguments based on logic and conceptual analysis go as far back as Aristotle and Plato, through the Muslim scholastic theologians such as al-Ghazali and al-Razi, and to Western Christian thinkers of medieval Europe such as Aquinas and Bonaventure as well as Enlightenment thinkers such as Leibniz and Clarke.

The Kalam Cosmological argument for example - the strongest proof in our estimation - was developed by Muslim scholars as early as the 11th century CE.

The argument is profound yet simple: the material world we sense around us comprises of temporal phenomena that depend for their existence on other temporal phenomena and so forth. Such a series cannot continue to infinity, for if it did no one thing would satisfy its dependence and nothing would exist. The fact that things do exist necessarily implies a finite series and, in turn, the existence of a being who determined both the existence of this series and the specific attributes or properties that define it.

By rational extension, this being must be eternal and without beginning, otherwise it is temporal and forms part of the series. It must also be sentient for a timeless cause producing a temporal effect requires an independent will. Finally, effecting so grand a creation as the universe and all that it contains necessitates knowledge and power.

Thus, by use of reason alone - no reference to scripture, ‘leaps of faith’ or assumptions - we deduce the existence of an eternal, necessary and transcendent being attributed with knowledge, power and sentience, otherwise known in the English language as ‘God’.

There are of course various objections to arguments like the above. Interested parties can navigate the hundred pages in the recently published Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology devoted to the presentation of a simplified variation of the Kalam Cosmological Argument together with all objections, responses and counter-arguments.

It is not the intent of this piece to assess any of these, but merely to show that rational arguments do exist, have existed for a long time, and are the subject of serious scholarly debate and discussion.

The problem with the atheist approach is that it refuses to recognise that rational arguments exist in the first instance. When presented, the mere raising of some objections or doubt is assumed sufficient to somehow negate the argument.

Such a search for certainty in the proofs of opponents coming from the heralds of science has a touch, a good dose rather, of irony about it. Perhaps they don’t know that science at its essence employs inductive reasoning and more often than not substantiates its conclusions in terms of probability and confidence?

Deeper epistemological considerations such as the varying strengths of different types of proofs, deductive v inductive reasoning, the structure, sources and limits of different types of knowledge are certainly missing from the populist atheist characterisation of ‘science v religion’. A characterisation fit for a children’s comic, but not for serious and sincere public discourse.

The result, at any rate, is a posturing that is anything but rational. The militant atheist bandwagon - driven by Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and Dennett - continues to paint their theist opposition as irrational simpletons who favour superstition and myth over reason and science.

Worse still, the atheist approach fails to apply the rational scrutiny it calls for upon its own assertions.

Even as a negating proposition atheism makes numerous assertions, implicit if not explicit, that need to be substantiated.

Is the universe eternal? Can an infinite regress of temporal causes actually exist? Where does that leave the bulk of modern astrophysical evidence that points to a beginning of the universe?

If the universe is not eternal and had a beginning, this implies that something came from nothing. Can something come from nothing? An absurd proposition, surely?

And if the case is simply one of science not having yet answered the key questions about the origins of the universe, then is not a reasonable explanation (if not certain in the atheist view) better than no explanation? Are scientific explanations ever certain in the first place?

Further, the denial of God leaves atheists with little room but to subscribe to secular humanism, leading to more assertions that need substantiation.

Why should church be separate from state? Why should religion be singled out for exclusion from influencing public affairs? Religion is after all one worldview from amongst many.

The reality is that secularism is taken for granted to be the best way whilst it is at its core irrational. It is the result of a compromise solution for a geographically, historically, and contextually specific problem, that of pre-Enlightenment Europe. The centuries-old oppression of the Church was sought to be repelled by advocating the separation of religion from state. But this represents a classical flaw of jumping from a particular case to a universal conclusion.

An analogous case would be our arguing that because George Bush’s capitalist, liberal regime in America was oppressive, capitalism and liberalism should have no influence in society.

Devoid of a rational argument for secularism (compromise solutions are never strictly rational), advocates resort to a rather romanticised view of it as a neutral system which allows for a pluralist society where everyone is free to practice their individual beliefs. Yet secularism is built on a specific worldview and is no more neutral than any other ideology. It disallows those parts of other worldviews which contradict with it, just as they would.

We then also have assertions such as the espousal of human reason as a basis for morality. But how can the human mind determine good and evil? It will surely lead to a subjective morality? How is an objective morality and, in turn, moral obligation to be established? What is the ontological basis of morality?

These are just some of the core questions that need definitive answers for atheism and its sister ideologies to substantiate themselves. Mere criticism of opposing views, as aggressive as it may be, will not cover for holes in reason, or be a substitute for rigorous validation.

Perhaps when atheists start applying rational scrutiny to their own beliefs they’ll realise that ‘new atheism’ is little more than a novel product of modern and post-modern thought, and a manifestation of all their deficiencies, inclusive of bells and whistles.

In any case, our response to the call for rational scrutiny of religious teaching is, quite simply, bring it on.

Uthman Badar is the media representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia, the local chapter of the largest global Islamic political party.

Yursil Kidwai on Modern 'Sharia' Law

(Suleiman's note: sorry for posting other people's articles yet again, but I found this one too good to leave alone! Some original stuff in the near future inshallah.)


Blasphemy and 'Sharia' Laws: Legitimizing Corruption and Cognitive Dissonance in Muslim Lands

By Yursil Kidwai
12 January 2011
The Huffington Post

After the Ottoman Empire turned to the modern Turkish republic in 1922, Western powers used a variety of means to draw new maps and lines around lands that were administered previous through a uniquely Islamic understanding of government. The most similar Western approach to the Ottoman government might be understood as 'monarchical-federalism'. The main goal of the West's previous efforts had been the dismantlement of this conglomeration of Muslim lands, so it was natural that their main priority would be to plan a future which would prevent any sort of reunification.

Muslims had suffered a loss which was akin to excommunicating the Pope from the Catholic Church. As the ruler of all that was Islamdom, Sultan Abdul Hamid II was sent into exile, earning his bread from his carpentry work for the rest of his life. Muslims were left leaderless like they hadn't been for 1400 years.

One can imagine these architects of tomorrow, in their smokey offices, deciding which new tribe they would support here, and how they would prop up this rival over there. Welfare of the people living under these new structures was a non-factor in these decisions. It only made sense, much of these plans were thought up in the early days of total world war.

Much of the Muslim masses were convinced that the end of times had come. And in a way, it had. An era of a singular coherent Islamic orthodoxy had ended. Muslims had lived in a society for over a millennia governed by a state which conducted itself according to it's own unique and complex system of checks and balances, an almost bureaucratic system of religious debate, and an overarching Sultan intervening between rival government factions.

This robust system was replaced with a scattering of dictators and 'princes' with little experience in running their personal families, much less nations. New states popped up without the authority or the coherency of any legal tradition. Scrambling, they incorporated various pieces of the French Republic and other western governing systems and brought them into their various dictatorships and new monarchies. This was sufficient 'progress' for the West.

Yet, Muslim masses would hardly accept the authority of a piece of paper, without some reference to God. Much like the idea that "one nation, under God" conveys, Muslims hold a strong belief that a completely godless state is no state worth living in. God ran strong through these lands, and anyone wielding authority which openly ran in contrary to a village elders faith would soon be dealing with countless rebellions.

However, villagers were hardly people learned in the religious development of the Muslim empire and the nuances of delicate legal cases and precedent. And when it came to the religion, what was to replace the Sultanate was a confusing mesh of secular and religious opinions, ranging from the most extreme to the most liberal. The removal of any social entity which could qualify people to make religious opinions left the direction of Islam in chaos. The rise of the printing press and mass media ensured the confusion would easily penetrate into the ordinary Muslim's homes. Due to this amorphous state of Islamic authority, any reference to religion within the modern states law had to be vague and transient at best.
We can see this impetus to include an undefined religious authority occurring within our nation-building even today. Iraq's new constitution states in Article 2:

"First: Islam is the official religion of the State and it is a fundamental source of legislation: A. No law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be established."

Yet at the same time, it dictates:

"B. No law that contradicts the principles of democracy may be established."

Can one democratically contradict the 'established provisions of Islam'? What are these 'established provisions', and whose 'established provisions' are they? No one knows the answer to these questions, yet.

Going back to historical trends, we've seen numerous states establish 'Sharia' Laws within their normal legislative process. These laws, which have had a lasting imprint on the mind of Western observers, often pronounce strict and severe punishments: cutting of hands, lashings, stonings. It is interesting to note that the laws which the states chose to announce and implement are those with the most severe punishments against the populace.

These dictator-states and pseudo-democracies seemed to desire blurring the lines between their own tyrannous rule and God's most severe justice. It seemed they wanted to distract people: "Don't forget, we're Muslims. Yeah, we do horrible things. But don't blame us, some of these horrible things are from God."

Islamic laws which reward charity, promote honesty, promote tolerance have been forgotten in these states, while a handful of 'Shariah' punishments were mixed in with brand-new torturous and oppressive policies and procedures.

Interestingly enough, these selected 'Sharia' punishments were frowned upon under the centuries of Ottoman rule and by its end had become completely unpracticed. In Ottoman lands where Sharia was the be-all, end-all official state law, these laws were unenforced as a matter of practice. This was not through denouncing or revising Islamic Law, but by putting into practice the complete and holistic set of checks and balances built into Islamic Sharia.

This meant, for example, that while the punishment of adultery was technically announced as 'stoning', one also needed an absurd four witnesses of the most upright character to see actual sexual penetration to even entertain the possibility of this maximum punishment. On top of that unlikely scenario, if one of those witnesses ever spoke a white lie to anyone, their character would be insufficient to hold up in the courts and the case was to be discarded. When these impossible-to-meet criteria are considered, it becomes clear that these punishments were intended to be demonstrations of the severity of the act in the eyes of the Lord (and hence society), and deterrents in all practical senses.

This is not unlike the death penalty in New Hampshire, where no one has been executed since 1939, and there is no death chamber to be found in the state. Such laws remain 'in the books' as deterrents, yet through various legal or social methods they can become unenforced as a matter of practice.

However, modern 'Islamic' states have revitalized these punishments without the wisdom of their historical application. The purpose of this has been to announce their regressive and incomplete application of Sharia. The powers-that-be ultimately hope that this process would bring legitimacy and a distraction from the corruption and cognitive dissonance which permeates through their governments.
'Blasphemy laws' today in Pakistan are the latest example of supposed 'Sharia laws' hitting the newswire.

How do we reconcile such laws with the story of Mary Fisher, a Christian Quaker, who came to preach 'blasphemy' to the king of all of Muslim lands in 1658? After being given the opportunity to directly preach her Christian message to the Muslim Sultan, Mehmet IV, Fisher was received with friendship, care and consideration and offered safe passage through Muslim lands.

The following account relates the exchange between them:

... he (Sultan Mehmet IV) told her to speak the word of the Lord without fear, since they had "good hearts" to hear it; strictly enjoined her moreover, to say neither more nor less than the word she had from the Lord, since they were willing to hear it, be it what it might. With great gravity the whole assembly gave heed to her earnest ministry, and when she became silent the Sultan asked if there were nothing more she would like to say? When she inquired whether he had understood her, he answered, "yea, every word, and it is truth!" He then expressed his desire that she should remain in his dominions, and when she declined this proposal, offered her a guard to escort her to Constantinople, as he would be greatly grieved if any harm should befall her in his empire. But she courteously refused this offer, trusting in the Lord alone. May we not hope that one who had, for the moment, ignored the great national contest between the Crescent and the Cross, and -- far beyond this -- laid aside the prejudices of the exacting faith of his fathers in his readiness to hear "the word of the Lord" albeit from the lips of a woman ..
(ref: Friends' Intelligencer Vol XXXIII (1877). Philadelphia: John Comly)

Before the dissolution of the Ottoman khalifate, apostasy and other blasphemy laws were rarely spoken of and last practiced back when Americans were still accusing each other (and killing) as witches in Salem in 1692. Blasphemy laws resulting in capital punishments were openly stopped through new edicts and perspectives in 1839, specifically by a decree known as the Noble Edict of the Rose Chamber.

Far from imposing and executing various religious communities, Muslims lived with, and even ruled over, numerous rival Christian communities. Muslims were forced to decide disputes between these Christian sects. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a prime example of Muslim arbitration and administration in negotiating a peaceful and progressive approach between Christians of various denominations. Up until this day, a Muslim family holds the honor of opening the door to allow the various Christian denominations to enter and worship. The arrangement of responsibilities between the Christian sects was decided with Muslim governance.

It seems more than coincidental that these 'Sharia' incidents occur in states that are run by atheistic/communist dictators (i.e. Saddam Hussein) or ridiculously corrupt 'Islamo-democratic' governments.

In Pakistan's case, the International Crisis Group provided a report last year stating:

Decades of mismanagement, political manipulation and corruption have rendered Pakistan's civil service incapable of providing effective governance and basic public services. In public perceptions, the country's 2.4 million civil servants are widely seen as unresponsive and corrupt, and bureaucratic procedures cumbersome and exploitative. Bureaucratic dysfunction and low capacity undermine governance, providing opportunities to the military to subvert the democratic transition and to extremists to destabilise the state.

Ridiculous distractions such as modern 'Islamic' states opinions on blasphemy, adultery, and theft allow Islamophobes to target their favorite religion, while allowing corruption and real problems to go under the radar. These laws today serve a purpose that they never had in what was the most authentic Islamic state (now only a memory): a means to prove a governments religiosity in a midst of lies, deceit, money and total corruption which make up most of its actual administration.

It seems clear that, after looking at the historical examples cited, obtuse punishments and announcements of one's religiosity (especially by a government), are a sign of a troubled spiritual state.

It is high time for Muslims to accept that what is making Muslim states un-Islamic isn't a possible repeal of blasphemy laws. It is the distance from the spirit of charity, honesty and sincerity which is a fundamental aspect of any true believer in the Day of Judgment, regardless of creed. Today's Muslim leaders could learn a lot from the open exchange between Sultan Mehmet IV and Mary Fisher, and the Sharia as he understood and practiced it. One needs only consider what would happen to Mary Fisher if she approached most of today's Muslim politicians and religious leaders.

Non-Muslims, on the other hand, need to quit associating these puppet governments and their lip-service to 'Sharia law' as the defacto Islam which they wish to judge Muslims with. After all, they helped create these pseudo Islamic monstrosities.

What's this? A halfway-sane article about the Afghan conflict!?

Source: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/simplistic-moralism-sells-afghans-short-20100806-11ofx.html

Simplistic moralism sells Afghans short
PRIYAMVADA GOPAL
August 7, 2010

Cartoon tales of good and evil are distorting our picture of Afghanistan.

Reprising a legendary 1985 National Geographic cover, this week's Time magazine features another beautiful young Afghan woman, but with a gaping hole where her nose used to be before it was cut off under Taliban direction. A stark caption reads: ''What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan.''

An editorial insists the image is not shown ''either in support of the US war effort or in opposition to it'', but to counterbalance damaging WikiLeaks revelations - more than 90,000 leaked documents that, Time believes, cannot provide ''emotional truth and insight into the way life is lived in that difficult land''.

Feminists have long argued that invoking the condition of women to justify occupation is a cynical ploy, and the Time cover already stands accused of it. Interestingly, the WikiLeaks documents reveal CIA advice to use the plight of Afghan women as ''pressure points'', an emotive way to rally flagging public support for the war.

Misogynist violence is unacceptable, but we must also be concerned by the insistence that the complexities of war and occupation can be reduced to bedtime stories. Time is not alone in condensing Afghan reality into simplistic morality tales. A deplorable number of recent works habituate us into thinking about Afghanistan as what British Defence Minister Liam Fox called a ''broken 13th-century country'', defined by pathologically violent men and brutalised women.

While Afghans have been further disempowered by being reduced to objects of Western chastisement, a recent judgment against Asne Seierstad's The Bookseller of Kabul has raised the possibility of challenging distortions.

Based on her stay in the eponymous protagonist's home, Seierstad's memoir uses offensive commercial language to describe ordinary marital negotiations and refers to female characters as ''the burqa''. The tone implies that even the most anti-Taliban Afghan men are irredeemably vicious patriarchs. Predictably, some critical reaction deemed Afghanistan a ''horrible society''.

While there exists a colonial tradition of relegating the non-West to the past of the West - and some suggest leaving it to rot in hopelessness - the trendier option involves incorporating Afghans into modernity by teaching them to live in a globalised present.

In non-fiction bestsellers such as Deborah Rodriguez's Kabul Beauty School, an American woman teaches Afghan women the intricacies of hair colour, sexiness, and resisting oppression. ''To all appearances, there is no sex life in Afghanistan,'' writes Rodriguez, obsessed, as is Seierstad, with the nuptial habits of Afghans. Sex and the City 2, set in the Middle East, may have tanked as a movie, but as ideology it has displaced meaningful global feminism.

Acceptable Afghan-American voices such as Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner) and Awista Ayub (Kabul Girls Soccer Club) reiterate the notion that suburban America can ''infuse'' Afghans with freedom. Formulaic narratives are populated by tireless Western humanitarians, sex-crazed polygamous paedophiles (most Afghan men) and burqa-clad ''child-women'' who are broken in body and spirit, or have just enough doughtiness to be scripted into a triumphal Hollywood narrative. The real effects of the NATO occupation, including the worsening of many women's lives under the lethal combination of patriarchal feudalism and new corporate militarism, are rarely discussed.

The mutilated Afghan woman ultimately fills a symbolic void where there should be ideas for real change. The truth is that the US and allied regimes do not have anything substantial to offer Afghanistan beyond feeding the gargantuan war machine they have unleashed.

In the affluent West itself, modernity is now about dismantling welfare systems, increasing inequality (disenfranchising women in the process) and subsidising corporate profits.

Other ideas once associated with modernity - social justice, economic fairness and peace, all of which would enfranchise Afghan women - have been relegated to the past in the name of progress.

This bankrupt version of modernity has little to offer Afghans other than bikini waxes and Oprah-imitators.

GUARDIAN

Priyamvada Gopal teaches post-colonial studies at Cambridge University.

An Interview with Seyyed Hossein Nasr - Today's Zaman

Seyyed Hossein Nasr

‘So-called Islamic universities following Western tradition’

 Renowned Iranian thinker and academic Seyyed Hossein Nasr told Sunday’s Zaman that most of the so-called Islamic universities in the Muslim world are not Islamic in the sense that they operate within the framework of a Western worldview.

“Their successes are successes of Western science,” Nasr said. According to Nasr, as long as Muslim educational institutions continue to copy Western science without engaging in any endeavor to internalize it, the Muslim tradition will continue to be destroyed. Professor Nasr is not altogether pessimistic, though. He observes that a new generation of Muslim intellectuals and scientists is being produced in certain Muslim countries. “Even when they write about Derrida, Heidegger, modern astrophysics or something like that, they try to speak from a perspective of a Muslim tradition,” he said.

Professor Nasr is particularly fond of the intellectual productivity he has witnessed in Turkey and Iran, whereas Western philosophy seems to be stuck at a dead end.

Nasr was in İstanbul to speak at a conference held as part of the UN-backed Alliance of Civilizations initiative, Sunday’s Zaman interviewed Nasr, who is regarded as a prime traditionalist, about the Muslim tradition, intellectual productivity in the East and the West and about the relationship between knowledge and the socio-cultural milieu it is produced in.

In the preface to “The Heart of Islam,” you say you wrote all your works to preserve tradition. What does tradition mean to you and why is its preservation so important?

The English word tradition is used in different ways, including customs, habits and historical transmission, but for me tradition means a reality of sacred origin which is given to humanity through revelation. Through preservation and application of that teaching, of that sacred instruction, our civilization was created. The same is true for the Western civilization. The Christian civilization was created by the coming of Christ. That is the beginning of the Christian tradition, and then it created the Western civilization with many forms of sacred Christian architecture, theology, ethics and forms of social structure. In Islam we have the Quranic revelation. That’s the beginning of the Islamic tradition and then the whole civilization is created with its art, with its social structure, with its laws and so forth. It is important to preserve this tradition because we believe that it comes from God, that it is reality.

So you don’t support the historicist claims about contextuality of revealed sacred texts?

We reject that completely. God always speaks in the language of the people to whom He addresses His message, but the sociological understanding of revelation is rejected by us. That is itself a completely anti-traditional idea. All Muslims for 1,400 years believed that the Quran comes from God, that it is not a product of pre-Islamic Arabian society or Mecca.

Do you make a distinction between the revelation of the Quran by God into the heart and mind of the Prophet and its understanding by the Prophet as a historical thing?

No, the Prophet was chosen by God and was protected from making errors. He was also protected by the Archangel. The Prophet’s understanding of the Quran is a guarantee for our correct understanding of the Quran.

There is a dependence on Western literature in the Muslim world by means of educational material. How will we preserve tradition if even on the most basic of issues we are dependant on a foreign tradition?

We will not be able to do so if we continue like this. Everything we do is copying from another civilization. Obviously it is going to end up by destroying our own civilization, and much of it has already been destroyed in the last 200 years. Education is a very, very key issue. When the West first began to colonize the Islamic world, they began with military forces, naval forces in the Mediterranean Sea and then land forces in North Africa. They soon followed by trying to dominate over the Islamic world by means of education, and since they had more knowledge of the natural world, natural sciences, many Muslims accepted this, and gradually the Western educational system spread throughout the Islamic world. I believe that what we have to do is to teach Western sciences, but not from the Western perspective. We have to recreate our own educational system. Even theology is being dominated now in certain places by just copying in a very weak way. I say “in a very weak way” because Western theology is not strong enough to persist.

How universal is the university? Can we speak of an Islamic university?

There is always a relationship between every form of knowledge and a worldview within which that knowledge is accepted as knowledge. There is no doubt about that. The worldview in all civilizations before modern times came from religion. This is true for every civilization. Hindu universities, Chinese universities, Islamic universities -- but as Western influence spreads all over the world, we will begin to emulate Western forms of knowledge, which claim to now be independent of religion. But it was not independent of the Christian worldview. The secularist paradigm which was created in the 17th century is itself a pseudo-religion in that it is a view of the nature of reality. There is no abstract knowledge; knowledge is always within the framework of a worldview, of a way of looking at the nature of reality.

Are there any Islamic universities in the world?

Since the first World Muslim Congress was held in the 1970s in Mecca, they decided to create Islamic universities throughout the Islamic world, and several have been created in Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan and elsewhere. They are called Islamic universities, but they are not really Islamic universities because they teach the Shariah, Arabic and Islamic history, but the other subjects are not integrated. In other places, they tried to take the old madrasa and modernize it, like al-Azhar University. The university itself is an Islamic university, but not the medical school. The medical school does not teach Islamic medicine. The school of architecture doesn’t produce Muslim architects. They copy Western architecture with a Muslim name. The name is Ahmet instead of John. But it is possible to have an Islamic university.

How will the Islamic philosophical worldview be revived?

I believe that all important intellectual transformations begin with a few, not with the many. When the modern scientific worldview came about, at the beginning, at the time of Galileo, there weren’t more than 20 people in Europe who understood and accepted what they were saying. The transformation always comes with the few.

Do you see new intellectual minds emerging in the Muslim world?

Definitely! Fifty years ago there were only two types of intellectuals in the Islamic world. One were those traditional ulama -- great scholars of Arabic, theology and Islamic law -- and the other type of intellectuals were totally Westernized intellectuals, but God does not figure in Western scientific thought. But 50 years later, now, we have a number of younger intellectuals in Turkey itself, in Malaysia, in Indonesia, in Iran, in Pakistan -- mostly in these five countries. Even when they write about Derrida and Heidegger, they try to speak from the perspective of a Muslim tradition. This is a very, very good sign. We didn’t have that 50 years ago. I have a lot of hopes for the future, and I spent all my life trying to create that. InshaAllah [God-willing] something will come out of it.

But is there still an intellectual infertility in the Muslim world?

I don’t usually see that in the same way. In Iran we have leading and incredible scientists doing all kinds of things in physics and in nuclear science. The fact that Islam has not made such a big contribution to Western science is a cultural problem. It is not a scientific problem. We lost our self-confidence, we lost the confidence in ourselves, we just try to copy the West. There are excellent Turkish heart surgeons or Arab heart surgeons in the US. But to make it a civilization of your own is something else. That was not done very much because of a lack of self-confidence.

What about the West? At least speaking about philosophy, it seems the West is passing through a kind of paralysis also.

The West is now undergoing a very, very severe intellectual crisis. The reason why people are not aware of it is because of the power of technology and the military might of the West. It is like the end of the Roman Empire. As long as the Roman legends were leading in Libya, nobody thought that something was wrong. It is a very similar situation. Western philosophy is now at a dead end. Even Heidegger said, Western philosophy ends with me. There is a philosophical crisis and a religious crisis as a result of that. After that comes the environmental crisis, which is not solved unless the West changes completely the way it lives, its worldview, and they don’t want to do it. So they use cosmetics all the time. Look at the Gulf of Mexico now. It is a great tragedy of human history. Nobody wants to talk about it. So the West is also experiencing a very, very large crisis, and I’d say it is suicide for us to try to blindly copy the West at this stage.

How did the West come to this point?

In a sense, if we speak in Islamic terms, the leaders of the society in the West decided to sacrifice the akhira to the dunya completely [Nasr is referring to Quran 2:86, which reads: “These are the people who buy the life of this world (ad-dunya) at the price of the Hereafter (al-akhira).”] The great German poet Goethe in “Faust” speaks about this. Faust sells his soul to the devil in order to get power and technology. So everything is sacrificed for material ends and earthly human welfare. But we also have spiritual needs.

Can we update Western democracy into a new system where our spiritual needs are also provided for?

First of all, democracy is a method; it is not a value system. It is a method of government, and it is a question of having more people participate. Look at the Ottoman world -- very powerful sultans sat here in İstanbul, and people claim that there was no democracy in the Ottoman state. But who elected all the village elders who ran all of Anatolia? It wasn’t the sultans sitting in Topkapı Palace. It was the local people. There was a lot of internal democracy within the Islamic world even at that time. Now it is possible to develop an Islamic model of democracy on a more macro level without sacrificing the spiritual values. But it is something that Muslims have to work on, and we are in a terrible situation when it comes to the field of politics.

During the last 200 years, the power of governance in the Islamic world has increased, not decreased. It increased step-by-step. As a result, all our institutions have been destroyed. We are now looking for models based on Western civilization, and they don’t always work because those institutions grew out of a particular civilization. What it needs is creativity and adaptation. Democracy is also not ideal in the West. Money is much more powerful than the individual. We see this in the US. You cannot even participate in a nomination for a party unless you’re a millionaire to begin with.

Please comment on the idea that original and innovative ideas need freedom to blossom. Looking from this perspective, how do you evaluate the atmosphere of freedom and democracy in Turkey?

First of all, let me talk about “new ideas needing freedom in order to blossom.” What happened to the word “truth”? Where is truth in this matter? Every new idea is not a good idea. Politically, we don’t believe that Karl Marx’s ideas, which were very new, were very good also. They killed tens of thousands of people during the next 100 years after his death. Truth is the criteria. And in every society, there must be this ambiance in which ideas are tested and only true ideas survive. Islamic civilization in its golden age created this ambiance. Otherwise it would not have produced such great philosophers. People debated each other and opposed each other, but they did not oppose the oneness of God. That was like a sky over everything. But within that, there was freedom of discussion. We already lost that. That has become more and more restrictive in the last century with the rise of modernism, which in the name of freedom destroyed the whole atmosphere of the Islamic ambiance. So you were free only if you expressed Western ideas; otherwise, you would be put in prison.

Now the atmosphere in Turkey is fairly good. I am not saying ideal, but the two countries which have the greatest field of intellectuals are in Turkey and Iran. Pure philosophy, which is the heart of all scientific development, is produced more in Iran and Turkey than in the rest of the Islamic countries. I think Turkey and Iran have the largest number of books coming out which seriously deal with these intellectual matters.



23 May 2010, Sunday


KERİM BALCI / ŞEYMA AKKOYUNLU İSTANBUL

Source: www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-210911-so-called-islamic-universities-following-western-tradition.html

Very Western Terrorism

One of the most enduring images of intercivilizational conflict these days is that of the Islamist terrorist and his war on the West. This is almost universally portrayed as a conflict between the traditional, the oriental and the quintessentially Islamic and the modern, culturally and intellectually superior occident. However, this perspective is dependent on a historical amnesia that affects so much of modern society today. Islamist terrorism is not a story of Islam versus the West, but rather of modern secularism falling upon its own sword.

We often attribute the violence of entities like Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah to superstitious primitivism. Far from being medieval throwbacsk, such movements have their ideological foundation in Western modernity. The most distinctive features of violent Islamism - the globalization of organized violence and the belief in the possibility of establishing a utopia via acts of destruction - are unfounded within traditional Islamic scholarship. Rather, they are the by-products of Enlightenment philosophy. The Islamist is just as likely to be middle-class and university-educated, rather than a stereotypical ignorant Third-Worlder. He often has spent time in the west, and received a western education. We only need to read the history of Muslim political radicalism to understand these facts.
The association between Islam and anti-Western violence is notable only because of its rarity. Except in cases of response to direct military invasion, such as African resistance to the redcoats of the British Empire, and more recently the conflicts in Bosnia and Cold War Afghanistan, the Muslim response to the challenges of the West was overwhelmingly informed by pragmatism, self-reflection and conciliation. The true weapons of the dissemination of Islam have always been through culture, religion and philosophy, hence its ability to spread to places like Southeast Asia, China and West Africa. Even during periods of military conquest by Muslim kingdoms, one would be hard pressed to find examples where it was actually motivated by religion.

However, many radicals see the traditional response as a flawed approach, and in espousing of violent insurrection reject the scholarship of tradition. In drifting away from Tauhid, the metaphysical Unity at the heart of Islam, they adopt the cosmology of the universe as Light and Dark, with the former’s imperative to conquer the latter. This Occidental archetype, this pursuer of victory against an Other, who if incapable of achieving this goal settles for the glorious and spectacular end, is an impossible role model if one follows the religion of a God who is the master of history, who sends the rain on good and evil alike.

How terribly modern the terrorist is! They justify the targeting of civilians as religiously-sanctioned, but how ironic is it that the self-styled warriors of God base their philosophy on secular modernism. From the bombing of German cities by the RAF to the nuclear annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, such violence is typical of the utilitarian Enlightenment ethic. For the religious, morality can never be subjected to the whims of convenience. On the contrary, the harder it is to follow, the more crucial it becomes. Within this attitude war is no longer an activity of defence, or a way to attain resources or power, but a veritable act of social engineering. This Utopianism, arising from the revolutionaries of France to be later passed down to innumerable inheritors, is obsessed with ideas of progress. That humanity can somehow be made better, and the fundamental evils and injustices wiped out through external action – armed conflict being an effective and legitimate way of achieving this. The ‘Greater Good’ conquers all.

Similarly, the fashion of the suicide attack is Islamically baseless in spite of its perceived normativity. Even the Hashashin preferred to be struck down by the bodyguards of their victims or be dragged off for torture than turn their blades upon themselves. If Christians would forgive me for the use of this polemic device; in the Quran there is no Samson. Jonah does not ask to be chucked overboard and Job does not pray for death. Though Islamic history and literature is replete with martyrs, one would be hard-pressed to find any who actively sought after martyrdom. There is neither Achilles nor Ajax, nor any of those who threw themselves at the Roman authorities begging for death, glorifying it for its own sake. Suicide bombing itself was pioneered by the Tamil Tigers, a Marxist-Leninist group which carried out the most number of these attacks up to the Iraq invasion, and passed on this technique to groups in the Middle East which were also of Marxist persuasion.

The insurrectionist and revolutionary mentality of the philosophers of Islamism, is symptomatic of a Westphalian conception of statehood with no basis in religion. ‘Muslim’ no longer becomes a descriptor of one’s metaphysical world view, but the name of a member of a certain political party, and jihad is the token revolutionary struggle through which supremacy is established. The Islamist attempts to establish a state where, in contrast to the traditional proliferation of self-regulatory bodies and separation between the ulema and the political leadership, he mimics the ideological totalitarianism of the modern centralised entity. In such a state, political dissidence is identical to blasphemy and people fear the government rather than God. In these “Islamic” societies morality is relegated to the law courts and individual conscience is negated. Virtue thus becomes superfluous and Paradise is accessed through obedience rather than effort or devotion.

From the Jacobins to the Marxists to the neoconservatives, modern philosophy gave rise to the view, found nowhere within Islam, that a new world may be brought about through the use of systemic violence. It is one of the great ironies of our times how the Islamists have internalized the essence of the very things they profess to hate.