[lbo-talk] Islamism and the death of Vanguardism

Tim tim_boetie at fastmail.fm
Sat Dec 2 12:04:01 PST 2006


On Fri, 2006-12-01 at 12:43 -0800, boddi satva wrote:


> Islamism has the very worst aspects of the revolutionary model. There
> is no room for popular modification of an Islamist group's ethical
> code. This code is, by its nature, fundamentalist and enforced by a
> hierarchy. It is also openly and violently hostile to any opponents,
> dismissing them as apostates and unbelievers. The Iranian state is not
> only unstable, it's stability is not even desirable. Thus the great
> success of the Islamist revolutionary model is a tragedy. The

On what are you basing this interpretation of Islamism? I don't know much about Islamism, but what little I've read (primarily, the works of Berkeley anthropologists Charles Hirschkind and Sabha Mahmood) suggest that Islamist movements are more complicated than you portray them here, that while they insist that any debate be conducted in terms of the Koran, they do provide space for varying interpretations of the Koran, and hence for a certain amount of genuine disagreement and debate.

--

"Boredom is the threshold to great deeds."

-- Walter Benjamin



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