ISLAM, ISLAMISMS AND THE WEST
AIJAZ AHMAD
full -
<http://socialistregister.com/socialistregister.com/files/SR_08_Ahmad_0.pdf>
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There are several discussions' worth of material in Ahmad's essay.
To start, I'd like to highlight the following excerpt which contains a valuable insight:
<snip>
The ecumenical popular Islam of Indonesia; the varieties of the lived Muslim subcultures in secular, multi-religious India; the vagaries of the 'Muslim nationalism' which provided the ideological justification for the creation of Pakistan; the incoherence of the linguistic nationalism of the East Pakistanis, which led to the creation of Bangladesh as a secular nation – all these indicate how misleading it is to ascribe to some inherent Islamic-ness of the polity or the culture as such. To refer to all these people as 'Islamic' is to occlude the specificity and novelty of Islamism in general, to posit hyper-Islamicity of Muslim peoples, and to succumb to the idea, propagated by the religious right as well as the Orientalists, that religion is the constitutive element of a culture, and hence also of its social existence and political destiny.
[...]
(Full at link above.)
Notice the way Pakistan's situation has been discussed; for many, the chief concern is that "Islamists" and "Jihadis" will take advantage of post-Bhutto-assassination turbulence, seizing power and achieving control of Pakistan's nuclear assets. Indeed, even in the absence of that doomsday scenario, Pakistan is said to have an "Islamic bomb".
I note that no one (at least no one within media earshot) calls the weapons commanded by the US in particular and the West in general 'Christian bombs' despite a stream nearly relentless Christian and Christian-esque rhetoric from prominent American politicians.
Using an ahistorical reading of Afghanistan's turn to Talibanism as a guiding star (a reading which ignores the cause and effect of internal events and geopolitical meddling and assumes that the mere fact of Muslims in Afghanistan is sufficient explanation for the Talib's rise to power), Islamist obsessed Westerners believe Muslim countries to constantly be on the brink of medieval revolutions.
On the opposite end, leftists of the Furahashi school are convinced that progressive change will come through Islamism - the essence, so the argument goes, of nations such as Iran. And if it is the essence - and therefore unavoidable - best to embrace, even celebrate it as the fulfillment of anti-imperialist dreams.
Whether interpreted (through Western eyes) as implacable threat or marvelous opportunity Islamic belief is described as being the only element of the various Muslim countries and cultures worth mentioning.
.d.