Precisely. So does Marxism. Or did when it was powerful. It is the boundary between public and private objectively drawn by the capitalist mode of production and subjectively drawn by political liberalism that religion and Marxism, when they matter, transgress, albeit in different ways. Neither religion nor Marxism, if taken seriously, is a matter solely of individual conscience to be excluded from the public sphere.
> I think we should now be able to see that history anew and conclude
> these two systems are irreconcilable and incompatible, and we had
> better start figuring out how to sequester religion---put it back in
> the quiet and private congregation mode where it belongs.
I rather think that the cases of religion largely confined to "the quiet and private congregation mode," most clearly Japan and Western Europe today, are historical exceptions, owing to their peculiar histories of economic, political, and cultural development: both are rich (having been colonial empires), both have conditions that limit capitalism's tendency to melt all that is solid into thin air (the culture of the ruling class and power elite as well as that of the masses in the case of Japan, enduring though waning powers of social democratic parties in the case of Europe), both have cultural traditions that limit appeal of the religions of the book (they did not arrive in Japan till the early modern period and Christianity, upon arrival, was ruthlessly suppressed by the ruling class, and Europe has an anticlerical tradition due to bourgeois and proletarian struggles against the wealth controlled by the centralized church). The rest of the world lack the combinations of these elements that have disposed Japan and Western Europe to irreligion. It is therefore unlikely for the rest of the world to become like Japan or Western Europe any time soon.
On 7/9/07, KJ <kjinkhoo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 09/07/07, Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Today, however, it
> > is Islam that must be examined anew, from inside and outside Islam, by
> > Muslims and others, to find threads within it that can be interwoven
> > with those taken from the Marxist tradition.
>
> You really don't think this has been attempted, was attempted? One
> could start with Iqbal and that equation of his: Islam = Bolshevish +
> God. Or, from a nationalist angle, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. The
> marxist biography of Muhammad by al-Sharqawi. Or, more recently Ali
> Shariati, as also the Mujahidin i-Khalq group. From a more liberal
> tradition, Fazlur Rahman, or even Wilfrid Cantwell Smith. There was
> the Indonesian Nurcholish Madjid, who in 1970 called for a
> "secularisation" by which he meant to distinguish between the
> transcendental and the temporal in Islam, for which he was branded
> "murtad" (apostate) by the islamists. There have been many
> others who sought to draw from the hadith of Abuzar/Abu Dhar.
> There have been political thinkers who sought to argue that
> the proper form of the caliphate today is the democratic
> republic, from as far back as the 1920s -- one guy, in particular,
> who was then thrown out of al-Azhar. Call them the "modernists",
> although the category may not fit well someone like Shariati.
>
> You probably know what happened to the Mujahidin i-Khalq. Fazlur
> Rahman was hounded out by Maududi and his group.
> Azad might as well be a "murtad" as far as the islamists are
> concerned, as also Iqbal. Even the likes of ibn Khaldun,
> al-Farabi, ibn-Sina, the whole Mutazilah tradition are beyond
> the pale, and one might as well forget about Rumi and Omar
> Khayyam. It's Maududi and Qutb. I really can't see any saving
> grace to Maududi; Qutb was, I think, more complex, but the Qutb that
> has come down as filtered through the epigones... And it's Qardawi
> (temporizing as he may be).
Yes, attempts have been made, I'm aware of that, and I'd say attempts should be re-made, both by Muslims and Marxists. I'm not saying that such work will bear fruit any time soon. But considering how many secular parties find themselves at a dead end, those in countries where Muslims predominate, and those in countries where Muslims constitute a significant minority, ought to give it a thought.
> Thanks for the Lowy piece with which I've no disagreement,
> but did you read the concluding paragraph?
>
> > What is sorely lacking in these "classical" Marxist discussions on
> > religion is a discussion of the implications of religious doctrines
> > and practices for women. Patriarchy, unequal treatment
> > of women, and
> > the denial of reproductive rights prevail among the main religious
> > denominations -- particularly Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- and
> > take extremely oppressive forms among fundamentalist currents. In
> > fact, one of the key criteria for judging the progressive or
> > regressive character of religious movements is their attitude towards
> > women, and particularly on their right to control their own bodies:
> > divorce, contraception, abortion. A renewal of Marxist reflection on
> > religion in the twenty-first century requires us to put the issue of
> > women's rights at the center of the argument.
>
> And if there's any one criterion to distinguish the islamist from
> other muslim groups and movements, it's precisely this: the islamists
> have an obsession about sex, specifically, women's sexuality, which
> then extends to clothing, behaviour, etc.
Take a step back and look at the history of treatment of women in countries under nationalist and state socialist regimes. Whether or not modern sex education was encouraged, modern birth control propagated, the right and access to abortion guaranteed, etc. depended upon a lot of factors and changed over time. Among the major factors were impacts of war, emigration, and other events that affected the availability of male labor, the state's concerns about overpopulation or underpopulation, etc. Similar factors have also been at work in changing the conditions of women in the Islamic Republic of Iran. When objective conditions created openings, women asserted themselves to expand their rights and freedoms. That in fact has been the way women have gained more rights and freedoms outside the South, too.
BTW, discrimination against women often went beyond the sphere of sexuality and extended to the basic issue of political participation. For example, in an effort to retain the traditional wing of the nationalist movement, Mohammed Mossadegh "drafted an electoral bill that ignored women" (Ervand Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions, Princeton University Press, 1982, p. 275). Would it have been correct for feminists, communists, and others on the Left to refuse to support his administration on account of that?
> If you haven't, take a look at Sabry Hafez, "The Novel, Politics and
> Islam: Haydar Haydar's Banquet for Seaweed", in NLR Sep-Oct 2000.
Yes, I have. I posted a link to it in 2002: <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2002/2002-March/006782.html>. -- Yoshie