open Democracy News Analysis - The danger of culture talk, Kanishk Tharoor - Comments

jdubow on "The danger of culture talk"

jdubow — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 03:03:38 +0000

Modern liberal political correctness assigns degrees of correctness based on degrees of victimization by Colonial, all White, bad guys. In the PC world (which exists in parallel to the real world of human experience) women have been oppressed the most and stand at the top of the chain of political worthiness. Blacks are perhaps second and Muslims are also up there. This has unhappy consequences, particularly when recent studies have shown that 90% of the mainstream US media can be classified as being politically correct and almost 95% of Professors in Academia can be so classified. Unfortunately, this reductionist classification of virtue doesn't allow for analyzing the behavior of various pc constituencies in similar circumstances compared to Westen colonial behavior and compared to a detailed analyis of the reqirements of social equilibrium at particular periods of history. One of the worst consequences of Politically Correct (PC) reductionism occurs in discussions of Islam and the Arabs. The PC formulation makes the current problems of Islam and the MIddle East all the fault of those horrible white guys in the West and excuses any reaction, up to and including sexism, racism, murder of civilians and other things that would be loudly condemned in Western nations. Thus the Islamic fundamentalists get the "yagotta understand" treatment that makes George Bush and the US responsible for any and all actions by Islamic fundamentalists. The worse the atrocity, the more blame guilt the US and the West has shoulder. Thus Western media and academics absolve Islam for responsibility for its current state and current actions. The Islamists don't have to take responsibility for changing anything. This is the equivalent of the classic formulation of corrupt and authoritarian regimes-"Show me the person and I'll show you the law". Depending on ones score on the wretchedness scale the degree of responsibility for ones actions can vary from full responsibility to none. In the real world of human experience this isn't the case. Individuals must assume responsibility for their actions and agreements between individuals, groups and societies are in the form of social contracts and not guilt driven submission to the will of people currently committing atrocities but who were wronged by people you don't know or aren't related to. Thus Islam has to take responsibility for actions that would negate the last 500 years of progress in the West, including sacred feminist doctrine, and for doing things that would induce Western support and not opposition. This is precisely what writers and journalists in the West, including the estimable Dr. Tharoor, fail to do. This leads to a dream world where Islamic leaders are led into magical thinking by Western media and intellectuals. A more honest response would be that real humans will require real concessions for real concessions and not just hot air and empty promises that are never audited for degree of fulfillment. This leads to real and strong discussions, but they are at least real and not Disneyland diplomacy. Any discussion of Radical Islam that doesn't include real change and adaptation by Muslims, be it in regard to living in the West or in regard to Israel and in regard to Al Qaeda and Iraq, is Disneyland and, at best, is irrelevant to real world politics and at worst, should PC leaders take over in the West, will lead to bloody showdowns and lots of pain, death and poverty on both sides of the divide.

meta@nmn.be on "The danger of culture talk"

meta@nmn.be — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 10:16:00 +0100

Belgium's national TV currently runs a series of explorations in the world of Islam entitled 'The Road to Mecca'. As it happens, the narrator starts his trip in Cordoba, not only because the south of Spain provides the closest bridgehead to the Maghreb countries, but also because El Andalus epitomizes islamic civilization at its best. Of course, starting from the heyday sets the rest of the narrative on a definitive track : all that follows, is measured as a degree of loss, insufficiency and lack. Tragically enough however, setting off on adventures from Mecca in the center of the, or the Taj Mahal in the east, would tie the narrator to a similar storyline of fading resonance, and degrading signal-to-noise ratios. It is precisely this dried-up and shrunken quality of islam today that defines the plight of muslims, both at home and in the diaspora. Europa has a great deal to thank Islam for, but since its heyday in the 10th to 12th century, it has not produced any viable political project to date (Hizbullah may embody a valuable oppositional force, just as the Muslim Brotherhood does in Egypt, but as a majority platform it is too reductionist to encompass the complexities of a globalized age); Islam has not produced any science of merit since its medieval contributions to mathematics (the recent divertimento about the do's and don'ts of Islam in space is telling); and the most impressive art is has produced of late is a body of literature that comes from voices who have stepped outside their native islamic frames of reference (and who often paid a high price for it). Both materialist and ideologic/idealist readings of the problem of radical islam today, commit the vital error of absolving Islam from its own embedded possibilities and responsabilities. Both readings thus hand the potential for change either back to 'the west' or the 'good muslim' - who by default exists as the inverted image of the 'bad muslim', both of which are again defined by their relations to a Western style Enlightenment. Abdelwahab Meddeb, in his incredibly erudite and stimulating book 'La Maladie de l'Islam' (Editions du Seuil, 2002) puts it bluntly : muslims need to enroll in a refreshment course of all the historic exceptions and infringements of the islamic tradition BY the islamic tradition. He provides ample examples of creative, pro-active and universalist, mystical even, reorderings of the central beliefs in Islam. For the record, Meddeb equally appeals to the West to come to terms with its denial and denigration of Islam. I agree. But I also believe that this coming to terms will not happen while the West paternalistically refrains from criticizing Islam, or expressing its own values. In that respect, the examples of the veil and the cartoon-crisis should not be lumped together in the same boxing glove to hit Islam with. The cartoon-crisis quite pointedly demonstrated that the political will of the West to protect free speech against collective silencing is feeble at best. The subsequent juggling act surrounding an anounced (but forbidden) 'protest against islamization' in Brussels on September 11th - widely commented upon in the international press - only serves to underscore the point. The veil is a different matter. The multiplicity of meanings embedded in the wearing of the veil warrants careful deliberation. The problem here is mainly that ad hoc cases have captured a lot of media attention so far, while a fundamental judicial debate and settlement is lacking. Apologists of Islam invariably invoke the variety of 'islams' that is being practiced worldwide. That may very well be, but this diversity exists largely behind thick curtains of conformity - at least when it comes to projecting its self-image to non-muslims. The crux of the matter is that Islam as practised by its multitude of followers worldwide, has developed only a very slim tolerance of criticism, if at all. Islam - it seems - does not know how to distinguish between ridicule, cynicism and legitimate criticism. Islam must develop its own radical critique, if it is to step out of the shadows of its own demons. To an important extent then, parasitic extremism must indeed be countered by and through the culture it feeds off.

The danger of culture talk, Kanishk Tharoor

KVB Tharoor — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 23:41:08 +0100

In the course of the discussions at this CSIS conference in Washington on Countering Extremism, other speakers have dipped into a key, but bitter debate in the study of terrorism: one about whether socio-economics or ideology motivate terrorists.

The debate goes something like this: materialists argue that political and economic conditions - war, occupation, poverty, alienation - breed terrorism. On the other side, critics point to the number of well-educated, middle class suicide bombers - those involved in 9/11 for instance, or the "doctor bombers" this year in the UK. It's not poverty that drives such acts, they say, but psychology and fervent ideology

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