Islam and its modern vexations
In the New York Times, Tariq Ramadan makes a case for the openness of the Koran, arguing that it is a text available to constant evaluation and reinterpretation. He writes, "In the latitude of interpretation offered by the majority of its verses, by the generality of the principles and actions that it promulgates with regard to social affairs, by the silences that run through it, the Koran allows human intelligence to grasp the evolution of history, the multiplicity of languages and cultures, and thus to insinuate itself into the windings of time and the landscapes of space."
In the Nouvel Observateur, the Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal compares the Islamo-nationalism of the government of Abdelaziz Bouteflika to the Nazism of World War II Germany. Keep up to date with the latest developments and sharpest perspectives in a world of strife and struggle.
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Reviewing Lee Harris' The Suicide of Reason, Ayaan Hirsi Ali approves of the author's insistence that fanaticism is inherent to Islam, and not just a contortion of the faith. Both the leftist Noam Chomsky and the neo-conservative Paul Wolfowitz are at fault for trying to rationalise the motivations of terrorists. She quibbles, however, with Harris' attack on "reason", invoking the Enlightenment as the west's noblest heritage. Instead, she blames the "Romantic" multiculturalists and relativists for the quandary facing Europe and north America.
toD's view: All three writers speak to separate strands in the ongoing debate about Islam and "modernity". Echoing her usual refrain, Hirsi Ali once more trots out the paeans to the Enlightenment that got her tarred as a "simplistic Enlightenment fundamentalist". Her inability - and downright refusal - to see any distinction between rigid, scriptural Islam and the diverse muddle that is practised Islam remains her main shortcoming.
Ramadan's sincere - if ponderous - broadening of the possibilities of Islamic scripture is instructive, but one cannot help but feel unsatisfied in its benign treatment of the inflammatory. How can the scholarly, humanistic readings of the likes of Ramadan impress themselves on radical, intolerant minds?
Compared to the simplicities of the previous two, Sansal's take on the Algerian government is refreshing. As with many governments in the middle east, Bouteflika's regime espouses secular democracy and enjoys the backing of many western states. Yet its toxic combination of authoritarian statism and Islamic symbolism borders dangerously on past fascisms. Sansal's critique reminds us that trying to separate the Islamic from the modern is not only impossible, it is beside the point.
How the west was lost
In the New York Times Sunday magazine, Nicholas Schmidle explores the varied landscape of Islamist politics in the restive west of Pakistan. The border region has witnessed an escalation of clashes between young hardcore Taliban and al-Qaida-affiliated militants and the Pakistani military since the past summer. Schmidle finds that a young generation of militants has displaced older tribal and more moderate leaders. At the same time, formerly pro-Taliban Islamist parties, like Maulana Fazlur Rehman's Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, have denounced their militant brethren and supported democratic, political processes in Pakistan. Within Pakistan's predominantly Pashtun northwest, rifts are growing between the old and the young, the tribal and the pan-religionist, and the political and the militant.
Speaking with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf insisted that Islamists could never take over the country nor could they get their hands on its stockpile of nuclear weapons. In a battling interview, the beleaguered president defended Pakistan's recognition of the Taliban during the 1990s, arguing that if more governments had recognised the Islamists in Afghanistan, it would have been possible to reform the organisation from within. Musharraf also vowed to step down when he felt that "the people, the majority, don't want me any more."
toD's view: Pakistan is both responsible and blameless for the crisis on its western border. Were it not for its long-standing policy of intervention into the affairs of Afghanistan - predating the Soviet invasion - that required the suppression of local Pashtun politics, the political landscape of the northwest would not be as scarred and as susceptible to violence as it is today. Were it not for blunt US and NATO military actions and blunders in Afghanistan, the border region would not be as militarised and volatile.
Musharraf is right in insisting that Islamists will never defeat the army and topple the government. But it seems increasingly unlikely that this new, steely generation of militants can be vanquished through force of arms alone. What kind of political concessions and compromises will be necessary - and palatable - in calming the border areas?
