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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: frankw1900 who wrote (89887)	4/4/2003 12:03:03 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Respond to of 281500

Hi Frank, Yes I think we are having some misunderstandings. Fortunately it seems we are getting closer to what each of us is saying. Let me clarify a few things about where I stand and what perspective I am taking. If there is anything I have always been against, it is organized religion. Not in the life of me did I ever think there will be a time that I will say something remotely in defense of political Islam or any other political religion. I don't even like church sponsored events. That said, I have to consider that there are people who very much disagree with this position. And I have no more right to make them give it up than they do in dragging me to church. Any massive social movement has many aspects and many reasons for it. The tendency is to caricaturize the movement with its most graphic icons. I bet that everybody here associates Khomeini with political Islam but nobody has even read a single quote from Prof. Shariati or considered the influences of people like Jalal Al Ahmad. This is most regrettable for two reasons: the first is that it is often people like Al-Ahmad who make political Islam a respectable ideology. Without them it would be confined to rural areas and the lower working class of society (ok I am generalizing, but there is more truth to it than not). The second reason is that while someone like Bazargan (or Ayatollah Taleghani) was every bit a political Islamist as Khomeini, unlike Khomeini they could have found ways for peaceful coexistence. At the height of the cold war anyone who was not extreme right would be labeled as communist. Many leaders who were nationalists were branded as such or as puppets of communists. Communism was of course the scourge of mankind with no moral compass whatsoever. And therefore any deviation from the right of the center was punished severely. As a result we made grave mistakes some of which are still haunting us. I don't think that we need to relive that process only this time with Islamist movements. The direct result of this broad brush painting is that only the most virulent versions of political Islam will survive and therefore only they will be holding the banner of dissent under which all sorts of dissidents will gather. BTW, I read (well tried to) the link you posted. It is too academic and too narrow in its focus. More specifically it seems to be written from an Egyptian slant about the extremists rooted in Egypt (and more generally in Arab world). As I have been trying to point out, to Arabs' dismay, they do not own Islam; they are a minority of Muslims. I found it interesting that the author remarks about the extreme similarities between the Islamist movements and those of Protestants. Yet he fails to mention how Protestants are now living in peace in America. Now let's go over the points you raised: In both cases I'm considering the islamist, that is fundamentalist versions of the faith. Neither differ in their essentials. Not at all. There are huge differences. May be you'd like to define what you consider their essential characteristics. Before you do, let me add this: In its most basic form, to be considered a Sunni Muslim you need to agree with only two things: that there is only one God, and that Mohammed was His messenger. On the other hand, to be a Shia Muslim there are two more conditions: the belief in Logic and the belief in Justice. No matter how hard a Shia politician tries, he cannot dispute these additional two cornerstones. You may say that in practice he ignores them just as the Soviets ignored the working class. That is a different debate. But the fact remains that the cleric cannot come and outright deny these or the principles that have been built on top of these. Hence there can be movements that are both fundamentalist and not backwards. > That is to say Shia believe only through debate and inspection can good and evil be understood and fought. They further believe in Justice as a fundamental element of universe that we should all adhere to. Generally speaking, so do non Islamist Sunnis and Shia. Not so. The Sunni (literally meaning followers of tradition) believe that everything they need to know has already been revealed during the early years of Islam. In the event that an unforeseen condition arises, the debate amongst the Sunni scholars is on how to extrapolate the old ways into the new. The Shia on the other hand do not believe in such extrapolations. They believe every situation is unique. The debate therefore is about the best solution that does not contradict the explicit edicts. See my reference to Logic as a cornerstone of Shia. These are huge differences. > Furthermore, a Shia cleric does not draw his power from some form climbing some form of power pyramid the way say Catholics do. He starts by publishing a thesis and giving lectures. As more and more people choose to fallow him, he gets to have a greater power base. Sure. Both in Shia and Sunni case; its sort of like some Protestant outfits. Not quite. The concept of Universal Caliph who has moral authority over the Umma died in Shia many centuries ago (I think around 900 years ago). Even then, it was always a dissenting movement not a full command center. The Sunnis on the other hand did not separate the king from God's representative on earth for a very long time (theoretically it still exists today). This means that no Shia can ever come out and claim moral authority over all Muslims. The religion explicitly disallows it. There has to be a freedom to lead in Shia. It is fundamental to its beliefs. Again, you can argue that the performance so far has not been up to par. But I'd say the time scale you are using is too short. Even so, if you contrast Shia fundamentalism in Iran with Wahhabism in Saudi, you'll see the differences. In Iran the theocratic setup is such that there is no viable democracy or justice. Too many people arbitrarily taken off the street and tortured. Too much theft and corruption. Too much of an attempt to monitor the state of folks' souls. Be it far from me to ever praise the mullahs in Iran for anything. But the picture you paint is unjust. Social structures have many reasons and you are blaming it all on the Islamists. But I could say many of what you just said about America. In the poor areas of US there is a huge drug and crime problem. Many people were taken in arbitrarily on suspicions of terrorism. And if you don't think there is government corruption here, you have not been reading all the reports to the contrary. Are the Islamists responsible for the problems in America too? To be fair it is a much bigger problem in Iran than it is here. But don't see why those problems are because of the Islamist regime and not because of the underlying social problems and cronyism. These were problems that also existed during Shah, albeit to a smaller extent. But then again, Shah had stronger economy (and so does US for that matter). > You fail to separate the actions from the motives. Do you really think that the people in the middle east don't like to have good cars and dishwashers? This is the crux of the misunderstanding. There are lots of medieval obscurantists driving around in Mercedes and Toyotas pining for for nukes. Islamism, like the Counter-Reformation, Naziism and Fascism are reactions to modernity. They are an effort to deny the present and replace it with an imagined past usually of heroic dimension. It stinks of nostalgia. It's very attractive to both aimless bourgeois children (bin Laden) and the dispossesed (those without access to modernity). In contrast to Islamism, Islam - Shia or Sunni - is not at all in itself incompatible with modernity. Well, yes there is some of that. But that is not all that is to it. I am arguing two things: that the reason Islamism is on the rise is the disillusioned public with the western solutions. This is almost like playing a game with a 4 year old. No matter how "honestly" you play, given your advantage as an adult you are bound to win every time. So after a while the kid is going to cry and leave in anger. If you are smart and want to keep playing, then you will actually teach the kid how to play and you take it easy on him from time to time. The other point I am making is that there are factions within the Islamist movement who are in disagreement with the extremists but since they see them as the best defense against oppressive regimes they are happy to come along for now. If in fact there were alternative means open to them, they would have chosen different paths. Sun Tzu