 This page is an archive from the previous version of The Row Boat, which is why it doesn't look and work the same as the current version. However, these archives are fully functional and integrated with the new system.
Why does this site permit advertising?
Powered by Little Logger |
The Row Boat"Had we but world enough, and time..." *
Disenchanting Extremism12/21/2006 15:48:23This thinking started with some remarks I made in a comment on 3QuarksDaily in an article about extremism and moderation. There are two points at work: (1) Many so-called moderates harbor rather extreme views (the article mentions Quaker pacifism), and (2) for religious extremists, religion is generally not as necessary an ingredient as we have gotten used to thinking. Sam Harris's "new atheist" manifesto, The End of Faith places the blame of recent terrorism on the religious beliefs driving the militants. But there is something to be said for putting ourselves in the shoes of many of them even without religion. The colonial violence of Western powers in the Middle East alone should be and is enough to explain why someone might want to organize attacks on the United States and Western Europe. Dire economic conditions, resource exploitation, and anti-Israel ideology are persuasive forces. Of course religious language and ritual have become the medium of this resistance movement (Bruce Lincoln's first chapter of Holy Terrors demonstrates this admirably), but that does not mean that "religion" (whatever that is) can be identified as the operative cause. For us and our leaders, "religion" has become an excuse for not taking the genuine greivances of the Arab world seriously. By describing their motivations as religious, we render economic injustice as irrelevant. In consequence, terrorism must be turned into an act of war and terrorists an enemy to be defeated, rather than terrorism as a criminal act and terrorists as criminals to be brought to justice. The difference is that with criminals, the root causes of the crime can be sympathetically examined and repaired without showing sign of weakness. In war, the enemy's motivations must be ignored until they are destroyed. In the same way that religion has been used to expain away things we can't understand (God created the heavens and the earth), now "religion" (an anthropological construct) is used to explain away the motivations of other human beings that we don't want to understand. Because if we did, our exploitation would have to end. Doing so would mean a pretty easy translation from the strange Islamic discourse of Bin Laden et al to something more secular and familar. The two languages are closer than many of us think. When considering the theoretical consequences of these remarks, I think of the Weberian tradition, which (in reaction to Marx) looks for the influence of religious ideas on aspects of economic and social life. I think what I am doing is preventing a kind of Weberian maximalism (that terrorism is a consequence of Islam), against what Weber himself would ever suggest. Instead, Middle East terrorism is related to Islam, informed in part by discourses that have taken place within that tradition. Weber, for instance, never wanted to suggest that the capitalist ethic was a necessary product of Protesetantism, only that there was some relationship between them in their emergence. He certainly wouldn't bother calling for the end of Protestantism on that account, though perhaps a consideration of it, along with everything else that might represent a relevant influence. A couple works have been coming to my attention on this front that I wholeheartedly recommend. One I have already written about, Stephen Humphreys's Between Memory and Desire, a collection of essays on modern Middle East history that suggests grounds for the actual rationality of the actions of so-called extremists. Another is the recent article in the New Yorker, "Knowing the Enemy," about a strategist who is arguing that Islamic fundamentalism can be better understood as normally sociological rather than essentially Islamic. He shows the movie "Fight Club" to his students to give them an image of non-Islamic fundamentalism (building bombing pre-9/11). Early in this article is this important paragraph: “I saw extremely similar behavior and extremely similar problems in an Islamic insurgency in West Java and a Christian-separatist insurgency in East Timor,” he said. “After 9/11, when a lot of people were saying, ‘The problem is Islam,’ I was thinking, It’s something deeper than that. It’s about human social networks and the way that they operate.” In West Java, elements of the failed Darul Islam insurgency—a local separatist movement with mystical leanings—had resumed fighting as Jemaah Islamiya, whose outlook was Salafist and global. Kilcullen said, “What that told me about Jemaah Islamiya is that it’s not about theology.” He went on, “There are elements in human psychological and social makeup that drive what’s happening. The Islamic bit is secondary. This is human behavior in an Islamic setting. This is not 'Islamic behavior.' ” Paraphrasing the American political scientist Roger D. Petersen, he said, “People don’t get pushed into rebellion by their ideology. They get pulled in by their social networks.” He noted that all fifteen Saudi hijackers in the September 11th plot had trouble with their fathers. Although radical ideas prepare the way for disaffected young men to become violent jihadists, the reasons they convert, Kilcullen said, are more mundane and familiar: family, friends, associates.
re:Disenchanting Extremism - 1/01/2007 09:05:57
re:Disenchanting Extremism - 1/01/2007 09:06:40
|
|
| |
