Back to Sept. 11 @ gregmoses.net
To the Forum of Indian Leftists:
“scapegoating Islamic fundamentalism”
“thinking-aloud”
By Priyamvada Gopal
(With note on Sheasby)
The term “scapegoating Islamic fundamentalism” is
still, rightly, a focus of debate. I’m still thinking
through this myself. Please read what follows as
“thinking-aloud” in safe and critical space with
comrades.
We can go ahead and put “Muslim or Islam” if people
want to. However, I think there is a reason for
keeping “scapegoating Islamic Fundamentalism” in our
statement. (BTW, even the popular media is now careful
to make that distinction between “good Islam” and
“extremism” when it remembers to. In betweeen all the
scapegoating and chest-thumping, there are now a
surprisingly large number of pious proclamations that
“We must protect our good citizens of Arab descent
because the soul of America is multicultural and this
is a struggle for the souldof America and how can we
prove we are superior after all if we give up that
soul?.” Don’t get me wrong: better to have those
smarmy announcements than no awareness at all)
The term “Islamic fundamentalism” seems often to refer
less to an actually existing object than an
explanatory construct that allows a de facto,
opportunistic attack, when necessary, on certain
cultural formations and peoples without losing the
liberal façade of tolerance for all religions. It
also prevents any examination of multiple causality.
The net result is that Islam itself has been
intimately imbricated with fundamentalism in such a
way that “moderates” (“good Muslims”) are seen as the
self-consciously restrained exception rather than the
inevitable rule. It results in an oddly contradictory
and confused formulation i.e “The fundamentals of
Islam are bad, but there are good Muslims who don’t
see certain things as fundamental to Islam. They are
good because they don’t follow the bad fundamentals
and have good fundamentals of their own. Or don’t have
fundamentals at all.”
Now somebody is about to jump up and say “well, we are
good progressives and we don’t support fundamentalism
in any form, are you apologizing for fundamentalists.”
No, I’m not (how amazing that one actually has to say
that on this listserve. I feel as virulent as the best
of us against the Taliban though for entirely personal
reasons, the RSS and BJP anger me with far greater
immediacy simply because they speak to certain forms
of nastiness I grew up with. While I’m producing
non-sequitors, let's also face it: “good
religionists,” non-extremists, people I grew up with
and still interact with can do some pretty messed-up
things in the name of cultural identity, community,
convention or faith). Actually—and this is also a bit
of an aside, so forgive me-- I think it is incorrect
to say that we, or some of us anyway, don’t support
fundamentalism in any form. I’m a fundamentalist
humanist, feminist and Marxist—which doesn’t mean that
I don’r revise my opinions in the light of history,
new knowledge and exigency, but it does mean that I
have strong normative views. So to use the term
“fundamentalism” as the Bush administration or the
mainstream media, or even liberal academia does--to
distinguish it from “better Islam” or “good
Christianity” doesn't always make sense. I think our
statement, however ham-handedly, is trying to address
the construct of “Islamic fundamentalism” as it is
deployed in dominant discourse. If the point of the
revision to “Muslims” or “Islam” is to demand that
Bush not attack Muslims, but imply that they should go
ahead and get the fundoos, then the simple response to
that would be “Yes, that is exactly what America plans
to do, and helping make the world a better place for
the good Muslims and, especially, their women,
especially, in the process."
A word on “scapegoating”: that is to point to the way
in which “Islamic fundamentalism,” however
reprehensible, has come to stand in for all other
causality and determination. We should continue to
keep “Islamic fundamentalism” in quotation marks if we
use it.
The point about causality and determination is where,
we, the left on FOIL and elsewhere are getting stuck
at this point. Currently, we’ve come up with our own
reverse formulation which makes a great deal of
intuitive sense to me but which also needs
interrogation in the interests of more clear-sighted
action. The current formulation is: “Western
Imperialism created Islamic fundamentalism which
resulted in global conflict which results in terrorist
action.” The result is a slightly disturbing punitive
model--“you brought this upon yourselves.” That may
be correct in its own right, but I’m not sure that
reiterating that alone is going to result in the
repentance and empathy we think it might result in,
even in self-critical quarters. Now that we have
brought up everything from globalization to Kashmir,
maybe we need to think in less formulaic ways (and I’m
speaking to myself here as much as to anyone else).
This means, for instance, that we don’t think of
Osama, the Taliban or even the BJP for that matter as
simply reflective of “base” political situations even
as they are, obviously, produced in the intersections
of late capitalism, class conflicts, land struggles,
petrodollars, older political systems, patriarchy,
religious sectarianism and so on.
Somebody raised an excellent point in a recent email,
similar to one that I raised less eloquently earlier:
“Who speaks for Islam? Who speaks for that matter,
for the Taliban”? I fear that in our own
participation in some of these maintream distintions
between “good” and “bad” Islam, we beg the question of
motivation and rather unexaminedly assume that if
someone says they bombed the WTC because they are
Islamic fundamentalists, then that action somehow
represents “Islamic fundamentalism, in some
determinate way. And "Islamic fundamentalism" then
becomes an easily knowable object, no longer a shadow
enemy without boundaries. Does “Islamic
fundamentalism” pre-exist the act which is supposed to
reflect its aspirations, or does the act itself come
to construct “Islamic fundamentalism.”?
Before the vigilant pounce on me for quibbling with
words, let me say that we too need to use the term
“fundamentalism” for our own critique, although I
think we generally use it differently: to point to the
construction of false fundamentals by those who “speak
for” Hindus or Muslims. I do not think that is how the
term is being used in US public discourse right now.
(Actually, I do think "fundamentalism" is, in any
case, a term that needs to be replaced by more
accurate and pointed one, but that is a different
debate).
I apologize for taking your time and patience: thanks
for reading this far and helping me work through my
own dilemmas.
Priya
Note on Sheasby:
to RPA list (9/16/01: 9:37pm)
All:
I appreciate the spirit of Walt Sheasby’s note
circulated by George Snedeker and what it says about
how certain movements work against the progressive
ambitions of Palestinian nationalist movements and so
on. At the same time, I would like to register a
certain analytical unease with the somewhat casual and
unexamined way in which the term “Islamic
fundamentalism” is being used both in the media and in
left/left-liberal circles. I have appended a note
that I sent to the Forum of Indian Leftists which is
also having a discussion on the use of this term and
whether to use just "Islam" or "Muslim" instead; we
are in the process of fighting the Indian government’s
move to appropriate global sentiment against “Islamic
fundamentalism” to further its own Hindu nationalist
agenda. Below are some phrases I pulled out from
Sheasby’s circulated note which itself is useful but
which may benefit from a re-consideration of how these
terms are being used. It is telling that some of them
were used as State Department counter-terrorism
representative and it seems to me that we might want
to develop a more distinct analytical vocabulary.
Finally, I thank for bearing with so many emails from
me: I will try to keep them to a minimum, I promise
1. “the creation of conflict within the Muslim world”
Is there such a definable thing as “the Muslim world”?
What are its geographical boundaries? Do US Muslims
count?
2. “a pan-Islamic Jihad”, which may not inflict
a military defeat on the U.S., but which could lead to
the destabilization…”
Does a network of terrorist or militant organizations
warrant a sweeping term like “pan-Islamic”?
[Is NATO a pan Judaeo-Christian movement? Seriously.]
3.“a fundamentalist Islamic confederation” See note below. The term “fundamentalism” begs a lot
of questions.
4. "architects of the pan-Islam strategy are not
supporters of Palestinian nationalist aspirations.
Their aims are much more ambitious than the
Palestine Liberation Organization...”
Yes. However, the term “much more ambitious” suggest
that they simply go further in what is, nevertheless,
a shared agenda. This is questionable from the
outset.
5. ” The new terrorism seems to be tied to an
internationalist Islamic move-
ment”
See above.
I hope these questions will be read and thought about
in the spirit of critical solidarity in which they are
offered.
Priya
Top
Back to Sept. 11 @ gregmoses.net