The origins of Islamic fundamentalism
Rhazes
The Al-Qaedas and ISIS’ of the world don’t arise out of a vacuum, immaculate conception style – they are, like all fundamentalist, violent ideologies, products of social conditions.
This is the crucial point Western liberals and Islamophobes alike prefer to downplay or as is more often the case downright ignore, for if this is acknowledged it becomes rather difficult to play the oh so valuable ‘Islam/Muslims are innately prone to violence’ card, which especially post-9/11 has made so many careers with the rise of the Islamophobia Industry, and continues to do so in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo atrocity.
Muslims going against their ‘nature’
But if fundamentalist ideology is indeed innately lodged within Islam or the Muslim psyche, and it is therefore inevitably bound to lead to the rise of fundamentalist movements like Al-Qaeda and ISIS (the implication of this view is, of course, that only with the complete annihilation of Islam/Muslims this threat can be alleviated), then how to explain the vast majority of Muslims who don’t have ‘go on shooting spree’ or ‘blow self up in Iraq/Syria’ on their daily to-do lists? How to explain those Muslims distancing themselves from, and fighting against these fundamentalists, who constitute the overwhelming majority? How to explain that during the Islamic Golden Age thinkers living in the Islamic world like al-Razi and al-Rawandi could say such blasphemous things like that all prophets (yes, including Muhammad) are charlatans exploiting peoples’ ignorance without getting their heads cut off ISIS-style?
Or, for more recent examples, how to explain that in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other Middle-Eastern countries there were strong, vibrant, left-wing, liberal secular movements, in some cases able to take power (though Western powers ensured that was never to last very long)? Or how about the many prominent Iranian left-wing, secular, democratic clerics and religious leaders who were marginalized shortly after the Islamic Revolution by Khomeini’s right-wing faction, aided by the US-sanctioned and supported Iraqi invasion of the nation?
I’m sure these figures are unknown to many who are used to the image of Muslims as intrinsically backward and violent, opposed to uniquely ‘Western values’ of secularism and democracy, but they nevertheless did exists: Taleghani, Montazeri, Shariatmadari.
Obviously Islam is capable of motivating that as well. How odd, Islam, as any religion/ideology, is capable of yielding disparate motivations, like how Christianity can motivate both the Ku Klux Klan and Martin Luther King.
But if the answer to the riddle of fundamentalism is not to be found lodged somewhere deep within Islam or the Muslim psyche, where should we look for it?
It’s the social conditions, stupid!
As said, ideologies and the movements they bring forth do not arise in a vacuum; they are the product of social conditions. When we say this about other violent ideologies like Nazism, it is generally uncontroversial (though admittedly there are still some who try to find explanations of it buried deep inside the German psyche or culture, but there have always been racists and loons). We explain the rise of Nazism by looking at the conditions that gave birth to it. Nuance suddenly enters the picture. We look at such factors as the economic depression, the heritage of the Versailles Treaty, the use of anti-Semitism to identify a scapegoat for all these troubles, et cetera.
In light of this, the remark that ‘Muslim fundamentalists are motivated by Islam’ (read: ‘Nazis were motivated by Nazism’) then is shown for what it truly is – a vapid banality. What we are asking about is where this motivating ideology comes from, not that it actually exists and motives people to do rather nasty things.
It has to be added that it is very unfair to compare Nazism to Islamic fundamentalism; the former was far more destructive after all, but it is useful to show the contrast between how various violent ideologies are perceived based on their adherents’ respective religious, cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
Of course, the same exemption is afforded to Zionism, another highly destructive ideology. Not all violent ideologies are alike when it comes to this, it seems. Note that the empirical approach that looks at the social conditions giving rise to such ideologies does function universally, irrespective of which ideology is concerned, hence also revealing the stupidity of equating Zionism with Jews/Judaism or trying to find it innately present in Jews/Judaism (this cuts both ways; anti-Zionist Jews are sometimes denounced as ‘self-hating’ Jews by Zionist Jews based on the same kind of twisted logic, ironically playing into the hands of anti-Semites by implying there is an intrinsic connection between the two).
So why does the mainstream in the West not afford the same privilege of empirical, coherent, reasonable explanation to Muslims as they do to others when from their midst a violent ideology springs up? Because since 9/11 the specter of Islamophobia has been haunting the Western world, and it allows us to justify seeing Muslims as being less than ourselves, as fundamentally other. That kind of sick vision is valorized in the Islamophobia Industry, which is very lucrative indeed as Le Pen, Wilders and Farage know all too well.
Highly educated and wealthy Nazis
This double standard also comes to the fore in the rather imbecilic argument that supposedly proves that social conditions have nothing to do with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism (which anyone who has ever tried to reason with an Islamophobe should be familiar with): Because there are also wealthy and educated Islamic fundamentalists, it simply can’t be poverty and lack of education that lies at the root of it all!!!…as if an analysis of the social origins of ideologies precludes this and only focuses on poverty and lack of education as explanatory factors.
Yes, ‘social conditions’ encompasses more than just poverty and lack of education; it concerns the totality of a person’s identity as it is constructed through society. For example, with respect to Bin laden it includes an analysis of the causes of his anti-US turn after his fruitful alliance with them fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, the US stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia.
If you’re thinking this is too convoluted, nuanced and complex, just consider how we analyze the origins and development of other violent ideologies. The above ‘argument’ is hardly ever made in relation to ‘normal’, i.e., Western-originating violent ideologies like Nazism; they are exempted from such critical scrutiny, for when it is the violent ideology of Westerners that has to be understood, nuance and complexity are par for the course. No, it can’t possibly be something that is innate to them, their way of life, culture or religion that gave rise to these violent ideologies, they’re so like us in these respects!
Let’s state the obvious because apparently it needs to be stated. There were highly educated Nazis, too, and of course quite wealthy ones as well. This does not change the fact that Nazism was not somehow deeply lodged within the German psyche or culture, just waiting to burst out. It arose out of a specific set of social conditions, the same ones that have ensured that Germany (and West-Germany before that) has been one of the most successful and civilized nations in the world over the past half century, incontrovertible proof that Germans are not innately prone to supporting or developing violent ideologies like Nazism.
On the contrary, the fact that the victorious Western powers managed to successfully adopt policies with respect to Germany that fostered the development of social conditions producing Christian and social democrats instead of Nazis shows where the answer to the riddle of Islamic fundamentalism lies, and that it is correct. If other, vindictive policies were enforced against the Germans instead, fostering social conditions conducive to giving rise to violent ideologies, as happened with Versailles, we might still have been hearing about the ‘innately violent nature of Germans and their culture’ by the likes of Annabel Nanninga.
Naturally, educated and wealthy Arabs are – somewhat shockingly perhaps – also human, like their German counterparts, and thus similarly capable of founding and supporting violent ideologies, as long as the requisite social conditions exist for it. The fact that this banal truism is employed as an excuse to discount the sensible, empirical approach to analyzing the rise of one particular form of violent ideology only tells you all you need to know about the Islamophobia Industry’s ‘logic’.
Uncomfortable conclusions
Upon diverting one’s gaze to the social conditions underlying the production of Islamic fundamentalism, one cannot help but seriously reconsider the West’s policies and the crimes they have engendered throughout the Middle-East for decades. As the American political scientist Robert Pape has demonstrated in detail, suicide attacks are overwhelmingly motivated by Western policies: ‘Overall, foreign military occupation accounts for 98.5% — and the deployment of American combat forces for 92% — of all the 1,833 suicide terrorist attacks around the world in the past six years [2004-2009].’ (p. 28)
This does not mean that domestic factors play no role, as if people in the Middle-East are hapless sheep with no agency – but no one denies this (there are social conditions that underlie these as well, of course, which we are all too aware of when it involves Germans). Pointing to internal causes like reactionary clerics and politicians in these nations whipping up religious, anti-Western fervor may be nice for a seminar discussion or an academic paper, but if it’s practical solutions we’re looking for we need to focus on the predictable consequences of our own actions and policies, which we can actually affect, and ask which ones we should pursue that will most likely positively contribute to changing the social conditions that have led and continue to lead to the creation and expansion of these violent ideologies. And yes, that includes those that don’t happen to affect us personally like the Saudi regime’s ideology, because they contribute to the rise of the ones that do.
How to avoid another Charlie Hebdo?
A nice start would be to treat the autocratic Saudi regime and other such Gulf states like Bahrain in the manner the US has treated Cuba for the past few decades, with the difference that this will actually have positive effects: Cut all diplomatic ties and enforce an embargo until they agree to accept basic human rights (for women, homosexuals, religious and ethnic minorities and others who are now marginalized), stop their ongoing crackdown on pro-democracy movements and allow them to develop freely (curious how Islam is capable of motivating these as well…).
Also, give the Palestinians their rightful due as defined under international law rather than uncritically supporting the Israeli illegal occupation whichengenders anti-Western sentiments throughout the region. And it wouldn’t hurt to remove the sanctions on Iran, which have been enforced under false pretenses, and reestablish diplomatic relations with it, thereby removing the ability of the conservatives there to employ the ‘blame the West’ card and further inspiring the already Westward looking youth of the country to do so ever more fervently.
If you’re not a member of the Islamophobia Industry, don’t profit from it and therefore won’t weep over its dismantling, and want to make sure atrocities like Charlie Hebdo won’t happen again, these are kinds of policies you must look toward and support.
If this sounds like ‘giving in to the terrorists’ to you, your enemy is Islam and Muslims tout court, not Islamic fundamentalism.
The Islamophobia Industry’s ‘solutions’
Where are the solutions offered by highly esteemed members of the Islamophobia Industry, aside from pompous declarations of war (against whom? For what purpose? How? No one knows…)? The complete absence of any kind of constructive, coherent solution makes perfect sense. The laser-like focus on Islam and the Muslim psyche as the wellspring of fundamentalism is a lucrative career move to make in the post-9/11 era, after all, and it is essential to keep it going. One of the founding members of the Islamophobia Industry, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, now married to a well-known right-wing bigot and homophobe, knows this all too well.
As do ‘New Atheists’ like Bill Maher, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. Their policy suggestions? Hirsi Ali wants to hand a Nobel peace prize to the genocidal maniac Netanyahu, while Harris believes ethnic profiling and keeping open the option of a nuclear-first strike on the Islamic world is the way to go.
Closer to home, GeenStijl calls for dropping more bombs! bomb! bombs! on the Middle-East, which had such a wonderful track record of success. Hans Jansen, member of the social democratic left who took on the sensible, empirical approach to analyzing the rise of Islamic fundamentalism before he realized there was more money to be made in the Islamophobia Industry with its peculiar ‘logic’, thus becoming a known academic fraud, uses his vast expertise on Islam to suggest that we see all Muslims as probable liars and enemy combatants. Instead of forcing them to wear a yellow star as a means of identification, just ask them about Israel. If they express dismay, all bets are off. Presumably one is then allowed to kill them, for rules of war apply.
Meanwhile, back on planet earth, the information we now have suggests that the brothers responsible for the atrocity were radicalized by the greatest atrocity of the 21st century, the US war on Iraq, and more specifically the horrors of Abu Ghraib, while a tape of the hostage-taker at the kosher supermarket records him justifying his actions by referring to Western interventions in the Middle-East and Palestine. In light of this, what if the sensible policies suggested by the ‘multiculti’, ‘burka-hugging’, ‘tea drinking’ left were pursued instead of the retrograde, jingoistic policies and empty rhetoric of the right?
Those are the kind of uncomfortable questions we aren’t allowed to ask by members of the Islamophobia Industry and its supporters, but should.
Rhazes (follow him on Twitter) feels compelled to write under a pseudonym because the Islamophobia Industry has gained so much influence and support in this country — which will probably increase dramatically in the coming period — that any opposition voiced against it will likely to lead to real life consequences, as the editor of this site has firsthand experience of.
Gastschrijver, 12.01.2015 @ 09:40
72 Reacties
op 12 01 2015 at 10:41 schreef MNb:
“There were highly educated Nazis, too:
Heidegger is not the best example; it’s not clear to what extent he was a nazi. Try Albert Speer and Joseph Göbbels. Two names not well known are Nobel Price of Physics winners Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark.
Overall an excellent analysis, though you might want to replace zionism with orthodox judaism. Netanyahu doesn’t identify with zionism. That movement was originally as left as the ‘burqa-huggers’ whose politics you think so sensible.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Zionism/zionism.html
op 12 01 2015 at 11:01 schreef Pickelhaube:
@Rhazes
Thank you for this excellent article. You’ve been busy! I entirely disagree with what you wrote but have so many things I’d like to address about it, it is so wrong on so many levels, that I decided to write an article, giving my liberal (as opposed to islamophobic) perspective on the points you raise. Nevertheless it was well written and I respect your argumentative skills.
I don’t have any agenda like you suggested, I just have my personal opinions.
op 12 01 2015 at 11:11 schreef marten:
So you want the USA to impose sanctions on their allies (Saudi Arabia) because of human rights violations, but you want the sanctions of their enemies (Iran) to be lifted, so they might become allies (despite the human rights violations)?
op 12 01 2015 at 11:17 schreef Rhazes:
@MNb, the piece I linked to was from a recent discovery by Heidegger scholars showing that not only Heidegger was politically a Nazi (he joined the party and actively supported it), but also philosophically. But you’re right, it doesn’t really matter that much as the point stands regardless. Regarding the historical nuance of the term ‘Zionist’, I’m aware of it (Chomsky identified as a Zionist in his youth), but it now is commonly used to denote support for Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
@Pickelhaube, I look forward to reading it, I just hope it won’t go down the paths I’ve seen so many other ‘counterarguments’ to the social explanation go, like trying to find some verse in the Quran to prove that it is uniquely violent in relation to other holy books. I’ve been there, done that, and it doesn’t work. But if you have something else to bring to light I’ll gladly hear it.
op 12 01 2015 at 11:24 schreef Rhazes:
@marten, ha! I was expecting that response, but so soon? The difference between Iran and Saudi Arabia is that the US already has pursued that policy for decades and it doesn’t work. In fact, the opposite is true. Whenever reformists are elected and the anti-Western rhetoric dissipates due to the lowering of tensions as in the late 90’s, early 2000’s, you see human rights improving. As soon as tensions rise again, fanned by US intervention in the region in favor of the Saudis’ foreign policy, as in the Ahmadinejad era, you see them being clamped down on again.
So yes, it makes sense to pursue a policy that promotes the policies of the reformists and democrats in the country rather than the conservatives.
In relation to Saudi Arabia, that means pursuing a policy against the current regime which is clamping down on all forms of dissent and has been for decades with active US support.
But even disregarding that, the Saudis have actively funded and supported ISIS, while Iran is fighting them. That isn’t sufficient reason for you?
op 12 01 2015 at 11:46 schreef Thomas E:
Impressive piece of work I must say. I am looking forward to Pickel’s contribution, mainly to find out if he will adjust some of the assertions I disagree with in your article.
I found your claim that religion itself cannot be held responsible for the atrocities, very convincing: ” Islam, as any religion/ideology, is capable of yielding disparate motivations, like how Christianity can motivate both the Ku Klux Klan and Martin Luther King.”
op 12 01 2015 at 11:54 schreef It’s the social conditions, stupid!Wat een wereld | Wat een wereld:
[…] Lees de gehele column hier […]
op 12 01 2015 at 12:02 schreef marten:
I’m all for boycotting the Saudi’s, but I fear that cornering the Saudi royal family will make them even more repressive. In that case, they will be able to use the West as external threat, and they will be able to brand all liberals as traitors.
op 12 01 2015 at 12:06 schreef Murat:
Rhazes,
As an Academic, I wish to publish your piece at the university. Phenomenally written! Much respect.
However, as I do not want to link students to this website due to nude pictures (sorry Peter,even though I do not mind at all, it doesn’t work wonders in regards to popularizing your blog) am I allowed to print it out and use it for my students?
Indeed, only with your permission.
Such a balanced and nuanced piece should be read by people around the world.
op 12 01 2015 at 12:07 schreef Manus:
I don’t think social conditions are the one and only answer.
In stead of comparing the Hebdo terrorists to Nazi’s, it would have been much more to the point to compare them to the RAF, (or any other 60-s terrorist group).
Can social conditions explain why Ulrike Meinhoff did what she did? Or any of the other young people growing up in an era of unpresendented wealth and freedom?
I don’t think so. Ideas play an important role, as does history, as does politics: the context of the revolutionary sixties is of crucial importance for understanding the rise of those militant groups.
Now, I agree completely that pretending that Islam is something “inherently” violent en thus terrorism waiting to happen, is fear-mongering.
The Arab revolution is of crucial importance. As are certain strands of thought within Islam. As is the historical position of certain groups.
op 12 01 2015 at 12:29 schreef Murat:
@Manus
“The context of the revolutionary sixties is of crucial importance for understanding the rise of those militant groups.”
Exactly, that’s what Rhazes says: Social Conditions.
op 12 01 2015 at 12:47 schreef Rhazes:
@marten, the Saudi state is a house of cards. As soon as the US withdraws support, it will likely crumble, hence why they won’t.
@Murat, of course, you are free to do with it as you please! I’m a big fan of open source.
@Manus, I don’t disagree, in fact I make that exact point where I talk about what exactly is encompassed by ‘social conditions’. It obviously includes politics as that is one of the primary factors affecting the construction of identities. You should be wary of those who interpret it as only to mean something very basic like economics. The social construction of identities is far more complex than that, involving a host of factors which sociologists, social and political philosophers have written about extensively.
The point is that these are all intrinsically social phenomena, not reducible to some foundational, unchanging core (often read into ethnicity, religion and gender). This is so evident it is rather amazing that people still try to argue otherwise. The RAF is a perfect example; their ideology is now, in post-Cold War Germany, completely extinct, yet similar movements (Marxist in outlook) still thrive in places like India and Nepal (see Naxalites).
op 12 01 2015 at 12:51 schreef Manus:
@Murat
A revolution is not simply a “social condition”.
People have always been starving poor and oppressed.
And yet, in 1789, for the first time: Revolution.
Without revolutionary thought no revolution. And revolutionary thought is not *caused* by social conditions [althought it relates to those conditions], because those conditions are always there, and yet only at a very specific moment in history revolution is possible.
op 12 01 2015 at 13:12 schreef Wim Raven:
Saudi Arabia will never be boycotted or rebuked, because its economy is completely intertwined with that of the ‘Western’ world. It is not only oil.
op 12 01 2015 at 13:16 schreef Pickelhaube:
@Rhazes:
No, i certainly won’t quote from the Koran, because I don’t see Islam as a monolithic unity like you do, but as a very diverse, sometimes contradictory tapestry of opinions and beliefs. Some of the movements within Islam are intrisically violent though and the violent behaviour of terrorists can certainly be explained out of their religious convictions and personality, rather than social and economic conditions.
op 12 01 2015 at 13:26 schreef Eddy:
While I agree that Dawkins has taken a somewhat spiteful approach recently, I’ve never seen Harris being dishonest or biased.
Sam Harris repeatedly said he would fit the profile and that ethnicity is only one of the factors that should be taken info account during airport security checks. The simple reasoning behind all of this is that there is not enough capacity to thoroughly search all people. And I agree: Some persons, like children and the elderly, are highly unlikely to commit a terrorist attack.
However, his haters keep quoting him out-of-context.
My question: What is the alternative? What should airport security checks look like?
http://m.samharris.org/blog/item/in-defense-of-profiling
All I see is tu quoquo arguments VS the west. Even though I agree with parts of the analysis, it doesn’t change the fact that this is the Islam we have to deal with.
op 12 01 2015 at 13:54 schreef Manus:
@rhazes
“The social construction of identities is far more complex than that, involving a host of factors which sociologists, social and political philosophers have written about extensively.”
I agree, however: social constructions, even in this nuanced definition, cannot explain all.
Going back to the Nazi-example: no, there is not a “nazi-gene” in Germans, and fascism was an European thing.
An yet the specificity of German Nationalism, German Philosophy, German Science et cetera all contributed to German Nazism, which was a very specific thing and not only because of the “social constructions of identity” in interbellum Germany.
op 12 01 2015 at 14:09 schreef Anoniem:
No Eddy, it’s the hardcore moslim FUNDAMENTALISTS we have to deal with. Like we have to deal with agressive Zionists and Tea Party fundamentalists.
op 12 01 2015 at 14:58 schreef Eddy:
@Anoniem
Fair enough: This is A Islam we have to deal with. It’s the fundaments of a religion that make the fundamentalism though…
For the sake of clarity: I don’t agree with agressive zionists either, but this isn’t a game of whataboutery and the Israeli-Palestinian-conflict is something that should not be considered as the very ‘fundament’ of harmony elsewhere. A fairer situation might help, but the Levant is not the center of the earth and should never be accepted as such.
op 12 01 2015 at 14:58 schreef Rhazes:
Manus, no offense, but I don’t find what you’re saying to be coherent. You seem to think the complexity of analysis involved somehow proves something against the point that is being made when it obviously doesn’t. I can’t really reply to that.
Eddy, nice to have a Harris fanboy on board. Harris has said repeatedly that Islam is not a race, it’s a religion, hence he cannot be a bigot. Yet at the same time he supports profiling Muslims by their physical traits. The fact that he says he himself would fit the profile does not change the fact that there is one to be made. He has yet to coherently respond to this problem (I actually managed to get this question asked to him in the TYT interview), and I suspect you can’t either. And your support for profiling is disgusting.
Pickelhaube, don’t read your own twisted thoughts into my head. You’re the one constantly whining ‘QUTB, QUTB, QUTB’ as if that’s the only or best interpretation of Islam that’s on offer, meanwhile stubbornly ignoring where that interpretation and its influence arose from. Oh, of course, it must be in their DNA. What else could it be when the religion itself is out?
op 12 01 2015 at 15:08 schreef Egbert:
Eddy, this is wrong with sam harris detecting terrorists at airports: “We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it.”
I hope you are not working in security business, your sense for unsafety is dangerously useless. Unless you work at TLV, where being a racist is required.
op 12 01 2015 at 16:15 schreef Edo:
Eddy, Harris said the following: there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney” . I think any human being who knows the torture reports of the CIA, and the war in Iraq that caused a milion people to die, knows that isn’t true. He also says that there is a rational argument to be made against the war but it’s a very scary thing to admit that keeping Sadam in place was better (implying that it somehow we tried are best, but muslims will fuck it up anyway). But that’s ignoring that 1 milion people died. No country will be better of when you bomb it and no entire population would welcome people who bomb them. There were groups against Saddam but the US didn’t decide to support them, no they decided to bomb the whole country . It ignores that Saddam in the past was supported by the US, and that the US governemnt and the US government has no interest in real democracy there. It has interest in oil. So I do think he’s pretty biased. Then again maybe so am I. About racial profiling, it’s a diffcult question, and we should think about it. Do you support it in the case of ferguson?
op 12 01 2015 at 16:19 schreef Pickelhaube:
You’re putting me into some kind of weird islamophobic frame. You are the one generalising all of Islam, while the ideological background of Al Qaeda and IS is very clear and much more specific. A proper understanding of Qutb’s philosophy is vital to understanding the motivation behind the terrorist attacks in Paris, which you entirely failed to identify. Nor would your “solutions” prevent a second Charlie Hebdo.
op 12 01 2015 at 17:15 schreef MNb:
Muslima according to profiling a la Harris:
Not a muslima according to profiling a la Harris:
http://www.javanenindiaspora.net/anaku_200x250.jpg
Wrong in both cases.
Moral of the story: terrorists will send someone who doesn’t look like a muslim(a), which makes profiling a la Harris a waste of time and money.
op 12 01 2015 at 18:00 schreef Floris Schreve:
The fundamentalist Islamist movement, originated in the mid 20th century is a strange mix of revolutionary Utopian ideas and reactionary elements. Interesting is the pamflet of Said Qutb, Milestones (Ma’alim fí’l-Tariq, 1964), the most important declaration of principles for the movement which formed the basis of the later Al-Qaida (Ayman al-Zawahiri was a student of Qutb) or even ISIS. You can download this work on many places on the internet, like here: http://www.izharudeen.com/uploads/4/1/2/2/4122615/milestones_www.izharudeen.com.pdf
An interesting documentary on the history of the islamist movemnt, from Qutb till al-Qaida is the BBC documentary series The Power of Nightmares by Adam Curtis. You can watch this three parted documentary here https://archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares-Episode1BabyItsColdOutside . I think it is clear that the modern fundamentalist islamist movement is not a return to the Original islam (whatever the claims of the current activists are) but a contemporary reaction on contemporary political circumstances and events
op 12 01 2015 at 18:13 schreef Pickelhaube:
Floris, in the article I already sent to Peter as a response to Rhazes article, I even linked to the documentary. Would you, as an arabist in your own right estimate that Qutb’s ideology is all about western values, or about geopolitics?
op 12 01 2015 at 18:29 schreef Floris Schreve:
@Jeroen, first I am not an arabist ;) I studied some aspects of the Middle Eastern political history as a part of my research to contenmporary art in the Arab World.
But Qutb’s pamflet is dealing with the issue of ‘Western domininance’ or ‘Western (cultural) imperialism’ on the the Muslim World. So yes, maybe it is more about geopolitics in the end.
op 12 01 2015 at 18:56 schreef Pickelhaube:
Middle eastern political history, even better :-)
Maybe this pamphlet, but the basic point of his ideology as a whole is western values, right? He was opposed to western imperialism insofar the British were behind the presence of an egyptian king and as the documentary you mentioned shows quite well, it was his opposition to liberal values that led him away from secularism. Al Qaida even cooperated with the US when that fit their purpose of combating the USSR in Afghanistan.
op 12 01 2015 at 19:01 schreef MarcodB:
This is a compelling read, and really provides food for thought. Many thanks for this, Rhazes.
It is an excellent piece. Have to take it in though. That may take some time…
op 12 01 2015 at 20:54 schreef Likoed Nederland:
Zionisme is nu juist een ideologie die wil opbouwen.
Het land werd zo goed ontgonnen, dat de Arabieren van heinde en verre toestroomden naar de voordien verlaten uithoek van het Ottomaanse Rijk. Aangelokt door de werkgelegenheid, hoge lonen en goede medische voorzieningen.
op 12 01 2015 at 22:39 schreef marten:
@Rhazes I agree in part with your analysis, but you seem to forget that while social condition do change the expression of religions, religions themselves are very powerful forces to change social conditions (usually for the worse, IMHO). For example, Zionism would not have been possible without the Jewish mythology of the promised land. Slavery would have ended centuries earlier if god had said: “thou shalt not have slaves”. For the same reason, Islamic terrorism would not be such a big thing, if it wasn’t possible to interpret Islamic teaching in that way (besides of course, the other, more peaceful ways). I’m not saying all muslims are terrorists, or that Islam is wholly bad: just that it has flaws that can be exploited by fanatics, like every other man-made religion.
op 12 01 2015 at 23:13 schreef Pickelhaube:
@Marten
Zionism certainly is possible without the Jeiwsh mythology of a “promised land”. There were also zionists who would have settled for other places, like Fugu, Madagascar, (former) British Guyana or British Uganda.
op 13 01 2015 at 00:21 schreef Eddy:
“He has yet to coherently respond to this problem (I actually managed to get this question asked to him in the TYT interview), and I suspect you can’t either.”
@Rhazes
No, you have yet to coherently understand and portray his views, but I highly doubt whether you’re willing to do that.
For instance: Nowhere does he say it’s in someone’s ‘DNA’ to bomb a plane. It’s pure defamation, like so many of your ‘observations’ are. It is hard having an honest discussion about it when someone is constantly doing that. Is your name Reza Aslan?
op 13 01 2015 at 01:05 schreef Rhazes:
What you say about Qutb is irrelevant to the point about social conditions being the root cause, not the religion itself. It can be easily explained why someone like him or Osama Bin Laden would despise Western values even if direct imperialist intervention does not play a prominent part in the analysis, as the causes always revert back to (some aspect of) the social (something you would never deny with respect to Germans, Jews, etc.), and since you care about credentials so much; I’m a graduate student specializing in Middle-Eastern (intellectual) and socio-economic history).
But let’s raise the stakes and make it personal, as I want to tease out the exact nature of your depraved views on this topic. Peter’s partner is a Muslim, whose interpretation of Islam is very progressive, diametrically opposed to Qutb’s. Is she less of a ‘real Muslim’ than him? Is his interpretation ‘more correct’ than hers?
If your answer to both is no, then yes, the answer can’t be the religion itself, it must be sought outside it. Anything else is meaningless quibble over semantics, which, again, makes you highly suspect because you never engage in it when it concerns Germans, Jews, etc.
marten, I believe you highly underestimate the malleability of ideology, specifically religion in this case. If P. is right about one thing (which I never denied, but it’s a nice rhetorical move I suppose), it’s that there simply is no such thing as ‘Christianity’, ‘Islam’, ‘Buddhism’, etc. You cannot find a principled follower of any of these doctrines because the doctrines themselves are human inventions, the products of interpretation, i.e., social products. Both supporters of slavery and abolitionists reverted to the Bible to make their case, both the KKK and MLK appealed to it, both Qutb and Maududi appeal to Islam, and yes, adherents of Hinduism/Buddhism commit murders, rapes, massacres, etc.
Imagine a biographer or historian who analyzed a historical figure or event in such a crude way: ‘X adhered to Y ideology/religion, hence they did Z.’ No one takes that seriously. In the case of the biographer, there’s a detailed investigation of the person’s biography and the totality of experiences that went into the production of their specific motivations. And yes, this is an analysis of the social construction of identities, not finding some non-existent ‘intrinsic essence’.
Pickel’s ‘principles’ at play:
1. There is no alternative but to say you’re outright lying now, either maliciously, distorting Foucault’s actual thoughts on the subject, or out of ignorance.
2. Your point about Qutb is relevant to the topic in what way? That such an interpretation actually was made at some point in time by someone? Who the hell denied this? You seamlessly went from the ‘rich and educated Muslims became fundamentalists too’ to the ‘Qutb became fundamentalist without the direct influence of imperialism’ canard to prove that somehow there is something about Islam specifically or innately part of it that produces fundamentalism, and then you whine about me arguing that there is such a thing as an essentialized conception of Islam (my whole point being that there isn’t).
3. Is the existence of Orthodox Judaism as expressed in participation and support for the Occupation somehow related to the innate nature of Judaism, or is it a social product? If the former is your answer, your bigotry extends beyond Islam, congratulations. But I have the sneaking suspicion it isn’t.
op 13 01 2015 at 03:44 schreef Huib:
@MnB
Rightwing Zionism developed already during the Twenties of the past century. In Odessa and soon in Jerusalem. It came to power in Israel during the Eighties.
Likud and Netanyahu are part of the heritage of that branch of Zionism, so very opposed to the original idealist (kibbutzim) kind of Zionism.
In my perception, father and son Netanyahu”s Zionism is still the leading ideology over other participants in Government like Israel Beteinu and the haredi and ultra-orthodox parties.
op 13 01 2015 at 09:05 schreef Nrosa:
Als zionisten ‘willen opbouwen’, likoed dan moet israel eens stoppen met bezetten en bombarderen, moet u eens opletten hoeveel sneller dat ‘opbouwen’ gaat.
op 13 01 2015 at 09:22 schreef Pickelhaube:
You’re starting to sound rather confused Rhazes. Could you maybe try to not be so lengthy? You can also be retarded in only a few words.
– It were your “social conditions” that were irrelevant. These social conditions are entirely unrelated with somebody who grew up in France, like the terrorists. Instead, I prefer to take a look at the actual doctrines at work.
– I don’t see people as more or less of a muslim, because I don’t see Islam as a singular entity, like you and the PVV do.
– I wasn’t misrepresenting Foucault and still recommend you actually read the text before passing such judgments. You very obviously never read his writings on parrhesia in “discourse and truth” and didn’t prove me wrong yet.
– I wasn’t a “canard” that Qutb wasn’t primarily involved with social, but cultural factors. He hated the decadent west after his studies in the US and because of that turned to fundamentalism.
-Zionism is a very diverse movement that actually has both religious and nonreligious, rightwing and leftwing factions. Like in Islam, you fail to address that complexity.
op 13 01 2015 at 10:22 schreef Anal Haq | Swap I. Chou:
[…] stuk is een reactie op het mooi geschreven en uitgebreid onderbouwde artikel van Rhazes, dat niettemin bezaaid is met feitelijke onjuistheden en gebrekkige analyses. Kort samengevat […]
op 13 01 2015 at 12:38 schreef Jasper:
Likoed Nederland, Picklehaube and their likes are doing more to promote antisemitism than Dieudonné would ever be able to.
op 13 01 2015 at 23:26 schreef Anoniem:
Back to the basics please if you do’nt mind. “ no offense, but I don’t find what you’re saying to be coherent. You seem to think the complexity of analysis involved somehow proves something against the point that is being made when it obviously doesn’t. I can’t really reply to that”. Eloquent en kort=af tegelijkertijd. Rhazes … Scherp, maar daarom nog niet waar of zuiver op de graat.
op 14 01 2015 at 01:29 schreef Rhazes:
Hi Anonymous, do you have any specific questions you would like to ask, or points you would like me to clarify in relation to that? I can’t provide an elaborate social analysis of the origins and development of revolutions in 200 words, but suffice it to say that taking on such an approach is the basic mode of operation for the vast majority of academics doing research in the relevant field (historians, sociologists, political and social philosophers, etc.). Hardly anyone tries to find explanatory factors in entities like ‘race’, ‘culture’, ‘nationality’, ‘sex’, etc. as understood in a static, essentialized fashion, for these are historical, social products; malleable, changeable, heterogeneous.
But yes, these analyses are quite complex, and there is naturally much disagreement over which (social) factors are more important than others. In terms of revolutions, here’s a good book on the topic.
op 14 01 2015 at 04:33 schreef een lezer:
Dit is een van de beste artikelen die ik over dit/deze onderwerp(-en) gelezen heb. Complimenten en dank.
op 14 01 2015 at 09:46 schreef Pickelhaube:
Right Rhazes, no social scientist takes factors like ideology or religion into account. Durkheim didn’t do anything like that when he studied the correlation between suicide and religion, Weber didn’t when he wrote the sociology of religion, something like the history of mentalities doesn’t exist at all, right? Or indeed, Foucault’s archeologies.
This is getting ridiculous. You are now making mistakes even someone in his first year studying social sciences wouldn’t make. This is all very basic. Why are you pretending to be a social scientist? You obviously aren’t. Are you afraid people won’t take you seriously without the pseudoscientific pretense?
So yeah, Anonymous was spot on when she pointed out your dishonesty.
op 14 01 2015 at 10:15 schreef Shiran:
Your article Rhazes started off as an interesting read, but turned very ugly unfortunately. Although the arguments are not unique or even new (Queen Rania of Jordan – to name one – argued all of them, and more, for many years with solutions given that are much more effective than yours.) your analysis nevertheless could be an important refresher that can be helpful to the debate.
‘Could be’, I say, because your writing turns out to be nothing more than an ugly piece of propaganda infested with political bias. It becomes evil when you label Netanyahu as a ‘genocidal maniac’ suggesting genocide has been perpetrated by him personally or Israel in general. Not only this is a blatant lie, of which you are very aware off, but it is also part of the many actors that fuel so dangerously the very subject you try to address. It is the same rhetoric radical clerics use to ignite and inspire those vulnerable as a result of the social conditions you mention, or with an uneducated view of Islam. This rhetoric, eagerly echoed by many of this site’s regulars, is what gets innocent people murdered.
Although you wrapped your ‘master piece’ in intelligent semi-academic thoughts and sentences it on
op 14 01 2015 at 10:27 schreef Shiran:
Your article Rhazes started off as an interesting read, but turned poisonous unfortunately. Although the arguments are not unique (Queen Rania of Jordan f.e. argued all of them, and more, for many years with solutions advocating that are much more effective than yours) your analysis nevertheless could be an important refresher that can be helpful to the debate.
‘Could be’, I say, because your writing turns out to be nothing more than an ugly piece of propaganda infested with political bias. It becomes evil when you label Netanyahu as a ‘genocidal maniac’ suggesting genocide has been perpetrated Israel . Not only this is a blatant lie, but it is also one of the actors that fuel so dangerously the very subject you address. It’s the same rhetoric radical clerics use to inspire those vulnerable because of such conditions or an uneducated view of Islam. This rhetoric, eagerly echoed by many of this site’s regulars, is what gets innocent people murdered.
You wrapped your ‘master piece’ in intelligent semi-academic thoughts and sentences but it only demonstrates irresponsibility and ugly propaganda. Too bad cause now the only thing I’m left with is wondering why you made such an extens
op 14 01 2015 at 11:10 schreef cRR Kampen:
“It becomes evil when you label Netanyahu as a ‘genocidal maniac’ suggesting genocide has been perpetrated Israel.”
You probably missed out on the mass murder and destruction of farmland, infrastructure en economy in general of Gaza. A typical, classical genocidal operation.
Or you do not like this fact to be in the news: Palestinians are not meant to exist so pretend.
It is Israeli bombs and phosphor that those clerics use. I repeat: Israeli bombs. And killings. And drone strikes, repeated, on soccer playing kids on a beach. Genocidal deeds, Shiran.
op 14 01 2015 at 11:18 schreef Anoniem:
Pickelhaube must think we are as stupid as him…Durkheim and the others mentioed all analysed ideology & religion as social phenomenon! Proves the case that was made!
op 14 01 2015 at 12:01 schreef Shiran:
The horrors and destruction of war, the legitimacy of a superior army crushing a densely populated (civilian) area, or the reasons behind the failing economy of Gaza are all valid subjects for debate. But none of them fit the description of genocide. But I know how your hatred blinds you cRR, I’ve seen it here many times, as I have seen how you like to play the emotional blackmail card like you do now with referring specifically to the boys killed at a Gaza beach.
But if you don’t mind I’d like to leave it with this, cause you’re derailing the argument I made, which is that Rhazes made his own writing invalid by lacking the discipline to not add his own personal political bias to his arguments.
op 14 01 2015 at 12:27 schreef cRR Kampen:
You mean you don’t give a damn about those boys on the beach or the 2000+ other murders. You have to lie about the fact the bombings of the military theocracy destroyed almost a third of the Gaza economy and were intended to do this – now read Resolution 260 again.
What you call ‘my hatred’ is my love for, among others, those boys. Do you really think you can talk me out of this love, Shiran.
“But if you don’t mind I’d like to leave it with this…” – nope, your remarks are not for free, coward. You will answer those boys on the beach, genocide-apologet.
op 14 01 2015 at 12:28 schreef Pickelhaube:
@Anonymous
You don’t seem to understand the point. I was being ironic, unbelievable retard and actually meant the opposite of what I wrote, which you could have concluded by following the links. Rhazes is the one denying that these factors would be taken into account, happy to see you disagreeing with Rhazes as well. He wrote:
Hardly anyone tries to find explanatory factors in entities like ‘race’, ‘culture’, ‘nationality’, ‘sex’, etc.
So actually social scientists do. Like Durkheim and Weber.
op 14 01 2015 at 12:51 schreef Anoniem:
Your qyouting him out of context…how pathetic..retard!!
He wrote “Hardly anyone tries to find explanatory factors in entities like ‘race’, ‘culture’, ‘nationality’, ‘sex’, etc. as understood in a static, essentialized fashion, for these are historical, social products; malleable, changeable, heterogeneous.”
op 14 01 2015 at 13:06 schreef Shiran:
I know it feels uncomfortable to get your ass whipped cRR, but besides that, where did I state that I don’t care about the violent death of these young boys? Right, I didn’t! I dismissed your foul play and attempt to derail my argument. If that is conflicting with your personal sensitivities, so be it. I don’t care.
And please, don’t be a hypocrite as well: your love for those boys? What a disgusting arrogance and utterly weak argument. Why don’t you take the first flight and get your sorry ass over there to help rebuild the Gaza infrastructure. They can use some help for sure.
Fyi, the soldiers involved with the killing of these boys will have to answer to a civilian court. The investigation has already started.
But do you have anything to add to my argument that an analysis becomes a mere opinion when personal (political) bias is added and therefore can no longer be trusted?
op 14 01 2015 at 15:35 schreef Murat:
@cRR Kampen:
“You mean you don’t give a damn about those boys on the beach or the 2000+ other murders. You have to lie about the fact the bombings of the military theocracy destroyed almost a third of the Gaza economy and were intended to do this – now read Resolution 260 again.
What you call ‘my hatred’ is my love for, among others, those boys. Do you really think you can talk me out of this love, Shiran.
“But if you don’t mind I’d like to leave it with this…” – nope, your remarks are not for free, coward. You will answer those boys on the beach, genocide-apologet.”
—- Ik ben oprecht blij dat er mensen als u bestaan.
op 14 01 2015 at 15:37 schreef Pickelhaube:
@Anoniem
I was hoping for that remark.
Would in your estimation sociologists like Durkheim or Weber treat these entities in an essentialized fashion? I didn’t quote out of context, but removed some pseudoscientific jingo that added nothing to his argument.
Because in fact, he didn’t just ignore the terrorist’s personalities, religion and direct environment because these aspects would be “essentialized”, he ignored them altogether and instead essentialized geopolitical factors in the middle east.
op 14 01 2015 at 16:14 schreef cRR Kampen:
Shiran, I wouldn’t be let into Gaza. Like cement is not let into Gaza. You know why. You don’t give a damn, either, otherwise you’d have volunteered your sorry ass yourself.
“But do you have anything to add to my argument that an analysis becomes a mere opinion when personal (political) bias is added and therefore can no longer be trusted?”
Sure. It’s a strawman. It is also logically fallacious. Finally it means you are not able to evaluate arguments on their own merit, but only according to who utters them. So if I say 1 + 1 = 2 you’ll disbelieve this fact because cRR stated it. Do it.
op 14 01 2015 at 16:46 schreef Shiran:
LoL, so now you’re trying to bully me into a reversed argument by trying to make me believe your excuse for not putting your ‘love’ into practise is because you’re not allowed to enter Gaza like the cement they so desperately need?
Well, wonderboy, let me help you prevent any further embarrassment. I am an Israeli, and very aware of the situation in Gaza.
You not being allowed to enter Gaza is bogus. You haven’t tried did you? Also you’re argument that cement is denied is also false. Tons are distributed already, but even now, when rebuilding homes is a priority again most of it has vanished into the malicious projects of the local jihad.
So, don’t try to pull that strawman card on me. It is you who fails to deliver, not me.
op 14 01 2015 at 16:47 schreef Pickelhaube:
Hahaha cRR, blessed ignorance. She did go to Gaza and did lots of good work over there!
op 15 01 2015 at 00:40 schreef cRR Kampen:
“… most of it has vanished into the malicious projects of the local jihad.”, Shiran.
What’s to be done about that?
What were you distributing in someone else’s place? And why? How come the Gaza economy cannot run itself, it’s harbour, airport, borders, fishing and ffing gas drilling et cetera?
op 15 01 2015 at 08:48 schreef Pickelhaube:
Shiran distribueert pure humaniteit in Gaza ;-)
Verkeerde vraag, cRR. De vraag is waarom jij daar niet bent, met al je morele superioriteit. Of ben je alleen maar een beetje vrijblijvend vanuit je luie stoel en met een arbeidsongeschiktheidsuitkering aan het reutelen? Lekker gratuit anderen de maat nemen met een jointje erbij, terwijl je zelf niemand bent en niets doet?
Je kan er dus gewoon naar binnen, net als cement, je bent enorm begaan met de gazanen, doe je ding! Of bevalt dat zijlijn dingetje je wel? Zo af en toe eens een gekke sjaal omdoen, wat roepen tijdens een demo, je een held voelen als je weggesleept wordt, daar zit de wereld op te wachten!
op 15 01 2015 at 10:28 schreef Michiel:
I have two major issues with this essay. First of all that ideology is itself also part of the social circumstances. Rhazes though makes it seem that one the one hand we have ideology and on the other hand we have economic, political and other sorts of circumstances (which are somehow ‘ideology’ free). Second of all Rhazes sees a one directional causation from these circumstances to the ideology of fundamentalism, which is of course absurd, fundamentalism also has influence on the circumstances he mentions. I would suggest Rhazes to read some modern sociology like that of Latour, Giddens or Schatzki. I also would like to suggest him to read some work of Jean-Philippe Platteau who shows how tribal thinking which is part of the islamic world obstructs economic growth.
op 15 01 2015 at 11:09 schreef Jasper:
Waar de wereld in elk geval niet op zit te wachten zijn rabiate Islamofobe haatpredikers, Picklehaube.
op 15 01 2015 at 11:44 schreef Rhazes:
Social conditions of the ‘ideological’ (better term would be normatively laden) kind are self-evidently present in politics, culture, etc., so no, I do not believe in such a dichotomy. Social identities are after all intrinsically normative ones, as is their construction by these multifarious social factors. I’m quite familiar with Latour, Giddens and Schatzki (written extensively on the last), there is nothing in them that contradicts anything I have written re. taking on social approach to identity formation rather than an essentializing one, which is uncontroversial. Can you demonstrate otherwise? Just cite the text and page number and I’ll look it up. Platteau is just wrong, see f.ex. Acemoğlu and Robinson’s work that shows in detail that is not true on a macro-level. Even if he is right on micro-level it wouldn’t matter unless he perceives ’tribal thinking’ as an immutable essential characteristic rather than a social concept. The former would be absurd. Cite text and page for that too if you can.
op 15 01 2015 at 13:35 schreef Pickelhaube:
@Rhazes
Whether or not “essentialized” is immaterial, a straw man, because you didn’t consider ideological factors at all, also not as an “inessentialized” social factor. Instead you essentialized a couple of random geopolitiocal factors that weren’t even remotely related with the motives of these murderers. Random, because you failed to identify the geopolitics of the jihad movements amongst other factors, that have just as much of an impact.
op 15 01 2015 at 20:47 schreef Michiel:
@Rhazes. Sorry, but you are not convincing. Yes you stated that identity is socially constructed. But I didn’t have any disagreement with you at that point. My first point was that you make it seem that circumstances somehow don’t have any ideology in them and that fundamentalism is all about ideology. If you agree with mee that circumstances as well as islamic fundamentalism are both a combination of heterogenous, material and non-material entities than this case is closed. My second point still remains, I think you haven’t made any effort to investigate what the effects are of of islamic fundamentalism on bad social-economic conditions. Yes you can state that islamic fundamentalism and tribal thinking are not inextricably linked, but there is a correlation between the two, or would you deny that? Have you any other explanation between islamic culture and bad economic growth? Acemoglu and other state that institutions matter, that isn’t necessarily at odds with what Platteau said, because the better political and economic institutions are correlated with a lower level of tribal thinking.
op 16 01 2015 at 06:02 schreef Rhazes:
M., re. first point it was a misunderstanding it seems as I agree with you. Re. second I believe it can be resolved when our objects are more clearly defined. By Islamic fundamentalism I refer specifically to political ideologies of Al-Qaeda, ISIS, etc., while you’re talking about a general ‘Islamic culture’ in relation to bad economic growth. I hope by ‘Islamic culture’ you’re referring to something like ‘diffuse set of Islam-inspired economic practices in places like Iran, Turkey’, etc., not some non-existent static monolithic entity. In which case point by Acemoğlu et al. stands in relation to ‘why nations fail’; it’s the particular set of institutions, irreducible to any specific ‘culture’ be it Islamic or otherwise, that defines this, as they show in detail. Otherwise explain discrepancy in economic growth between e.g. Turkey and Sudan on that basis. Re. tribalism and fundamentalism, sure. Pure careerism also plays a significant role. But these all fit within the parameters of the approach I outlined. 200 words insufficent to discuss this all in detail, mail me if you’d like a more thorough reply: zakariyarhazes@gmail.com
op 16 01 2015 at 10:56 schreef cRR Kampen:
Pickelhaube kan niet googlen en verzint maar wat over mij, prachtig gezicht :D
Maar… Ik héb een kek sjaaltje. Precies de kleur en maat van die van Inspector Morse :D
Maar inderdaad, ik opereer een beetje op de achtergrond. Geef, puur voor MIJN amusement, commentaar op psychopaatjes enzo (no pun intended, hoor). Als een soort voetbalverslaggever het plebs en Pickelhaube bekijken, fileren en verachten. Heerlijk. Wanneer begin je aan Shoa 2.0? Ik begin immers wat uitgekeken te raken op het laffe intro en ben toe aan de hoofdfilm :)
op 16 01 2015 at 11:09 schreef Pickelhaube:
@cRR Kampen
Wat je in wezen schrijft is dat je naast autistisch ook narcistisch bent. Succes ermee. Zie je trouwens wel vaker bij mensen die de schuld van alles wat er gebeurt buiten zichzelf leggen en het zelfs logisch vinden dat je dan geweld gaat gebruiken, dat daar op z’n zachtst gezegd een elementje van narcisme inzit.
op 16 01 2015 at 15:02 schreef cRR Kampen:
” op 16 01 2015 at 13:52 schreef Peter:
Als Jeroen nou ook even die antisemitismebeschuldiging intrekt, dan kunnen we weer verder met ons leven.”
—
Vrijwel zonder uitzondering is het bij mij ’two strikes you’re out’. Ik weet niet waarom ik het doe, maar: laatste herkansing, Jeroen.
op 17 01 2015 at 13:39 schreef Michiel:
“I hope by ‘Islamic culture’ you’re referring to something like ‘diffuse set of Islam-inspired economic practices in places like Iran, Turkey’, etc., not some non-existent static monolithic entity.” Haha touché, but you are right.
“In which case point by Acemoğlu et al. stands in relation to ‘why nations fail’; it’s the particular set of institutions, irreducible to any specific ‘culture’ be it Islamic or otherwise, that defines this, as they show in detail. Otherwise explain discrepancy in economic growth between e.g. Turkey and Sudan on that basis. Re. tribalism and fundamentalism, sure. Pure careerism also plays a significant role.” I agree with you that economic and political institutions are not irreducible to any specific culture, but they are somewhat connected to culture and part of culture. Maybe I haven’t made it clear enough, but I believe with you that islamic inspired institutions can structurally improve social-economic wellbeing. I don’t however believe that fundamentalist-islam institutions can sustainably do this.
op 23 01 2015 at 16:19 schreef Vals Bewustzijn | Swap I. Chou:
[…] zijn. Ik schetste deze karikatuur, omdat hij in zijn stuk de oorsprong van het moslimextremisme eenzijdig legde bij westers destructief beleid in het midden oosten. Als voorbeeld gaf hij Bin Laden, die […]
op 23 01 2015 at 18:20 schreef The Deconstruction of Pickelhaube | The Islamophobia Industry:
[…] http://www.frontaalnaakt.nl/archives/the-origins-of-islamic-fundamentalism.html […]
op 23 01 2015 at 18:29 schreef Rhazes:
The Deconstruction of Pickelhaube: https://theislamophobiaindustry.wordpress.com/2015/01/23/the-deconstruction-of-pickelhaube/
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