Random Variable

In this entry I will try to outline how a new popular movement of Islam could serve to democratize the Middle East, and also pose a formidable and welcome challenge to Western domination of the third world.
But first, let me make clear my motives.
I am not a Muslim. I was a one-time member of a semi-extremist Islamist political movement whose misguided, cold-war era aims were to drive back the world to a 13th century despotic kingdom, but more on that another time.

Individualize and open the institutions

Now, you may think that individualisation has destroyed religion more than any other feature of post-modern society, but it’s not entirely true.
Individualisation leads to a resurgence in religion in a world where the modern notion of sociotechnical progress has lost most of its currency.
What evangelical Christians fail to realise is that their particular form of faith where God talks to you personally is a new concept in Christianity’s history. It’s symptomatic of individualism, a social process that can give rise to new forms of synchronization, both constructive (liberal Christianity) and destructive (right wing fundamentalist Christianity).
The belief held by suicide bombers that their deaths are a requirement of faith is due to the individual internalisation of their personal anguish and frustration into their religious beliefs.
I believe that if institutional Islam – its mosques and religious leaders – allow the individualisation of religion, and provide support for it, people will have an outlet for their frustrations and problems that perhaps do not have to display themselves in such barbarous acts. The evidence that the majority of suicide bombers are either 2nd generation or foreign migrants leads credence to this theory. In a sense, Islamic institutions must become the social welfare officers of the Muslim world.
Islamic institutions must also support positive displays of individualised Islam – in the forms of art, film, music and culture. That works of modern religious art are paid for by western art galleries presents a great loss of essential cultural identity to the Muslim world, which exacerbates the problems above.
Just as the BBC took the decision to broadcast Jerry Springer the Opera as a cultural work, Islamic societies should also embrace critical, hostile and blasphemous works created by its own members as part of its culture, not a dangerous rejection of it.

Allow people to realize that there is a political vector of change in Islam by providing mass education of real histories

The common misperception amongst Muslims is that the religion has remained fundamentally unchanged since its inceptions. Any historian worth their salt knows that this is pure nonsense. Islam has had massive upheavals depending on which ruling family was in power at the time. Few Muslims realise that the last huge change in Islamic thought was instigated by the British in the early 20th century to justify the forthcoming rule of the Saud family.
Education is key to this – but this is problematic in the Middle East where in some areas literacy is as low as forty percent.

Provide empowering not stultifying religious education

The hadith is the collated sayings of the Prophet Mohamed. Tradition states that most of these were collected together by a Russian scholar named Bukhari who spent his entire inheritance on this collection. He gathered together these sayings through interviews with companions and then established a chain of trust for each saying, with particular emphasis on primary and secondary sources. These hadith are passed on in the oral tradition, and most “students” education consists solely of memorising these by heart.
I contend that this is redundant in a century where publishing is cheap and DVDs store gigabytes of data. Students should spend more time in critical analysis of these ahadeeth
The University of South California has created a Hadith database of academic standard with the proviso;
“There is a real danger that Muslims will fall under the impression that owning a book or having a database is equivalent to being a scholar of ahadeeth. This is a great fallacy. Therefore, we would like to warn you that this database is merely a tool, and not a substitute for learning, much less scholarship in Islam.”
Still, access to databases should remove the memorisation of hadith as the raison d’être of a Muslim scholar.

Abandon the ulemah and develop the concept of the public sphere

Islam has always prided itself on having no clergy. This had advantages in previous centuries in that it prevented the stagnation of social development that was witnessed in Europe. The lack of one overarching clergy led to a lot of conflict between kingdoms that strengthened technological advancements as well as enabling the flow of literature and art.
Most Muslims believe in the concept of the ulemah – an established group of scholars who make all the big decisions. But where are they? Their voices seem to be silent compared to the likes of Bin Laden and Co. – almost to the extent that the Ulemah have undergone a psychotic transference of power over to Bin Laden in the minds of many Muslims. This goes to some extent in explaining the rise of terrorism.
The one billion or so Muslims who inhabit this planet must collectively apply their private minds to the public problem of Islamic fundamentalism and reform.
At the end of the day, the religion is the sum of the actions of its ummah – its masses – not the voice of a few men in beards.

Abandon the project of moral relativism and embrace cosmopolitanism in setting up a democratized Middle East

America’s idea of installing democracy in the Middle East is a based on the moral relativism proposed by Samuel P Huntingdon, who believes that the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic civilisations are as different to each other as a cat is to a monkey. Ignoring the racist undertones in Huntingdon’s works, he claims that there’s no way we can impose our universalism on the Islamic world.
But wait a minute, isn’t taking our “democracy” over there evident of us pushing universalism?
Well, no, not really – at least not in the form of democracy we’re seeing in Iraq.
The American administration want to set up a morally relativistic democracy where it’s ok, say for example, for prisoners to be executed without fair trial and a Shia theocracy to be installed.
In a realistic cosmopolitanism, societies have to accept a priori certain universalistic negatives such as denouncing the denigration of human dignity, genocide and slavery, but simultaneously are able to apply contextual principles to their social realities. Thus it is not difficult to envisage a Shariah that both respects international law and Islamic law

Of course a fragmented Islam puts the Western world in a favourable position. Without a strong cohesive intellectual community, Islam as a popular ideology cannot pose as a serious threat to Western imperialism. The Muslim world should expect no official help from the West for as long as there is oil under their feet.

That’s all about all I have to say on the matter for now. I’m sure I’ll return to it later.

Please comment.