Resistance and reform - Islam: Keynote

New Internationalist, May, 2002 by Ziauddin Sardar

Immediately after 11 September, I was caught in a pincer movement by my neighbours, writes Ziauddin Sardar. My English neighbour, a highly educated man addicted to news, fired a series of angry questions at me. Why are Muslims so violent? How can Islam justify the killing of innocent people? Why are Muslims still living in the Middle Ages?

Before I could reply, my Muslim neighbour, a devout woman of Pakistani origin, jumped in. 'The very word Islam means peace,' she said. 'The majority of Muslims are peace-loving people who live in the modern world. This is the work of a few fanatics who want to turn the clock back to medieval times.' After a pause, she sighed: 'I just don't know where these people come from.'

Both the questions and the answers have a long lineage.

The events of 11 September notwithstanding, Islam has always been seen in the West as violent, barbaric and anti-democratic. These stereotypes were formulated during the Crusades and have persisted ever since. As Orientalism, a mode of thinking about and representing Islam and the Muslim World, they have become an integral part of Western art, literature and scholarship. Think of all those 'Arab terrorists' in a string of films such as True Lies, Executive Action, The Siege or even the 1960s 'classic, Khartoum.

For Muslims, nothing could be further from the truth. Islam is all about seeking peace for its own sake. Indeed, peace is considered in Islam as an essential precondition for 'submission' - the second literal meaning of the word Islam - to the 'will of God'. Only through the creation of peaceful circumstances can the life of faith be implemented in all aspects of human existence.

What the fateful events of 11 September reveal, more than anything else, is the discord between the true nature of Islam, as religion, culture, tradition and civilization, and its contemporary manifestation. Far from being a liberating force, a quest for equity, justice and humane values, it seems to have become an obscurantist, unethical enterprise. Indeed, it appears as though Muslims have internalized all those historic and contemporary Western representations of Islam that have been used to demonize them for centuries. Or, as my neighbour confessed in colloquial Urdu and in a moment of self-realization: 'We now actually wear the garb of the very demons that the West has been projecting on our collective personality.'

How has this come about?

Modernist panaceas

To some extent, the predicament of Muslim societies reflects my own experience after 11 September. Just as I was caught in a pincer movement by a modernist news addict and a traditional Muslim woman, Muslim societies too are trapped between forces of modernity and globalization on one hand, and an emergent traditionalism that often takes a militant form, on the other. In the late 1940s and 1950s, when most Muslim countries obtained their independence, modernization - or more specifically development along Western patterns - was seen as a panacea for all social and economic ills.

Indeed, most Muslim countries whole-heartedly embarked on a rapid course of modernization. But the strategies adopted were, on the whole, out of step with the traditional societies they were attempting to change. Thus a rift developed between those who backed modernization and accompanying Westernization and those who were concerned about preserving the traditional culture, lifestyle and outlook of Muslim societies. In most cases, the traditionalists saw modernization and the associated policies of 'development' as an onslaught on their history, lifestyle and worldview. The modernists saw Westernization as the primary means of survival for Muslim countries. Now, with modernity losing ground both in the West and the non-West, globalization is being projected as the new theory of salvation. And, once again, traditionalists are reacting against globalization just as vehemently, if not more so, as they did against modernity.

The modernist leaders who took over from the departing colonial powers maintained their hold on Muslim societies with excessive use of force and by ruthlessly persecuting the traditional leadership and abusing and ridiculing traditional thought and everything associated with it. The economic and development policies they pursued often ended in spectacular failure and concentrated national wealth in the hands of the few. Globalization has further marginalized traditional cultures, creating a siege mentality in historic communities. These factors have contributed to the emergence throughout the Muslim world of a new form of militant traditionalism.

Thus the Muslim world finds itself caught in an intense struggle between the combined forces of an aggressively secular modernity and globalization pitted against an equally aggressive traditionalism. This struggle is quite evident in countries like Indonesia, Algeria and Bangladesh where internal battles between modernists and traditionalists have raged for well over two decades.

To this complex. we must add another dimension. Both traditionalists and modernists now share the belief that the fate of their societies is actually determined by decisions taken elsewhere. This is why so much energy in the Muslim world is now spent in criticizing the actions and consequences of the centres of power: the nexus of Western government, economy, industry and popular culture where globalization is manufactured and exported to its recipients in the Muslim World. The widespread feeling of dispossession and total powerlessness in Muslim societies is a product of this. Hence the sense of rage that now envelops both modernists and traditionalists alike.