The Obamessiah

Hilarious:



Although, in reality, it's a bit scary given that, well, that's the way all of his supportersfollowers really do look at him. Kindda creepy, too.

On Political Islam & Globalization

When thinking of political Islam, the first think that comes to my mind is the fallacy that many people believe when they assume that it is in some way a new phenomenon. Since it began back in the 600’s Islam has always been inherently political, as it spread across the Arab world not through grassroots action but rather by top-down conquest. This type of spread can be deemed political because the primary definition of ‘the State’ is, simply, 'legalized force;' and thus, we can say that Islam came to today’s Muslim world via the enterprises of the State.

Now, in the time since the original Islamic conquests, Islam has remained, more-or-less, within the Muslim world (although not for lack of trying) and thus, the only part of the world that Muslims were familiar with was Islamic. And, naturally, the governments there were Islamic and the society was Islamic. In other words, without the interconnections of today's world, the 'world' as nearly all Muslims knew it was as perfectly Islamic as it, perhaps, could have been. However, with the arrival of the information age and the immediateness brought by globalization, the Islamic world began to shrink and come in much closer contact with the rest of the world. With this increased awareness of the non-Islamic world around it, Islam had to take on a new international, or even supra-national, form in order to maintain its political dominance over Islamic peoples.

Part of the reason it became necessary for political Islam to evolve in the face of globalization was the need to combat the new ideas that flowed in over satellite television sets (etc., etc.) from liberal democracies like the United States. Ideas like freedom of the press and human rights and equality before law presented a challenge to the old Islamic political order because this order is very much illiberal in the Western/Enlightenment sense of the word. Indeed, Islam, as historically constructed, is not only political but, within that political (and societal) structure, directly contradictory to nearly all the basic tenants of 'Western' society as it has been constructed post-Enlightenment; and this is primarily because there is no clear distinction between the secular and the sacred within Islamic society.

Thus, what many in the West, and seemingly some within the Islamic world as well, want is for Islam to have a ‘Reformation,’ of sorts, which will enable Islamic-majority countries to become more compatible with liberal democracy; and thus, by extension, come to possess a great number of human rights and freedoms not found under old-style Islamic regimes. What the goal of this reformation ought to be is the introduction of a genuine division between the secular and the sacred within Islamic society. Only with the creation of a separate, secular, public sector of life can true liberal democratic principles be allowed to flourish and Islam become adapted to the modern world around it.

In my mind, this seems to be the ultimate question that is being answered right now in Iraq: whether or not an Islamic society is, in fact, capable of such a transformation. Indeed, right now there seems to be nothing against the proposition that, 'if Iraq is incapable of stabilizing into some kind of a democratic society, even if it is in a somewhat bastardized form, then Islam itself might be incapable of doing so.' Put more simply, Iraq will tell us whether or not Islam is capable of a 'Reformation.' The question cuts even deeper than this for Islam, as without these changes political Islam, and thus Islamic countries, will remain handicapped within the International community, unable to efficiently tap into the economic benefits of modern society.

The modern political Islamic movement, what's been called Radical Islam, is a response against all of these things. It is a movement which hopes to preserve the traditional role of Islam as the authoritative voice of politics within Islamic nations. Without this divide into secular and sacred Islam retains a great degree of control over politics and thus over the Islamic subjects under said Islamic governments. Put another way, modern governments open people up to other ideas and other faiths; and a large part of Islam is insecure enough in the power of its own message to feel the need to react by trying desperately to prop up and maintain the old power structure.

Consequently, if the Radical Islamists we face in places like Iraq and Afghanistan are indeed, as I have claimed, reactionaries hoping to protect the traditional place of Islam within politics and society, then the key to defeating them lies, as I have often claimed, in the support of things like Democracy in Islamic countries. These things, if successful, will shatter the traditional role of Islam within politics; and if liberal, Western, and Modern principles and ideas become accepted within the political system, then they can slowly become accepted within Islamic society as well.