The Problem of Politics: Islam Between East and West -- Part 2
By: Eco al Hollandi
In the first article of this series, we discussed the problem of
modernity, how it behaves, and why it is so important that we understand
that it is the modern process itself that is our “other”. Those who’ve
read that article might remember we specifically took a stance against
framing the problem as “the West” as in the Western people and/or
Europeanness itself, instead making the argument that Islam offers a way
to an authentic, alternative future for all cultures—-including
European cultures—-and that as such it could never be the case that
these cultures were the direct “other”.
The reason that the modern process itself was signified as such was that
it behaves in the exact opposite manner as Islam; with the latter
offering the opportunity for differing cultures to authentically form
around a unified essence, thus creating a unity in a patchwork of (true)
diversity, where the former instead fragmentizes the world into a bland
nothingness, offering a false diversity that is only diverse on the
surface.
But especially because we began that first article with a discussion on
the weakness of the Muslim world in light of the situation in Palestine,
there remains a question of what we can do to get out of this weak
state. Furthermore, while the Westerner, or Western culture, is not our
enemy, the West as a political entity is the force that backs and
enforces the modern process around the world. While we, by necessity,
had to lay down the foundation and thus discuss the idea of Islam being
the opposite of modernity, we can now move to an analysis of this
political West and how Muslims should deal with the political reality of
being faced with an overwhelming force in a world where we have so
little power.
The Political West and the Modern Process
We described in depth how the modern process is destructive by nature.
It tears apart authentic cultures and leaves behind nothing real or
human. Because of this, it fragmentizes the world while simultaneously
moving that world into a global drab of nothingness. This is true for
all corners of the world and especially for the West itself, where
modernity originated.
It would thus be easy to assume that, if the political West globally
backs and enforces this process, it is thus anti-self and is actively
looking for the world’s destruction. While this explanation would surely
find favor among the more conspiracy-minded, this is in fact rather far
from the truth. The political West believes in the ideas that
kickstarted and continue to feed the modernity process, as well as
believing in parts of this process, such as Capital and technological
growth, but it does not like the output of the process as such.
In the first article, we discussed Deleuze & Guattari’s concepts of
deterritorialization and reterritorialization, explaining that they
believed that reterritorialization always accompanies
deterritorialization and that reterritorialization is in fact nothing
but the attempt to stabilize the process, while simultaneously
normalizing the earlier breakdown of authentic structures.
It is reterritorialization that the Western political entities, and in
some sense all political entities, are looking for. This means that,
while the Western political entity backs the process in theory, it
attempts to ward off its negative effects by reterritorializing the
previously deterritorialized entity. Of course, this is quite logical,
every political entity wants and aims for growth, it’s a big part of how
they retain power and in the modern world, growth is identified by the
modern process itself.
In practice however, this leads to a political power that behaves rather
schizophrenically, on the one hand—-at home—-where these ideas
originated, it attempts to stabilize the process, attempting to ward off
any radicalism leading to further deterritorialization (and thus
destabilization). On the other hand, by reterritorializing they
normalize the new reality, consequently enforcing this around the world
and demanding others adapt to it.
Faustian Spirit
The attempts to stabilize the process at home have not exactly led to a
peaceful political situation. In fact, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to say
that the tensions caused by the culture war in the West have reached
unprecedented levels far beyond those of other nations. So why is it the
case that despite their attempts at stabilization these tensions seem so
high in the West?
Part of this we have explained, namely: that the Western political
entity is increasingly attempting to play catch up while the process
accelerates. There is also a role that the media and social institutions
play here in spreading the desire to take part in the process among
individuals (both inside and outside the West). It would be too
time-consuming to go deep into the role of media and institutions here
but it is important to remember that these individual desires serve as
fuel for the flames.
What we can furthermore say is that this increase in desire and tensions
has little to do with an actual opposition. While it is often said that
people are “radicalizing” in the West, they are only doing so from the
point of view of a system that throughout the 20th century has attempted
to narrow down the political Overton window (as radicalism leads to
opposition and to “ideas of alternatives”) as politics became more and
more about stabilization.
But in fact, even most of the radicals in the West, besides a small
group, are broadly in support of modernity. They might be disinfected or
in disagreement about how the government is running things, but they are
often in full support of the ideas that underline the modern process, at
most disagreeing with how one should handle that process. The question
of why this is so gets us back to the topic of Western or European
culture and the Westerner or European being different from the process
that we discussed in the first article.
European man has often been associated with something called “the
Faustian spirit.” It is this spirit—-which is said to be innate to
European man—-and its drive for progression and expansion, that makes
the West unable to step away from the modern process as it is defined by
an endless progression. That progression eventually leads to
dehumanization, as with that progression comes an ever-increasing
fragmentation.
Now, perhaps this seems contradictory to the first article. Didn’t we
say that there is nothing about the Westerner that cannot let him have
an authentic culture with an Islamic essence? How can this be when the
Faustian spirit is innate to the Europeans? We maintain that this is
only a contradiction on the surface. Because while that spirit exists,
there is nothing wrong with the European, exploratory spirit. In fact,
it has given the world much beauty and is exemplified by a praiseworthy
drive for novelty and adventure, fundamental parts of the human
experience.
The problem is that with the onset of modernity, the increase in
individualism, and the subsequent decline of religion, there was
suddenly no institution to guide and define the borders for that spirit.
As markets pushed technological innovation further, people’s individual
desires increased, thus giving the markets more capital to innovate
further. wanting to push further and further, even beyond the point of
humanity. There are various moments that can be seen as decisive which
would take too long to discuss here, but what is clear is that somewhere
those innovations, driven by that Faustian spirit, ran out of control.
The problem thus, is not the Faustian spirit itself, but the fact that
it blended with its own creation – modernity itself. In modernity, the
Faustian spirit is unlimited and not mitigated by humans but rather is
increasingly controlled by the process itself.
In an almost comically ironic sense, with the Renaissance beginning as a
humanist project and with various revolutions in the name of the freeing
up of the individual, in retrospect, we see that with the fall of
religion, there was suddenly no reason for humanity’s exceptionalism and
as such no reason for the process of growth to stop once it wasn’t
beneficial to humanity anymore. This gets us to a crucial point with
regard to the political dimension. While we said in the first article
that the entire world is largely modernized (and thus, westernized) an
alternative modernity cannot under any circumstance arise in the
contemporary West.
Islamic Civilization and The Weak State of Muslims
If Europeans, due to their possession of the Faustian spirit, are unable
to stop modernity, our thesis that Islam is the exact opposite of
modernity suggests that it alone is capable of this, exactly because it
would be able to contain that spirit of a nation, using it to give shape
to Islam while mitigating the Faustian spirit, rather than letting it
reign free. Here we get into the practical problem that has been looming
over our heads since the introduction to the first article.
While in theory, it might be good to know that Islam offers a solution
to the problem of modernity, we have noted in the previous article that
Muslims themselves are utterly modernized; a problem which is
exacerbated by cyberspace, media, and cultural institutions. In
combination with the earlier mentioned enforcement of those
reterritorialized values, this creates an inability for most Muslims to
tap into Islam’s true potential and, knowingly or unknowingly, makes
them partial to the modern process, even if they claim to be in
opposition to it.
Because of the way politics works in a modernized Western world, Muslims
cannot expect to vote their way out of this. As the system is driven to
stabilize, it will inherently only allow ideas that are strictly in line
with it. Let it not be thought however that we should engage in
something such as a violent revolution. Besides the fact that it would
be ridiculous to even think one has a chance of winning such a conflict
in the weak state that we are in, it also doesn’t fix anything, and we
have seen that this is in fact itself a modern phenomenon.
As we discussed in the first article, this is evidenced by both extreme
ends of the modern Muslim; the Jihadist and the progressive Muslim. Both
groups have repeatedly made the mistake of thinking that Muslims should
take up weapons and engage in mass revolution, resulting in the same
mistakes of calling for (either Jihadist or decolonialist) violent
action. Engaging in such acts has not only been tried and miserably
failed (along with the destruction it brought along) but it also makes
us unable to tap into Islam’s true essence, which is not barbaric and
destructive but rather builds up towards the high.
Yuk Hui, furthermore, points out that this attempt to fight against the
modern West as a way to shift to an alternative, more authentic future,
has already been tried by others in “the East.” He provides the example
of Japan and the Kyoto school of thought, who became ardent supporters
of the Japanese regime and the idea of a World War in the years before
WWII, as a way to give Japan the power to move away from global
domination. As seen, Japan, after engaging in horrendous excesses, has
been completely westernized and any semblance of traditional values no
longer exist on a deeper level, but is a leftover residue of earlier,
pre-modern times.
Hui discusses this example in his book on Cosmotechnics, in which he
sets out his quest of looking for an authentic, Chinese post-modernity.
This is interesting because often when we think of non-Western
civilizations succeeding in breaking loose from the West we think of
China. To get a better understanding of what we might do as Muslims we
should perhaps take a further look at these alternate civilizations,
which belong neither to the West, nor to the Islamic civilization that
we have talked about up until now.
Other Civilizations and the Decline of the West
When we analyze alternate civilizations, we see that some have indeed
managed to protect themselves against the West and have even become its
direct global opponent and are even predicted to replace the West as a
global superpower. China has, in some way, done exactly what we talked
about previously—-creating an authoritarian state in an attempt to
stabilize the process, managing to keep some of modernity’s negative
effects out the door through this authoritarianism, while simultaneously
modernizing and keeping up with the West. Where the West has huge
problems with these attempts of stabilization, as any form of
authoritarianism strongly clashes with European sensibilities, the lack
of the Faustian Spirit among the Chinese makes it easier for the Chinese
government to implement such policies.
Now, one might have the idea that this means that we should study the
way in which China became a superpower. While this makes sense, it is
easier said than done; not in the least because the Chinese revolution
began in a vastly different world from ours, where a feudalist empire
was transformed into a communist state. Aside from these differences,
China is not a perfect civilization to emulate. As we have seen, Yuk Hui
himself is specifically trying to create a “Chinese (post-)modernity,”
as it is recognized that even though China might, for now, control the
process and ward off some of its negative effects, that process itself
is still utterly Western.
Furthermore, China still faces many of the problems of modernity, which
is evident when looking at its declining fertility rate and the strong
decline in social structures around its cities. As such, even an
authoritarian regime like theirs is only partly capable of evading the
effects of modernity and it has to do so by increasingly intruding upon
the lives of its citizens.
Still, the Chinese do offer an alternative future to the Western one,
and certain philosophers such as Hui and others are attempting to search
through Confucian and Taoist texts as a way of reclaiming some authentic
Chinese elements and creating a truly alternative future. While as a
Muslim I believe they are incapable of this (which at this point needs
no further explanation), their opposition to the West and their lack of
the Faustian spirit does create chances for a world in which the
military enforcement of Western values, that as of now has consistently
kept Muslims from creating its own civilization, can be reduced.
This does not mean that we should “support” China (or any other
civilization) only because they are “anti-Western” (a strategy or idea
that in Leftist groups is sometimes aptly termed “Campism”). It does
however mean that while other civilizations might harm Muslims in their
direct sphere, and we should begrudge that, they seem to possess less of
the inherent drive to spread their way of living across the globe. Sure,
one might point to China’s endeavors in Africa and other countries
around the world and there is definitely a critique to be made here, but
these places still do not become Culturally Chinese. Rather, the Chinese
are there mainly to gain power and seem uninterested in exporting their
cultural products over the world.
I want to emphasize that Muslims should not take this as me advising to
put our weight behind other civilizations. This is especially the case
for Muslims living in the West themselves, who should refrain from
becoming pariahs. Rather, the conclusion is that the political struggle
with alternate civilizations and the internal problems with
stabilization the West faces can result in a world in which the
political West does not want to and/or is unable to enforce its values
around the world.
Furthermore, the decline of the West means little if we don’t realize
that other civilizations are unable to overcome modernity due to their
lack of Islam. In fact, if we take Hui’s thesis that technology in
modernity is utterly Western itself and combine it with the idea that
only Islam can overcome modernity, then one might say that the Chinese
becoming the global superpower will fix little in the long run. Even if
such a civilization attempts to protect itself through increasingly
totalitarian forms of state repression, if the process continues to run,
then eventually these walls will collapse. Still, if the West is unable
to act as a “global police force” due to its internal problems and the
global power struggle with these other civilizations, this can offer
opportunities for us as Muslims to create our own civilization.
So What Should we do?
The emulation of the rise of alternate civilizations such as China might
be interesting but is a long project that requires tremendous effort,
not only because we want to make sure that the Islamic spirit is
sufficiently present to ward off the necessity of authoritarianism, but
also because, as discussed, these civilizations became “their own” in
very different times. Furthermore, in a world where our community has
weakened, alienated from Traditional Islam, and influenced by modernity,
just attempting to “grab power” has, and will never, work.
It might come across as strange that I started off this article with the
promise of discussing how the Muslim world in its current weak state
might deal with that overwhelming Western political force and that the
only prescriptions I have given up till now is that we should do
nothing—-we can’t vote, we shouldn’t commit violence, we shouldn’t act
as pariahs, etc. I have discussed the opportunity arising out of the
contemporary situation of the world, but how are we to practically do
this when in this article it seems that I’m only prescribing a series of
can-nots and do-nots?
I am not proposing that we as Muslims sit back and hope that things fall
into place for us. Rather, what I have attempted to show is that, while
we might not have any strength to forcefully create our independence
from other civilizations, the current state of the world does offer an
opportunity to move away from that weakened state. The described
problems that the political West is facing and the seeming lack of
interest of other civilizations to become their own “global police”
offer us the possibility of building ourselves up once more.
But this is of no benefit to us if we count on the masses, many of whom
have already become modernized in their understanding of Islam
themselves. What we should do then is use the expectation of an
increasing lack of a political stranglehold on Muslims as a group to
create communities of experts, who can rise above our weakened state of
being, so that they might actually come to know how to give shape to a
future Islamic civilization.
These communities (one might say: an Islamic elite) can think through a
true alternative. As the differing global powers will increasingly be
unable to deal with the problems of modernity, leading to their own
collapse, this Islamic elite can give us the chance to offer an
alternative when this moment arrives. If those “experts” among us
furthermore manage to be “elite” by holding onto positions of power and
having the necessary knowledge, they can use this future cataclysm to
reshape the trajectory of the Islamic world and the world at large.
In the third and last part of this series, I will bring together the
conclusions from the first article and this one, to look at why and how
this Islamic elite might utilize the Islamic essence and their expertise
to uplift us from our weak state and bring forth an Islamic future that
is rooted in Islam’s traditional essence and in authentic culture.