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Introduction
Reflecting
on the 1991 Gulf War in which the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was
reversed and the Iraqi regional power curtailed, S.R. Gill observed:
It partly reflects not simply the struggle between states, ... but
also the struggles over the organizing principles of society -
struggles which began at least as early as the Middle Ages and the
era of the Crusades - between Western capitalist secular materialism
and the metaphysics and social doctrine of Islam as well as more
secular pan-Arabist forces in the shape of the Iraqi regime.1 In the
same vein, Bernard Lewis has stated that: This is no less than a
clash of civilizations - the perhaps irrational but surely historic
reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage,
our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both.2 Gill, Lewis, and Samuel Huntington all appear to contemplate
conflict between civilizations as the "latest phase in the
evolution of conflict in the modern world."3 The lines are being sharply drawn between the West and its old
nemesis, the World of Islam. Such demarcations reflect two distinct
civilizational orders with their own specific and dynamic
understandings of the nature of congruency between normative
standards and social existence. Implicit in such a process are the
fundamental considerations of epistemology and ontology and the very
foundations upon which civilizations are to be built and
consciousness shaped.
This
article addresses some salient aspects of the anticipated
civilizational conflict. Its basic contention is that the
multi-dimensional conflict between the Muslim world and the secular
West can only be resolved at the foundational levels of epistemology
and consciousness. Only then could Muslims engage in the
"politics of civilizations," not solely as the
"objects of history as targets of Western colonialism,"
but "as movers and shapers of history."4 I will proceed by expounding some essential sources of conflict and
by deconstructing liberal democracy as the political and ideological
manifestation of the Western hegemonic system. I will further
suggest the Iranian revolutionary experience as a budding nucleus of
an Islamic transformation and propose criteria against which this
phenomenon could be Islamically analyzed and understood in future
and anticipated works.
This is an attempt at a preliminary formulation
of a methodological approach towards the development of an Islamic
social and political counter-discourse.5
As Fazlur Rahman has
poignantly pointed out, "the survival of the Islamic world as
Islamic is conditioned not only on activist ferment, but on patient
and complex intellectual labor which must produce the necessary
Islamic vision."6
Muslim
Consciousness and the Chaotic Reality: A State of Epistemological
Dualism "World politics," wrote Huntington, is
"entering a new phase" in which "the fault lines
between civilizations are replacing the political and ideological
boundaries of the Cold War as the flash points for crisis and
bloodshed."7 As opposed to the earlier conflict, the new
demarcations are "basic," "fundamental,"
"consciousness" based and "less mutable;"8 in
short, essential. Both the West and the Muslim World, understood in
their broadest cultural and religious identities respectively, are
poised to engage in this new-and perhaps not so new-form of
conflict. Even regimes in Islamic countries which have loyally
served Western interests, such, for example, as Saudi Arabia and
Turkey, have come to be exposed to these new demarcations. Daniel
Pipes and Patrick Clawson suggest that Washington should "view
Saudi Arabia as a temporary ally with whom numerous and profound
differences remain, and to keep open other options."9 As for
Turkey, they strongly advise against the mistake of perceiving it as
"just another European state," and suggest moving it
administratively in the State Department from the bureau that
handles other European countries, into the Middle East. This would
constitute "a small but significant step to begin the process
of seeing the country in its proper context."10 Under such
circumstances, intellectual curiosities about cultural and/or sub-civilizational
diversities become less relevant, or rather superfluous, as, in all
practicalities, both civilizations will come to see and act towards
each other monolithically.
Conditions
of civilizational conflict thus deprive the parties concerned of the
luxury of doubts about one's essential and basic values. In the
separate civilizational configurations of Islam and the West,
maintaining and preserving uniqueness and differentiated identities
and expressions of consciousness become a prerequisite for survival.
Consciousness,
or the internalized normative standards according to which identity
and basic reality are perceived and interpreted, is a direct product
of a legitimized system of knowledge/values and its epistemological
constructs. Epistemology aims to clarify the origin, structure, and
methods of knowledge formation and, most importantly, to construct
ideal standards of objectivity and ideal criteria of validation
which can guide investigators as they seek to test their knowledge
claims.11
Epistemological
considerations are crucial to the construction and appraisal of
social and political interpretations at both the religious and
secular levels.12 The Western consciousness internalizes rationalism,
secularism, democracy, liberalism, capitalism, and human values as
its essence and basic civilizational identity. At the other end is
the Islamic world-wide community, or Ummah, which defines itself
essentially as based on revelation and, therefore, divinely
ordained,13 one/unique,14
the most elevated of all human communities,15
and which shall always be meant ill by earlier receivers of divine
revelations.16 In those competing claims it is not hard to discern the
very basic roots of conflict. It starts at the level of
consciousness and extends to the multiple dimensions of human
existence.
At
play here are the dynamics of "objective . . . and subjective
self-identification of people."17 In the political domain, this
spills over into addressing the nature of authority, its ultimate
source, its legitimations, and how the Muslim Ummah/civilization
perceives itself to be different and distinct from others. In
essence, the ultimate purpose and meaning of the community's reality
and existence is defined, and the standards of interaction to be
upheld at all times are set. Such self-identifying questions
determine the parameters and constraints within which Muslims are to
deal with other communities.
Distinct
attempts are made to isolate or merge political and religious
morality in human events. This reflects the dialectical process
which both creates and is embedded in an independent Islamic
consciousness, which sets and to which is set the criteria of
meaning and validity. The ultimate expression of this process is the
Shari`ah (Islamic law).
Islamic
ontological-epistemological foundations-as opposed to the reduced
epistemological basis of Western consciousness-presuppose Islam's
transcendence as a revelation that is external and independent of
social reality. This remains true even if interpretations of it are
often influenced by historical conditions. Attempts at approaching
Islam as a cultural phenomenon of symbols and meanings in isolation
of its revelatory nature are not only reductionist but erroneous.18
Adopting
Western criteria of religious culturalism as the valid knowledge not
only represents an epistemological contradiction, but above all is a
process of superimpositon of one consciousness upon the other. At
one level, there is an Islamic consciousness that is required to
shape reality; at the other, there is a Western reality that
attempts to shape consciousness. It is at the heart of this process
that the Western project of cultural domination is consummated and
where the dilemma of Muslims' existence and adaptations in modern
times lies.
It
goes without saying that objective material factors contribute to
the shaping of human consciousness. A perpetual state of material
subjugation of one consciousness to another is likely to illicit
concomitant subjective subjugation. Muslim contact with the modern
West historically has taken place within the context of a discursive
formation which sustained a relative power relationship. The
preponderance of Western power necessitated that this discourse be
both hegemonic over and repressive of the Islamic East. It was not a
dialogue between equals nor a conversation, but a will to power
which attempted to reconstitute Islam and Muslims both at the level
of consciousness and at the empirical level.
The
impact of this historical experience is not difficult to discern.
Its structural expressions in the Islamic environment-be it in the
educational or political sphere-continue to reproduce themselves in
a fashion that perpetuates this power relationship. Elites in most
Islamic countries are largely products of superimposed constitutive
educational and political structures. In this lies the essence of
the polarization and bifurcation between elites and masses in the
Muslim world.
Muslim
and Arab intellectuals, imbued with the Western discourse of
rationality, have entered political life as natural allies to the
local traditional elites and the colonial West. The broad mass base,
on the other hand, has had no choice but to fall back upon the
traditional values of their own society to protect themselves from
the excesses of the new class-a class which seeks to pattern its
life and values along Western lines. Commitment to traditional
(Islamic) values thus reflects a defensive posture aimed at
rejuvenating the spirit of internal cohesion and self-identification
against the disintegrative effects brought in by patterns of modern
life. It further reflects an indigenous consolidation against the
danger of destruction of the national balance, perpetrated by
external pressures.19
In
the absence of social cohesion, it becomes almost impossible for the
State to deal adequately with strains, penetrate society, regulate
social relationships, and extract resources. In the absence of an
overarching consciousness that unites and merges its subjects at all
levels of the social scale in a commonly accepted meaning and
criteria of validity, there can be neither strong societies nor
strong states, a point which Joel Migdal seems to overlook in his
study of "Strong Societies and Weak States."20 Thus, when
Bassam Tibi, for example, suggests the secularization of Islam 21
and calls approvingly for a substantive "renewed understanding
of Islam," along lines similar to the Christian reformation,22
he
fails to distinguish the historical development of Christianity and
its nature vis-a-vis Islam, nor to indicate where the reformation
has left Christianity today. He seems to be calling for a wholesale
adoption of the Western value system as the infrastructural
foundation of modern societies. In those societies, pluralism
appears to be a socio-structural correlate of the secularization of
consciousness.23
Tibi deals with Islam within the confines of Western paradigms that
simply reduce religion to sociological and cultural epiphenomena,
ignoring its distinct claims to validity and its internal
communicative meanings. Islam in those terms is comprehended not in
light of its own independent standing, but in light of an alien
constitutive formation and image. The chronic dependency of
elites/intellectuals on Western paradigmatic approaches to
understanding themselves and their own religio-cultural expressions
lends particular credence to Ali Shari`ati's distinction between
elites/intellectuals and "free thinkers."24 Participating in
their own ?orientalizing,25 the former have entrenched what the
Algerian thinker Malik bin Nabi referred to as the essential and
psychological "susceptibility to colonialism."26 By "orientalizing"
themselves and objectifying their own consciousness, they have
ultimately subscribed to transforming their own societies into
colonizable ventures.
It
follows, therefore, that Muslims' existence cannot allow for the
perpetuation of such a conflict between two opposed levels of
consciousness vying for their common loyalty. One is Islamic,
constitutive of their identity, and the other secular-discursive,
constitutive of their material susceptibilities. This setting calls
uncompromisingly for the consummation of a process of divorce
between these two antithetical levels. While not sufficient, it
remains a necessary condition for resolving this
"confused" state of affairs, and for creating a clear
Islamic consciousness that is dialectically receptive to other
systems of knowledge. This divorce, in other words, while necessary
for terminating the Western discourse in its present formation, is,
at the same time, a first step towards furnishing the grounds for a
future and inevitable dialogue. The nature of this dialogue and its
outcome are to be determined primarily by the parameters of an
independent Islamic consciousness.
The
call for a divorce therefore, is not to be understood as a call for
isolation nor for nostalgic reminiscence, but as a temporary
retrenching experience necessary for the reinitiation of the
dialectic process of ijtihad (Islamic reasoning) on its own ground
rules, and as the foundation for an Islamic theory of change. For
this reason, Rahman's point that early Muslims practiced ijtihad by
acting "first upon their experience of the totality of the
Qur'anic teaching and introduced the citation of particular verses
only at a secondary stage,"27 remains wanting. What legitimized
such a decision-making process in the first place was the fact that
it was made in a world still governed by religious certainty, and
undertaken in an environment shaped and governed by Islamic
principles. How relevant, or to what extent such a process is
possible in the absence of a constitutive and politicized Islamic
vision, and in an environment shaped and governed primarily by
secular, "antitraditional traditions"28 remains an open
question.
In
so far as it becomes possible, the concept of authenticity of
ijtihad gains meaning that extends beyond the nostalgic attachment
to the past which can never be again. As Habermas has pointed out, a
"teleological thought that contrasts origin and goal with each
other loses its power completely."29 Ijtihad, as authenticity,
becomes not only "the reassertion of the historical truth of
the earliest period of Islam as the true being of Islam," in
Leonard Binder's terms,30 but also, in a present practical sense, the
conscious consummation of this process of divorce "as the
medium in which modernity makes contact with the archaic."31
Subjugated adaptations to a secularized reality would reduce Islam's
certainty to the scepticism of a competitive arena of varied
"reality-defining ideologies."32 Without the requisite
milieu, anything similar to what Rahman has called for can only lead
to "little more than forcing from the divine texts that
particular interpretation which agrees with preconceived standards
subjectively determined," in short, to "juristic
opportunism."33
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