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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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