free water and electricity: Al Qaeda embraces civic duties and courts hearts and minds in South Yemen.
Tagged: political islam Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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aziz
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aziz
Is it true that if given democracy, muslims will vote for Islam?
I think the answer is yes and no. At present, political Islam is the only democratic alternative to oligarchy, autocracy, and pseudo imeperialism. OF COURSE muslims will vote for political Islam – that is because Islam (as with any culturally pervasive major faith) is what they can turn to for comfort and succor.
However the thesis that secular political democracy is incompatible with Islamic societies is simply wrong. After all, Iran, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan all emerged from colonial and imperial eras as secularist states. Modern day Turkey has a unique history in that it turned away from Islam as a rejection of the post-imperial era. But the rest of the middle east was largely secular – and leaned communist in most cases. Nasser himself and the pan-Arab movement was an explicitly intellectual movement that disavowed faith and created the vacuum which was then filled by Qutb. Saudi Arabia is another exception, due to oil.
Fundamentally, there is nothing judeochristian about the concept of democracy. Islam itself has enough of a framework over the centuries of jurisprudence to support a fully democratic system, and most of the major empires in the Islamic world had elements of democratic rule. The millet system is a good example of a precursor to the concept and may well have been a partial inspiration for the American Founders themselves as they sought to articulate their desire fro greater autonomy – only they were pushed to an extreme.
I think that political islam needs to now undergo the maturation phase. A great resource for watching how political Islam is evolving is POMED, the Project for Middle East Democracy blog. I’ve been reading them for years; another great resource has basically been everything Marc Lynch (Abu Aardvark) has ever written.
I reject the thesis that Islam and democracy are incompatible, and I think that the present state of affairs in the muslim world is indeed best characterized as reactionary. The concept of democracy is not and end condition but a tool for an evolving process towards liberal, constitutional republics.
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McKiernan
Can you provide a working, valid definition of the use of the term you use called… political Islam ?
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aziz
in the most general sense, political parties that explicitly draw upon Islamic values and principles to guide their platforms. The Muslim Brotherhood is political Islam; Hamas in Gaza is political Islam, Hezbollah is political Islam. Sinn Fein is political Christianity, the BJP is political Hinduism.
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Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
Aziz, the statement regarding Sinn Fein is ridiculous.
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aziz
i could be wrong about Sinn Fein. My knowledge of it is admittedly thin. Are theu socialist instead of explicitly Christian?
Perhaps a better analogy would be the Southern Republican Party in the US as political Christianity.
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McKiernan
Yes, I’d like to go there as well.
Sinn Fein is not political Christianity. At best, it is a left wing republican (as in Republic of Ireland meaning) organization of irish nationalism seemingly flourishing in Norn Iron (Ulster) . It is more closely the representative of the Provisional Irish Republican Army and an organization light years removed from the original Irish Brotherhood and the original IRA of the 1910s and 1920s.
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aziz
btw McK you can also use the tags on the post to explore the topic further – see:
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Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
For all practical purposes I’m sure I agree with you Aziz. I certainly favor “democracy” over the dictatorships that prevail in the Muslim world and although I am sympathetic to Islamist parties when they are the opposition to such dictatorships and even to the idea of Islamist government, I am no fan of any established Islamist government and the idea of Islamist parties in power basically being right wing parties doesn’t excite me either. Certainly, it is historically ignorant to suggest that it is impossible for Muslims to use any type of government (what Muslims can do, will do, and have done are of course different questions than a statement regarding Islam).
The theoretical question of whether Islam and democracy or Islam and secular democracy are compatible is meaningless without long discussions over what is democracy and what is secular, which are extraordinarily contested terms before we even get to figuring out what is the essential “Islam” with which to ask whether they are compatible.
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aziz
well said! secular democracy is basically an illusion; there isn’t one on earth and never has been. Much is made of America’s separation of church and state, but this does not mean that the government is secular. so secularism is a red herring. Perhaps France and Turkey achieve the closest in ideal with their concept of laicitie.
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McKiernan
Aziz,
Are you suggesting that political Islam is “the only democratic alternative ” in those nations that are primarily Muslim in culture ?
How does a nation achieve democratic multi-cultural diversity, i.e freedom of and from religion, if in fact it doesn’t remove G-D and religion from its nations Constitution ?
Are you telling us, that say, Saudi Arabia can have a wonderful democracy and at the same time proscribe non-muslims from entering Mecca or Medina ?
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Maitham
Democracy and multi-culturalism are not synonymous. Historically they have rarely even coexisted.
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McKiernan
Yes,
What does that mean ?
Are you telling us, that say, Saudi Arabia can have a wonderful democracy and at the same time proscribe non-muslims from entering Mecca or Medina ?
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Maitham
The US puts its foreigners through hell every time they try to come for a visit. In principle, how is that any different?
By choosing to discriminate on the basis of religion and not just nationality, Saudi Arabia is certainly out of step with the rest of the modern world, but I don’t think either form of discrimination is inherently incompatible with democracy.
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McKiernan
You can’t be serious.
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McKiernan
Actually, I was waiting for Aziz to reply.
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aziz
i replied.
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aziz
Saudi Arabia is a monarchy, not a democracy, and is unlikely to ever be a democracy given the oil curse.
That said, the refusal ofnon-muslims to Mecca has absolutely nothing to do with democracy. I am a free-speech absolutist and a longtime proponent of liberal democracy promotion, but when it comes to this issue, I stand form with the mullahs. No non-muslim may set foot in the Holy City.
No, not pain of death or anything absurd like that. Plenty of nonmuslims have in fact been to Mecca, been caught, and unceremonioiusly booted out. Even in the modern day Saudi. It happens and if you’re really that motivated, it isnt that hard. But the general prohibition and rule must stand,. forever.
That’s non-negitiable and has zero to do with democracy. Im happy to be forever excluded from the Vatican inner sanctums or whatever equivalent you folks have.
to answer your real question, right now political Islam is a alternative, and probably the best alternative in a democratic system, as a form of pushback to the secularist and autocratic recent histories. Whether political Islam becomes dominant or not depends on a case by case basis. Its doubtful it will dominate in Egypt, probable it would dominate in Yemen, and it did flourish in Iran and became autocratic itself.
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McKiernan
My real question was:
“How does a nation achieve democratic multi-cultural diversity, i.e freedom of and from religion, if in fact it doesn’t remove G-D and religion from its nations Constitution ? “
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Maitham
Not everyone wants multi-culturalism. Islam, because it takes firm positions on certain matters of private conduct, has limited compatibility with this principle.
As both Aziz and Abu Noor stated earlier, most states that profess the principle are not purely multi-cultural in practice, so this may not be the right point to focus on.
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aziz
I guess I don’t see why the mere mention of God in a constitution is an impediment to multi-cultural tolerance and diversity, or freedom from and of religion.
Is the word a magic token thta makes people intolerant? We dont have the word God in our Constitution but it hasnt made people more tolerant here. If anything the animus towards musims has only grown since Obama was elected. And will get worse as 2012 approaches.
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Maitham
I think there also may be different definitions of tolerance in different times and places. It is very hard to imagine US-style anything-goes tolerance thriving under the banner of Islam. Islam enforces some hard and fast distinctions between people, and modernist liberalism is corrosive to all such distinctions, so I think there is an unavoidable tension there.
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Maitham
Can we even have this discussion without questioning whether nation-states at all, as they are currently configured in the Middle East, serve the interests of the people or are stable long-term? A certain sense of Egyptian/Moroccan/Iraqi/etc. nationalism has certainly taken root over the past century, but with the need to play ball against world powers one can only imagine that Pan-(insert unifying principle here)-ism has some future in the region.
I only bring this up because the development of political systems may be affected by the framework within which they evolve.
As far as Islam and democracy, I don’t see anything inherently undemocratic about Islam. The loosely-defined “tribal” system, which has served as a backdrop for much of Islamic history, tends to be characterized by a high degree of democracy at the lowest levels of organization, even if autocracy rules the higher levels. There is no inherent reason why this pre-existing democratic principle cannot be extrapolated upwards, with the help of modern technology and trends in social organization.
That said, it is worth noting that a large portion of the early Islamic tradition (at least that I have read) focuses on the need for individuals to set aside their personal preferences and desires and surrender themselves totally to the wishes of the ruler. This is best explained by the fact that tribal chauvinism and political instability was a major problem in the classical Islamic world, just as it was in Europe during the same period. If the problems change, the prescriptions can, too.
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aziz
I’ve written before on that as well – I agree that nation states are a flawed model, but realistically its unlikely we will move away from them in the near or even long term. Maybe a few centuries from now, but not in our lifetimes surely. Lets focus on the possible.
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bk
An Inconvenient truth for Islamists looking to Erdogan and Turkey:
“An inconvenient truth for Erdogan’s Islamist admirers, though, is that the secret of the AKP’s success is that it ditched all talk of Sharia and reinvented itself as what Erdogan calls “Muslim Democrats” on the pattern of Europe’s Christian Democrats. As Erdogan and his allies have been tacking toward the mainstream, Islamist regimes in Iran, Sudan, and Afghanistan “failed to deliver on their promises of social justice, equality, rule of law, and freedom from foreign domination,” says Gönül Tol of the Middle East Institute in Washington. As a result, “Islamism has lost its energy, legitimacy, and appeal among the new generation of Arab Muslims.” Arab Islamists need to reinvent themselves for a new, postrevolutionary era—one in which they will be judged by how much security and prosperity they can provide their people. In Eastern Europe, Communists reinvented themselves as socialists. In the same way, Turkish Islamists like Erdogan reinvented themselves as post-ideological conservatives. If Turkey is anything to go by, it’s a formula that works.”
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aziz
rather timely letters in the New York Times about democracy’s history in the middle east:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/opinion/02iht-edletters02.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
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qbshcjews
QOGtQJ hjxlgykkocem
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aziz
Juan Cole busts 5 right-winger myths about teh Arab Street protests. My favorite:
Looking to the Tunisian and Egyptian futures, it is not true, as dreary anti-Muslim Israeli propagandist Barry Rubin alleged, that Muslim fundamentalist parties always win free and fair elections in Muslim-majority countries. This frankly stupid allegation is disproved by the Pakistan elections of 2008, the Albanian elections of 2009, the Kurdistan elections in post-2003 Iraq, and all of the Indonesian elections.
It’s not just anti-muslim propagandists who assert that when muslims have democracy, they choose Islamism.
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Dean Esmay
No lie. The old song “clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right” often comes to mind.
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Mc Kiernan
Myth #3:
3. Yusuf Qaradawi, the 84-year-old preacher whose roots are in the old Muslim Brotherhood before the latter turned to parliamentary politics, is nevertheless no Ayatollah Khomeini. Qaradawi addressed thousands in Tahrir Square in Cairo on Friday. Qaradawi called for Muslims to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda alongside US troops in 2001. On Friday he praised the Coptic Christian role in the Egyptian revolution and said that the age of sectarianism is dead. Qaradawi is a reactionary on many issues, but he is not a radical and there is no reason to think that either the Youth or Workers’ Movements that chased Hosni Mubarak out of the country is interested in having Qaradawi tell them what to do.”
Wait, this just in:
“Influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi has issued a fatwa that any Libyan soldier who can shoot dead embattled leader Muammar Gaddafi should do so ‘to rid Libya of him.’
‘Whoever in the Libyan army is able to shoot a bullet at Mr Gaddafi should do so,’ Qaradawi, an Egyptian-born cleric who is usually based in Qatar, told Al-Jazeera television.
He also told Libyan soldiers ‘not to obey orders to strike at your own people,’ and urged Libyan ambassadors around the world to dissociate themselves from Gaddafi’s regime.
Famous in the Middle East for his at times controversial fatwas, or religious edicts, the octogenarian Qaradawi has celebrity status in the Arab world thanks to his religious broadcasts on Al-Jazeera.
He has in the past defended ‘violence carried out by certain Muslims.’
The West accuses the cleric of supporting ‘terrorism’ because he sanctioned Palestinian suicide attacks in Israel. Britain and the United States have refused to grant him entry visas.
The cleric, spiritual leader of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and longtime resident of Qatar, heads the International Union for Muslim Scholars.”
http://www.skynews.com.au/topstories/article.aspx?id=580641&vId=
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abunoor
Mc Kiernan,
I don’t know what your deal is, but are you suggesting that al-Qaradawi’s statement’s on Khaddafy are wrong? Surely, an insane dictator who is ordering the bombing of his own people should indeed be killed.
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Mc Kiernan
For the moment, I’m suggesting the one of Juan Cole’s myth-buster statements are slightly askew.
As in # 3.
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abunoor
I don’t see the relationship at all. While I don’t really know exactly what it means to say Qaradawi is “no Khomeini” or that he is “not a radical,” I certainly think any sane intelligent person would agree with what he said re: Khaddafy.
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Dean Esmay
He’s “not a Khomenei” in the sense that it’s pretty clear he doesn’t have a large enough fanatical following to simply take over a country and install himself as a dictator and brutally liquidate all opposition, nor does it look like he’d want to do such a thing.
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Dean Esmay
Oh, and, uh, crazy neocon warmonger loon that I am, I’m very comfortable with pretty much anyone capable of doing so shooting the Libyan dictator on sight.
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Mc Kiernan
Ummh,
Like most sane, intelligent people would say:
“Whoever in the Libyan army is able to shoot a bullet at Mr Gaddafi should do so”.
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Maitham
McK: Assassinating dictators has always been a favorite American fantasy and was publicly advocated by many American observers of the First Gulf War. I don’t see why Qardawi should be held to a different standard.
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Mc Kiernan
Mait,
Yes, Imam Yusuf al-Qaradawi should be held to a very, very higher standard.
If he was speaking that justice is at the end of a bullet… so where was this guy for the past 40 years ?
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Mc Kiernan
I actually thought the subject matter of the post was the five myth-busters of Juan Cole, and not
who gets on the “lets shoot Gaddafi bandwagon.” I’m finding Cole’s approach quite
problematic,
given the history of Sheik al-Qaradawi. To quote…a UK blogger:
“After a 50-year exile, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi has returned to Cairo to preach his particular
bloody interpretation of Islam to more than a million followers. He is a Muslim Brotherhood
cleric who advocates the slaughter of Jews, supports wife-beating and female genital
mutilation, and is positively effusive about the execution of apostates and homosexuals. He is
also the spiritual adviser for the Palestinian Authority terrorist group, Hamas.
He has been banned from Egypt since 1961, but found refuge in the UK and was welcomed
with open arms by Ken Livingstone.
The Sheikh’s message to his adoring faithful was foreboding: “Don’t fight history,” he exhorted.
“You can’t delay the day when it starts.”
And he means a little more by ‘it’ than the revolutionary movement for democracy which has
toppled the governments of Tunisia and Egypt, and now threatens those of Libya, Yemen,
Bahrain and Algeria. Indeed, he doesn’t hope for democracy at all, except as a means to
sharia. For those who have ears, ‘it’ is a hope that the revolutionary spirit is more contiguous
with the 1979 Shi’a triumph in Iran. “The Arab world has changed,” he proclaimed. This is the
Sunni moment.
While al-Qaradawi was a guest in the UK, he founded the European Council for Fatwa and
Research (ECFR), of which he is still president. Its aim is world conquest and ‘the
manifestation of Allah’s infinite mercy, knowledge and wisdom’.
“What remains, then, is to conquer Rome,” he strategized in 1995. “The second part of the
omen. ‘The city of Hiraq (Constantinople) will be conquered first’, so what remains is to
conquer Rome. This means that Islam will come back to Europe for the third time, after it was
expelled from it twice… Conquest through Da’wa (proselytising), that is what we hope for.
We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through sword but through Da’wa.”
Oh, …I haven’t expressed the opinion that the leader of Libya ought not have a shortened
lifespan.
IMO, al-Qaradawi’s statement on Gaddafi are opportunistic for the benefit of his agenda, not
that of genuine democratic reform.
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Maitham
Actually, McK, the US government did attempt to assassinate Qaddafi back in 1986. So by your count, this proves once and for all the the US government is completely crazy, and much crazier than Qardawi, because they actually followed through on their threat with high-explosive bombs.
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aziz
editorial at CS Monitor: Political Islam is here to stay.
The bottom line is that political Islam, in some form, will be a significant factor in much of the Arab world and beyond. US foreign policy must come to grips with this emerging reality. Its approach must reflect an understanding of how contemporary political Islam came about and how democratic governments rooted in its principles will behave.
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hakim
ASAWR
Meanwhile, in SaudiRIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Ten moderate Saudi scholars say they’ve formed the kingdom’s first political party and have asked the king for recognition.
After the turmoil in Egypt and Tunisia, there have been demands for reforms in Saudi Arabia, which follows strict Islamic rule.
Sheik Mohammed bin Ghanim al-Qahtani said on Thursday he is on the coordination committee of the newly formed Umma Islamic Party. He says the party sent a letter to the Royal Palace on Wednesday requesting recognition.
His statement says it’s time to endorse political rights, including the right to elect a government, promote the role of women in society and preserve women’s rights.
The party’s nine other founding members are university teachers, political activists and businessmen.[link]
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aziz
exhibit A of the compatibility of Islam and democracy – great LAT article on Turkey’s reforms:
A political party espousing a commitment to what it calls “Islamic moral values” has brought Turkey closer to a full-fledged democracy than it has ever been.
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shams
al-Islam is perfectly compatible with islamic democracy.
it is EGT immune to judeoxian/westernstyle/protestant democracy.
America is not a secular nation– it is a protestant one.
give the credit for separation of church and state to Martin Luther, not the ‘enlightenment’. -
Saif
Might wish to tell this to the Kurdish people:
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midwinterspring
What exactly is your point with this remark? Is Islam the reason for the Kurds’ problems in Turkey? Is the AK Party? Or are you just using one of many tired canned responses to any positive developments in Turkey?
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shams
Saif’s point is that ‘secular democracy’ is supposed to ensure the equal representation of all the citizens, reguardless of ethnicity or religion or gender.
He is refuting all you guys braying about the triumph of ‘westernstyle/secular democracy’ in Turkey.
Like i am.
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midwinterspring
OK, so answer my question: Is Islam the reason for the Kurds’ problems in Turkey? Is the AK Party?
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shams
The legacy of the Tyrant Ataturk, artificially imposed Kemalist occidentalism, and the biological basis of behavior are the Kurds problems.
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shams
Ataturk was a tyrant and a dictator– but the West never calls him that.
He outlawed his own peoples alphabet to cut them off from their history. -
Dan
shams, you call Ataturk a “tyrant”, while you stay silent on the corrupt POS Ottoman caliphs who were a bunch of incompetent retards and legitimized the British occupation of Anatolia. You are a complete hypocrite especially with your love of Islamists whom you never have the cojones to condemn.
Is Ataturk a tyrant for resisting colonialists and imperialists? The Ottomans embraced them. And you claim Ataturk is still the tyrant, get lost.
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Dan
“He outlawed his own peoples alphabet to cut them off from their history.”
Ottoman Turkish was the language of the upper-class. It was a language that most of the people and peasantry had no knowledge of, since they were illiterate. The Ottoman Empire was far removed from the people by the late 19th century.. The language was not only difficult, but even old Ottoman archives show that there was large discrepancies over the use of the language. Example of one official showcasing its Arabic side, while another its Persian or Turkish side, proved that there happened to be no uniformity on the language itself.
As a result of converting the Turkish language with the Latin script, he was able to increase the literacy rate and allowed Turks of all social classes to understand their history better. Ataturk even called for the translation of the Qu’ran to Turkish.
And you fallaciously claim that Ataturk wanted to cut them off from their history, you are a lying snake shams. Stop talking out of your ass especially when you seem to wet your pants over Islamist movements whom you believe are infallible.
Besides, no one is stopping Turks from learning Ottoman Turkish. So if they want to do that, then they can do so at the university level.
Seems like shams would prefer Turkey to be like Pakistan where illiteracy is rampant. And this is the so-called Islamic state that shams prefers, what a joke.
Islamists are seriously a dumb lot.
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shams
i am no fan of islamists. they are reactionary fundamentalists and millenialists. that is a stupid name for them, they have nothing to with the practice of Islam. they are hirgabi, they kill innocents and muslims.
I am a fan of the biological basis of behavior, EGT, SNT, and evo theory of culture.
Ataturk had his reasons for attempting to westernize Turkey– he wanted to beat the colonialists and imperialists at their own game….by becoming them.
It was still the model of the benevolent despot….there was no consent of the governed.
He was still a tyrant.
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johnpi
Prophet Mohammad’s promise to the Christians.
In 628 AD, a delegation from St. Catherine’s Monastery came to Prophet Muhammed and requested his protection. He responded by granting them a charter of rights, which I reproduce below in its entirety. St. Catherine’s Monastery is located at the foot of Mt. Sinai and is the world’s oldest monastery. It possesses a huge collection of Christian manuscripts, second only to the Vatican, and is a world heritage site. It also boasts the oldest collection of Christian icons. It is a treasure house of Christian history that has remained safe for 1400 years under Muslim protection.
The Promise to St. Catherine:
“This is a message from Muhammad ibn Abdullah, as a covenant to those who adopt Christianity, near and far, we are with them.
Verily I, the servants, the helpers, and my followers defend them, because Christians are my citizens; and by God! I hold out against anything that displeases them.
No compulsion is to be on them. Neither are their judges to be removed from their jobs nor their monks from their monasteries. No one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it, or to carry anything from it to the Muslims’ houses.
Should anyone take any of these, he would spoil God’s covenant and disobey His Prophet. Verily, they are my allies and have my secure charter against all that they hate.
No one is to force them to travel or to oblige them to fight. The Muslims are to fight for them. If a female Christian is married to a Muslim, it is not to take place without her approval. She is not to be prevented from visiting her church to pray. Their churches are to be respected. They are neither to be prevented from repairing them nor the sacredness of their covenants.
No one of the nation (Muslims) is to disobey the covenant till the Last Day (end of the world).”
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buzz
I have been thinking about the question of influential people in Islam and who has the right to speak on behalf of Islam. This led me to an article in the American Muslim today. There is a legal battle in Malaysia where authorities are attempting to silence some self-proclaimed cleric:
The Sharia authorities in the Malaysian state of Selangor have charged the former Mufti of Perlis, Dr. Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin, of preaching Islam without a permit to do so. For Malaysian-watchers worldwide, this case will be seen as a litmus test for Malaysia, the Najib administration, the government and Sharia authorities of Selangor (now under the control of the Pakatan Rakyat), and the state of Islamic praxis in Malaysia in general. The outcome of the case will tell us where Islam is heading in a country that has for some time now been seen and cast as an exemplary model of normative Islam at work. But is it really?
Former Mufti Asri’s ‘crime’, if one could even call it that, was to preach Islam without an official permit. But in the course of the past few weeks the man himself has been vilified by his critics and accused of being – among other things – a Wahabi Muslim as well.
It is an interesting debate. I can see how some who are drawn to anarchy would also be drawn to Islam. It has a very decentralized nature with only a Transcendent God and an anti-iconic Holy Prophet to hold it together. Islam is ….whatever they say it is. Politics. Activism. Terrorism. Mysticism. Etc.
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johnpi
‘There’s nothing Islamic about a state.’
In his new book, Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Sharia, the Sudanese-born academic Professor Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im points out: “You will not find any reference to an Islamic state or to state enforcement of sharia before the mid-20th century – it’s a post-colonial discourse based on a European-style state.”
Many Muslims fall back on a romanticised view of the very first community of believers in 7th-century Medina, ruled by the Prophet himself, and cite it admiringly as their precedent for an Islamic state, but this approach is flawed. First, any historical precedent that revolves around the presence of a divinely guided prophet-as-political-leader seems wholly irrelevant, in an era in which we have no divinely guided prophet to lead us.
Second, the Medina “state” should be seen as a purely political and pragmatic, rather than Islamic or religious, construct. The celebrated pact that the Prophet signed with the various tribes of Medina involved the non-Muslims of the city – chief among them the Jews, who were granted formal equality with the Muslims – recognising only his political and temporal, rather than his religious or spiritual, authority. As the historian Bernard Lewis puts it: “Muhammad became a statesman in order to accomplish his mission as a prophet, not vice versa.”
Third, Medina lacked fixed borders, a standing army, a police force, permanent civil servants, government ministries, foreign ambassadors and a public treasury. To pretend that it can serve as a practical model for the large, complex, post-industrial societies of the 21st century is fanciful.
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razib, murtad fitri
of course not! only mormons and evangelical xtians reject separation of religion & state (and prosyletization too).
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thabet
SSRC has a dedicated section of reviews for his book. Well worth checking out.
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shams
ibn Taymiya would say there is no separation of knowledge and identity….so there can never be a true separation of church and state…like the Mormon tenent that the US gov was created by God, and evangelical xian insistance that the US is a “judeo-xian” nation.
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thabet
There is no true separation, imho. It is either a symbiotic relationship of some sort or outright domination of one over the other.
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johnpi
Religion, secularism working in tandem in Bangladesh.
Secular governance not reducing importance citizens place on religion.
Despite the return to power of Bangladesh’s Awami League – the political party that won in December 2008 on a platform of secularism, reform, and a suppression of radical Islamist groups – religiosity is by no means waning in the world’s seventh most populous country. A Gallup Poll of Bangladesh conducted this year finds practically all Bangladeshis saying that religion is an important part of their daily lives (100%) – relatively unchanged from the three previous Gallup Polls of Bangladesh.
….It seems as though the general population is further defining the roles of politics and religion in their country by drawing a distinct line between the two. Support for the secular Awami League, according to Time magazine, is as high as it was when they won an overwhelming victory in the pivotal 1970 election that led to the war of independence from Pakistan. At the same time, religiosity remains strong in this country of nearly 90% Muslims: More people claim to have attended a religious service in 2009 than in years past, and confidence in religious organizations has increased over the years.
The current government defines the country as “secular with a majority Muslim population,” and not officially as a Muslim state.
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razib "the atheist"
well, i don’t know many bangladeshis outside of my family, but when i visited in 2004 it was interesting to me how non-political my tableeghi uncle, or my uncle who is an imam, were. my tableeghi uncle, who has traveled the world mentioned how much he was jealous of buddhist monks cuz they don’t eat meat and so are thin, while my imam uncle showed me around an old part and dhaka and took me to the gates of a buddhist temple.
bangladesh is f**ked up in MANY ways. but at least it doesn’t have some of the craziness of other nations when it comes to religion & politics. the main caveat is that hindus might offer a less sanguine view due to the non-trivial levels of social ostracism & hostility as well as violence they confront from extremists. OTOH, hindu women seemed comfortable enough in dhaka malls wearing forehead marks (i forget what they are called).
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razib "the atheist"
p.s. most of my family is awami league, though a large minority are BNP. i know that though the tableegh is non-political my awani league supporting relatives would not talk politics around him cuz they perceived he opposed their secularism (his brother, my uncle, was on the party list for some election in dhaka as AL).
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Tec15
What laughable twaddle to support preexisting convictions. Political support in Bangladesh is dependent on bread and butter issues like price of essentials, anti-incumbency, perceived level of corruption etc, and not on which side is more or less secular. The last issue is irrelevant to all but a handful of elites and the religious minorities. The supposed level of support for Hasina’s government also seems artificially high but in any case is likely to fall in the coming months.
>> OTOH, hindu women seemed comfortable enough in dhaka malls wearing forehead marks (i forget what they are called).
BTW razib, they aren’t restricted to Hindu women, so the ones you saw may well not have been Hindus.
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razib "the atheist"
BTW razib, they aren’t restricted to Hindu women, so the ones you saw may well not have been Hindus.
the long ones. not the regular dots.
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razib "the atheist"
ok, u r right i think. with women the religious significance of all the marks is ambiguous.
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johnpi
David Sanger reviews Juan Coles’ new book, “Engaging the Muslim World,” which he describes thusly:
…this field guide to the politics of modern Islam traces the history of the different movements, whose violent offshoots are still morphing into new forms. Along the way, Cole, a historian at the University of Michigan, explores what he sees as the twin dynamic of “Islam Anxiety” in the United States and “American Anxiety” in the Arab world.
Readers of Cole’s blog, Informed Comment, will find many of the arguments familiar, though they are well assembled here, with essays on the myths surrounding Saudi Wahhabism, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the unintended side effects of American meddling in Iran. Cole starts his book in the right place: America’s addiction to Middle Eastern oil, which has skewed policy and often led us to support dictators we would ordinarily put on the list of human-rights violators. (The Saudis would probably qualify.) And he declares a truth that should be sobering to President Obama: “The fact is that we are likely to become more dependent on Islamic oil in the coming decades, not less,” he writes, noting that 11 of the top 15 exporters of oil are countries with Muslim majorities.
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thabet
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Arwi, and 
thabet are discussing. 
bk, and 3 others are discussing. 
Mc Kiernan, 
Maitham, and 1 other are discussing. 
hakim is discussing. 
shams, 
Dan, 
Tec15 are discussing. 
aziz 7:06 am on May 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
of course, it isn’t doing them much good: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/01/poll-many-muslims-in-mideast-pakistan-have-poor-view-of-al-qaeda/
thabet 4:47 pm on May 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Also according to Pew, al-Q seems about as popular in the regions polled as the US…
That should tell you something.
aziz 6:33 am on May 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
not really. Love/hate of the US is basically irrelevant – its driven by perception towards the IP conflict, towards imperial legacies, western history, and of course local islamist propaganda. AlQ’s declining popularity is relevant because it is declining – as purveyors of the propaanda themselves, its quite significant that they have squandered all their good will. Their claim to legitimacy was accepted at face value when it was theoretical, but now that people have had a chance to tase their actual rule they are repulsed.
Arwi 9:22 am on May 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Love/hate of the US is driven by “perceptions” of the IP conflict, imperial legacies, western history and Islamist propaganda. So drones killing civilians, tellig lies to make war on Iraq, shock and awe, Guantanamo, torture in Abu Ghraib, the presence of US troops,, etc. are not factors.
Strange that attitudes towards the US are driven by “perceptions” rather than experiences, when any number of places in West Asia have experienced US actions directly.
aziz 7:13 am on May 3, 2012 Permalink
I didnt say that attitudes were driven by perceptions of the US, I said they were driven by perceptions of the IP conflict.
I dont think its accurate to lump all US actions into one category either. Afghans and Iraqis alike will are not unanimous in their judgement of our actions there (as evidenced by eth very real angst in both places amongst the public about our impending withdrawal).
Arwi 9:24 am on May 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
The popularity of Islamist groups has been in based in the provision of social services. The strange thing to me is that the US doesn’t draw the support away by providing better services. The aftermath of the Pakistani earthquake was an ideal opportunity.
aziz 7:15 am on May 3, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I dont think its that simple. Providing “services” isnt as easy as dropping off a load of supplies here and there – it requires building an infrastructure and then active governance. As much as lefty critics compllain about the cost of war, the cost of such services would be massively greater (especially because unlike soldiers, the civilian workforce required would be much more vulnerable and tempting an effective a target).