By Samir Al Taqi
On November 29, Saied Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, laid out the vision of his party on a number of regional and Lebanese issues. The speech could be considered as a milestone in the development of militant political Islam.
During the Cold War, western Academia and pundits agreed on describing the world conflict as a clash between Western Democracies and Russian “totalitarianism”, despite the fact that Soviet Marxism did not spring from an Orthodox monastery. It was rather a natural product of the European Enlightenment movement. After the end of the Cold War, the failure of western policies in the Middle East was blamed on an evil enemy, Islamism. Yet, modern militant Islam could be anything but a simple casting of the traditional Islamic Ideology on the current political context.
On the contrary, Marxism and modern militant Islam are the result of a complex indigenous growth. The speech of Nasrallah is yet another demonstration of discredited clash of civilizations thesis.
Modern militant Islam is an exotic hybrid; originates mainly from the encounter of parts of the Islamic intelligentsia with radical western ideologies. Islamic militancy, be that Sunni or Shiite are legitimate and genuine product of modernism. Both incorporate elements derived from European ideologies into intellectual means.
In his speech, Nasrallah used analytical techniques and terminology pertaining to the same logic. He spoke about “the decline of U.S. hegemony in favour of a multi-polar system that yet to emerge.” He noticed that: “(This) deepens the crisis of the hegemonic world and the fall in the U.S. financial markets and global economy …. which reflects the structural height of the worsening crisis in the capitalist model”.
The idea of a revolutionary vanguard of militant believers does not originate from Islamic pedigree. It is borrowed from the modern and post modern experience dating back to the Jacobins period, through the Bolsheviks and latter with Marxist guerrillas.
As an example of the prevailing discourse, Al-Saied proved to be equally influenced by the Koran and the main paradigms in western philosophy represented by thinkers such as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Heidegger. The speech was rich in affinities to the vanguard post-modern thinking and activism in the West. There is no way to argue that this was a traditional Islamic thinking.
The encounter with western thought was not the only reason that led to the emergence of political Islam. The arbitrary geopolitical system that was founded in the Middle East after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and later by the fall of European colonialism played key role too.
Still many western or western-based writers maintain that the “failure” of radical Islam would lead to “much difficulty in reversing its trail of decline". They refuse to accept that the genuine power of modern militant Islam, like the Bolshevik revolution, is an assumption for modernity. It originates from a deepening crisis in their societies, from a complete dislocation of the young generation from the local corrupt comprador, from the utter failure to respond in any reliable way to either the challenges of nation-building and modernization or to the challenges of external intrusions.
Fuelled by an insoluble Malthusian dilemma, modern Islamist movements may well gain enough momentum to overthrow pro-western regimes. The likely outcome is chronic regional instability.
Islam once was tolerant and pluralistic religion, more advanced than anything Christendom could offer. Ironically, though, they seem to pine not for the complex culture that Islam once animated, but for that monument of failing western Enlightenment fundamentalism, the former Soviet Union.
Modern militant Islam is not a form of localised resistance to globalisation. In fact, It was, and may remain form some time, a universal political project.
In his speech, Nasrallah said: “American arrogance has left our nation and peoples with no choice but the choice of resistance, for a better life, and for the future of humanity, the future is governed by relations of brotherhood and solidarity in diversity (between different faiths) and is, a world of peace and harmony, just as laid out by the movement of the great prophets and reformers throughout history”.
Just like the neo-liberals and Marxists, Islamists are taking part in a grand discussion about how the world is to be governed. None is ready to entertain the possibility that it should always contain a diversity of regimes.
On this point, Islam, at least for the time being, differ from other "non-western" thoughts be that of India, China or Japan, which are much more restrained in making universal claims.
Meanwhile, much has changed since the cold war began. Unlike communism, modern militant Islam does not claim to be secular. For that one reason, it is puzzling for many who still hold on to the atavistic 19th-century belief that secularisation is a precondition for modernization. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the west is trying to impose its way of life on the rest of humanity believing that it suits everyone.
Nasrallah presented a much more diversified and tolerant perception of the future of Lebanon and the World: “It was the resistance in Lebanon, including the Islamic resistance first to the face of hegemony and occupation” ...”the whole nation and commitment to the national interests of Lebanon and to trust its people and holds dear the values of humanitarian law, justice and freedom”... they maintained this option at the time seemed to be the launch of the U.S. era in which attempts have been made to present it as the end of history”.
Having been in Paris in the 1968, I was not able to figure out the real differences between this discourse and that of the leftist movements in Western Europe that emerged in the demise of the Soviet power and reshaped the world in the last decades of the twentieth century. It is difficult to imagine that the demise of the US would be different.
- Comments
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|212.116.220.xxx |2009-12-10 09:18:08 Kemp - the question is...A well-written and a very elucidating article. The question remains, however, i
f we accept the concl usion of the author—that a so called post-modern I slam is
rising— is it going to be accepted, as a p olitical partner as well as an alter
native version of the Extremists, by the “Western Democracies”?
