Rohini Hensman: Steering Between Islamophobia & Muslim Fundamentalism - Leftist positions on the Veil
Pervez Hoodbhoy, in a chilling article entitled ‘Drones: theirs and ours,’ begins by saying that a drone is a programmed killing machine, and goes on to describe the US drones that have wrought so much havoc in Pakistan. He then makes a dramatic switch: ‘Pakistan has many more drones than America. These are mullah-trained and mass-produced in madrassas and militant training camps. Their handlers are in Waziristan, not in Nevada. Like their aerial counterparts, they do not ask why they must kill. However, their targets lie among their own people, not in some distant country. Collateral damage does not matter… The walking (or driving) drone’s trail is far bloodier than that of the MQ-1B or MQ-9; body parts lie scattered across Pakistan… As a murder weapon, the human drone has no room for moral judgment, doubt, remorse, or conscience’
The term ‘fundamentalism’ is actually a misnomer, since there are, in the case of every religion, basic disagreements about what fundamentalists claiming allegiance to it regard as ‘fundamental,’ and what progressives claiming allegiance to the same religion regard as fundamental. Nonetheless, the term has now passed into common usage, and will therefore be used here in its accepted sense. The object of faith, for fundamentalists, is clearly defined, absolute, and cannot be questioned. It therefore provides a stable point of reference in a world that is otherwise changing rapidly, creating all manner of insecurities. This characteristic of fundamentalism has led to its being explained as a response to capitalism and modernity: a clinging to certainty in a world where, in the words of the Communist Manifesto, ‘All that is solid melts into air’. In Karen Armstrong’s words, ‘Fundamentalists will often express their discontent with a modern development by overstressing those elements in their tradition that militate against it. They are all – even in the United States – highly critical of democracy and secularism. Because the emancipation of women has been one of the hallmarks of modern culture, fundamentalists tend to emphasise conventional, agrarian gender roles, putting women back into veils and into the home’ (Armstrong 2001: 141).
Thus fundamentalism is a very specific type of response to capitalism and modernity: areactionary response. Its purpose is to provide justification and reinforcement for the domination of those who have traditionally exercised power within a community: men, religious leaders, community elders, and so on. It speaks for the oppressors whose power to oppress is being challenged by modernity and especially by democracy. It is therefore politically right-wing. It is important to distinguish between religious fundamentalism (which is not necessarily violent) and the political use of fundamentalism (which almost always is); but the abdication of the right and responsibility to think and make moral judgments for oneself makes fundamentalists easily manipulable by right-wing political leaders.
The critical difference between fundamentalist interpretations of religion and progressive ones is that the latter encourage critical thinking and independent moral judgments on the part of their followers while the former absolutely prohibit any such thing. In an article on Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot by the Taliban because she insisted on the right of girls to have an education, Shehrbano Taseer, whose own father Salman Taseer was assassinated because he tried to prevent the execution for blasphemy of a Christian woman, Aasia Noreen, writes: ‘The power of ignorance is frightening…What the attack on Malala makes clear is that this is really a battle over education. A repressive mindset has been allowed to flourish in Pakistan because of the madrassa system set up by power-hungry clerics…The clerics don’t teach critical thinking. Instead, they disseminate hate…What schools with a good syllabus can offer is the timeless and universal appeal of critical thinking. This is what the Taliban are most afraid of’ (Taseer 2012). Clearly, Muslim fundamentalism, like all religious fundamentalisms, is politically right-wing, and conducive towards the growth of the extreme Right. It should go without saying that revolutionary socialists must oppose it.
The conception of Islam propagated by the Islamist Right bears a striking resemblance to the conception of Islam propagated by Islamophobes, and this makes combating Islamophobia more complicated than combating racism. ‘Race’ is a figment of the racist imagination, and anyone who is capable of independent thought can be convinced that it does not exist in reality. But the ‘Islam’ of the Islamophobes – or something very similar to it – does, unfortunately, exist; one cannot combat it by pretending it doesn’t... Read more:
