Khaled Ahmed - Hazards of Identity: Modern societies are rejecting globalism for exclusionary categories.
The 21st century has
hardly begun and the great promise of globalisation and “liberal inclusion” of
the last century is fading. The world’s powerful states, heretofore wedded to
internationalism, are turning inward and seeking their primeval identities.
Nations are seeking identities away from multiculturalism and wish to protect
themselves by banning immigration. Borders are being closed, and those who had
crossed them decades earlier as welcome guests are being treated with
intolerance.
Anthropologist Akbar
Ahmed has found the rise of identity politics in Europe interesting enough for
him to undertake a journey to Europe to experimentally see if his earlier
theses on the subject jibe with what is happening now. His Journey into Europe:
Islam, Immigration and Identity is a kind of culmination to his three earlier examinations
of “tribal” identity. As Ahmed surveys the identity-seeking Europe, he is
reminded of the “inclusive” state of Abdur Rahman in al-Andalus (Iberia), in
the 8th century AD. It was remembered for its “Convivencia”, or the idea of the
living together of different identities, which Islam has forsaken today. Rahman
was an Umayyad prince from a Berber mother in Syria. He was a descendant of the
founder of the dynasty who had married a Christian woman — thus indicating the
source of his “Convivencia” in al-Andalus between Muslims, Christians and Jews
tolerant of multiple identities.
But, this Convivencia
that one puts today in front of a Europe forsaking the Enlightenment and
seeking “identity”, did not last: Ahmed compares it to what is happening today
among nations. One is reminded of Jamaludin Afghani too, who opposed Syed Ahmad
Khan - an ancestor of Akbar Ahmed - in India, but proposed acceptance of Islam
in Europe. Afghani possessed a lot of traditional learning that eased his entry
into the Muslim societies of Turkey, India, Iran and Egypt. But he got his
comeuppance in France, where orientalist Ernest Renan told him, prophetically,
that his claim - that Muslims would ultimately turn to reason and modernity - will never be proved right as the Muslims will defeat his thinking just as they
had rejected Ibn Rushd (Averroes) in the 12th century for having learned too
much of Aristotle.
Today’s European
intolerance of the Muslim minorities reminds one of an early warning by a
European genius in a different context. Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) in The
Origins of Totalitarianism traced the modern state’s internal cleansing to its
second project: Of conquering other territories and killing off the population
there through genocide. It is the imperialism of the modern state which gets
internalised when it purges its own population to eliminate those who are
“different”... read more:
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/hazards-of-identity-globalisation-21st-century-identity-politics-5827089/More articles by Khaled Ahmed
