Unsettling Possibilities
BY SALAH A. A. KHADR
The importance of religion is by no means receding in the modern world. The salience of religious movements around the globe, and the substantial torrent of commentary by scholars and journalists that have accompanied them, attest to that fact. Whilst the “resurgence of religion” has been welcomed by many as a means of supplying a perceived and much necessary moral dimension to secular politics, it has been viewed by others with alarm, seen as symptomatic of a growing “irrationality” and intolerance in everyday life. A straightforward narrative of progress from the religious to the secular is no longer acceptable. Too often simplified to a requirement of the separation of religious from secular institutions in government, such perspectives can be extremely misleading since what is distinctive about the process of secularization is that it presupposes new concepts of religion, ethics, and politics, and new imperatives associated with them.
For many, to whom Islam self-evidently refers to an aggressive, hostile, irrational, and retrogressive tradition, the rise of the phenomenon referred to as “political Islam,” “Islamic revivalism,” and “fundamentalism” represents the next major threat to the West now that the spectre of Communism has diminished. But to what extent have strong, liberal secularist dispositions impeded the comprehension of certain trends pertaining to powerful nonsecular ideas? It would seem that to be “modern,” “rational,” and “objective” in our secular society, one is encouraged to an extent and within certain spheres to demonstrate a disenchantment with the notion of spirituality. Secularism to this degree, thence, is no longer regarded as a paradigm amongst paradigms, but the paradigm, the path to take.
Within this context, as John Esposito amongst others has suggested, the modern (Western) notion of religion as a system of personal belief makes an Islam that is comprehensive in scope, in which religion is integral to politics and society, and “abnormal,” as it departs from the accepted modern secular norm. Thus Islam, for many, becomes incomprehensible, irrational, extremist, and threatening.
To elaborate, it would appear that a Muslim critique and rejection of secularism arguably makes the West doubt the sincerity and superiority of its convictions, which are predominantly liberal in origin and orientation. This in turn leads to the questioning of some of its most revered beliefs. Yet at the same time, Western ingrained logic of liberalism teaches that free and rational thinking perforce culminates in the acceptance, not rejection, of liberalism. Focus then inevitably switches to the reasons and forces supposedly obstructing the Muslim way of reasoning, which can be seen as leading to the creation of two distinct classes of actors. They assume themselves to be free-thinking agents, employing reason to act normally; Muslims, in contrast, are considered irrational and not yet free to think or act reasonably. To admit that Muslims are free and rational agents would imply that from their rejection they know something about liberalism that has escaped Western scrutiny, in turn suggesting that the West’s own acceptance of liberalism has not been as free or rational as it thinks. Likened to an insecure neighborhood bully, thence, the West does not fear Muslims so much as it distrusts and fears itself.
Rather than recognize these unsettling possibilities, a choice is made to persist with the belief that Muslims’ troubles lie with themselves rather than with us. We see no option but to judge the differences between “us” and “them” as entrenched, perhaps immutable. In this way, Muslims come to be viewed as foreign threats and external agitators, whose “alien” nature runs far deeper than the possession of a different passport. The sense of difference and otherness we feel toward Muslims stems more from the subjective image we wish to have of ourselves than from objective attributes common to Muslims. As Vaclav Havel has suggested, hate is indeed more important for the hater than the object of his hate, implicit, that Western fears might have much more to do with themselves than with Muslims and Islam.
Salah A. A. Khadr is Center for Global Studies dissertation fellow and a PhD candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.
