From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: AUT: Re: Re: Reply to Harald
Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2001 10:40:38 -0500


Hey Harald,

I am re-writing this as my PC was hit by a power surge which erased what I
had written  Argh.

Anyway, I think we agree mostly.  After all, you will not find me defending
any religion.  I agree with marx that the all critical thought begins with
the critique of religion.  But we have some nuanced differences.

On the Christian Fundamentalism question, I would certainly agree that in
most of the world, Christianity does not hold the kind of sway or influence
comparable to Islam.  However, I am not so sure that is the case here in the
US.  Christian Fundamentalism has a powerful hold on sections of this
country, forms an important, maybe the most important, section of the Far
Right, and has carried out substantial campaigns against basic civil and
human rights with some degree of success (abortion rights, reintroduction fo
prayer in public schools, banning of teaching evolution or of making
evolution a "theory" alongside creationist nonsense.)  Also, it is no
accident that school textbooks all get tested in Texas in the core of the
Bible Belt (even though Texas is 49th in education in the country out of 50
states!) which also happens to be the core of religious conservatism.  The
last several presidents have been religious fundamentalists, more or less,
and only one Catholic has ever been President because, in part, of
anti-Catholic sentiment in large parts of the country.  You can drive
through the South and see billboards warning against Papism and Catholicism.
Also, these types of Christians do not consider Catholics to be Christians.
And the first phrase up when the bombing happened: "God Bless America".  So
much for secularization and separation of Church and State.  And I can
guarantee you they did not include Allah among the manifestations of God
when they said it.

And I still have not seen anyone address my point about Judaism and Islam.
There is at least one well-known Israeli author who has written extensively
that Zionism in fact flows from Judaism.  Now, if we are going to connect
Islam with Islamic Fundamentalism, then I think we need to have the courage
to challenge the Judaism/Zionism connection, something which will push some
heavy buttons, since Israel is also an ethno-theocracy.

As for the things you were worried I attributed to you, Harald, I did not
mean for it to come off that way.  I was still kinda pissed and not
differentiating carefully enough, but I know you did not say those things.

And yes, this act is different.  Each of the acts I sited were different.
However, when people (again, not necessarily you) start talking of this as
an unspeakable tragedy or as 'madness', I see this as no more or less
'unspeakable', 'inhuman', 'mad', etc. than those other acts, REGARDLESS of
the fact that they were different.  I refuse to accept that Bush's Christian
Fundamentalism is less insane.  I refuse to accept that the US can claim
this one incident as incomparable to anything ever done by the US to anyone
else.  We have to break the religious sentiments of "My country right or
wrong."  The distance from patriotism to religion has shrunk.  I will not
credit the arguments of the media or much of the Left that, unique tho it
may be in some important ways, it is more horrific, more shocking, or more
irrational and heinous, that the acts I listed.  Each of them was a product
of the particular working out of capital at a particular moment.  The enemy
is capital, and to the extent that each and every religion is nowadays tied
into capital, regardless of its former foundations and precisely because
religion has always been about alienation and therefore needs and propagates
alienated society in order to justify its own existence.

In the end, this is not a huge sticking point between us.  I think.  After
all, I don't think it would mean that either of us would be any less opposed
to the mass targeting of Muslims, Middle Eastern, North Africa, and South
Asian (or others mistaken as such) peoples now happening, thanks to the FBI.
I don't think we would be less opposed to mob attacks on the same
populations.  The question is now how we deal with this ideologically, on
how we craft our political response.  On how we deal with the question,
relevant for us, of what prospects for something else in places where
Islamic Fundamentalism holds some sway.  Fighting for secularism is
certainly one option.  However, I am afraid that we can also overstate the
power of fundamentalism.  If Caffentzis is right, then fundamentalism may
also have a much weaker hold in some ways than we think.  Actually, I don't
know.  I know so many secular Middle Eastern, North African and South Asian
people that it is hard for me to gauge from here.

Anyway, going on a day trip.  Cheers.

Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba-AT-online.no>
To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2001 12:56 AM
Subject: AUT: Re: Reply to Harald


>
>
> >My reply:
> >I have never denied that Islamic Fundamentalism is reactionary.  I find
it
> >funny that even though I have stated my point rather clearly on this that
I
> >continue to be treated as if I am defending the Taliban.  Your piece
mixes
> >Islamic Fundamentalism, which is a specifically Modern and capitalist
> >ideology pulling on a supposed 'traditionalism', with Islam, which has
all
> >kinds of messed up stuff in it.
>
> I have never suggested that you defended the Taliban. That would be real
> stupid of me. What I am suggesting is that Islamic fundamentalism cannot
> be reduced to Islamist fanatics. Or to it put otherwise just as what you
> might
> refer to as Christian fundamentalism was once was the orthodoxy, at the
time
> when talking about Christanity still had a real meaning, so the theology
of
> Islamic fundamentalism  not far removed to what is preached in mosques
> qu'ranic schools in large parts of the world, with the important exception
> that most believers not act on it . Not many "good muslims" would  deny
> when pressed on it that the death penalty for adultary or apostasy forms
> an integral part of Islam, even if they would try avoiding talking about
it.
> This
> may be a political controversial but not theologically. Rejecting the
divine
> words of the Prophet is not very popular within Islam, and can also be
> quite deadly. That there really is no way out of Islam once you have been
> part of it, also forms an important background for that so few
non-believing
> or agnostic muslims openly express it.
>         Today Islam _is de facto  a far more reactionary religion than a
> Christanity
> reduced to shadow of its former self, if for no other reason that Islam
> yields
> far more _secular_ power.
>         To draw an analogy between the position of contemporary
Christanity
> with that of contemporary Islam is to use the words of Lafif Lakdar
> (Khamsin:
> Journal of Revolutionary socialists of the Middle East, 1981) "just to
make
> mockery of conrete history".
>         Seperation of religion and state sounds fine. You make it sound
like
> it was only some extremist fringe that could oppose this. But the very
idea
> of such a seperation is essentially un-Islamic. In this particular sense
> Islam
> was always more secular than Christanity. Islam is in its very origin
> statist
> (or rather empirical) more than anything else. Christanity became an
> emperical  legitimation on a later stage, but was in its origin a far more
> inward-looking religion. Thus the the Rule of the Four Rightly Guided
> Caliphs
> forms an integral part of (sunni) Islam, just like the "sunna [the words
and
> deeds] of the Prophet" does.
>         This is of course also the problem for modernisers, and why it
makes
> it very hard for them to raise a critique of the Islamists within a
Islamic
> framework., as the former tend to be far closer to its root and essence.
>        As for hindusim you can believe almost what you wish, and then
there
> are so many Gods to choose between.
>
>
> But I entirely agree that with should clearly diffeniate between Islam
> and the mass of muslims, or as you put it "the mass of people who
> would never have supported this horrific act ". No disagreement on
> this, even as you see I pose it differrently.
>
> That people loose their senses in no way excludes a rational socio-
> economical understanding of what produces such manifestations
> of madness. Capitallist alienation increasingly does so, something U.S.
> schools have seen some very deadly examples of in the last couple
> of years. My understanding of the event is otherwise almost indentical
> to the analysis of George Caffentzis you appreciate, apart from
> that I have focused less on Saudi petroleum. And a high degree
> of irrationality in no way stand in contradiction the political project
> of empire building, I am convinced was strartegical thinking behind
> the creation of the World Trade Center Graveyard. There was a lot
> of irrationality at the roots of Nazism also.
>
> You write "I really want to know who the hell thinks this act is a worse
> act of terror than the acts I have listed [Dresden?  Than Hiroshima?
> Than Dien Ben Phu? Than Cambodia?  Than Iraq?  Than allowing
> the cynaide gassing of the Kurdish peoples by Turkey? all of them
> carried out by secular states]"
>
> It is not a question of worse, or not, Chris. That is an entirely
different
> question. I also think there is a great difference between the Khmer
> Rougue and Dresden and Hiroshima. Again not a competion of what
> is worse but very differerent phenomena.
>
> I have never mentioned the word evil, nor would I ever think to do
> so. One thing is obvious is that hijackers were idealists, and the
> victims of capitalist alienation as much as everyone else who died.
>
>
> You write; "Frankly, I am not worried about the Taliban imposing a
> dictatorship in the US  ..." Neither am I, but I am worried about the
> the very deadly counter-revolutionary force the Islamists represents
> in many parts of the world, and as such also in the United States,
> Europe etc.  Thus an idelogical struggle against everything they
> represent must be crucial for any social revolutionary strategy, and
> I have very hard to see how this could be accomplished without
> a crtique of Islam.
>
> I wholly agree with you that globalised capitalist alienation produces
> the inflation of madness. But that does not in itself make some of
> its fruits less irrational, just that it is possible to gain a rational
> understanding of the forces which went into creating it.
>
> You write:
> "And this is my point above all else.  We need an actual analysis.  In the
> end, whatever you call people is less relevant than having a thoughtful
> analysis that will let people grasp why this happened and connect it to
the
> rest of the world. "
>
> And my point is that by refusing to admit that Islam is a real factor in
> this, that is a real social force in many parts of the world in a way that
> christain beliefs are not,  such an analysis will have to remain very
> incomplete. I have no problems at all with that "the relationship to glo-
> balization and class composition,"  must from an essential part of
> any analysis. In fact I take this for granted. But Mosques and Qu'ranic
> schools etc is not at all an insignificant factor for the understanding
> of class compostion. Something the case of Afghanistan is an all
> too obvious example of, as the link to Saudi petroleum money also is.
>
>
> I could understand News & Letters refererence to Strasserism, not to what
> you have written in any way, that was ridiculous, but to some "third
> worldist"
> more less maoist influenced currents of "the left, " expressed perfectly
by
> the political journey of Horst Mahler.
>
> Harald
>
>
>
>
>
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