Hisd65 Final Essay: The Crucial Negativity of the Islamic Other

Initially, the deconstruction of the terms “Islam” and “The West” appears to be a useful genealogy of terms that appear to structure violent foreign policy or general misunderstandings about some supposed essential difference. Indeed there is already intertwined into the history of the West, the Islamic encounter – the Muslim presence in Spain geographically and the massive intellectual influence Muslims have had on phenomena such as the renaissance already illustrate that such a supposed binary in its crude form is unhelpful and incorrect, as these terms intersubjectively constitute one another. Paradoxically however, Derrida mentions how deconstruction is a process of both questioning, and yet maintaining often the necessity of a concept. It involves often a determined effort to maintain “the survival of those concepts that one is in the process of questioning” (Cherif,53). As in not just the survival of the terms, but a remaining insight into why they had been opposed in that fashion to begin with, and what it would mean to engage in a deconstruction. In collapsing distinctions regarding the “West” into the American West vs European West for example that have different characteristics, and “Islam” into the variety of contexts that can be considered Islamic, such as the Middle-East, South Asia, South-east Asia etc. We provide the useful tool of deconstructing certain binary oppositions that orientalists may find essential to these concepts, as unchangeable and static essences which can never be reconciled. However, simultaneously we cannot then throw these concepts together – there remains a fundamental distance between even an indigenous understanding of what it means to be Islamic as opposed to Western, although these concepts are in flux. For example, can Islam be integrated into the triptych formula that Cherif offers that for him categorizes the modern? Namely the tripartite combination of secularism, scientism, and capitalism (Cherif, 49) which according to Cherif have caused the mass alienation and conflicts characterizing modern society. By this we mean the regulation and removal of Islam from public life and all religion from public life under the name of secularism, as France is attempting to do for example, the scientism of assuming that only scientific inquiry provides acceptable knowledge about the world and must be the only epistemological framework we consider in any given public discourse (as opposed to say even moral philosophies), and finally a strong commitment to global capitalism in all its forms which often contradict the spiritual ethic of Islam. Cherif and Derrida both support secularization, as a process and ideal, but in direct contrast to a kind of violent attack on religion in the public space – again which in our current contemporary context such as in France is justified more and more in relation to something like secularism.

Islam, it seems according to both thinkers cannot easily be integrated into these categories without seriously reconsidering them. Although Islam can be for them secular, scientific, and universal it cannot be in the violent state-enforced removal of public religious imagery, the scientism which assumes the inability of any other attempt at understand the world and social life, and finally a globalizing capitalism which seeks everywhere to create markets and commodification as opposed to pursuing some higher moral ideal. In all these cases, what is Islamic cannot be easily mapped onto what is “modern” or “Western” in the way that a deconstruction of the initial binary between Islam and the West would lead us to think. There is one more fundamental difference between Islam and a more contemporary neoliberal global system that must be referenced as well – the inability of something like neoliberal market rationality to encompass religious ethics and decision-making. Wendy Brown mentions in regards to the political rationality of neoliberal governance, borrowing from Foucault, that neoliberalism is not solely some abstract set of policies implemented in the economic sphere. Rather as Foucault says, modern norms of governance seek to construct the “conduct of our conduct” (Li, 1) – we are taught to behave in certain fashions, while experiencing this as a form of free expression, that is in reality according to the precepts of governing rationalities. Since it is difficult to explicitly regulate large populations down to the most minute details, governmentality relies on a kind of public culture or education towards certain goals, behaviours, and ideas which are beyond the uniform realm of a given regime or state apparatus exerting power but exist dispersed throughout different contexts and discursive spaces (Li, 2). We orient ourselves around certain values in the neoliberal era which require a kind of implicit and often unconscious self-policing and regulation. The state does not engage us in a kind of explicit repressive fashion because neoliberal governance occurs through norms which we ourselves integrate into our relation with the world – by this I mean that the whole of lived experience is governed by market rationality which we ourselves are the agents of. It is this inability to escape the political rationality of neoliberalism, that equally replaces the ability to meaningfully relate to religion. Religion is not one of the rationalities by which we make sense of the world – instead religious experience comes into a direct conflict with a market rationality that at every point attempts to make certain cost-benefit analyses of everything from ubiquitous questions on why we dress a certain way to more fundamental questions such as why do have human relationships at all.

This in my view directly contradicts religious rulings and precepts which at many points seek to escape rationality altogether – take the famous Hadith of the Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him “Charity does not decrease wealth, no one forgives another but that Allah increases his honor, and no one humbles himself for the sake of Allah but that Allah raises his status.” This is a transactional relationship that could be considered at the outset neoliberal for the one who believes in the divine recompense. Sure they are giving, but it is because they believe they will receive divine recompense. This reading from the neoliberal market rationality is aided by certain conceptions of Islamic ethics which seek to maximize their relationship to modern values. For example, I read an interesting journal article which mentioned that this exact Hadith on charity speaks to self satisfaction, psychological comfort, blessings from God, and most importantly the joy of giving itself (Baqutayan, 88-92). This seems almost perverse however. We seem to be giving, only in that we will receive in return something greater. Even our interpretation of religious edicts seem to be limited to this kind of transactional relationship – which escapes a kind of larger question on why we have human relationships to begin with. Ethically it seems untenable for example that our relationships with our loved ones are transactional – a kind of unfeeling commitment to someone only in relation to the good it brings back. However, we see that our contemporary relationships do tend to be transactionally related in this fashion. Take something like Tinder for example – the entire idea being that one can have casual no-strings attached relationships without the need for strong commitment. It is pleasure without risk – you organize entirely what you want from the relationship, namely sexual pleasure, without any of the resulting pains and risks associated with something like love. As Badiou mentions, we remove from love its otherness and alterity, we reduce it to a kind of error or risk we rather not engage in. For Badiou however, it is this chance, this ability to engage in “the event” which itself creates the possibility for difference and authenticity. Badiou says “Provided it isn’t conceived only as an exchange of mutual favours, or isn’t calculated way in advance as a profitable investment, love really is a unique trust placed in chance.” (Badiou, 17). More fundamentally this risk, this element of non-transactionality allows for experiencing the world from the perspective of difference (Badiou, 17) an alterity which cannot be found in transactional logic, due to the inherent risk of the proposition.

This is the response “of any power incapable of bearing the spectre of opposition” Baudrillard, 30). How can the Other, Baurdillard asks “unless he is an idiot, a psychopath or a crank, want to be different, irremediably different, without even a desire to sign up to our universal gospel?” (Baudrillard, 30). It is this anathema to the idea of opposition which so much so characterizes the other that is an “intellectual construct” of Western thought according to Cherif. The other, who does not exist solely as different but seeks to attack and reject the totalizing regime which seeks to coopt him is what our current ideals of homogeneity or “normalizing” also agree with – far from seeing Islam and the West are reconcilable categories, by stripping the other of their alterity we are already in agreement with the orientalist and fundamentalist assertion that there are essential differences in these categories which we must somehow fight against or oppose to one another. Instead, as Baudrillard hints to and captured in the political musings of Cherif and Derrida (Cherif, 87) in any resistance to a globalized homogenic culture we will be required to utilize difference itself, the vision of the other that is distant and unable to be rationalized and yet must be completely respected and dialogued with. This is the political vision offered by Derrida, who builds on the political possibilities and alternatives which Baudrillard does not delve into. What does it mean to have an other which we recognize as an other – and yet are able to have dialogue with, and to respect as they are in their alienness, and vice-versa.

The second is a more fundamental ethical question – can we have differing conceptions of ethics and the ethical good, or a true sense of plurality today? To what extent is something like plurality viable or desirable? If we assume that plurality and diversity are goods, worthy of pursuit, we will necessarily have to concede certain ethical grounds that we as a culture may find inalienable, to cultures that may not find them inalienable. Attempts in modern Islamic thought to rationalize or overturn traditional Islamic legal and theological tenets on homosexuality are a good example of this dilemma. Commonly, something akin to the sentiment “Islam is a religion for all times” is used to justify more socially progressive reinterpretations of classical Islam law or theological tenets. This is true – Islam engages in a universalism which upholds the idea that its tenets and structures of faith will last forever, yet simultaneously what lasts is the specificity of some of its commands, while others may be historically contingent. If homosexual relations must be reinterpreted in light of modern ethical standards, or something such as interfaith marriage, what about something like the command against interest? Can any Muslim country today avoid the international banking system which at every turn contradicts their religious beliefs? What system then do we create to determine which beliefs are universal and which are specific, and how we sort through which commands can be reformulated for the modern sense and which cannot? This is a hermeneutical question which is outside both the scope and capacity of this paper to address but reveals one more important question – what are our underlying motivations for a reformulation of certain Islamic ethical concepts?

The question of how we respond to ethical interiority or exteriority in regards to deriving ethics from scripture is a more complex discussion than I can engage in – but the concern remains for our purposes, that the ethic of exteriority even if inseparable from interiority, exists in greater degrees in regards to some ethics than others due to a social milieu in which such a re-evaluation might be necessary. It becomes imperative, for a Muslim who sees themselves as a pursuer of ethical perfection, to reconcile why something generally considered to be ethically acceptable in modern culture, is not so in their traditional legal and theological frameworks. A strong divide between solely internal as opposed to external extractions and derivations of ethics from scripture is not possible, but it is true that certain social contexts have a greater degree of external ethical pressure than others. For example, the need to reconcile religious justifications of slavery would be stronger in African-American communities than Anglo-American.

Unfortunately, this is a situation where it would come down to the intention of the interpreting subject, something which is itself difficult to ascertain. We can imagine without difficulty, someone who completely unfeeling towards the social context and pressures of todays ethical paradigms, legitimately believes from a kind of interiority of the source texts, that they justify the ethical permissibility of homosexuality. He is engaging in what traditional scholars would consider the normative journey of ascertaining and attempting to identity normative moral standards and legal derivations from source texts. But we can imagine with the exact same ease, in fact much more, someone ascertaining ethical values from larger culture first due to social context and pressures, regarding issues such as the permissibility of homosexuality and then reading these into source texts or finding ways to justify them. Again, traditional scholars have had to use both of these tools pragmatically, and there is no idealist reality in which only the first method was used, indeed the second method is just as traditional. However, generally the justification for reinterpretation occurs following the idea that some ethical precept or legal derivation was acceptable at some given time period for some given rationale. And now, in a different time with different rationale’s we no longer need to, nor can rightfully implement or refer to those ethical concepts and laws. The difficulty or lack we find in todays reinterpretation is this exact cause of rationale – for example what rationale was historically fulfilled by saying homosexuality is sinful? And in what way would that rationale not be present today? In essence, there is a conflation occurring between what is contextually ethical, practical, and necessary as opposed to what is universally so. No Muslim would claim for example that the prayer is somehow no longer mandatory because we spend more of our day working than we have historically – thereby it is universally ethically mandatory. Homosexuality thereby would have to be justified from a strange position then – either it was somehow ethically justifiable in the past but no longer, or more controversially that it has always been ethical and the theological virtues of the former peoples, are not something Muslims can rely on as a given or as normative.

The further concern with the second method is of course the disturbing aspect that we are simply finding a variety of perspectives from which to justify what is already homogenously considered ethically acceptable. While there was previously a kind of unanimous agreement in the Abrahamic faiths for example on the sinful nature of homosexuality, all three are now having discussions on its permissibility – are we to assume all of them, simultaneously underwent a realization akin to the first method? Or, as is most certainly the case, do we assume the second method of re-evaluation is occurring here. Again, the problem with the second method isn’t it being supposedly non-traditional. Only that the second method, when concerning statements of universal ethical good or normative ethical understanding, is much more susceptible to legitimizing a kind of totality of morals, beliefs, and values – such that there is no ability for true negativity to exist. The Islamic other is simply a different perspective of looking at global values we have already conceded to be undeniable. There is no alternative place from which morals, values, or beliefs can arise. There is no ability for a true pluralism to exist – where through individual autonomy for example, we independently reach or willingly adopt ethical conclusions deviating from any popular accepted ethical precept in modern culture. Progress, rationality, and individual freedom for example are just some of the vague terms that now occupy a kind of global ethical paradigm which all particular paradigms are expected to adhere to despite these terms meaning different things to different people fundamentally, and often defined in regards to the interest of any given hegemonic group. When the plurality of ethical systems must necessarily comply to a uniform idea of the ethical good – this undermines the ideal of private religious inclinations and freedom to religious belief altogether (Kutty, 2014). Just as the LGBTQ community deserves full constitutional and legal protections as a result of their right to foundational human dignity, so too Kutty argues we cannot compromise the religious persons access to their religious conscience without undermining the essence of difference itself.

Thereby, if liberal societies are free to even intervene in societies where the standard of freedom to leave isn’t truly present, can non-liberal societies equally do the same when standards of individual autonomy are threatened? The ability to determine which actor is capable of engaging in this kind of decision-making, is also left out of the discussion. How do questions of unequal political and economic power for example affect our ability to make these judgements? Further Crowder unlike some pluralists believes that we actually can weigh what are incommensurable values. What creates difficulty for other pluralists is that there is no universally adhered to primary value which would undermine all other values in relation to it. Thereby individual autonomy is desirable for Crowder, serving as an important tool in ethically organizing and prioritizing incommensurable values some of which may be more appropriate or useful at given times, subject to practical reason (Crowder, 125). For Crowder, societies require individual autonomy to promote a kind of internal diversity within members, as opposed to just a diverse set of uniform cultures. Although this is a strong ideal, how do we conceive of diversity in this context? In a given Muslim society for example you will find people adhering to different theological schools, different legal schools, different sects, and following often radically different ethical paths (the Sufi path as opposed to that of the Wahhabi for example). There is often a strong public consciousness and debate on these issues – would this suffice as the standard for internal diversity? If we mean necessarily that there has to be a large amount of secular thought present, it equally opens the question then, in a largely secular society whether religion can then be present in the public space in the same fashion. According to Crowder eventually we must use practical reasoning and the pursuit of individual autonomy to address these questions of incommensurable values to privilege one over the other when they are in conflict (Crowder, 138). Presumably, this can apply to a toleration-pluralism as well where eventually it may have to undermine its own toleration and engage in something like violent behaviour. Again however, the positionality of who is able to make the “rational judgement” is never considered. For example, in contemporary France one can easily say there has been a rational judgement that to curb terrorism, we must ban the hijab, because we must value safety more than personal liberty even though both are important to us. Yet left out of this kind of autonomy and practical reasoning is the Muslim voice itself.

Once again this leaves us unable to answer the empirical question of whether this would promote pluralism to begin with, or only further entrench the capacity of some large culture to rationally weigh its own incommensurable values in whatever fashion it found reasonably advantageous. In this case some monistic value may even help found more just decisions, than a kind of pluralistic weighing. Crucially however, Crowder is claiming that value-pluralism itself implies liberalism, as liberal individual autonomy is the basis for preserving value-pluralistic socities. However, this conception of plurality simply seems too focused on some autonomous rational agent that may well not exist. As in this marriage between a kind of universalist liberal assertion of individual autonomy and value-pluralism is founded on the idea that this individual autonomy exists to begin with – whereas if it doesn’t, to assert this individual autonomy we may even need some group solidarity against behaviour modification process’. The very tension between the inability for liberalism to fulfill its own universalist ideals, leads us to question why it should be a basis for value-pluralism to begin with.

Similar arguments in favor of liberalism, even in value-pluralist contexts are common. Galston argues that since we cannot actually morally justify imposing our values on any other group, we must at least prefer liberal societies to non-liberal ones, in that they allow for the expressive liberty of citizens to pursue the ethical good as they see fit and thereby reflect the possibilities of plurality itself (Moore, 1). Crowder then argues that liberal societies promote the greatest amount of values to be pursued, which are intrinsic goods and thereby are morally preferable to non-liberal societies. (Crowder, 131). Gray argues that the previous two arguments are incorrect, as non-liberal societies may allow for the expressive liberty of citizens or a wide array of values more successfully than liberal ones (Moore, 2). This argument is quite interesting, as we see again “expressive liberty” is for Galston just assumed as an empirical fact of liberal society, as is supposedly the ability to pursue as many values as possible by Crowder. Whereas, our discussions of auto-exploitation from Han, governmentality from Foucault, and behaviour modification from Zuboff complicate the foundational assumptions of these arguments. Instead, as Moore argues, the fact is itself impossible to somehow compare or rank what are considered incommensurable values, or to argue for simultaneously value-pluralism and liberalism (Moore, 2). This is further complicated by the monistic retort that the value-pluralist assertion of incommensurability is itself stated as an objective fact, which functions as a monistic ethic. Thereby, any criticism of monistic values must self-reflexively also not take their own criticism as valid or applicable.

Rabi'a. “[O My Lord] by Rabi'a.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55267/o-my-lord-56d236a947ec8.