the erosion of identity: christian twilight

Gallup Poll, 2008

Returning to another part of that Gallup poll mentioned earlier...

Why isn't the conclusion of that poll that, despite the number of adherents that Christianity can very legitimately claim for itself, it is a dying religion (to be as hyperbolic as possible)? This seems especially true of Protestant Christianity (whose traditional center has been America and Northern Europe). What that poll tells me, at the very least, is that, in the areas dominated by Christianity, Christianity is not the primary means of either interpreting or organizing people's lives.

That is obviously a broad generalization and the reasons for the erosion of Christian identity in these areas are diverse (Orthodoxy in Russia has obviously faced different pressures than the Christian stew that is found in America). And one would also need to be attentive, in a manner I have not, to the flourishing of Christianity in Africa and South America

-LoA

hat tip to Abu Noor

the erosion of identity

My own read on some of the data on religious identity is that liberal culture erodes Christian identity (I suspect it erodes everyone’s identity, but…). Thus you see the growth in those who identify themselves as “no religion”. Insofar as certain Christian groups were growing, it was limited to those groups that have no historical memory, lack a strong confessional identity and emphasize the immediate psychological experience of the believer as the basis of their Christian commitment (Evangelicals, Pentecostals, non-denominational, etc., etc.). This immediacy, the loss of any sense of belonging to a historically dynamic community, the denigration of rationality, all yield Christians who in fact lack an identity. Identity relies on memory; the absence of it means a Christianity that is simply caught in a perpetual present.


Uttaporn Nimmalaikaew, "Blowing Away in the White Sense" (2007) [Oil, Thread and Inkjet on Canvas]

In the face of this erosion, communities with a rich historical tradition find themselves resorting to authority to protect themselves from this religious-stream-of-consciousness. Authoritarianism is though just the other side to the coin of identity-loss. It reflects the fact that the persons no longer have a sense of why they believe the things they do and so the traditional practices are maintained, not by an ephemeral feeling, but by fiat. It stands in reaction to social forces that are chaotic, unmasterable by the individual, and therefore frightening. Authority may produce a kind of stability but it is no better at creating identity. Unable to experience the present moment as part of History, we, instead, believe because God (e.g., some guy in a dress, the Church or pick-your-random-book) says that is what we must believe in order to get the reward of avoiding relativism and getting our ticket punched to heaven.

-LoA

Recalling 12 September 1960

The day on which American Catholics decided they wanted to be Protestants after all.

It was the day on which JFK insisted that the separation of Church and State was not merely a legal principle found in the United States constitution, but that somehow he had so thoroughly internalized it that it had become etched on his soul and that Catholicism would have no political bearing on his life.

John Courtney Murray would provide the theoretical description and pushed for the Protestantization of Catholicism all the way to the Second Vatican Council.

And may God have mercy on our souls.

Recalling 1829

In 1829 the Catholic Emancipation Act was passed in the United Kingdom. In the minds of many at the time it was unconstitutional insofar as the sovereign was both the spiritual and political head of the people and as such there was no way in which Catholic's could submit fully to the crown. On the other hand, it seems more appropriate to see it as a broadening of the crown's power and a liberalization of the understanding of it's role. No longer would it be the case that English civil religion would be equated with one particular cultic form but instead the way was opened to embrace ever wider forms of cultic practice under the spiritual direction of the crown and thereby sublimate them to Englishness. In this way the law and rule of England came to be more uniformly and systematically applied to its citizens, eliminating a situation in which Catholic's existed at a lower or marginal level within the English state.

The existence of parallel courts of law at the peripheries of the English legal system is a return to the days prior to 1829 when it was recognized that there were those citizens and permanent residents of the nation who could never really be English and who did not reside within the fullness of English law. Rowan Williams, who currently has his plate full presiding over the dissolution of the Church of England, may well be presiding over the dissolution of 1829 and the liberal English state as well.


-LoA

When Liberalism Loses the Courage of Its Convictions

This week the chief prelate of the Church of England, the widely respected Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, suggested that England find a way to accommodate the traditional forms of Shariah law, especially with respect to family disputes, within the legal structures of the United Kingdom. Williams is a scholar and academic with outstanding works on topics ranging widely from the Arian controversy of the 4th c. AD to the work of the Russian Orthodox theologian Sergei Bulgakov. This is hardly likely to be a spontaneous or thoughtless comment; instead it is likely to be the studied opinion of the most vocal and important spokesperson of the English government on matters of religion and faith.

In recent days I have been preparing to teach a course on world religions. It is not a task I relish since the whole discipline of world religions is a minefield of Orientalism. As a theologian, I am struck by the lack of systematic thought that has gone into the idea of dialogue with those who exist extra ecclesiam. It has sparked in me a hint of admiration for Political Liberalism insofar as it has one of the most well conceived, systematic and coherent "theologies" of religion in the West. Insisting on the private and moral nature of religion, Political Liberalism has managed to sublimate the great traditions that preceded it under its banner. Its post-Christian Protestantism insistence on the separation of faith and works allows it to leave the beliefs of the traditions "intact" while nonetheless bringing the practice of all into accordance with its vision of who humans are and the nature of a stable human community. The Secular is not so much an a-religious space, but a transreligious one with new rituals and liturgical forms that organize and interpret - and ultimately relativize - the place of other traditions in the life of its citizens.

The allowance of parallel legal institutions with the UK strikes at one of the central tenets of Politically Liberal "theology" of religions: the separation of faith and works. As a Roman Catholic the separation was never particularly appealing and it has always fascinated me the extent to which Catholics have failed to fight against it in their desire to enter into the mainstream of Liberal cultural and political life (JFK for instance had to embrace it in order to legitimize his candidacy). Nonetheless, when Liberalism begins to question the foundations of its own existence one has to wonder whether or not Liberalism has lost its faith. Is the Liberal experiment failed?

And what next from the Archbishop of Canterbury? It has been suggested that the creation of parallel religious courts will help Catholicism in such matters as adoption. Many adoption agencies in the US and the UK have run into problems as they are required, under existing law, to allow same-sex couples to adopt children (in the state of Massachusetts for instance, Catholic charities no longer arranges adoptions). But what else will be covered. Will divorces be denied to Catholic couples? What criminal charges will a husband be allowed to bring against his wife if he finds out she is using birth control? If he finds out she had an abortion - i.e., in the eyes of the Church, committed murder?

Where is Liberalism going?

working through liberalism

MC Escher, "Liberation" (1955)



The Enlightenment, which was to deliver us from our tutelage and minority, operated on the principle that traditions and social stratifications that had been taken for natural were in fact unfounded human conventions. Having denaturalized that old feudal order the liberal revolution of freedom, equality and universal fraternity could be brought about. Yet, this political emancipation, as Marx called it, only affected persons at the most formal level, while leaving the very real divisions of civil life intact. Thus, it is no surprise in the face of the ubiquity of Late Capitalism that once again society is confronted with large scale social stratification that is effectively feudal-aristocratic insofar as one’s economic possibilities are largely a function of one’s ‘accident of birth’. At the same time, humanity is inundated with the frantic insistence on the naturalness of the liberal tradition itself, the universal desire for democracy and of course the natural rationality and freedom of capitalism.

It is no wonder, then, that among those who do not wish to enlist in the Crusade for democratic-capitalism, a position which has ironically taken on the role of a conservative ideology (Fukayama), there is a tendency to call for a renewal or completion of the Enlightenment (Habermas): in other words, a repetition of the strategy to denaturalize and revolutionize for the sake of freedom in order to overturn the lingering sources of stratification, division and alienation. Yet this is the very program of abstraction and formalization which brought about the current order.

Others, like John Milbank, suggest that the Enlightenment be abandoned in favor of a hierarchical but non-alienated society, one that can embody hierarchical difference without violence. While such a position does grasp the essential role hierarchy plays in current societal organization, and its ties to any attempt to discern the Good in the present moment, it ignores that the hierarchies themselves feed off alienation and violence in order to fulfill their educative function. As Milbank’s own mentor, Augustine, would have taught him, Cogito (knowledge) cannot loose itself from Cogo (power); hierarchies only ever exist because of sin.

Finally, then, ought one not see the possibilities of politics as present within the contradictions and alienations of political liberalism? This would mean not looking for some new solution, which would be nothing but the raising up of some new idol, one which would be judged by capitalism in any case. Instead by insisting on non-closure and relativity of this historical moment and the persistence of the desire for something other than what is, one is open to the New which is our salvation. Only in this way can politics legitimately be the work of the people (liturgy).

W(h)ither Fascism?

If one were to continue to propose entries for Milan Kundera’s “A Short Dictionary of Misunderstood Words”, certainly, today, one would need to add FASCISM. It seems to me there must be at least two components in place to have a genuinely fascist government, party, organization or movement. First, and probably most importantly, there must be a desire to rally the citizenry and organize the political realm around the idea of the nation-family: some common racial, or ethnic heritage, some common, natural, language, possibly, within which the cultural inheritance is passed down across the generations. There must be, then, a very rigorous form of nationalism, where the idea of the nation is taken quite literally: nation as a reference to our natus, or birth.

Secondly, fascism relates to the economic reorganization of the nation along the lines of a state capitalism in order to revitalize the productivity of the worker, but also to provide security for that same worker. Ernst Jünger, one of the economic theorists of fascism, argued in ¬The Worker (1932), for instance, that the revitalization of German industry was linked to the revitalization of German men, warrior-men, and thus the strength of Germany itself.

In both cases, what one sees is the nostalgia for roots in the midst of an uncertain, and economically unstable world, where one found one’s identity through conformity to one’s nature, one’s nation, one’s natus. Oswald Spengler’s “conservative revolution” was premised on the politics of natus, against the internationalism of liberalism and Marxism, and for Jünger, freedom was only found in giving oneself over in obedience to serving and protecting one’s natus. In both cases there was a longing for a strong leader who would rally and lead the people in this new nationalism.

From this it ought to be immediately clear that Islam is stridently anti-fascist. The Ummah, the unity of those who submit to God, is a unity of all peoples without regards to race, nation, or ethnicity. Politically speaking mainstream Islam has taken a variety of political forms, but none of them have been fascist: one could point to imperial or monarchical (with roots in the tribal organization) as perhaps the most common.

But of course this is not the way fascism is being used; instead it has been used to focus attention on elements at the Right extreme of Islam: Al-Qaeda, etc. Islamo-fascism: the enemies of liberalism. Now it is true, as already mentioned, that fascism was anti-liberal. Rightists from Spengler to Heidegger saw liberalism as decadent, promoting mediocrity and weakness. But this in and of itself is hardly fascist, it is a position shared by many Rightists. There is an abiding emphasis on the Ummah within Al-Qaeda, bringing together Arabs and Pakistanis and Afghanis and Southeast Asians in a way that is not always seen due to racial tensions that do persist among the various groups. Moreover the criticism of Anglo and Continental governments, the criticism of their decadence, is entirely religious in its basis, not nationalistic, and the same could be said for the criticism that one sees from the militant parties within Islam against certain Middle Eastern governments themselves, especially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Finally one must say that there is nearly no economic component to the critique or the ideological thrust of the militants.

The Islamists seem to have two basic goals: the re-establishment of the caliphate and the universal extension of shariah law. With that in mind, one is left to wonder why we do not call them what they are, virulently anti-liberal, imperialistic theocrats, instead of the terribly inaccurate “fascists”.

Is there, then, a rise of fascism today? If so, it must certainly not be where the Anglo and Continental governments have wanted to identify it. There has also been a tendency amongst the Left, following the initial impulses of persons like Michel Foucault, to identify the universal penetration of Anglo and Continental life by the forces of Late Capital, what Adorno would have called the Culture Industry, as fascist because of the surreptitious conformity it evokes in its citizenry, its ability to extend control. But again one must point out the antithetical nature of Late Capitalism, and really one should say Capitalism generally, and fascism, due to its universal aims and its reliance, in cohort with political liberalism, on universal ideas of nature and human nature that unite everyone of all races and creeds under the natural law of rights (and thus competition). Indeed one would have to say that those who oppose the globalizing impulse behind Late Capitalism are indeed the more significant regressive forces, and insofar as those concerned with distributive justice, whether liberal or Leftist, have been willing to accept such arguments within their ranks, they undermine the cause of freedom and equity which they pursue.

Likewise there is a tendency on the Right to identify, rather haphazardly, all liberalism as socialism and all socialism as fascism. One must say, within the American context at any rate, there seems to be no real socialism and certainly no Marxism that is politically effective. No one in the mainstream of American political life is engaged in a critique that points the historicity of the liberal-capitalist complex, nor possesses any sense that Capitalism might collapse under its own success. There is nothing in American politics that suggests that the dominance of Late-Capital and the accumulation of private property ought to be or can be disturbed. There is simply a preservation and management of what is apparently seen as the natural order. Moreover, even if there were a genuine Marxism in this country, one would be forced to point out that no two groups hated each other more than the Marxists and the fascists: Marxism insisted on a universal conception of freedom in which no one could be free unless all were free, while fascist nationalism sought only a local definition of freedom and believed that Marxism undermined the natural order of things. This is why Marxism was able to make common cause with liberalism against fascism in the form of the Popular Front: both Marxism and liberalism, in different ways supported a universal conception of freedom and equity.

One should grant, in passing, one significant point here, to the Right. The economic reforms of the post-depression era, not only in America, but throughout the liberal world, were largely inspired by fascism’s economic success. But one also has to say, knocking on wood, that fascism has no real soil in which to take root in America, as it might in Europe. America for Americans is almost laughable, compared to France for the French, or Germany for Germans. Who would those Americans be? There is no common natus, no common language or culture, around which Americans would be able to rally. This is the cause of Heidegger’s judgment that American’s could never be authentic: they are, by definition, a people without roots. And indeed fascism had far less success and support in the United States than it ever did in Europe.


One might ask then, one last time, whither fascism? Is there any sort of fascist revival going on in the contemporary world? I would suggest that there is though neither in the United States nor in the Islamic world, but once again on the Continent of Europe where it had its appeal to begin with. For many years countries like France and the Netherlands have prided themselves on being bastions of liberalism with a very generous immigration policy built around the Enlightenment ideal of cosmopolitanism. Yet in the wake of the instability in the Middle East and threats of terrorism primarily from Muslim groups and several incidents of violence, one has seen nationalism reasserting itself on the Continent.

The re-emergence of the Right, in the personage of the late Pim Fortuyn, for instance, was a clear sign of tidal change on the once liberal Continent. This was followed in France by the restriction of immigration, vigorous debate on the standards of citizenship, and a highly controversial law which banned religious attire in schools and government offices (while it affected many different groups in minor ways, it was aimed primarily at the elimination of girls wearing hijab to school). Finally, there are new and recent incidents in Germany, which has been suffering under a well publicized resurgence of Neo-Nazism in the public arena. Using a law dating which dated back to the Nazi regime itself, German law enforcement made the decision to arrest a Baptist woman for the crime of home-schooling her children. The mother, who remains under arrest, is now separated from her family; the father took the children and fled to Austria. Nor is the mother's case unique as the German government seems intent to crack down on home-schoolers, many of which are Christian. Meanwhile there was the infamous case of the Moroccan woman who was told that since she was from Morocco she should expect subhuman treatment at the hands of her husband and that German government would not get involved in any extraordinary way.

I would suggest that the real place we need to fear the resurgence of fascism is among our N.A.T.O. neighbors. The debates over immigration, citizenship and identity, the legal decisions that have been made recently in Germany and France are disturbing signs. The motivation in all cases has been a renunciation of liberal values and the demand that the people of the nation conform to some idea of the natural cultural identity of the nation-family and that all forces that run counter to that ideal must be suppressed in this time of crisis. Crisis was always the excuse of Rightists from the time of Oswald Spengler forward.

The mis-identification of fascism does not help us to understand the extreme problems and challenges that are faced in the Islamic world, while at the same time it blinds us to the regressive threats to liberalism much closer to home.

concerning pornography: a meditation on flannery o'connor

Sharon Sprung, "Folding Chairs" (2006)

Flannery O'Connor identifies two sins of art: sentimentalism and pornography. Pornography has several characteristics, but the one that draws the most attention from her is the breakdown of the public/private split. But perhaps one should reformulate this in a couple of ways; pornography can invoke at least two distinct strategies. First, it can proceed covertly, allowing the consumer (and porn is packaged for consumption; it lives on hunger and its own ability to depersonalize the product so it can be devoured) to indulge the desire which has been defined as illicit, while allowing the conscience to comfort itself by ultimately reaffirming the taboo that is the basis for the desire, and punishing the illicit behavior. A vast majority of crime drama functions precisely in this way – enticing the consumer through access, often, to sexual fantasies, especially of violence against women (e.g., the Nicholas Cage film "8mm" to a vast majority of the episodes of 'Law and Order: SVU'). This violence/sexuality at once titillates and entertains (all the hallmarks of classic porn), but always with the expectation, and ultimately fulfillment of, the criminal's punishment: the law of masochism! In this way the consumer is allowed to explore what is a very real desire (there would not be an audience if in fact no one was entertained), given a peak into a sexual world that is not "normal", is "taboo", but reassured that they are better off without the reality (and to be clear, this is not limited to sexual entertainment – e.g., "Terminator 2" founders helplessly in this tension). In this way it offers the virtual as an escape, secretly constituting the Real as flat and empty, and thereby deflecting desire.

But more explicitly, and traditionally, pornography is the use of the Real itself for entertainment. In this way, once again, the Real is emptied of depth and made into a commodity. Yet, this is, precisely, the very basis of the capitalist understanding of labor: the belief that human actions can be disconnected from the real life of a person, abstracted and consumed. And so the extension of pornography into the work place (e.g., reality t.v.) and other areas of life is unavoidable. Capitalism is pornography – the packaging of life for sale on the basis of the old theatrical/liberal/transcendental lie that we are not what we do: the disection of life into easily digestible, disconnected and meaningless moments.

What disgusts about the pornographic – or perhaps better to say, stigmatizes those associated with it – marginalizing or re-pulsing them to a state of social exile – is that they confront, unabashedly, the founding truth of the social-economic organization of this historical moment and present it naked and undeniable; there is nothing so intimate that it cannot be sold, nothing so interior to who we are that it cannot be commodified, marketed and consumed. The pornographers (or whatever one wishes to call them), the prostitutes: these are to contemporary society what the hangman was to a previous era: the stark image of the violence on which the society secretly thrives.

Let the one without sin throw the first stone.

-LoA

the opportunity for political islam

Philosophy, which once seemed obsolete, lives on because the moment to realize it was missed.”
-Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics

Apologia
I have spent much of my academic career in that borderless space known as Political Theology, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the differences between philosophy, theology and political theory. This will be a work of Political Theology. Yet I am nonetheless venturing out of my depth and so I must provide some sort of apologia, both in the technical sense and in the more colloquial sense, since it is not a work of Christian political theology, but Islamic.

First a defense: The idea of writing such an article arose out of a prior discussion concerning the establishment of an Islamic state. In this discussion I was merely a reader and critic, pointing out what I saw to be flaws in the proposal and questioning, in particular, the legitimacy of any State that did not have freedom of speech and the press. Without those, claims to legitimacy would have to be accepted entirely on the authority of those whose interests were most at stake. I was then asked my thoughts on the possibilities of a liberal Islamic state. What follows will constitute my reply.

Second an apology: This article is in danger of being the voice of yet another non-Muslim telling Muslims what Islam ought to be. This is not my intent. And, in advance of offending someone of faith due to gross errors of fact, my complete and utter lack of knowledge of knowledge regarding the tradition and the long history of its interpretation (which I am not even going to discuss), and the history of the political life of the Islamic faith, I wish to make clear that I am not prescribing what Islam should be. I wait with anticipation to see what Islam will become. All I wish to do here is outline what I (and who am I after all?) see as a possibility open to Islam in the present historical moment. I find it an interesting possibility because, as I will mention further in a moment, it is not a possibility that is open to Catholicism.


Political Liberalism
Political Liberalism emerged in an attempt to overcome certain social tensions, particularly religious tensions, that were present in various states, and presented itself as a way of subsuming and managing those tensions without completely evacuating or nihilating the differences out of which the tensions arose. This meant that social and political peace could be purchased without having to eliminate the contending parties. Instead, differences that had been politically decisive were reinscribed as civic divisions that did not extend into the public political sphere. In this way the divisions remained, but were demoted in importance, or rendered unimportant from the standpoint of the law.

Two key ideas were indispensable to this reinterpretation of previously political categories into civil categories. The first was abstract justice, or what Rawl’s terms ‘justice as fairness’ or the priority of Right over the Good. Abstract Justice is doctrine that all citizens are equal before the law. This is an abstract claim because it does not address equality in the day-to-day lives of its citizens. Instead it says that in the eyes of the government all the citizens are of the same importance and will be treated the same. Justice is blind. The other side of this is that everything that divides one person from another is allowed to remain at the level of civic discourse and practice: Jew or Greek, Rich or Poor, Male or Female; the divisions that structure private life are of no interest to the political entity.

The second important idea was that of negative freedom. For most of theological, philosophical and legal history, it had been assumed that the freedom to choose was really the least important understanding of freedom and the lowest kind of freedom. True Freedom was about the ability to do the Good. Even in figures such as Kant, whose politics are entirely liberal, one sees this idea persist in his account of autonomy. Autonomy is present when the will acts in accord with its own principles, and is not guided by outside forces which would enslave it. This meant that questions of the Good were inseparable from the establishment of freedom. It led to some of the grossest violations of the human person, embodied in the Inquisitorial dictum that “Error has no rights”.
Negative freedom is the freedom from constraint. The State would allow, inasmuch as it was possible, for persons to pursue whatever Good they saw fit. The State would be indifferent to this. The State would simply provide the framework within which persons were safe to pursue their freedom and did not live in fear of having their freedom arbitrarily violated or constrained by other citizens or the State itself.

Since the wars of religion provide such an important mythological underpinning, even to this day, for the justification of Political Liberalism, I will simply use religion as an example of the way in which these two doctrines served to eliminate political unrest. First the State became blind to the professed religion of its citizens because of Abstract Justice. In a court of law, if and where one attended religious services, or what one believed was irrelevant to one’s standing in the eyes of the law. This likewise meant that the law itself could not be written in such a way as to promote or protect one religious body over another. Secondly, people were then allowed, on the basis of negative freedom, to pursue whatever religious affiliation they desired as a civic or private matter. The question of the Good was left to individuals and to voluntary civic organizations to work out as they saw fit, as long it did not disrupt public order.

In all that has been said in this section thus far we have simply presupposed the State, but let us say one final word about the Political. Liberalism, taken on its own, is at least super- if not anti-political. The claims of Liberalism concerning the Rights of Humanity arising out of the abstract equity that has been described and its ability to exercise its freedom independent of the interference of others conceptions of what ought to be done, is universal. Nonetheless, the turn to the Political recognizes the need for some body capable of providing the public order within which freedom might be pursued and a power capable of rectifying the situation should one’s freedom be violated. This political body can only be legitimate if it provides the necessary conditions of the possibility for individual persons to live out their freedoms and thus does not violate their inherent equity. As long as the Political provides this, to violate the laws of the State would be to violate one’s own person because one would be undermining one’s own freedom and equity.


A Liberal Islamic State?
Let us make a quick and clear distinction between elections and liberalism. The choosing of governments by elections is a secondary phenomena and is not of itself Liberal. Government’s based on elections, whether they be democratic or republican, etc., are not necessarily liberal. Nor does State need to have elections in order to be meaningfully Liberal, though elections are a handy way of allowing the people to ritually express their solidarity with the government which represents them. There is no inherent contradiction between democracy and the Islamic state. Recent elections in the Middle East should be ample enough proof of this.

Nonetheless I am going to argue that there is a contradiction between Liberalism and an Islamic state. Interpreted in a manner that is most benign, Liberalism misinterprets the nature of religion. It treats religion as if were merely a matter of the human spirit which is internal and private. Freedom of religion becomes simply a subdivision of freedom of conscience. Since the state deals in the material of human actions and religion deals with the internal human spirit, than can, by definition, be no conflict between the Political and Religious. Likewise, the religious institution is interpreted by Liberalism as a purely civic and voluntary society. Its actions do not and cannot, by definition, extend beyond the civic sphere. Its attempts to address social issues must act within the framework already provided by the state. Political life is, in no way, religious.

This in turns shows a rather fundamental anthropological misinterpretation on the part of Liberalism. Liberalism treats religion as if it were not a matter that concerns the human person in the whole of its being. Religion is merely one activity among others: one is a Muslim, a Girl Scout and a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. In fact, important Liberal theorists call anyone who allows their belief in God to underlie the totality of their actions a fanatic and insane (e.g., Rorty’s treatment of Ignatius of Loyola; or the Rawlsian discussions of how to interpret the Amish and why the government does not suppress them).

This error shows up in a more fundamental way even at the point at which Liberalism is closest to granting religious belief its full determination. Religion is a question of how human beings will pursue the Good. But by making it a private matter, Liberalism likewise reduces religion to an individual matter. Even if we do come together in some sort of voluntary society, e.g., the mosque, to ask the question together, the answers that might be given are denied to have any ultimate importance or address humanity at the level of its universal destiny. The determination of human beings according to the doctrine of negative freedom essentially denies that humanity has, as such, a purpose or goal beyond what the individual arbitrarily chooses to take up as a task. Understood this way, any claims that Islam tried to advance within a Liberal setting about humanity in its universality, about the orientation of humanity in the fullness of its being towards God, or that all are Muslim by birth, must inevitably be viewed as mere opinion and gross fanaticism, even if it is allowed as a matter of free speech.

Interpreted more perniciously, this is to say that Liberalism only allows religions insofar as they further the goal of Liberalism itself. Liberalism tolerates religions because for Liberalism the religions are Liberal institutions aimed the formation of good private citizens: thus the reduction of religion to morality that is characteristic of Liberal discourse. They direct the citizen toward particular types of social activities and deal with problems in the civil sphere which can not be easily addressed by the Political. Religions and other voluntary institutions are the ways in which Liberalism organizes and forms its citizens through everyday activities.

Pushed even further, Liberalism cannot allow the interpretation of Islam or any other religion to bear upon the totality of the human person, to raise questions of Ultimate or transcendent concern because Liberalism is itself an alternative religion. Liberalism itself is that which sets the terms for the totality of the human being. While it claims to allow human beings the free pursuit of private goods, the fact is that religious pursuits in the private sphere must conform to the preconditions set by public order: they must conform to the formal definition of being human that is already given at the level of the Political and which the Political enforces since any breach by the private sphere is condemned as an encroachment upon the rights of others. If this is true than it is not the case, as with the benign interpretation, that Liberalism is unable to address the totality of human existence. Instead, Liberalism does address the totality of human existence and considers the questions already answered. Liberalism is itself a form of religious dogmatism.

This interpretation is reinforced once one realizes that the public/private split that is enshrined by Liberalism is a mirror of the Protestant division between works and faith. Public works are not important to the salvation of the human spirit. Works are meant merely to conform to the law. What works one does is a matter of indifference before God, God only cares what is in the heart. Understood this way, Liberalism is a form of Neo-Protestantism or post-Christian Protestantism.


The Hegemony of Liberalism
Yet, one might still say that if there is to be an alternative to Liberalism and its constant companion, Capitalism, the only place that one can look for it, in the present moment, is from within Islam. I expressed this idea once before, though, as I said at that time, I find it highly doubtful that it will be able to organize itself into such an alternative. But doubt is not the same as impossibility, and I do think it is imaginable. So I will briefly outline certain seeds that might allow one to think an alternative.

Normally I argue that there is no outside or beyond with regards to the Liberalism-Capitalism complex. This does not ignore that there remain segments of the globe that have not been fully integrated into that complex, but says that this lack of full integration is indicative not of the incompleteness of the hegemony of Late Capital, but of the way in which those segments which are not yet integrated lag behind from a production standpoint. But this only means that they offer ripe territory for the expansion of Capitalism as the Liberalism-Capitalism complex are driven by its constant need to create new markets.

That supposed alternatives have not offered real resistance is becoming increasingly clear. One can see this especially with respect to the (former-)Soviet Union and with China. Neither the USSR nor China represented Marx’s dream of what a revolution should look like. In neither case did Marxism arise as the revolutionary overthrow of an industrialized society, but instead it arose in these largely rural societies as an expression of frustration by the peasant class against corrupt and decadent rule. Soviet Marxism especially had to engage in a kind of apologetic to explain how it was indeed possible to skip over Capitalism and arrive at the Worker State, while the Chinese Cultural Revolution unapologetically sent its urbanites out into the country-side for re-education. The truth was that the new order was not post-Capitalist at all, but was instead a way of beginning to overturn outdated feudal economies and begin to incorporate industrial power. They were playing economic and political catch-up. This process continues in Russia and China, each in its own way: perhaps more smoothly in China where the government has gradually brought its economic apparatus into contact with the world markets and thus also gradually introduced Capitalist and Liberal reforms.

One might make similar observations about Chavez, for instance. Once again one is looking at a region which does not have the economic apparatus in place, nor the political and cultural infrastructure, to avoid being swept up in the rush of Capitalism and so, in the name of socialism and populism, Chavez is using temporarily available financial resources to try to protect his country from untimely incorporation and act as a buffer against Capitalism and Liberalism. One must likewise recognize that the Venezuelan economy, even more drastically than the Soviet and Chinese economies that came before it, is not sophisticated enough to maintain this resistance for any length of time.

I see two reasons to hold out some hope that Islam will stand and offer a real, progressive, alternative to Liberalism-Capitalism. The first lies in the power of Islam itself. Islam is a rich and complex tradition that is the heart and soul of millions of people world-wide. This is not a Marxism that was thrust upon large populations who suddenly had to re-write their entire histories in order to understand the new ideas. State incarnations of Marxism have always been, to a certain degree, the attempt to create a cultural identity from scratch. Islam on the other hand carries with it a long history of discourse about the nature of being human, an understanding of justice and mercy, freedom and law, etc. which are capable of extension and explication in very diverse ways, and thus of adapting themselves to new and unforeseen circumstances.

Second, Islam is the dominant cultural force in parts of the world which are either under-Capitalized or resistant to Late Capital. At one level, one can express suspicion that much like South America and the pseudo-Marxisms of Russia and China, these are regions which are trying to adapt their modes of production in such a way that they can at once protect themselves against advanced Capitalist economies and catch up to them. I will return to this idea in the conclusion with some sympathy. But one must note that they do stand in an interesting position nonetheless. The center of gravity in Islam has always been Arabia and it is difficult to foresee this changing soon. The Middle Eastern economy (and allow me to include Iran in this picture) has largely been a mono-economy based on oil. Egypt is an excellent example of the struggle faced by Arabian states without significant oil reserves. Yet such a mono-economy is endangered. Technology is eventually going to push beyond fossil fuels and that future is probably none-to-distant. Second, oil is itself a dwindling commodity. Even if technology does not overtake these economies, time will very soon. The time is coming very soon when the Arabian economy is going to have to reorganize itself in a massive way or face complete devastation (this quite frankly is one of the major instances of short-sightedness in the United States’s plan to reduce its reliance on foreign oil; and in the massive waste of money that one finds especially in Saudi Arabia). This will be a moment of social and economic redefinition. Assuming that this is done with some foresight, that the Saudis and Kuwaitis, the Emirates, etc. still have significant cash reserves at the moment in which this begins, assuming that they can break free of a client-patron model of relationship between the state and its citizens, then they will have the opportunity to reorganize themselves in a truly progressive way. Unlike China or the Russians, the imminent and foreseeable demise of the Arabian mono-economy provides the motivation to undertake such a large scale project.


The Possibility of a Modern Islamic State
What we are envisioning then is not a Liberal Islamic state, but nonetheless a thoroughgoingly modern one. By modern we still make reference back to the tradition of Continental Philosophy. Negative Freedom was not the only doctrine of freedom to arise out of the modern period. Negative freedom was simply one doctrine in an era fascinated by the idea of human freedom. Many recognized the limits of negative freedom and continued to advocate an idea of freedom that saw an intrinsic relation between freedom and the human Good.

Much of what the Muslim world resists in the spread of Liberalism-Capitalism is the inability of Liberalism to judge the good, the inability of its people and culture to evaluate the values of their projects in any other language than that of Capital. In short, they do not experience the encroachment of the Liberal tradition as being liberating because they see no connection between it and their centuries long reflection on the relation of humanity to God. Thus far the response to the spread of Capitalization and Liberalism has been reactive. It has brought about a rigidifying of old forms, a kind of cultural ossification. Religious authorities have attempted to resist the invasion by holding tight not only to power but to forms of life that pre-date the encounter with Capitalism and Liberalism.

I implore Islamic leaders not to make that mistake. This was likewise the path chosen by Catholicism in resistance to the spread of modernity, Liberalism, Capitalism and the growth of freedom. As a result they lost their legitimacy as the voice of freedom. Moreover they created a situation in which they drove their members, who looked to them for guidance, into the waiting arms of Liberalism-Capitalism because they refused to come to terms with the changes and only reacted with condemnations and anathemas against the new. By the time Rome was willing to enter into conversation with modernity, some 300 years after the fact, modernity had lost interest in the conversation and Catholicism is now left trying to situate itself a socio-political world in which it is a marginal voice and in which Christianity has largely been absorbed into the mainstream of Liberal society with all the implications mentioned above.

The Modern Islamic State then would be a place in which the people of the State would understand the purpose of the Political to be communal quest for that which transcends the Political. One could not avoid, of course, supplying the basic needs and comforts as well as security for the people, but having done that the people will not understand the State to have fulfilled its purpose, but merely to have laid the foundations for its role. Following those basics, the discussion can begin among the people concerning the nature of the Good and how that Good will be sought in the contemporary context.

The Ummah, the nation, is not then a closed entity. This is true on a number of levels. First the Ummah is capable of embracing the totality of humanity and it seeks and promotes a Good that is not limited in its scope. Further the universality of the Ummah points to the manner in which the State is not defined by a particular culture, set of customs or race. Islam is capable of rich embodiment and harmonic constructions of society. As a project of pursuing the Good it does not view Muslims as abstractly equal, but instead sees the equity of humanity to exist in the concrete particularity of their being. Thus it does not have to pretend everyone is the same in order to deal justly or fairly. This means it is capable of sustaining a wide variety of practices and traditions which it is nonetheless able to interpret as a common and universal project.

Since the Ummah is a communal project that interprets humanity in its totality as directed toward God, the Islamic state must not fall into the dogmatic political-fundamentalism that is characteristic of Liberalism-Capitalism. Liberalism-Capitalism assumes a universal and ahistorical human nature. Thus it believes that all humanity can be satisfied by the expansion and repetition of timeless government which is inherently desired by all. This dogmatism drives Liberalism’s colonialist attitudes and leads of its very nature to the consumption of that which it comes into contact with until all that is left is the abstract, cultureless and inchoate humanity on which Liberalism thrives. The Ummah, precisely because it is a not-yet completed project must remain open to hearing the voice of God anew. The Ummah will have to wrestle with its tradition and treat it as something living. It cannot look solely to the past, but understand the past to be the foundation of an as yet unforeseen Future. The Ummah is in motion.

Here, two mistakes must be avoided at all costs. One cannot treat the tradition as if it contained a deposit to which one merely needs to return. A deposit is dead. The God of the Qur’an is a God who speaks. God’s revelation is not the possession of anyone; it does not belong to humanity. To claim to have revelation in one’s hands is to claim to hold and contain God: it reduces God to a thing. Instead the Islamic state would be one which recognized that its existence is an attempt to hear God anew. It is not the possessor of the Word of God, but it continually awaits the Word of God and together listens to the Word which God speaks through the Qur’an and through the tradition. Anything less than this denies the very essence of the Islamic state because it makes God into the possession of the State instead of the State the possession of God. It means that, since the State holds the revelation of God, humanity lives for the State instead of living together a life toward God. It means the State blasphemously makes itself into a theocracy, thereby identifying State power with God, instead of a self-giving in which humanity surrenders itself over to God.

Moreover one cannot under any circumstances stifle free speech. This has been a temptation on the part of States throughout history, especially those that believed their purpose was to direct humanity toward the Good. Partly this was because the State often mistook itself for a direct embodiment of divine power. But more fundamentally it understood dissent to be damaging and a threat to the faith of the people. One must counter on two fronts. First, the only way that the State is going to fulfill its mission as the place in which, together, the people pursue the Good, make worship their common project, is if the people are able to engage in a discussion concerning the nature of the Good.

Second the quashing of dissent is not what is a danger to the faith. Instead, it is the stifling of dissent that is the greatest danger to faith because it suggests that the Truth is somehow unable to withstand critique. That which can be critiqued is not the Truth and therefore deserves criticism. The State which bans dissent mistakes itself for God, and becomes, thereby, worthy of even greater criticism. To allow dissent is to trust that the Truth wins out. God, who is Truth, is impassible: i.e., God is that which cannot be critiqued, divided, or threatened by any power. If something falls to criticism, then it was only a relativity in any case. This is part of what it means to insist that the Ummah is a project. To say this in another way, one must recognize that while the liberal freedoms are, in the end, the most trivial kinds of freedoms, they are nonetheless an essential part of freedom.

This leads us finally to the question of religious freedom. One must say that insofar as one is willing to participate in the Ummah and its project, the pilgrimage of the State toward God, one will be Muslim. Those other voices, whether they be Christian, Hindu, Liberal or atheistic, which will no doubt be heard in the public square, will, if they are untrue, find themselves in a marginal and uninfluential position. This is to say they will for all practical purposes exclude themselves from the common political life of the people. To set aside one’s dissent and enter into the political life of the community is also to declare common cause, a common faith. This may perhaps, in certain settings, mean the incorporation of certain goods that one finds among those who wish to make common cause. This brings us back to the rich, complex and universal nature of the faith. There is nothing good which is foreign to the Islamic state and which it can not appropriate.


Conclusion
I have attempted to outline a vision of the State that exists in a living relationship with the God who speaks, as it is understood within Islam. This thought experiment is an offering in which I envisioned a future for Islam that does not contain a repetition of the mistakes that Catholicism made over the course of the previous three centuries: ally itself with the powers of social conservatism and religious ossification.

But I end with a challenge; and this gets to the issue of why i do not ultimately believe there is an outside-Liberalism-Capitalism. The question is what will an economic alternative to Capitalism look like. Without this Liberalism will inevitably continue its hegemony. Such an alternative will also have to find its roots and practices, it will have to find its possibilities already present within the historical moment. It is this that I fail to see anywhere present. Where are the roots of an other-economy to Capitalism? Where in Capitalism does something new already appear? Or is there, already within Islam, some habit of economy waiting to emerge into explicit and self-conscious rational economic being?

It is for these reasons among others that I maintained in an earlier text that "We are trapped in a conversation with Liberalism which we cannot escape."

And God knows best...


-LoA

theses on political liberalism and human rights

We are trapped in a conversation with political Liberalism from which we cannot escape.

Frederick Leighton, "Captive Andromache" (1888)

In most conversations regarding human rights and the values of political Liberalism I have a tendency to hide behind the thoughts of others. I will explicate and defend Kant or Husserl. But at a certain point, one must step from behind the curtain and be honest in how one evaluates the current situation. As much as I am sympathetic to Kant and Husserl, and I have a great deal of admiration for them both, I do think there are limits to the Liberal tradition, not least of which is its own inability to recognize its status as a tradition. This is a critique around which the Right and the Left can usually find agreement. Liberalism, of necessity, fails to realize that it was born out of a certain historical moment and a certain cultural setting. It is the expression of emergent voices whose wishes, desires and ideals were formed in light of a host of cultural, political, social, religious and economic changes that gripped Europe in the transition from the Late Middle Ages to Early Modernity that have continued to find their fulfillment into the present where those voices are now culturally dominant.

Moreover, insofar as Liberalism has taken itself to be the established and eternal truth about humanity, it is simply another dogmatic fundamentalism. It insists that its principles be imposed universally on all humanity and seeks the legal codification of those principles. Those who question, those who ask if there might not be some point beyond Liberalism-Capitalism are declared to be heretics and enemies of humanity. They find themselves at the mercy of the legal powers of governments who view them as colluding with the enemy, in many cases they find their ability to travel restricted and in the most extreme cases find themselves literally criminalized.

All of that said in acknowledgement of Liberalism's limits and flaws, it must nonetheless be affirmed that the values of political liberalism did arise out of a real engagement with the meaning of being human and the human desire for wholeness or completeness. Any discussion of human rights has to remain rooted in that quest(ion) concerning the nature of the Good or it loses any real power to hold the imagination while it likewise loses its legitimacy as something more than the expression of power and imperial domination by Anglo and European governments over "lesser" and "sub-human" regimes.

Next, and more controversially, in the present historical moment, Liberalism is the only truly progressive political force in existence. This situation places Christians and Muslims (and Marxists, etc.) in a difficult position. Christianity by linking itself with the forces of domination and war in the late Middle Ages and stubbornly holding onto that alignment throughout the 19th and even 20th centuries quite rightly lost its legitimacy to guide the public discourse concerning the nature of socio-political life. For that reason it exists as a marginal moment within the larger entity that is Liberal Society. Moreover, in significant ways it has continued its legacy of identification with those in power and, with little fuss on its own part, has allowed itself to be absorbed into Liberal life, adapting itself to the new situation and thereby forfeiting any chance of offering an alternative. It has contented itself with being a purely civic institution. Liberalism is after all capable of tolerating and even using what it accepts as 'good-religion': religious civil institutions which are willing to accept their role in liberal society and the new and limited definition of religion as a private and interior matter.

It is this capitulation on the part of Christianity that many Muslims see and it quite appropriately leaves them skeptical. Islam remains the most adequate expression of humanity in large portions of the world. Islam remains, in a large portion of the world, the one living force capable of resisting real tyranny; a way of understanding their lives that does not capitulate to arbitrary powers and repressive and dehumanizing forces of government, but is instead felt and lived as their own. Therefore, when they see other ‘People of the Book’ losing their own identity to the point where Anglo-European Christianity is largely indistinguishable from the culture of Political Liberalism and Capitalism and when the greater Muslim world sees that Christianity has, within the dominant political climate, proven incapable of offering another vision or countering the most destructive effects of Liberal life, they are largely unimpressed with Liberalism and its so-called freedoms.

Nonetheless, it likewise seems to me that political Islam, as it has manifested itself in recent years has demonstrated itself inadequate to the demands of the historical moment and in fact has proven itself to be as socially and politically regressive as any clerico-cratic or ecclesiocratic (if refuse to call them theocratic states, because that suggests that somehow god is ruling and not human beings) might be expected to be. It too has been equally fundamentalist; it too has proven unable to ask about the future of humanity because it also has taken the discussion to be over, albeit settled in a past out of which humanity is now called to repeat rather than Liberalism’s timeless-eternal present. If there is to be a political Islam that will offer an alternative to the spread of Liberalism (and I must admit I have my doubts on this score at least for the moment), it will have to be one which does not look to the past, but one which, having been born of that past is able to hear the voice of God speaking anew. One can also say, on the reverse side, that Liberalism has failed to grasp, due to its own fundamentalist dogmatism, the manner in which Islam is in fact its natural ally against tyranny.

For the moment though, the truth is that neither Islam nor (to an even greater degree) Christianity find themselves in a position in which they can offer a realistic and progressive political alternative to the hegemony of the Liberal-Capitalist order. In fact the situation for many of us is that we are de facto liberals-against-the-letter. Even as we find ourselves standing "outside", there is, at the same time, no outside in which to stand. We are a people without a home. And in this homelessness, the possibility of dissent and advocacy for change resides in the maintenance of Liberalism. There is no place outside Liberalism within which we can make a stand. And so, we find ourselves having to make common cause, having to create a Popular Front, if you will, with Liberalism precisely because we have to recognize its progressive value even in the midst of its failures and limits.

If this is so, then we cannot fully separate ourselves from the discourse of Liberalism, even if, in our hands, the language of Liberalism is transformed and finds itself strained to limits that it cannot ultimately bear. The task of those who believe that the question of the human good remains open, that humanity has a Future, is to push the forces of progress to their limit so that it becomes clear where the contradictions are, in order that one might glimpse, in the fractures of the present, some hope that there will be a Future. To push Liberalism to the fullness of its possibilities so that it will be eventually (and I do not think we are close to being there yet) made aware of its own historicity and inability to fulfill itself. And finally we must constantly remind Liberalism of a truth that it would like to forget: namely, that insofar as it believes it has answered the question of the nature of the human good, it remains a form of religion; it tries to meet the human desire for the Good. Liberalism, in many cases, would like to forget this. It would like to say that it consigns the religious to the private sphere. But if it forgets that Liberalism was born out of an attempt to restate the nature of the good life, if it fails to discuss Human Rights as truths grounded in the very nature of being human, arising from the need of humanity to be whole, then liberalism will lose the very force that makes it a progressive reality. Liberalism will lose the very thing that makes it the manifestation of a broken-Truth.

-LoA

problems with language; or, the war against ideas, part 2

Evelyn DeMorgan, "The Field of the Slain" (1916)

One wonders how much of the foreign policy failure of the United States in the Middle East is itself a failure of language. Do the Americans even understand what it is they are working for? The Crusade-for-Democracy has been and will continue to be a dismal failure because democracy is not really what America and the Europeans want to see in the middle east, even though they do not seem to realize it. Democracy, where it has been achieved has been an embarassment, and a wave of middle eastern democratization would only increase the problem. Palestine, in free elections, elected Hamas; elections in Lebanon have seen the increased political influence of Hizbillah; the broadening of elections in Egypt (Masr) demonstrated the popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood, while extending elections in Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Pakistan would weaken if not topple those who would be allies and partners of liberal governments.

Democracy is not the solution and is often a problem. It was a form of government spurned up until very recently because of how dangerous it was to hand over power to the mob. Democracy is always, taken on its own, mob rule. The failure, then, is the inability of the United States, among others, to recognize and articulate that it does not want democratization but liberalization in the Middle East: something that is not tied, initially in any case, to a particular form of choosing one's rulers. Monarchies, dictatorships, oligarchies, etc. are all capable of being liberal, and it was only the liberal revolutions in France in and the United States that made democracy something more than the tyranny of the mob (and that only after a great deal of bloodshed at the hand of the mob in France). Liberalism, a word that Bush is seemingly incapable of speaking, is the commitment to the universal rule of law, the tradition of human and civil rights, a belief in universal human dignity, negative freedom (i.e., freedom from constraint) and the abstract equity of all before the law. These are the things that protect the socially vulnerable from the violence of tyrants, even when that tyrant is the demos (the mob/the people) itself.

Perhaps this failure is rooted in the American political situation. There has never been a flourishing right or left in the United States. Neither fascism nor Marxism were ever very successful on American soil, and so the term liberalism lost its distinguishing character relative to those other two movements against which it was so starkly defined on the European continent in the middle 20th century. And now 'liberal' is a curse in the mouth of social and economic conservatives, even though neither side, ironically enough, realizes that they are both liberal.

But whatever the case, the goal of the United States ought to be the broadening of liberal reforms in those countries with whom it is friendly in the middle east: the least and last of which would be "democratic" elections. High on the list must be freedom of speech and its relative, freedom of the press (something which is itself under increasing pressure in the United States): the ability of the government and thus also the public to tolerate speech with which it does not agree; the ability to show that violence is not the only way to handle disagreement. This would allow political parties to organize, to form their own voice and to learn how to operate in the public square. The places where we ought to be pushing for liberalization are Saudi Arabia (slowly), Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt (where the United States has exhibited failure on a massive scale in recent days) and encourage its further extension in Lebanon (which is at a critical moment), Qatar, and the UAE (especially Dubai), and Bahrain.

Instead, current American policy is alienating those whom it has the greatest ability to actually reach, and disrupting and further degrading the lives of those over whom it has the least influence. Democracy, without liberalization, is tyranny, and America is helping to bring that new tyranny to the Middle East at gun point.

-LoA

this war...

Overheard: "But when it comes to adultery, it's 90 per cent the women's responsibility. Why? Because a woman possesses the weapon of seduction. It is she who takes off her clothes, shortens them, flirts, puts on make-up and powder and takes to the streets, God protect us, dallying. It's she who shortens, raises and lowers. Then it's a look, then a smile, then a conversation, a greeting, then a conversation, then a date, then a meeting, then a crime, then Long Bay jail. (laughs).
Then you get a judge, who has no mercy, and he gives you 65 years.
But when it comes to this disaster, who started it? In his literature, scholar al-Rafihi says: 'If I came across a rape crime – kidnap and violation of honour – I would discipline the man and order that the woman be arrested and jailed for life.' Why would you do this, Rafihi? He says because if she had not left the meat uncovered, the cat wouldn't have snatched it."


I have sat through this detestable sermon before. Girls and women should cover themselves, dress modestly, so they do not inspire undesirable thoughts and actions in boys and men. The sexual urges of men, the acts of objectification and violence that follow, these are the fault of women, the way they dress, and how they treat men. They bring it upon themselves. I grew up on it, a staple sermon, explicitly given from the pulpit, and implicitly repeated and affirmed by my mother. It is not just from conservative pulpits that one hears it, it is the attitude of frat boys and 'pimps' who take the dress of the woman as permission before a word is ever spoken, a statement of her wishes towards him. Show The Accused to a full room and are we so confident what the reaction will be? The film remains controversial twenty years later (which is not all that long really). So when this attitude, still prevalent, is heard from a Muslim pulpit, instead of the Christian pulpit which I sat in the shadow of, and it is met with outrage, one wonders where all the outrage is the rest of the time. Where are the denouncements of objectification and rape every other day? Why is it so quiet in here?


Rene Magritte, "Les Jours Gigantesques" (1928)


Overheard: “FIFA rules state that they are not going to let players play if they are going to put themselves or other players at risk…if it becomes untucked and the player is running on a breakaway, for example, and another player pulls on it, I would imagine it would be quite a jar to the neck and head of the player wearing the headgear.”


She imagines?! Is it not her complete inability to imagine, her completely inability to understand, why someone might wear a headscarf that is more than clear in her statement? This was the absurd statement given by the technical director of the Quebec Football Federation in response the ejection of an 11 year old Muslim girl from a soccer tournament for the sole reason that she was wearing a headscarf. Sadly, her team and four others that walked out of the tournament following the ruling seem to have a greater understanding of the issues at stake than did this woman who holds a position of authority in the sport. One is more than tempted to see the Western distrust of the hijab and, even more, niqaab, as little more than an insistence that women be made to recall that in the West they are public property who ought be readily and visibly available to the mal(e)-formed consumer. And in this case, its best they learn it while they are still young.


Rene Magritte, "La Grande Guerre" (1964)


Overheard: “The exercise of the right to castigate does not fulfill the hardship criteria as defined by Paragraph 1565 (of German federal law).”

Meanwhile, Continental Europe seems unable to shake off the ghosts of fascism that continue to walk the halls of government. France has passed a law banning women from wearing hijab in schools and while working in government buildings. This supposed effort to liberate women from their oppressors in fact seems nothing more than a statement that the French government does not think Muslim women are worth educating nor do they want them representing France. This disdain for Muslim women was again repeated in the past few weeks just next door in Germany when a German divorce court effectively ruled that it was permissible for a man to beat his Moroccan wife. Apparently what was so outrageous when spoken by a Muslim Australian cleric less than a year ago, is in fact the official position of the German state: women only have the rights that a mal(e)-formed culture is willing to give them.


-LoA