PSPD in English Archive 2002-01-31   1002

Coexistence with Islamic Fundamentalism?

George Katsiaficas (Wentworth Institute of Technology)

To my great fortune, I am not now in the US. I am fortunate not because I fear anthrax or other terrors but rather because my mind and soul are not being inalterably soaked by the patriotic outpouring swirling through the country with greater strength than a tornado. During the last such nationalistic maelstrom (the Iran hostage crisis in 1979) I was also lucky enough to have been living abroad. I mention my location because my perspective-worlds apart from the vast majority of Americans-will probably seem quite foreign, perhaps even alien and blasphemous.

In South Korea, emergent grassroots viewpoints bear little resemblance to those in the US. The 20th Century was singularly brutal here, beginning with an unspeakably harsh Japanese occupation and colonization, through the bloody suppression of post-World War 2 anti-US uprisings and the subsequent annihilation of millions of people and destruction of nearly all of the entire peninsula’s infrastructure during the Korea War. The frozen state of war since 1953 continues to abet dictatorial tendencies in both Koreas. Through decades of tremendous sacrifices and heroic struggles, the South Korean people won the beginnings of liberty and a semblance of democracy, and through it all US corporations have profited enormously. Thus, when the heartland of America was hit on September 11, many here-including those normally sympathetic to the US-secretly celebrated and privately expressed satisfaction that a country which has inflicted so much pain here and elsewhere has come to experience for itself that which it has so glibly and painlessly exported. Universally hated and reviled in the US, Osama Bin Laden for many Koreans is a 21st Century Che Guevara, admired for his personal sacrifice, for his dedication to the downtrodden, and for his ability to cross national boundaries to fight for his ideals.

Watching the BBC world news here in Kwangju (CNN is not part of my cable package), I marvel at the sophisticated pageantry of the falsely elected American president, son of a former president who is now a business associate of the Bin Laden family and was then affiliated with Contra cocaine dealers, grandson of industrialists who were highly placed Nazi collaborators, portray himself as the champion of human rights and individual liberty as he bombs already devastated Afghanistan further into the Stone Age. Surfing the web, I’ve followed with dismay the recent expansion of Southern Air Transport, Evergreen and other CIA-owned or related airlines in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Not coincidentally, Richard Secord (chief operative in support of the Indochinese heroin Mafia during the Vietnam War and cover man for Contra cocaine dealers in the 1980s) has been reported recently to have twice visited there.

While Tony Blair serves as point man in the disinformation campaign about mushrooming Taliban heroin production, the UN reports that it plummeted last year by as much as 90%. Poppy flowers, however, were reported to have proliferated in Uzbekistan-something no doubt significant to Secord and the rest of the secret government within the US government. Leaders of the Northern Alliance must be thrilled at the prospect of their soon to be realized drug fortunes. Perhaps when children born on September 11 reach the ripe old age of 50 will such details become public knowledge-and perhaps also the mountain of evidence that the US government had advance knowledge of the September 11 attacks (as we now know they did of Pearl Harbor) but chose to hide it so they had a suitable pretext for fighting their already orchestrated war on Afghanistan.

Yesterday, as I watched students here march against the war, I lamented the US peace movement’s paltry efficacy, its inability to speak for or effect peoples’ consciousness. It appears that the US government will again channel America’s vast resources into a long war for domination of the world’s energy and drug supplies. If US progressives are to have any chance of intervening in the current constellation of forces, to change the direction of the world’s great powers currently lined up for a long-term war on Islamic fundamentalism and Arab nationalism, we need to rethink radically our perspectives and values. The American movement’s anguished expressions of sorrow and heartfelt grief after September 11 are indications of how the entire country marches in lock-step to the tunes played by a propaganda system that values American lives above all others. The US public passively accepts the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children from our blockade with scarcely an expression of regret. People remain loyal to superiority of the American way of life-no matter what the cost to the rest of humanity. As for the wretched of the earth, if their anti-imperialist movements do not accept our values, our notions of feminism and gay liberation, of “democratic” elections and individual “freedom,”then to hell with them-no solidarity, no sympathy and certainly no legitimacy.

In the case of Islamic fundamentalism, nearly all Western commentators view it as purely reactionary-as a misguided response to American cultural imperialism and military intervention. Such a view denies Islamic fundamentalism agency in its own right. Once again it is we who are the creators and they the mud we mold. Scarcely anyone has even bothered to glance at Islam’s rich history or to undertake a cursory glimpse of its philosophy. If they did, they would immediately see that unlike the Torah or the Bible, the Koran is thought to be the word of God, not of mere men, and his commandments about our everyday lives are loud and clear. As far back as the 12th Century-during the time Averroes was writing and the West was in a backward state-Islamic fundamentalism reared its head. How then can it be reduced to a response to Western modernization? Nowhere in our universe of discourse is there recognition of the piety and dignity of millions of Moslem fundamentalists.

To appreciate the Eurocentric content of many Leftists’ perspective on Islamic fundamentalism, consider for a moment the case of Poland’s Solidarity movement. Despite Solidarity’s patriarchy and religious conservatism, much of the Left fawningly celebrated it because it fit the working-class definition of a revolutionary subject. Daniel Singer carefully documented these backward dimensions of Solidarity in his book on that subject, and he warned us not to judge emergent revolutionary subjects from our own values but within the context of their concrete existence.

Thanks to the internet, I’ve been able to tune in to many American Leftists’ thinking since September 11. In almost all cases, intolerance and black/white categories animate discussion of the “enemy.” Writing in The Nation on November 5, Katha Pollitt observed that unlike the Vietnam War, “This time, our own country has been attacked, and the enemies are deranged fanatics.” On October 14, Nation editor and LA Weekly columnist Marc Cooper called them “atavistic, religious fascists whose world view is diametrically opposed to all humanitarian and progressive morality.” Another respected commentator (whom I shall not name because her comments were circulated on a private listserve) maintained that fundamentalism’s “doctrine of intolerance simply cannot stand in contemporary society if we are to evolve towards peace and cooperation.” Intolerance of intolerance?

These examples flow from an inability to respect difference and a notion that there is only one just way of life-ours, of course. If the Left continues to impose a monocentric notion of justice, a concept most articulately expressed in the work of noted feminist theorist Seyla Benhabib, peace will never be realized. Alternative views can be found coming from Nelson Mandela, who endorsed limited autonomy for white homelands, and Fred Hampton (leader of the Black Panthers murdered by the FBI and Chicago police in 1969) who insisted that white power should belong to white people. No doubt many people will find it difficult to regard Islamic fundamentalism as having any positive attributes. That is all the more reason why peaceful coexistence is vitally important. The alternative is never-ending war.

Before the collapse of the French empire, two disastrous defeats in colonial wars, one in Vietnam and the other in Algeria, ended French dreams of global glory (and inflicted millions of deaths upon indigenous peoples). US imperial ambitions have already cost the lives of over 2 million Indochinese. As in Vietnam, the US may win nearly every battle in its war with Islamic fundamentalism and Arab nationalism (the 1991 Gulf War, current attempts to kill Osama Bin Laden and depose the Taliban) but there is little doubt in my mind that the US will never win this war. Moslems fought for centuries to liberate Crusader-held lands, especially Jerusalem (third holiest site for Islam where few Moslems are now permitted). Does anyone realistically expect them to persevere any less in the face of contemporary Western penetration of Islamic holy sites? With the bottomless pit of its war against Islamic fundamentalism and Arab nationalism, the American empire’s aura of military invincibility will be shattered, leaving issues of global justice to be resolved with a new context. Assuming the accuracy of the above observation, two fundamental questions emerge: As pax Americana declines, what will be the nature of the subsequent global order? What will become of Israel?

Within the context of current power relations-i.e. concentration of military might in nation-states) optimists posit a United Nations controlled global military to insure justice and protect the powerless as an alternative to (or in spite of) US military hegemony. While a single world military would unquestionably represent a giant step from militarized nation-states, saving humanity untold trillions of dollars in war-related expenditures, to say nothing of the incalculable suffering inflicted daily by militaries the world over, the idea of a UN-controlled world military raises several dilemmas, the most pressing of which is exactly who would control it?

If we ourselves a brief moment of utopian speculation (today more difficult than ever in the aftermath of the carnage of September 11) few people would disagree with the desirability of the complete abolition of weapons mass destruction-not just nuclear, chemical and biological weapons but also so-called conventional ones like fighter jets, bombers, landmines and artillery. If it is to be strategic, the peace movement that is now only beginning should be directed toward the abolition of militaries, not their reform. In a world where even peaceful means of transportation are turned into weapons of mass destruction, nearly everyone would consider such a proposition foolish, but with major weapons systems in the hands of governments, how else can the powerless fight back? Only through the universalization of non-military conflict resolution will humanity’s future fate improve beyond our abysmal reality. Of course, the destruction of the world’s militaries would undoubtedly send the global economic system into a disastrous depression-all the more reason for us to discuss it as part of the need for a completely different world system (or anti-system).

Since the Holocaust, the safety of Jews remains of great concern to any consideration of global justice. As the US empire declines, Israel’s security is certain to suffer, possibly to the point where a Jewish state in Palestine ceases to be a realistic option–even with the use of Israel’s nuclear arsenal. As history’s ironic dialectic turns victors into vanquished, every Palestinian death, each missile fired at defenseless Arabs and Afghanis only further diminishes the security of a Jewish state in the Holy Land. For decades, Palestinians have called for a secular state in which Moslems, Christians and Jews would enjoy equality. With the growing weakness and ultimate defeat of the Zionist project, what fate will befall Israel’s millions of Jews?

Islam’s historic toleration of the Jewish religion contrasts quite favorably with centuries of the West’s pogroms and bigotry that culminating in the Nazi Holocaust. Witness the fate of the Jews of Cordoba, respected and celebrated by Moslems for their libraries and learning, but tortured and expelled en mass after the Spanish conquest. Far from resonating with Islam’s history, contemporary hatred of Jews in the Islamic world should be understood as its very Westernization-not as a reaction to the West’s “superior” values. Contemporary Western anti-Semitism continues unabated in the media stereotypes and public hatred, not of Jewish bankers and communists as with the Nazis, but of Arab oil sheiks and terrorists.

If history teaches us anything, Jews would enjoy far more rights and privileges within an Islamic framework than anything ever known in European history before World War 2. Those who doubt the accuracy of this understanding of the past or question its validity for the future would especially agree that back-up measures should now be undertaken to protect Jews living in Israel. What better proposal than the free emigration of Jews to lands of their choice–most importantly to the USA? Lest we forget, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Zionist and US officials arranged for treaties compelling Russian Jews to go to Israel, no matter how many family members they had elsewhere and regardless of refugees?free choice.

The preceding discussion, while to me to be a sober and realistic assessment of the future lack of viability of a Zionist state as well as an accurate understanding of the long wave of historical developments of which we are today a part, will no doubt seem to some as intoxicated musings or even villainous and premeditated propaganda. Few sane people would disagree, however, that whatever military actions the US now undertakes, measures should be undertaken to rectify policies that might motivate future desperate acts like those of September 11. For years, I have worked in support of an independent Palestinian state. It now appears the US and Britain have finally mandated one. Rather than taking it for granted, however, the peace movement should embrace it as an important step forward.

Unlike loyal oppositions, strategic social movements seek to build long-term directions into immediate responses to crises, to inject revolutionary ideas in moments of crisis. Without prolonging my remarks and delving into a discussion of the relation of reform and revolution, let me summarize: Peaceful coexistence with Islamic fundamentalism and Arab nationalism is an idea whose time has come. We need to embrace it and inject it into the public’s mind to change US policy. Within the new peace movement which the Left needs to help build, the following strategic objectives should be continually raised:

1. Universal abolition of weapons of mass destruction and national militaries.

2. Right of free emigration to Jews in Israel to countries of their choice.

3. Immediate international control of Jerusalem that would allow people of all faiths to worship there.

4. Support for an independent Palestinian state.

Kwangju, South Korea

November 3, 2001

*George Katsiaficas is editor of New Political Science. Among his writings, he has coedited with Kathleen Cleaver Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party (Routledge, 2001). He has been a visiting scholar at Chonnam National University in Gwangju, in 2001.

George Katsiaficas

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