Devadatta
Well-Known Member
Occidentalism is the name of a book or rather extended essay or pamphlet that identifies pathological hatred of the West as a worldwide phenomenon with many forms and a long history. It makes connections over a wide & diverse field, as cultural studies/history of ideas sorts of texts will do, and doesn’t really fully frame or very satisfactorily conclude the argument. So it begs some question.
But the core of the argument is very simple: hatred of West is rooted in a much broader social phenomenon, the counter-enlightenment, and that much of the ideology for that hatred originated in the West itself.
Here’s the short list: The romantic revolt in literature, the mythology of the “Russian Soul”, the “German Blood”, the various German philosophers with their recast of Biblical ideology in the form of racial or national will unfolding through history, and the various totalitarian ideologies that seem to naturally flow from this turn in the European mind.
Now the irony here is that ideally all these movements have their uses & their truth. The enlightenment, or rather, its core value the free play of the mind against authority has been a powerful force. It needed to be checked, corrected, criticized, supplemented. In the form of industrial capitalism & consumer culture the enlightenment has, in a sense, become a runaway freight train that certainly needs to be checked. But the point here is that the counter-enlightenment itself became a runaway freight train in the form of the totalitarian mindset.
Besides pointing to totalitarianism, all these turns have something else in common: they arise out of a sense of being on the wrong side of the enlightenment, of being on the outside looking in, and so are responses from the pure place of the “instinctual,” “natural”, “virtuous” country; against the Babylon of the city, whether that city is Paris, London, Rome, New York or the Hague.
All of these “instinctual” responses are rooted in fear of the enlightenment and its core value: the free play of the mind against received authority. They go beyond useful criticism to a kind of hysterical response. So here’s cultural neurosis on a colossal scale.
Talk about civilisation and its discontents! This neurosis of course formed one of the essential underpinnings of a series of European wars and untold carnage. The West has paid a high price for this spiritual civil war.
But the point of Occidentalism is that what was bad for the West has turned out to be far worse for many other cultures. The West, because this schism originated in its own divided mind, is to a certain extent inoculated against its worst excesses; it’s built up some immunity. Other cultures lack this immunity. The book points to the death cults of the kamikaze in Japan (whose martyrs were often more knowledgeable in literature than politics, in German Philosophy than in Shinto piety), the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, who drove whole populations into the countryside to be purified onto death, and the real elephant in the room, the rise of totalitarian ideologies that currently plague the Muslim world.
That the Muslim version of this pathology is particularly virulent and persistent is no accident. A sickness that may only be an episode in many other cultures could be terminal for Islam.
The reason is not hard to find. As already noted, underlying all this is the pattern of rural/urban, country/city, pure village/corrupt Babylon. The authors of Occidentalism, like many others, locate the paradigmatic expression of this conflict in the Hebrew Scriptures; here is the original “rage against the empire”.
(Before anyone goes off on a tangent, the only sin implied here against the Hebrews is their magic with words. The Bible may be the mother of all ideologies, but if the Hebrews hadn’t written it, someone else would have come up with a Grade “B” version, equally dangerous, but lacking the upsides.)
In any case, when Islamist ideologues in the Muslim Brotherhood, or the notorious Said Qutb, imbibed the poison of Western ideology they had no trouble melding it with the totalitarian aspects of the Abrahamic tradition they already knew. Here we have a kind of ideological echo chamber, which must make these ideas feel so convincing to their adherents.
And then you have the nature of Islam itself. Muhammad may be a prophet but he could easily be styled the world’s first fundamentalist. The core of his teaching was to strip Abrahamic religions of all complexities, Christian theology, Jewish questionings, and take it back before Jews & Christians, to what he imagined was the original faith of the legendary Abraham.
At the core, there certainly is a vision & experience of the monotheistic God, closest in character to the G!d who speaks to Job out of the whirlwind. This is the authentic faith of over a billion Muslims, and will not be questioned here.
However, one of the very first verses of the Qu’ran is to the effect that “this shall not be doubted”. And on the back of the monotheistic vision is built a whole structure of legalist/social control that effectively transfers authority from God to the Qur’an to Muhammad to the clerics and now, in many places, to any fool with a beard. (In the interests of disclosure, I too have a beard!)
You know, I think the word “liar” appears at least as frequently as “love” in the Qur’an. And who is a “liar”? Apparently, anyone who questions.
If you took what orthodox Muslims call Shariah out of its religious context, you would probably call it the rules of some dystopian totalitarian state. So again, this leads to an easy & persistent fusion to the totalitarian turn, ancient & modern.
So what’s my point? This most virulent strand of Occidentalism is not only a plague to the vast majority of Muslims, and a decided barrier to the growth of their well being & development, it’s a mortal danger for the rest of us. And I’m not talking about the few hundred or even thousands that terrorists manage directly to kill – hard as this sounds, we kill more people every year in traffic accidents. No, it’s the cascade effect of terrorism. It’s the encouragement of an answering fundamentalism in the West, the election of leaders who’s strategic thinking is strictly schoolyard, who enter into disastrous wars & occupations, who feed & magnify a hundredfold the very phenomena they’re trying to stamp out.
The cure? Muslims can only sort it for themselves. No further imports from the West will help them, certainly not the kind of secularism that’s already at its limit, and invented for other purposes. They’ll need to reinvent themselves, and rediscover the spirit of inquiry through their own internal struggle. From the non-Muslim end, the best thing we can offer is less b.s. and more straight talk, plus the encouragement & support of all progressive voices in Islam as they are now emerging.
Sincerely,
Devadatta
But the core of the argument is very simple: hatred of West is rooted in a much broader social phenomenon, the counter-enlightenment, and that much of the ideology for that hatred originated in the West itself.
Here’s the short list: The romantic revolt in literature, the mythology of the “Russian Soul”, the “German Blood”, the various German philosophers with their recast of Biblical ideology in the form of racial or national will unfolding through history, and the various totalitarian ideologies that seem to naturally flow from this turn in the European mind.
Now the irony here is that ideally all these movements have their uses & their truth. The enlightenment, or rather, its core value the free play of the mind against authority has been a powerful force. It needed to be checked, corrected, criticized, supplemented. In the form of industrial capitalism & consumer culture the enlightenment has, in a sense, become a runaway freight train that certainly needs to be checked. But the point here is that the counter-enlightenment itself became a runaway freight train in the form of the totalitarian mindset.
Besides pointing to totalitarianism, all these turns have something else in common: they arise out of a sense of being on the wrong side of the enlightenment, of being on the outside looking in, and so are responses from the pure place of the “instinctual,” “natural”, “virtuous” country; against the Babylon of the city, whether that city is Paris, London, Rome, New York or the Hague.
All of these “instinctual” responses are rooted in fear of the enlightenment and its core value: the free play of the mind against received authority. They go beyond useful criticism to a kind of hysterical response. So here’s cultural neurosis on a colossal scale.
Talk about civilisation and its discontents! This neurosis of course formed one of the essential underpinnings of a series of European wars and untold carnage. The West has paid a high price for this spiritual civil war.
But the point of Occidentalism is that what was bad for the West has turned out to be far worse for many other cultures. The West, because this schism originated in its own divided mind, is to a certain extent inoculated against its worst excesses; it’s built up some immunity. Other cultures lack this immunity. The book points to the death cults of the kamikaze in Japan (whose martyrs were often more knowledgeable in literature than politics, in German Philosophy than in Shinto piety), the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, who drove whole populations into the countryside to be purified onto death, and the real elephant in the room, the rise of totalitarian ideologies that currently plague the Muslim world.
That the Muslim version of this pathology is particularly virulent and persistent is no accident. A sickness that may only be an episode in many other cultures could be terminal for Islam.
The reason is not hard to find. As already noted, underlying all this is the pattern of rural/urban, country/city, pure village/corrupt Babylon. The authors of Occidentalism, like many others, locate the paradigmatic expression of this conflict in the Hebrew Scriptures; here is the original “rage against the empire”.
(Before anyone goes off on a tangent, the only sin implied here against the Hebrews is their magic with words. The Bible may be the mother of all ideologies, but if the Hebrews hadn’t written it, someone else would have come up with a Grade “B” version, equally dangerous, but lacking the upsides.)
In any case, when Islamist ideologues in the Muslim Brotherhood, or the notorious Said Qutb, imbibed the poison of Western ideology they had no trouble melding it with the totalitarian aspects of the Abrahamic tradition they already knew. Here we have a kind of ideological echo chamber, which must make these ideas feel so convincing to their adherents.
And then you have the nature of Islam itself. Muhammad may be a prophet but he could easily be styled the world’s first fundamentalist. The core of his teaching was to strip Abrahamic religions of all complexities, Christian theology, Jewish questionings, and take it back before Jews & Christians, to what he imagined was the original faith of the legendary Abraham.
At the core, there certainly is a vision & experience of the monotheistic God, closest in character to the G!d who speaks to Job out of the whirlwind. This is the authentic faith of over a billion Muslims, and will not be questioned here.
However, one of the very first verses of the Qu’ran is to the effect that “this shall not be doubted”. And on the back of the monotheistic vision is built a whole structure of legalist/social control that effectively transfers authority from God to the Qur’an to Muhammad to the clerics and now, in many places, to any fool with a beard. (In the interests of disclosure, I too have a beard!)
You know, I think the word “liar” appears at least as frequently as “love” in the Qur’an. And who is a “liar”? Apparently, anyone who questions.
If you took what orthodox Muslims call Shariah out of its religious context, you would probably call it the rules of some dystopian totalitarian state. So again, this leads to an easy & persistent fusion to the totalitarian turn, ancient & modern.
So what’s my point? This most virulent strand of Occidentalism is not only a plague to the vast majority of Muslims, and a decided barrier to the growth of their well being & development, it’s a mortal danger for the rest of us. And I’m not talking about the few hundred or even thousands that terrorists manage directly to kill – hard as this sounds, we kill more people every year in traffic accidents. No, it’s the cascade effect of terrorism. It’s the encouragement of an answering fundamentalism in the West, the election of leaders who’s strategic thinking is strictly schoolyard, who enter into disastrous wars & occupations, who feed & magnify a hundredfold the very phenomena they’re trying to stamp out.
The cure? Muslims can only sort it for themselves. No further imports from the West will help them, certainly not the kind of secularism that’s already at its limit, and invented for other purposes. They’ll need to reinvent themselves, and rediscover the spirit of inquiry through their own internal struggle. From the non-Muslim end, the best thing we can offer is less b.s. and more straight talk, plus the encouragement & support of all progressive voices in Islam as they are now emerging.
Sincerely,
Devadatta
