Transcript 5.3-Thoroughly Modern Muslims

Cultural Globalization: The
Role of Religion –
Introduction
Lechner & Boli, pp. 345-347
1
Public "Relieved" By bin Laden's
Death
2
Islamic Revolution in Iran (1979)
 “Major world event" that "put fundamentalism on the
map"
 Outcome of long struggle to overthrow the Shah of Iran
 Shah was seen as “puppet” of the West, esp. the US
 Iran was predominantly Shi'a (the two main sub-groups of Islam
are Shi'a and Sunni)
 Shah was seen as an "illegitimate tyrant who had tried to
modernize the country in violation of Islamic norms"
 Revolution showed it was possible to build an Islamic
state under modern circumstances
3
Islamic Revolution inspired active
jihad among a minority of Muslims
 jihad: a religiously motivated opposition to a secular,
liberal global order
 In predominantly Sunni countries, a movement w/similar
purposes was growing, the Egyptian Muslim
Brotherhood, which also rejected Western culture and
advocated a restoration of sharia
 sharia: Islamic law
 In Afghanistan, after the Soviet invasion in 1979, an
extremely conservative group called the Taliban took
lead in resistance to invasion and established an
oppressive, orthodox regime in the 1990s
 The struggle attracted militants from other countries,
such as Saudi Arabia
4
Militants increasingly thought of jihad as
global struggle to restore Islamic
caliphate and implement sharia
 culminating in the attack on the World
Trade Center on 9/11
 to some, 9/11 was the expression of a new
global political divide, a "Clash of
Civilizations" (à la Huntington)
5
Islam, like Christianity, is diverse
 Believers have a range of perspectives on
globalization
 Muslims differ on basic questions
concerning the relationship between
religion & the state, gender roles,
democracy, etc.
6
"Bin Laden and Other
Thoroughly Modern Muslims"
Charles Kurzman, Ch. 42, pp.
353-357
7
Islamists, Radical Islamists, and
Islamic liberalism
 Islamists seek to regain righteousness of early
yrs of Islam and implement sharia
 either by using the state to enforce it
 or by convincing Muslims to abide by Islamic norms of
their own accord
 Radical Islamists have much in common w/
Islamic liberalism:
 Both seek to modernize society and politics, recasting
tradition in modern molds
 Both see multiple ways to be modern and don't
equate modernity w/ Western culture
8
Radical Islamists (Al Qaeda)
vs. traditionalists (Taliban)
 Traditionalists draw on less educated
sectors of society
 Believe in mystical and personal authority and
are skeptical of modern organizational forms
 "For this reason, traditionalist movements
are finding it difficult to survive and occupy
only isolated pockets of Muslim society"
(pp. 353-4)
9
The Islamists Roots in Secular
Education
 Many Islamists have university (secular) rather
than seminary (religious) educations
 OBL (AQ leader) held civil engineering degree,
but issued fatwas (religious decrees) as if he
were a seminary educated Islamic scholar
 Islamists have railed against seminary-trained
scholars as out of touch and politically inactive
 Seminaries are considered "backward" by Islamists
 College-educated Muslims have increasingly
been analyzing sacred texts in a "do it yourself"
kind of theology
10
There's great diversity in Islamic
opinion and Islamic authority
 Gov’ts have taken a role in establishing
their own official religious authorities and
advancing their own visions of the proper
relationship between Islam and the state,
through textbooks, for example
 There is no universally recognized arbiter
to resolve Islamic debates
 Any college graduate in a cave can claim
to speak for Islam
11
Islamist political platforms share
much with Western modernity
 Islamists envision overturning tradition in
politics, social relations, and religious practices
 Islamists are hostile to monarchies, such as the
Saudi dynasty in Arabia
 Islamists favor egalitarian meritocracy, as
opposed to inherited social hierarchies
 e.g., OBL combined traditional grievances such as
injustice, corruption, oppression, and self-defense
with contemporary, secular demands such as
economic development, human rights and national
self-determination
12
Western biases tend to wrongly lump
Khomeni's Iran together w/ the Taliban
in Afghanistan
 Both claimed to be building Islamic states, but Iran is a
modern state and Afghanistan is not
 Islamic Republic of Iran copied global norms by writing
constitution, ratifying it with a referendum w/ full adult
suffrage, holding elections, conducting census, etc.
 vs. the traditionalist Taliban, which preferred informal and
personal administration to the rule-bound bureaucracies favored
by modern states
 On the issue of gender, Taliban barred girls from school,
while the Iranian Islamic Republic more than doubled
girls education levels
13
In ideology and also in practice, bin
Laden/Al Qaeda and other radical
Islamists mirror Western trends
 Al Qaeda operates globally like a TNC,
with affiliates and subsidiaries, strategic
partners, commodity chains, standardized
training, off-shore financing
 Insiders call it "the company"
 It's a bureaucratic organization, with a
modernized communications strategy
14
Radical Islamists are a minority
within Islam
 Surveys consistently show that most Muslims oppose
Islamists and their goals
 Islamists rarely fare well in free/partially free elections
 However, the US-led war on terror may inadvertently
benefit Islamists
 The modernization of Muslim societies promoted by the
US and its allies as a buffer against traditionalism may
wind up fueling Islamism
 Modern schools produce Islamists as well as liberals
 Modern businesses fund Islamist as well as other causes
 Modern communications can broadcast Islamist as well as other
messages
 Modernity may take many forms besides Western
culture
15
Osama bin Laden Largely Discredited
Among Muslim Publics in Recent Years
16
Islam & the West
17