Beat-the-heat t1_jcahkt9 wrote
Reply to comment by Damascinos in The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of Politics of Fear - (2004) BBC, part 1 of 3 compares the rise of neoconservative movement and the radical Islamist movement [00:59:11] by Damascinos
"Islamists" largely don't call themselves that and this documentary kind of just hashes out the familiar tropes that inflate the relevance of Arab conservatives to the Islamic resurgence when it is largely just an ethno-religious response to foreign intervention more than anything else, after all many of the conflicts that the US got involved in after 2001 were far older than the Muslim brotherhood, some in fact were older than America itself.
This simply just presents the same oversimplified orientalist view of conflicts without really delving deeper into the roots of them; the single highest predictor of Islamic militancy has always been moral outrage and not philosophical or religious disposition (you can see research by Scott Atran to confirm this).
Now i myself am agnostic but raised Muslim, if you ask me who i would rather see in power; a secular government allied with the west or a conservative Islamic government that advocates indigenous interests then i would definitely say the latter, this is essentially why there is a growth of "Islamism" across the world, as Bin Laden himself said even his "pagan ancestors" would have fought against the West.
Damascinos OP t1_jcas31c wrote
No, of course they don’t call themselves Islamists, the word doesn’t exist. However they do call themselves adherents of certain schools of Islamic thought led by certain sheiks’ interpretations of the Koran. And that, when you look into their interpretations, is Islamist in nature.
One shouldn’t dismiss the Arab conservatives influence on Islamic resurgence otherwise you wouldn’t be able to explain away the Saudi and Qatari influence throughout the Muslim world post 1990, ie Balkans, Levant and Central Asia (to be fair Iran’s influence has been just as damaging).
As for moral outrage, it’s subjective and not universal. And because of that, manipulation is a lot easier, as has been proven. And that is the real reason why Muslims become militant.
As for your last paragraph, those aren’t the only two options available and your view of either black or white is not fair to those that don’t live in a homogeneous Muslim country, ie Syrians, Palestinians Lebanese, Egyptians, Indians, Chinese etc etc. A secular led government can still have the indigenous interests in mind while still being a productive and independent member on the world stage; Indonesia or Malaysia comes to mind.
33hamsters t1_jcb506f wrote
I don't think u/beat-the-heat is dismissing the influence of conservative Islam, I think he's pointing out that there's a lot of ethnographic and cultural factors that get brushed over in Adam Curtis' work. I think that's a mild and valid criticism, one that is understandable in light of the limitations of the BBC archives Curtis is working with.
Beat-the-heat t1_jcdc0xb wrote
>One shouldn’t dismiss the Arab conservatives influence on Islamic resurgence otherwise you wouldn’t be able to explain away the Saudi and Qatari influence
Arabs simply provided money, ideologically they aren't behind the Islamic resurgence; Most Muslims are Asians and have their own distinct ideological movements e.g. despite what most westerners claim the Taliban are neither Wahhabi nor Salafi, they are Deobandi and the influence of Salafism is highly overstated. This misunderstanding is also why the West heavily funded Sufi movements post 9/11 in countries like Pakistan and they are now even more problematic (with most of the recent attacks on minorities being initiated by Sufi groups like Barelvis)
>As for moral outrage, it’s subjective and not universal.
Maybe not to you because you live in the west and think like they do, most of us really hate these people though for what they have done to our countries and the region at large; As Malcom X would say, there are two types of Negroes.
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>As for your last paragraph, those aren’t the only two options available
Largely does seem to be the case presently
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>A secular led government can still have the indigenous interests in mind while still being a productive and independent member on the world stage; Indonesia or Malaysia comes to mind.
So what exactly is the distinction between an "Islamist" government in your mind and a supposedly secular government like Indonesia which imposes conservative laws (e.g. banning sex outside of marriage, blasphemy provisions etc) ; Indonesia is one of the countries leading the Islamic resurgence but it is never outright called an "Islamist" country by Westerners.
Damascinos OP t1_jce7ode wrote
Despite having a rebuttal, I think with your Malcolm X insult this conversation has run it’s course. Thanks though.
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