Global Issues: Cultural Conflict ~ Islam and Identity Politics

The Guardian has an interesting article entitled To see Muslim discourse in politics as a vicious anachronism is to see very little and it aruges that “explaining political Islam as the product of rage or sexual frustration ignores the nature of religious identity in multi-ethnic democracies”. The article touches on some of the themes in the Global Issues ‘Cultural Conflict’ component, especially in relation to the politics of identity and the rise of religious extremism.

The article focuses particularly on the rise of Islam in SE Asia; however, but it does so against a broad canvass and gives a lot of good context. Here are a few choice snippets:

“Needless to say, the world’s diverse peoples show no sign of doing a rerun of western Europe’s history, or of abandoning own belief systems that provide an ethical basis for life, sustain hopes and account for pain. Islam, in particular, remains defiantly vital, in economically resurgent and democratic south-east Asia as well as among the Middle East’s struggling despotisms.”

“Nevertheless, to see Islamic discourse in mass politics as a vicious anachronism is to see very little. embroiled as it is in the internal politics of multi-ethnic countries, Islam moves in many directions in south-east Asia, and only occasionally against the west or liberal values. Unlike south Asia and the Middle East, the region has no “failed states”, to use the thought-annihilating term so loved by geopolitical experts; Indonesia happens to be the third largest democracy and one of the fastest-growing market economies in the world.

It is no doubt comforting to cover a vast socioeconomic terrain and its baffling particularities, oddities, and discontinuities with a blanket explanation like “Muslim rage”. But in a multilayered world of restless identities, the vocabulary of description and analysis must expand. This is less difficult than it sounds.

Most of us have an instinctive understanding of how our own societies work: how differences in ability, income and status play out in public life, how material interests are negotiated and racial-religious conflicts managed, or how Lib Dems come to work with Tories. It may not be asking too much to credit other societies with at least some internal complexity while acknowledging that they might do things differently out there. The only other option seems to consist of an unattractive moral narcissism, and a rather weird obsession with headscarfs.”