"Seek knowledge, even unto China" - Prophet Muhammad

As-salamu alaykum, chapos!

After consulting with the cyber Ulama we have decided to create an open thread where curious posters can take a break from the great posting jihad and ask questions on the nature of Islam or the Muslim experience. So long as they are asked in good faith, from a position of truly wanting to learn, these questions will be answered without judgement.

As for Muslims, all of us are free to answer any of the questions, even ones that have already been answered. This is an open thread, and the input of different Islamic perspectives is valuable to getting a big picture.

To all those reading this, remember: No one person is an authority on Islam. This is why it traditionally the din never had its own clergy. Always have this in mind when researching on Islam.

Alright, now GET TO ASKING!

  • Saif [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Great question. Muslims are a large and diverse community across the world, so obviously there is no single solution and it should depend on the specific local context - however, in general, Muslims are very devout and do not think in the same terms as secular Western/liberal humanists do. They tend to view the world through an Islamic lens, and secular nationalist movements are doomed to fail in the long-term in places like the Middle East because it simply can't be reconciled with their values of a united Ummah practicing together.

    Islam has within it something me and my friends like to call "endogenous radicalism." I'll let Hegel explain this, though mind some of the Western chauvinistic language (and the fact that he calls us "Mahometans"):

    "Abstraction swayed the minds of the Mahometans. Their object was, to establish an abstract worship, and they struggled for its accomplishment with the greatest enthusiasm. This enthusiasm was Fanaticism, that is, an enthusiasm for something abstract – for an abstract thought which sustains a negative position towards the established order of things. It is the essence of fanaticism to bear only a desolating destructive relation to the concrete; but that of Mahometanism was, at the same time, capable of the greatest elevation – an elevation free from all petty interests, and united with all the virtues that appertain to magnanimity and valor."

    Essentially, due to the structure of the Muslim world view, there is a deep-seated dissatisfaction in most Muslims in the world that manifests itself "fanatically" by reacting negatively to the current form of things, the "world of the concrete", but which also constantly pushes Muslims into political action, "capable of the greatest elevation." Muslims view an unjust world and cannot help but use Islam to change it. This is why terrorists are easily recruited, but it is also possibly the greatest weapon against them, if used correctly.

    The strategy I would suggest would be that Muslims develop an Islamic revolutionary consciousness that is distinctly liberatory rather than reactionary. It can be done and has been done in the past (I've used the MEK as an example). Radicalizing young impressionable Muslims throughout the global south by showing them that communism is the only valid manifestation of Islamic values would take away from the recruiting pool of the reactionaries and Salafists. This is an important difference because most attempts to address terrorists is to meet them on secular terms, through an imperialist "justice system" or liberal ops, and this will only weaken the very valuable tool Islam provides for leftists.

    • Shmyt [he/him,any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I like this answer a lot, its very grounded and accessible but also shows the same forward thinking desire to make the world better.

      More controversial question, not asked in bad faith: what are your opinions on Xinjiang and the Uighur population?

      Full disclosure I want to believe China is trying their best to solve the radicalisation problem but I am extremely concerned that their efforts are eerily similar to the residential schools in canada that destroyed our First Nations people for generations.

      Do you feel the measures in Xinjiang are having/will have any lasting success? Are those measures creating or working towards a revolutionary conciousness in your opinion? Do you feel it is a half measure that will only create more tension, do you feel it goes too far or just goes in the wrong dorection?

      (Please feel free to answer according to the reports you have heard and believe, be it the reports from the West, the official line from the PRC, or somewhere in between)

      • Saif [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I've talked about this on the site before, but the gist of my take is: it's definitely not as bad as Western media wants you to think, because in their pathology they like to project their dark underbelly onto others. However I personally get disheartened by the lack of skepticism for these camps among leftists.

        My concern is that they are clearly approaching this situation in the mode of the secular nation-state, something that has never worked. You simply cannot approach Islam that way without getting something wrong at some point. Of course I don't want this to turn into a China struggle session, so I'll speak in a more general sense. What China is doing, regardless of the ideological position of the party, what they're doing in terms of their actions, is bad for the left globally and bad for the vulnerable Muslim community specifically, because their actions are consistent with cultural erasure. I would never go as far as to call it a cultural genocide, because that's absolutely not what the CPC is doing, they aren't nearly going that far. But what they are doing is not good either - they are diminishing unique cultural and spiritual practices and ways of life because they believe this will pacify the region. And it might very well do that, but that is not the same thing as saying it is the only way to make the region not a threat to you.

        There are ways to positively develop Xinxiang's relationship to the State as a whole, to diminish terrorism in the region, without resorting to these kinds of policies, and as leftists we should want them to take those options because it protects a vulnerable community.

        Let's say you were a smart, pragmatic Marxist and you found yourself having to navigate the Xinxiang problem, and since you are a Marxist obviously your goal here is to cultivate the necessary conditions to replace capitalism with a communist economic system. A smart thing to do, something which is rarely pursued because for some reason it's a novel idea, would be to help develop in the region a synthesis of Marxist ideals, Islam, and Uighur culture. As I've pointed out a lot, Islam and leftism are fully compatible and it's not very difficult to espouse an Islamic version of many of these ideologies. This would cultivate the idea within a population that reactionary terrorists are simply un-Islamic and provide nothing of value to you. Maybe even develop a distinctly Islamic strain of a vanguardist State in the area to serve as a perpetual check on counter-revolutionaries, and they'll do this because they are actively fueled by the belief that the revolution is willed by God. These would make for valuable allies, would they not? But for some strange reason people are barely willing to entertain the notion that you could construct a theological argument for communism when it's practically screaming at you when you open any holy book. For the Uighur people specifically, I am concerned that a similar effect will take place there, where the population loses any sense of meaning and suffers a form of political alienation, the same one many Muslims face today after having the political dimensions of the din taken away from them and having their own culture diminished. Just food for thought. Halal, of course.