Re: Islamic Militancy: It is their problem

In a message dated 10/29/01 12:07:42 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
KSamman@aol.com writes:

<< The criticism that we need to consider what's happening "within" a given 
region, culture, gender, class, ... is not unlike the response giving by some 
of my students. Hussain's comment that "it is entirely facile to try to 
locate the roots of contemporary Islamic inspired militancy exclusively in 
terms of capitalism, modernity, peripheralization, etc" is very similar to 
the response I would get, lets say, from a social scientist like Oscar Lewis 
who would say that "you leftist blame the larger society for everything when 
obviously the problem stems from the fact that this Wal Mart worker has 
learned from his family negative traits that led him to his poor, miserable 
life."  The two are not unlike each other.  For Hussain, some Muslims have 
learned that Islam means holy war from past historical cultures of their own 
making and now have carried this cultural baggage into the modern era.  For 
Lewis, the Wal Mart employee has learned negative qualities like "immediate 
gratification" in his childhood and is now i
 n his adult life reproducing his parents bad qualities. >>


I don't think this is being fair to Hussain.  He was not trying to explain 
why the Middle East has been peripheralized--he was trying to explain the 
content of its response, 'resistance' etc to that peripheralization.  Surely 
it's difficult to do so for any part of  the world without considering what 
cultural elements are floating around (whether produced before or after the 
incorporation into the modern world system) to 'bricolage' with.  Otherwise, 
how does world systems analysis explain the patent variety of responses in 
the periphery/semi-periphery (or the core, for that matter)?  If you want to 
claim that Islamic militancy, the Zapatistas, civil wars in Africa are all 
pretty much the same thing, fine, but some of us would like to understand the 
reasons why they diverge the way they do.  One could argue that the world 
system treats different parts of the periphery differently--for example, the 
fact of Middle East oil may be of some relevance to explaining Islamic 
militancy, by endowing some conservative members of a despised group (on the 
global level) with deep pockets--but I doubt that will really get us too far. 
 Implied in Samman's analysis is that when 'the modern world system' arrives, 
previous local dynamics become irrelevant.  At least it is not explained how 
they are relevant, since efforts to bring them up are labeled 'blaming the 
victim'.  I think there is scholarship from practically every part of the 
world now that demonstrates the untenability of this position.

It all comes back to the question of agency--in other words, whose actions 
you are going to see as relevant to explaining why the world looks like it 
does.  Whether one is talking about sexist structures, minimum wage workers, 
or the plight of a region of the world, at some point one cannot only look at 
the actions of the powerful, but one also has to look at how the actions of 
the oppressed shape the situation.  Things quickly get all tangled up, since 
in many ways the oppressed seem to embrace the structures said to be 
oppressing them,  take actions that seem to have nothing much to do with 
changing their situation, and at many times the oppressors appear to embrace 
the projects of the oppressed, but nobody promised a simple, clear world.

Steven Sherman
Guilford College