Re: So what!

Hi Warren and others,

Thanks for that interesting post, but I think you are
speaking to a like-minded audience when you discuss
the negative potential of all fundamentalism.  On your
argument that this politicized religion is
"pre-capitalist" hits me, however, as being off the
mark.  I don't mean to sound sarcastic here, but as
far as I know mankind has not yet invented HG Wells
time machine. Do you mean to tell me that Khomeini and
Pat Robertson, by placing themselves in opposition to
liberal modernist discourse, are actually a
reincarnation of a pre 16th century Feudal mentality? 
I respectfully disagree.  I believe such characters to
be quite at home here in our period.  The only stunt
they have to perform is learn a few techniques from
other, more "progressive" characters who have accepted
the mantle of state power.  Khomeini indeed did not
act unlike most other figures who have acquired state
power, and your description of the Irtanian revolution
sounds not unlike any other modern revolution: they
all after coming into power opressed the workers,
forced their women into submission, and produced
surplus for the ruling classes.  Some were, of course,
more efficient in one or the other fields of
oppression, but they were all playing to the same
tune. On the ordered, hierarchical society you use
Iran as example, my comments are the same.  Khomeini
learned this from watching too many Star Trek films
and adopted his form of Islam to function well with
the modern apparatus of social control we call the
modern state.  You can call this precapitalist if you
want but a star trek disciplinary system was not
available to the Abbasid caliphate or the Mamlukes. 
No, they had to depend on that awkward, inefficient
tributory system with all of its complications.  

Khaldoun Samman



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