Tariq Ali is an interesting kind of person. A secular Pakistani intellectual (so a "cultural Muslim"... as much as I dislike the term). But in a lot of ways his anti-imperialist perspective resonates very well with the interests of the Muslim world (Perhaps we could call him a "political Muslim")? In the above-mentioned interview he makes an interesting distinction between himself and someone like Hirsi Ali.
I travel a lot both in the Muslim world and in the rest of the world, but I have never yet felt threatened. Why is that? It is no doubt because people who don’t agree with me about religion know that I am an enemy of imperialism. I unceasingly criticize imperialism and all its works, more than the believers do. Whereas Hirsi Ali and people like her in the United States and in Europe make a profession out of attacking Islam. There are other important questions in the world.
Why do these people concentrate endlessly on Islam? In the way that they attack Islam, they go along with existing prejudices. And for that they are hated. There is no excuse or justification for acts of violence against these people. It is necessary to discuss with them. But these acts are a sign of despair: people are so much at the end of their tether that they have recourse to violence.
It reminds me of the distinction I made a long time ago between Irshad Manji and Me'shell Ndegeocello (Me'Shell Suihailia Bashir Shakur). All non-Muslims, (or Muslims for that matter) are not made from the same cloth.
3 comments:
Ok. I was about to be pretty critical of the post until I read the link. I don't think the excerpt you posted was reflective of the overall point that Tariq was making.
I do think he made a pretty contradictory statement here:
Life in the Muslim world is not monolithic: there are believers, unbelievers, atheists
I don't think there is such a thing as a "unbeliever" or "atheist" in a Muslim world as being either would make the person a non-Muslim. Of course you could say that he has fallen into the same East-West trap of West=White Christian and East=Muslim -Arab when we know that no such East -West division exists except in our ideologies.
interesting post.
how come you don't like the term 'cultural muslim'?
I tried to explain my attitude towards "cultural Muslim" in an entry on Guatemalan/Iranian spoken word artist, Robert Karimi. (There is a link to it in my entry on "white people and native religion". The brief answer is just that religion and culture are very different things. And it seems like the concept of "cultural Muslim" almost tends to encourage and facilitate the idea that converting to a religion is like submitting to cultural imperialism.
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