"When philosophy paints its grey in grey then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey in grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk." -- G.W.F. Hegel, 'Preface', Philosophy of Right.
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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx
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Identity, Immigration, and Liberal Democracy #2
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July 16, 2006
I wan t to pick up on Francis Fukuyama's, Identity, Immigration, and Liberal Democracy, published at the Journal of Democracy, and which I considered in this postThat post indicated Fukuyama's claim of the flaw in liberalism---its hole in relation to political deference that liberal societies owe groups rather than individuals. Liberalism only recognizes individual rights, which can only be secured through a social contract, that prevents one individual's pursuit of self-interest from harming the rights of others. A utilitarian liberalism, we can add, only recognizes individual interests or preferences.
Fukuyama says that:
The radical Islamist ideology that has motivated many of the terror attacks over the past decade must be seen in large measure as a manifestation of modern identity politics rather than as an assertion of traditional Muslim culture. As such, it is something quintessentially modern, and thus familiar to us from earlier extremist political movements...The argument that contemporary radical Islamism is a form of identity politics has been made most forcefully by the French scholar Olivier Roy in his book Globalized Islam ... According to Roy, the root of radical Islamism is not cultural---that is, it is not a byproduct of something inherent in or deeply essential to Islam or the cultural system that this religion has produced. Rather, he argues, radical Islamism has emerged because Islam has become deterritorialized in such a way as to throw open the whole question of Muslim identity.
Australian conservatives, in contrast, argue that radical Islamist ideology is byproduct of something inherent in or deeply essential to Islam. It has nothing to do with identity.
So how has Islam become deterritorialized in such a way as to throw open the whole question of Muslim identity?Fukuyama says that:
The question of identity does not come up at all in traditional Muslim societies, as it did not in traditional Christian societies. In a traditional Muslim society, an individual's identity is given by that person's parents and social environment; everything, from one's tribe and kin to the local imam to the political structure of the state, anchors one's identity in a particular branch of Islamic faith.
He then adds:
According to Roy, identity becomes problematic precisely when Muslims leave traditional Muslim societies by, for example, emigrating to Western Europe. One's identity as a Muslim is no longer supported by the outside society; indeed, there is strong pressure to conform to the Western society's prevailing cultural norms. The question of authenticity arises in a way that it never did in the traditional society, since there is now a gap between one's inner identity as a member of a Muslim cultural community and one's behavior vis-a-vis the surrounding society.
Roy's account is very pertinent to Australia. It is one that is familar, and overlaps, with previous waves of migration. Fukuyama says:
Understanding radical Islamism as a form of identity politics also explains why second- and third-generation European Muslims have turned to it. First-generation immigrants have usually not made a psychological break with the culture of their land of birth and carry traditional practices with them to their new homes. Their children, by contrast, are often contemptuous of their parents' religiosity, and yet have not become integrated into the culture of the surrounding Western society. Stuck between two cultures with which they cannot identify, they find a strong appeal in the universalist ideology offered by contemporary jihadism.
Liberalism doesn't have the bite here. Why not embrace liberalism?
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