Islam and Modernity: Are they Compatible?

In the book titled “Modernity, Islam and Secularism in Turkey”, Alev Cinar discussed how modernity is always studied or analyzed in a western way. “They analyzed trends, institutions, which are characteristics of Modernity in Europe” (p.3).  Cinar sees this as an inaccurate way of analyzing the modernity in the non-western countries, especially the Muslim countries (not Islamic states but countries with the population are a majority of Muslims). This is because modernity in Islamic countries is influenced by the Islamic cultures, teachings and norms. However, Cinar argued that there are aspects in analyzing modernity that is similar to the European way. Such as that “all modernization projects involve the creation of a particular sense of nationhood and the construction of the specific national identity”. The National Identity is a main factor to how one may see how modernize a country is. Cinar also emphasized that even though the Islam and Western ideologies are different in many ways, not all Islamic ideologies are anti-western. In Turkish, the word modern came to be used synonymously with secular and was evoked to indicate political alliance against Islamism. Ataturk, became the symbol of secularism as he was ‘the father of modern turkey’. Turkish Modernity has been built upon such narratives of self-defamation, be it produced by the westernist urban elites of the late 19^th century.

In the book “Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798-1989”, Albert Hourani also discussed about Modernity but in Arabic countries. Although he mainly focused on Islamic scholars Jamil Al-Din Al-Afghani, Rida Rashid and Muhammad Abduh, through them he talked about Islamic modernization in countries such as Egypt and Iran. Al-Afghani for instance, who travelled throughout the Middle East, sharing his values and ideologies about Islam. Al-Afghani taught about, “The danger of European Intervention, the need for National Unity to resist it, the need for a broader unity for the Islamic peoples, (and) the need for a constitution to limit the ruler’s powers”(p.109). Relating back to Cinar’s argument about European influence to people’s way of analyzing modernity in Islamic countries, one can connect how the European intervention is a threat to Muslim’s society’s process in modernizing. Modernization in Islamic countries takes a fairly different path compared to the western way, and others have to realize it in order to see that modernization is actually happening. If European intervention is seen as the right way to modernize in Islamic countries, then nationhood would decrease from that country, as its religious and cultural norms will slowly fade.

Muhammad Abduh also has similar principles as Al-Afghani. He believed that the best way for a Muslim country to modernize is by going back to the 1^st principles of Islam, back to the “Golden Age”, and using those principles to develop a modern life. To him, Islam is a middle path between science, reasons, morality, or faith. Islamic principles from the early days, are not against reason, in fact they are compatible with each other. Just the facts that good are rewarded and bad are punished, is a logical law, similar to laws we have today made by society that also brings secular principles. My point is, both Cinar and Hourani would argue that Islam and modernization are interconnected with each other. Not everything in the Islamic principle is against the Western or shall we say the secular principles.


Rossa D.

Identities in Turkey

The book, Modernity, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey, By Alev Cinar outlines the different identities of modern day Turkey. On one hand, political Islamists relating their identity to the Ottoman Empire, and on the other, secularists constructing their own in 1923 when the republic of turkey came into being. Both groups constructed their own realities causing contentions in issues like; headscarf, public space, and even history.

Although the points of confrontation lead to the formation of new positive elements, the differences in their views led to conflicts and divisions within Turkey itself. Both identities represented themselves as modern rejecting the modernization of the other identity; the Secularists viewed Islamists to remain backward, while the Islamists viewed the Secularists to be corrupt.

An important question about Islam and modernization has been questioned frequently. While the author of the book argues that since they were able to change the public sphere, modernization is adequate, the Secularists would argue that the Islamist/Ottoman Identity regarding change was based on backward ideologies and therefore their modernization is irrelevant.

According to the author’s definition of modernization, both identities were successful in changing the public sphere. For instance, the controversy regarding the headscarf, when the republic of turkey came to existence, the leader Mustafa Kamal AtaTurk, banished many taken for granted ideologies including wearing the headscarf in public. In his point of view, the headscarf was promoting backwardness rather than modernization and therefore banned wearing it in public places. On the other hand, during the 1980s, the Islamists promoted the headscarf as a symbol of decency and tradition rather than backwardness. Moreover, while the Islamists did not like the way people viewed the headscarf and tried to change it fashionably, the Secularist saw it as a way to put Islam into context with modernization.

 Likewise, the conflict was not restricted to social ideologies but extended to ideologies concerning the appropriateness of public entertainment. The Islamists took charge of the entertainment sector and influenced its theatre greatly; they were able to blend in several customs (the secularists Jazz band and the traditional music of Turkey of the Ottoman Empire) to create traditional music that can relate well to their Ottoman context and to the Turks in general. However, the Secularists disapproved their decision and thought it represented backwardness rather than modernization.

            In my Colonialism, National, and Identity class, I had the privilege to listen to a Turkish speaker talking about her Turkish identity and what it means to be Turkish. In her speech, it was clear that she was one of the Secularists because she did not only exclude the Islamists Ottomanists’ point of view, but incorporated a history well before their existence. In regard to the book we read for this class, the author of the book includes that in order for a successful nationalist project to succeed, its history must not date back further than where their history started. And this was clearly evident in her speech where according to her the Garden of Eden was in Turkey.

-OMG

Post-Ottoman Modernity

The question of modernization within the context of an Islamic society dates back to the 17^th century.  At its height, the Ottoman Empire represented one of the most powerful political entities in world history.  Stretching from the Maghreb to the Caspian and from Hungry to Yemen, the Ottoman Empire dominated a territorially vast and diverse domain.  Especially after its conquest of Constantinople and the Balkans, the casual observer would have considered the Ottomans one of the world’s superpowers. Yet, all of this soon changed.  The small Christian kingdoms that at one time were frightened of Ottoman influenced soon eclipsed the Turks.  How did the powerful Ottoman Empire fall behind to less significant states such as Britain or France?  The answer was the European countries ability to modernize/industrialize.  The discourse on modernity in the former Ottoman Empire bears ways in which Islam can co-exist with the modern world. 

            Turkey, the direct descendant of the Ottoman Empire, occupies a unique position geographically, politically, and intellectually within the context of Islam and modernity.  Like the ideas of the Enlightenment within the context of the foundation of the United States, the foundation of Turkey was marked by ideas of modernity.  To Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, the Ottoman Empire collapsed because it did not modernize (or more accurately modernize quick enough).  Ataturk set out to create a modern and secularized Turkish society from the top-down.  In creating a secularized society, Ataturk attempted to relegate Islam to the private sphere.  Islamic laws and/or traditions were attributed as Turkish (fitting within a strict concept of nationalism), changed, or discouraged.  An backlash against Ataturk’s modernization reforms occurred later in the 20^th century with the rise of Islamism.  Despite the negative connotations that political Islam was within western discourse, the Islamists are also seen as modernizing agents by historians such as Alev Cinar.  In the context of Cinar’s definition of modernity, both Ataturk and Islamism represent modernizing agents.  For Cinar, modernity is defined as a need for progress and change for a better future.  This is triggered by something wrong with the present.  The heirs of Ataturk and Islamists agree that something is wrong with their present society (although they certainly would disagree on what).  The major difference is the new society they are hoping to achieve.  Turkish Islamists are certainly no less modern then their secularist counterparts.  Here is Islam and modernity cooperating together.  On face value, it is different than the more secular modernity usually attributed to the West (and Ataturk).  But, it is modernity nonetheless.  

            At its height, the Ottoman Empire united almost all of what is considered today as the Middle East.  As Ottoman/Islamic unity would not last forever, other modernists such as al-Afghani used this unity as symbolism for the decay of the Islamic civilization.  Al-Afghani advocated the unity of the Islamic world and a return to the “true” Islam which he saw as equivalent to true reason.  Despite advocating a return to an older Islam, it would be incorrect to lump al-Afghani with fundamentalism or term him as a reactionary.  Al-Afghani was concerned with the decay of Islamic society in the political, technological, and moral spheres.  Using Cinar’s previous definition of modernity, al-Afghani was trying to progress society (Islamic) towards a better future.  Al-Afghani is a modernist who looks greatly different from the Turkish modernists (even among many Islamists).  If anything, al-Afghani shows a compatibility with Islam and modernity in a completely different fashion. 

BDF

Colonizing Egypt 1

Colonizing Egypt begins by describing the first interactions of Europeans with the Egyptians. Even though the first encounters of Europeans and the outside world were encounters through exhibitions, it never the less gave them a sense of the “other” despite it not being the real thing. The Egyptians, when first learnt about these exhibitions, were furious; not only were the exhibitions degrading, but also because they portrayed Egyptians and Egypt as pieces of objects.  However, The exhibitions give us an idea of how Europeans saw the Egyptians.

When Europeans began infiltrating into Egypt they described it as chaotic.  Egypt for them seemed out of the ordinary as if it were a carnival or huge market place.  Because Egypt had come under the control of the British, they saw it necessary to change and modernize them. Unlike other colonies, Egypt was not only exploited for its resources, but people too. The British had wanted to govern them properly but could not do so with the chaos at hand. The formations of a new army, the creation of a new housing system and the allocation of new schools and agricultural system helped the British colonize Egyptians effectively.

 During the process of colonization, Egyptians were given the impression that the process of modernizing Egypt were changes that were for there own social good. However, its clear that the dramatic transformation that took place in the 1830’s were unbearable for the Egyptians. For instance, Restrictions had been put on there freedom of movement. Consequently, those who wanted to travel had to get permission. These transformations were not for their own sake, but for the sake of Britain to force them into a capitalist system. Furthermore, the transformation was aimed at disciplining and coordinating Egyptian society.  According to Foucault this was not to expand Egyptian society, but to infiltrate re-order and colonize. Because Europeans, as explained in chapter one, thought of Egyptians as a chaotic people, these new laws and structures sought in one way or another to modernize them according European style.

For instance, the new army that was formed created a community of them where they would be together during times of peace and war. This community of soldiers even over looked the production industry. While the new army did not resemble anything of that of Europeans, it was the beginning stages for order and a way to start controlling the Egyptian people.

         The British also colonized the Egyptians by introducing to them a new housing model. This model sought to put a population depending on their class. In a capitalist society there are the middle class the rich and the poor. The construction and the allocation of people to their house was a way to categorize people to a specific group. The model housing was also used for the purpose of bringing order. It divided up the people and contained them in their social ranking, but its main purpose was to introduce the people to the system of capitalism

-OMG

Mass Deception

We now depend on the media for entertainment. Whether we get that entertainment on television, the radio, or even from the Internet, they are all the same product disguised differently. The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer describe what entertainment has become.  In summary, they argue that the world is given the illusion of free decisions and choices, but in reality they do not.  It is unfortunate that it took a reading to force me to think outside the box to see the illusion I have been in. It not only made me realize how much influence these products have on us, but how these elites are gaining profit from this.

 Art is usually referred to as a product thats main purpose is to show the expression of an artist. Art comes in many forms such as music, paintings, photography and even film. While it is difficult to find true forms of art, it still exists. Nevertheless, it is still hard to find a film and categorize it as art. as Adorno and Horkheimer point out: films success these days are not measured on an artist’s expressions , but on how much technology was used to produce that movie, how many stars actresses there are, and by the amount of modern products used.

 People do not watch the movie as a form of art anymore, but for leisure time. When comparing the many films, it is hard to distinguish between them as they are aimed at either making the audience feel better, or make the audience want to be associated with that film. It no longer becomes the artists’ expression to

the world, but the audiences’ expression of the movie. In capitalist system, it becomes just another relation between the consumer and the product. And like other relationships, it becomes another illusion that the consumer has a free choice to pick his film to watch. 

Artists who are in the film industry have no choice but to continue with this non-ending cycle as it is their only means of profit. Changing the discourse is difficult, especially since when movies different to those “normal” films are categorized as not entertaining. But since when was art meant to entertain its subjects. In terms of Foucault's words, the reality of the film industry has created its own discourse, and to challenge this discourse, we must act differently. Changing the discourse however is difficult because both the consumer and the producer rely on the other.

-OMG

The Orientalist Perspective as an Enframing Discourse

In class, we discussed that orientalism is an enframing discourse. The word oriental itself comes from the word orient, which means the east, while the occident is the west. The orientalist perspective is the perspective used to depict a subject from the Eastern culture. As we focused on the Middle East we watched a movie about the book Orientalism written by Edward Said.

He used art as a means to show the West’s depiction of the Middle Eastern culture. We used the knowledge from this book to reanalyze the book we previously read, Colonizing Egypt. The movie talked about how the depiction of people who visited the middle-east made a lot of stereotypical accuses. These people made people in the Middle East look frightening. They created a representation of Arab people that does not really represent the Arab people as a whole. For example, they show through the art works how the men always have a long beard, scary eyes, and always get beaten in war.

In colonizing Egypt, Timothy Mitchell also did the same thing, when he explained how the France rebuilt Egypt in their World Exhibitions. Through the eyes of the western world, Egypt was rebuilt in an exact way how it looks in the outside, but not really in the inside. In the video, we might agree that most Arab men have a long beard but their personalities, which was depicted as scary and heartless, was wrong.

To some extent, I would agree with Said Edwards when he said that the North American perspectives of the Middle East in general are politicized by the Israel. This racism towards the Middle East people, are more and less one of the important reasons to consider when we analyze the reason for the conflicts between these two regions. Said Edwards, repeated how since the early days of film, when media started revolutionizing, the Middle East was already represented negatively.  The “threatening and demonizing figure of Middle East in the Journal, Media, and Hollywood”, showed how fanatic and extremist the region is. Not just the Middle East, Said Edwards also discussed about how Islam is seen by the western. He said that, Islam is seen to promote violence repeating the line of development. Muslims are seen as villains and they came out with the ideology that it is hard to deal with the Nulsims and make them listen, so the only way of doing it is “to give them a bloody nose”.  Islam has been depicted as the enemy, and that there is no knowledge that can confront this unless the good western people go to the Middle East and experience the culture themselves.

Mitchell also analyzed enframing. He talked about the way the new city of Cairo which is structured or built in the panoptical model, which is how the prisons are built nowadays..  This building style is where all the activities of the area can be monitored from the center.  The “new methods of order were seeking to penetrate, colonize, and multiply” (Mitchel, 4). In this way, everyone is under control, and that everyone will start adapting to feel in control, so they will not go against order. This is an example of enframing, as enframing means a creation of a fixed hierarchy of meanings with the aim of creating a systematic knowledge and/or explaining the useful potential of an object or person. I hope this essay shows how enframing is an orientalist perspective.

Rossa D.

Enframing, Said and Impressions

            As you know, the bulk of the last two class periods have revolved around Mitchell’s book, Colonising Egypt and his concept of enframing. Enframing, being the means by which colonizers created info and set up a rigid hierarchy, plays into the documentary, about Edward Said and his work at disemboweling and extensive work against orientalism, from Wednesday because orientalism is an enframing discourse. Edward Said was from Palestine (I believe); his education took place in boarding schools and western high education.  Helena asked us this would have influenced him. Personally, I find it contradicting, to a point, that the man hailed as picking apart orientalism and providing paths for ‘better’ education and learning, with reference to the Middle East, had a very, seemingly, disconnected with relation to Middle Eastern (more accurately Palestinian) life. If Said attended all of these western institutions, where he would have been ingrained with thinking from a western perspective and did not participate in the same way with his birthplace as others born there, how can he speak with such authority about the experiences of Middle Easterns as a whole. Granted he seemed, to my western view, to hold many insights, but I have to ask how his western and class privileged up bringing influenced him? I want to ask him if he was aware of these influences? Did he really make an effort to move past his, inherent, indoctrination from his schooling and privilege? And along with this its interesting that Said’s nephew is now writing where his Uncle Said left over—sort of. I wonder what privilege (if any) is acting that ‘allows’ them to be the spokes person? Though, along with these questions an equally important one to ask is, if he had lived local and gone to the local schools, would we, the west, have even listened to him?

            To place more focus on the documentary, I really wish it had been done after 9/11. I feel like Said would have so much to say about what occurred then. The relationships he pointed out, I feel like would have been heightened. I was actually surprised by the reactions in the 90s to the Oklahoma bombings. In my mind the negativity and targeting of Muslims and Middle Easterners began after 9/11. Ignorant? Yes. I think this occurred for me because I never had words to express or question the practices and also, I was only in 4^th grade when the attacks occurred.  As Said talked, I was further blown away by the common placement and abundance of on the ground Middle Eastern paranoia. I really shouldn’t have; I have taken Chuck’s America’s Middle East course, in which we read about all the ways that the US has created a slanted singular view of Middle Easterners. The thing that still strikes me is how the media images of how the ‘bad guy’ was often, supposedly/apparently, depicted as Middle Eastern, because I never made the connection. I did not the much of anything about the region until college. It was not taught much beyond geography class. We did not get to Iran as planned in my Comparative Governments class. In my World History we discussed Byzantine, but spent the most of the time on China. The one image I do know I gained was the impression that culture moved out of the ‘fertile crescent’ to the East and later to the West (it temporarily stopped in northern Africa, but not for long). Now, I do not agree with this at all, but these were the images I held through my schooling. So maybe the media coverage that Said talks about affected me more than I realized.