Whose Fundamentalism?

WHOSE FUNDAMENTALISM? Minoo Moallem September 26, 2001 In the wake ofthe horrific events ofSeptember nth, "Islamic fundamentalism ," a discourse which has been decades in the making, has finally come into its own. Islamic fundamentalism is taken to connote somethingthatlies outside theWest, a reversion to an archaicand barbaricage. It is seen as Islam's essence and the ultimate source of otherness. The barbaric other is/belongs outside civilization; he is in a permanent war with civilization butwith no possibility ofentering history. He penetrates civilization with the intention ofdestroying it; he is a man ofdestruction. His freedom is the taking away ofothers' freedom. The barbaric other is there to legitimize and give meaning to the masculinist militarism ofthe "civilized" and his constant need to "protect." Protection enables an alliance between protector and protected against a common foe. This alliance effaces the protector's will to power. The representation ofIslamic fundamentalism in the West is deeply influenced by the general racialization ofMuslims in a neo-racist idiom, which has its roots in cultural essentialism and a conventional Eurocentric notion of"people without history." Islamic fundamentalism has becomeageneric signifierused constantlyto single outtheMuslim other, in its irrational, morally inferior, and barbaric masculinityand its passive, victimized, and submissive femininity. New forms of Orientalist discourse not only legitimize Western intervention and the protection of Western economic and political interests in the "Middle East," but also justify discrimination and the exclusion ofMiddle Eastern and Muslim immigrants in diaspora. It reduces all Muslims to fundamentalists, and all fundamentalists to fanatical anti-modern traditionalists and terrorists , even as it attributes a culturally aggressive and oppressive nature to all fundamentalist men, and a passive, ignorant, and submissive nature to all fundamentalist women. Such totalizing discourses not only deny the presence ofdissenting social movements in the region, but also dissimulate the existence ofvarious forms ofnegotiation over the meaning [Meridians:feminism, race, transnationalism 2002, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 298-301]©2002 by Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved. 298 and interpretation ofIslam in many differentMuslim countries, perpetuating what Edward Said identified as Orientalism. The depiction ofIslam as a static system transcending cultures and peoples is the condition, in the context ofmodernity and postmodernity, ofwhat is being called "the Islamic revival" or "the Islamic resurgence." This process accords with the expansionist logic ofthe West, the quest for oil and political control ofstrategically located "Middle Eastern" countries. It also accords with Western measures to ensure the preservation or establishment offriendly local regimes, and with the steady deterioration ofculture and social values ofthe people in this area. That means thatit has no relation to history and no connection to any other forms offundamentalism, either in the U.S. or elsewhere in the world. The collapse ofthe Soviet Union, and with it the bipolar logic ofthe cold war, leftavacuum in American cultural and political life; Islamic fundamentalism was on hand to shore up a dualistic moral framework ofgood and evil. Islamic fundamentalism functions both as a transnational movement and a system of representation. It moves by way of global networks of communication, trade, and travel; its vectors are money, ideas, bodies, and consumer goods. It has brought to the surface deep fears of"difference "; it disavows by projection what is intolerable in the "enlightened" West. The question therefore arises: can it be that Islamic fundamentalism is the noxious reservoir ofan unresolved past and an unexamined present in the West? Can it be that, in the mirror ofwhat we call Islamic fundamentalism, we (are afraid to) see the problems ofmodernitycarried overto the complexconditions ofpostmodernity? Is iteasierfor us to consign Islamic fundamentalism to a mythic, barbaric past, whereby we moderns are assured ofthe superiority ofour civilization? Where, after all, are we to put the history ofcolonialism, genocide, and slavery? The presence in the West ofmasses ofimmigrants and refugees from Muslim cultures has added new anxieties about hosting the Muslim "other" from the postcolonial territories. The new cosmopolitan centers of the contemporary world, far from being a paradise of hybridity, are marked by what Abdulrazak Gurnah calls "the twin traditions ofasylum and xenophobia." The discourse of asylum co-exists with xenophobic narratives to construct the foreigner as forever alien and tragic. Refugees and immigrants from postcolonial territories and Muslim...