Shifting demarcations

A few thoughts on the endlessly shifting dividing lines and rhetoric we are witness to:

"Islamists", we're told, are out to create 'barbaric' and 'undemocratic' societies, where 'human rights' will be something of a heresy. "Modernists", on the other hand, are the very people that are needed to free Muslim peoples from the tutelage of a "medieval religion". Does that sound familiar? What, then, do we make of the "Islamist", Rachid al-Ghannouchi, who wishes to completely democratise Islamic society and introduce the language of 'human rights' into Islamic legal discourse, but is persecuted by secular Tunisia; and of the "modernist", and former Professor of Islamic Thought at the University of Chicago, Fazlur Rahman, who sought to use the state as an instrument of "moral-religious" values, but was driven from his home by conservative and fiery elements of Pakistani Islam?

According to the younger Emile Durkhiem [1858-1917] [1], it is traditional soceities who exhibit the 'mechanical' quality of the "collective conscience" in order to bring about integration; the socio-moral integration is tight leaving little room for the individual. This has, traditionally, been embodied in religion, especially a religion which has a string emphasis on orthopraxy as well as orthodoxy: that is common beliefs and values (of the majority) hold sway. Yet, what do we see? The "moderns" of our age employ the rhetoric of 'traditional' societies in order to bring about a social-bond: "our way of life", "our common values", "our dreams", have all gained force in recent months and years, especially in the face of terrorism, and the hysteria which surrounds this terror, that of the 'Other' (Communists, Muslims, asylum seekers, immigrants). Is this new? Well no... Do you remember the Rushdie affair? Despite the fact that Muslims protested within legitimate means against the sale of the book (protests, petitions [2]), they were villified for not "conforming" to "our way of life", to "our [British] culture", "our values"; they were given lessons in the media by politicians (who should have simply explained that the book cannot be banned by the law); 'liberal' journalists moralised on the "subversive" elements within Britain who had not yet accepted "British values" [3]. Of course, this could say more for the flaws in Durkheim's views on traditional and modern societies. Or maybe it tells of societies who think of themselves as 'modern', but in the face of a (perceived) threat, exhibit 'traditional' characteristics.

Notes
[1] Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, New York: Free Press, 1997 [1893]. Durkheim later changed his views and conceded the need for even modern societies, with their 'organic' solidarity (as oppose to a mechanical solidarity), to believe in common symbols which would anchor the whole of society.

[2] The fatwa by Khomeni carried no legal force outside of Iran, and even less for most Muslims in the UK who can be broadly classified as Sunnis. Muslims in the UK did distance themselves considerabley from the fatwa, which was obviously designed to rouse base emotions and passions in Islamic Iran; call it a traditional society binding itself around a religious value.

[3] Just what are "British values", in light of the hysteria generated by the Rushdie affair, is a question explored by Talal Asad's essay "Multiculturalism and British Identity in the Wake of the Rushdie Affair", In: Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Power in Christianity and Islam, Baltimore & London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1993, pp. 239-268.