Are the problems of Islam simply the peril of modernization?

Whitechapel has much in its past—oppression, bigotry, poverty, radicalism—that would have helped Hirsi Ali understand not only the neighborhood’s newest inhabitants but also her own family. But “Nomad” reveals that her life experiences have yet to ripen into a sense of history.

The sad truth is that the problems she blames on Islam—fear of sexuality, oppression of women, militant millenarianism—are to be found wherever traditionalist peoples confront the transition to an individualistic urban culture of modernity. Many more young women are killed in India for failing to bring sufficient dowry than perish in “honor killings” across the Muslim world.

Such social pathologies no more reveal the barbaric core of Hinduism or Islam than domestic violence in Europe and America defines the moral essence of Christianity or the Enlightenment.

Pankaj Mishra reviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s new autobiography (and anti-Islam tract), Nomad.

7 Responses

  2. I think it’s important to realise that ‘Islam’ is just one layer in the cultural palimpsest (I think this word when I use it has a slightly different meaning than it actual ‘official’ meaning) of wherever it is found.

    Without knowing anything about the topic (it is the idea I am trying to get across, not a fact), I suspect Islam is not responsible for female circumcision, for example – at least not directly. I suspect female circumcision was found in those regions where it is found long before Islam arrived, and I suspect it is performed among animists and Christians in those same regions.

    The above should not be taken to mean that I am in any way a defender of Islam, which I dislike.

  4. Is the assertion that it is logically impossible for the specific teachings of a religion or specific aspects of a culture to, in aggregate, deleteriously affect how morally its members act? Alternatively, is the assertion that upon careful review of history, culture, and religion, Islam is entirely devoid of negative aspects such that all problems are best seen as being merely friction between modernity and a traditionalist culture? Both are problematic.

  6. lark,
    With all due respect, I don’t know that I agree with your statement about Islam not having the equivalent of a Pope. The Pope is a “centralizing religious authority” for Catholics, but not for any other Christian denomination. There are divisions within Christianity, just as there are within Islam. In addition, Christianity has had its fair share of radicals (though perhaps less recently than Islam). There are radicals in any religion, just as there are those individuals who, though they once adhered to a certain faith, ultimately come to vehemently renounce it. It is a matter of personal opinion, and not a reflection of an entire religion, for someone to speak out against it. It certainly cannot be denied that there are places where Islam is used to oppress women, and where this has increased in recent times, but it is not the case that Islam universally oppresses women, It seems that in places, such as Iran, where Islamic fundamentalism has come to further the oppression of women, women are beginning to revolt against it, organizing themselves against this very oppression. Given this increasing resistance, it is hopefully only a matter of time until women are able to reverse the oppression instituted in the name of Islam.

  7. I thought this piece indulged in argument by analogy, and the analogy was not presented in depth. He asserts the rise of Islamic fundamentalism is ‘like’ the difficulties other societies have experienced with modernization. This gives a western reader a way to understand Islamic societies, but does that understanding have anything to do with Islamic societies, or is it a western fiction?

    For example one thing that makes Islam especially susceptible to violent radicalism is that it has no central legitimizing religious authority, like the Pope. All sorts of weird fatwas can – and do – fly around. A recent one in Saudi Arabia asserted that if unrelated men and women must work together, the men should drink the breast milk of the women, because that creates a form of relationship that doesn’t require veiling. See http://saudiwoman.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/whats-front-page-news-in-saudi-arabia/.

    Pankaj Mishra did not grapple with what makes Islam distinctive.

    He did not look at Islamic dictates about women, yet was highly dismissive of Ali’s criticism of women’s role and treatment in Islam. She bristles with specific critiques, and waves them off with his line about these being transitory issues of modernization.

    It is not clear to me that these are transitory issues. There are many places in the world where Islamic societies have become more oppressive of women, not less. The argument that the march towards freedom continues needs to be made, not asserted. In that respect Mishra was merely glib.