Peddlers of clash of civilizations

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Which books does an average Western reader choose when s/he wants to be better informed about Islam and the Muslims? What does s/he buy when s/he goes to the bookstore or gets on Amazon? While some readers opt for well-researched books or advanced academic books, the numbers tell us that these constitute only a minority. The majority of ordinary readers, as is the case everywhere, go for best-sellers -- capsule books easy to swallow, easy to consume.

  Which books does an average Western reader choose when s/he wants to be better informed about Islam and the Muslims? What does s/he buy when s/he goes to the bookstore or gets on Amazon? While some readers opt for well-researched books or advanced academic books, the numbers tell us that these constitute only a minority. The majority of ordinary readers, as is the case everywhere, go for best-sellers -- capsule books easy to swallow, easy to consume.

  This being the case, no wonder the controversial Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci s books, particularly her recent “The Force of Reason,” sell thousand of copies on both sides of the Atlantic. The book sold more than 800,000 copies in Italy alone. For Fallaci facts are far less important than crude rhetoric. Thus she boldly claims that 95 percent of Muslims are against democracy and essentially at odds with it. How on earth she arrived at this overconfident conclusion, which data she has measured exactly or how many Muslims she has interviewed to make such bold statements are questions that are bound to remain unanswered. Questioning her methodology has no relevance. What matters for her is the force of defamation and the force of misrepresentation: generating rhetoric for the sake of rhetoric. She further maintains that “moderate Islam” is an oxymoron since Islam is prone to violence and extremism. To argue otherwise is a myth shared only by naïve Westerners, she adds.

  Reading Fallaci s work, one gets the impression that there can be only two types of Muslims: the overwhelming majority -- the brutes or potential brutes -- and those who have finally come out and denounced their religion -- the impious. The bad and the once-bad. One other unchanging element in Fallaci s work is her deep aversion toward intellectuals. She constantly insults those cosmopolitan intellectuals who make every effort to question the existing cultural stereotypes in an increasingly polarized world. Intellectuals, according to Fallaci, only muddle and fuddle the problem. Too much theory. Too much research. Thinking too much when they should see once and for all that all Muslims are a threat to Western civilization! Although Fallaci purports to be an author, she has no time to lose herself with other books or book-people.

  Idolizing ignorance and playing to the gallery certainly proves easier than undertaking the task of fighting unawareness wherever it may come from and promoting empathy on all sides. No need to remind that such deep distaste of intellectuals has been a common aspect of every totalitarian discourse in history -- in Russia, China, Italy. Today Europe is home to approximately 20 million Muslims. While not every European politician or political figure seems to be content with this current development, some like Fallaci have gone so far as to look for a conspiracy theory behind this population growth. How did Europe become the abode of so many Muslims in so little time, asks Fallaci. Surely there must be an ideological combat behind it, some sort of a malicious plot! Fallaci claims that Europe is on the way of becoming Eurabia. As antagonistic as Fallaci might be, it is crystal clear that some fanatical Muslims in Europe seem to be eager to prove her right. Recently an imam in Oslo told the Norwegian newspapers that “our way of thinking will prove more powerful than yours.” He further claimed that by the year 2050 Muslims would constitute 30 percent of the European population and that then the rift between the two sides would be more visible.

  Such confrontational distinctions between an imaginary “us” and an imaginary “them” are precisely what the peddlers of the thesis of the clash of civilizations need. Poles apart as they might seem, as a matter of fact Oriana Fallaci and the fanatical Muslim speaker in Norway should be buddies. After all, they both rely on the same exclusivist mentality, the same type of generalization and dualities, the same sort of politics of fear and politics of collision. They legitimize each other s existence. They need one another. Meanwhile, the rest of us need to blur the very boundaries Fallaci and the Norwegian imam take for granted. We urgently need to challenge the religious and cultural dogmas that fabricate such belligerent rhetoric, just like we need to re-appreciate “cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism.”