'Islamic culture: An easy scapegoat'

I permitted myself to post the whole article by Soumayya Ghannoushi who is a researcher in the history of ideas at the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London; in the hope that you will read it to the end. This is what many people from that area [Middle East] think (not neccessarily my opinion), to reach them and show them the sincerety of the West and Bush's plans in meddling in their affairs you may have to consider a 'different' approach then villifying their religion, humiliating them at every turn and destroying their homeland by continuous interventions.; so that eventually they can turn to their own projects of reformation and democratisation with all that it entitles.
Ok enough blabbering here is the article .

"Ever since the monumental day of 11 September 2001, the world has been inundated by stale cliches and dim-witted myths, poorly disguised as honest academic research and free, objective journalism.
In this great hyperbole, the world appears broken into two opposite trenches: a sphere of freedom, morality and civility, confronted by its antithesis: an enslaved barbaric realm that encapsulates all that "we" are not.
The far-stretching lands of Islam loom largely in this bleak uncivilised sphere. If the modern West is dynamic, the world of Islam is stagnant. If it is governed democratically and honours self-ownership, Islam is plagued by a despotism that crushes the individual altogether out of existence. If it is rigorously rational, the world of Islam is the embodiment of raving instincts and wild emotionalism.
This discourse, which derives its roots from the tradition of Orientalism responsible for rearticulating and institutionalising the enormous arsenal of mediaeval Christian terms, narratives, images and myths about Islam and its world, had been severely undermined by the waves of Third World national liberation movements and the ever-growing tradition of post-colonial studies which question the essentialism and readymade models asserting the uniqueness and cultural purity of the West as opposed to the East's backwardness and stagnation.

With the dramatic events of September 11, however, this discourse was able to rear its ugly imperialist and colonialist head once more, reformulate its postulates and recycle its old stereotypes of Muslims, their world and faith.
What had 30 years ago been cause for embarrassment and disrepute, was once again restored to normality, even respectability. Muslims thus found themselves the object of incessant condemnation and vilification.
When it comes to the subject of Islam and Muslims, even the most elementary requirements of responsible objective scientific research could be dispensed withWhile not even the weak, marginalised Muslim minorities in the West were spared, the world powers that reign over the destiny of the Middle East and the greater part of the Muslim hemisphere assumed the role of the innocent victim of "Islamic aggression", who bore no responsibility whatever for the tragic crises of the region, from war, chaos and occupation to economic backwardness and political despotism.
Even those of little if any knowledge of Islam and its intensely complex historical condition, movements and traditions now entered the unrestricted open market of Islam.
When it comes to the subject of Islam and Muslims, even the most elementary requirements of responsible objective scientific research could be dispensed with.
We have thus become used to seeing parts of Quranic verses extricated from their contexts and combined with other fragments to distort the general meaning, to hearing Quranic verses confused with sayings of the prophet and talk of otherworldly punishment and reward represented as rules determining treatment of non-believers in this world.
And daily we bear witness to the hideous spectacle of ignorance, arrogance and prejudice parading freely across the larger part of the countless analyses, columns and articles on Islam and its world that stretch across pages and pages of newspapers, glossy magazines and academic reviews.

The 19th century European travellers' distant detached observations of the strange ways of the Muslim other, the Christian missionary, colonial administrator and military generals' representations of the remote world of Islam, are now replaced by ones by journalists, Islamologists and so-called experts.
The distorted and confused conception of the Islamic faith and historical experience these hold finds its roots in three elements essentially. First, a recycled Christian memory of Islam that remained active even in the era of secularisation.
The mediaeval Christian view of Islam as a deviant heretical creed continues to survive within a "secularised" framework. For although Christian theology has lost the vanguard role it had enjoyed during the Middle Ages, its content has been largely stripped of its transcendental character and rearticulated within a modern essentialist philosophy.
Secondly, the shift in the balance of power in favour of the modern west and emergence of an international order that gave the upper hand to the European powers over the rest of the globe, mainly in the south Mediterranean hemisphere. And, finally, the deep crises and high level of political disintegration that accompanied the accelerated decline of the Ottoman Empire and, since the beginning of the 19th century, came to characterise the whole Muslim world.
These three interconnected factors gave the modern west leave to silence Islam's voice and impose itself as the unique power of logos, of understanding, revealing, categorising and modulating Islam and its societies.

Since culture is an easy target, readymade postulates and categories are constantly invoked to explain all the ills plaguing the Muslim world. And it is precisely through this gate that thinkers with little acquaintance with Islam have engaged in a polemical discourse on Islam overwhelmed with superficiality, generalisation and distortion.
But beyond the superficial cultural explanations behind which hide western elites and decision makers, how can we make sense of the crises that dominate the scene in the Muslim world in general and the Arab region in particular? Could we dissociate the current condition of this sensitive part of the globe from its active near past, from the colonial policies and foreign interventions that still dictate much of its fate?
Could we separate the region's situation from the mammoth structure of a world order governed by great powers headed by the American giant, which reign over the destinies of the people of the Middle East?
If we are to gain insight into the grave phenomena emerging in the Islamic world, we must begin by freeing ourselves of the blind, naive essentialism characteristic of a great many analyses of the problem, which seek theological explanations for highly complex historical phenomena.
The intensely intricate nature of the Islamic socio-political situation marked by striking contradictions and strong tensions is better understood when viewed within the context of the waves of Western imperialist expansion, of the crises of the post-colonial state and the reality of social deprivation, economic dependence and decadent educational systems unable to fill the vacuum generated by the erosion of traditional learning centres, along with the marginalisation of the Muslim masses from the political system.

The situation is further complicated by American foreign policies in the Middle East, its backing of Israel's military occupation of Palestinian land and shameful military occupation of Iraq, which according to the most modest estimate available, has resulted in the deaths of over one hundred thousand Iraqis and wrought havoc in the country's infrastructure.
The countless innocent Iraqi lives it wrecks and the enormous American resources it devours (a colossal $240 million) are in the eyes of the architects of this latest of America's colonial ventures, justified by the underlying aim: imposing military dominance over this country, thereby laying hands over its enormous oil fields and subduing the entire strategic Arab region to American hegemony fully.
Only the terminally naive and politically blind may, indeed, be duped by the heroic rhetoric of bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq and the region. If anything, the US is widely regarded by the majority in the Middle East as a crucial obstacle in their struggle for freedom from oppression.
It is interesting that the most despotic states in the Middle East region are those who have the closest ties with the US and its Western allies. One, indeed, may legitimately ask if such totalitarianism is the product of Islam, or whether it is the creation of Western policies themselves.

It is to the West's hegemonic self-engrossed policies and bleak historical record in the region that we should turn if we are to understand the causes of the great turmoil shaking Muslim societies to their very depths.
Indeed, much to the horror of the journalists and intellectuals acting as the "enlightened missionaries" of new colonialism, it is America's statesmen, generals and moneymen that hold the key to our search for the origins of "Islamic" fanaticism and extremism, not the texts of the Quran or the tradition of Islam's Prophet as they never tire of repeating.
And even if we chose to accept Bush and Blair's rhetoric that places the "enlightened free world" above and in opposition to the rest of humanity staggering under the weight of fanaticism and extremism and if we were to see bin Laden and al-Zarqawi as the natural product of an Islamic culture in need of remoulding through educational reforms, we would still be faced with the following question:
What of the expressions of fanaticism in the Western "free" world itself? Where are we to classify yesterday's brutal totalitarianisms of the likes of Nazism, fascism and Stalinism and today's ascending extreme political right?

Could Le Pen of France, Jorg Haider of Austria or the deceased Dutch rightwing politician Pim Fortuyn be described as by products of the mighty western modernity and its sublime cultural values?
If that is the case, then a process of cultural reform would seem to be even more urgently needed in the west, since unlike the elements emerging from the shadowy impoverished and powerless Muslim world, these rising forces have at the service of their fanaticism, once in power, a staggeringly potent military machine that threatens to bring death and destruction to much of the globe.
Once more, the keys to world peace and stability it seems are in the hands of the "enlightened free world", not in the realm of darkness and decadence that stretches across the rest of the globe; in Washington and London not in Baghdad and Gaza."