I see the stigmatization and destruction of traditions like the Last Wednesday as manifestations of a fundamental and (in my eyes) very sad shift in the history of Islam. This shift first of all came to be due to a process of defining Islam as a uniform, static and stagnant fixed (cultural-religious) “identity” which did not yet exist in the so called classical times and then, under political domination of exploiting powers, privileging the culture, traditions and interpretations of affluent Muslim social elites in close contact with colonial institutions over the culture, desires and perspectives of the “common people”… Stigmatizing Folk Islam, in my eyes, is not a natural outcome of our search for “the Truth”, be it Islamic or otherwise. It is not a natural outcome of a wish to establish better spiritual standards in the lives of human beings. It is… a voluntary and deliberate choice for a cultural/class based chauvinism and a step towards a methodology of pure destruction, and I deem both to be antithetical to any possible conception of better spiritual standards and a search for “the Truth”.
I have made this point at times on this blog, and from what I am told by Muslim acquaintances, it is the Salafi/Wahhabi trend in Islam (one of the tendencies that in its extreme form likes to declare jihad and blow up “infidels”) that pulled / is pulling a “Vatican II” in the Muslim world. These are the same people who tear down the shrines of the saints, condemn the use of talismans against the evil eye, and seek strict interpretations (which are in reality historically conditioned) of Islamic law in order to create a purer religion. It is driven by the paranoia of a reactionary ideology hemmed in by modernity which seeks to attack modernity with its own hermeneutic tools.
Read the rest of this entry »