Thursday, June 22, 2006
islam as "objet petit a" - hidden fears and desire
Just Looking ...
Something that most people don't know about the aftermath of 9/11 is that there was increase in conversion to Islam almost 5 fold in the year after than occurred the year before. Kalmar was right, the Qur'an sure did sell. Interestingly, even before 9/11 it was the fastest growing religion in America and although some of it was definetly attributanle to immigrant migration, the majority was conversion, remarkeable since Islam is admittedly a non-missionary religion. Interesting is that one would never hear of such a thing in the media or through everyday discourse. It was quite fashionable for other faiths to be explored and celebrated, indeed, there has been a popluar incorporation of Hinduism, Buddhism and new age "spirituality" into popular culture. They have been re-fashioned and re-imagined into the symbolic order, yet Islam even though it outnumbers even Jews in the United States, remains hidden in the mainstream. There is another reason that Gandhi did not like theosphy, largely because he that it operated in simulacrum- an amalgamated counterfiet - to the authenticity he saw in all formal religous traditions. In other words what Gandhi's deist underpinnigs wanted was not a secularization of society, like Nehru then or us now re-interpret, but a sacralization. Even 'sufism' (the islamic science of tsawwuf) is re-imagined, extracted from its traditional form, and imagined as its own religion...."I'm not Muslim, I'm Sufi" -- can the flower and its scent exist without each other?
What is more fascinating is that the largest group of converts afterwards has been women, aged 18-35. Isn't Islam against women?! Interestingly it is women who are white, latino and black. Islam as gender and racial resistance?! Since 2001 conversion rates have continued to increase. Still you never hear about it, but you do hear about kids and confused individuals who, not Canadain but "Canadian grown", like a bacterial infection, are multiplying under 'our' skin. Those kids could'nt put together a battery pack from radio shack - but they pose a threat to us all. What about those women, are they threatening?
Some other thoughts... if indeed there is no alternative to the hegemonic symbolic order, except violence as Zizek suggested, does the "war on terrorism", a war on an abstract noun, mean that although we understand and withness a system that we know is constructed, how will the system overcome its flaws and inherenly self-destructive tendencies.. through a continued hyper-reality, through forever chasing our unfuliflable desires like Sisyphus of old hoping just once for jouissance? In other words, will savvy reflexivity and declaring war on the only forms of possible resistance and change, mean that we use the logic of our symbolic system to fix its own flaws? Einstein said the thinking that has gotten you into the problem is not the thinking that will get you out. Is a higher level symbolic order possible? Clearly those women think so.
Terrorism to Islam is what divorce is to marriage, in commiting the first you invalidate the other.
Peace and best regards to you all,
Fawad Ahmad
Something that most people don't know about the aftermath of 9/11 is that there was increase in conversion to Islam almost 5 fold in the year after than occurred the year before. Kalmar was right, the Qur'an sure did sell. Interestingly, even before 9/11 it was the fastest growing religion in America and although some of it was definetly attributanle to immigrant migration, the majority was conversion, remarkeable since Islam is admittedly a non-missionary religion. Interesting is that one would never hear of such a thing in the media or through everyday discourse. It was quite fashionable for other faiths to be explored and celebrated, indeed, there has been a popluar incorporation of Hinduism, Buddhism and new age "spirituality" into popular culture. They have been re-fashioned and re-imagined into the symbolic order, yet Islam even though it outnumbers even Jews in the United States, remains hidden in the mainstream. There is another reason that Gandhi did not like theosphy, largely because he that it operated in simulacrum- an amalgamated counterfiet - to the authenticity he saw in all formal religous traditions. In other words what Gandhi's deist underpinnigs wanted was not a secularization of society, like Nehru then or us now re-interpret, but a sacralization. Even 'sufism' (the islamic science of tsawwuf) is re-imagined, extracted from its traditional form, and imagined as its own religion...."I'm not Muslim, I'm Sufi" -- can the flower and its scent exist without each other?
What is more fascinating is that the largest group of converts afterwards has been women, aged 18-35. Isn't Islam against women?! Interestingly it is women who are white, latino and black. Islam as gender and racial resistance?! Since 2001 conversion rates have continued to increase. Still you never hear about it, but you do hear about kids and confused individuals who, not Canadain but "Canadian grown", like a bacterial infection, are multiplying under 'our' skin. Those kids could'nt put together a battery pack from radio shack - but they pose a threat to us all. What about those women, are they threatening?
Some other thoughts... if indeed there is no alternative to the hegemonic symbolic order, except violence as Zizek suggested, does the "war on terrorism", a war on an abstract noun, mean that although we understand and withness a system that we know is constructed, how will the system overcome its flaws and inherenly self-destructive tendencies.. through a continued hyper-reality, through forever chasing our unfuliflable desires like Sisyphus of old hoping just once for jouissance? In other words, will savvy reflexivity and declaring war on the only forms of possible resistance and change, mean that we use the logic of our symbolic system to fix its own flaws? Einstein said the thinking that has gotten you into the problem is not the thinking that will get you out. Is a higher level symbolic order possible? Clearly those women think so.
Terrorism to Islam is what divorce is to marriage, in commiting the first you invalidate the other.
Peace and best regards to you all,
Fawad Ahmad
# posted by Anonymous @ 8:19 PM 
