Update: 4/26: After reading this, please see my response to Haroon's objections, Part II. Where you may get a better idea of what is meant by pragmatic postmodernism.

I am indebted to Abdal Hakim Murad (aka TJ Winter) for rousing me from my adolescent dogmas. In the 1990's there were no Western-Muslim voices that had the ability, or the audacity, to engage Islam and the English language with facility. A British convert, a graduate from the traditional institutes in Egypt, and a lecturer at Cambridge, in the English speaking Western-Muslims it was AHM (and not Tariq Ramadan), who made certain that when the Wahhabi backed recruiters came to the English speaking Western Muslims, they be rebuffed. If you were a youth with any intellectual aptitude, you could not read AHM and simultaneously affirm Al-Qaeda's brand of radicalism. So, in that sense, AHM has done more to combat extremism amongst Muslims than any of our new fangled pundits like Manji managed to do. His method was simple: arouse so much pride in the heart of the Muslim about his history that he not feel the need to resort to the a-historical violence pandered by the radicals to compensate for his feelings of existential insecurity. AHM did this by way of facts. He told Muslims that the Islamic tradition was an ethical tradition. He related anecdotes about how the Ottomans invented a missile but then failed to use it because they feared how much harm it would bring to the forests. He explained why it was that Muslims in the 17th century turned down the offer to use the newly-invented printing press (and thereby lose out on a chance to expand literacy): the reason had something to do with a desire to value the calligrapher's hand-crafted works. Looking back it at it now we might call AHM's efforts "traditionalist apologetics." Perhaps they were pietist excuses for the status-quo, but results speak for themselves, and this much is certain: none of whom read AHM turned to murder, nor had any intellectual bases to even think of murder.

Although during college I stopped relying on AHM as a way to reject and attack extremism in Islam (I opted for rationalitism over traditonalism) I still followed his career and read his writings. One particular piece that appeared in the Winter 2004 issue of Islamica Magazine, called "Bombing Without Moonlight: The Origins of Suicidal Terrorism" (herein called "the essay") is one of AHM's most famous works. In this essay I am going to analyze that essay. But this post seeks to do more than that. I am not the first to analyze his piece. Many far more capable than me have tackled it in recent memory. One of them is the incorrigible Haroon of Avari/Nameh who set forth a three part series on the essay in the winter of last year. It is probably the best commentary on the essay I have read. Rather than being a straight up exegesis, it takes off from ideas within the essay and runs with them into unheralded and brilliant excursii. If AHM's essay was a beautiful painting, Haroon's essays are like an intricate, beautiful frame that surround AHM's essay and make it worthy of hanging and admiring. Still, in my opinion, what I think AHM gets wrong, Haroon ends up exacerbating instead of ameliorating. Therefore, my current piece is an analysis of both AHM's original essay and Haroon's commentary of the original. I will disagree with both and offer my own perspective on a 'solution.'

AHM's essay in full can be found here. If you have the time and the desire to sit through painful pseudo-contintental obscurantist writing, read AHM's essay now. If not, you can rely on the following brilliant summary of the article.

We live in the moment, and forget the lessons of the past. Contrary to popular impression, suicidal militancy neither begins in nor belongs to the Islamic tradition. As the logical extreme of contemporary Islamist politics, it is a thoroughly modern phenomenon and has a rich lineage in Western thought itself. By the same token, traditional religion provides a more effective antidote to this phenomenon than do the primary Western combatants in the 'war of ideas.' The first of these, neoconservative belligerence, is a veiled anti-Semitism (now directed against Muslims) that shares the dualistic worldview of Islamism. The second of these, (post)modern liberalism, cannot offer a code of ethics that categorically rejects suicidal militancy. Since it has no defense for why human beings are ends in themselves, the ethical is suspended when push comes to shove, and human beings become soft targets in the game of war. The theoretical backdrop of suicidal militancy is therefore a quarrel between the Enlightenment (represented by liberals) and its stepchildren (conservatives and Islamists). The only way out of this mess is an appropriately pluralist, tolerant and intellectual form of traditional religion.

Source: ABD of Other Matters, on a post on his Muslim thinker's blog (where an outline is also provided).

Haroon's analyses are in two parts set forth here and here. Note: contrary to his usual Voltairean inclination he opted for a more obscure form of stream of consciousness philosophy (thus doing his best Derrida), so perhaps it is best to wait until after my (promises to be easy to read) post to read his essays. Although this caveat only applies to those who have a bachelor's or less.

Finally, though, I begin.

Winter's essay begins with an unqualified declaration. It begins his assault on everything 'modern,' 'late modern,' and 'post-modern.' In other words, on everything contemporary:

Attention deficit disorder seems to flourish under conditions of late modernity.

Haroon immediately picks up on the import of this first sentence.

Here, in his very first sentence, Winter hooks us with a reference to a disease, a sort-of hot-topic disorder, namely ADD, and then describes it as symptomatic of "late modernity." In other words, are we at the waning days of modernity? If so, why are we there? How did we get there? Does this mean modernity is simply in crisis, or in terminal decline? Clever, no?

But what Haroon finds (rightfully) clever, is Winter's biggest heist. No qualification is given for why late modernity is afflicted. As with all traditonalist arguments, the central premise is to be taken on faith. This would be forgiveable, but for the fact that in this case the central premise — the existence of an ontological ADD — would not exist unless it had first been diagnosed by the psychologists of late modernity itself. This first sentence, rather than revealing late modernity to be a psychological condition, instead, reveals Winter's intellectual method: demonizing modernity at all costs, even if it involves using the tools of modernity to conduct said demonization. In fact, this lack of intellectual rigor is what makes this particular essay so damning. Winter's entire project — to argue the supremacy of traditional religion over all children of the Enlightenment — uses the methods of late modernity. It is the classic relativistic post-modernist's method: when a quote or a thinker suits your argument, use him; when a quote or a thinker can be used to assault your opponents, use him. There are two examples of this intellectual geminiism. By the way, please do not confuse a relativist post-modernist with his more intellectually authentic cousin, the pragmatic postmodernist (to be discussed later).

The first example, are Winter's two reference to Gilles Deleuze, the French thinker who exposed 20th century psychoanalysis to be nothing more than metaphysical speculation, in the famous book, Anti-Oedipus. In the first paragraph, Winter, referring to the idea that modernity cannot remember its past, cites to Deleuze as the premier representative of post-modernism relativism. Ok, fine, perhaps Deleuze is a relativist. Yet, in the next section, Deleuze becomes an agent of tawhidic unity whom Winter is calling "Islamically suggestive." Either one is to conclude that Winter has no idea what Deleuze argues, or that Deleuze is simply a citation to him, irrespective of what Deleuze has to say; a bibliographic decoration who has been used to adorn his unimpressive prose, precisely because it is unimpressive (despite its eight dollar vocabulary droppings).

The second example is Winter's equivocation of Ash'arism with skepticism. In the first paragraph Winter states that "later modernity" — that diseased and ADD-ladeled era in which he accused us of living — reminds him of Ash'arite skepticism. Yet a few paragraphs later he is referring to the Ash'arite "confidence in the intelligibility of God in the world." Certainly Ash'arism can't be both skeptical enough to be like having ontological ADD and confident enough to believe in transcendent knowledge. Yet again, either Winter doesn't know what Ash'arism is, or that saying Ash'ari over and over to his largely traditionalist readers makes him sound more traditional. Yet another linguistic decoration without any meaningful contribution. But his misappropriation of Ash'arism (if massive confusion can be called appropriation) is not as forgiveable as misquoting a second-rate French philosopher. The reason is that Islamic Traditionalism is inextricably linked with Ash'ari theology. Without the Ash'ari assertion that the Quran is uncreated, which is to say, that revelation trumps reason, there is no traditionalism. If there was no Ash'arism in Islamic Law, we'd all be rationalist, and in the 12th century, when Islam took a turn towards the hadith (as a way to help it explain those allegedly a-rational Quranic verses), Islam might have taken a step towards rationalism (which would have argued that the Quran is only valid as long as it is consistent with common sense, and the doors of ijtihad might not have been closed, nor would Ibn Rushd have been persecuted). So, while Winter holds himself out to be as the formemost guardian and spokesman of traditional Islam, he has no idea of the necessary theological framework that undergirds traditionalism? Unacceptable!

Haroon finds Winter's traditionalism inapt for a different set of reasons. Consider these three separate sections.

Winter is a "traditionalist." In order for him to be a traditionalist, he needs a coherent and meaningful sense of "tradition"; while tradition is meaningful, I don't think tradition is as coherent as he makes it out to be, nor is the modernity Winter posits as tradition's nemesis.[…]

Traditionalist Islam requires him to emphasize the spirituality, historicity, depth, beauty, polysemy and rootedness of Islam. But while it is hard to say what tradition is, specifically, for Winter, it is easy for him - though it should not be! - to say what it is not: Modernity is the absence, or negation, or denial, of tradition. Does that mean, then, that tradition is the absence of modernity? (Logically, that doesn't have to stand, but we can see quite easily why the assumption would be made.) The danger here is that Winter is exalting a reading of Islamic history and, from that reading, drawing connections to contentious assumptions.[…]

This is why, after all, the traditionalist hates postmodernity: It has no sense of narrative. Without narrative, and instead in its place fragments, the traditionalist wouldn't be able to fall back on a long history of Islam. And the traditionalist needs to fall back on this long history of Islam, in part, in order to refute modernity, which is conceptualized as some kind of rupture in time.

These are potent criticisms that Winter would do well to address. However, they are inadequate. They stop one step too short. They put tradition to the test, but do not go so far as to say that traditionalism is fundamentally flawed, which is what I would argue. In other words, Haroon seems to be saying that if traditionalism can rectify, or address, some of these concerns; if it can bolster it's narrative, it would be an adequate and potent way of organizing society. Haroon relies on the notion of using "intermediate social authorities" as a way to bolster traditionalism in such a way that it can address the modernist existential void. That is a vague way of saying that Haroon wants what passes for traditionalism today to become more sophisticated and better organized so that it can set itself up as a filter between the individual man and the state/oligarchical apparatus. Like I said, finding traditionalism inadequate in its process is far different than finding traditionalism inadequate as a matter of substance. Haroon finally confirms what we have started to suspect.

On a personal note, I have to say that traditionalism has become more and more attractive to me. Maybe because I have such a predilection for the intellectual, and traditionalism accommodates the bookish and the romantic - whereas those more uninterested in narrative, for example the scientifically minded, tend to interpretations of Islam either very liberal or very radical, and easily make out of them unquestioned hegemonies.

In other words, Haroon's initial acceptance of Winter's opening — late modernity is a disease — comes full circle. After much protest (composing two long posts & the promise of a third that never came), Haroon buys into Winter's argument: modernist readings of Islam and/or existence have aspirations of totality/hegemony, while traditionalism, by way of its potent narrative, provides unity to a soul. Of course, neither Winter nor Haroon give a reasonable answer to why we call the modernist narrative "hegemonic" and call the traditonalist narrative "unifying." Perhaps this has to do with the fact that Winter and Haroon do not believe that modernism can provide a consistent historical narrative because after all, it emerged later in time, whereas people have always been traditional. Nevermind the circularity of this proposition that what comes first is better than what comes later because the first came first. Aside from that, there are two substantial problems with this assertion.

The first is that Winter's traditionalist narrative is as rife with disjointedness (let's call them Haroonian 'ruptures') as he alleges the modernist narrative to be. On this point, Winter's discussion of suicide in religion is so revealing (which was ignored by Haroon).

If we recall, Winter's thesis was that suicidal terrorism in Islam — and in the rest of the word (Tamils, Buddhists, Shintos) — is a modernist phenomenon. He then proposed that if we embraced traditionalism, we would not have this problem. But what kind of traditionalism ought it be? Well, he never answers the question directly. But we know which kind of traditionalism it ought be not.

It ought not be Hindu pre-modernism:

The atmaghataka, the suicidal Hindu, was a familiar sight of the premodern Indian landscape, where ‘religious suicides were highly recommended and in most cases glorified.

Nor ought it be Greek pre-modernism:

Achilles chooses battle against the Trojans, knowing that the gods have promised that this will lead to his death. Ajax takes his own life, in the confidence that this will not affect his honour. Chrysippus, Zeno, and Socrates all opt for suicide rather than execution or dishonour. Marcus Aurelius praises it to the skies.

Nor ought it be Christian traditionalism:

The Biblical text nowhere condemns suicide. (Judas is condemned for betrayal, not for taking his own life; although Augustine will claim otherwise.) On the contrary, it offers several examples of individuals who chose death.[43] Saul (the koranic Talut) falls on his own sword rather than be humiliated in Philistine captivity (I Samuel 31). Jonah (Yunus) asks the frightened mariners to cast him into the sea (Jonah 1.12), and begs ‘Take my life from me,’ (4.3) for ‘it is better for me to die than to live’ (4.8-9). Job (Ayyub) prays: ‘O that I might have my request, and that God would grant my desire; that it would please God to crush me’ (Job 6:8-13), and even ‘I loath my life’ (7:15). Later, during the Maccabean revolts, the hero Razis falls on his sword to avoid falling into the hands of the wicked (2 Maccabees 14:42, 45-6). A notion of vicarious atonement has developed, so that the militant’s suicide which enrages the enemy brings a blessing to the people (4 Maccabees 17:21-2).

Nor ought it be Jewish traditionalism:

The early rabbis typically accept self-immolation in situations of military desperation, to avoid humiliation and to impress the enemy. The deaths of Saul and Samson were regarded as exemplary. And in 'the Jewish Middle Ages, enthusiasm for martyrdom (at least in Ashkenaz - northern Europe) became so great that it proved a positive danger to Jewish existence.’ Religious voices raised in support of 20th century Zionism could link this tradition to their own militancy.

Nor ought it be the traditonalism of Renaissance Europe:

This suicide-warrior rises to the top of Western literature in Samson Agonistes. Milton is here smarting from the horror and shame of the Restoration.

Apparently, to Winter, all traditionalisms suffer from the suicidal tendency, ah, well, except for the Islamic. Obviously, this assertion is patently wrong. If, as he suggest, going into a war with the intention of dying is suicidal, then traditional Islam was also suicidal. Traditional Islam could not prevent the hashisheen. Traditional Islam sanctioned Ottoman fratricide, where the traditional scholar said it was permitted to murder your rival for the sake of peace. Traditional Islam sanctioned devshirme — the making of warriors who had no purpose but to die. Second, we finally see the problem with assertions of traditionalism: they come hand to hand with assertions of exclusivity. "My traditionalism is the most 'natural' while all other traditionalisms are false!" claims the traditionalist. Yet Winter argues that traditionalism is not totalitarian? Right!

The Enlightenment, and subsequently modernity, both came into existence because they were seeking to escape precisely these shenanigans. They were seeking to be free from those who demonized all other narratives in order to selfishly advance their own. This was why the American Founders wanted the state to be religiously neutral.

The second refutation takes us back to the first sentence of Winter's essay and argues that modernism does offer a viable and holistic grand narrative. Immediately the tradititionalist will reply, that if the modernist grand narrative was so holistic, how did it permit genocide, Hitler and Hiroshima? There is no answer to this. The modernist narrative failed. All modernists have to accept that. However, that does not mean that we fall back to traditionalism. That would be the gravest of mistakes. We must recall that traditionalism affirmed colonialism, and traditionalism affirmed slavery, and traditionalism provided the bases of Jim Crow, and in the Muslim world, traditionalism permitted feudalism, and traditionalism co-conspired with all Islamic Empire building (which was far from bloodless in case we have forgotten Nadir Shah), and traditionalism affirmed the gradual "disappearing" of women from the public sphere, and traditionalism affirmed female genital mutilation (Reliance Of The Traveler - the major Shafi'' work), and traditionalism affirmed Islamic slavery, and Islamic sex slavery, and despotism. What Winter calls traditionalist "strategy of negotiation with the sultan" should be referred to what it is: tyranny. In fact, were it not for Islamic traditionalist's assertions that "a thousand days of tyranny is better than one days of anarchy", no Arab or Muslim tyrants of the 20th century would exist. There would be no Saudi Arabia. There would be no Iran. There would be no Mullah Complicit With State. If modernism gave to Islam its terrorists (which it did and I concede it readily), traditionalism gave to Islam its tyrants. Which one is worse? Well, all parties concur that were it not for the tyrants there would not be terrorists. You figure it out. In this case we know that the tyrant came before the egg.

Still, unlike traditionalists, I, as a modernist, am willing to concede the failure of modernism. Which is why post-modernism was proposed. Of course, traditionalists like Winter and neo-traditionalists like Haroon immediately decry the entire project. As Haroon states:

Of course, postmodernity was supposed to have succeeded modernity, but seeing as the places where postmodern ideas are the most predominant tend to be the least effective and influential, in industrialized societies of course, it seems that postmodernity has made a pathetic substitute.

But that assertion is patently wrong. Where post-modern ideas are predominant is what the world flocks to. Post-modernism is not a sort of intellectual ADD. It is the willingness to concede that you are wrong. While traditionalism, and modernism, were wont to question everyone but themselves, post-modernism turns the eye of inquisition upon itself before turning it towards another. This, actually, is the reason that the American right-wing derides postmodernism (alleging it is soft), and it is why religious traditionalism mocks it (alleging it is relativist, headless, and suffering from ADD). As a way of organizing society postmodernism is the best that we have so far offered ourselves. It should not be thrown away for its flexibility. It should be defended on account of it.

This sets up a dual task for people like me, Rorty and Habermas, those whom I call: pragmatic postmodernists (who are not to be confused with relativist postmodernists). On one hand we must resist those in our midst who would turn us back to the ways of thinking in absolutes (the right wing or Iran). On the other hand we must resist those who ally themselves with us for antagonizing the absolutes they opposes only to eventually place themselves at the heighest absolute (as the children of Winter are wont to do, what with their use of postmodernist methods as long as it suits their agenda).

Traditionalists like to argue that if Postmodernism really offered an adequate and unifying vision of the world, the places where Postmodernism is rife, (America) would not have right-wing movements that promise certainty by way of extremism. In other words, they keep harping the same old point: we offer unity, while you only provide fragments. I do not have to reply to this allegation. Fortunately, mankind has had plenty of experience with all those oligarchs who have offered 'unity' to us over the course of history. The only thing all of these oligarchs share is their willingness to bury you if you should dissent. We have seen what the Church of God, the Ummah, the Brotherhood of Man have done. Try it out with some followers of Winter. Try and suggest to them that alternative readings of Islam are legitimate. See how they scoff. I know, because I was one of them.

While it is true that in the postmodern schema it is quite alienating to find yourself having to grapple with the exigencies of life without pre-established answers (or is it orders?), that intellectual freedom also creates the condition for the strongest kind of soul to emerge. This was precisely Nietzsche's point and why he remains postmodernism's Prophet: you are on your own, which means you better discipline yourself to rise to the task of your loneliness. Traditionalists like to spin this the other way. They say that postmodern freedom is not freedom at all, it is chaos. In many respects, this is a valid critique. The disjointedness of modern leftism is a great example of that (and I harp against it often). However, pragmatic postmodernism answers that the solution is not to abandon this project, but to continue it. We must affirm to ourselves that what we need is to educate ourselves on how to be self-disciplined. Abandoning this project for the sake of solutions that we have repeatedly proven to be destructive, exclusivist, racist, imperialist, colonialist, fascist, and collectivist would be foolish.

In fact, I should simply like to remind all enemies of pragmatic postmodernism that it has not gone and destroyed a civilization, enslaved a race, or carried out a war on false pretenses. Iraq, if I may remind everyone, is being conducted by a right-wing leader. It is not postmodernism's fault that right-wing "emerged." The fault belongs to the right-wing, and its version of traditionalism that it is behaving as it has. If you allow the right-wing to blame its transgressions on the postmodernists, you suffer from an intellectual bankruptcy that cannot be cured. As to the War on Terror, we have seen what absolutists can do (that would be: make more terrorists). In a war of information and ideas, perhaps it is time to let those in the world who are most capable with using information take the lead: us pragmatic postmoderns.

Many who see that dreaded p-word will either run, laugh, or accuse me of having no beliefs. Quite the contrary, it is perfectly consistent to be a postmodernist and be opposed to nihilism, as I have demonstrated. Nor does a pragmatic postmodern fritter away in fear in the face of the fundo, as I have demonstrated. (Plus we write sentences like that!). We start from the operative assumption that the democratic institutions we have erected for ourselves (with meaningful contributions from the right-wing and traditionalism), are ours to uphold, no justification necessary. We do not need something beyond history and institutions to legitimate them. If I were in Bush's place on Sept. 11, 2001, I would not require God to speak to me to open a can of whoopass on Bin Laden. The fundamental belief of a pragmatic postmodernist is that a belief can still regulate action, can still be thought of worth dying for, by people who are quite aware that this belief is caused by nothing more than the fact that we have belief in it. We believe in human solidarity. We believe in minimizing cruelty and humiliation while simultaneously doing our best to include as many people as possible in our "we." This blog is the best example of that. Muslims, infidels, atheists, jerks, fetuses, eunuchs. What differentiates us from all others is that instead of saying that our ideals are the foundation of our democratic order, we believe that our ideals exist solely for the service of democratic politics.

You will have noted that because of our position we never need to hide behind grandiose (and largely inconsistent) prose as with Winter, nor behind vague and bumbling ejaculations, as with Bush.

Living in the moment means we are absolutely clear about what we are saying.