when i was first introduced to the history of colonialism, it struck a well-spring of thoughts i had harbored but was never sure of how to ever articulate.
one thing i often wondered about was how did the colonials act the way they did. didn't they realise how they were acting?
of late though, i have started having a sneaking suspicion that when history is written, i may end up on the wrong side of it - intellectually speaking. i eventually came to the conclusion that it wouldn't really matter what side of history one resides at, as long as i can end my life trying to be true to myself.
so in an attempt to be true to one's self, i started thinking about the militants currently running rampage in our country, who are a bit hard to notice for most of us since the sand our heads are buried in stings if we open our eyes.
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then, one of my favorite
blogs did a piece on the taliban. i left a long, rambling and largely incoherent comment on my own take on the matter, which went as so:
i don't think that there is a difference between their religious goals and their political goals. its just how they understand islam,
i think one reason muslims countries and cultures were so taken aback by colonialism/modernism etc was that islam stopped being the basis of the whole universe, and became something that could be analysed and looked at separately.
and in the reality of the modern world, the ideas muslim had about the world were incompatible and unworkable, so religious thought continued to stagnate and fester, and modernity and science took the place of islam as the basis of the universe.
the taliban, who were themselves seemingly out of the midst of modernity, embarked on a campaign that aligned religious and political goals as one.
unfortunately, the taliban are very much a product of post-modernity/post-colonialism. and so, their ideas of islam are subservient to their political goals, which i think are to expand their culture of extreme patriarchy.
islam is just a banner. but before we make that comment, i think it is important to realize that just because they are wrong, it doesn't mean anyone else has the right idea about islam's place in the contemporary world. mainly because people try desperately hard to align islam to modern thought, or copy+paste islamic ideals from times long past.
the important thing for those who say "the taliban don't follow 'real' islam" is that there is no real islam. there is no orthodox islam, as even sunni beliefs are split within their own schools of thought. therefore, islam is only meant to be interpreted. as you can see with the taliban, their interpretations are through the prism of their patriarchal set of views.
the taliban can only be ideologically defeated if there is an islamic reawakening, which robs them off their stranglehold over islamic interpretation. while that may sound stupid, it staggers the mind that in the 30s iqbal was explaining interpreting existentialism through an islamic reasoning. now most muslims can't spell existentialism.
(finally, before the secular types get offended, i mean islam and muslim in the same sense as the term islamic art. that is to say islam in not just a religious sense, but cultural, hereditary sense. so my conceptualization is meant to include oxymorons like secular muslims.)
only minutes after that comment, i came across
this video.
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