So I heard this prima facie innocuous oxymoron last Tuesday, as I was trotting back from the loo to my bunk: “I’m not racist; it’s just that I don’t like Chinese”.
I am not writing this to respond directly to the govt’s calls recently for closer inter-racial and inter-religious bonds. I felt that such an endeavour was closely lacking when I was in Chicago already. Now that I’m back in SG, where Indians (and maybe Malays but I don’t know) make up a much more substantial minority in the demographics, it’s clear as day that it is imperative for such bonds to be strengthened in the light of all the nonsense going on in Europe and in the ‘Muslim world’, whatever that means.
It’s probably not too controversial a claim to make that nobody seriously believes that a properly harmonious multicultural society can exist in our world. As it is, I am already close to thinking that we in this generation should be happy that our world is a lot more peaceful today than it could very well be, and seems to be heading for. But it is intriguing to hear from some people I am interacting in my camp with who believe that there truly are ‘melting-pot’ societies in the world. WR championed most vigorously the US which he said is the paragon of properly egalitarian and multi-racial systems in the real world today. Out of respect I chose to hold on to my jaw lest it fell to the ground. But he sincerely believes/d that the primordial ties that gird members of a race together can be eliminated if not permanently then at least for a long albeit temporary basis, under a carefully administered sociopolitical milieu. In his view, when such a quasi utopia comes into fruition, there will no longer be substantial groups of people who will gravitate towards atavistic prejudices. There will be a proper awakening of the minds of these people, who realize that people should be recognized not by their skin colour or even religious beliefs, but primarily by who they are individually, and what they can do for society.
And I was like *gasp*. So much for – in my own humble opinion – dreams. Well, there clearly are in our midst people who cannot or will not recognize that there are pragmatic demands on us to bury our racial/religious views or throw them out in the open but talk about them sensitively and exchange them honestly with those held by members of other races or religious groups. And increasingly, these demands are not just on us Singaporeans. It’s becoming a demand worldwide, because for better or for worse, people are apparently beginning to galvanise themselves into social action based on certain issues that bind them according to civilisational parameters: race, ethnicity, religion, history, geography etc. That means that we will have to quickly adopt an alternative vantage point to understanding the social and relating to others. Individual identity that today becomes increasingly politicized seems to transcend increasingly porous national borders. We see people hitting the streets all over the world on particular sets of issues, and therein lies a camaraderie that is built on notions of personal identity that these aggrieved persons share. That means that we can’t just think in terms of our minorities or our religion that is interpreted in this particular way locally. The idea of the local I think is beginning to take a back seat. Once upon a time, globalization meant closer economic and financial and trade ties. There was also an augmented need for the non-West to adopt Western trade practices and precepts. Then certain academics and observers insisted that because of this, globalization means Westernisation, or at least has to, at some point in time. This view still has currency, I think, but it’s not as simple as that. To equate the two would bring us actually to a certain kind of Eden I think, not because I am a big fan of so called Westernisation, but really because at least I think it is easier for communication amongst ‘groups’ if they still exist in this ideal state of homogeneity. There is a common platform of shared ideas and beliefs widely called liberalism. While tensions still exist between ‘liberal’ thinkers which may include even libertarians and anarchists, it’s nevertheless probably less divisive or diverse at the very least as a rift or even chasm between the West that has been seen by Muslims as snobbish for centuries, and the Muslims. Basically, life even on a global scale isn’t just about trade and economics and finance. Admittedly these are major issues that almost any society that seeks to elevate itself from a destitute existence ought to face. But precisely because globalization is an attempt to describe human life and existence both micro- and macro-scopically, and because life and existence aren’t just about these, and because the non-economic, non-trade and non-finance issues are not going to be so easily swayed by this tripartite monster called globalization, the demands of life and existence put on persons and peoples become polarized, so much so that the persons and peoples that view themselves as subjects of assault and insult feel so indignant they become incredibly sensitive, vocal and of course, the recent stupidity evinced by the Enlightened West doesn’t help. The aggrieved Muslims want more desperately to hold on to their beliefs in the light of perceived invasion by the West, in a nutshell.
And all this is only going to get worse. I still hold on to my view in the past that global terrorism is only a fad of our time and it too will fade in the wider scheme of things, just like communism and socialism. But I am beginning to worry that just as the Cold War has a hand in our current worries over global Islamic terrorism when the Soviet Union/US conflict engendered alliance issues in the Middle East, our view of terrorism as being increasingly Islamicised will engender many observers so confident and quick in their thinking to believe that Islam is a religion of violence and terror. Whether these dolts are themselves in positions of power I don’t know, but their specious fallacies are bound to colour the layman’s conception of Islam and terror as a political movement, so much so that a polarization seems close to inevitable, and eventually, the vogue after global terrorism will be rancour between the West and the ‘Islamic World’.
I cast doubt earlier on the meaning of such a World, partly because I think such reification is simply an attempt to confirm Huntington’s thesis of understanding global politics and phenomena in the language of civilizations. Before Sept 11, there was never any attempt made by the Western media, academics or politicians to talk of Muslims and related social structures in any concerted or even systematic language of its own. But after the US perceived an Islamic terrorist network as its top enemy, and after a beleaguered President needs to support an impossibly costly project in Iraq and earlier Afghanistan, and after the US foolishly used a universal and really harmless concept of jihad as the spirit that the ‘good’ West has to fight against, for freedom and for justice, we’ve long passed the point of no return. We are increasingly seeing Muslims in Iran, Afghanistan, Indonesia and Malaysia as members of an Islamic ‘World’, which is clearly a dangerous business. Is Islam and are Muslims really that homogeneous, to the extent that despite having lived in radically different societies for generations, they can co-exist harmoniously and stably? It is difficult to think so. And do not forget that there are also Muslims in Britain, the US, France, Australia and of course, in Singapore, Brunei and Thailand. Muslims are just so scattered globally that it sounds way too much like a stretch to gather them all and apply narrow readings on ‘Islamic’ teachings on all of them as if there was no deviation of views at all. We all are familiar with the Shia’, Shi’ite, Sunni debates. Some run deep but some are almost cosmetic. The natural conclusion that one ought to reach, even if one is ignorant of these divides, but is aware of the fact that Islam is merely a few centuries younger than Christianity and that Muslims are almost all over the world in different societies, is simply that Islam can’t be so flat a concept or religion that no kinks or ruptures exist.
Why then can we so conveniently term the West, ‘the West’? Numerous theories are circulated in the market, but I think the intuitive answer is that the West still refers to a geographical region on the map (as clearly suggested by the very name ‘the West’) and hence a cluster of societies that for better or for worse have experienced broadly speaking similar routes of growth in recent memory. The periods of the Enlightenment, Industrialisation and the so-called exporting of goods and attendant liberal ideas after ‘globalisation’ took place all led to broadly similar views in politics, governance, ethics and morality. For Islam however, even if believers are taught by the same set of books, Muslims have scattered so far and wide and have remained so for so long that in terms of our immediate memory at least, the social forces of wealth, equanimity, posterity and the histories of and issues faced by their home countries colour substantially the views of these Muslims. Religion may be a strong binding force for pious believers, but what one group of Muslims understands as ‘religion’ or ‘Islam’ could be different from another group, largely if not at least because of their differences in sets of experiences. On the other hand, Westerners don’t need to all be Christians (nor for that matter, Protestant, Methodist or Russian Orthodox) to be deemed a Westerner. They need to have lived in a ‘Western’ country and have embraced the ‘Western’ way of life which at least includes a reverence for freedoms of speech, religion, the media etc, democracy and a broadly free market. And these immediate factors almost always have a great sway on a people. By grading separate individuals as being part of an ‘Islamic world’ that transcends national boundaries is like casting a net large enough for the globe and plucking people caught despite their relative discontents and lumping them all as being components of this ‘world’. And why should it be so stable as to be deemed a ‘world’? what happens if this linguistic abuse is not remedied quickly enough? It is only going to feed the polarization and acrimony that is rapidly eroding the banks of civility that we often assume we already have safely in place.
Ok enough of griping about this repulsive convenience the West so willfully terms ‘the Islamic world’. I’ll talk about that almost hilarious oxymoron the guy from my camp mused aloud the next time. Later.
