Saturday, October 29, 2011
Islamic World Political Compass
Majority of people outside Islamic world tend to be ignorant about the political ideology of the political leaders in the Middle-East, South East Asia, West Asia, Africa, and the Western world. Some Westerners claim that Osama bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein cooperated together but it would be impossible. Osama bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein have a totally different ideology from each other, and they had never seemed to be able to cooperate together.
Osama bin Ladin was an Islamic conservativist who detested combining Islamism with any modern political ideologies such as socialism, pan-Islamism (United Islamist nations), and political party ideology. Osama bin Ladin formed his own politically influential groups such as Taliban and Al Qaeda. But, his initial aim was to establish individual people and their community following the traditional Shariah law, and keep them away from modern politics. Unlike Sadam Hussein and Colonel Gaddafi, Osama bin Ladin was not interested in modern ideology such as either forming a strong iron fist political party for himself such as Hussein did or establishing a political community gathering different people from different nations to be unified under a strong modern political administration such as Gaddafi did.
By contrast, Saddam Hussein was a hard core atheist and highly influenced by the USSR communism. Even though Hussein persecuted all members of Iraqi Communist Party, his political ideology was a resemblance of Stalin's. As same as the communist nations' leaders such as Stalin and Mao Zedong, Saddam Hussein wanted his nation to follow him and his iron fist political party by admiring his charisma. If there were an Islamic worship in his nation, the loyalty of his nation to him and his political party would decline because people no longer worship him and his party as a Godly charisma.
Nowadays, the movement to use Islamisn as a tool to establish the modern nation state or a tool to fight against the political oppression. Therefore, some people tend to think of Islamism as a sort of the modern political ideology. However, although the original Islamism takes account of economic, cultural, and metaphysical taughts, the style of Islamism is different from some Islamic political thinkers nowadays regard. The modern political ideologies focus on analysing how individuals live in and react to law, legislation, monetary economy, fiscal policy, and ideologies political parties hold, and attempt to establish these systems which are more likely to stabilitise a community where individuals live in, benefit to particular one individual or a group of individuals, bring a high level of utility to individuals living in a community, and/or gurantee individuals' right. By contrast, the traditional Islamism focuses on how individuals are living supiritually well regardless of how their surroudings are in order to accomplish what God wanted human-beings to be, and only created their own law as a principle guide line for them to live for their God's sake. All in all, the modern political ideologies regard the law to be a contract between individuals themselves whereas the traditional Islamic law (Shariah law) regards the law is a cntract between any individual and God.
The modern political ideologies regard human-beings are well-determined, semi-rational, and consistent enough to follow their own decision based on their needs, wants, and values. Therefore, they trust in the contract with only human-beings without will of a super-natural supreme-being. This trend is high influenced by the Christian way of thinking which claims the worship of God and religious taughts should be separated from the secular authority, law, and custom in order to keep the religion from interests of the secular world. Thus, as the modern political ideologies were highly inflenced by Christianity, even though some of them were highly sceptic about or even strongly against Christianity, so that all people following the modern political ideologies are influenced by this separatino of the religious world view and secular world view. This aspect motivates individuals to create their own moral, law, legislation, their own ethics about monetary economy, fiscal policy, and their custom and culture by human-beings' own decision based on their needs, wants, and values.
All the traditional Islamists, who are not only Osama bin Ladin and the fundamentalists but also all the genuine Islamic people following the traditional Islamic way of living, believe that individuals are too weak and inresponsible to establish the order. Therefore, the modern political systems based on the contract between individuals is too weak and inconsistent to be maintained so that these systems eventually corrupt individualsm, instabilise their community, and spoils their soul. This is the aspect that the traditional Islamism is sceptical about allowing human-beings to create their own moral, law, legislation, their own ethics about monetary economy, fiscal policy, and their custom and culture by human-beings' own decision based on their needs, wants, and values. These Islamists put emphasis on the importance of the interaction of God's will as a mediator of human-beings' own decision based on their needs, wants, and values. It means that individual human-beings make a contract with God at the first stage, and then agree or disagree with the other human-beings. This characterisitics denies the existence of the modern political ideologies, which over-estimate human-beings and their decision making process as explained previously, take place in their community.
Osama bin Ladin was one of these traditional Islamist who are highly sceptical about the modern political ideologies which over-estimate human-beings. This aspect explains that he wanted to react against this tradition to bring the traditional Islamism based on the contract between individual and God (The super-natural), and was highly sceptical about individuals and the modern political contract.
The modern Ismamic political activists combined the modern political ideologies and the traditional Islamism together.
Colonel Gaddafi attempted to combine Socialism, the modern Western political ideology, with Islamism together. His aim was to unite people by both the modern contract between individual people and the Islamic contract between each individual and God. Gaddafi combined the ideology about the the equality among people insisted by the Western socialism and Islamic tought insisting all people are equal in front of God. His original aim was to put emphasis on the equality among people to attract his supporters and alliance nations to him.
Malcolm X, in the United State of America (USA), was also the one who combined the modern political ideology with Islamism. He combined the human right idea invented by the Western modern ethics and Islamic attude of anti White suprematist Christinamism (* Only mentioning a particular kind of Christian groups). Malcolm X thought highly of protecting the individual right stated by the modern political philosophy which is formed by the contract between individuals in their secular law. However, he also thuoght that the equity (fairness) of this contract was violated due to the situation that some human-beings are not considered as variable to be treated fairly. Then, he thought all individuals living in a community need another form of strong doctrine which implant the idea of all individuals' right into their mind. His choice was Islamism which claims all human-beings are equal in front of God, and always put emphasis on the interaction of God's will while human-beings are making any contract.
The problem of these modern political figures is that both could not develop their political ideologies to be influential in a long term. We are not sure whether Gaddafi once had a strong altruism to use his political ideology to unite people and put the equality policy into practice or he initially wanted to use his ideology just to attract people to obey him. Nonetheless, regardless of what he might have initially thought, he turns up to be very corrupted,and operated the policy which was very different from what he promised people to bring. Malcolm X 's policy was so violent that it turns up to become a descrimination using an anti-descriminational ideology. These two were so idealistic and aspired to establish the community which precisely follows their idea that they could not tackle with obstacles in the reality. Furthermore, both Gaddafi's Socialist Pan-Islamism and Malcom X's Black Islamism cannot be accomplished because they combised two different kinds of ideologies, the modern political ideology and Islamism, which regard of a totally different world view from each other as explained previously.
Sukarno, the founder of independent Indonesia, was much more able to achieve to combine the modern political ideology with Islamism. The reason is that he remainded his political ideology, the Islamic State Socialism, only in a constitutional level. Sukarno was pragmatic to put his policy into practice. Unlike Gaddafi, he did not rant his political ideology as if it brings a utopia, and rationally faced with realities. Unlike Malcom X, he did neither violently exaggerate nor enforce the equal right as a fundamental objective to be accomplished. He only refered to the principle of equality, right, and islamic ethics as the objective guide line (not the way it must always be).
Nevertheless, both the fundamental Islamists such as Osama bin Ladin, and the genuine traditional Islamists may say that marging Islamism into the modern (Western) political ideologies lead people and their community far from what Islam treaches. The original Islamism insists well-beings of people come into reality when people in their community become supiritually well by being aware of the contract with God; not with the contract with the system human-beings established themselves. So, they would not want Islamism to be used as a tool for someone who wants to establish a system to rule the others under his/her administration even though the ideology held by this administration sounds wonderful. Therefore, United Socialist Pan-Islamic nation invented by Gaddafi would not be able to convince these traditional Islamic people. It is agaist their theory to exaggerate the right because their religion teaches the nature in this world is severe so that we need to take for granted. Therefore, the hatrate against the oppression to the individual right is unproductive so that they would not agree with Malcom X. They may say that Sukarno's policy was practical to develop a nation where protects Muslim people's life style, their interests, and their material well-being, but does not particularly follow precicely how Islamism requires people to do....
All in all, Islamism is a complex religion, and a mysterious ideology at the same time. In this globalised world where the way of all political systems work is based on the modern (Western) political philosophies (ideologies). Some attempted to use both Islamism and the modern political philosophy together to administrate their own nation. However, the fundamental problem is that Islamism involves a totally different basis of philosophy which may never be harmonised with the modern political philosophy (ideology). Thus, both Islamic fundamentalist, who aspire to enforce people and their community to follow the original traditional Islamist practice, and genuine traditional Islamic people, who just want to keep their own Islamic life style whose Islamic identity is not diluted by adapting the modern (Western) life style, isolate themselves and their community from the influence from any modern political ideologies and the globalisation. This segregationist method has a problem causing a huge tention of conflict between themselves and people from outside their community. Hosni Mubarak selected the alternative way which does not use Islamism in politics. Mubarak operated a rational and secular political administration which can adapt into the current globalising world trend to both protect and develop his own nation. Unlike Sukarno, Gaddafi, and Malcolm X, Mubarak considered Islamism is not practical to be combined with the modern political ideology which bases the philosophy to operate the political administration. Furthermore, Mubaraku realised the global free market system is beneficial for his nation and people living there. So, socialism is a hindrance, and Islamic intervention in his nation's political administration (Although he did not think Islamism is worthless; He admitted Islamism thrives). Hence, although Islamism is respectable religion and an interesting ideology, it seems to be still troublesome to be used for a principle basing any political administration. It will be interesting how Islamism become evolving to be adopted into the political administration in the future though.