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| Islamic Politics and the Problem of Universalism |
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Without rehearsing Gramscian doctrine, the hegemonic strategy attempts to replace the common sense of society. For example: in British society today it is common sense that if you can at all qualify, you should get a credit card and run up debt. Your savings should earn interest just as your debts and mortgage are punished by interest charged against you. If an ethical consumer wants to avoid the interest culture, then practically the only option is the embryonic Islamic banking sector. A sensible hegemonic approach would be to build up this alternative for all consumers regardless of religion, finding ways in which most normal kinds of consumption could still be maintained (e.g. the purchase of housing). An islamicate culture would seek to persuade people that usury is wrong, perhaps by drawing attention to the damage heavy debts cause to people's lives. To give another example: Muslims should seek to enhance the reputation of Islamic schools such that non-Muslims would want to send their children there. Excellent results in the general curriculum are not a side issue: they are the main issue, from the point of view of fostering an islamicate culture. A similar rationale suggests that time should be taken to promote the option of learning Arabic within the national curriculum. A third example might be public attitudes towards drink. Alcohol abuse costs the NHS up to £1.7 billion per annum.4 Binge drinking fuels violence and disorder in our city centres. It would be quite reasonable to campaign for a ban on alcohol advertising, to bring the law in the UK in line with its treatment of tobacco.
To be successful, proponents must be flexible and open-minded in building up political coalitions to achieve shared goals. They need to forge a much more sophisticated relationship with the media than they have sustained hitherto. A recent tabloid headline, 'Preacher of Hate', shows what this sort of approach is up against.5 It reported the successor to Abu Hamza in the Finsbury Park Mosque ranting against 'filthy kuffars'. If Muslim proponents are serious about spreading Islamic values then they will have to restrain such wild men and explicitly repudiate violence. They will also have to engage actively with the press and television to ensure that positive news about Islam circulates.
In European society and in the US foreign policy that is currently reconfiguring the Arab world, the truth is that a powerful anti-Islamic backlash is underway. Terrorism has placed Islam under suspicion, however unfairly. The attempt to disseminate an islamicate culture is unlikely to succeed comprehensively, still less the effort to institute Islamic law. Yet the effort to do so could still bring benefits within a political landscape that currently resembles an agribusiness monoculture: a uniformity of meretricious consumerism and unjust exploitation. There is plenty here for non-Muslims to support if Islamic politics can be opened up, and made hospitable rather than an existential threat.
Reference
1. A. Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (London, 1991), p.17
2. E.g. by M.G.S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam (Chicago, 3 vols., 1974)
3. There is no chance of British society, for example, accepting a religious police on Saudi or Iranian lines.
4. http://www.alcoholconcern.org.uk/servlets/doc/903
5. Daily Mirror, 7 February 2005
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