Brown Pundits

This is an old post and I would probably change some things now (and in fact, will change some things soon once I do a new post) But this was lost when the old Brownpundits crashed and I wanted to recover it. So here it is
Posted on October 7, 2013 by omar

Hussein Ibish has written an article on the decline and (impending?) fall of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Reports of their death may be exaggerated, but surely the “Islamist political party” project is not doing well in most places. Turkey will be cited as an immediate counter-example, but I think AKP just hasn’t had the chance to really become too “Islamic” yet. If and when they do (and pressure to do so is bound to come from within, unless the project falls apart so badly in the middle east that Turkey gets away without trying it), they will find themselves in trouble as well.

The problem (in over-simplified form):

Modern states and modern politics (not just all the complex debates about how power should be exercised, who exercises it, who decides who exercises it, the theories around it; but also the actual institutions and mechanisms that evolved) arose first and foremost in Europe. There are surely things about that evolution that are contingent and could have been different elsewhere, but there are also many very fundamental features of modern life (modern levels of knowledge, modern industry and organization, modern understanding of human biology, psychology, sociology etc) that will still hold no matter where they develop on this planet. This is an extremely dense and imposing edifice. You cannot reject it and be modern in ways most people do seem to want to be modern (I have NEVER met an Islamist who did not want an air-force). Some non-western countries have already managed that knowledge transfer (e.g. Japan, South Korea), others are getting there (China), others hope to get there someday (India?) but Muslims are notable for wanting to get there while remaining medieval in terms of theology, law and politics. And not just at the fringes. Fringes are fringes everywhere. But in the Islamicate world, this dream is mainstream.

Why? maybe because while no serious theory of politics developed in Islamicate religious thought (Ibn Khaldun is not religious literature), some dreams/fantasies of an idealized “Islamic state” were allowed to percolate. The deal was that the ulama would throw this dream around at each other and leave actual ruling to the rulers (who in practice were always and everywhere guided by existing Byzantine, Persian and Central Asian models and by “mirrors for princes” kind of literature, not by the dreamworld of the “rightly guided caliphs”). Every Islamicate empire down to the late Ottomans ruled in the name of Islam, but they did so using institutions and methods that were typically West-Asian/Central-Asian in origin. And then the Europeans took off (literally by 1903 but earlier metaphorically) and that whole world crashed and burned.

And out of this wreckage, somebody dug up the old stories of the rightly guided caliphs; It seems to me that early fantasists (like Allama Iqbal) took it for granted that a lot of this is just propaganda and we all need propaganda, so “ek hi suf mein khaRey ho gaey Mahmood o Ayaz” (a famous verse of Iqbal, describing how Sultan Mahmood and his “slave” Ayaz could pray in one row; the wonders of Islam, that sort of thing) but they fully expected reality to be much closer to London than it was to Medina (witness his approval of the Grand Turkish assembly). To them, it was more like Chinese or Japanese reformers creating their own version of what worked and getting out from under the imperialist thumb. I am sure Iqbal did not expect to be the leading poet of the Pakistani Taliban! But over time, stories frequently repeated can come to be seen as the truth. Islamist parties want to create powerful, modern Islamic states. But the stories they are using are more Islamic than modern. Far more so than the early reformers perhaps realized. The result is that every party is all the time in danger of becoming hostage to those espousing primitive notions of Shariah law and medieval political ideas. It turns out that pretending to have “our own unique genius” was much easier than actually having any genius that could get the job done. Human nature being what it is, the easy path was taken.

A small role was also played by well-meaning Western supporters, who wished to help the “lesser races” out of their misery and raise their “self-esteem”, and piled it on thick. With validation coming from Westerners, some in the Westoxicated Muslim elites had little difficulty believing “our indigenous tradition, our glorious heritage” and so on.

And last but not the least, some of the brightest minds of our generation chose to be ruined by postcolonialism instead of opting for more wholesome pursuits like sex, drugs and rock and roll. Today, the Leftist intelligentsia (otherwise the natural opponents of the Islamist parties) in Muslim countries is so heavily contaminated with Western academic claptrap that some can be found cheering on the Islamists as signs of welcome “resistance to the dominant narrative”. OK, maybe this is not true of Arab countries, I dont know. It seems to be prevalent in a certain Western educated, upper-class Pakistani and Indian context though.

The results do not look pleasant.

PS: On Islamicate empires, my background view:

Islamicate empires (the dominant form of political organization in the middle east and South Asia since the advent of Islam) had a near-total separation religion and state. The empires were run as West Asian empires, mostly (almost totally) an evolution of previous imperial patterns in that region. The religion evolved within these empires, but had practically nothing to say about politics. Religion was part and parcel OF the empires, but religious doctrine provided practically NO guidance to the political process. The political process used religion but was neither derived from it, nor bound by it .

Islamic theology accepted practically ANY ruler as long the rulers were Muslims. An imaginary idealized Islamic state was discussed at times but had little to no connection with actual power politics, contemporary OR past.

Empires governed loosely and interfered little with the everyday religious rituals of the ruled, especially outside the urban core. The rulers were interested in collecting taxes and continuing to rule. Most of the ruled gave as little as possible in taxes and had as little as possible to do with their rulers. This is not a specifically Islamic pattern, but it was almost universal in Islamicate empires.

As a result, Muslim religious literature developed no serious political thought. “mirrors of princes” and pre-Muslim (or not-specifically Muslim) traditions guided actual politics, not some notion of “Islamic state”.

PPS: some misconceptions are coming up repeatedly:

1. That I am referring to ALL muslims. Not so. I am talking about Islamist parties, which are NOT a majority in most Muslim countries, but are mainstream in most. There is also the matter of the Islamist parties getting a certain authenticity cachet in the eyes of Western observers looking for “Muslim representatives” in the multiculturalist universe.

2. That this is about whether the Egyptian military or the Morroccan king are making X or Y correct choice. No, its not about them. Its a broader generalization; the MODE of failure may vary. But failure of the Islamist political project is inevitable…not because there can be no such project in principle, but because the project as it has actually developed in the 20th century is based on the twin illusions of “the ideal Islamic state” and “Islamic political science”…neither of which actually existed in history.

(1.) you actually start becoming punctual

Over at The Aerogram there is an interesting piece up, Caste Privilege 101: A Primer for the Privileged. The main downside of the piece is that it is standard post-colonial “social justice warrior” claptrap. Unless you buy into the premises a lot of the rhetoric falls flat. You can really write a regular expression to just “search & replace”, and it could be about another set of people. Really the post just leverages pretty generic ideas about race privilege, and interpolates them into a South Asian context.

But the good part is that it is interesting that the experiences of low caste South Asians is highlighted. There simply aren’t that many in the Diaspora…or are there? Perhaps they “pass” as this woman and her family have done? And it is a nice reality check to note that what many South Asians consider normative South Asian behavior and folkways are actually just representative of a relative thin and elite strata of Indian cultures. It is also quite sweet and delicious when the authors suggest that many South Asian Americans with names like Iyer and Mukherjee who play the part of “oppressed person of color,” despite a customary elite family background, and impeccable educational qualifications and a high income, are oblivious to the structures of privilege in which they partake while excoriating white society.

The major issue I have is that in the process of lecturing (and frankly hectoring) higher caste Indians the authors express their own narrow viewpoints. For example, when talking about religious differences between low castes and higher castes, they excise Muslims out of the equation. As Muslims are about 1/3 of the South Asian population this seems an important lacunae, and as we all know there are caste and caste-like structures within Islam too, some of which have been imported from Hinduism (e.g., “Muslim Dalits”).

Finally, a lot of the generalizations about upper caste Indians seems to be bullshit. American born Indian Americans intermarry at nearly a 50% clip. I really don’t think that caste matters that much when they (we) are marrying people of other races at a very high rate. The fact is that no matter if you are a fair skinned Pandit or a dark skinned Nadar in this country you’re a “sand nigger.” Next to that all the caste posturing looks like a farce.

Just some random thoughts trigerred by a question that Razib asked and a post on FB.
The question:

“Why are all South Asian American websites so Left?
Any thoughts? It’s a consistent tendency that explicitly South Asian (de facto Indian) websites tend to have a Left inflection. This means that they’re soaked in critical race theory assumptions, but also genuflect to broader Left liberal concerns and priorities (e.g., “black lives matter” or the boycott of Israel). My hypothesis is that it’s a selection bias in the type of people who set up these websites, and read these websites. Though the average South Asian American is a liberal Democrat, they’re not that political, and too busy to know much about “intersectionality.” There are conservative South Asian Americans in the public intellectual space, but they are people like Avik Roy or Reihan Salam, whose focus is rarely on South Asians (though Reihan brings up his Bangladeshi background now and then).”


I think (and I think Razib would agree) that not ALL South Asian websites have a Left inflection. For example, I am sure there are a number affiliated with Hindutvadis/RajivMalhotra types that are explicitly anti-Left wing. And I am sure there are a number affiliated with various Muslim groups that are in their own world, impossible to classify as left or right, just not-WEIRD.  But that being said, there IS a very distinct leftward tilt in the highly educated westernized South Asian crowd. Since this is exactly the crowd one finds in universities and “serious” media and arguing in “intellectual” blogs and so on, their visibility is far beyond their actual numbers. And it is not just about visibility. Most people (in some sense, almost ALL people) get their views and opinions ready-made from a relatively small group of opinion-makers. The extraordinary dominance of some (not all; some process of meme-selection does go on) left wing tropes in this highly educated and influential group therefore translates into wide (mostly uncritical and superficial) acceptance of many of these tropes within the larger South Asian community.
Which then brings us back to why? I have a few thoughts:

1. Victimhood bonus. I really think this is the single most powerful motivator. Many highly educated Indians (and Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, etc) come from an elite background and any reasonably consistent left wing analysis would have them feeling guilty about their position back home. But suddenly, here in Columbia university, you can get to play victim at no cost (and with some benefits..especially if you stay in the humanities, in which case career choices and peer groups will reinforce and support that choice). It is a VERY tempting offer and only the most churlish and obstinately pig-headed can pass it up. Racialicious is delicious. And this bonus is on offer from the Left, not the Right. That fork in the road and the choice to be made are therefore completely clear and impossible to resist.

2. Marxism from back home. Marxism was really the default ideology of the first anti-colonial generation in Asia and Africa. In some places, where real Marxist revolutionaries tried armed violent revolution and got put down (as in Malaysia) or were pre-emptively slaughtered by CIA-supported generals (Indonesia) the situation was more muddled, but in the Indian subcontinent the educated elite was highly influenced by Marxism. Most of us brought that vague left wing symnpathy with us to the West (it was not very deep. But then, it never is, anywhere; most left wing parties have 3 ideologues who actually try to read Capital, the rest are lucky if they can read the manifesto) and therefore naturally gravitated to the left in the West. The Left in the West had meanwhile moved on to post-Marxist pomo poco bullshit and that actually proved more attractive to most elite-origin desis than the more “economist” and organized revolutionary Marxism of the old days. No need to be poor, no need to be hunted by the FBI, and all the benefits of being on the right side of history. Who could resist?

3. Racism. Obviously there really IS a substratum of race conciousness and of explicit, or now mostly implicit,  racial superiority in European and North American civilization. This is owned and massively condemned by the new Left (in fact, it has almost become the default organizing principle of the new Left, in place of proletarian revolution) and denied or (on the fringes these days) owned and honored by the Right. The choice is clear.

4. Ignorance. Never underestimate the ignorance of the educated human specimen. Since, unlike our working class fellow immigrants, we are mostly ignorant and simultaneously proud of our vast erudition, there is little chance we can spot blind spots, misrepresentation or total muckups in the Left wing post-marxist world after we move into it. We read the correct books, follow the correct opinion makers and become more and more ignorant and more and more proud of our vast knowledge. The clear choice is then reinforced. No surprise.

5. Truth. And last (and maybe least, or am I being too harsh?) there are elements of truth in the left wing position. The fetishization of individualism and guns and whatnot on the Right in America for example is just not very appealing. Environmentalism, healthcare, education, social justice, tolerance…on so many things the claim is that the left has the humane, reasonable and progressive position. And this claim has enough truth in it to keep the left the default setting for most educated immigrants. There is a “thinking right” and there are great inconsistences and even idiocies in the actual details of the “Left” once you get into it, but once you step ashore on the left side of the beach, you rarely even get to see those… So you keep going. Something like that.

Finally, and at a tangent to this whole business. The young people so tragically shot in N. Carolina. Some of our friends were naturally concerned that this reflects a new level of Islamophobia in this country. I had posted a link to a story about lynchings in the deep South (a century ago, things have changed a lot, even in the South) and a good friend commented that now they are lynching Muslims. My first muddled thoughts were (as usual? I am beginning to suspect I am sometimes just contrarian for the sake of being contrarian? maybe so) to deny that this is a lynching. I am copying my FB comments here without editing (you can figure out the context pretty easily) just to get thoughts from other better informed (and perhaps wiser) commentators:

Me: The “Muslim Lynching” in N Carolina, while a huge tragedy for those three good people and their grieving families, was NOT a lynching at all. That was my point. Actually this thought first came to me several years ago in LA. I was at an award ceremony for a (good) South Asian social work organization and some of the speakers were laying it on about their struggle against oppression and racism. I happened to be sitting next to a Black lady and after I told her that I did not think our experience had ANYTHING in common with the Black experience, she felt permitted to open up…and she did. She said she was happy to work in solidarity with people like us, but for us to somehow claim victimhood in the same ranks as Black Americans was, frankly, very very irritating to her. I agreed with her completely and we parted in perfect harmony 🙂 . Since then, I have had other reasons to get irritated by the “social justice warrior” types and have had occasion to think that Neitzsche (PBUH) may have had a bit of a point about such things. As a non-aristocrat (and unlike you, not much of a Roman General at heart 😉 ) I am not exactly pining for the return of aristocratic values, but I cannot help the occasional thought that White people who write for “The Nation” and whine about White supremacy and the poor huddled masses of Brown people being fooled by their superiors are, in some sense, in the happy position of whining about being so bloody superior..and of course, there are other more substantive problems with the whole identity politics run amuck thing.. .anyway, I am not sure it reflects well on us….this thought needs more serious elaboration and is liable to massive misunderstanding, so I will leave it here, but no, I dont think Carolina was ANYTHING like a lynching. It’s not a lynching when the local community goes around trying to be nice to the lynched..

To which a friend responded:
It’s a terrible tragedy what happened in NC. I’m sure the victims’ faith had something to do with it, but it’s also important to realize that it’s extremely hard to demand an understanding and compassionate attitude from the non-Muslim US public when the later has been witnessing unimaginable scenes of carnage running on a daily basis from the Muslim quarters of the world—beheading, burning people alive, rape, and plunder, being done systematically and in keeping with the ideological framework of Islam. I believe this was a random act of terror and doesn’t represent the mainstream American attitude. Comparing this tragedy by invoking lynching of black people is disingenuous or rather simplistic. In these trying times one has to be mindful that If only 10% of the Muslims are to be the extremists type, the number is higher than this, we are talking about 150 million strong diehard army which is glad to slay and get slain in their march to subjugate the entire world to their god, as per their holy book, surah 9111. It’s a staggering number indeed that’s diffused globally, and not to mention a good 50% of their sympathizers, the useful idiots, the clueless moderates. Eventually if moderate Muslims don’t accept this as a reality they are the ones who will be the next victims, either at the hands of the extremists or the hate crimes that’s bound to shoot up in the wake of atrocities which are too many to count. Islam has the crisis of ideology, an ideology that is intertwined with Muslims identity. Ultimately, it’s a crisis of Muslim identity. It’s not looking good for a very long time to come.


Me:   I will take the opposite tack and suggest that the “fear of Muslims” and their impending clash with civilization is itself exaggerated. I think IS type atrocities will mostly occur in Muslim countries. Most European Muslim tourists-killers going to IS will get blown up by barrel bombs and go on to meet their houri quota rather soon. Few will make it back to explode in Europe and VERY FEW will make it to America (two oceans and Canada, alhamdolillah). Neither the terrorist campaign nor the backlash will be as huge as we sometimes fear. Or at least, that is my guess for today. Tomorrow, I may be in a different frame of mind…

 Him: Technically you are correct. Omar Ali. But humans are not that objective when it comes to matters pertaining to faith and scenes of daily brutality committed in the name of religion. Perception is what matters in these situations.

Me: My thought was that we may see those scenes and think about them more than the average American. Most people have already classified “those barbarians” as barbarians. But then they have a life to live and I dont find most Americans obsessing about it…Maybe I am wrong, but that is how it seems right now.

Him: Those ‘barbarians’ carry a black flag inscribed with the first kalimah. Images like these make it very easy for the mind to associate.

Me: again, my thought was that the kalima and so on are more OUR crisis and OUR problem. Hardly worth notice for most Americans…

I have to run, but what do you think??

Any thoughts? It’s a consistent tendency that explicitly South Asian (de facto Indian) websites tend to have a Left inflection. This means that they’re soaked in critical race theory assumptions, but also genuflect to broader Left liberal concerns and priorities (e.g., “black lives matter” or the boycott of Israel). My hypothesis is that it’s a selection bias in the type of people who set up these websites, and read these websites. Though the average South Asian American is a liberal Democrat, they’re not that political, and too busy to know much about “intersectionality.” There are conservative South Asian Americans in the public intellectual space, but they are people like Avik Roy or Reihan Salam, whose focus is rarely on South Asians (though Reihan brings up his Bangladeshi background now and then).

Hello from Phnom Penh.