Contextualising a Dead Horse
In a great televised exchange about the Clash of Cartoons on newshour (video here), Fouad Ajami and Ali Abunimah offer opposing views.
One indicator for the opacity of argument is how often words like "thing" or "context" are used, and by this count Abunimah loses in two sets, 0-3, 0-4. Using "thing", which indicates a refusal to define a term, is, however, harmless compared to "context" which simply points to all "things" not mentioned.
Contexts in Social Science
Contexts, unless clearly specified - in which case we could use the phrase "in relation to" - are perhaps the most unhelpful analytical tools available in the current debate. Clearly, no one challenges the mind-numbing truism that social phenomena never exist in a vacuum and thus cannot be completely decontextualised, but it appears that many commentators are simply beating around the bush, flogging a dead horse, contextualising ad infinitum, ad absurdum, ad nauseum.
Pacifist lefties intimately share the concerns of the violent righties, but reducing the whole to a byproduct of "modernity" or "globalisation" or some such explanatory muddle ought to be opposed. What explains the difference here? And what explains the difference between Muslims who find the cartoons distasteful but accept the spectre of being offended that is intimately tied to the freedom of expression, those who don't accept liberalism but reject a violent response to a non-violent act, and those who react violently? I postulate that "context" offers no prospects for an answer.
The underlying issue is one of the philosophy of (social) science. Most scientists agree broadly with Karl Popper in claiming that a theory is only useful if it can be falsified. Abunimah makes this increasingly hard by naming a conglomerate (of identified and unidentified) causal variables but Fouad Ajami nonetheless makes an attempt at falsification.
The falsification of Context
Ajami responds
The reaction, sans the War on Terror, should, according to Abunimah's thesis, have been a peaceful rebuttal , a catalyst for further dialogue about the compatibility of Islam with European liberalism, perhaps a tiny fraction of fundamentalists being publicly opposed by an overwhelming counter-demonstration aimed at accepting the basic tenets of a liberal society in Europe and marginalising those dissenters who refuse to embrace the political foundations of the society they coinhabit, and a non-reaction by Muslims outside of Europe, in the absence of Western encroachment, viewing this as the legitimate product of a pluralist liberal society within a pluralist system of states. If this is not close to the reaction Abunimah would have otherwise expected, then highlighting the context to the neglect of all other issues amounts to intellectual dishonesty.
In a nutshell, the particular context is only insofar to be emphasised above all else as it accounts for the crucial difference in outcome.
Fouad Ajami, like me, is not convinced by this argument. Ajami attempts falsification by pronouncing that
"Fundamentally we've seen this before. This is a replay of what exactly happened a generation ago with the Satanic Verses of Salman Rushdie. The riots began in England then, and then they spread to the Islamic world."
The riots in 1988 following the publication of the Sanatic Verses occurred in a different context, without any declared War on Terror, bereft of biblical references to crusades and the perceived vilification of all Muslims as terrorists. But Abunimah's immediate context causality still holds as long as (i) the context was sufficiently similar in 1988 to 2006 and (ii) is bolstered by the absence of riots (and presence of integrationist dialogue) after other incidents of free speech insulting Islam in different contexts.
Contextualising the Satanic Verses Affair
Political actors instrumentalise Islam
Fouad Ajami comments on the recent violence,
"when you are talking about these two capitals, Beirut and Damascus, you're really talking about the cynical youth on the part of the Syrian regime of this incident. This is not about religion; it's not about the prophet. It's not about these cartoons. It's about the determination of the Syrian regime to use cynically this episode and to sew disorder in Lebanon and to make Syria itself, which is under the gun for all kinds of high crime, to make it seem like the embattled heart of the Arab and the Islamic world."
In 1988-89, regimes also had their contexts in which they acted. In Pakistan, where the election of Benazir Bhutto had set back the Islamisation programme, the Islamic Democratic Alliance rallied behind the Rushdie affair to oppose the Western-educated Bhutto. In India, Rajiv Ghandi was quick to ban the book not only to secure Muslim votes but also since Rushdie's previous book, Midnight's Children, had targeted Indira Ghandi. In Egypt, the conflict between liberals and fundamentalists was raging, the Muslim Brotherhood was oppressed, and the banning of the book was hence politically astute. And in Iran, Khomeini used the opportunity to issue a fatwa to rebuff the emerging pragmatists, led by Khamaini and Rafsanjani, and in order to garner the support of fundamentalists within his regime and abroad.
1989,2006: Different Contexts, Similar Outcome
Both contexts provided openings for political groups to magnetise public support, but this is to be viewed as a general phenomenon of politics, not as an outcome of any specific context. In fact, Abunimah answers to Ajami's comment on the cynical instrumentalisation on behalf of the Syrian regime, "his thesis that this is Syrian-inspired doesn't explain the protest in Indonesia and India and across the world." Agreed.
In 1988-89, the ambitions of some regimes and political groups also fail to explain the extent of the backlash. It fails to explain the firebombing of bookstores at UC Berkeley, of the The Riverdal Press, of newspapers who defended the novel, the violence in India that resulted in five deaths in Bombay, the dead in Egypt or elsewhere. Around the world, Muslim communitites held huge book-burning rallies as if they were ice-cream socials. Rushdie's Japanese translator was killed, his Italian translator was stabbed, his Norwegian publisher shot, and 37 people died in Turkey when their hotel was burnt down in a protest againt Rushdie's Turkish translator. The uproar was similar to today's and the death toll heavier. What, then, was the broader context that explains these anomalies for Mr. Abunimah?
The World in 1988-89
In 1988, there had been no 9/11, no War on Terror, no invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, no Guantanamo Bay, and no Abu Ghraib. When the book was banned by many Muslim countries in November '88, the ceasefire between Iran and Iraq was only three months young. The Soviet Union's influence in the Middle East had declined to the extent that many academics claim that the Cold War ended earlier in the Middle East than anywhere else. The USSR and the USA had both backed Iraq. The Arab states had been, after the decline of Pan-Arabism, for once firmly united behind Iraq, opposing the threat of an exported Shiite Revolution. Iran, as a matter of fact, was completely isolated and the Arab states enjoyed the backing of the U.S. Arabs and Muslims, in general, enjoyed better relations with the West than before and the Soviet Union was completing its withdrawal from Afghanistan. The superpowers were not fueling inter-Arab rivalries or intruding behind the curtain of bipolarity.
One similarity was that with the end of the conflict in Afghanistan, many Arab muhajedeen had no particular purpose, no precise manifestation of evil to combat and returned to their home countries, displaced, purposeless, unemployed, and enraged by the fire of fundamentalism. Thus fundamentalism was on the rise. But in 2006 the militant fundamentalists' existential crisis has alas been resolved.
The Poverty of Context
Nonetheless, the world was strikingly different 17 years ago. Ali Abunimah's post-Sept. 11 context only makes sense if he could persuasively argue that it is a replay of the late-1980s context. This appears to be an impossible task.
Neither does Abunimah fulfil the second requirement by citing cases in which Muslims reacted differently due to the difference in context.
The context explanation thus falters on two accounts. Firstly, it is unable to resolve a similar outcome in a different context. It also fails to provide counter-examples of a different outcome to a similar situation in a different context. Secondly, it does little to come to terms with the difference in reaction among Muslims. It is for these reasons that hyper-contextualisation ought to be resisted. For those who still employ this strategy, it colours them in a shade of an unreflected, obstructing apologetic for an unworthy cause. They are merely contextualising a dead horse to obscure the visibly obvious.
"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle" - George Orwell.
One indicator for the opacity of argument is how often words like "thing" or "context" are used, and by this count Abunimah loses in two sets, 0-3, 0-4. Using "thing", which indicates a refusal to define a term, is, however, harmless compared to "context" which simply points to all "things" not mentioned.
Contexts in Social Science
Contexts, unless clearly specified - in which case we could use the phrase "in relation to" - are perhaps the most unhelpful analytical tools available in the current debate. Clearly, no one challenges the mind-numbing truism that social phenomena never exist in a vacuum and thus cannot be completely decontextualised, but it appears that many commentators are simply beating around the bush, flogging a dead horse, contextualising ad infinitum, ad absurdum, ad nauseum.
ALI ABUNIMAH: "Well, I think that there is genuine offense at the cartoons which are definitely distasteful to Muslims, but I think that the cartoons in themselves can't really explain the extent of the protest and the anger that we're seeing. And I think that this incident in a sense was a spark in a context where since Sept. 11, increasingly people across the Arab and Muslim world perceive themselves to be under a generalized assault by the United States and its allies. And there's a whole list of things that people would cite from the war in Iraq, U.S. support for Israel, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and many other things including increasing xenophobia against Muslim communities within Europe that provide tinder for this kind of widespread process."The most serious discontent with "hyper-contextualisation" is that it takes the form of a general apologetic, refusing to allocate blame, take sides, or, more significantly, to single out a conflictual core. When we compare explanations for violence among Muslims with those for right-wing extremists, although the analogy is not to be elaborated, the issue crystallises. After all, when Neo-Nazi organisations are on the rise, we should analyse them through their tensions with mainstream society, not explain their anger as only "meaningful" in a context of growing immigration, increasing social mobility and displacement, the underdevelopment of poor urban areas, their suboptimal access to education, and the subsequent inkling to group-think (while Abunimah would add that "there's a whole list of things that people [who?] would cite"). These well-defined relations in which radical right-wing rhetoric flourishes should be structurally addressed but this seems to distort the fundamental clashes of world views with identifiable values.
Pacifist lefties intimately share the concerns of the violent righties, but reducing the whole to a byproduct of "modernity" or "globalisation" or some such explanatory muddle ought to be opposed. What explains the difference here? And what explains the difference between Muslims who find the cartoons distasteful but accept the spectre of being offended that is intimately tied to the freedom of expression, those who don't accept liberalism but reject a violent response to a non-violent act, and those who react violently? I postulate that "context" offers no prospects for an answer.
The underlying issue is one of the philosophy of (social) science. Most scientists agree broadly with Karl Popper in claiming that a theory is only useful if it can be falsified. Abunimah makes this increasingly hard by naming a conglomerate (of identified and unidentified) causal variables but Fouad Ajami nonetheless makes an attempt at falsification.
The falsification of Context
Ajami responds
"Well, I don't agree with this. I think, you know, to hear the self-pity that my colleague here expresses, you would almost not really --you would have to remember that there were these horrific attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which were the starting gun for all that he is talking about.Fundamentally we've seen this before. This is a replay of what exactly happened a generation ago with the Satanic Verses of Salman Rushdie. The riots began in England then, and then they spread to the Islamic world."Whereas Abunimah in a noncommital condundrum accuses the Western response to Sept. 11 of creating the structural basis for the outbreak of protests, as opposed to the "spark" of the cartoons, Ajami rightfully challenges this causal explanation. Reducing the violent outbreak to the context of the War on Terror paradigm can only be considered analytically compelling if, in the absence of the War on Terror paradigm, the reaction would have been signficantly different.
The reaction, sans the War on Terror, should, according to Abunimah's thesis, have been a peaceful rebuttal , a catalyst for further dialogue about the compatibility of Islam with European liberalism, perhaps a tiny fraction of fundamentalists being publicly opposed by an overwhelming counter-demonstration aimed at accepting the basic tenets of a liberal society in Europe and marginalising those dissenters who refuse to embrace the political foundations of the society they coinhabit, and a non-reaction by Muslims outside of Europe, in the absence of Western encroachment, viewing this as the legitimate product of a pluralist liberal society within a pluralist system of states. If this is not close to the reaction Abunimah would have otherwise expected, then highlighting the context to the neglect of all other issues amounts to intellectual dishonesty.
In a nutshell, the particular context is only insofar to be emphasised above all else as it accounts for the crucial difference in outcome.
Fouad Ajami, like me, is not convinced by this argument. Ajami attempts falsification by pronouncing that
"Fundamentally we've seen this before. This is a replay of what exactly happened a generation ago with the Satanic Verses of Salman Rushdie. The riots began in England then, and then they spread to the Islamic world."
The riots in 1988 following the publication of the Sanatic Verses occurred in a different context, without any declared War on Terror, bereft of biblical references to crusades and the perceived vilification of all Muslims as terrorists. But Abunimah's immediate context causality still holds as long as (i) the context was sufficiently similar in 1988 to 2006 and (ii) is bolstered by the absence of riots (and presence of integrationist dialogue) after other incidents of free speech insulting Islam in different contexts.
Contextualising the Satanic Verses Affair
Political actors instrumentalise Islam
Fouad Ajami comments on the recent violence,
"when you are talking about these two capitals, Beirut and Damascus, you're really talking about the cynical youth on the part of the Syrian regime of this incident. This is not about religion; it's not about the prophet. It's not about these cartoons. It's about the determination of the Syrian regime to use cynically this episode and to sew disorder in Lebanon and to make Syria itself, which is under the gun for all kinds of high crime, to make it seem like the embattled heart of the Arab and the Islamic world."
In 1988-89, regimes also had their contexts in which they acted. In Pakistan, where the election of Benazir Bhutto had set back the Islamisation programme, the Islamic Democratic Alliance rallied behind the Rushdie affair to oppose the Western-educated Bhutto. In India, Rajiv Ghandi was quick to ban the book not only to secure Muslim votes but also since Rushdie's previous book, Midnight's Children, had targeted Indira Ghandi. In Egypt, the conflict between liberals and fundamentalists was raging, the Muslim Brotherhood was oppressed, and the banning of the book was hence politically astute. And in Iran, Khomeini used the opportunity to issue a fatwa to rebuff the emerging pragmatists, led by Khamaini and Rafsanjani, and in order to garner the support of fundamentalists within his regime and abroad.
1989,2006: Different Contexts, Similar Outcome
Both contexts provided openings for political groups to magnetise public support, but this is to be viewed as a general phenomenon of politics, not as an outcome of any specific context. In fact, Abunimah answers to Ajami's comment on the cynical instrumentalisation on behalf of the Syrian regime, "his thesis that this is Syrian-inspired doesn't explain the protest in Indonesia and India and across the world." Agreed.
In 1988-89, the ambitions of some regimes and political groups also fail to explain the extent of the backlash. It fails to explain the firebombing of bookstores at UC Berkeley, of the The Riverdal Press, of newspapers who defended the novel, the violence in India that resulted in five deaths in Bombay, the dead in Egypt or elsewhere. Around the world, Muslim communitites held huge book-burning rallies as if they were ice-cream socials. Rushdie's Japanese translator was killed, his Italian translator was stabbed, his Norwegian publisher shot, and 37 people died in Turkey when their hotel was burnt down in a protest againt Rushdie's Turkish translator. The uproar was similar to today's and the death toll heavier. What, then, was the broader context that explains these anomalies for Mr. Abunimah?
The World in 1988-89
In 1988, there had been no 9/11, no War on Terror, no invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, no Guantanamo Bay, and no Abu Ghraib. When the book was banned by many Muslim countries in November '88, the ceasefire between Iran and Iraq was only three months young. The Soviet Union's influence in the Middle East had declined to the extent that many academics claim that the Cold War ended earlier in the Middle East than anywhere else. The USSR and the USA had both backed Iraq. The Arab states had been, after the decline of Pan-Arabism, for once firmly united behind Iraq, opposing the threat of an exported Shiite Revolution. Iran, as a matter of fact, was completely isolated and the Arab states enjoyed the backing of the U.S. Arabs and Muslims, in general, enjoyed better relations with the West than before and the Soviet Union was completing its withdrawal from Afghanistan. The superpowers were not fueling inter-Arab rivalries or intruding behind the curtain of bipolarity.
One similarity was that with the end of the conflict in Afghanistan, many Arab muhajedeen had no particular purpose, no precise manifestation of evil to combat and returned to their home countries, displaced, purposeless, unemployed, and enraged by the fire of fundamentalism. Thus fundamentalism was on the rise. But in 2006 the militant fundamentalists' existential crisis has alas been resolved.
The Poverty of Context
Nonetheless, the world was strikingly different 17 years ago. Ali Abunimah's post-Sept. 11 context only makes sense if he could persuasively argue that it is a replay of the late-1980s context. This appears to be an impossible task.
Neither does Abunimah fulfil the second requirement by citing cases in which Muslims reacted differently due to the difference in context.
The context explanation thus falters on two accounts. Firstly, it is unable to resolve a similar outcome in a different context. It also fails to provide counter-examples of a different outcome to a similar situation in a different context. Secondly, it does little to come to terms with the difference in reaction among Muslims. It is for these reasons that hyper-contextualisation ought to be resisted. For those who still employ this strategy, it colours them in a shade of an unreflected, obstructing apologetic for an unworthy cause. They are merely contextualising a dead horse to obscure the visibly obvious.
"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle" - George Orwell.
posted by Raphael Korn at 2:23 PM
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