Talal Asad wrote, in response to the Rushdie crisis:
In the West today, intolerance of Europe's Others has again become more strident. Collective cruelty is, of course, neither new nor confined to the West. Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians continue in our day to perpetrate acts of violence and cruelty. But it is the secular moder state's awesome potential for cruelty and destruction that deserves our sustained attention - as citizens and as athropologists of modernity.
from Genealogies of Religion, 1994, p. 306
Has subsequent history confirmed his analysis? It is hard not to think so. It is interesting that opposing cruelty is the very thing Rorty thinks secular liberalism has to offer the world...
2 comments:
I would say that over the course of history, and given how recent the secular state is, that Islamic imperialism has shows a greater capacity for cruelty and oppression.
Here I think, for example of the janissaries: children taken from their Christian dhimmi parents in the Balkans, forced to convert to Islam and raised in a military setting, and then unleashed as the oppressors of their own flesh and blood.
Examples could be multiplied.
Dears All,
I donot want to contest what has been pointed out by regarding cruelty by Muslim monarchies in our past history. But what I intend to bring fore is the context in which Talal Asad`s argument should be viewed. This context has been provided by weaponary of mass destruction invented and poccessed by our so-called modern/secular and peace loving states. This weaponary has no inherent capacity to distinguish between citizen and combatant. It more offen that citizens are likely to be affected by it as compared to combatant. This is what we have ourself proved with last decade of our war aginst terrorism. If we doubt then we should just go through those official reports of US govt which has mentioned the ratio of combatant`s death with so-called collateral damage of civilians.
Our age is not different from our previous ages and civilisations so far as attitudes of ruling powers are concerned, but there is big differnce between our present powers in terms of their capacity to kill and inflict damage, this capacity has never been acquired by any civilisation or power in world history. This is what Talal Asad was referring.
I think we should be critical of our past, but this criticism should not go to the extent of masking our own capacilities of destruction or kill. This capacity is unmatchable without any argument.
Post a Comment