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Sunday, March 22, 2009
Settings, privacy
I've set this and my other blogs to be as stealthy as possible. Search engines will look in vain, blogrolls will see us as a blankness. So even though there can be no expectation of privacy in a public blog, we are as invisible as it is possible to be. My large lecture course blog has been up and running for a few weeks now and has been free of snoops and intruders. And I can't imagine caring if anyone does come across this, hope you feel the same. It's not as though I'm hoping this will turn into a dear diary space for the expression of our innermost thoughts. So please feel free to post uninhibitedly, if we do this right it might turn out to be a worthwhile workspace.
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Okay- I don't know how to post my own heading-- I'm not a blogger per se-- BUT, I have questions nonetheless in light of this weeks reading and other readings I've found of Norton's.
ReplyDeleteIs the argument circular for trying to give legitimacy to democratizing the Muslim world? Can we democratize a RELIGION?
I personally do not think so and I think Norton would agree. In this class, we are dealing largely with transnational organizations. Whether or not these organizations are democratic (and most are not), the only hope we have is to democratize the nations themselves. But we can only do this if the people themselves want to because, what is democracy without participation of the masses?
How do we define power? The expression of control over others. Who is trying to hold this control? Too many conflicting forces, groups, political movements etc. claim power over the Middle East and it's people, tugging in too many directions and voiding each other out.
Is democratizing the Middle East moot? Circular Argument?
These are all excellent questions, debated not only in the scholarly literature but in terms of national and international policy as well.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I hope you have picked up from our readings is the sloppy way many writers have used terms such as Islam, Islamic, Islamic societies, Muslim, Muslim politics, the Muslim or Islamic world, etc. Without a clear defense of what they mean by the term in the way they employ it is becomes easy for some writers to flatten or bunch together phenomena that are too complex to be associated with one another. "Are Islam and democracy compatible" is to my mind one of the most glaring example of this. In all cases what is needed is precision, together with frank acknowledgement of how others have seen things differently. In the best writing, moreover, we see a determination to distinguish among words, concepts, things, and ideals (Fred Halliday for example does this admirably well). If you fail to do any of these things it is easy to slip into essentialism (The Islamic View of Politics) or to ask questions so broad as to be meaningless. For you guys this provides a hook for papers or sections of papers.We don't want papers that concentrate entirely on scholarly failings, but introductions should situate the issue within a larger scholarly context with a critical eye, one I hope you are well on your way to developing.
Yes, some of the organizations are transnational in reach, but never forget the adage that all politics is local. The question, what do all transnational Islamist movements share is to me less interesting than the particular contexts that gave rise to, and shaped, individual movements. Those of you writing on Hizbullah or Amal, or the Muslim Brotherhood, will want to pay attention to both contexts. But more important than that is to treat each one as a particular phenomenon in itself, and not a local instance of some larger thing.