"WRONG PROPHECIES Islam" by Gilles Kepel
, from La Repubblica 05/03/2011
"I remember a breakfast at the Club of Harvard professor Samuel Huntington with a few years after publication his famous article, then of his book on the clash of civilizations. I wanted to see it because, in preparing his argument, he also used among other things my book The Revenge of God In those pages I explained how, in the seventies, they had developed the religious political movements within Christianity, the ' Judaism and Islam. I wanted to draw parallels between these trans-religious phenomena, to show that, although in different ways, each of the three had been born in reaction to the crisis of modernity and the industrial world, the weakening of the Solidarity trade union and workers after the disappearance of work in factory, rising unemployment, and so on. Paradoxically, however, had Huntington drawn only to the Islamic part of my book, using it to argue the exceptional nature of Islam. On this he established a unique vision of Islam without realizing that within that faith is opposed social forces clashed for control, or to impose a division between the secular and the religious reference in the political struggle and in the public space. The discussion with him that day was polite, but radically different positions surfaced. A few years later came the Sept. 11, 2001. Huntington enjoyed a second triumph: the attacks by Al Qaeda
, in the eyes of most commentators, validating his thesis and the absolutist nature of Islam;
turned the bulk of the faithful followers of Bin Laden.
my part, in the book "Jihad, The Rise and Fall of Islam", I tried to explain Islam through precisely a decline. In fact, it was split. On the one hand, there were radical groups intended to use more and more violence in the hope that that would awaken the masses and triggered the Islamic revolution. Those groups were a Muslim version of the Red Brigades or the German Red Army Faction. On the other hand, there were as Islamist AKP turkish, ready to participate in the political system, intended to have their doctrine then dissolve in pluralism, and to recognize that sovereignty derives from the people and not from Allah: democracy. On 12 September, while Huntington triumphed in the media, some French journalists demanded my removal from the chair, so my writing seemed to them nonsensical.
Yet today, 10 years have passed, I think that analysis right. Islamic extremism, of which Bin Laden was the emblem, was unable to drag the masses of the Muslim world. Al Qaeda has been reduced to a sect without fertility policy. On the other hand, authoritarian regimes and dictatorships of various Mubarak and Ben Ali, considered by the western "bulwarks" against Islamic extremism, have also become obsolete. Today the Arab peoples have emerged from that dilemma - caught between Ben Ali and Bin Laden. They made a new entry into a universal story that saw the fall of dictatorships in Latin America, the communist regimes in Eastern Europe, and even the military regimes in the non-Arab Muslim countries, like Indonesia and Turkey. As a result, the Islamists who proposed the political participation within a pluralist system modeled on turkish now dominate, though in Egypt have not been able to impose their political vocabulary, and are - without prejudice to future developments - in follow the democratic revolutions in Arabic, rather than rely on the sovereignty of Allah. So, I think the political sociologist was right compared to some studies that reduced society in ideological texts.
Many, with great ingenuity, now write that Islam has gone, the Arabs are like the Europeans or the Americans. The reality, however, is more complex. The Arabs, in fact, are building a modern, hesitating. It is no coincidence that the first Arab revolution has taken place in Tunisia, and the most famous slogan has been expressed in French: "Ben Ali DEGAGE", "go away", which is reproduced faithfully by the Egyptians in a country where almost nobody speaks more French . The Egyptians have heard about Al Jazeera and became a revolutionary slogan. In Tunisia there is a true cultural pluralism Franco-Arab. This helps us understand the true nature of revolution in progress: rooted in local cultures, and at the same time in the universal aspirations, with all the difficulties that entails. "
E 'as the singular Eurocentric visions blather followed completely falsified history other but also of its history and how the vision of some historians inevitably fall into the "myth": narratives more or less fantastic that serve to explain the truth to the masses pseudo difficult to document. The West "Cradle of Democracy"? Let's see how many myths are hidden in this belief: 1 - Up to less than a century ago, there were formal democracies in Europe, only Britain and France, at least partially in Scandinavian countries. Fierce and bloody dictatorship have continued in the old continent to Spain, Italy (Mussolini we forget?), Germany, Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, the Balkans as a whole. Note that France and Britain are allowed the luxury of democracy through colonial rule exerted in other people's homes in a good part of the world. The United States of America have seen their democracy coexist with the genocide of indigenous peoples with slavery and racial discrimination of African Americans, with the military dictatorships in charitable gift given to Central America and much of South America and thanks to the unique mechanism cost effective way for the population (5% of world population) a good 40% of the resources of the globe. In the name of what Europe has an absolute primacy of democracy and the right to judge what people are worthy of democracy and what not?; 2 - One of the strains not only with which we deal with the conceptual theme of Islam is the claim that the entire Islamic world is dominated by theocratic spirit. Now we know that for theocracy means the political power exercised in the name of God to be rooted priestly caste, powerful and not very well educated. From a theoretical point of view the only theocracy in the strict sense in the world is the State of Vatican City and only a part of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini. Even before the Chinese conquest of Tibet by the Dalai Lama was really a feudal theocracy. Sunni Islam, has among its basic principles that every man is "Khalifa" of God is God, the Compassionate and Merciful to be the true Lord of the Worlds ("Rabbi Alamin). If they wanted to be conceptually stricter various Huntington around the world should develop the political side of Islam 'theocentrically democratic "and that the company was founded by the Prophet Muhammad and preserved by his successors, the" rightly guided Companions. " should be added that the spirit of brotherhood that, even in the hardest moments can resist the Muslim peoples has given of himself these days as an extraordinary and moving with the Tunisian people. Although poor, suffering from scarcity of food resources, the Tunisians have been counteracted by a spontaneous mobilization of people to the terrible conditions of more than 100,000 refugees from Libya, virtually alone. When the problem was almost solved by the return most of the refugees fled from Libya, the Tunisian border came pathetic 4 tents sent by the Italian Government, and I do not think that other European nations have done better. E 'that the Tunisians, in spite of all their nonsense about their "Europeanization", were Muslims and the well-known saying of the Prophet: "If you see someone hungrier than you, by your bread." Let me conclude by recalling that for a Muslim God is Justice, and the despotic tyranny exercised over the people is always unjust.
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