Thinking Past Terror: Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left.

Thinking Past Terror:

Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left

By Susan Buck-Morss

W.W. Norton & Company, 160 pages

Susan Buck-Morss reminds us that an engaged public must take on Islamism as a discourse, or a way of understanding and giving meaning to the world. Buck-Morss, as a scholar of the Frankfurt School, or dissident Marxists who pose a critical theory of society and politics, offers a thought experiment in response to the racialization of Islam and Arabs: what if there were a counter-hegemonic global solidarity movement? She asserts that Islamism is not a pathological worldview used by evil fanatics to destroy other ways of life but rather a political discourse. Islamism is not monolithic but a diverse and fragmented politicization of religion and culture in which people explore and figure out power relationships, postcolonialism, capitalism, modernity and Western hegemony. Thus, Islamism is a way of viewing the world that, if taken seriously rather than as an alien, dangerous ideology, can help us completely rethink leftist politics. In particular, political Islam is struggling with the same contradictions of the current political, economic and social global hierarchies as "we" are. If both Western progressive and political Islamic thinkers/activists could recognize a shared commitment to understanding power, then that very communication would pull together a leftist movement dedicated to radically democratizing the world.

Buck-Morss proceeds to dismantle assumptions about Islamism, such as misogyny and repression, in a fascinating narrative that deftly moves from the vagaries of U.S. foreign policy to a critique of global capital to the depoliticization of art to an open-ended question about the possibility of a global left She argues that if we want to fiercely critique how power works, we must explore these seemingly disconnected events and discourses I purposely say "we" because she seems to be speaking to the already converted, to those who are already convinced that there must be a global leftist political project to transform the world. Thus, it is especially disturbing that, as early as page 2, Buck-Morss finds it necessary to make the disclaimer: "Islamism is not terrorism." Further, she sees nonviolent communication and debate as a way to end terrorism, by both transnational actors and states, but she also comments:

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[The USA] is a nation founded on principles of freedom ... the deeply human, I will say it, universal political freedoms of belief, speech, assembly, due process, and equality before the law ... I am fiercely loyal to the United States of America that espouses these ideals--ideals in no way the exclusive produce of our history, but struggled for widely within the global public sphere. I will give my life to defend both them and the multiplicity of diverse human beings that as fellow citizens and honored guests inhabit my beautiful land. (29)

Buck-Morss then distinguishes between this U.S. and the national security state that acts undemocratically and against the ideals and aspirations of the one she describes above. I find myself struggling with her language, particularly with the term "universal," to which she ascribes a very particular, Western description as well as with her "loyalty" to a land that was actually founded through genocide and slavery. Her idealism is both enchantingly familiar and disturbing. It is this discomfort that progressive leftists should acknowledge when contemplating solidarity and resistance. It is easy, in a sense, to lambast the U.S. most people find murderous and imperialistic. It is a lot harder to realize that one feels attached to some premise that the "real" U.S. is about something else.