Final Blogpost: Colonialism as a MacBook and Self-Determination as a Right

Two thoughts I’d like to share:

First, it seems to me that retrospect invariably frowns upon colonization. At the very least, it discredits those who force belief systems and societal structures upon those to whom such ideas are foreign.

Both history and our class discussions point to a sociological and ideological hubris at the center of colonialism (and, in particular, its flaws). On a simplistic level, this is the notion that “if it works for us, it must work for them” – an idea that Naureen articulately chided today. She pointed out that there arise artificial cultural overlaps, existing only in the minds of the colonizer, and not in the mind of the colonized. Prominent contemporary scholar Tariq Ramadan writes in his Islam and the Arab Awakening that “social struggle and resistance to colonialism” yielded “the birth of political Islam and of the Muslim Brotherhood.” (Ramadan  71) 

Ramadan notes that colonialists “sought to convince the colonized that their backwardness was the fault of Islam's inability to keep the political and religious spheres separate.” (Ramadan  86) Even when intentions are noble, however, it seems that this practice serves primarily to frustrate the masses and create inhibitions that haven’t previously existed. Consider this: you meet a prolific author who has won numerous prestigious awards. You tell him that he has no choice but to begin writing his novels on a MacBook Pro, immediately. And what’s more: he gets to type on a newly-designed keyboard. The author has always used QWERTY, and he’s always used a typewriter. That’s always worked for him. This transition is abrupt and destructive, because he didn’t come naturally, gradually to use a new, evolved technology. You forced it upon him, with little to no training, and now the prolific author is rendered literarily mute.

So, too, are societies rendered impotent and frustrated when the system they’ve long been following is swept from beneath their feet.

Another thought, on another topic:

Should our opposition to Iran’s nuclear ambitions – buttressed by vows to annihilate a country and its people – and other acts of what can really only be described as fanaticism and perversion of Islamic principles compel us to oppose all of Islam that rests in the realm of politics? Should Islamism be entirely subdued because of what are, hopefully, relatively rare incidents of radical fundamentalism? Ramadan asks in an alternative way. He wonders, rhetorically: “Can it be termed political Islam when a tiny group of violent extremists that has no organized structure to speak of, no articulate political vision, kills innocent people in different parts of the world?” (Ramadan  98)

I don’t think so. Self-determination is a basic human right that should not be denied or limited because of someone else’s twisted fundamentalism.

About three years ago, a 19-year-old Afghan woman was raped by a relative of hers. She reported the rape to local authorities, and accordingly spent two and a half years in prison, where she gave birth to a daughter. According to the Guardian, “the (Afghan) presidential palace said Gulnaz (the woman) would be released after she agreed to become the second wife of her rapist – a prospect that supporters say she had dreaded.”

Just to clarify: the woman was jailed because she was raped. Then, for the same reason, she was forced by law to marry her rapist. Now, she will live the rest of her life in the home of a man who committed an egregious crime against her. Gulnaz lives perpetual punishment for having been a victim. That isn’t the absence of a common frame of reference; that is immorality in the flesh.

Of course, such a case is relatively anomalous (though fifty percent of women in in Afghan prisoners are there for “moral crimes,” according to the aforementioned Guardian article). I don’t propose that we condemn all of global Islam to purgatory. I do propose that we asses the cultural roots of these legal practices and search for ways to quell them and their kin. We shouldn’t meddle in issues of mere cultural preference. That would be insensitive and overly obstructionist. It is the objective breaches of morality and human rights that seem more fitting of some further oversight, assessment, and action.