Islamophobia: Liberal Prejudice – Notes Towards a Polemic

Posted on November 15th, 2004 by .
Categories: Some personal considerations.

Daily Moiders

Marc Mulholland writes for Crooked Timber (that’s why the trackback) but also has his own site: Daily Moiders. An interesting piece here from july 2004 about islamic reformation. On Crooked Timber the question is asked, after the ‘fuss’ about Qardawi, how do we think a islamic reformist looks like. Something like Calvijn? In Liberal Prejudice – Notes Towards a Polemic Mulholland talks about liberal islamophopia. “Liberals have a tendency to treat their own norms as self-evident and, as expression of ahistorical �rights�, not only universally applicable but necessary components of full human morality. Pre-liberal cultures are unacceptable unless reduced to fancy dress. Liberals in effect treat non-Liberal values as �false consciousness�, easily sloughed off by liberated humanity. In reality, cultural identities are not as easily shed as liberals like to think, and for the constituents of the group exposed to constant denigration, the caveats expressing regard for liberal or assimliable currents in the persecuted group are likely to be rejected as hypocrisy. Indeed, patronising homilies on the need to reform � liberals in the Christian tradition often unselfconsciously call for Reformation, as if the epoch that produced the Thirty Years War is owed universal respect � are more likely to reinforce the authority of archaic institutions as buttresses against cultural inundation. ”

Very interesting for several people in the Netherlands…and probably elsewhere…

[Also read the discussion on that piece of Mulholland on Crooked Timber: http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002209.html ]

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