The Muslim Naked in the Face of the Future, or Big Islam and Little Nation: Why Farah Pandith's Appoint Makes Such Sense

Our President's address to Russia, towards the tail-end of his visit to that place, it got me to thinking how often Obama goes "over the heads of" governments (or, more properly and with better manners, "through and beyond structured governance") and speaks directly to the people, conscious of his platform, reputation and perceived accessibility.  This is of course a massively populist gesture, a product of a conviction that everyday people's opinions matter enough that they can and should be directly spoken to.  Even in much of the Muslim world, huge parts of which are poor, fragile, or horribly governed, Obama made the choice of talking directly to Muslims as Muslims, as people with a common identity (at certain levels) who want to be heard and who need to be spoken to.  But this is also a gesture communicating a profound and stunning understanding of the implications of our collective human future, of the effects of the march of capital and capitalism, internet and other technologies and new forms of mass communications.  

Like this blog, or this very speculative post.  Will Muslims face a future where many of us are naked before economics, without the protection offered by mediating structures? (of which there are, broadly speaking, two types: Institutional and Socio-Cultural, or governance and armies and mores and traditional practices and standards.)  

Even as governments amass more power, capital amasses still more.  The whole world is interlinked, and governments can no longer easily impose their will -- this holds for us in America, too.  We cannot do what we wish, we are tied to China, and China to us (among other bondages).  

Capitalism has made a type of global order in which governments, while vital pieces, are chased into corners, made less and less sovereign while apparently more and more watchful.  Only very huge countries, or IGO-type structures (ASEAN, the EU) still push back to visible effect.  I think Obama unerstands this better than almost any other American politician, and certainly more than any other American President.  The era of American exceptionalism has been eroded by the free market ideology we once best and most eagerly championed.  Just as Iran's Revolutionary Guards, meant to protect clerical revolution and Islamic democracy now protect the revolution from the clerics, so too do successful systems eventually (or at least very often) proceed on their own unchecked momentum, mutating and multiplying to unseen effect.  In this sense, the Muslim world, which boasts no governments that can rival Brazil, India, or Russia, let alone the EU, China or the US, is the most futuristic part of the planet.  

Th Muslim world has been exposed and overwhelmed by the naked interests of capitalism and/or imperial hegemony, internally and by rival external powers (hello, East Turkestan).  Its governments are least able to resist; hence, the idea of Ummah has a salience -- and the idea of speaking to Muslims, directly, and globally, has a wisdom -- that cannot be applied to any other human population.  Because the governments in question can too often do little more than oppress their own people; they are simply unable to resist massive economic practices and forces which smash their agendas if even positive ones.  Hence more and more the idea of the Ummah, Avari believes, is separated from and wants to separate from, the idea of governance; other than a few countries, within Muslim circles Ummah really has global connotations (but not, importantly, effects or possibilities) precisely because there is so little identification with nationalisms.  That's not to say that national feeling is not hugely important, or that there are not deep divisions and violent fissures between local Muslim populations, but rather that the articulation of Muslimness is today more separable from state structures than possibly ever before.  Technology among other things lets that happen.

Maybe the Islamic world is ahead of things in a negative way, a forewarning of what happens when social forces are overwhelmed by economic imbalances. But it is also then most capable of embracing a post-national world, for which reason the idea of appointing Farah Pandith to her post, under Secretary Clinton, as Special Representative to Muslim communities makes so much sense: Because Obama understands that talking to peoples is as important (morally, but also pragmatically) as talking to governments, and if there is any popular sense of identity in the world which has deep resonance -- as deep as a nationalism, and less effective for its lack of state structure -- it is the idea of Islam as community.  In other words, Obama is even smarter than we thought he was.

I invite your thoughts on this very hastily-assembled digital stream of typed thoughts.

Comments

[Anonymous]

What tangible benefits will Obama achieve with a'beyond-the-structured-governance approach', as in the case of addressing the global Muslim population directly ? What is the net effect of this 'deep resonance' you refer to.