Thread by @manrilla

On #CriticalTheory

On this day some eat turkey, I read dry scholarship on #liberalism and #postmodernism. Oh, yeah. And I eat turkey, too.

I’ve seen a number of debates — some quite heated! — going back and forth about the validity, soundness, and compatibility of #Islam with #criticaltheory scholarship. Some advocate that it’s entirely incompatible with so-called traditional Islamic thought.

I for one do not subscribe to this on a metaphysical level (as some advocate) though I do find several problems with its claims when taken too far or its scoped expanded too wide. In fact, I think a thing — or a philosophy — is not so much incompatible with Islam

as much as Islam may have something to say about it, perhaps admonishing it or even outright banning it, but this is always situational in my esteem.

I will say this: I do have disagreements with critical theory, especially the subgenre espoused by Michel Foucault, which not simply challenges the link between the traditional, language, and power, and how those can lead to injustices but more importantly,

how Foucault and critical theorists create a kind of “exaggerated determinism”, as Charles Arthur Willard describes in his book, “#Liberalism and the Problem of Knowledge”.

In my opinion, I agreed with Willard that if we’re (or critical theorists) aren’t careful you can end up creating a kind of fatalism. Willard writes (according to Foucault),

“We are [no more than] playthings of social structures”.

It’s as if, according to critical theorists, we have no agency in the face of institutional/traditional power structures. As a believer and practitioner of Islam, this fatalism is as immoral as it is unacceptable.

As a Muslim, I believe I will always have some agency for self-determination even if it’s only, as the Prophet said, “detesting a thing (tyranny, immorality, injustice) with my heart”.

What I find most revealing about postmodernist thinkers (of which Foucault and critical theorists are a subspecies) is that they are not merely interested in critiquing or challenging power/tradition/institutions but instead they seek to supplant them.

In the end my critique against critical theorists is not merely that they are not “Islamic” (this is a very problematic word that deserves a lengthy post in its own right) but that they will not lead to the attitudes, behaviors, and actions that are befitting a believer;

a believer who believes all power structures submit to the Divine maxim: there is no power or might save for God (لا حولة ولا قوة إلا بالله)!

It’s not that critical theorists have nothing to offer or that they do not highlight the presence of truly tyrannical power structures: indeed they do. But the Qur’an does not teach us that having power is in itself immoral or leads fatalistically to injustice.

If this were the case Foucault and other critical theorists would be embarrassingly caught with either their pants down or their hands in the cookie jar. No, it is what one does with power that matters and that does not preclude the very real human tendency to create hierarchies

and privileges. Neither of these are innately satanic, something critical theorists propound, intentionally or otherwise.

Finally, I would offer my own critique of critical theory, again citing Willard:

“The real trap [of critical theorists] ... lies in exaggerating the self-confirming nature of discourses. One concludes that critique can only come from outside, yet on Foucault’s reasoning there is no outside.

Critique is either futile or a brute confrontation of one total institution versus another."

As a believer, critique is never futile. One must ask: is it needed, relevant, and to what scope? And critique most assuredly comes from outside for God resides outside His creation. It is here that critical theory has something to wrestle with besides power structures:

what is the nature of reality? For if one believes there is no “outside”, that what exactly are you truly critiquing (or rebelling against)?

To God we belong and to God we are returning.