Thread by @KHaleema746

Shahid Alam's response to the Orientalist thesis of Dr. Hoodbhoy - Thread

He states:
“A new imperialism had descended on the Islamicate world in the 1990s. Its rules were clear. The US would support despots in the Muslim states so long as they came to terms with Israel

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https://twitter.com/IkJustuju/status/1290943615641034753

and kept a tight lid on political Islam. If any country dared to depart from the terms of this contract, it faced economic sanctions – and, if these did not work, war. When Iraq challenged this contract in 1990, it faced both endless war and crippling sanctions

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that have devastated its economy and caused more than a million deaths. Similarly, Algeria illustrates the fate awaiting a Muslim country if the Islamists seek to capture power – even through the democratic process.

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This new imperialist contract explains why the “democratization” of the 1990s bypassed much of the Islamicate world.
Professor Hoodbhoy thinks otherwise. Instead of offering a historical analysis, rooted in the dynamics of global capitalism and

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the legacy of past conflicts between Europe and the Islamicate world, he joins the Orientalists in blaming the difficulties of the Islamicate world on Islam, the religion and civilization.
His method is familiar – damnation by accusation, damnation by defining the essence

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of Islamicate societies. If Islam is obscurantist, anti-rationalist, fanatical, and misogynist, then we can explain the aversion of the Islamicate world towards modernity and democracy. The Orientalist has spoken: the case is closed.

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Shahid Alam further states that those who maintain that Islam is anti-democratic might gain from a short lesson in the modern history of constitutional movements in Islamicate countries. Muhammad Ali of Egypt appointed his first advisory council in 1824,

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consisting mostly of elected members. In 1881, the Egyptian nationalists succeeded in convening an elected parliament, but the British disbanded this when they occupied Egypt a year later. Tunisia had promulgated a constitution in 1860, setting up a Supreme Council

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purporting to limit the powers of the monarchy. However, the French suppressed this Council in 1864 when they discovered that it interfered with their ambitions in Tunisia. Turkey elected its first parliament in 1877 though it was dissolved a year later by the Caliph;

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a second parliament was convened in 1908. Iran‟s progress was more dramatic. It started with protests against the grant of a British tobacco monopoly in the 1890s, but this escalated into demands for a constitutional monarchy.

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In 1906, Iran‟s first elected parliament adopted a constitution limiting the powers of the monarchy and assumed the power to confirm the cabinet. However, this led to a struggle between the Qajar rulers and the constitutionalists.

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In 1911, with support from their Russian and British patrons, the Qajar monarch defeated the Constitutionalists and disbanded the parliament. The Constitutional movement persisted for two more decades,

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until the new Pahlavi dynasty, which rose to power with help from the British, suppressed it in 1931.
Compare these developments with the history of constitutional movements elsewhere, not excluding Europe, during the nineteenth century –

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and the world of Islam does not suffer from the comparison.
Incredible as this appears to minds blinded by Eurocentric prejudice, Tunisia, Egypt and Iran were taking the lead in making the transition to constitutional monarchies.

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In recent decades too, democracy in the region has not been stifled by some essential incompatibility between democracy and Arab or Islamic traditions. Both directly and indirectly, oil, Israel and the old Western antipathy to Islam have been important factors

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derailing the normal evolution of these societies. Oil led to British and, later, US support for monarchies and dictatorships that suppressed the nationalist and democratic aspirations of their people. The insertion of Israel – an expansionist, colonial-settler state –

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into the region produced wars and tensions, which supported the creation of security states at the cost of civil society. More recently, the growth of an Islamist opposition has deepened Western support for repressive regimes in the region.

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Giving Up ‘False Notions’?
Pervez Hoodbhoy counsels Muslims to give up the “false notions” of Islam. On the contrary, Muslims alienated from their roots need to renounce false Orientalist narratives – of an Islam that has been misrepresented as irrational, misogynist,

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fatalist and fanatical.
Rational thinking did not begin with the Enlightenment. In fact, several Enlightenment thinkers turned to Islam to advance their own struggle against medieval obscurantism, the intolerance of an organized clergy, and the anti-rationalism of their own

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mystery religion.
According to Bernard Lewis, “The image of Mohammed as a wise, tolerant, unmystical and undogmatic ruler became widespread in the period of the Enlightenment.” It is time for alienated Muslim intellectuals to tear the Orientalist veil that obscures their

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vision of Islam, re-enter the historical currents they have abandoned, create a deeper understanding of the dynamics of derailed Islamicate societies, and lead them into an Islamic vision of a world where all

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communities, ethnic and religious, race against each other “in doing good works.”

Reference:
1.Alam, M. S. (2004). Is There an Islamic Problem?: Essays on Islamicate Societies, the US, and Israel. The Other Press.