A Study of Culture, Belief, and Social Structure by Tahir Iqbal - HTML preview

From Gramsci, we take the idea that there are interests in society. The interests, or desires, of an individual will affect the messages that they accept. Ideas will often be rejected if they are against a person’s interests and will often become warped to fit their desires and prejudices. What interests are there in AA? It is not correct that a non-racist person will find AA in their interests, except as they may perceive that it is sending a message to the US to stop or carry out a policy or value. Identity will define a persons interests as will economic status and historical factors.

The progress of an idea, its metamorphosis as it travels across society inter and intra-generationally, is determined by the methodology of the group that discuss the idea. From Popper, an Open System ,or one that allows criticism will create better ideas by cutting away at bad parts of ideas until we reach the ideal truth. From Hegel, we suggest that ideas are created through criticism which eventually reaches the ideal. We argue below that democracy is a valid system for quickly reaching the ideal.

We can look at ideas in the relations they have with each other, for example anthropology and sociology are linked as social science, though they contain different methodologies and have contradictory concepts, heterogeneity in the former and homogeneity in the latter at different levels to each other. Ideas form massive idea maps and are part of social forces’ ideologies.

There is information compression as ideas spread across the network, which leads ,from Shannon, to signal degradation, that is the information content of the message deteriorates as it goes through the network.

Some ideas are archetypes, that is there is a fuzzy logic relation between ideas throughout history and across different parts of the world and society. Marxism comes from the Christianity archetype since they are based on similar privilege of the poor, though this is a fuzzy identity. We can identify similarities which can lead us to arguing that different ideas are linked through time by comparing similarities in their idea maps.

Social norms are rules and values that are part of a social force. They generate can generate energy when they are violated by another group, and also they generate action and evolution of strategies. A social norm to dress differently to others will lead to a continually changing set of styles of fashion, though the desire for conformity will lead to archetypes being held to, as will the technical competence of producers of clothes. The limitation of bureaucracy may lead to social forces using a distributed organisation and decision making structure. This is the division of the command structure into many sources, with the piecemeal approach to solving problems across many participants.

The Universal Social Model Applied to Democracy

 

Free speech, free values (that is the toleration of alternative value systems), free universities and also a free press leads to a greater amount of creation, adaptation and synthesis of ideas through debate.

Open debate that is progressive requires criticism, which leads to new ideas being created to overcome opposition, and also listening, that is people must be prepared to learn from others, so all ideas are transmitted across the network and allowed to synthesise. This leads to maximum creation of new ideas and thus greater choice. Whether or not people should have a filter is difficult to analyse since the filter changes ideas to fit interests in society. An ideal debating team or parliament as we call it, will require many individuals, some who are against each other and some who are more objective and do not have much of a filter outside of the rational. Indeed a few wise madmen with no filter whatsoever may even be useful.

Democracy is argued to be progressive as we have outlined it. Clearly there can be many forms of democracy which all produce the same effect. The main thing needed is a group of heterogeneous people who are creative, representative of all interests and understand or can learn a large range of issues.

Democracy has the ability to distribute decision making and problem solving to create novel and representative solutions which are in line with the interests of society. The ability to overcome paradigm limitations due to free values, makes the need for democracy in society ever more pressing, and the need for people to understand how democracy really works to create solutions that authoritarian, despotic regimes are less well able to create.

While the UK parliament has both an objective unfiltered aspect, the House of Lords, and a more filtered interest representing group, the House of Commons, the problem with this system is that they do not continually debate critically between each other in one house. The problem is the limitations of either house would possibly be transmitted mimetically across the group making the house either very objective or very interest particularly short term political interest orientated.

The problem with knowledge is that it is often influenced politically. This may lead to a hegemony occurring with an elite’s interest controlling knowledge. This applies to parliament as well. The way to avoid this problem is to have knowledge representing a wide variety of interests and for those interests to be allowed free rein in debate. The limitation of participants in debate as well as the restriction of different subjects methodology prevent knowledge from being applied well to existing problems. The slow change in knowledge to keep up with present issues is also a problem. The limitation of subject matter allows elites to take control as well. These criticisms also apply to parliament as well.

Traditional democracy is representative. The voters choose someone who is essentially an accountable limited term dictator. We suggest a new route to solving the problems of the world and society.

In short we suggest having everyone enter into debates which they choose to enter giving ideas on how to solve problems in the interests of society. This would create a better democracy. The theoretical basis of this is distributed computing. Essentially this is where many people each contribute to the solution of a problem. The fact of the matter is that people each have a limited amount of mental capacity, so if a problem is broken down and given to many people who each solve part of the problem, much more complex problems can be solved. This is also similar to the production technique known as Open Source used in the creation of Linux. Clearly this requires an educated society and more resources should be ploughed into initial and ongoing education, rational thought and critical thinking.
The essence of this new democracy is to be found in debate. The many participants would contribute their ideas to a forum, perhaps on the internet, and would debate the relative merits of their ideas. Criticism is essential for this process to work, maintaining quality of debate and ideas. People would be stimulated by seeing the forum and create even more ideas and solutions. The lack of need for voting on ideas would be counterbalanced by the fact that anyone could enter the debate and criticise any idea. The debate would need people to realise that they must be constructive and respectful to others. The debate would also have its guiding principal of finding consensus among participants. We should stress that these debates are not a substitute for existing democratic institutions like parliament, but essentially they would create another house in parliament, one in cyberspace. The House of Everyone. While this house would have no legal powers it would impact on the debate in the other houses of parliament, simply because it would generate better ideas that would be in line with people's feelings on various matters. A team of moderators would go through the forum and find common themes in the debates and write articles summarising the common points people make. These articles would be available on the forum and would stimulate the generation of yet more ideas. Articles would also be available on the constraints facing governments written by civil servants and academics which would give people a better idea of how to tackle problems which society faces. Instead of the debate in society being divided into various interest groups lobbying parliament, people would interact in one forum to create a united Britain.

Legitimacy is created in this kind of democracy through everyone feeling like they have contributed to policy. This would solve the government’s main problem which is to legitimise itself. This is in opposition to the NeoConservative idea of the “noble lie” where governments don’t tell the masses everything to enable them to believe in the government.

More ideas would be created and also ideas would be generated that were in line with existing thinking of the people of society. Why should one only have a say when the election comes?

 

What is anti-Americanism?

Anti-Americanism is a term used to describe the many different processes and reactions to America as a nationstate in existence and in action. It relates to world views, ideas, discourses and narratives associated with many different groups in many different countries.

As a phenomena that is fundamentally a mental act of information compression to describe reactions to Cultural Hegemony such as the predominance of Hollywood, to American values (different parts of the spectrum of values in the US are seen by varying groups as bad), to the progress of US policy in various parts of the world.

As a master narrative, an era defining global story, it takes on the character of universal truth across cultures. It defines an external other, a threat to all. In this sense the very idea of AA is actually a danger to America, especially if people are not afraid to be AA. However, the category implies racism on the part of the antiamerican, and so is likely to coerce people to react against it.

We will not take on the division of legitimate criticism of the US and illegitimate criticism. Such subjective categories cannot be universally identified. To take on such categories would be to interact in the debate on the US.

The take we have on Anti-Americanism is to look at the mechanisms and processes that underlie it. The use of a blanket term is useful only insofar as we look at the processes that it is caused by and causes. The subdivision of the term into the Anti-American left, AA Muslims, etc, is also useful because it is likely that these social groups will have an internal dynamic, though we must also look at the interaction between the groups. For example, demonstrations by the Stop the War Coalition involved British Muslim groups as well, an alliance of the left, peace activists and Islam in the UK.
Thus we look at all kinds of processes, attitudes, policies and ideologies as well as narratives and discourses that are against the interest or the being of the United States of America. We define this as AA.

The fundamental problem with this definition is that AA does not take into account the fact that a policy of the US is formulated in conjunction with other pressures including the opinion of others outside of the US. If a policy is bad for the world then the US may well consider the value of AA. Thus AA is not necessarily a bad thing, indeed as we mention in our theory of democracy, exchange of ideas from different viewpoints creates progress.

AA is not just a set of ideas, it is a kind of mindset that alters the perception of the viewer of international events to colour them in a different anti-american light. Conspiracy theories about the CIA being involved in operations without evidence are examples of the AA mindset. In this sense is best seen as an idea map whereby historical narratives with America as an idea and political entity being linked to promotion of immoral or illegal activity, such as war, assassination, coup d’etats, torture, discrimination and double standards, inaction in respect of genocide, promotion of instability in countries, trade sanctions and disputes, anti-environmental activity, lying and trickery. It is interesting to look at the similarity of Anti-Americanism as an idea map and the development of the Western idea map of Islam.

There is also the question of which America are we talking about. If we look at the split in recent elections in the US between Democrat and Republican lines, there is a liberal element and a reactionary conservative element. Some anti-Americans are not in opposition of the more liberal more dovish sentiments of the political establishment which begs the question whether anti-Americanism is really a reaction to the right by the left.

The problem is really that America does not take into account the political viewpoints of others outside of its system, which leads to problems. If the AA social groups are to become effective they must try to engage in dialogue with Americans to convince them of better ways of solving common problems rather than creating hatred of America. This is the deep rooted and myopic nature of AA. It is a social phenomena, an emergent effect of many different social groups and processes, that acts as a beast on its own rather than an amalgamation of many different conscious beings with free will and reason. Related to the emergent (unwilled and macrosystemic) nature of AA is the current Western idea of Islam as an evil to be confronted, tortured, converted and if that does not occur, destroyed. When one looks at ones enemy what one often sees is oneself. Later we will discuss the Western viewpoint of Islam as ‘Islamofascism’. What we argue there relates to the point that idea maps once set in history and consensually accepted can take on a dynamic of their own in informing and structuring relations later on, perhaps expressed in violence and religious/ethnic deportation.

The interesting development is the substitution of anti-Americanism in the world’s idea map with Islam as a problem, whether through so called terrorism or supposed oppressive practices by sovereign Islamic nation-states. Clearly Anti-Americanism, which came to a height in the late 20^th Century brought a reaction from US policy elites to substitute the critical faculty of its society towards Muslims. Clearly this also has the effect of legitimising domination of one of the world’s richest supplies of oil while also providing an external threat to create a feeling of a united social group in the US and among its allies and thus reduce contestation. It has to be seen as a grand and powerful plan by US elites. The fact that Muslims have made a robust response to this plan shows the lack of forward thinking which is endemic in the US.

The Left

We shall discuss the Left wing peace movement of the UK during the 21^st Century in its contestation of the Official government narrative and policy. The official government narrative was that history begins on September 11^th 2001 (often termed 9/11), when the world trade centre in America was destroyed by terrorists who were Muslims. To understand why the left contested the official story of the government we discuss several related ideas that were causing a shift in understanding of the world as it was then. The left was visible in peace demonstrations in London, with socialist worker party banners peppered through the march and members of the Labour party present, such as Tony Benn.
The Left’s social norms are generated by the historical development of this social group as well as the archetypes of what is seen as good for the ordinary working class person. This means that institutions like the trade unions, implements or strategies for obtaining good for the working class are a social norm, privileged even though many in the left have the common British dislike of power concentrated.

Vietnam was a period when the Left were against the conduct of American foreign policy. This created an archetype, that is a common thread in ideas and stories across time and space, that has come again in the interpretation of events after the 9/11 attacks. The impact of defeat in Vietnam on the cultural psyche of the West lead many to draw parallels between Vietnam and the invasions of Muslim countries that followed 9/11. Essential to this idea is that expectations of defeat of the US were high, but also the real cost of war was thoroughly and graphically understood by peace movement members. The tension between the Left and the US government’s foreign policy is found historically, since Lenin spoke of the US’s “Imperialist capitalist” policies. This too has formed an archetype that has come together with the Vietnam interpretation and created a strong backlash against the war by the Left. After the difficulties of the Iraq invasion there was a considerable diffusion of the Left’s arguments as theory became dreadful reality.

The left has had an old narrative that the source of progress by capitalism is violence and theft. This forms an archetypal idea that moves through the generations and finds its new version in the form of reducing America’s motivation for invasion of the Middle East to the desire for oil. Clearly if oil were the major objective then the administration wouldn’t have embarked on the invasions of Muslim countries since we have seen the oil price rise to very high levels in recent years. This assumes basic economic knowledge guiding the US government. There are plausibly several considerations for the true motivation of US foreign policy. Firstly there is the winds and currents of prevailing thought (such as neo-conservatism), the history of the US facing sustained criticism from all quarters whether from others or its own people lead to a reaction to ignore and deflect dissent and contestation, replacing this with a forceful, myopic drive for American interests, as seen by the US administration. The issue of an external threat giving rise to less contestation within the nation-state, through distraction along with reproduction and reinforcement of the institutions of the nation-state is clearly a good though complex explanation for US behaviour. The America of the late 20^th century was a place where groups were engaged in challenging the idea of that age ‘Globalisation’. The collapse of the internet bubble that lead to a recession in the US came just before 9/11. These conditions explain some of the overbearing reaction of the US government to 9/11. However we must make clear that explanation and moral justification are two different subjects, social theory/historical analysis and moral philosophy.

The left has been pacified by the argument, from Hayek, that socialism is good but requires terrible violence to achieve itself, the example of Stalin being the key point. This narrative, which has shades of Christianity, is part of the process that leads many in the left to call for peace.

The left’s social norm of disarmament and lack of militarism in the UK labour party is possibly something that has been nurtured by the establishment to pacify it. This too has been a key source of the acceptance of the ‘peace’ message.

The effect of the 9/11 “Thou shalt not kill” message created by this event is to have generated a great deal of impetus for a peace movement. The left do not have a category of them and us, i.e. they see people from other countries as equals. This means that they strive to have rules that are universal, in the sense that they are founded on the Liberal equality archetype. They take it as self-evident that all are born equal. The left therefore has a key driver of anti-racism and promote the involvement and peaceful, respectful engagement with different ethnic groups.

Some of the rational criticism of US foreign policy in respect of Muslims is based around a model of terrorism, implicitly held by adherents to the Left’s peace movement. The rallying call of the Left Peace movement is that the US administration is the biggest recruiter of terrorists who attack the West. What the model is composed of is that the history of double standards in US foreign policy is directly linked to the motivation for Muslims to become terrorists. In this way it is implied that the US administrations of the late 20^th and early 21^st century are implicated in creating terrorism through providing provocation of Muslims. We will discuss Bin Laden’s input into the Islamic praxitioner jihad’s idea map later, where we will see that this model is founded on a thorough analysis of his argument for jihad. What is argued by the left is that there is a deviation of the goal of the West, as understood by the Left to be peaceful relations with Muslims, from policy, which in the early 21^st Century involves heavy handed attacks and military invasion by American forces. The model that the left has of terrorism is that it is motivated by a desire to stop American attacks, occupation and murder of Muslims. Therefore the US policy of invasion to stop terror is thrown into a contradiction. If the cause of terror is the reaction to Muslims being killed and their lands being occupied then a policy of invasion of Muslim countries becomes self-defeating. Thus the left argues that there is a deviation of goals from policy.

Below is summarized the key points we have discussed above to produce what is an idea map for the left’s peace movement from the UK after 9/11/2001. This idea map must be seen in a relation of tension to the existing narrative of the US government as to the best response to the issue of a worldwide Islamic jihad being fought.

Islam

 

Much of the hatred of America by Muslims is likely to be a recent thing, for example Islam predates America so it is not possible for Islam to be inherently anti-American.

Islam has social norms or rules in respect of Jihad, which state that “Fight those who fight you”. They also have rules saying that if an enemy wants peace, you should also accept peace. The former rule generates an idea map which links American foreign policy with these rules of the Quran. The extent of the penetration of this idea map is hard to determine, it would change from day to day with events. But we can tell that much of Islamic anger is generated by this idea map and it is the source of Islamic AA. As we can see idea maps create effects in the minds of the holders of them, especially when one sees the idea map of US foreign policy history with intervention in Iraq and lack of any action on genocide in Bosnia. The reasoning basis is one of the US constitution that all people are born free and equal though this has its origins in reasoning from religious books where all people are the same before God.

The history of Islamic anti-Americanism is primarily, unlike early European AA, due to US foreign policy. Since the 1953 American sponsored coup in Iran that imposed the West leaning monarchy, there has been substantial dislike of America.

We hypothesise that it was a simple AA of objection to policy, which created potential energy in the Islamic social forces, and thus lead to the creation of hatred for America and the new realised energy of terrorism. Terrorism did not start with many of the US’s recent wars, but it was possibly motivated by US involvement in the Middle East region. The fact that the nascent Al Quaeda was prepared and even welcomed US help in overcoming the Russians in Afghanistan suggests that at this time anti-Americanism was not prevalent.

Islam does not value criticism as much as other groups particularly of scholars of Islam. Thus the part that ideas play in the Islamic social force are simply archetypes, ideas from earlier ideas, which is essentially the main reasoning process that occurs in Islamic jurisprudence as formalized by Shafi’i. Therefore ideas in Islam will tend not to evolve as much as ideas in other groups like the Left. On the other hand, there will be greater tendencies of consensus in this social force because there are fewer ideas accepted.

A current in thinking concerning the Jihad movement of the modern world is that the seed of it was spread from Sayyid Qutb’s argument of the process of Islam; politically and socially. It has sometimes been cited that Qutb formed the archetype that lead to Bin Laden. It is possible that the message of Qutb has propagated across the network of Muslims or it is possible that actions of America created the credibility of Qutb’s message. Racism is a possible reason for Qutb’s message propagating though it is possible that Qutb is not the main reason for AA racism propagating. Many people affected by US foreign policy may have the same thoughts concurrently without any propagation. These thoughts then give Qutb, Bin Laden and others messages more credibility.

We discuss the idea map of the modern Jihad movement from a textual analysis of Bin Laden’s messages. The western media typically reports excerpts from them, which is very telling, considering the fact that if one has nothing to hide then one listens to the opponents arguments and engages with them. The fact that the whole narrative of the war on terror and international Jihad has become a series of overlapping stories in the sense of being near impossible to complete discuss without being contradictory means that we must focus on core mechanisms that drive the whole system of relations between Muslims and the West. Above all we are interested in sociological explanation rather than moral questions of who is right or wrong. Taking this as an approach we hope to elucidate more of the picture rather than paint over reality with our prejudices.

Bin Laden has given many messages to the world. It is difficult to separate the political Bin Laden, that is the one who wishes to move people in certain directions, and the real one, that is the one who represents his personal feelings on matters. Clearly though his messages are above this dichotomy since they affect people as they are interpreted by them. They are fairly unambiguous messages so we do not have to consider the possible variation in interpretation. Unequivocally he calls for global jihad against what he sees as a Judeao-Crusader Alliance, which one assumes is America and Israel with possibly Britain involved too and this may refer to Europe as well. He sees it as a defensive jihad to deter the killing of Muslims, particularly civilians.

He creates a narrative that suggests that the modern history of the Muslim people is one of being a victim of aggression by non-Muslims. He singles out America for most of the blame. He connects this historical narrative to previous ones, suggesting that the fall of Andalucía (southern Spain which was controlled by the moors) could happen to Muslim lands particularly Saudia Arabia. His reservations and anger over US foreign policy, both its actions and inactions, are shared by a great many Muslims. This is a reaction to information from the media about Muslim deaths and torture which stimulates natural human reactions as part of group behaviour as well as reactions from rules given in the Quran regarding the viewing of all Muslims as one group and also viewing the justification of killing in response to killing as a valid course of action. What Bin Laden does though is to override rules that civilians are not allowed to be killed in battle. He also mirrors Bush’s initial reaction to 9/11 of ‘you’re either with us or against us’, with a declaration that any Muslim who helps America in its invasion is defined as a target of the Jihad movement and is considered an apostate.

Since Bin Laden was not carrying out terrorism since his early youth, it would seem plausible that the actions of the US came to bring about his ideas linking Islamic theology to military strategy under the motivation of historical relations. Curiously enough he does not go back to the British imperial mistakes with regard to the Muslim world perhaps due to the decline of the empire. Were Bin Laden to be concertedly against non-Muslims then he could certainly draw on the colonial legacy of Britain. But Britain no longer influences the world. Therefore his Jihad is limited to the material well being of Muslims rather than something that one can say is caused by a hatred of non-Muslims.

An interesting digression is the reaction of Bin Laden to the peace movement in the West. He describes peace activists as “polite and good people”. What becomes clear from this comment is that he does not intrinsically hate the West’s people. Discussion with many Muslims show a similar attitude. We see here a great concordance between the Left wing model of terrorism and Bin Laden’s idea map, that it is motivated on achieving peaceful relations between Muslims and the West, in other words terror is a strategic response to Western foreign policy that murders Muslims rather than an existential discordance. The response of the Left to 9/11, by creating a peace movement, leaves Muslims with a Foucaudian problem in determining the correct theological rule to follow in terms of the exercise of Jihad. This is stated as whether the agency in question is the state (which wants war) or the people (who want peace, as given by the existence of a peace movement).

Islamo-fascism; an example of idea map analysis in the policy of justifying mass murder of Muslims

Another area of interest is the term “Islamofascism”. This is the linking of two ideas, Islam and fascism. Islam was created in the 7^th century and was not linked to Fascism which was essentially created by Hitler in the 20^th Century. Islam did not develop into Fascism. Hitler was not a Muslim. A key idea in Fascism is the asserted superiority of the Aryan race. Muslims are of all ethnic groups and there is no ordering according to ethnicity. The only similarity is that Muslims and Nazis are both people who America has been at war with. Muslims are fighting against the mass murder of their people by Americans, that is simply the text of their argument to encourage Muslims to fight America. Nazi’s wanted to colonise the colonisers of Europe. In no area of Bin Laden’s texts does he state that he wishes to overthrow the American government or establish the superiority of the Aryan ethnic group. The lack of reason in idea maps is perhaps no where more evident that here. The fact that ideas are linked together often in short phrases that have a resonance and popularity without rationale could begin our search to understand culture more and lead us to insight into this deeply symbiotic part of the human and society.

The popularity of the term Islamofascism and ascription on people as being Islamo-fascists is the most banal and obvious pomp to justify American mass murder of Muslims, whether past, present or future. It is interesting to note that such an idea can exist even though reason would suggest that it was incompatible with