Re: <nettime> ICT&S Researchers: Towards Critical Internet Theory

["Benjamin Geer" <benjamin.geer@gmail.com>]

On 29/09/2007, Thijs <thijsv77@gmail.com> wrote:
> [?] In contrast to most post-modern nation states, Islamic
> fundamentalism offers the kind of warm hearth for which many shaken
> Western souls might yearn

Maybe it would be more accurate to say that words like
"fundamentalism" and "terrorism" offer the kind of warm hearth for
which many shaken Western souls might yearn: the ability to lump
together a wide range of social phenomena that they don't understand
under a few convenient labels taken from American and European
history, such as American Protestant fundamentalism and the French
revolutionary Terror of the 1790s.

Here are some possible alternatives (which I'm sure could be
improved):

Al Qaeda: Salafi nationalist guerilla network
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood: Sunni reformist party
Hamas: Sunni Palestinian nationalist party and militia
Hizballah: Shia Lebanese nationalist party and militia

Two things leap out of this sort of classification: the need to know
something about Islam in order to know what the Arabic words mean,
and the need to take nationalism seriously as a force that motivates
opposition movements.

Ben







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