Menurut kumpulan pendukung kebebasan media yang berpangkalan di Paris, Wartawan Tanpa Sempadan (RSF), indeks kebebasan media Malaysia naik sedikit kepada 92 anak tangga tahun ini daripada 113 tahun lepas.
Satu peningkatan yang boleh dibanggakan?
The Sun mengulas begini: We note with optimism that by and large Malaysians have been able to handle the new openness with maturity and balance, even though some quarters have felt threatened by the discussion of the so-called "sensitive" issues.
Sememangnya The Sun satu-satunya akhbar yang semakin berani mengambil peluang era keterbukaan yang wujud bawah perdana menteri baru yang memerintah ala "negara polis", kata bekas perdana menteri yang empat kali berturut-turut diisytiharkan "musuh utama kebebasan akhbar", enemy of the press, oleh Jawatankuasa Melindungi Wartawan (CPJ) dan RSF. Untuk lebih lanjut, sila ke laman web IFeX.
Akhbar dalam talian berbahasa Cina Merdeka Review juga telah mengulasnya, termasuk mengutip pandangan saya ... Anda pula bagaimana? Setuju dengan indeks RSF ini... ?
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Polis
Barangkali dalam banyak-banyak kenyataan Dr Mahathir Mohamad yang mudah saya (dan mungkin juga teman-teman lain) bersetuju, yang ini paling menarik dan mudah pula mengundang perdebatan:
"... my allegation that we have a police state. I said each time I am invited, the police will question and intimidate the people. He said this was not true. He disagreed that we have a police state."
Sekarang Dr Mahathir sedang menikmati tekanan tersebut, banyak aktivis dan pemimpin pembangkang terjerat dalam ugutan ini sudah sekian lama.
Seseorang yang tidak melalui saat-saat ini berasa sukar untuk menerima ungkapan dan realiti "negara polis".
"... my allegation that we have a police state. I said each time I am invited, the police will question and intimidate the people. He said this was not true. He disagreed that we have a police state."
Sekarang Dr Mahathir sedang menikmati tekanan tersebut, banyak aktivis dan pemimpin pembangkang terjerat dalam ugutan ini sudah sekian lama.
Seseorang yang tidak melalui saat-saat ini berasa sukar untuk menerima ungkapan dan realiti "negara polis".
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Rejimen
Walau sudah agak lama saya mewawancara (rasmi) Amir Muhammad, tetapi hanya hari ini artikel saya tentang filem terbarunya Apa Khabar Orang Kampung? berjaya ditulis dan diterbitkan di mStar Online.
Filem ini sequel Lelaki Komunis Terakhir, telah diluluskan LPF tetapi tiba-tiba menjadi isu yang cukup menggelegak pertengahan tahun ini.
Sequel ini, tentunya, masih lagi tentang komunis tetapi kali ini tentang gerakan komunis Melayu -- Rejimen ke-10 PKM.
Selalunya imej gerakan gerila ini sebagai gerakan orang Cina untuk kepentingan China atau/dan kaum Cina di sini.
>> Untuk melihat foto, sila ke laman ini, di sini dan juga laman ini.
>> Artikel lama saya tentang Rejimen ke-10 PKM, selepas lawatan ke perkampungan mereka pada 2002, khususnya bersandarkan catatan Abu Samah, baca di sini.
Filem ini sequel Lelaki Komunis Terakhir, telah diluluskan LPF tetapi tiba-tiba menjadi isu yang cukup menggelegak pertengahan tahun ini.
Sequel ini, tentunya, masih lagi tentang komunis tetapi kali ini tentang gerakan komunis Melayu -- Rejimen ke-10 PKM.
Selalunya imej gerakan gerila ini sebagai gerakan orang Cina untuk kepentingan China atau/dan kaum Cina di sini.
>> Untuk melihat foto, sila ke laman ini, di sini dan juga laman ini.
>> Artikel lama saya tentang Rejimen ke-10 PKM, selepas lawatan ke perkampungan mereka pada 2002, khususnya bersandarkan catatan Abu Samah, baca di sini.
Kampus
Kampus -- kita ghairah membincangkan pilihan raya kampus, adil atau tidak ia dikendalikan. Kenapa calon-calon kelompok siswa yang pro-pembangkang atau pro-NGO tidak dibiarkan bergerak bebas.
Bagi menggantikan label pro-pembangkang, kita cipta istilah pro-mahasiswa atau calon bebas (independen) bagi mengalih perhatian daripada label "pro-Aspirasi."
Kita kehilangan perspektif besar, tenggelam dalam isu 'kecil'. Perspektif luasnya, dan lebih fundamental, bukan pilihan raya MPP, bodoh!
Isunya "kebebasan akademik" dan kualiti pengajaran. Faham!?
Bagi menggantikan label pro-pembangkang, kita cipta istilah pro-mahasiswa atau calon bebas (independen) bagi mengalih perhatian daripada label "pro-Aspirasi."
Kita kehilangan perspektif besar, tenggelam dalam isu 'kecil'. Perspektif luasnya, dan lebih fundamental, bukan pilihan raya MPP, bodoh!
Isunya "kebebasan akademik" dan kualiti pengajaran. Faham!?
Monday, October 16, 2006
Kurus
Metabolic syndrome, in other words, could be the great disease of our age. Or it could be a sign of how diseased our age is, a demonstration of how certain we are that there is always a scientific explanation, a diagnosis, and perhaps a pill for what ails us. Either way, metabolic syndrome is a disease whose time has come. ('The Thin Pill', Wired, October 2006)
Mark Twain once said, “It took a brave man before the Civil War to confess he had read The Age of Reason. ” But that didn’t mean it wasn’t read. In 1797 alone, a single Philadelphia printer sold a hundred thousand copies. In Britain, sales of “The Age of Reason” outpaced even those of “Rights of Man,” though, since it was banned as blasphemous, it’s impossible to know how many copies were sold. ('The Sharpened Quill', The New Yorker, 16 Oktober 2006)
Lecturers and university staff across Britain are to be asked to spy on "Asian-looking" and Muslim students they suspect of involvement in Islamic extremism and supporting terrorist violence, the Guardian has learned. They will be told to inform on students to special branch because the government believes campuses have become "fertile recruiting grounds" for extremists. ('Universities urged to spy on Muslims', The Guardian, 16 Oktober 2006)
Mark Twain once said, “It took a brave man before the Civil War to confess he had read The Age of Reason. ” But that didn’t mean it wasn’t read. In 1797 alone, a single Philadelphia printer sold a hundred thousand copies. In Britain, sales of “The Age of Reason” outpaced even those of “Rights of Man,” though, since it was banned as blasphemous, it’s impossible to know how many copies were sold. ('The Sharpened Quill', The New Yorker, 16 Oktober 2006)
Lecturers and university staff across Britain are to be asked to spy on "Asian-looking" and Muslim students they suspect of involvement in Islamic extremism and supporting terrorist violence, the Guardian has learned. They will be told to inform on students to special branch because the government believes campuses have become "fertile recruiting grounds" for extremists. ('Universities urged to spy on Muslims', The Guardian, 16 Oktober 2006)
Friday, October 13, 2006
Ideologi abad ke-20
Beberapa idea asas yang menyokong pandangan awal saya kenapa agama (semua agama, bukan hanya Islam) itu 'ideologi' dan kenapa pula beberapa mazhab berfikir dalam bidang filsafat, sains tulen dan sains sosial, serta teori-teori seni, budaya dan sastera boleh dianggap bersifat 'ideologi'.
Jadi, tidaklah tepat/benar untuk melihat persoalan ideologi ini sebagai persoalan idea-idea atau cabang berfikir tentang politik, kekuasaan, kenegaraan dan ekonomi semata-mata.
Beberapa takrifan:
(1) the unifying system of beliefs, attitudes, and values expressed in the superstructure of a culture. The body of thought and ideas that guides a society and perpetuates the status quo of the bourgeoisie.
(2) Literally the study of ideas, the collective knowledge, understandings, opinions, values, preconceptions, experiences and/or memories that informs a culture and its individual people. Ideology is often aligned with political beliefs, but is much broader than that, relating to any social or cultural beliefs, and these beliefs are revealed in literary or other texts.
(3) "Ideology" means to favor one point of view above all others and to adhere to this point of view. The ideologue sees the world from a single point of view, can thus "explain" it and attempt to "change" it.
(4) A comprehensive world view pertaining to formal and informal thought, philosophy, and cultural presuppositions usually understood as associated with specific positions within political, social, and economic hierarchies. Many schools of modern literary criticism contend that the ideological context of both reader and author always affects the meanings assigned to or encoded in the work.
Sejarah asas kata 'ideology':
Destutt de Tracy was born in Paris on July 20, 1754 and died in Paris on March 10, 1836. He was a philosophe, one of the founders in the 1790s of the classical liberal republican group known as the Idéologues (which included Cabanis, Condorcet, Constant, Daunou, Say, Madame de Staël), a politician under several regimes spanning the Revolution and the Restoration, and an influential author.
When the Estates General were called to meet in 1789 he, although a member of an aristocratic family which had been ennobled twice (hence his name), joined the Third Estate and renounced his title. He was later elected to the Constituent Assembly and served in the army in 1792 under the Marquis de Lafayette.
During the Terror he was imprisoned and only escaped execution because Robespierre beat him to the scaffold. It was during his period of imprisonment that he read the works of Condillac and Locke and began working on his theory of idéologie.
He was made a member of the Institut National in 1796 (he was part of the Section of the Analysis of Sensations and Ideas in the Class of Moral and Political Sciences, which was later suppressed by Napoleon in 1803) and later appointed to the French Academy (1808). During the Directory Tracy was active in educational reform, especially in creating a national system of education. His membership of the Senate during the Consulate and Empire gave him many opportunities to express his "ideological" opposition to Napoleon's illiberal regime, which culminated in 1814 with Tracy's call for the removal of the Emperor.
Tracy coined the term "ideology" shortly after his appointment to the Institute National in 1796 to refer to his "science of ideas" which attempted to create a secure foundation for all the moral and political sciences by closely examining the sensations and the ideas about those sensations which arose in human beings as they interacted with their physical environment. His deductive methodology for the social sciences has much in common with the Austrian school of economics which emerged after 1870.
For Tracy, "Ideology" was a liberal social and economic philosophy which provided the basis for a strong defense of private property, individual liberty, the free market, and constitutional limits to the power of the state (preferably in a republican form modeled on that of the USA).
For Napoleon, "ideology" was a term of abuse which he directed against his liberal opponents in the Institut National and it was this negative sense of the term which Marx had in mind in his writings on Ideology (he called Tracy a "fischblütige Bourgeoisdoktrinär"—a fish-blooded bourgeois doctrinaire).
Perdebatan: Apakah ideologi itu idea-idea kumpulan dominan sahaja?
‘To study ideology,’ writes John B. Thompson, ‘… is to study the ways in which meaning (or signification) serves to sustain relations of domination.’
This is probably the single most widely accepted definition of ideology; and the process of legitimation would seem to involve at least six different strategies.
A dominant power may legitimate itself by [1] promoting beliefs and values congenial to it; [2] naturalizing and [3] universalizing such beliefs so as to render them self-evident and apparently inevitable; [4] denigrating ideas which might challenge it; [5] excluding rival forms of thought, perhaps by some unspoken but systematic logic; and [6] obscuring social reality in ways convenient to itself.
Such ‘mystification,’ as it is commonly known, frequently takes the form of masking or suppressing social conflicts, from which arises the conception of ideology as an imaginary resolution of real contradictions.
In any actual ideological formation, all six of these strategies are likely to interact in complex ways.
There are, however, at least two major difficulties with this otherwise persuasive definition of ideology. For one thing, not every body of belief which people commonly term ideological is associated with a dominant political power.
The political left, in particular, tends almost instinctively to think of such dominant modes when it considers the topic of ideology; but what then do we call the beliefs of the Levellers, Diggers, Narodniks and Suffragettes, which were certainly not the governing value systems of their day?
Are socialism and feminism ideologies, and if not why not? Are they non-ideological when in political opposition but ideological when they come to power?
If what the Diggers and Suffragettes believed is “ideological,’ as a good deal of common usage would suggest, then by no means all ideologies are oppressive and spuriously legitimating.
Indeed the right-wing political theorist Kenneth Minogue holds, astoundingly, that all ideologies are politically oppositional, sterile totalizing schemes as opposed to the ruling practical wisdom: ‘Ideologies can be specified in terms of a shared hostility to modernity: to liberalism in politics, individualism in moral practice, and the market in economics.’
On this view, supporters of socialism are ideological whereas defenders of capitalism are not. The extent to which one is prepared to use the term ideology of one’s own political views is a reliable index of the nature of one’s political ideology.
Generally speaking, conservatives like Minogue are nervous of the concept in their own case, since to dub their own beliefs ideological would be to risk turning them into objects of contestation.
Takrif umum yang lebih bebas dan longgar daripada persoalan kuasa dominan (yang juga makna kuasa baru muncul yang melawan dominasi puak kuat).
The political philosopher Martin Seliger argues for just such a formulation, defining ideology as ‘sets of ideas by which men [sic] posit, explain and justify ends and means of organised social action, and specifically political action, irrespective of whether such action aims to preserve, amend, uproot or rebuild a given social order.’
Ideology today is generally taken to mean not a science of ideas, but the ideas themselves, and moreover ideas of a particular kind. Ideologies are ideas whose purpose is not epistemic, but political. Thus an ideology exists to confirm a certain political viewpoint, serve the interests of certain people, or to perform a functional role in relation to social, economic, political and legal institutions. (Christine Sypnowich, 2001, 'Law and Ideology', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Daniel Bell dubbed ideology ‘an action-oriented system of beliefs,’ and the fact that ideology is action-oriented indicates its role is not to render reality transparent, but to motivate people to do or not do certain things. Such a role may involve a process of justification that requires the obfuscation of reality.
Nonetheless, Bell and other liberal sociologists do not assume any particular relation between ideology and the status quo; some ideologies serve the status quo, others call for its reform or overthrow.
Beberapa pengkelasan 'ideologi' (menurut saya):
1. Politik/ekonomi
2. Falsafah/sains/pengetahuan
3. Seni/sastera
4. Agama
Jadi, tidaklah tepat/benar untuk melihat persoalan ideologi ini sebagai persoalan idea-idea atau cabang berfikir tentang politik, kekuasaan, kenegaraan dan ekonomi semata-mata.
Beberapa takrifan:
(1) the unifying system of beliefs, attitudes, and values expressed in the superstructure of a culture. The body of thought and ideas that guides a society and perpetuates the status quo of the bourgeoisie.
(2) Literally the study of ideas, the collective knowledge, understandings, opinions, values, preconceptions, experiences and/or memories that informs a culture and its individual people. Ideology is often aligned with political beliefs, but is much broader than that, relating to any social or cultural beliefs, and these beliefs are revealed in literary or other texts.
(3) "Ideology" means to favor one point of view above all others and to adhere to this point of view. The ideologue sees the world from a single point of view, can thus "explain" it and attempt to "change" it.
(4) A comprehensive world view pertaining to formal and informal thought, philosophy, and cultural presuppositions usually understood as associated with specific positions within political, social, and economic hierarchies. Many schools of modern literary criticism contend that the ideological context of both reader and author always affects the meanings assigned to or encoded in the work.
Sejarah asas kata 'ideology':
Destutt de Tracy was born in Paris on July 20, 1754 and died in Paris on March 10, 1836. He was a philosophe, one of the founders in the 1790s of the classical liberal republican group known as the Idéologues (which included Cabanis, Condorcet, Constant, Daunou, Say, Madame de Staël), a politician under several regimes spanning the Revolution and the Restoration, and an influential author.
When the Estates General were called to meet in 1789 he, although a member of an aristocratic family which had been ennobled twice (hence his name), joined the Third Estate and renounced his title. He was later elected to the Constituent Assembly and served in the army in 1792 under the Marquis de Lafayette.
During the Terror he was imprisoned and only escaped execution because Robespierre beat him to the scaffold. It was during his period of imprisonment that he read the works of Condillac and Locke and began working on his theory of idéologie.
He was made a member of the Institut National in 1796 (he was part of the Section of the Analysis of Sensations and Ideas in the Class of Moral and Political Sciences, which was later suppressed by Napoleon in 1803) and later appointed to the French Academy (1808). During the Directory Tracy was active in educational reform, especially in creating a national system of education. His membership of the Senate during the Consulate and Empire gave him many opportunities to express his "ideological" opposition to Napoleon's illiberal regime, which culminated in 1814 with Tracy's call for the removal of the Emperor.
Tracy coined the term "ideology" shortly after his appointment to the Institute National in 1796 to refer to his "science of ideas" which attempted to create a secure foundation for all the moral and political sciences by closely examining the sensations and the ideas about those sensations which arose in human beings as they interacted with their physical environment. His deductive methodology for the social sciences has much in common with the Austrian school of economics which emerged after 1870.
For Tracy, "Ideology" was a liberal social and economic philosophy which provided the basis for a strong defense of private property, individual liberty, the free market, and constitutional limits to the power of the state (preferably in a republican form modeled on that of the USA).
For Napoleon, "ideology" was a term of abuse which he directed against his liberal opponents in the Institut National and it was this negative sense of the term which Marx had in mind in his writings on Ideology (he called Tracy a "fischblütige Bourgeoisdoktrinär"—a fish-blooded bourgeois doctrinaire).
Perdebatan: Apakah ideologi itu idea-idea kumpulan dominan sahaja?
‘To study ideology,’ writes John B. Thompson, ‘… is to study the ways in which meaning (or signification) serves to sustain relations of domination.’
This is probably the single most widely accepted definition of ideology; and the process of legitimation would seem to involve at least six different strategies.
A dominant power may legitimate itself by [1] promoting beliefs and values congenial to it; [2] naturalizing and [3] universalizing such beliefs so as to render them self-evident and apparently inevitable; [4] denigrating ideas which might challenge it; [5] excluding rival forms of thought, perhaps by some unspoken but systematic logic; and [6] obscuring social reality in ways convenient to itself.
Such ‘mystification,’ as it is commonly known, frequently takes the form of masking or suppressing social conflicts, from which arises the conception of ideology as an imaginary resolution of real contradictions.
In any actual ideological formation, all six of these strategies are likely to interact in complex ways.
There are, however, at least two major difficulties with this otherwise persuasive definition of ideology. For one thing, not every body of belief which people commonly term ideological is associated with a dominant political power.
The political left, in particular, tends almost instinctively to think of such dominant modes when it considers the topic of ideology; but what then do we call the beliefs of the Levellers, Diggers, Narodniks and Suffragettes, which were certainly not the governing value systems of their day?
Are socialism and feminism ideologies, and if not why not? Are they non-ideological when in political opposition but ideological when they come to power?
If what the Diggers and Suffragettes believed is “ideological,’ as a good deal of common usage would suggest, then by no means all ideologies are oppressive and spuriously legitimating.
Indeed the right-wing political theorist Kenneth Minogue holds, astoundingly, that all ideologies are politically oppositional, sterile totalizing schemes as opposed to the ruling practical wisdom: ‘Ideologies can be specified in terms of a shared hostility to modernity: to liberalism in politics, individualism in moral practice, and the market in economics.’
On this view, supporters of socialism are ideological whereas defenders of capitalism are not. The extent to which one is prepared to use the term ideology of one’s own political views is a reliable index of the nature of one’s political ideology.
Generally speaking, conservatives like Minogue are nervous of the concept in their own case, since to dub their own beliefs ideological would be to risk turning them into objects of contestation.
Takrif umum yang lebih bebas dan longgar daripada persoalan kuasa dominan (yang juga makna kuasa baru muncul yang melawan dominasi puak kuat).
The political philosopher Martin Seliger argues for just such a formulation, defining ideology as ‘sets of ideas by which men [sic] posit, explain and justify ends and means of organised social action, and specifically political action, irrespective of whether such action aims to preserve, amend, uproot or rebuild a given social order.’
Ideology today is generally taken to mean not a science of ideas, but the ideas themselves, and moreover ideas of a particular kind. Ideologies are ideas whose purpose is not epistemic, but political. Thus an ideology exists to confirm a certain political viewpoint, serve the interests of certain people, or to perform a functional role in relation to social, economic, political and legal institutions. (Christine Sypnowich, 2001, 'Law and Ideology', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Daniel Bell dubbed ideology ‘an action-oriented system of beliefs,’ and the fact that ideology is action-oriented indicates its role is not to render reality transparent, but to motivate people to do or not do certain things. Such a role may involve a process of justification that requires the obfuscation of reality.
Nonetheless, Bell and other liberal sociologists do not assume any particular relation between ideology and the status quo; some ideologies serve the status quo, others call for its reform or overthrow.
Beberapa pengkelasan 'ideologi' (menurut saya):
1. Politik/ekonomi
2. Falsafah/sains/pengetahuan
3. Seni/sastera
4. Agama
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Kritik ideologi
Ideologi, seperti juga agama, atau sebaliknya -- agama, seperti juga ideologi -- harus dikritik.
Ia mencipta pembiusan pada fikiran, cuba mensemulajadikan (naturalize) kewujudannya, dan mencipta kesedaran palsu pada penganut dan, kadang-kadang, penentangnya.
Ia memberikan legitimasi pada hegemoninya -- menghalalkan manipulasi kuasa dan sumber ekonomi; menghalalkan kewujudannya sebagai sesuatu yang "wajar" atau "baik", malah sesuatu yang "bermoral".
Tetapi apakh itu ideologi? Terry Eagleton, pengarang buku tentang teori dan analisa ideologi, menulis, dengan meminjam pandangan seorang pemikir politik Martin Seliger: "sets of ideas by which men [and women] posit, explain and justify ends and means of organised social action, and specifically political action, irrespective of whether such action aims to preserve, amend, uproot or rebuild a given social order."
Lihat huraian ringkas Eagleton di sini atau beli bukunya yang ini.
Atau setidak-tidaknya melihat takrif asasnya di sini. Dan kalaulah Wikipedia boleh diharapkan sebagai satu sumber rujukan, boleh juga lihat di sini.
Di negara jiran, sebuah buku berjudul Kritik Ideologi dihasilkan oleh Francisco Budi Hardiman tetapi sayangnya tidaklah komprehensif, asyik-asyik dengan pemikiran Jurgen Habermas.
Ia mencipta pembiusan pada fikiran, cuba mensemulajadikan (naturalize) kewujudannya, dan mencipta kesedaran palsu pada penganut dan, kadang-kadang, penentangnya.Ia memberikan legitimasi pada hegemoninya -- menghalalkan manipulasi kuasa dan sumber ekonomi; menghalalkan kewujudannya sebagai sesuatu yang "wajar" atau "baik", malah sesuatu yang "bermoral".
Tetapi apakh itu ideologi? Terry Eagleton, pengarang buku tentang teori dan analisa ideologi, menulis, dengan meminjam pandangan seorang pemikir politik Martin Seliger: "sets of ideas by which men [and women] posit, explain and justify ends and means of organised social action, and specifically political action, irrespective of whether such action aims to preserve, amend, uproot or rebuild a given social order."
Lihat huraian ringkas Eagleton di sini atau beli bukunya yang ini.
Atau setidak-tidaknya melihat takrif asasnya di sini. Dan kalaulah Wikipedia boleh diharapkan sebagai satu sumber rujukan, boleh juga lihat di sini.
Di negara jiran, sebuah buku berjudul Kritik Ideologi dihasilkan oleh Francisco Budi Hardiman tetapi sayangnya tidaklah komprehensif, asyik-asyik dengan pemikiran Jurgen Habermas.
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Kritik agama
Ada dua topik diskusi yang saya berminat untuk lanjutkan. Dan dimasukkan di web Ummahonline.com, satu daripadanya sudah agak lama tetapi akhir-akhir ini semacam ada minat baru untuk membicarakannya.
Satu, Agama wajib dikritik habis-habisan (31 Januari). Asalnya artikel lengkap saya tahun lalu di akhbar web Malaysiakini.com.
Jadi, tanpa mengupas banyak, saya kira saya telah membentangkan sebahagian besar premis, tujuan dan ruang lingkup yang dimaksudkan 'kritik agama'.
Antaranya: Kritik bertujuan mendorong pemahaman kritis (mempertikai) dan reflektif (renungan) terhadap asas-asas anutan agama tersedia ada (kukuh) yang bergerak dalam masyarakat, yang seolah-olah muncul secara semula jadi, dan akibatnya tidak dipermasalahkan atau dipertikaikan lagi. Atas sifatnya yang berinteraksi atau terjaring dengan kepentingan modal, kuasa dan tradisi, kritik agama bertujuan membongkar selimut ideologi atau selubung wacana dalam hubungan kepentingan itu (juga, konteks dan sejarahnya) yang tidak selalu telus, dan malah sering mengendong dakwaan kekudusan agama.
Topik kedua, tidak jauh daripada topik pertama Analisa 'Islam sebagai ad-din' (3 Oktober).
Jadi, kepada teman-teman yang berminat mendiskusikan dua topik ini, bolehlah ke sana.
Atau, kalau malas mendaftar sebagai peserta forum web Ummahonline, bolehlah idea-idea itu dilontarkan di kaki (ruangan komentar pembaca) artikel ini. Saya akan salin semula dan tampal sepenuhnya ke forum tersebut.
Kepada yang berminat, berikut beberapa sumber bacaan menarik:
1. The political economy of of women's support for fundamentalist Islam
2. The political economy of Middle East terrorism
3. Arab and Muslim political attitudes: Stereotypes and evidence from survey research
4. The basis of Islamic fundamentalism (bab 5, teks lengkap di sini)
5. Mirror reflections: Fundamentalism and the market economy
6. Understanding Islamic fundamentalism: A politico-legal analysis
7. Islam, Islamists, and democracy
Satu, Agama wajib dikritik habis-habisan (31 Januari). Asalnya artikel lengkap saya tahun lalu di akhbar web Malaysiakini.com.Jadi, tanpa mengupas banyak, saya kira saya telah membentangkan sebahagian besar premis, tujuan dan ruang lingkup yang dimaksudkan 'kritik agama'.
Antaranya: Kritik bertujuan mendorong pemahaman kritis (mempertikai) dan reflektif (renungan) terhadap asas-asas anutan agama tersedia ada (kukuh) yang bergerak dalam masyarakat, yang seolah-olah muncul secara semula jadi, dan akibatnya tidak dipermasalahkan atau dipertikaikan lagi. Atas sifatnya yang berinteraksi atau terjaring dengan kepentingan modal, kuasa dan tradisi, kritik agama bertujuan membongkar selimut ideologi atau selubung wacana dalam hubungan kepentingan itu (juga, konteks dan sejarahnya) yang tidak selalu telus, dan malah sering mengendong dakwaan kekudusan agama.
Topik kedua, tidak jauh daripada topik pertama Analisa 'Islam sebagai ad-din' (3 Oktober).
Jadi, kepada teman-teman yang berminat mendiskusikan dua topik ini, bolehlah ke sana.
Atau, kalau malas mendaftar sebagai peserta forum web Ummahonline, bolehlah idea-idea itu dilontarkan di kaki (ruangan komentar pembaca) artikel ini. Saya akan salin semula dan tampal sepenuhnya ke forum tersebut.
Kepada yang berminat, berikut beberapa sumber bacaan menarik:
1. The political economy of of women's support for fundamentalist Islam
2. The political economy of Middle East terrorism
3. Arab and Muslim political attitudes: Stereotypes and evidence from survey research
4. The basis of Islamic fundamentalism (bab 5, teks lengkap di sini)
5. Mirror reflections: Fundamentalism and the market economy
6. Understanding Islamic fundamentalism: A politico-legal analysis
7. Islam, Islamists, and democracy
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Islamisme
Berikut kata-kata, analisa, yang dibuat oleh Chris Harman, seorang pemikir sosialis tentang gerakan Islam dalam analisa kelasnya:
But no set of ideas can have such an appeal to different classes, especially when society is shaken by social convulsions, unless it is full of ambiguities.
It has to be open to differing interpretations, even if these set its adherents at each other’s throats.
This has been true of Islam virtually from its inception.
Apakah anda boleh bersetuju dengannya dalam makalahnya 'The prophet and the proletariat' (1994)?
Harman kemudiannya dalam bab 'The class base of Islamism' membahagikan gerakan Islam dan penggeraknya kepada empat kelompok manusia:
The Islamic revival gets sustenance from four different social groupings – each of which interprets Islam in its own way:
i. The Islamism of the old exploiters: First there are those members of the traditional privileged classes who fear losing out in the capitalist modernisation of society – particularly landowners (including clergy dependent on incomes from land belonging to religious foundations), traditional merchant capitalists, the owners of the mass of small shops and workshops.
Such groups have often been the traditional sources of finance for the mosques and see Islam as a way of defending their established way of life and of making those who oversee change listen to their voices. Thus in Iran and Algeria it was this group which provided the resources to the clergy to oppose the state’s land reform programme in the 1960s and 1970s.
ii. The Islamism of the new exploiters: Second, often emerging from among this first group, are some of the capitalists who have enjoyed success despite hostility from those groups linked to the state. In Egypt, for instance, the present day Muslim Brotherhood “wormed their way into the economic fabric of Sadat’s Egypt at a time when whole sections of it had been turned over to unregulated capitalism. Uthman Ahmad Uthman, the Egyptian Rockefeller, made no secret of this sympathy for the Brethren”.
In Turkey the Welfare Party, which is led by a former member of the main conservative party, enjoys the support of much of middle sized capital. In Iran among the bazaaris who gave support to Khomeini against the Shah were substantial capitalists resentful at the way economic policies favoured those close to the crown.
iii. The Islamism of the poor: The third group are the rural poor who have suffered under the advance of capitalist farming and who have been forced into the cities as they desperately look for work. Thus in Algeria out of a total rural population of 8.2 million only 2 million gained anything from the land reform. The other 6 million were faced with the choice between increased poverty in the countryside and going to the cities to seek work.
But in the cities: “The lowest group are the hard core jobless made up of displaced former peasants who have flooded the cities in search of work and social opportunity ... detached from rural society without being truly integrated into urban society”.
They lost the certainties associated with an old way of life – certainties which they identify with traditional Muslim culture – without gaining a secure material existence or a stable way of life: "Clear guidelines for behaviour and belief no longer exist for millions of Algerians caught between a tradition that no longer commands their total loyalty and a modernism that cannot satisfy the psychological and spiritual needs of young people in particular”.
[....]
iv. The Islamism of the new middle class: However, neither the “traditional” exploiting classes nor the impoverished masses provide the vital element which sustains revivalist, political Islam – the cadre of activists who propagate its doctrines and risk injury, imprisonment and death in confrontation with their enemies.
The traditional exploiting classes are by their very nature conservative. They are prepared to donate money so that others can fight – especially in defence of their material interests. They did so when faced with the land reform in Algeria in the early 1970s; when the Baathist regime in Syria encroached upon the interests of the urban merchants and traders in the spring of 1980s; and when the merchants and small businessmen of the Iranian bazaars felt themselves under attack from the Shah in 1976-78 and threatened by the left in 1979-81.
But they are wary of putting their own businesses, let alone their own lives, at risk. And so they can hardly be the force that has torn societies like Algeria and Egypt apart, caused a whole town, Hama, to rise in revolt in Syria, used suicide bombs against the Americans and Israelis in Lebanon – and which caused the Iranian Revolution to take a turn much more radical than any section of the Iranian bourgeoisie expected.
This force, in fact, comes from a fourth, very different stratum – from a section of the new middle class that has arisen as a result of capitalist modernisation right across the Third World.
Saya sedar aktivis gerakan Islam, ustaz (kalaupun bukan ulama) atau pendakwah berasa kekok atau marah dengan analisa (dan jenis perkataan) yang disampaikan oleh Harman, atau penulis-penulis lain seumpamanya.
Tetapi bolehkah kita nafikan manusia Islam itu tanpa apa-apa kepentingan sekali pun?
But no set of ideas can have such an appeal to different classes, especially when society is shaken by social convulsions, unless it is full of ambiguities.
It has to be open to differing interpretations, even if these set its adherents at each other’s throats.
This has been true of Islam virtually from its inception.
Apakah anda boleh bersetuju dengannya dalam makalahnya 'The prophet and the proletariat' (1994)?
Harman kemudiannya dalam bab 'The class base of Islamism' membahagikan gerakan Islam dan penggeraknya kepada empat kelompok manusia:
The Islamic revival gets sustenance from four different social groupings – each of which interprets Islam in its own way:
i. The Islamism of the old exploiters: First there are those members of the traditional privileged classes who fear losing out in the capitalist modernisation of society – particularly landowners (including clergy dependent on incomes from land belonging to religious foundations), traditional merchant capitalists, the owners of the mass of small shops and workshops.
Such groups have often been the traditional sources of finance for the mosques and see Islam as a way of defending their established way of life and of making those who oversee change listen to their voices. Thus in Iran and Algeria it was this group which provided the resources to the clergy to oppose the state’s land reform programme in the 1960s and 1970s.
ii. The Islamism of the new exploiters: Second, often emerging from among this first group, are some of the capitalists who have enjoyed success despite hostility from those groups linked to the state. In Egypt, for instance, the present day Muslim Brotherhood “wormed their way into the economic fabric of Sadat’s Egypt at a time when whole sections of it had been turned over to unregulated capitalism. Uthman Ahmad Uthman, the Egyptian Rockefeller, made no secret of this sympathy for the Brethren”.
In Turkey the Welfare Party, which is led by a former member of the main conservative party, enjoys the support of much of middle sized capital. In Iran among the bazaaris who gave support to Khomeini against the Shah were substantial capitalists resentful at the way economic policies favoured those close to the crown.
iii. The Islamism of the poor: The third group are the rural poor who have suffered under the advance of capitalist farming and who have been forced into the cities as they desperately look for work. Thus in Algeria out of a total rural population of 8.2 million only 2 million gained anything from the land reform. The other 6 million were faced with the choice between increased poverty in the countryside and going to the cities to seek work.
But in the cities: “The lowest group are the hard core jobless made up of displaced former peasants who have flooded the cities in search of work and social opportunity ... detached from rural society without being truly integrated into urban society”.
They lost the certainties associated with an old way of life – certainties which they identify with traditional Muslim culture – without gaining a secure material existence or a stable way of life: "Clear guidelines for behaviour and belief no longer exist for millions of Algerians caught between a tradition that no longer commands their total loyalty and a modernism that cannot satisfy the psychological and spiritual needs of young people in particular”.
[....]
iv. The Islamism of the new middle class: However, neither the “traditional” exploiting classes nor the impoverished masses provide the vital element which sustains revivalist, political Islam – the cadre of activists who propagate its doctrines and risk injury, imprisonment and death in confrontation with their enemies.
The traditional exploiting classes are by their very nature conservative. They are prepared to donate money so that others can fight – especially in defence of their material interests. They did so when faced with the land reform in Algeria in the early 1970s; when the Baathist regime in Syria encroached upon the interests of the urban merchants and traders in the spring of 1980s; and when the merchants and small businessmen of the Iranian bazaars felt themselves under attack from the Shah in 1976-78 and threatened by the left in 1979-81.
But they are wary of putting their own businesses, let alone their own lives, at risk. And so they can hardly be the force that has torn societies like Algeria and Egypt apart, caused a whole town, Hama, to rise in revolt in Syria, used suicide bombs against the Americans and Israelis in Lebanon – and which caused the Iranian Revolution to take a turn much more radical than any section of the Iranian bourgeoisie expected.
This force, in fact, comes from a fourth, very different stratum – from a section of the new middle class that has arisen as a result of capitalist modernisation right across the Third World.
Saya sedar aktivis gerakan Islam, ustaz (kalaupun bukan ulama) atau pendakwah berasa kekok atau marah dengan analisa (dan jenis perkataan) yang disampaikan oleh Harman, atau penulis-penulis lain seumpamanya.
Tetapi bolehkah kita nafikan manusia Islam itu tanpa apa-apa kepentingan sekali pun?
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