A mode of uncivic or even barbaric engagement was born around 100 years ago, and it persists to this day. This engagement is not about modernity, but about the instrumentality or mechanics of achieving modernization through force and coercion. The instrumentalities of this coercive process is made of a tri-part alliance:
A Westernized intelligentsia that deconstructs tradition in the name of originality and innovation, but that is entirely imitative and dependent on the social and political thought of their former colonizers. This intelligentsia condemns the past in the name of progress, but is thoroughly unoriginal and uncreative in dealing with its own native memory.
A nationalistic military that takes great pride in the idea of being the guardians of independence and self-determination, but that is fundamentally unproductive and thoroughly dependent. Although the military creed of these national armies is rooted in the idea of the protectors of independence, there is nothing remotely independent about these militaries. Their armaments, structures and strategic training are derivative and imitative.
A legal system that is culturally rooted in the adopted memories of the colonizer, and that is largely divorced from its own native customs of negotiating justice. For the most part, these legal systems are wholesale transplants that function within a sociology and anthropology of law that is not their own.
This unholy trinity, consisting of the military in alliance with a Westernized intelligentsia and a transplanted legal system, repeatedly closes ranks to maintain dominance over a native population in the name of independence and progress.
Read it all from ABC Aus..
He gives away his game in the last sentence:[blockquote]When Attaturk needed guidance on the reconstitution of Turkish cultural institutions, reportedly, Attaturk hired the American philosopher John Dewey. Those that have been observing the Sisi regime’s discourses on Islamists would suspect that he retained Fox News and its Islamophobic pundits as his advisors.[/blockquote]The effort by some Muslims to rescue Islam from its radicals may well bear fruit, but this author and others would do well to look at their own tradition clearly while trying to do so. Blaming “colonialism” and “Islamophobia” won’t help them deal with the actual issues they face.