The political-theological shadow of Maslow: “I have desired only what Thou didst desire”

Abaraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, often portrayed as a pyramid with the more basic material needs at the bottom, haunts much of the contemporary discourse in both religion and political science (and, perhaps, long before Maslow articulated it, the pyramid has been in the backs of everyone’s minds since time immemorial). In simplest terms, for the political, democracy and liberty can easily be undermined by a careful calculation of keeping the majority of society on the brink of physiological and psychological starvation. The religious almost seem to tacitly agree, as they counter-act by either outright denying the importance of the pyramid’s bottom tier (asceticism), sharply separating the apex from the lower tiers (“Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”), or asserting the apex’s dictatorship over the lower tiers (fundamentalism, theocracy). However, Maslow’s shadow is much more intricate and dark.

My friend Maarten, a student and aspiring activist in peace and conflict studies, and I share what could be called a Maslowian obsession, mine religious, his political: the relationship, and often conflict, between body and soul, this world and the next, or put another way, resources and rights, stability and liberty. At root, it is really about, both individually or collectively, the clash of desires, heteronomy’s limits upon self-actualization and self-determination, and the struggle with contingency. We’ve been thinking about these issues as they appear under the light of material crisis — such as the one going on right now in the Great Recession and the deepening of the neo-liberal order — when history very much casts entire swathes of human beings into the seeming positions of winner and loser, successful and failure, celebrated and forgotten, survival or extinction.

A symbolic vote / The symbolism of the vote

Of all the things that infuriate me about the United States, a nation that is as exceptionally mismanaged as it is exceptionally inventive, the one that has irritated me the most the past month has been the inability for American expatriates to vote at our embassies. The reason almost certainly lies in the Electoral College: expatriates cannot simply be registered as a bloc of their own, since the popular vote is filtered at the national level via the state-based “electoral” vote. Yet one more reason to strongly consider revising, if not getting rid of, the Electoral College.

Here’s another: if we understand democracy as the vox populi along majoritarian lines, then the very mathematics of the Electoral College system are undemocratic. Whoever can carry enough states to bring his (or her) overall Electoral College vote total to at least 270 shall win. Since most states in this election are supposedly already spoken for, this suggests that an extremely small percentage of voters — i.e., those in the mythical “swing states” — shall determine the race (back-of-napkin calculations suggest 5 million). The logical flipside of this is that the rest of us might as well not vote; the result, if it is indeed so pre-ordained, shall be the same.

But my purpose here is not to complain; rather, it is to go on the record as an Obama supporter. In the end, he really is the best candidate; indeed, in the words of one friend, he’s the best candidate we could ever hope to have. The New Yorker has an excellent summary of Obama, as well as why we should fret about Romney (I still can’t believe my countrymen might elect a president with offshore accounts! What are we, Kazakhstan?).

I suppose in the end it’s a kind of faith, or, yes, hope: give Obama four more years. And it’s not about partisanship; it’s about what I, and many of my countrymen — “countrymen” both in the particular American sense and in the global sense, in that the world is but one country and mankind her citizens — believe is the best for the United States and the world. What Romney represents isn’t that.

And it’s indeed about representation, symbolism. The characters of these two men are complex, and it’s uncertain what they completely signify. However, there’s an inkling that “Obama” at least signifies not descending into ideological fanaticism, and with it, the prevailing of reason. Of course, the triggers of signification rely a lot upon one’s framework, as I imagine Romney supporters would say that this is what “Romney” signifies for them. So, in a way, we’re all leaping into the dark with our vote.

Ah yes, my vote. Well, I missed the absolute latest postdate, which means my vote probably won’t be counted. Again, not that it would matter from a mathematical perspecitve (I’m a New Yorker, and my state has been pre-ordained for Obama); rather, it’s a statement. I’m saying: I’m still involved, and whatever the outcome, I still wish the best, for my society and the world.

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Social leaking / social whistleblowing

I’m thinking over this story about the Facebook group plotting to overthrow the Turkmen government. I’ve already pondered the journalistic ethics about publishing it (“Did I just kill a revolution?”), but there are some really interesting aspect I want to take a moment to discuss.

In terms of the technology: first, this remarkable feature of modern communication applications to serve as a mirror for humanity, revealing ourselves to ourselves, blemishes and all; second, the darkside of this mirror, namely, its potential to turn against us and become a tool of self-oppression; and third — and this is the pat I want to focus on right now — is the way in which it’s making our civilization vastly more leaky and transparent.

Back in April I was interviewed by Dr. Suelette Dreyfus, an international expert on digital whistleblowing. We had a long conversation on the definition of “whistleblowing”, and it occurred to me that besides the traditional, Daniel Elsberg-style leak, or its Julian Assange update, there may now also be “social leaking” or “social whistleblowing”. This is essentially unintentional releasing of information by the rank-and-file of an organization that at an authority, whether it be cultural, governmental or corporate, would have preferred not to be released.

So, as I see it, such leaking may often take the emotional form of venting. For example, neweurasia‘s Annasoltan has recounted the following anecdote about two Turkmen apparatchiks:

“Once I met two Turkmen diplomats who behaved as though they were in a race with each other to expound on the great achievements of our president. But when one them went to the toilet, the other quickly made scandalous revelations about the government and seemed desperate to convince me that he despised the regime. Imagine: a diplomat, our nation’s representative to the outside world!”

Or, as in the case of this Facebook group, the various reactions of everyday people confronted with a terrifying new idea, namely, the downfall of their government. In this latter example, the outside world has learned something very important about the current collective mindset within Turkmenistan — something we could not have easily determined before:

Counter-martyrdom and the trial of bin Laden

In my last post, I talked briefly about the disturbing paganistic and technophilic aspects to Osama bin Laden’s brand of Islamism and the Americans’ War on Terror. Along the way, I remarked that I would have “infinitely more” preferred bin Laden to have been put on trial, although I still believed “justice had been served”. I feel that I should clarify both remarks, then invite my readers to share their thoughts.

Why Hizb ut-Tahrir is wrong

Hizb Ut-Tahrir is one of the world’s leading radical Islamist organizations. They propose “restoring” the Caliphate as the necessary precondition for “rejuvenating” the global Islamic community. This essay, originally published in three parts on neweurasia, constitutes my attempt to deconstruct their ideology. It’s point of departure is an essay by the University of Ghent’s Bruno De Cordier, also published on neweurasia, in which he defends the cogency of their ideology. (The photograph to the right is of the last Calph, Abdülmecid II.)

Last week, neweurasia ran a post by the University of Ghent’s Bruno de Cordier concerning his views on why the radical Islamist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir has been able to survive as long as it has despite sharp repression of its membership throughout Central Asia and the deep suspicion, even strong dislike for it evinced by the United States and many of its allies.

“I believe that the answer may lie in the extent to which the organization’s platform, if understood in a certain light, may be tapping into very real discontent and aspirations in the general population, and is responding to on-the-ground realities better than secular human rights organizations,” he argues. Fair enough, but let’s evaluate some of his evidence and lines of thought, and while we’re at it, Hizb Ut-Tahrir’s platform itself.

I shall move through Prof. De Cordier’s post and respond to it according to the order he uses therein. This first part shall deal with substance of the arguments for Hizb Ut-Tahrir’s vision of an Islamic super-state, particularly the Caliphate (paragraphs 2-6); the second part with Westernization, Modernization, and transnational integration (7-11), and the question of whether the global Islamic community needs a “defender” (12); and the final part with the bigger yet more fundamental questions of the efficacy and desirability of an Islamic super-state, faith, and “alter-globalism” (13). I’ve got a lot on my plate, but that’s because there’s a lot to dismantle, and much of it very crucial, because as I’ll ultimately argue in the third part, what’s rally at stake are differing visions of what it means to be human.

Will 50 km slow down the dominoes?

Is the fate of the Libyan Revolution (or Counter-Revolution, if you’re Gaddafi), and whatever fascinating and powerful phenomenon may be happening throughout the Arabic world, coming down to these, what, 50 or so kilometers?

Ras Lanuf appears to be an interesting place, by the way. At the moment it’s just a small town surrounding an oil refinery. However, I stumbled upon these plans by the Gaddafi government to convert it into an “international world-class city and an economic hub”. (Click “read more” to see images.)

The first truly European country

What does it really mean to be in a nation-state? I’m talking about, as it were, a political phenomenology, and I think it’s an intriguing question. Indeed, it’s the traveller’s question — where does the essence of a society lie? Is it unchanging or morphous? There’s a well-known elusive quality to the living human society of the nation-state, something very Heraclitan, as though the Egyptians who built the Pyramids and the Belgae who fought the Romans were somehow the ancestors of today’s Egyptians and Belgians, and yet somehow not: with each generation, they’ve stepped into the same river of time, event, and identity again and again, but because of that, it’s never the same river twice.

I think it’s very interesting to juxtapose the Egyptians to the Belgians because both societies are constituted of, on the one hand, very ancient geographical and demographic elements, and on the other hand, repeated and violent influxes of exotic blood — they are rich with relics of both stone and gene. And yet, the Egyptians have a much stronger sense of continuity, one that’s co-extensive with the borders of the current geopolitical place that history and the world have affixed as “Egypt”, whereas the Belgians have a profoundly weaker sense of of it for “Belgium”. Rather, Belgians’ continuities lie in their towns, in their families, and to some extent in the regional polities affixed as “Flanders”, “Brussels”, and “Wallonia” — that is, if they have any sense of continuity at all, which many of them self-avowedly don’t.

And then there’s the ongoing political crisis, which has left the federal central government hollowed out and in gradual decline, yet which hasn’t appeared to have harmed the three regional sub-governments all that much. Again and again I wonder: how is such a phenomenon enabled? It’s a subtle and tricky question, as most of my Belgian friends think I’m talking about what they always talk about, namely, how Belgium’s federal government “doesn’t matter” (wealth distribution and healthcare notwithstanding) and, moreover, how this might actually serve as a model or even paradigm for a future European federation or European nation-state. I’m actually not thinking about that; rather, I’m curious about the experiential and conceptual significance of the fact that there are three semi-sovereign governments here that are able to get by seemingly without the sovereign central government.

In other words, when I ask, How is Belgium possible? I’m actually really asking about the remarkable depth of Continental integration — and what this may really say about the future of the European Union.

Why dominoes are too black and white

I think I’ve identified the root cause of my skepticism up to this point, and that’s that the concept of the “domino effect” argues that both the motivations across all countries are uniform, and worse, that the results will likewise be univocal and constructive. There is little regard for the forces, both positive and negative, that are evidently being unleashed in the region, much less the manifold reasons why these explosions are happening now.

Thus, my concerns about these revolutions have more to do with how they are conceptualized, by both Westerners and Arabs, than with their immediate ethics. That’s the knot I’ve been trying to disentangle in my own mind. Simply put, I don’t want these events, and all the lives changed due to them, reduced to just another romantic image or simplistic slogan–even though I know they shall–because that would reduce them to political tools: I can already hear American Republicans proclaiming the need to advance more revolutions like these across the world and Chinese Communists cracking down on their citizenry for precisely that very fear.

Such reductionism also does an injustice to the events themselves and all those who’ve partaken in them. Slate has a good essay on the topic, comparing these revolutions to the ones of 1848, and why we need to be more careful in our historiographical thinking. [If you wish, click "Read More" to read an excerpt.] In other words, dominoes are just too black and white to really capture the nuances of these happenings.

The tongue is a smouldering fire…

For Gabrielle Giffords, now in the twilight between this world and the next; for Jared Loughner, lost in the night of madness; for his victims, now in the kingdom of the impossible; for my fellow Americans, who have too long dwelt in the wilderness of angry discourse; for myself, who has too often spoken in impulse rather than thoughtfulness:

“[The seeker] must never seek to exalt himself above any one, must wash away from the tablet of his heart every trace of pride and vainglory, must cling unto patience and resignation, observe silence, and refrain from idle talk. For the tongue is a smouldering fire, and excess of speech a deadly poison. Material fire consumeth the body, whereas the fire of the tongue devoureth both heart and soul. The force of the former lasteth but for a time, whilst the effects of the latter endure a century.” — Baha’u'llah, Gleanings, paragraph #213

“O Emigrants! The tongue I have designed for the mention of Me, defile it not with detraction. If the fire of self overcome you, remember your own faults and not the faults of My creatures, inasmuch as every one of you knoweth his own self better than he knoweth others.” — Baha’u'llah, The Hidden Words, Persian #66lle

The spiritual meaning of September 11

The world over, particularly Muslims, stood in horror and outrage at the decision by an obscure group of religious fanatics in Florida to burn the Qur’an in the name of Christianity. For the moment, it seems they have decided to defer the terrible act, which allows the rest of us to pause and reflect about how our global society could have devolved to such a low point.

To begin with, untold millions are wondering, Why aren’t the American authorities stopping them?, especially considering the violence and instability that is likely to result from the deplorable act. There are very real and important legal and philosophical issues. In simplest terms, many Americans believe that to stop this group from burning the Qur’an would be to endanger one of the core principles of human rights, namely, the right to express one’s opinions, no matter how strange, controversial, or abhorrent.

To the charge that the United States’ own laws may have made it morally impotent, or worse, complicit in such an affront to humanity, Americans respond that they are reaching for a higher morality, one that encompasses the total civic community and not any one group. The rights of the few must be protected for the sake of all.

That argument is true and must be stated clearly, but I feel that what’s been missing from the discussion, though, has been the deeper spiritual and cultural dimensions. What kind of world are we living in when members of a religious community can so radically misunderstand or grossly misinterpret the principles of their faith and their nation as to attack the entirety of another religious community so symbolically and with such hatred?

Indeed, what kind of world are we living in when members of the recipient religious community themselves think it equally justified to rise up in violence and to exact vicious reprisals upon innocents who are in no way connected to, affiliated with, or approving of the desecration of their holy text?

Jon Stewart and the shadow elite

Jon Stewart recently revealed what can only be dubbed a perfect example of Janine Wedel’s “shadow elite“. To explain the concept, here’s Wedel herself, from my interview with her for RFE/RL:

What I argue in “Shadow Elite” is that a new breed of players has arisen in the past several decades…whose maneuverings are beyond the traditional mechanisms of accountability.

They, for example, play multiple, overlapping, and not fully disclosed roles. They have their people and work themselves individually [as] government advisers, think tankers, consultants to businesses. They appear in the media. And it’s very difficult for the public to know who exactly they represent.

Wedel’s website uses former US Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, retired US General Barry McCaffrey, and Obama economic adviser Larry Summers as examples. Well, now we can add to the list Saudi prince Al-Walid bin Talal.

Injustice against Baha’is is injustice against all Iranians

Disheartening news everyone. Word from Iran Press Watch and the Muslim Network for Baha’i Rights is that the seven Baha’i leaders who have suffered unjust detention and trial in Iran have finally been sentenced — for 20 years each, a a total of 140 years! Their crimes? “Espionage,” translation: because our faith’s World Center happens to be in Israel; “acting against national security,” translation: informally organizing the Iranian Baha’i community after the formal administrative order had been forcibly disbanded by Iranian authorities; and being “enemies of God,” translation: being Baha’is.

Meanwhile, there’s the continuing persecution of rank and file Baha’is, including a new round of house demolitions. But I need to emphasize that even though Baha’is are suffering incredibly, they are not the only oppressed religious minority in Iran. Although many other religions have nominal official sanction, whereas Baha’is are totally illegal, this in no way should be taken to mean that their existences are any happier. Jews are also frequently threatened with the crime of espionage, to say nothing of the multitude quiet ways in which Christians and Zoroastrians are prejudiced against by the government.

In other words, the morally bankrupt sentencing of the seven Baha’i religious leaders is not only a blow against my religion, but a blow against religious freedom in Iran and a disheartening perversion of Islam’s principle of non-compulsion in religion. It’s high time Iran took to heart these words by Baha’u'llah:

O Son of Spirit! The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice; turn not away therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I may confide in thee. By its aid thou shalt see with thine own eyes and not through the eyes of others, and shalt know of thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy neighbor. Ponder this in thy heart; how it behooveth thee to be. Verily justice is My gift to thee and the sign of My loving-kindness. Set it then before thine eyes. — Hidden Words, Arabic #2

Justice and the facts in Kyrgyzstan

As Managing Editor of neweurasia, I want to take a moment to address something that’s been concerning me throughout the crisis in Southern Kyrgyzstan, namely, the conflation of speculation with fact, ultimately and especially regarding the issue of blame and the problem of evil.  To begin with, this is what the international journalistic community thinks it knows and only that: as affirmed by the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights, it appears that gangs of masked men attacked, in an organized and premeditated fashion, Uzbek and Kyrgyz targets in Osh.

That’s all we know right now.  Even the Commissioner is unsure as to these gangs’ intentions, although it’s more than reasonable to conclude they were seeking to provoke a reaction.  More importantly, we don’t know who they are.  There is no smoking gun — yet.  In its place there are a lot of theories buzzing around, everything ranging from Russian special forces to secret agents of the Bakiyev network.  But these are only theories at the moment.  Until we have hard evidence, e.g., a confession, one that meets international standards of propriety, we do not know what was the plan behind these attacks.

Kyrgyzbelgiastan

I’ve been following the tragic events in Southern Kyrgyzstan all weekend and coordinating neweurasia‘s English coverage.   It took me a while to re-establish contact with our team in Osh and Jalalabad, at least one of whom appeared to be hiding in his house.  The videos have been heartbreaking: entire neighborhoods burned down.

The whole disaster has cast a dim light back onto the society in which I currently find myself, Belgium.  This country also has long standing difficulties between its two major constituent ethnicities, and it has has just undergone an election in which apparent separatists emerged triumphant. Many of my friends here are alarmed by the results and fear for the future of their nation.

Leo Belgicus’ Flemish flea

The election results are coming in and it looks like the the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA) is heading for a landslide victory (by Belgian standards, that is).  Other European nations are flabbergasted, not to mention anxious, as the Flemish vote avowed separatists into power.  Countries like Spain are particularly nervous, for if separatism can be legitimated here, in the heart of the European Union, then there will be little legal force to stop a domino effect of secessions across the Continent.  The Belgian lion has a Flemish flea, but its itch is being felt by all of Europe.

Three years too long

As the seven Iranian Baha’i leaders known as the Yaren enter their third year of imprisonment, new details about the harsh conditions of their incarceration have emerged, prompting renewed calls for their immediate release.  Meanwhile, at the direction of the Universal House of Justice, Baha’is around the world are organizing special devotionals to commemorate this unfortunate anniversary.

I ask all my loved ones and readers, religious or not, to please offer a prayer or a meditation on behalf of the Yaren, as well as all those around the world suffering persecution for their beliefs.

O peoples of the world! The Sun of Truth hath risen to illumine the whole earth, and to spiritualize the community of man. Laudable are the results and the fruits thereof, abundant the holy evidences deriving from this grace. This is mercy unalloyed and purest bounty; it is light for the world and all its peoples; it is harmony and fellowship, and love and solidarity; indeed it is compassion and unity, and the end of foreignness; it is the being at one, in complete dignity and freedom, with all on earth. – Abdu’l-Baha

Seeing ourselves in our religions

As I get older (and granted, I’m far from elderly), I surprise myself by how I seem to get more radical, but not blindly so.  My misgivings toward capitalism in general run deeper and deeper.  Yet, I also surprise myself in the way that my perhaps peculiar brand of Leftism apparently has some bourgeois limits.

For one, I am not so foolish as to identify capitalism with democracy, although of course they both share roots in liberalism.  Moreover, I also make the perhaps bold distinction between democracy and methodology — something which most Americans don’t like to try.

The way I see it, for all of liberal democracy’s many strengths, it has become a breeding ground for discord.  I am critical of the system for the ways it manufactures consent, inspires egotism, partisanship, and mediocrity among public servants and the political class, and inevitably strips agency from the citizenry.  There has to be a better way of being democratic, of avoiding the short-sighted self-destructive cycles of liberalism without resorting to the sophistries of traditional Marxism.

For another, in light of the uprising in Kyrgyzstan and subsequent land seizures by impoverished citizens of that nation, I’ve had to seriously confront myself about my feelings toward private property.  After all, it’s easy to say I’m a Leftist, but Marx et al were prophetically correct that atomistic individualistic private property is at the core of capitalism, so am I  willing to put my money where my mouth is?  The answer is: not yet.

There are two reasons for my equivocal answer.  On the one hand, there were the Jewish and Protestant values I grew up with of hard personal labor, not to mention the hard lessons of my family’s struggles with money taught me about the need for thriftiness. However, at a more profound level is the sense of ownership itself, of possessing if nothing else one’s inner world and ultimate destiny.  Private property, then, is ultimately about the immortal soul.

Eyjafjallajökull versus Adam Smith

In this corner, weighing several hundred million tons of stone and ice, and armed with smoke, ash, and an unpronounceable name — NATURE!

And in this corner, weighing several hundred thousand tons of winged steel, and armed with the cool precision of spreadsheets and elite business degrees — ECONOMICS!

Twelve rounds, one K.O. Let’s get ready to RUMBLE!!!! (For only $200 million per day on Pay-Per-View television.)

This is how I’m spending my Easter vacation

So, yesterday I woke up with a deep, satisfying yawn, stretched, and said to myself, Ah, today is a good day to study.  Hmmm but let me just peak at what’s going on in Central Asia, since, after all, that’s my job… And then KABOOM! Kyrgyzstan explodes into revolution.  Gee, thanks guys!

This is the part about being an editor that is physically and mentally exhausting but very fun.  Covering events like this one aren’t so much “journalism” as we normally imagine it — digging up dirt in a noirish quest for truth — but more like an adrenaline-charged race as we hurry with all our might to keep up with events.

I’ve had to do all of the heavy lifting over here in the West, but much praise goes to our man in Bishkek, Mirsulzhan “Michu” Namazaliev, who is appearing all over the international media, including CNN and The Independent, on neweurasia‘s behalf (although he doesn’t shy away from plugging his own organization ).

It’s interesting to me how Kyrgyzstan has twice been a major event in my journalism career, beginning with the Tulip Revolution, and of course now with this uprising, whatever it may be.  Both events have demonstrated the power of what neweurasia‘s Annasoltan calls “digitalism“, a revolutionary (evolutionary?) flowering of human connection.

For all the headaches my job brings me, not to mention all the disruptions, my work as an editor has afforded me the opportunity to experience this sweeping change firsthand.  I am not only witnessing the future — I am living it.  That’s not a bad way to spend one’s Easter vacation, a season of upheaval, resurrection, and transfiguration.