Haz on Islam's Premature Modernity & Apocalypse (PART 2) - Infrared Show Clip 🚀 Infrared Content Catalog

you know so this is why also and this is

also another sense in which for me my

being a muslim is uh an indispensable

part of being a marxist leninist without

islam my marxism leninism

has no object right

it's because to me it's very clear to me

that when i through the past few years

have made these connections and

discovered these things it became clear

that we live in a pre-muslim world

in a sense like our world has not yet

drawn out to the consequences islam has

for humanity or modern tries to say for

modernity i should say

and it has changed my perspective on

modernity as a whole and islam's place

within it to me

it's a matter of a kind of lost

modernity and a lost enlightenment which

again began with my investigation of

marx's jewish question his work the

jewish question as i was looking for

answers to understand islam from a

marxist perspective and to me uh

both

the west as well as the muslim world at

large

have not awakened to this kind of new

religious era of islam i think it's one

of the only religions on earth

like for example it's very clear the

consequences of christianity for the

world in the form of modernity in the

form of uh oh yeah modernity itself

right

and the modern era as such as well as

judaism

but

to me what about hinduism

with the issue with hindus and buddhism

is they're not messianic religions so

those are more religions that deal with

a kind of cyclical view of time and as

such

can be constantly reinvented across uh

different epochs and different eras

a new kind of

so to speak muslim era right when i

remember i do come from this kind of

perspective when i say it's a muslim era

i'm not saying exclusively muslim but

you can look at it from that perspective

to me um islam's consequences for

modernity like there's something very

strange that happened in the muslim

world's encounter with modernity which

is

for the rest of the world it was an

apocalypse the modern age but for the

muslim world it was seen as a kind of

like almost competition right it never

was able to fully conquer

the muslim world um because it wasn't

really seen as like a challenger like

through the french revolution and all

these changes in europe the muslim world

yawned like

the the muslim response i don't know if

you know this to the french revolution

for example was oh they're overthrowing

the king

because they want to be equal and they

all want to be treated like

equal men yeah it sounds like a tuesday

you know what i mean like uh

that's this kind of revolution i mean

this this was not seen as like a world

shaking thing in the muslim world

whereas it upset everything in in europe

so to me it's like i don't know it's

also something i i kind of prefer to

usually keep private because uh it's

it's almost like you you lose touch with

what really makes it unique if you

if you're always talking about it that

makes sense i think

by the way

that uh when we interpret the system of

uh identity in the west and in islam in

the islamic world it's very very very

distinct right it is

very different

right and so

when these when the muslims responded to

the french revolution in the west

what the what i think the primary issue

that they saw was that in the west

there are these step systems

these axiomatic

systems

these are yeah there are these axiomatic

systems of form and how it must there's

a neuroticism a fundamental neuroticism

of just this paranoia of a fortress it

just

safeguarding itself against the

metaphysical outside constantly dividing

itself into hierarchies and absolute

points of division

things that were

things that just seemed like a cope from

like an eastern or muslim perspective

right yeah which is more focused on this

kind of

reverence of real

kind of i mean the reason why there's a

fatalism associated with the muslim

world from the western

from the western mind from the western

gaze

is because the muslim world uh the

object of islam divinity in islam and so

on

is really associated with metaphysical

being just being like what is what is

real what is

almost in a kind of nietzschean although

i'm not a fan of nietzsche i think he's

a bad guy but this is what conjures to

mind in the western mind whereas

in the west it seems like there is this

eternal war between spirit and matter

that has already been sublated in uh

islam yeah yeah no i mean if you look at

the systems of moshe in the west and the

east what you will notice is

the the western mind creates this

most ideal form and then everything

rationally must conform to it precisely

and precisely yes

therefore and here's and not only

is it an ideal form that must be imposed

upon the world but every semblance of

contradiction coming from the outside

is conceived as the intentionality of a

hostile and malign

agent yeah

yeah exactly and so there's this sort of

there's this loss of or organic

development in western thought and so

that's why a revolution is so uh in the

west

revolutions are these incredibly uh

impactful events which to this day you

know everybody talks about the french

revolution how it changed history

because

in that moment

that most ideal changeless timeless

object which everybody can perform that

everybody conforms to at that moment

received

uh a strike against it and then

everybody goes crazy because they're

like well wait a second this is supposed

to be

the most ideal timeless form

and uh the fact that it's being

something is breaking away from it or

something is struggling against it

that that is like

our the object of the enemy it's it's

the com it's

if if that makes any sense

yeah no i i completely get it but one of

the things that troubles me right and

this is why

i have such a non-dogmatic view

and this is really what troubles me what

happened

to the muslim world in this decisive

period of early modernity

such that this folly this western folly

so we could so to speak it culminates in

modernity which is you know modernity is

this elevation of

negation right and uh abstraction and so

on uh spirit basically more or less

over and against all indeterminate and

real things but what had happened in the

history of islam

such that

it had to be awakened to the shock

of modern industry and modern

cultural realities and so on and so on i

guess what i mean to say is um

i personally don't know this

would the muslim world have organically

developed what we call modern industry

and modern society or was there

something decisive about what happened

in europe

that plays in

a decisive part in the

history of islam

yeah and to me the question is like

why is it that

this

testing of

realizing the absolute threshold between

spirit and matter

form and content head and body had to

really be

just like why

did it have to be that why couldn't the

muslim world itself

uh

muster the inert the

power within itself or the potentiality

within itself to really probe the

threshold between for example mankind's

relationship to nature and and maybe

there it's an open question here is

there are traditionalist perspectives

that will say we could have but we knew

it was basically bad too like for

example modern industry and electricity

and so on these is like a opening to

demons and

even though you will live better like

you know what i mean like it's it

reminds me of how for example

chinese military

the development of the chinese military

was by no means tied to the

technological capabilities they were

able to develop weapons and technologies

that they intentionally did not

because of tradition and morality and

and things like that

like honor basically right so that's

really what

what's on my mind is

more or less this why did the muslim

world lag behind europe that to me is

the most important question

for muslims all around the world i do

think i i have a proposed answer for it

if you would like to hear sure yeah yeah

so first of all let me uh establish

something since the days of the prophet

muslims are against modernism now you

might say how is that possible modernism

is a phenomena only started really uh

occurring during before the french

revolution shortly before after

but uh in honesty there was this like

in the muslim world there's this concept

that uh has been there since basically

there was this hadith in sahih muslims

very very popular hadith in which it was

written

there will the end times will come when

these primitive arab tribesmen who

develop simple machineries to

fulfill simple tasks

when these uh when these tribes start

competing with each other to create

incredibly tall buildings now as you

know

oh that's happened yeah

yeah that's happening

and um why why was there this you could

say this superstition against against

this uh you know this very recent

architectural phenomena why were they

railing against it uh at the time of the

prophet thousands of years ago well it's

very simple

it's because i think

islam had this fixed rate of development

right

because the way they viewed material the

way they viewed essence

uh they did in a sort of a linear a

linear sense of development right

it wasn't

as if

somebody superimposed

superimposed one form upon the other and

there was a great struggle which ended

up uh sublating the two concepts in

islam the development was a much more

linear process one concept meets another

concept and they quickly sublet they

quickly sublate into these constant

linear processes now here's the argument

i would make for the west

the west faced a lot more struggle in

its development because the west uh well

these all these individuals uh were so

hyper um

were so um opposed to each other that um

in their struggles

uh the development was hyper accelerated

if that makes any sense yes it does it

does that's was actually hegel's

argument himself hagel said that the

almost infinite self particularization

and gradual determinant development

of the european small principalities in

tiny states

was much slower and much more gradual

in the sense of like

the rapidity of the development of

enlightenment and sciences and so on

whereas for him

the islamic dialectic so to speak was

really one of this kind of rapid as you

describe linear development

which left no space for the openness of

contradiction

itself exactly exactly and so one of

actually one of the issues was because

there was this

just the space of rapid linear

development

when opposition would rise up from the

west and plant itself in the seeds of

the east

there was an alien reaction to it which

completely halted organic development so

i'll try to explain this the ottoman

empire

was one of these glaring um

examples within history the ottomans

when they started developing at first

they were a muslim bailic they were

nomadic they were turkey yeah well when

they westernized

they received these enlightenment ideas

in the in the renaissance they allied

with france they developed these

concepts of um

uh you know the western individual and

they were the ones who were mostly

reading stuff like the cartesian corgito

right yeah um

well the rest of the east was not

exposed to this now what happened was

when the ottoman

sphere of thought which was importing

itself from the west uh

when it was imported itself from the

west the east did not know how to

respond to this because unlike all their

other linear rapid states of development

where okay two opposing or two opposing

things meet and sublate very quickly

all of a sudden development was halted

because they didn't really not respond

to the ottoman empire and you will

notice the ottoman empire historically

started declining rapidly because they

didn't have any development because they

had uh locked themselves between two

strong contradictions

where they were not developing right

it's almost as if they reached the end

of history too fast yes yes exactly they

reached

their the eastern philosophies

they had it

uh they possessed the eastern

philosophies but at the same time the

western developing forces were imposing

were starting to impose themselves on

this region on this continent and the

ottomans suffered between these two

contradictions and could not

could not come to some sort of you know

some sort of sublation between the two

if you know if you get what i'm saying

and uh what ended up happening was

because of that

the ottomans were the dominant eastern

power when they started to decline the

middle east started to decline and then

gradually you see colonialism

imperialism imperial expansion

you know to me this is what my

collective has investigated the most

the key to understanding islam islam is

a future oriented religion not a past

oriented religion

judaism for example is about the past

story of the people of israel and the

covenant and so on and so on and it's a

religion about moses and abraham going

back to the past but islam is a future

oriented religion and to me

the key

of islam's world historic significance

lies in

the landed nomadic empires as a whole

from the mongols to the turks

to the rest these are the ones who gave

i think there are even passages

indicating not in the quran but in other

texts that these nomadic step peoples

were the

force of the end times like the the

i don't know if you know what i'm

talking like the ones who wear horse

hair on their feet or whatever these are

the force of the apocalypse islam

already experienced its eschatological

end times its apocalypse in the form of

the invading nomadic turkic and uh

mongol um forces in the middle east

yeah and

this this was the kind of introduction

of this

cemented

this permanent state of um

contradiction

and the rapid linear development i think

you're talking about where

this they did not come from they were

not arabs they did not come they were

not originally muslim either this is

another kind of scandal but they later

would convert but they still represented

the one exception within the body of the

kind of muslim ummah so to speak while

at the same time being their guardians

this is a very common phenomenon by the

way

for example in egypt the mamluks became

the ruling dynasty right and the mom

lukes were foreigners from islam who

were molded in the uh

image of islam right

and the significance of that is

basically like

they're they're both outside and within

but they're the one exception within the

whole ummah that represents this outside

of outsideness

right

yeah foreigners but at the same time the

guardians of

the familial

so

yeah um

to me

there's an extremely interesting

relationship between

settled civilizations and said uh

nomadic

uh this is the biggest contradiction in

the whole history of

mankind right the settled and the

nomadic it's always been a recurring

contradiction islam became

it had its origins in the bedouins

nomadic people right

and

it took its its you know the highest

extent of its development was through

other nomadic empires like mongols the

turks

and especially the turks really honestly

but yeah also the berbers in north

africa and so on

but i mean this is not

a coincidence it's the nature of the

religion itself in relation to uh

humanity but

you know

what's interesting to me what i mean to

say with this is that especially with

the mongol invasions

you do see an apocalypse analogous to

that of

modernity

which is to say this process

that was such a trauma and shock to what

everyone had expected before him these

foreigners where not even muslim came

and basically defeated and conquered

everyone

um was a fundamental lasting um

historical point of trauma i think uh

similar to the way modernity introduced

itself for christian peoples right for

on other peoples throughout the world

and furthermore um

you also see parallels in the form of

like the kind of standardization of the

societies the

kind of um

unprecedented level of religious

tolerance the

formation of what appears to the types

of secular governments governance i even

under the mongols to me

that islam basically i'm torn between

two ideas one is that islam was

modernity it is literally the religious

form of modernity that happened too

early two

that islam was always modern so to speak

in a sense and that or that two

uh

islam

uh corresponded to this kind of mongol

modernity

greater islam experienced its modernity

earlier than europe did

and as a matter of fact the european

modernity was just a copy of the islamic

one yeah it's it's very interesting i

rephrase that because i was thinking

about this and the way you phrased it

that it is

it is like it is modernity that's

actually brilliant because when you if

you look at the sources of the early

sources the muslims always thought that

they were reaching an end of history

soon so i'll give you an example

did you know this early muslims thought

that the end of history was the conquest

of constantinople

in the hadith in the very early hadith

it is written when we will conquer

constantinople we will basically bring

about an end of history

it's also the um

this the gog and magog it's very clear

to me the people who are outside of uh

what is it the wall of alexander what is

it called again it's in persia

it's the dulcar

you know beyond that wall is the nomadic

step peoples who would eventually

conquer

constantinople itself

yeah under the banner of islam

yeah it's really fascinating that islam

was actually locked between these two

great forces rome what they considered

rome and the mongols and so

because of this

when encountering these two forces they

actually thought they were reaching an

end of history they rapidly developed uh

and

unlike again the west which locked

itself into these super impositions and

so because of that when we reach the

ottoman empire now we have a great

crisis the ottoman empire cannot

identify

its development

it it cannot identify it is my

development

that of the nomadic eastern forces or

the islamic arabian forces or the

western tecularizing forces and the

ottomans they simply could not

realize right they could not realize

where they were headed in a sense they

could not come to the uh terms then with

the fall of the ottoman empire the rest

of the middle eastern world soon

succumbed

to

the imperialist forces so they succumbed

to the imperialist forces and when the

western peoples descended upon islam

they did not see

this rapid chain of development this

assimilation of contradictions right

which by the way if you ask hegel that's

a very that's a very successful society

they they were able to

sublate so much uh in such a at such a

rapid pace compared to the worst when

they met

this culture when the imperialist forces

met this culture all they saw in it was

this is

the

antithetical

uh construction of christianity yeah and

they

imposed upon it it's well this is just

eastern christianity and the as we know

the asiatics they're a bunch of savages

and

yeah and so this a this asiatic

christianity is simply um

it only seeks to reflect it only seeks

to reflect our superior

uh western christianity and uh

uh correct me if i'm wrong

but this does sound sort of similar to

hegel's master slave dialectics right

yeah that's an interest i mean phanom

directly talks about that in the war in

algeria specifically about the islam but

you know to me um

here really is the kicker that's really

tough for me to understand