CMM1113. Tutor James Hall. Student 10043898 Susanne Harford. Blog 4, Week 10
The Twain Shall Meet. Part 11.
Or
The Society and State that protect the rights of the individual to think and embody thought.
Just as Christianity followed the flag into the Orient during the colonial era, today political Islam is entering the Occident not only through its religious institutions such as the mosques and madras, but also through personalised symbols such as the female burqa and niqab and the male turban and long beard.
Ali, 2010, August 6, p. 21.
How then to recognize individuality and to reconcile it with its intelligent and by no means passive or merely dictatorial, general and hegemonic context?
Said, 1978, Introduction, p. 9.
Today’s Western societies learn much about themselves, about their western world, and about the East or Orient, via western mass media. The Western press is relatively free, and thus it is extremely easy, on any day, to find outstanding examples of major differences between East and West. This blog will concentrate on just one of the many, many underlying, key differences between today’s “West”, and one sector of the East, the world of Islam – the rights of the individual. This difference is a cornerstone of Western societies. This blog will specifically discuss some of the rights of the individual citizens currently living in Western society; freedom of speech, the right of legal representation, and freedom of dress. By subjecting the reading by Said and some current Australian mass media articles to the theories of Giddens, Durkheim, and Thompson & Haytko, and others, this blog will argue that although Said’s 1978 version of “The East, or Orientalism” is now somewhat dated, the East of Islam is still very different to the modern/postmodern Western world of Australia. The blog will argue there are countless differences between the two States, and as the number of Islamic people taking up permanent residence in Australia increases, this important dilemma must be properly, and continuously considered and discussed – by the State, the institutions and the public.
Said’s East, or Orient, is not “disappearing … it’s time is [not] over” (1978, Introduction, p. 1). On the contrary the Eastern world of Islam remains vitally real, to continue as “one of [the West’s] deepest and most recurring images of the Other” (Introduction, p. 1). Today, differences between the Western world and the Islamic East remain sharp. Islam continues as a real (as versus imagined) “contrasting image, idea, personality, experience” (Introduction, p. 2). When Giddens discusses some of Durkheim’s western political concepts, he says they “only come into being with the development of the modern form of society” (1986, Introduction, p. 1), Giddens is discussing a world different to that of Islam. The Giddens/Durkheim world-views contrast starkly with the snapshot put forward by Ali and reported in the western mass media; that “Philosophically, Islamism is a revolt against modernism” (2010, August 6, p. 21).
The articles and the theory discussed in this blog highlight the modern/postmodern Western path of profound change and “evolution … [that Western society is now on and how the West] embodies conflicting factors, simply because it has gradually emerged from a past form and is tending towards a future one” (Giddens, 1986, Introduction, p. 26). The writings used describe a major and fundamental difference between the West and Islam; as Ali states “For more than 1,000 years, the pulpit with the support of Muslim governments has ruled over the minds of Muslims unchallenged, and has singularly remained the chief obstacle to any religious reform and cultural change” (2010, August 6, p. 21).
Countless facets of this difference – between the dynamism of the West and the sedentary nature of Islam – show up by Western mass media – every day. Giddens uses Durkheim’s “political theories” to describe the West (Durkheim, 1986, Introduction, p. 1). Durkheim says the West has gradually moved, over time, from a ‘mechanical’ to an ‘organic’ … type of society” (p. 2), and the “latter [the organic] refers mainly to the large-scale, industrialized form of society characteristic of modern times” (p. 2).
A supporting media example in The Australian, August 6, 2010 article entitled “Stoning lawyer flees Iran” (p 11) updates the Western public about a tragic saga of great general interest to the populace. This story of an Iranian woman who has already received a legal, public punishment of 99 lashes, and is awaiting a death by either stoning or hanging is foreign. The male lawyer representing the woman fled from one Islamic society to another – he is currently in solitary confinement in an infamous prison. This vibrant story of the East, of Islam, one that is foreign to the West of today, signals caution to new-readers in Australia.
The caution comes about, because, although similar punishments were common in the West as late as several centuries ago, today the woman’s “alleged” crime – adultery – is no longer punishable in this modern world of the West No woman, no matter what she had done, can be stoned, or scoured, and nor be deprived of legal representation. In the West, lawyers cannot receive treatment like this from the authorities, no matter whom they represent. Today Australia regards most forms of capital punishment as horrifying and barbaric.
Recently in Australia the rights of the individual to continuing legal representation, and the role of the western State in this process has been considered and the situation has been amended to ensure this occurs. This review was mainly brought about by the case of David Hicks. Giddens provides some insight, when he explains Durkheim further: “the tyranny of the conscience collective, through the growth of organic solidarity, [has been, in the West] gradually dissolved in favour of a cooperative order” (1986, Introduction, p. 5).
Previously Western society was, as is Islam today – “mechanical … [and] individuals [were] dominated by the conscience collective – the set of collective beliefs and values upon which the continuity of social life depend[ed]” (p. 2). Western mass media regularly demonstrates how far Western society has moved onto the current “organic” postmodern Western position. The West no longer holds fast to many of its earlier collective beliefs and values of the “mechanical” order. It is unlikely any similar set of punishments would occur in the West, by any judiciary, for any crime, or the lawyer thus compromised.
Another supporting example is James Jeffery’s recent snippet/article for Strewth! The Weekend Australian (April 3-4, 2010, p. 8). Australia is still ostensibly a Christian society and Jeffery publicly defends atheist’s rights to their beliefs, against attack by two foremost Christian leaders. It is interesting to consider Jeffery’s article in the light of Giddens’ further explanation of Durkheim’s views; that the organic society “produces the progressive emancipation of individual thought and action from subordination to the conscience collective” (Giddens, Introduction, 1986, p. 2).
In the article, Jeffrey pours irony over the Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen, and Anthony Fisher, the Catholic Bishop for Parramatta – for their verbal attacks on atheism. In the Australia of the past, Jeffrey’s words would have been considered a crime, both against the country’s religious leaders, and against Christian society. Returning to Giddens’ analysis of Durkheim helps explain why Jeffrey is able to openly criticise Christian leaders in the Australian press today. Giddens says: “The ‘normal’ tendency of the advancing complexity of society is to produce … a decline in the intensity of coercive sanctions” (1986, p. 5).
Thus, in modern/postmodern, Christian/secular Western-world Australia, the society dealing with Jeffrey is very differently to that punishing the woman in the current, Eastern world of Islam. Giddens words describe this difference:
a crime against strongly held collective values,
against ‘transcendent beings’; the same act which, when
it concerns an equal, [Jeffery versus the bishops]
is simply disapproved of, becomes blasphemous when it
relates to someone who is superior [as in the case of the woman]
the horror which it stimulates can only be assuaged by violent repression.
(1986, p. 6).
The regular Islamic “violent repressions” the Western mass media relay to the Western public are part of a process of preventing societal change. This is explained by Durkheim, who talks about how “the absolutist State is ‘closed in upon itself’, cut off from the people … [and how this situation in Islam] tends to inhibit the effective occurrence of change” (Giddens, 1986, Introduction, p. 7). Ali says that Muslim leaders of Islam are “prepared to accept the material products of modern science but reject the metaphysics that underpin this science … [and at the same time are engaged in] spread[ing] globalising political message of Islamism” (2010, August 6, p. 21). If Ali is correct, this goes against that which Said calls the enormous power and productivity that historically came about by close relations between the Occident (the West) and the Orient (Said, 1978, Introduction, p. 4).
Said describes the “relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony” (1978, Introduction, p. 5), and Giddens explains that the actions of “such States are indeed all-powerful against the individual” (1986, Introduction, p. 7). Actions like these bring the Islamic East into direct friction with the Australian West, where everyone is an individual, with individual rights. One major component of Islam’s entry into western societies is restrictions in the way its members dress. Ali calls this an “intrusion … confronting” and says that these modes of dress “represent a mindset … [and] create an “otherness” by the Islamists” (p. 21).
Thompson and Haytko state the absolute freedoms of dress of the West are all parts of a key way that Western individuals have the right to engage in “ongoing social dialogue … [via the] concrete issues of dress, clothing tastes, and public appearance” (1997, p. 15). These issues include “self-worth: the pursuit of individuality; the relation of appearance to deeper character traits; the dynamics of social relationships, gender roles, sexuality, standards of taste, economic equality, and social class standing” (p. 15). In addition, this individual right is a microcosm of how Said’s Orienatlism acts still acts as a counter-point to the way the West views itself, and as he says “Orientalism lives on academically through … doctrines and theses [originating in the West] about the Orient and the Oriental” (Introduction, p. 5).
Thompson and Haytko continue “consumers use … fashion discourse to address a series of tensions and paradoxes existing between their sense of individual agency (autonomy issues) and their sensitivity to sources of social prescription in their everyday lives (conformity issues) … in a number of creative and procreative ways that do not reproduce a single hegemonic outlook” (1997, p. 16). Thompson and Haytko’s words highlight how severely restricted forms of dress, especially public dress, such as in the Islamic world of the East, also restricts the individual’s freedoms.
In contrast, the right to choose how to dress, and the freedom to constantly change the appearance and the mode of dress allows the Western citizen to freely engage in and to develop “countervailing meanings manifest in complex ideological systems”. The Western citizen is thus able to “engage in novel juxtapositions and creative reworkings of dominant meanings” (Thomas and Haytko, 1997, p. 16). Thompson and Haytko state this freedom/s “run against the grain” of the prevailing mindsets and assist the society to consider many issues.
A “fashion discourse … [is an] intertextual affair (Scholes 1982) that incorporates a wide array of cultural viewpoints” (Thompson and Haytko, 1997, pp. 16, 17). Thus, many members of Western society may choose to engage in a hegemonic dialogue, can be involved in visually proposing change. These are key personal everyday freedoms that enable a Western individual to know they have some control over their own lives, and are “conscious of [them] it” (Giddens, 1986, Introduction, p. 9). This also provides positive reinforcement of the validity of their society – back to its individual members.
Ali points out that while “facial expressions are a means of communication and display the otherwise hidden character of one’s heart and mind”. In Islamic societies of the East insist on maintaining the strict imposition of specific modes of dress and appearance on individuals now forming part of Western societies, Muslims trying to integrate into Australia must “[deprive] not only themselves but also the rest of society an invaluable means of social communication and exchange”. (2010, August 6, p. 21). They will not allow their members to enter into the use of these “intertextual disjunctures” (Thompson and Haytko (1997, p. 17) that form key parts of the Western world, a society that Giddens and Durkheim see as
The State within a democratic polity is the main agency which
actively implements the values of moral individualism; it is the
institutional form which replaces that of the church in traditional
types of society” (1986, Introduction, p. 9).
Of relevance here also is Giddens’ statement:
the specific role of the democratic State is not to subordinate
the individual to itself, but in fact to provide for the individual’s
self-realization. The self-realization of the individual can only take place through
membership of a society in which the State guarantees and advances
the rights embodied in moral individualism.
(1986, Introduction, p. 9).
The current the Western world “guarantees and advances” (Giddens, 1986, p. 9) these rights of the individual. It provides ways and means to ensure this freedom occurs, even in the most difficult and controversial of cases, as with David Hicks. Conversely, the restrictions of the individual in Islamic societies do not appear to do the same, as in the case of the Iranian woman who received the flogging and now awaits the death sentence – without legal representation. Ali says that the maintenance by “political Islam” of strict dress codes is part of developing “parallel societies in the West” and that the Islamic societies “neither want to assimilate nor integrate” (2010, August 6, p. 21).
Australia is a Western society at the forefront of change, as discussed by Fisher and Sonn, who say The necessity to face up to major challenges, change that are entirely different”(2002, p. 599) is occurring as new arrivals are constantly arriving into Western society. Those arriving are considered different, and highlight their differences, and they still thus fill the role of what Hall describes as the Other of non-Western societies (1992, p. 291)
For new arrivals into Western societies like Australia to become accepted into that society, it is not only by the locals who must accommodate change. There must be generous assimilation and integration – by both the incoming and the established societies. Thompson and Haytko say:
Consumers interpretive uses of fashion discourses create emergent
meanings that reflect a dialogue between their personal goals, life
history, context-specific interests, and the multitude of countervailing
cultural meanings associated with fashion phenomena … [and
individuals use them to] transform, and in some cases, contest
conventional social categories, particularly those having strong
gender associations”
(1997, p. 17).
Vernon, in discussing empathy, says, “we are much more embedded in the social world of other people than we realise” (2010, September 24, p. 2). The mass media gives the societies of the Western world this ability, to decide, “how we will behave towards others” (p. 2). However, Vernon also goes onto say that, the modern concept of empathy can be ambivalent; that using empathy effectively “is a personal, political and moral challenge” (p. 2).
To arrive to live successfully in Western societies like Australia there must be generous assimilation and integration – by both the incoming and the established societies. Ali says that the maintenance by “political Islam” of strict dress codes is part of developing “parallel societies in the West” and that these societies “neither want to assimilate nor integrate” (2010, August 6, p. 21). Australia’s short history clearly shows the disasters that occur when one side or other does not accommodate change. The tragic result to the circumstances of the original indigenous Aboriginal people of Australia, the “inexcusable treatment of the original inhabitants” (Fisher and Sonn, 2002, p. 599), is a stark example. Their culture and their rights are only now – beginning – to be addressed by current Australian society-in-general.
Fisher and Sonn say: “Change in societies is one thing that cannot be avoided”(p. 598). That change to the plight of the Australian indigenous people can finally occur demonstrates the level of and the strength of the freedoms bestowed upon citizens of Western society, upon Australians. They say education and socialization (p. 604) provide major platforms for two-way assimilation, and that “Change may be slow and incremental, adaption to new environments, changing social mores (p. 598).
They are discussing” reformist rather than revolutionary” (p. 599), and are talking about personal freedoms. These freedoms contain certain responsibilities. Western individuals can, if they so wish, contribute to the ongoing hegemonic debate. They allow the individual the right to consider matters, challenge existing paradigms and established mores, and to personally represent ideas to the populace in general, and to the State – problems such as those presented by the entry of Islam into Western society.
The major way western societies learn about themselves, and others, is via the mass media. On any given day, countless examples are found in the free press. Today in Australia, each day the media deliver to the western masses messages that clearly display very important differences between the Islamic East and the West. This is because, as the 21st Century begins, the West is firmly fixed (one hopes) within the modern/postmodern world. In that world change occurs constantly and at great speed.
At the top of this blog stands Said’s question. Said is of the East, and his question asks how, while continuing to resist change in its own world of the East, Islam can continue to repress the development of many individuals within its ranks. This is an especially relevant question in Australia, where, at this time, many of Islam’s members are physically entering the modern, Western world of the individual – as citizens. Giddens states the Western world continues to move on from its own historic base and Australia’s short history clearly shows the terrible results that occurred in the past, when major changes to a society did not properly allow for all types of humans within the populace. Recently in Western mass media Ali described how the still-current, traditional Islamic mindset rejects fundamental Western individual freedoms; freedom of speech – as used by all the writers of the articles discussed, and all the theorists; the right to legal representation, as discussed in the article picked up from London’s The Times (which did not contain the writer’s name); freedom of dress – as discussed by Ali and Thomspson and Haytko. Although not specifically discussed in this blog the right to equality of all citizens, regardless of religion, gender and race, age, and so on, underpins everything discussed. The individual in the West owns the right to personally act or not, to worship or not, how to dress, to live, to eat, to drink, to have a dog as family companion, as they alone decide. All individuals in the West also have the personal right to change their mind, over and over again, about all of these facets of their way of life, including their appearance, their religion, as they alone decide. These are key freedoms that play major roles in the ways Western individuals views themselves and their Western world. They form essential components in an on-going hegemonic debate – between the State and society’s institutions and the people, in Australia and must not be compromised. The State of Islam and the West as in Australia differ markedly on these freedoms. The West will continue to embrace change, but it must be change that moves Western society and individual freedoms towards the future, not back to the past, which is where Islam is currently stuck. The West can only continue to successfully embody what Giddens calls conflicting factors, and successfully operate as a multicultural society – if the freedom of the individual continues to flourish.
Reference
Ali, A. (2010, August 6). Veil a relic of repressive culture: the burqa and niqab are the products of a
misogynist and patriarchal tribal system. Opinion: The West Australian. p. 21.
Fisher, A. T. And Sonn, C. C. (2002). Psychological Sense of Community in Australia and the
challenges of Change. Journal of Community Psychology, Vol. 40, No 6. Pp. 597-609.
Giddens, A. (Ed). (1986). Durkheim, E: Durkheim on Politics and the State. Oxford: Polity Press.
Hall, S. (1992). The West and the rest: Discourses and Power. In S. Hall & B. Gieben (Eds). Formations of modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Jeffery, J. (2010, April 3-4). God squad hits out. Strewth! Focus. p. 8: The Weekend Australian.
Said, E. (1978). Introduction: In E. Said. Orientalism. (pp. 1-9). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
The Times. (2010, Friday August 6). Stoning lawyer flees Iran. World 11: The Australian.
Thompson, C. J., & Haytko, D. L. (1997). Speaking of Fashion Consumers Uses of Fashion Discourses
and the appropriation of countervailing cultural meanings. Journal of Consumer Research. Vol 24. Pp. 15-42.
Vernon, M. (2010, Friday September 24). What sets people apart. Review. p. 2: The Australian
Financial Review.
susanneah 
