The Americanization of Mental Illness - Excerpts

Excerpts from:

The Americanization of Mental Illness
By Ethan Watters, January 10, 2010, NYTimes
Source


AMERICANS, particularly if they are of a certain leftward-leaning, college-educated type, worry about our country’s blunders into other cultures. In some circles, it is easy to make friends with a rousing rant about the McDonald’s near Tiananmen Square, the Nike factory in Malaysia or the latest blowback from our political or military interventions abroad. For all our self-recrimination, however, we may have yet to face one of the most remarkable effects of American-led globalization. We have for many years been busily engaged in a grand project of Americanizing the world’s understanding of mental health and illness. We may indeed be far along in homogenizing the way the world goes mad.

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In any given era, those who minister to the mentally ill — doctors or shamans or priests — inadvertently help to select which symptoms will be recognized as legitimate. Because the troubled mind has been influenced by healers of diverse religious and scientific persuasions, the forms of madness from one place and time often look remarkably different from the forms of madness in another.

That is until recently.

For more than a generation now, we in the West have aggressively spread our modern knowledge of mental illness around the world. We have done this in the name of science, believing that our approaches reveal the biological basis of psychic suffering and dispel prescientific myths and harmful stigma. There is now good evidence to suggest that in the process of teaching the rest of the world to think like us, we’ve been exporting our Western “symptom repertoire” as well. That is, we’ve been changing not only the treatments but also the expression of mental illness in other cultures. Indeed, a handful of mental-health disorders — depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anorexia among them — now appear to be spreading across cultures with the speed of contagious diseases. These symptom clusters are becoming the lingua franca of human suffering, replacing indigenous forms of mental illness.

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Western mental-health practitioners often prefer to believe that the 844 pages of the DSM-IV prior to the inclusion of culture-bound syndromes describe real disorders of the mind, illnesses with symptomatology and outcomes relatively unaffected by shifting cultural beliefs. And, it logically follows, if these disorders are unaffected by culture, then they are surely universal to humans everywhere. In this view, the DSM is a field guide to the world’s psyche, and applying it around the world represents simply the brave march of scientific knowledge.

Of course, we can become psychologically unhinged for many reasons that are common to all, like personal traumas, social upheavals or biochemical imbalances in our brains. Modern science has begun to reveal these causes. Whatever the trigger, however, the ill individual and those around him invariably rely on cultural beliefs and stories to understand what is happening. Those stories, whether they tell of spirit possession, semen loss or serotonin depletion, predict and shape the course of the illness in dramatic and often counterintuitive ways. In the end, what cross-cultural psychiatrists and anthropologists have to tell us is that all mental illnesses, including depression, P.T.S.D. and even schizophrenia, can be every bit as influenced by cultural beliefs and expectations today as hysterical-leg paralysis or the vapors or zar or any other mental illness ever experienced in the history of human madness. This does not mean that these illnesses and the pain associated with them are not real, or that sufferers deliberately shape their symptoms to fit a certain cultural niche. It means that a mental illness is an illness of the mind and cannot be understood without understanding the ideas, habits and predispositions — the idiosyncratic cultural trappings — of the mind that is its host.

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One study published in The International Journal of Mental Health, for instance, portrayed those who endorsed the statement that “mental illness is an illness like any other” as having a “knowledgeable, benevolent, supportive orientation toward the mentally ill.”

Mental illnesses, it was suggested, should be treated like “brain diseases” over which the patient has little choice or responsibility. This was promoted both as a scientific fact and as a social narrative that would reap great benefits. The logic seemed unassailable: Once people believed that the onset of mental illnesses did not spring from supernatural forces, character flaws, semen loss or some other prescientific notion, the sufferer would be protected from blame and stigma. This idea has been promoted by mental-health providers, drug companies and patient-advocacy groups like the National Alliance on Mental Illness in the United States and SANE in Britain. In a sometimes fractious field, everyone seemed to agree that this modern way of thinking about mental illness would reduce the social isolation and stigma often experienced by those with mental illness. Trampling on indigenous prescientific superstitions about the cause of mental illness seemed a small price to pay to relieve some of the social suffering of the mentally ill.
But does the “brain disease” belief actually reduce stigma?

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Analyzing the data, Mehta found a difference between the group of subjects given the psychosocial explanation for their partner’s mental-illness history and those given the brain-disease explanation. Those who believed that their partner suffered a biochemical “disease like any other” increased the severity of the shocks at a faster rate than those who believed they were paired with someone who had a mental disorder caused by an event in the past.

“The results of the current study suggest that we may actually treat people more harshly when their problem is described in disease terms,” Mehta wrote. “We say we are being kind, but our actions suggest otherwise.” The problem, it appears, is that the biomedical narrative about an illness like schizophrenia carries with it the subtle assumption that a brain made ill through biomedical or genetic abnormalities is more thoroughly broken and permanently abnormal than one made ill though life events. “Viewing those with mental disorders as diseased sets them apart and may lead to our perceiving them as physically distinct. Biochemical aberrations make them almost a different species.”

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Researchers hoping to learn what was causing this rise in stigma found the same surprising connection that Mehta discovered in her lab. It turns out that those who adopted biomedical/genetic beliefs about mental disorders were the same people who wanted less contact with the mentally ill and thought of them as more dangerous and unpredictable. This unfortunate relationship has popped up in numerous studies around the world. In a study conducted in Turkey, for example, those who labeled schizophrenic behavior as akil hastaligi (illness of the brain or reasoning abilities) were more inclined to assert that schizophrenics were aggressive and should not live freely in the community than those who saw the disorder as ruhsal hastagi (a disorder of the spiritual or inner self). Another study, which looked at populations in Germany, Russia and Mongolia, found that “irrespective of place . . . endorsing biological factors as the cause of schizophrenia was associated with a greater desire for social distance.”

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NOWHERE ARE THE limitations of Western ideas and treatments more evident than in the case of schizophrenia. Researchers have long sought to understand what may be the most perplexing finding in the cross-cultural study of mental illness: people with schizophrenia in developing countries appear to fare better over time than those living in industrialized nations.

This was the startling result of three large international studies carried out by the World Health Organization over the course of 30 years, starting in the early 1970s. The research showed that patients outside the United States and Europe had significantly lower relapse rates — as much as two-thirds lower in one follow-up study. These findings have been widely discussed and debated in part because of their obvious incongruity: the regions of the world with the most resources to devote to the illness — the best technology, the cutting-edge medicines and the best-financed academic and private-research institutions — had the most troubled and socially marginalized patients.

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Critically, the story allowed the person with schizophrenia a cleaner bill of health when the illness went into remission. An ill individual enjoying a time of relative mental health could, at least temporarily, retake his or her responsibilities in the kinship group. Since the illness was seen as the work of outside forces, it was understood as an affliction for the sufferer but not as an identity.

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Many traditional cultures regard the self in different terms — as inseparable from your role in your kinship group, intertwined with the story of your ancestry and permeable to the spirit world. What McGruder found in Zanzibar was that families often drew strength from this more connected and less isolating idea of human nature. Their ability to maintain a low level of expressed emotion relied on these beliefs. And that level of expressed emotion in turn may be key to improving the fortunes of the schizophrenia sufferer.

Of course, to the extent that our modern psychopharmacological drugs can relieve suffering, they should not be denied to the rest of the world. The problem is that our biomedical advances are hard to separate from our particular cultural beliefs. It is difficult to distinguish, for example, the biomedical conception of schizophrenia — the idea that the disease exists within the biochemistry of the brain — from the more inchoate Western assumption that the self resides there as well. “Mental illness is feared and has such a stigma because it represents a reversal of what Western humans . . . have come to value as the essence of human nature,” McGruder concludes. “Because our culture so highly values . . . an illusion of self-control and control of circumstance, we become abject when contemplating mentation that seems more changeable, less restrained and less controllable, more open to outside influence, than we imagine our own to be.”

CROSS-CULTURAL psychiatrists have pointed out that the mental-health ideas we export to the world are rarely unadulterated scientific facts and never culturally neutral. “Western mental-health discourse introduces core components of Western culture, including a theory of human nature, a definition of personhood, a sense of time and memory and a source of moral authority. None of this is universal,” Derek Summerfield of the Institute of Psychiatry in London observes. He has also written: “The problem is the overall thrust that comes from being at the heart of the one globalizing culture. It is as if one version of human nature is being presented as definitive, and one set of ideas about pain and suffering. . . . There is no one definitive psychology.”

Behind the promotion of Western ideas of mental health and healing lie a variety of cultural assumptions about human nature. Westerners share, for instance, evolving beliefs about what type of life event is likely to make one psychologically traumatized, and we agree that venting emotions by talking is more healthy than stoic silence. We’ve come to agree that the human mind is rather fragile and that it is best to consider many emotional experiences and mental states as illnesses that require professional intervention. (The National Institute of Mental Health reports that a quarter of Americans have diagnosable mental illnesses each year.) The ideas we export often have at their heart a particularly American brand of hyperintrospection — a penchant for “psychologizing” daily existence. These ideas remain deeply influenced by the Cartesian split between the mind and the body, the Freudian duality between the conscious and unconscious, as well as the many self-help philosophies and schools of therapy that have encouraged Americans to separate the health of the individual from the health of the group. These Western ideas of the mind are proving as seductive to the rest of the world as fast food and rap music, and we are spreading them with speed and vigor.

No one would suggest that we withhold our medical advances from other countries, but it’s perhaps past time to admit that even our most remarkable scientific leaps in understanding the brain haven’t yet created the sorts of cultural stories from which humans take comfort and meaning. When these scientific advances are translated into popular belief and cultural stories, they are often stripped of the complexity of the science and become comically insubstantial narratives. Take for instance this Web site text advertising the antidepressant Paxil: “Just as a cake recipe requires you to use flour, sugar and baking powder in the right amounts, your brain needs a fine chemical balance in order to perform at its best.” The Western mind, endlessly analyzed by generations of theorists and researchers, has now been reduced to a batter of chemicals we carry around in the mixing bowl of our skulls.

All cultures struggle with intractable mental illnesses with varying degrees of compassion and cruelty, equanimity and fear. Looking at ourselves through the eyes of those living in places where madness and psychological trauma are still embedded in complex religious and cultural narratives, however, we get a glimpse of ourselves as an increasingly insecure and fearful people. Some philosophers and psychiatrists have suggested that we are investing our great wealth in researching and treating mental illness — medicalizing ever larger swaths of human experience — because we have rather suddenly lost older belief systems that once gave meaning and context to mental suffering.

If our rising need for mental-health services does indeed spring from a breakdown of meaning, our insistence that the rest of the world think like us may be all the more problematic. Offering the latest Western mental-health theories, treatments and categories in an attempt to ameliorate the psychological stress sparked by modernization and globalization is not a solution; it may be part of the problem. When we undermine local conceptions of the self and modes of healing, we may be speeding along the disorienting changes that are at the very heart of much of the world’s mental distress.

Ethan Watters lives in San Francisco. This essay is adapted from his book “Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche,” which will be published later this month by Free Press.

Three Cups of Tea - A Critical Review

Three Cups of Tea - A Critical Review

By Ali A.

Different readers must have read “Three Cups of Tea” (2006) with varied emphasis and with different take-away lessons. The variation in their readings was probably informed by their educational, professional, geographic, ethnic, and national backgrounds, also their knowledge of the Pak and Afghan geographies and cultures, and, further, their understanding of current American involvement in these regions, its motives and history.

But, not all readings of this book are equal and not all facts and lessons from the book are worth taking. No doubt the book presents a remarkable story of courage and compassion. The purpose here is not to question those values. Nor to deny the personal struggles of the main character, Greg Mortenson, as depicted (and constructed) in the book. It is to scrutinize the cultural discourse – and solution – of 'development' and 'humanitarian intervention' offered in it. A New York Times bestseller that was subsequently published in two condensed versions for kids between 4 and 8 and 8 and 13 in the year 2009 and a required reading not just for school kids and social work majors in many US schools but also for senior commanding officers in the US military (according to the book’s official website), “Three Cups of Tea” has sort of become a canon for policy makers, social workers, and school teachers in many institutions. The availability of this book and its condensed editions in both original and cheap, pirated formats in bookstores of many South Asian cities indicates its widening popularity (or, at least, the potential for that). That makes it even more critical to carefully analyze the narrative and message of this book.

A particularly insightful approach to engage with this book is to examine its underlying normative assumptions and politics against the backdrop of the ‘cultural discourse’ that is being utilized to justify ongoing American hegemonic expansionism. This critical engagement is very relevant to how our humanitarian activists, policy makers, and general concerned audience, including you and I, understand these regions and peoples. It is also relevant for the kind of measures we adopt for 'solving' the regions' problems, deciding what is the 'right' thing to do, who should do it, and how.

Colonial Humanitarianism

First, the book never questions the idea of "humanitarian" intervention by an imperial power like the US, but only debates the method of such an intervention: That any such military intervention should be accompanied by humanitarian re-construction efforts, which (supposedly) would be a good thing for the local people and for American security interests (see p. 294). There is no reflection on Washington's past record of military interventions and its outcomes in this argument, and no appraisal of US motives and geo-strategic interests in the region. However, before any other question, the legitimacy of humanitarian interventions should be interrogated: What gives a country – especially a country like the US with a terrible track record of militarism and human rights violation – the right to violate sovereignty of other countries in the name of 'spreading democracy' and 'humanitarian interventions'?

Moreover, toward explaining the cause of extremism and 'terror', the book conveniently mutes the messy political history of the region-s. Perhaps because that history would point to the pivotal role that CIA, ISI, and Saudis played in creating the menace of terrorism and extremism. And, that would complicate the overly simplistic analysis of "terror" presented in the book. However, in any analysis of ‘terror’ in the Pak and Afghan regions, what should not be forgotten is that the Cold War was not fought in America or Europe but in regions like Pakistan and Afghanistan which are still paying the price of that war. In their efforts to combat Soviets, the US and its allies heavily funded and nurtured the most extremists of the militants in the region, because, as Mahmood Mamdani points out in his book "Good Muslim, Bad Muslim", they thought that fanatics fight harder. The US wanted to give Soviets their own Vietnam. The policy of using right wing religious organizations to combat socialist-nationalist impulses and movements was already a long-established US strategy in the Middle East before it was applied to the Afghan case.

Quoting a scholar from Pakistan, Mamdani also describes how a radical school curriculum was developed in an American university that was then taught to the children in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan, particularly in the NWFP (now known as Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa) and the FATA regions. The same children then would be recruited for fighting against the Soviets. The Taliban are just the second generation of those extremist militants that the CIA, ISI, and Saudis nurtured together, spending more than six billion dollars and providing sophisticated weapons and training. Without understanding this history and the influence of external powers, one cannot understand the causes of terror in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Furthermore, it should be made clear that the American interventions in these (and other) regions of the world are themselves a kind of terrorism which continues to breed more terror and violence in reaction.

“Three Cups of Tea” simply ignores this long history and continuing interests of regional and global powers. Instead, in its highly a-historical and a-political narrative, the roots of the problem are smoothly traced back to 'internal' causes within Muslim societies: the problem with competing interpretations of Islam and with local socio-economic and cultural conditions, in particular, illiteracy. The silence on the role of 'external' political factors allows the narrative of this book to present 'our' involvement as only humanitarian and benevolent: 'We have nothing to do with their mess; we only want to help them fix their mess. Because we are able to do it, therefore, we should do it, in good faith'.

As the book pampers the blissful ignorance of Americans – the primary target audience of the book – of the imperial and exploitative policies of their government, it also appeals to, and reinforces, a false sense of self-righteous philanthropy in them. However, not philanthropy, but social justice should be the idiom of American interaction with the rest of the world. The difference the second approach makes is huge, because it induces an attitude of humility and guilt as it also induces a critical political awareness.

What Americans need to understand is that their affluence, luxury, extravagant "way of life", apathy toward politics are all directly linked to wars and exploitation of people and resources by their government in other parts of the world (and in their own country too). And each American, especially those directly benefiting from the imperial exploitations, is morally responsible for the actions of the American government-s. The place to start any humanitarian effort is to put a stop on their own government's military adventurism as well as economic and cultural exploitations in other parts of the world. What needs to be understood is that anti-Americanism in most parts of the world is not a result of "ignorance" but of direct experience with the consequences of American exploitation. Without considering and addressing the political causes, trying to change 'culture' through education in Muslims societies won't be much effective. On the contrary, such culture-centered understandings of the issue have at times contributed to the propaganda and justification of Washington’s hegemonic expansionism (See Lila Abu-Lughod’s and Saba Mahmood and Charles Hirschkind’s articles cited below).

Saving Muslims from themselves

Building on that last point, before Americans could help other people they should seriously reflect on their own biases and normative assumptions. The narrative in "Three Cups of Tea" never seriously reflects on how colonial-istic and arrogant it is to try 'changing cultures' of other people, through military means or ‘soft’ humanitarian efforts, to what 'WE' consider is 'right' for them. To save those people, to civilize them, to help them progress, isn’t this old colonial discourse of 'white man's burden' in a new guise?

"Three Cups of Tea" mentions in the passing another book "Ancient Futures" but never really connects the moral of that book to its own overriding message, especially the message presented in its second half. From the brief mention of that book in "Three Cups of Tea", "Ancient Futures" appears to suggest that there can be multiple ways to be modern, and indigenous people and cultures do not necessarily need to follow the West-European and American route-s to becoming modern. In fact, their definition of 'progress' and 'modern' may be very different from 'ours'. This moral lesson was shared in "Three Cups of Tea", but it never had any significant impact on its grand narrative or message, which remained couched in the idioms of "backward vs. modern", "conservative vs. progressive", "fundamentalist vs. tolerant". At various point in the book one gets the impression that the farther one gets from one's tradition and 'conservativeness' and becomes ‘like us', in thoughts and actions, the more "modern" one seems to become. Such measures of ‘progress’ and ‘achievement’ are especially apparent in the aspirations and changes reflected in the characters of Jahan, Aslam, and Tahira by the author-s for their ‘Western’ audience (See pages 195, 204, 299-303, 312).

The contention here is not about building schools or providing other welfare services to people, but who is building them, with what assumptions, and purpose. Furthermore, what kind of education is being given in those schools, imparted with what impressions about indigenous culture and life, and at what cost?

With regards to impressions about indigenous culture and life, “Three Cups of Tea” misleadingly characterizes rural as essentially wild, poor, and ignorant, and therefore inclined on extremism and terror. Quite the contrary, rural areas in Pakistan – especially the places with sustainable living patterns and rich traditions – can't always be considered "poor". If progress is measured with ‘happiness’, ‘peace’, and ‘trust’, and not through extra-complicated life arrangements and material luxuries of urban areas, some of these rural areas may be far richer than their urban neighbors. One should also bear in mind that the rural areas in most of Pakistan have been historically known for their pluralistic cultural environment with emphasis on devotion and diffused religious culture and practices. That is especially true for the Northern Areas with very rich and diverse cultural histories.

To automatically equate “rural” with backwardness and ignorance is quite presumptuous and misleading. And, although the intention in “Three Cups of Tea” was probably to develop a more sympathetic understanding of the focused regions and bring ‘West’ and ‘East’ closer on humanitarian grounds, the narrative has strong resemblances with the colonial-style Orientalist discourse about “other” cultures. That discourse was built on “differences” between “us” and “them”. The “us” in this discourse constructed its self-image in relation to “them” and understood itself as enlightened, civilized, and superior. The other, unfamiliar cultures, in this logic, were seen as barbarian and dangerous, therefore, to be afraid of and to be controlled and civilized (See Edward Said’s insightful works cited below). The “other” in the present narrative is not necessarily the opposite but just behind “us” in the historical march toward progress, and “our” responsibility is to help them catch up.

Given such misleading impressions about the rural – widespread not only among foreigners but also social workers and policy makers from more urban areas of Pakistan – one wonders about the curriculum and teaching that are being given in those schools. What image of their own lands, people, culture, and religion the students studying such curriculum would develop for themselves? And what impact it would have on their self-identity and sense of purpose when the West-European and American historical experiences are taught to them as ‘universal’ and the only route to modernization (or the most successful and natural route to modernization). Such normative assumptions are abundant in the established ‘modern’ school curriculums found in both America and Pakistan. One therefore wonders when the students are taught about Western advancements, are they also informed about colonialism and slavery which were fundamentally part of the same project of Western "enlightenment" and "progress" – not as exceptions but as part of the very logic of "progress" and "civilization" as could be seen in the writings of John Locke and John Stuart Mill who rationalized and justified colonialism as a ‘progressive force’ which would civilize the indigenous people in colonized territories? And, similarly, when the students are enchanted with dreams of Western modernity, are they also allowed to competently and critically reflect on possessive individualism, excessive consumerism, exploitation of environment and people, and secular transformation of religions and traditions, which are all part and parcel of Western ‘Enlightenment’ and capitalist advancements, and to decide if taking the western route to becoming ‘modern’ is really that desirable?

Having spent some time in the Gilgit-Baltistan region recently and seen the outcome of some welfare projects run under similar organizations, including Aga Khan's, I am very concerned about the notions of "development" which detach children from their roots and land, make them lose their identity and self-worth, and about the notions of "progress" which are defined primarily in material-istic terms, that is material well-being of individuals and collectivities, but without serious regard for spiritual and cultural values and goals. It is one thing to adopt boiling practice for drinking water but quite another to start considering your traditional dress as dirty and backward. From this viewpoint, the character of Jahan in the book is quite illustrative of this problem.

Pakistan does need more schools and quality education, but simply constructing schools is not enough. The key is to look into the curriculum and teachers training. What kinds of identities are being constructed in the process of schooling, what role models are being presented, what outlooks of the world and sense of purpose in life are being imparted, and what tastes, desires and values are being constructed?

We need to ask similar question about other development projects in the region: What cost and consequences to people, culture, identities, values, and environment?

Gross Misrepresentations

Apart from problems with normative assumptions in the book, there are gross misrepresentations which require thorough scrutiny. That includes elements of fictions. For example, as one commentator pointed out elsewhere, "Mortenson could not have attended Mother Teresa's funeral in Spring 2000 (pp 233-235) because she died in Autumn 1997" (Nosheen Ali, 2010).

I also have serious doubts about Mortenson's kidnap episode in Waziristan. Those familiar with the geography of the region know very well that the Northern Areas (Gilgit-Baltistan) are miles apart from Peshawar and the FATA areas (where “Waziristan” is), and it makes little practical sense to expand the project to that far-away region when Mortenson had not completed even his first school in Korphe, Baltistan (and the book itself admits that the people in Korphe’s neighboring areas desperately wanted schools in their localities). On the same note, consider also the November 1979 issue of Time Magazine covering the Iran hostage crisis that Mortenson finds in his cell and through which he and co-author, David Relin, construct an emotion-filled, deeply touching narrative of fear and hope in the same episode. The story was probably quite inspiring to many American readers, but it is very unlikely for that English-language, 15 years old issue, with a "garish painting of a scowling Ayatollah Khomeini" on the cover, to be found in a cell located somewhere in the remote area of Waziristan. Likewise, the whole episode is filled with holes that were never satisfactorily addressed, leaving too many doubts. The episode, curiously enough, is also devoid of traceable details about “Waziristan”. (One can similarly question his excursions, their nature and purpose, into Afghanistan immediately after the fall of the Taliban regime.)

The Waziristan episode was critical to collapse starkly different geographies, cultures, and political histories into each other to frame Mortenson's tale and message in terms of combating "terrorism". That became possible only by suppressing the rich histories and variations among Northern Areas, Peshawar, FATA, and Afghanistan. Northern Areas (Gilgit-Baltistan) have 60-75% Shia population, whereas demographic makeup in the FATA areas is quite the inverse. Northern Areas, furthermore, are ethnically and linguistically much more diverse than the FATA areas. The connection with terror of the Sunni-radical-Taliban kind could not have been made by just discussing the Northern Areas, where Mortenson actually did the majority of his educational and welfare work. How were these regions connected in “Three Cups of Tea” then? Not through showing any parallels between their cultures, political histories, or geographies, but through Mortenson's travel, and through that the readers were given the impression that these starkly different regions can all be understood as one geographic and cultural entity – untamed and dangerous, in desperate need of education and enlightenment.

Perhaps the author-s and publishers wanted to collapse these regions to make their story more marketable considering the hype about terrorism and its sell-ability in America, as Nosheen Ali suggests in her analysis (Nosheen Ali, 2010). Perhaps, they also wanted to make their narrative more relevant and engage with the current war-on-terror discourse seriously and sincerely – but, evidently, uncritically and un-self-reflectively – through their own liberal-humanist diagnosis of the problem: That is, ‘ignorance and backwardness are the root cause of terror in the Muslim world'.

The overly simplistic-and-generalized depiction of ‘rural as wild, poor, and ignorant in Pakistan inclined on extremism’ was also instrumental for the author-s to make the case for their kind of solution: ‘Build schools before madrassas gets them’. The subtext of this solution is that secular education would turn students into ‘modern’ Muslims (read: “Good Muslims”, defined as modern, progressive, tolerant, pro-West) and remove their misunderstandings and ignorance about America (because to have those “misunderstandings” is wrong and characteristics of “Bad Muslims”, defined in the dominant cultural discourse as backward, fundamentalists, violent, and anti-West.).

Toward conclusion, ignorance no doubt has created a lot of injustice in the world and no region is spared from its evils. For concerned Americans perhaps the most optimal place to start combating ignorance is America itself. But, simply opening more schools in America won’t do it. Because celebrating “Columbus Day” as “discovery of America” but not as colonial exploitation of civilizations which already existed in the Americas, and observing “Thanksgiving” as the national holiday but without contemplating on the historic injustice done to Native Americans, and slaves and indentured servants for that matter, will continue to reinforce that blissful ignorance and false self-righteousness in Americans. “Columbus Day” and “Thanksgiving” are just two among many instances of distorted elements in the established (dominant) curriculum and teaching practices. What we need is a substantial transformation of the established curriculum taught in the schools – and in the content of other popular sources, like TV, movies, novels, magazines, from which people learn history and construct their imaginations and identities. And, not philanthropy or false national pride, but a deep concern for social justice for everyone and a self-reflective and sincere understanding of other cultures should be the guiding principles for developing that curriculum.

For further readings on this line of argument, see:

"Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?"
http://www.smi.uib.no/seminars/Pensum/Abu-Lughod.pdf

“Feminism, the Taliban, and Politics of Counter-Insurgency.” By Charles Hirschkind and Saba Mahmood http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/1/777777190136/

Particularly, on problems with the binary of “Good Muslim vs. Bad Muslim”, see
"Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: Cracking the Media Code"
http://www.islamicinsights.com/news/opinion/good-muslim-bad-muslim-cracking-the-media-code.html

See also, Nosheen Ali’s excellent analysis of this book,
Ali, Nosheen. 2010. "Books vs Bombs? Humanitarian development and the narrative of terror in Northern Pakistan", Third World Quarterly, 31: 4, 541 — 559

Edward Said’s works, particularly, “Orientialism”, “Culture and Imperialism”, and “Covering Islam”, deal directly with some of themes discussed in this review.

Ali A. is doctoral student in Social Sciences. He can be reached at alismails786@gmail.com. Other versions of this article appeared in IslamicInsights and InkPaperMosaic


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[Edit Aug 6, 2010]

Further comments based on readers' responses from a discussion in a public forum:

Thank you for your thoughtful comments. Let me try to address them one by one:

**** Wrote: "Mr. Ali, with your assertion that, “…the book presents a remarkable story of courage and compassion. The point is not to question those values. It is to scrutinize the ideas (and solution) of ‘development’ and ‘humanitarian intervention’ offered in this book…” you are precisely undermining its message. I will also add that since this book is a novel, and not some study on the Afghanistan/Pakistan problem, it should not be criticized with the criteria that you use. Nevertheless, I will try to show that even with your pre-established criteria for judging the book, the book is still a great read."

1. In case you missed it, the book is written in the style of a realistic biography and partly as ethnography. Read the Harry Potter series instead if it is just courage and compassion that you are looking for and if that is your only criteria for judging the worth of this book. This book deals with some serious issues and the representation of the regions and solutions that it offers has some severe implications. And for that reason its narrative should be seriously engaged. “Three Cups of Tea” has sort of become a canon for policy makers, social workers, and school teachers in many institutions.

**** Wrote: "You accurately depict the US as an “imperial power” that does not have a stellar record when it comes to humanitarianism. Then you ask: “What gives a country – especially a country like the US with a terrible track record of militarism and human rights violation – the right to violate sovereignty of other countries in the name of ‘spreading democracy’ and ‘humanitarian interventions’?”

My answer:

The US does not have the right at all, but it has a duty to act in this unique case. Why? The US is ultimately responsible for the “mess” that continues to grow in that region. ... Therefore, since the US was one of the main actors in creating the problem, it is obliged to “fix” it too!"

2. No doubt, the US has created a mess in the Afghan-Pak regions. Good that we are on the same page on this point. What you also need to realize is that the current US presence in those regions is not out of altruism and benevolence. Furthermore, the continuing presence is actually exacerbating the political conditions there. For example, in Pakistan, we did not have any suicide bombers before 9/11, now we export them! Thanks to Bush and Musharraf’s anti-terrorism policies! In the case of Afghanistan, you may want to read on the phenomenon of “neo-Taliban” in Afghanistan (see, for e.g., Tariq Ali’s column cited below), who were not trained in the traditional madaaris of the 1980s but are from common Afghan people who have joined resurgent militant elements only after the American invasion, in reaction to continuous American bombardment and other misadventures in their country. What you also need to realize is that American intervention in these regions are themselves a kind of terrorism, which continues to breed more terror and violence in reaction.

**** wrote, "You claim that there is “…silence on the role of external ‘factors’….” in the book. This is false, because the book explicitly mentions the various external factors that I stated above. Specifically, Mortenson says it was the CIA which made “…Stinger missiles and the training to fire them effectively available to mujahedeen leaders battling America’s Cold War enemy here, leaders like Osama Bin Laden.”"

3. Of course, a few external factors have been ‘mentioned’ in the book, but never considered in the diagnosis of the main problem. The stinger missiles that you name were mentioned only in the passing and in inconsequential terms (see pgs. 213 and 217). And, if you look at the narrative carefully, even after ‘mentioning’ the external factors, the logic or cause of terrorism is basically traced back to the INTERNAL factors in the book: Conflict in interpretation of religion; the “good” and “bad” Muslims in that region; and, above all, illiteracy (as illustrated in the title of one of its chapters: “the enemy is ignorance”).

Once again, contrary to the book’s message, anti-Americanism in most parts of the world is not a result of “ignorance” but of direct experience with the consequences of American exploitation.

4. On the issue of false sense of self-righteousness, my basic contention is about the idiom of American engagement: philanthropy vs. social justice. The book does complicate the narrative of American engagement to some extent, but, as I argue in the review, the basic idiom remains the same. The courage and compassion that you find very inspiring in this book also feed into this idiom. I have made this point already in the review – so, won’t repeat that here. For further elaboration, you may want to read Lila Abu-Lughod’s and Saba Mahmood’s articles (cited below). You may also want to look at the politics of “Good vs. Bad Muslims”, which is part of that cultural idiom and discourse (See the article cited below).

5. Again, the subtext of Mortenson's solution is that secular education would turn students into ‘modern’ Muslims (read: “Good Muslims”, defined as modern, progressive, tolerant, pro-West) and remove their misunderstandings and ignorance about America (because to have those “misunderstandings” is wrong and characteristics of “Bad Muslims”, defined in the dominant cultural discourse as backward, fundamentalists, violent, and anti-West.). This subtext contradicts your claim that Mortenson’s solution is just about building schools and the curriculum choice is on the locals. For without the modern, secular curriculum that is by default the established curriculum in Pakistan, with all its faults, how is a school any different from a madressa. It’s the curriculum that makes all the difference and that is the key factor in Mortenson’s solution, even if he does not speak about that in open terms.

6. *** wrote, “The book proposes education and books as the solution, not wars and weapons. (With all due respect, I think you should be ashamed of yourself for depicting Mr. Mortenson in such a negative way for there are few people in the world who dedicate their entire lives in helping other human beings and bridging gaps between cultures. These are the people of action, not words.)”

At some points in the book, I agree with you, one does get the impression that the character Mortenson (as depicted in the book) opposes the American war-s and proposes books in place of wars. However, on pg. 294, Mortenson explicitly states that he supported “the war in Afghanistan” . He further says on the same page, “I believed in it because I believed we were serious when we said we planned to rebuild Afghanistan. I’m here [in Afghanistan] because I know that military victory is only the first phase of winning the war on terror and I’m afraid we’re not willing to take the next steps.” So, Ms. ****, if you look at his message closely, he is basically asking for a well-rounded strategy for war on terror, in which books should follow bombs in any post-war reconstruction efforts. In other words, ‘development’ should be part of US war strategy.

7. On the point about imposing normative assumption, as I suggest earlier, despite mention of some self-reflective works (like “Ancient Futures”), the grand narrative of the book remains couched in the tropes of “backward vs. modern”, “conservative vs. progressive”, “fundamentalist vs. tolerant”, in a new-Orientalist kind of narrative. As I suggest earlier, at various point in the book one gets the impression that the farther one gets from one’s tradition and ‘conservativeness’ and becomes ‘like us’, in thoughts and actions, the more “modern” one seems to become. Such MEASURES of ‘progress’ and ‘achievement’ are especially apparent in the aspirations and changes reflected in the characters of Jahan and Tahira by the author-s. Read closely the pages 195, 299-303, and 312.

For example, when Jahan says, “I couldn’t take my eyes off all the foreign ladies…They seemed so dignified. Whenever I’d seen people from downside before, I’d run away, ashamed of my dirty clothes.” (p. 195)

Or, when the book describes Tahira’s aspirations with these words: “Tahira, wearing a spotless white headscarf and sandals that wouldn’t have been practical in the mountains, told Mortenson that once she graduate, she planned to return to Korphe and teach alongside her father, Master Hussein. “I’ve had this chance,” she said. “Now when we go upside, all the people look at us, at our clothes, and think we are fashionable ladies. I think every girl of the Braldu deserves the chance to come downside at least once. Then their life will change. I think the greatest service I can perform is to go back and insure that this happens for all of them.” (p.312)

***, you may be seeing Jahan or Tahira as mere individuals who are asserting their personal aspirations. I am seeing their views as part of a pattern. It would take too much space to get in the debate of what’s wrong or right with this pattern and based on what perspective. Now, I am not saying all of these problems can be traced back to the curriculum being taught in those schools. The argument I presented is not just about what’s in the content but also what’s not in it and therefore what becomes the default presumption and bias. In that regard, in the review I hinted at some observations from my experience in the region and talk with people there. See the point about Western Enlightenment.

Furthermore, when I talked to people, I find that their aspirations and experiences of educational development and consequences are much more nuanced and multi-faceted than what was flatly and romantically presented in “Three Cups of Tea”. To give you just one example from a workshop that I conducted a couple of weeks ago in an area close to Gilgit, in which I emphasized on taking a comprehensive and cultural-sensitive approach to educational development, one community worker shared a concern that a single-minded emphasis on female education has created a disbalance in some places where you now have about 90% female literacy rate but very low male literacy rate. Now there aren’t good marriage proposals for these girls, many of whom end up in relationships that are less than satisfying to them. He connected that to the increasing number of suicide cases among educated females in a particular community. The observation, no doubt, requires further research into the causes and here I only present that as just a question to problematize the single-minded emphasis on female education advocated in “Three Cups of Tea”.

The observation also raises a number of other related questions here. The approach shared in the book is ‘ask people what they want and help them to get that’. You see that careful, contextual approach in the first few cases in the book, but then building-schools becomes the one-solution-for-all-problems for the rest of the places, especially in the second half of the book, with a focused emphasis on female education. We see no dialogue or critical exchange that should be the key ingredient of his advocated approach. Instead, the book relies on a very simplistic, if not misleading, diagnosis of local cultures and their problems (as I argue in my review) and advocates its single-minded solution to a problem (Wahhabi-Taliban style terrorism) that does not exist in the Northern Areas. That contradicts the approach that the book advocated at the beginning.

Community workers from the area shared a variety of experiences and approaches in their comments in my workshop, which were not always in agreement with each other, but they presented a quite complex picture of ground realities and needs. I wish Mortenson had continued the approach he advocates in principle, because that would have allowed us to see the variety of social factors and solutions that may be available. Next, and this might sound contradictory to the previous observation, but it could be argued that common people may not always know what may be best for them; more specifically, what may be the consequence of a certain educational development approach. To simply rely on their wishes may be too naive, and at times, irresponsible. I distinguish common people from the experienced community workers and that should resolve that apparent contradiction.

At times, especially in the second half of Mortenson’s book, I also felt that we see characters (not always professionals or experienced community workers) that speak exactly what he wanted to hear, expressing ideas and aspirations in a flat, almost romantic fashion for the Western readers about what needs to be done. This is probably due to the single-handed, decontextualized, anti-terror rhetoric and approach in the later half of the book, and perhaps also due to the construction of narrative by the two authors under the influence of the cultural discourse and in view of increasing the appeal of their narrative.


More Articles:

“Feminism, the Taliban, and Politics of Counter-Insurgency.” By Charles Hirschkind and Saba Mahmood http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/1/777777190136/

Tariq Ali on Neo-Taliban: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174977/tariq_ali_has_the_u_s_invasion_of_pakistan_begun_

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[Edit December 1, 2010: In another forum where this review was published, a person named Ghulam Parvi posted the following]

"GM. Parvi (Ghulam Parvi in three cups of tea). #

10.24.2010 10:56

Dear Ali and Friends. I am Ghulam Parvi for whom Greg Mortenson praised in his book three cups of tea.I know him, I worked him, I taught him, I helped him morally, physically and financially. Before publishing the book, when Greg showed me draft book, I told Greg and David that they have included many false stories and quite wrong picture of local culture and religion and law, Greg promised and committed that he will not included those false stories, but they published. Every reader should know that I was the translator to David Oliver Relien, when Greg brought David to Baltistan to polish the stories of three cups of tea. I am the eye witness to say that David and Greg has included false stories.

He proved himself to be a dishonest and false story teller. He and David has made the book interesting, with fictitious stories. When he says himself, what and how his humanitarian services mixes with Saudi Arab, Iran, Kuwait, Religious conflict, Wahabism, Taliban, etc. etc. He has shown him as Hero, while he has not mentioned great services of the local people, local organizations and groups.

Does the American Readers believe over the stories? Without confirmation. Strange. Do not the publisher of America need permission to publish ones reference, who is defamed. Are the American writers, publishers and humanitarian workers like American Army, who blamed Iraq for having mass destruction weapons, attacked Iraq against the will of UNO, and then later committed that there were no weapon of mass destruction and the report of their CIA was baseless."

Whose "Human Rights"?

This is from Talal Asad's book "Formation of the Secular" (2003). In it, he critically engages with the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum's 'Human Capabilities' approach to human rights.

Asad's critique problematizes the normative assumptions of (this version of) liberal "Human Rights" discourse, as well as dissects its political utility.

"The self-owning “human”

I said earlier that the Universal Declaration does not define “the human” in “human rights” other than (tautologically) as the subject of human rights that were once theorized as natural rights. But what kind of human does human rights recognize in practice?

Those who formulate and implement Western policies often assume that there is a natural fit between the legal culture of “human rights” and the wider culture of “Western norms.” This includes particular attitudes to the human body and to pain. In Chapter 3 I mentioned some post-Enlightenment views about measures of suffering that allowed imprisonment to be represented as humane as opposed to flogging. Here I want to pursue a slightly different point: attitudes to the body indicated by such moral preferences – why, for example, confinement, even solitary confinement, is an acceptable form of punishment while any punitive practice that directly impinges on the body is not.

High value is clearly given to the integrity of the body – which explains in part the particular horror in Euro-America at the widespread custom of female genital mutilation in some African regions. I say “in part” because there is no comparable sense of horror at the custom of male genital mutilation. The latter is, of course, a quite familiar practice in the Judeo-Christian West and the former is not. But there is more to it than that. There is the belief that female circumcision, unlike the male variety, interferes with the sexual pleasure of the women. The enjoyment of sexual intercourse is a valued part of being human; anything that interferes with that enjoyment is in some powerful sense inhuman. [31] It therefore becomes a matter of a human right and its violation. So there is here both an interference with the subject’s ability to experience “full” sexual pleasure. The human being owns his or her body and has the inalienable right to enjoy it.

In an impressive series of publications Martha Nussbaum has reopened the old question of human nature through the Aristotelian idea of human capabilities that she recognizes can also be linked to the concept of human rights. Her basic idea is that a list can be compiled of central human functional capabilities (for example, “Being able to use the senses, to imagine, think, and reason – and do these things in a ‘truly human’ way, a way informed and cultivated by an adequate education, including, but by no means limited to, literacy and basic mathematical and scientific training. Being able to use imagination and thought in connection with experiencing and producing self-expressive works and events of one’s own choice, religious, literary, musical, and so forth” [Nussabum, pp. 78-79]). The universal character of these capabilities, according to Nussbaum, can be found in the Rawlsian idea of “overlapping consensus,” which I have discussed briefly in connection with Taylor’s use of it in the Introduction. “By ‘overlapping consensus’ I mean what John Rawls means,” she writes, “that people may sign on to this conception, without accepting any particular metaphysical view of the world, any particular comprehensive or ethical view, or even any particular view of the person or of human nature.” And yet, Nussbaum’s idea of universal capabilities does express the emerging idea of “the human” in it. A subject possessing bodily integrity, able to freely express himself or herself, and entitled to choose for herself or himself what to believe and how to behave is not simply a “freestanding moral core of a political conception” to which people sign on. It is itself a thick account of what being human is – and one that underpins human rights.

As a view of human nature it follows that where these capabilities are not being exercised due to obstacles, their removal will allow humans either to exercise them spontaneously (and to rank them), or to freely choose not to do so. However, humans will have to be taught what good capabilities are and how to exercise them, and to be prevented from exercising vices that harm others. After all, humans are also capable of cruelty, greed, arrogance, treachery – indeed there is scarcely anything they are not capable of. So part from being able to identify vices and their harmful social effects, someone must have the power to identify “obstacles,” to remove them, and also to ensure – by force if necessary – that vices are not restored. That sovereign power is a human capability too, but not one that everyone may freely exercise simply on that account. When invested in the state, that juridical power becomes a precondition for the flourishing of human capabilities. According to Nussbaum, that state must, of course, be one committed to universal values. As such it would not only secure the same rights for all its citizens, but also their ability to experience the emotions of love, grief, justified anger – and even their ability to “use the senses, to imagine, think, and reason – and to do these things in a ‘truly human’ way.” One difficulty here is that the secular state now becomes the definer of “the truly human,” and although Nussbaum attempts to distinguish between capability and functioning, assigning only the definition of the former to the state, it is not always possible to distinguish between them.

There are other well-known problems with this view that may be noted in passing. First, the ability to choose freely whether or not to exercise a capability sometimes encounters a contradiction: because certain choices are irrevocable, they themselves may constitute insurmountable obstacles to further choices (as an illiterate one cannot make an informed choice regarding literacy unless one has experienced it, but having become literate one cannot then change one’s mind). Second, it is a notorious fact that human capabilities – and the conditions in which they are realized – are subject to conflicting interpretations. When “human capabilities” are legally enshrined the business of interpreting them is the privilege of judicial authorities and technical experts, and politics proper is excluded. In brief, it becomes a matter of domination rather than negotiation.

Who - in a world of nation-states - has the authority to interpret and the power to promote the conditions that facilitate human rights, and "the human" they sustain? At a meeting two years ago the U.S. Trade Representative negotiating China's entry into the World Trade Organization causally observed in response to a journalist's question that "democratic political reform and greater adherence to human rights are certainly encouraged by an opening to the West and Western norms." What might these norms be when viewed as styles of life relating to specific kinds of subjectivity?

In a recent article on American global power, Ignacio Ramonet, chief editor of Le Monde Deiplomatique, recounts the scale of U.S. military, diplomatic, economic, and technological hegemony, and then goes on to ask why - given the liberal democratic ideology of equality and autonomy - there isn't more criticism of it? I quote his elegant answer in full:

"No doubt because US hegemony also embraces culture and ideology. It has long been the home of many fine, universally respected intellectuals and creative artists in every field, who are quite rightly admired by one and all. Its mastery extends to the symbolic level, lending it what Max Weber calls "charismatic domination". The US has taken control of the vocabulary, concepts and meaning of many fields. We have to formulate the problems it invents in the words it offers. [The article at Le Monde's website currently has the following sentence instead: "It obliges us to formulate problems of its own invention with the words it offers". Italics supplied by Asad. He also combined the paragraphs together.] It provides the codes to decipher enigmas it created in the first place. In fact, it has set up any number of research centres and think-tanks for this very purpose, employing thousands of analysts and experts. These eminent bodies produce reports on legal, social and economic issues with a perspective that supports the ideal of the free market, the world of business and the global economy. Their lavishly funded work attracts endless media attention and is broadcast the world over... Wielding the might of information and technology, the US thus establishes, with the passive complicity of the people it dominates, what may be seen as affable oppression or delightful despotism. And this is all the more effective as its control of the culture industries lets it capture our imagination. The US uses its admirable know-how to people our dreams with crowds of media heroes, Trojan horses despatched by their master to invade our brains. Only 1% of the films shown in the US are foreign productions, while Hollywood floods the world with its wares. And close behind come television series, cartoons, videos and comics, not to mention fashion, urban development and food. The faithful gather to worship the new icons in malls - temples raised to the glory of all forms of consumption. All over the world these centres of shopping fever promote the same way of life, in a whirl of logos, stars, songs, idols, brands, gadgets, posters and celebrations (like the extraordinary spread of Halloween in France). All this is accompanied by the seductive rhetoric of freedom of choice and consumer liberty, hammered home by obsessive, omnipresent advertising (annual advertising expenditure in the US exceeds $200bn) that has as much to do with symbols as with the goods themselves. Marketing has become so sophisticated that it aims to sell not just a brandname or social sign, but an identity. All based on the principle that having is being... The American empire has become a master of symbols and seduction. Offering unlimited leisure and endless distraction, its hypnotic charm enters our minds and instills ideas that were not ours. America no longer seeks our submission by force, but by incantation. It has no need to issue orders, for we have given our consent. No need for threats, as it bets on our thirst for pleasure."

I do not present this statement as decisive evidence of what is going on in the world. Its interest lies in the explanation it offers of how, by having "to formulate the problems [America] invents in the words [America] offers," global society adapts to a stronger, more modern language - in which the equal rights to pleasure can be articulated as America's project of secular redemption. [38] Ramonet's recognition that the desire to do as one pleases (to do what pleases one) evoked by marketing discourse is familiar enough - the normalization of consuming desires is a banal feature of contemporary capitalist society often noted by both supporters and critics. Familiar, too, is his suggestion that the human being assumed in modern market culture is an autonomous individual who seeks pleasure and avoids pain. For just as electoral democracy postulates the equivalence of citizens (each of whom counts as one and only one) within any given party, so market strategies assume the equivalence of buyers (each of whom counts as one) within any given niche. In both cases the choosing subject is a statistical object to be targeted, added to or separated from other individuals. It is this that explains the U.S. Trade Representative's claim that greater adherence to human rights is encouraged by the acquisition of "Western (that is, American) norms" in place of older ones, just as the opening up of free trade with the West and the blossoming of a market society will reinforce human rights.

My thought is not that this claim is arrogant, or otherwise morally tainted, but that it may be true. "Cultures" are indeed fragmented and interdependent, as critics never tire of reminding us. But cultures are also unequally displaced practices. Whether cultural displacement is a means of ensuring political domination or merely its effect, whether it is a necessary stage in the growth of universal humanity or an instance of cultural takeover, is not the point here. What I want to stress is that cultures may be conceived not only in visual terms ("clearly bounded," "interlaced," "fragmented," and so forth) but also in terms of the temporalities of power by which - rightly or wrongly - practices constituting particular forms of life are displaced, outlawed, and penalized, and by which conditions are created for the cultivation of different kinds of human. Resentment on the part of the weak about being treated cruelly by the powerful is generally a spontaneous human reaction, but learning to see certain practices as insupportable that were not previously viewed as such, and organizing social opposition to them, are steps in the reconstruction of the human.

In an interdependent modern world, "traditional cultures" do not spontaneously grow or develop into "modern cultures," People are pushed, seduced, coerced, or persuaded into trying to change themselves into something else, something that allows them to be redeemed. It may not be possible to stop this process; it may be a wonderful thing that the process takes place as it does because people really are redeemed through it. I do not argue for or against such directed changes here. I merely emphasize that they are not possible without the exercise of political power that often presents itself as a force for redeeming "humanity" from "traditional cultures." Or - and this comes down in the end to the same thing - as the force for reclaiming rights that belong inalienably to man in a state of nature.

In the seventeenth century, so John Pocock proposed, the self was beginning to be seen as contingent. The anxiety that that provoked was the context in which Locke's political appeal to natural rights acquired added plausibility. Legal discourses for defining the person gain added weight. In an essay on flexible capitalism at the close of the twentieth century, Richard Sennett has argued that the highly unstable conditions of work in America are making a coherent narrative of the self - and therefore realization of "character" - increasingly difficult. It is possible (although this is not Sennett's argument) that this new stage in the growing anxiety about the private self is not unconnected to the increasing insistence on the redemptive quality of human rights at a global level. When the secularist ideological order separating public politics from private belief is seen to crumble, the new terrain is occupied by a discourse of human rights taht can be taken as either sacred or profane. Canovan's appeal to myth to defend the liberal project of human rights (see Chapter 1), King's appeal to universal brotherhood and human dignity under God, the U.S. government's global project to free both belief and property, and Nussbaum's celebration of the capabilities of the sovereign human are all variations of this discourse."

(Talal Asad 2003: 148-155)

[31] "Martha Nussbaum cites "opportunities for sexual satisfaction" as an aspect of "Bodily Integrity," listed as one of the "central human functional capabilities" in her influential Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 78. The assumption that "opportunities for sexual satisfaction" can be clearly identified and legally protected is intriguing".

[38] "But as the post-9/11 "war on terrorism" demonstrates, the United States does not simply seduce its opponents with pleasure. It is prepared to use devastating force. The war against Afghanistan was presented by the American media not only as the pursuit of terrorists but as as the liberation of Afghan women..."

Note: Please see the book for all footnotes.

On History and Historiography

For sometime I wanted to list down articles and books related to the themes that I am interested in. Basically, a bibliography with titles that I have found useful or that I have read good reviews about and want to read soon. It's going to be a list of personal favorites, not a comprehensive list on the subject.

I start with Philosophy of History and Historiography in this post.

First, a quick note on how I distinguish the two. The philosophy of history, as it is understand here, is an attempt to find patterns and causes in social and historical changes. Historiography is about ways of writing history. It's about interrogating the research methodologies and social perspectives that inform selection of data, focus on certain historical agents (and not others), and questions that a historian/historical-sociologist pursues. The two - Philosophy of History and Historiography - are analytically separate enterprises, but closely related.

So, for example, Ibn Khaldun starts his "The Muqaddimah" with a critical appraisal of the history-writing of his time and proposes to present his own method, which he claims was based on ilm al-'Umran (Science of Population or Civilization). He outlines that science in 'The Muqaddimah' (the 'Prologue' to his Grand History, written in multiple volumes). The science was informed by his realistic and careful reading of history (realistic in terms of trying to find objective causes in history). He identified tribes and tribal solidarities as the core principle of social organization of his time and as a primary agent of historical change. His narrative focused on tribal groups to explain the rise and fall of dynasties.

The below list is in no ranked order:

"Trends of History in Qur'an" by Muhammad Baqir Sadr (Book, Online)

"The Muqaddimah" by Ibn Khaldun (Book, Online)

"On the Sociology of Islam" by Ali Shariati (Book, Citation)

"Social and Historical Change" by Murtaza Mutahhari (Book, Citation. Many parts are available Online. See "Man and Universe", Chapter V - "Society and History")

"On the Plight of the Oppressed People" by Ali Shariati (Article/Speech, Online)

"Marxism and other Western Fallacies" by Ali Shariati (Book, Citation)

"What is History?" by E. H. Carr (Book, Citation)

"Orientalism" by Edward Said (Book, Citation)

"Silencing the Past" by Michel-Rolph Trouillot (Book, Citation)

"Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura, 1922-1992" by Shahid Amin (Book, Citation)

"The Holocaust industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering" by Norman G. Finkelstein (Book, Citation)

"Remembering partition: violence, nationalism, and history in India" by Gyan Pandey (Book, Citation)

"Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference" by Dipesh Chakrabarty (Book, Citation)

"The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories" by Partha Chatterjee (Book, Citation)

"Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time" by Reinhart Koselleck (Book, Citation)

Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities" by Marshall David Sahlins (Book, Citation)

"The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" by Max Weber (Book, Citation)

"Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison" by Michel Foucault (Book, Citation)

"Vision and Method in Historical Sociology" By Theda Skocpol (Book, Citation)

"Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons" by Charles Tilly (Book, Citation)

"Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation" by William Hamilton Sewell (Book, Citation)

Review - Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran

Review: Jasmine and Stars: Reading More than Lolita in Tehran (UNC Press, 2007)

By Ali A., Islamic Insights, Feb 9-15, 2009

While reading a text assigned for your class on a topic related to Islam and Muslims, ever had that feeling of frustration, “That’s NOT how it is!”? You know the reading is full of holes, yet you are at a loss for words to articulate what’s wrong with it?

If your answer is yes, here is a book in which you will find a range of tools to dissect those annoying readings. The book is called “Jasmine and Stars: Reading more than 'Lolita' in Tehran” (UNC Press, 2007). The author is Fatemeh Keshaverz, who is a professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Keshaverz’s argument is two-fold. One, she exposes the omissions and misrepresentations in Azar Nafisi's national bestseller “Reading Lolita in Tehran” (Random House, 2003). Two, she presents a literary analysis of a range of poetry and prose from Iran as well as gives us a feeling of life in Iran from her personal experience. This exposition is meant to question the simplistic and bleak picture one may get from “Reading Lolita in Tehran” and to invite the readers to understand Islam and Muslim cultures in their full complexity and richness.

Keshavarz argues that Azar Nafisi’s book represents a ‘New Orientalist’ narrative. Her argument builds on the critical writings of Edward Said in which he argued that the way the West perceived the Orient (the East) had profound consequences on their mutual interactions. By “West”, he was particularly referring to the circles of power and the intellectual discourse over the past few centuries. In the Orientalist perception, the East was seen as unvaryingly different, backward, inferior, mysterious, and dangerous. It was something to be wary of or to be disciplined. Aggressive colonial expansions in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere were rationalized as a ‘progressive force’ which would civilize the indigenous populations in the colonized lands. These expansions occurred simultaneously with the development of the Enlightenment and technological advancements in the West. [1] Edward Said further argued that such perceptions, especially concerning the Muslim world, continue to dominate the popular discourse in the West.

Developing on Said’s line of argument, Keshavarz argues that the ‘New Orientalist’ narrative "equally simplifies its subject. For example, it explains almost all undesirable Middle Eastern incidents in terms of Muslim men's submission to God and Muslim women's submission to men. The old narrative was imbued with the authority of an all-knowing foreign expert. The emerging narrative varies somewhat in that it might have a native--or seminative--insider tone. Furthermore, as the product of a self-questioning era, it shows a relative awareness of its own possible shortcomings. Yet it replicates the earlier narrative's strong undercurrent of superiority and of impatience with the locals, who are often portrayed as uncomplicated. The new narrative does not necessarily support overt colonial ambitions. But it does not hide its clear preference for a western political and cultural takeover. Most importantly, it replicates the totalizing - and silencing - tendencies of the old Orientalists by virtue of erasing, through unnuanced narration, the complexity and richness in the local culture" (p.3).

The introduction and the first chapter of “Jasmine and Stars” introduce the goal and main arguments of this book. The subsequent three chapters take the readers on an exciting journey which explores the rich literary heritage and diverse lives of the people in Iran. Keshavarz particularly focuses on the Sufi tradition in her discussion of Islam. The personal stories she shares all throughout the book convey feelings of warmth, tenderness, and “shared humanity” (p.5) (shared by the peoples of Iran and the West). In her analysis of poetry, novels, and Sufi thought in these three chapters she also shows how these literary expressions animate in the lives of ordinary people in Iran. The fifth chapter quite sharply dissects “Reading Lolita in Tehran”. Concluding the book in the sixth chapter, Keshavarz once again exhorts the readers to explore the shared humanity and richness of Muslim cultures.

The first and fifth chapters along with the introduction could also be read separately if readers are interested in specifically reading the critique of “Reading Lolita in Tehran”. The tools and vocabulary provided in these chapters could also help with evaluating works such as “Nine Parts of Desire”, “The Bookseller of Kabul”, “'The Kite Runner”, “The Almond”, “Persepolis”, and “The Trouble with Islam”.

The value of this book should be self-evident in a time when distortions and lies about Islam and Muslims are widespread. These distortions are damaging not only for inter-communal relations but also the way Muslims themselves perceive their identity. Yet while reading the book, at times I wished that Keshavarz had scrutinized the premises of these distortions even more deeply. This analysis would have expanded the power and scope of her criticism. Below are two inter-related points in this regard.

The first point is that people do not have to believe in the same things you believe in before you could appreciate and respect their humanity. By presenting instances of ‘shared humanity’ (shared values, emotions, thoughts), Keshavarz does a fine job of relating with the Western audience. Her discussion of modern Iranian literature, particularly the works by Forough Farrokhzad and Shahrnush Parsipur, conveys a strong sense of agency – the kind of agency which is idealized in the liberal feminist discourse(s). Keshavarz is also very frank about her feminist sensibilities in the book that have informed her selections and arguments. However, the real challenge in any attempt to understand other cultures and peoples is to appreciate the ‘differences’ in outlooks and sensibilities, while also observing that our own ideals may not be universally valid. For example, women in Muslim cultures may also cherish ‘autonomy’ and ‘empowerment’, but their definition of these ideals may be very different from what some liberal feminists would like for them. Failing to recognize this difference can result in the kind of intolerance that is seen today in France against the Muslim Hijab. Some scholars would take the argument on another level to argue that ideals like ‘freedom’ and ‘autonomy’ (which have a particular history in the Western liberal tradition and are often defined in terms of individual choices and interests in opposition to community values and interests) may not be as important – if at all – for many women in other cultures. Saba Mahmood and Lila Abu-Lughod’s works make compelling arguments in this regard. [2] In their works they also argue that appreciating these differences does not necessarily mean falling into moral relativism.

The second point is that we need to question the question first before answering with the typical ‘Not all Muslims are fundamentalist/extremists, and we need to consider the voices of moderation and peace too’. The question that needs to be asked first is what’s wrong with being a fundamentalist and who defines a “fundamentalist” as such? If being a fundamentalist means believing in some fundamentals of religion, then most Muslims are fundamentalists! This issue connects to a dichotomy that underlies the popular discourse in the West. In this dichotomy Muslims are either ‘Good’ or ‘Bad’. Good Muslims are ‘modern’, ‘moderate/progressive/rational’, and ‘pro-western’. The Bad Muslims are ‘backward’, ‘fundamentalist/extremists/fanatics’, and ‘anti-western’. I am not saying that “Jasmine and Stars” necessarily falls into this trap. But it misses the voices and sensibilities of those considered to be the “Bad Muslims” (both male and female), particularly those that were part of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and those that are opposed to physical and symbolic intrusions by global powers today. By no means is this segment of the population a minority in Iran, and they are the ones most frequently stereotyped in the ‘New Orientalist’ narratives. Representing their lives and outlooks does not necessarily mean that one endorses or justifies them. But as risky and daunting as this task may be for the kind of project that Keshavarz is engaged in, without challenging the ‘Good vs. Bad’ Muslim dichotomy most answers would come off as merely apologetic in the popular discourse.

Toward this end, we first need to scrutinize the normative assumptions of the liberal-secular discourse and its supposed moral superiority. (Examples are in the last two points – one relating to the discourse on women’s rights, the other relating to the politics of war on terror). Next, we need to bring in the political and historical context in the picture. I have Mahmood Mamdani’s important work “Good Muslim, Bad Muslims” (Pantheon, 2004) in mind that critically examines the American foreign policy during the Cold War era. In the first chapter of “Jasmine and Stars” Keshavarz could also use a more elaborate discussion on the relation between power and knowledge, in how misrepresentations about Islam serve the hegemonic ambitions of global powers today. [3]

In the challenging task of representing the missing voices (of the supposed “Bad Muslims”), Keshavarz could perhaps find a parallel with the outrage she personally felt when it was unintentionally implied to her by another person in London that the Iranian culture and people were backward ('they ate with hands') (p.24-25). The outrage was not about using or not using spoons per se. It was about the insinuation underlying it in that particular situation which she felt was undermining her culture and her own identity. She perceived it to be a kind of symbolic violence. It is clear from the text that she felt it rational and natural to respond to it. Other people can also have similar attachment to their religious symbols and values, and they can be as real and rational to them as any other reality out there.

On a side note, at times, I did not feel very convinced by the interpretation she presents in some of her anecdotal examples. For instance, the encounter she had at the grocery store in the check out line where she thought that her Muslim name caused discomfort and suspicion in the next lady. She made that conclusion by just observing the lady’s body language and thought that the lady's particular behavior was a reflection of the dominant cultural understandings (p.16-17). One can similarly question the scene in the bus where she listened to a conversation between two soldiers who were returning from the war front in 1987. Based on a very short dialogue between the soldiers, our author suggests that "I can tell you for sure that neither of them had enjoyed the war, or had looked for heroism, and yet neither had run away..." (p.134). Not sure what she meant to imply with this, but the question is whether anything could be implied with certainty on the basis of that short conversation. In these and some other anecdotal examples, more ethnographic details would have helped the readers to judge for themselves whether they agree with her interpretation.

I hope that the critical remarks in the second half of this review would not to dissuade you from reading this wonderful book with full of gems. These remarks were only meant to seriously engage with her arguments. I highly recommend this book for personal readings and group discussions. [4]

Ali A. is a doctoral student in social sciences. He can be reached at alismails786@gmail.com.

References:

[1] The critical point that needs to be emphasized here is that the justification given for Colonial expansions was not contradictory to the liberal ideals of political rights and self-determination. The Enlightenment contained notions of uni-linear progress of history and civilizations, the emphasis on particular modes of thought and reason, and the importance on individual rights and private property as means of self-actualization. Based on these ideals certain cultures and peoples were seen as “modern” and “superior” and others as “backward” and “inferior”. Both John Locke and John Stuart Mill supported and rationalized the practice of colonialism as a “progressive force” which would civilize and advance the backward civilizations. That was the “White Man’s Burden”. These ideas were also incorporated by particular versions of missionary Christianity. For more on this line of argument see Uday Mehta’s “Liberalism and Empire” (Chicago, 1999).

[2] See Lila Abu-Lughod. “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?” (American Anthropologist, September 2002). An interview with Abu-Lughod (Asia Source, March 2002). See Saba Mahmood’s interview by Nermeen Shaikh in “The Present as History” (Columbia, 2007) and her book “Politics of Piety” (Princeton, 2005).

[3] Hamid Dabashi’s critical review of “Reading Lolita in Tehran” entitled “Native informers and the making of the American empire” (Al-Ahram, June 2006) has some useful insights in this connection.

[4] Readers may also like to see the following pieces: Interview: Fatemeh Keshavarz with ZNet; Interview: Fatemeh Keshavarz with UNC Press; Interview: Good Muslim, Bad Muslim - Mahmood Mamdani - Asia Source; Review: Movie ‘300′ by Hamid Dabashi; “Questioning Liberalism, Too” by Saba Mahmood, Boston Review.

Saba Mahmood: Questioning Liberalism, Too

Another thought provoking article:

Questioning Liberalism, Too

A response to “Islam and the Challenge of Democracy” by Khaled Abou El Fadl

Saba Mahmood

Source

Khaled Abou El Fadl’s essay is an erudite attempt to explore those principles and values within Islamic political and legal traditions that could be made compatible with ideas of liberal democracy. Abou El Fadl joins a growing number of scholars who have been writing on this theme in the last three decades—some of these writers are located in the Muslim world and others in Europe and the United States. These thinkers represent a wide spectrum of political perspectives: some of them are supporters of the reformist trend within the Islamist movement (such as Tariq al-Bishri in Egypt, the Tunisian scholar Rashid al-Ghannouchi, who lives in exile in France, and Abdolkarim Soroush in Iran), and others espouse a more straightforward secular-liberal line (such as Said Ashmawi in Egypt, Nurcholish Madjid in Indonesia, and Aziza al-Hibri in the United States). The increased attention that the Western media has recently given to these explorations is an indication of the hope that “liberal Islam” has been invested with, following the events of September 11, a potential resource for “saving Islam” from its more militant and fundamentalist interpreters.

What’s curious to me is that in these explorations by Muslim scholars Islam bears the burden of proving its compatibility with liberal ideals, and the line of question is almost never reversed. We do not ask, for example, what would it mean to take the resources of the Islamic tradition and question many of the liberal political categories and principles for the contradictions and problems they embody? Or, how would one rethink these problems by bringing the resources of Islamic political history to bear upon them? For instance, many of the aforementioned authors, including Khaled Abou El Fadl, urge that liberal conceptions of individual autonomy, human rights, and individual freedom be incorporated into Islam. Thus Abou El Fadl argues in his essay that the “Qur’anic celebration and sanctification of human diversity” should be made the ground for incorporating what appears to be a liberal conception of tolerance: “an ethic that respects dissent and honors the right to adhere to different religious or non-religious convictions.” It is striking that the normative claims of liberal conceptions such as tolerance are taken at face value, and no attention is paid to the contradictions, struggles, and problems that these ideals actually embody. As scholars of liberalism have shown, the historical trajectory of a concept like tolerance encompasses violent struggles that dispossessed peoples have had to wage to be considered legitimate members of liberal societies—not to mention the ongoing battles about what it means “to tolerate” someone or something, who does the tolerating and who is tolerated, under what circumstances, and toward what end. Given this fraught history, is it not worth pausing to reflect whether other traditions, such as Islam, might have their own resources for imagining such an “ethic that respects dissent and honors the right to adhere to different religious or non-religious convictions?”

There were different conceptions of religious and communal coexistence, for example, that informed the social and political life of the diverse communities that lived under the Ottoman Empire and even under Mughal rule in South Asia. These conceptions were not organized around the problem of majority and minority populations. In the Ottoman system, for instance, non-Muslim communities were vertically integrated into a hierarchical ruling structure, but had their own independent legal systems. This mutual accommodation enabled different social groups living under a shared political structure to practice distinct ways of life; life-worlds were the preconditions for the individual’s existence, rather than the objects of individual interests as they are conceived within liberal democratic thought. The system did not make non-Muslims the social or legal equals of Muslims, but it did grant them a certain autonomy to practice and develop their traditions in a manner that is almost inconceivable under the present system of nation-states. The reason I bring up this different understanding of coexistence is not because I believe in its moral superiority, or consider it to be an example from the Islamic tradition that could be made commensurable with a liberal understanding of tolerance. Rather I want to use this history to ask what I think is a far more interesting set of questions, such as: how does this history make us rethink the politics of tolerance and pluralism beyond the confines of individualism to include the rights of plural social groupings? Or, for that matter, to ask whether the liberal meaning of tolerance is the best or the most desirable one; what does this understanding preclude, under what kinds of presuppositions, and for whom?

I believe the reason these kinds of questions are seldom pursued is because of the hegemony that liberalism commands as a political ideal for many contemporary Muslim intellectuals, a hegemony that reflects the enormous disparity in power between the Anglo-European countries and what constitutes the “Muslim world” today. Indeed, the idea that the liberal political system is the best arrangement for all human societies, regardless of their diverse histories and conceptual and material resources, is rarely questioned these days. One would think that proponents of “pluralism and diversity” in the world, like Abou El Fadl, would want to explore some of the contrasting ways that questions of difference have been imagined and politically instituted within different non-liberal traditions.

It should also be pointed out that Khaled Abou El Fadl’s essay is largely a philosophical exercise, one that does not take into account the practical impediments to the institutionalization of democracy in the Muslim world. Had he been concerned with practical issues, he would have had to deal with complicated questions such as why some of the worst violations of democracy in the name of Islam have been perpetrated by states (such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Pakistan) which have been propped up by liberal democracies like the United States—support without which these states would not have survived in their present form. A more practical engagement would also have had to deal with the fact that the problems of religious and ethnic strife, or the abrogation of democratic freedoms, do not simply reflect the “undemocratic” tendencies within Islam, but characterize most secular regimes in the Third World today. As many scholars have recently taught us, these problems are not unrelated to the liberal forms of government implemented by colonial and postcolonial states. I do not fault Abou El Fadl for his philosophical inquiry. But what I do find problematic is his failure to subject to critical scrutiny our liberal notions of justice, autonomy, tolerance, individual rights and so on, from the standpoint of the Islamic traditions he so clearly holds dear. Rather than ask the question of how Muslims can become better liberals, I believe it is far more pressing to ask how the world is (or can be) lived differently—confronted as we are with a historically unprecedented homogenizing force of modernity that will brook no arguments for an alternative vision.

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Image: Cover of Saba Mahmood's "Politics of Piety" (2005 Princeton)

Description from the University Press Books

Author Saba Mahmood is Professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of California, Berkeley.

Politics of Piety is a groundbreaking analysis of Islamist cultural politics through the ethnography of a thriving, grassroots women's piety movement in the mosques of Cairo, Egypt. Unlike those organized Islamist activities that seek to seize or transform the state, this is a moral reform movement whose orthodox practices are commonly viewed as inconsequential to Egypt's political landscape. Saba Mahmood's compelling exposition of these practices challenges this assumption by showing how the ethical and the political are indelibly linked within the context of such movements.

"This very timely book opens doors into spaces of Islamic piety that shatter the stereotypes which dominate thinking in the West. Mahmood carefully unpacks the distortions that common modes of liberalism and feminism impose on the Muslim world. She combines richness of description with theoretical sophistication to provide insight into the struggle of some Muslim women to live their faith, often in the face of not only Western liberal influences but also Arab nationalism and political Islamism. The reader is forced to face dilemmas that cannot be easily resolved. This is social science at its most illuminating." --Charles Taylor, Board of Trustees Professor of Law and Philosophy, Northwestern University