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Radio ReOrient 14.1: State of the Ummah: “A War Against the Islamic Republic?”, hosted by Shehla Khan, with Mona Makinejadbanadaki and S. Sayyid.
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Salman Saeed
Welcome to the new books network
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Sheila Khan
sa.
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Salman Saeed
Listeners. And welcome back to a new season
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NBN Host
of Radio Reorient, the podcast where we explore the Islamosphere and illuminate the post Western.
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Salman Saeed
Your hosts the season are Chel Award Claudia Radovan, Saeed, Khan Bizarmir and Amina Isadas.
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Sheila Khan
This season we'll kick off with two podcast episodes from our occasional series State of the Ummah, where we look at contemporary issues in the Islamicate and issues affecting the global Ummah.
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Salman Saeed
Today's episode features one of our guest hosts, Shayla Khan, with Mona Makinijad and Salman Saeed. They will be discussing the war on the Islamic Republic of Iran, the role and impact on the diaspora, and the way in which Orientalism has shaped the conflict.
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Mona Makinijad
Without further ado, let's listen in.
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Salman Saeed
Okay, thank you all for tuning into Radio Reorient once again. This is one of our occasional series on the state of the Ummah and today, which is the 30th day of the war against Iran, we're going to be looking at the conflict against the Islamic Republic. But what we're going to try and do is avoid following just the headlines or keeping up with what is happening. This is not our main purpose, but really to reflect around some of the main issues which have been thrown up both in terms of political theory, ethical philosophy, but in general, how do we understand what the war is really a symptom of? To join me in this endeavor, I am very, very happy to be welcoming as co host of these programs. Maybe they can introduce themselves. Firstly, Mona, do you want to say who you are?
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Mona Makinijad
Salams all, good afternoon. I am Mona Makinejot, a lecturer and postgraduate researcher in sociolog and social policy. And I'm glad to be part of this discussion today.
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Salman Saeed
And Sheila.
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Sheila Khan
Dr. Sheila Khan. I'm an early career researcher in international relations, focusing mainly on epistemology and decoloniality.
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Salman Saeed
Okay. I'm Salman Syed and I read World History and I write Political Theory. So without further ado, I thought what we might want to do is, is understand that this war, like many wars, is also war of narratives. In a sense, war throws up our ability to understand kind of common realities, common sense ways of perceiving the world. And this is very much the case in a conflict like this where a number of tensions which have already existed come to play. And maybe what we can do and maybe something we could start is maybe Mona, one of the things that anyone watching this conflict and listening to it and listening to the commentary on it is kind of shocked by the variance between not only the people who are the protagonists. One would expect D.C. and Washington to have different views on Tehran, but even those who associate themselves or call themselves Iranian or part of or Persians even as that community. There are very, very different positions being held and being advocated. And maybe you can tell us a little bit about how would you explain this kind of wide gap between the different understandings of what the meaning of this war is.
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Mona Makinijad
I think when we are talking about this war specifically the role of the narrative that just one kind of legitimized this war was the narrative just wanted to introduce this war. A war against ISL Republic, not Iranian nation. Right. It was from very early days of the war, even before the war. I remember when Reza Pahlavi in the press conference in Munich, he wanted to reflect on the situation in Iran. He mentioned that the situation in Iran these days is not conflict between the revolution and reform. However, it's a conflict between the occupation and freedom. Right. He wanted to clearly introduce Islamic Republic of Iran as an acquirer of the land. And it was not the first time that he made this kind of. It was dominant narrative during different rallies, diaspora rallies that just wanted to introduce themselves as the true ownership of the land. Right. To a bit elaborate on that. I think it worth a bit pausing this Narrative of occupation and the way that this diaspora or these monarchies wanted to introduce themselves. They usually start by this statement that we are Persian, we are not Muslim and this war is not against Persian, it's just against some public of the Muslim. Let's just having in mind that how we can name a country that is majority is Muslim, say that okay, it's not war against Iran, just against the Muslim. How would this narrative become much more problematic? But I think it's important to not to know the roots of this kind of narrative. Right. The role of the histography in the way that this Iranian identity has been constructed through very Islamophobic Kemalism myth of the Arab invasion that is not limited to Iran itself. Shala, you wanted to point it out to the trace of this Kemalism narrative in different part of Islamic hait as well?
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Sheila Khan
Yes, please Mona, if you could. Just because I think from what you're saying, it seems that the narration of the war is being conducted in a very clearly identifiable orientalist binary where the nation is seen as secular, as far removed from Islam or the Islamicate. So there's a very, very clear distinction there. And I think perhaps we could also mention the way that the Iranian government is always spoken of as a regime which has no roots within Iran society, within Iranian history or culture, as something very alien and imported. And I think it links back to the idea of the so called Arab invasions of Persians. So there is this very kind of strident and rather clumsy, if I may say so attempt to narrate the war in these very kind of crass binaries. I'm just wondering whether you feel that on day 30 of the war that sort of binary still stands. But also would you just tell us a little bit more about what you mean by Kemalism, if that's okay for sure.
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Mona Makinijad
I think to talk about what because we named these narratives as a kind of clearly Islamophobic that wanted to introduce themselves that clearly we are against Islam. And however, what makes them more horrific is not just talking about the way they are wanted to introduce themselves against Islamic Republic, but kind of justifying all this destruction that happening that is not limited to Islamic Republic in any way that we say that it's targeting. The regime itself, however is ongoing on all the residential areas, targeting the hospitals, schools and even it has kind of influence throughout the generation. Right. And seeing that when talking about the attacking the power plant is not something that. So I think it makes when we call it Islamophobic narrative, it's really Important to recognize to what extent is much more horrific in contributing to the bigger project of that you refer to this Kemalism and what I exactly mean by that more specifically, why use this term? Because I think what make it very clearly this division between Islam and Iranian nation problematic was the way that you wanted to contributed to introducing a forged history of the Iranian nation, very ethno nationalistic that wanted to introduce Iran's as a part of this Aryan myth family. Right? There's some searching for some pre Islamic origin for the Iranian identity to construct this ethno nationalist narrative of Iranian identity. Salman, you wanted to join on that?
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Salman Saeed
Yeah, I just wanted to come in here. I mean, I think it's two points. Firstly, I think it's important to understand, as you said, that Islamophobia isn't just about people using misrepresenting Muslims or saying horrible things. It has a kinetic possibility, not just murder or violence, but also genocide. So in a sense that you know, the destruction of or the destructive violence is not alien to Islamophobia. So I think that's really, really important to recognize that. But I think I just want to maybe suggest a little bit more about the. You mentioned the Aryan ness of the Kemalist project within Iran and trying to recuperate that. But maybe say a little bit more about Kemalism obviously comes from Mustafa Kemal, who tries to do similar things, but without that obvious link to Arianism. And I wonder whether we can just reflect a little bit because it seems to me that maybe Kemalism, which is really a series of reforms that Mustafa Kemal introduces in what at that time had just a few years before had been the Ottoman state, which had been the seat of the caliphate, which had been the strongest independent Muslim state, having to reconstruct itself and abandoned almost continuously at least 1400 years of history. But it became a template. And what is interesting is this, that that notion of that template is often missed out because there is a way in which Turkish history is seen as distinct from Iranian history, which is seen as distinct from the history of Pakistan or the history of Egypt, et cetera. And in a way we end up thinking that the only unit of analysis is the current nation state, rather than seeing how that current nation state came into being. And then the unit of analysis should be in some of those continuities and connected connections, rather than just in terms of what the boundaries are in relation to that. So maybe we can talk a little bit more about Kemalism in a positive sense here.
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Mona Makinijad
I think you refer that to what I said is really important to analyze is of this Islamophobia or the crisis that we are witnessing nowadays, not just inside Iran, in many other places as well. Just going beyond this methodological nationalism understanding of that to know that how it has been because we name it as ecmalism. Maybe this comes this mind that it doesn't make sense to apply to Iran or the other part of the world. But it's really important to find relationality between these things, right? Specifically the war in Iran, the genocide in Gaza and stuff, to see what made them possible, to make it clear. My point, what I mean exactly, I would like to say that when you are discussing about Kemalism, apart from the things that happened in Turkey in 20th century or during the ran Iran and all itself, it's clearly about removing Islam from the political and public and social sphere.
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Salman Saeed
Right?
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Mona Makinijad
It is the thing that when we are talking about Kemalism both as a transnational and trans historical category, that we can see in different kind of Islamic order. And exactly where I think the monarchist group and the Zionism meet each other, right to removing Islam from the political. So this, I think this connection between these two group, it was the thing that we see, I think even before the war that how they become allied and in different marshes they are attacking the Palestinian marches, turret in the Palestinian flats and all these things that we was witnessing that how usually Zionism trying to be supported by Iranian diaspora or monarchies. And it's exactly where we can talk about the way that the Iranian nation, this Kemalis ethno nationalistic, wanted to introduce itself. Right. Clearly not just as a Muslim, a part of Islamic context, but as a white member of this European family. Shella, you wanted to join us in that?
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Sheila Khan
Yeah, I just want to sort of, you know, sort of kind of juxtapose this whole kind of fixation with the nation with the actual notion of the human and perhaps relate that also to Kemalism, Eurocentrism, Orientalism. So what we see from the sort of, from the discourse of the Iranian diaspora is really a dehumanization going. I mean, when they're asked, do you support the bombings of schools or hospitals? They are absolutely comfortable with it. They are absolutely happy to go along with that. So again, there's this severe kind of dehumanization that's taking place which is completely at odds with the notion of the nation which they have actually succeeded in hollowing out. I mean, what is the nation if it's not the children, the patients in hospitals Doctors. And now we've lately seen that a university was targeted of the best universities. So again, it goes back to the idea of which human lives are worth saving and which are not. And of course, we saw that to horrific effect. We are seeing that to horrific effect in Gaza, the same dehumanization going on. And that logic has actually been transplanted onto Iran as well. So again, we need to make those links between which humans matter, which human lives count. And again, we sort of, you know, we have that behind that notion of the human is always that proximity to whiteness, to secularity, to whiteness. And wherever that, you know, wherever. I mean, the only humans who count are those who are either they're white or they're as proximate to what, you know, to whiteness as can be humanly possible, so to speak.
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Mona Makinijad
Yeah, I think it is introducing Iranian nations as a whiteness. I find it very problematic in terms of obviously Islamophobic and racist narrative. But also it is odd that the way that it introduced itself to this colonial imperial project in the whole world wanted to introduce itself as the ownership of the true land. And introducing, as I mentioned, Islamic Republic as an occupier, which I find it very problematic, this representation of Islam Republic, not just because Iran majority population are Muslim, but we know that the Islamic Republic was a result of very popular revolution Iran. It was not in any sense result of any kind of foreign intervention, coup and stuff. However, this Pahlavi destiny has a clear heritage of that both Reza Shah and Mohammed al Joshah can get power to this coup. I think it's really important to think the relation between the Islamic revolution and imperialism in the whole world and how this. How it has introduced itself when it has become to power. Some of you wanted to talk a bit about that for us.
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Salman Saeed
Yeah, I think I really want to pick up what you said about the Islamic revolution in Iran as being a popular mandate, a popular mobilization, unlike the. The Pahlavis, who either were in place by coups or supported by external powers. What is the case in Islamic revolution? It is the movement of the people. Now, the issue is really this, is that there's a number of tensions around the notion of the very notion of Islamic revolution. I mean, there's a. On the one hand, there is the kind of analysis which summed up in a book title which I forgot the name of the author right now, who wrote was called the Unthinkable Revolution and partly was that when the revolution occurred in 78, 79, it was not conceivable that there could be a revolution which was articulated with Muslimness. This is really, really quite staggering because the argument was that Islam was always going to be used in a way which was repressive, was always going to be a work of the elite, not of the people. And therefore there could never be any popular uprising. This was in the era of national liberation struggles. And the idea that popular liberation would always take that form. So when the Islamic revolution happens, there is actually no conceptual tools available to even try and understand this. But this goes back to the point that we started with, is to do with the kind of frameworks of narratives of understanding. So the first point was that it was unthinkable. And that unthinkability was also reflected not just in academic sources, but also in terms of the fact that you have various intelligence services saying that these are the possible futures. Or you have a very prominent writer saying that it is possible that Iran becomes a kind of a military dictatorship, or it may continue with the monarchy rule, or it may become a socialist republic, et cetera, et cetera, but it was never possible that it would become an Islamic republic. And so it was just the impossibility of articulating Muslimness with the people. And this, in a way, has been a real problem for much of the Muslim communities throughout the world, that Muslims in many cases instinctively recognize that in societies where they are not able to express their Muslimness, they are not going to be able to be free, they're not going to be able to have agency, whereas often those who are less toxicated, those who are kind of following kind of Orientalist understandings, see the opposite. And I think that's really, really critical to one of the challenges that we have. Mona, you want to come in?
- [21:11]
Mona Makinijad
Yeah. I find it very interesting the way that you put it, introducing Islamic republic as unthinkable. The way that if we think that we have just one path of civilizations and it's this linear understanding of the history, that it should be reproduced and is a necessity that we all need to follow the only path. How it has kind of criticized and it was kind of something exceptional through this civilization path that it has been introduced. And you pointed out to this problem of the west structification among all this Islamic egg and Muslim world. If rc we call it Karzad egi. Right, let's use that term. And it showed us that the thing that we are today talking about, that this colonial imperialism order of the world, it doesn't seem that it's limited to time. So we are talking about the Problem at least when Jalal Talking about the 20th century and stuff much more.
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Salman Saeed
Do you want to say something? Sorry? Do you want to say a little bit more about the concept and how it came up? Because I think it'll help listeners in Dakar and Jakarta as well. Because I think it's a very useful concept.
- [22:26]
Mona Makinijad
Yeah, I think it's really. Let's just briefly say that how Jalal talking about that.
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Salman Saeed
So who's Jalal?
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Mona Makinijad
Tell us a little bit about Jalal. The concept of barzadagi is tied with his and the name of the Jalala Al Ahmad and Iranian Muslim intellectuals that become dominant in the 20th century. And he talking about this colonial order of the war. But clearly Jalalan talking about this problem, he put it in the context of wider Islamicate context. He did not talk about this Iran as a specific context. And when he wanted to problematize this colonialism order, he mentioned that it doesn't. This hierarchical relation has never just one side, one player that is just reducible to the colonial power. However, the Orient itself contributed to that in the way that he called that one of the main player of this field was Garbzade, the one who wanted to understand itself to these Eurocentric colonial missions, or the one who think introduce itself through this Orientalist representation. And this was really interesting because for him it was not. He wanted to. It was quite important because he showed that when you're talking about Garza Dagi is not just about reproducing this colonial order, but kind of justifying the violence towards the Orient. Right, it was very central because if you are backwards, if you are Orient through this civilization mission, all violence is kind of justifiable to you to make it much more modern.
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Salman Saeed
But I think this is where the Orientalism we've talked, we've hinted at and we talk about Kemalism comes in two ways. Because normally people associate Islamophobia and Orientalism with the right. But in the case of certainly the Islamic revolution in Iran, it actually has distorted or undone the distinctions between left and right. So these distinctions emerged in the French Revolution in a way that the French Revolution gave birth to the distinction between left and right. And that has more or less been followed when it comes to the situation around the Islamic Revolution, that distinction begins to sort of weaken because you have many on the left who are hostile to the Islamic revolution, arguing that A, it's not a revolution, B, that it's not anti imperialist and C, that there could be no revolution based on Muslimness or a revolution which has Islam in it, because these are concepts by themselves problematic. And as you mentioned already, there's a sense of a unilinear, progressive notion that the destiny of the world is Westernization, and that is a destiny that was shared both by the right and the left, which is basically the foundation of their Eurocentrism. So in a way, the Islamic Revolution's occurrence is really, really a challenge both to left and right and the very idea of the left and right and also to the very idea of what a revolution can be. Because at the heart of this is the possibility that if it is possible for Muslim societies to have some kind of accountable governance, then it must have a place for Muslimness. And without that, you are only going to get a degree of violence and a degree of repression. It is very, very clear that those who want democracy must also have a degree of sovereignty, because you cannot be a democratic society if the society itself is not able to make decisions on its own. So the Islamic Revolution, in a way, is an interruption of the logic of Kemalism, which I think was a hegemonic discourse, not just in, you know, we've already talked about it, not just in Turkey, but it spread out throughout the Muslim, the Islamosphere. Everywhere there you see the same kind of tension. They're trying to sort of say that what we want to do is have a future in which Islam is domesticated, marginalized, or removed from public affairs, from social, from culture. That is the way that we will become more Western, and by becoming more Western, we will become more modern. And in a sense, the Islamic revolution is one of the key moments of, in which there is a pushback against Kemalism. And that, I think, explains some of the geopolitics of where we are with Islamophobia and where we want to come, where we want to understand some of these issues. Because in a way, the hostility towards the Islamic revolution is often the most intense from those, let's call them regimes, just to be provocative, in which Islamophobia becomes fairly central to the possibility of holding on and maintaining their positions and their particular shape and contours of their particular societies. Mona, you want to say something?
- [28:02]
Mona Makinijad
I just find it interesting, a point that you mentioned, that how Islamic Republic in Iran or Islamic revolution was kind of interruption for the Kemalism order. I find it, I just wanted to. To elaborate on that. When we are talking about Islamic Republic of Iran and this 47 years, it's hardly ever, I think, reducible to one essential entity that always was the same, right? This State building process has quite up and down as well, that needs to be recognized, especially if wanted to put it in the wider context of Islamic context and the region as well. So just wanted to hear from you as well, if you wanted to point it out to that as well. Regarding this history, do you think it still was, we can name it as an interruption of technology?
- [28:57]
Salman Saeed
Yeah, I think that's a really important point because there's a tendency to see the Islamic Republic as being the same as it was in 79 and the same as it was in 89 and the same as it was in 99. Etc, Etc. This is clearly not the case and in fact very few political projects are able to maintain the same kind of continuity. They don't. You can look at for example the United States, you can see the different kind of phases that state formations. You can look at the Soviet Union, you can see different kind of phases. You can look at Britain, its history from 1945, you can say that there's a particular kinds of phases and organizations and different logics are in play. So I think it's important that we see that this tension between, let's call it the Islamic Revolution and Kamalism isn't resolved in a sense that yes, this was an interruption, that's why I said it was an interruption rather than an eradication. But one of the tendencies is that how Kemalism keeps becoming recuperated. And I would argue that many of the challenges that the Islamic revolution face, clearly many of them are external, but there's also an internal element in which the Islamic revolution itself became, for a variety of reasons which we can investigate on another occasion, began to have more and more Kemalist elements into it. And that meant that it became more and more, in many ways more nationalistic. It managed to try to bring some of these things together and some of the kind of elements that we associate with Kemalism, et cetera. And I think that's one of the tensions we're going on. And maybe one of the ways to understand this war is that it gives an opportunity for the Islamic Republic to rewrite that social contract. Because one of the things that we know very clearly that in the era of the Cold War, from 19 till 1989, let's say the boundaries of countries was guaranteed by the superpowers. That's why we had very few boundary changes with the end of the Cold War that guarantee no longer exists. While the external superpowers were guaranteeing your boundaries, your borders, you didn't need your people, you only needed Your main challenge was going to be internal and you only needed a security service. You didn't need external defense. Once you have to protect your borders, you then need your people. And getting your people to be supportive means that you have to reimagine that relationship again. And I think that one of the challenges has happened is that to what extent the decisions made by certain sections within Iraq to follow the policies which have actually been more inclined towards Kemalism than the Islamic revolution itself. And I think that has produced some of those tensions. But I think having said all of that, I think there would be a remiss not to recognize that Iran, like nearly the entire Muslim communities, operate now in a world system or international order that is, is Islamophobic and that produces lots of different kind of challenges. I don't know if you want to follow up on that.
- [32:24]
Sheila Khan
Go. Yeah, I mean, I think the question of Muslimness is really important, but it's also important to point out that Muslimness only becomes a problem when it goes against the diktat of empire. If the Iranians had somehow assimilated themselves to what was known as the so called liberal international order, perhaps they wouldn't be here today, we wouldn't be having this war today. But as, as we've known that, you know, Netanyahu is bragging about the fact that he's waited for 40 years for this opportunity to attack Iran. So it's the fact that Iran, however the revolution may have developed, however it may have morphed over time, it still represents autonomy or it still represents a kind of threat, if you like, to the prevailing world, which we can call either the liberal international order or some kind of, or with Zionism, with Zionist hegemony as its subtext. So it is important to see that Iran as a state does represent a very, very substantial geopolitical challenge to the region at large. And in that sense, I know you mentioned that the Iranian revolution may have changed over time. Obviously it's evolved, but I think the sustained hostility to Iran has not. It's been there from the beginning. And it's also very interesting to kind of talk about other sort of related discourses, like the discourse on terrorism, on fanaticism, on rogue states, which actually sort of really gathered momentum from the 70s, but particularly after 1979 and after the Iranian revolution, that these discourses have actually remained fairly constant and they are mobilized at different times by different actors. And the latest cohort being the Iranian monarchists who've kind of picked up on these discourses which have been available which have been in circulation since that time. So I think you want to say something.
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Salman Saeed
No, I want to go back to the question about Muslimness. I think you're right. But the thing is this, the way that when I talk about Muslimness, it has to be an autonomous expression. And I think no one doubts that. I mean, look at. There's a moment at which the Turkish Republic starts becoming problematic. It's a moment where it is exactly at the moment when it starts asserting a position which doesn't comport with the Kemalist logics entirely. So in all of these political associations, we're not looking for purity, we're not looking for 100% of anything. We're looking for tendency. The fact remains that if the Islamic Republic of Iran was like the current Islamic Republic of Pakistan, it is unlikely that there would be this war, which you say is a good thing, but it is unlikely that it would actually be a sovereign society. It is unlikely that it would have any kind of accomplishments or possibilities for its own people. So in a sense, I think these are not just foreign policy choices. They actually have implications for the constructions of societies. So in a way, Muslimness becomes critical because when Muslimness appears, it appears in that kind of form of autonomousness, because it appears in opposition to ethno nationalism. And that, I think, is the critical dimension here, because Muslimness then undermines ethno nationalist enclosures. And that is one of the things that makes it much more problematic right now. It is a surface of inscription for writing things which are transnational. That doesn't mean that it's perfect, it doesn't mean that it can do all these things, but there is a certain element in that. So I think this is why it's really important that we understand that what Islamophobia does is bridge the domestic with a foreign, with the interior, with the exterior. So in a sense, we are dealing with a phenomenon of Islamophobia, which is not just what happens domestically, but also geopolitically. And I think once we start understanding that, we then start seeing the relationship between colonialism and racism was always divided between what was internal and was external. So for us, that I think is really important to put this into context of the geopolitical dimension of the war, because the war isn't just a war about geopolitics. It's also war about cultural elements. Into that, that. Yamona, you want to say something?
- [37:00]
Mona Makinijad
No, just very quickly, because we talk a lot about how you made a connection between the internal and external aspect of that. I Think as we pointed out a lot to this imperialism, colonialism, this orientalistic narrative of this war and representation of Islamic Republic. But I just wanted to point it out also that when you are talking about Orientalism and do not consider the Islamic Republic as kind of just passive subject that doesn't have any kind of the agency, all the good and bad choices are the result that happens both internally the situation that right now and put it in the wider context of the international law, Islamic Republic also has kind of agency and it should not be deniable that that to be recognized when we are talking about that. I think this understanding opens our eyes to more to knowing what's the condition right now under Gradmore specifically.
- [38:06]
Salman Saeed
I think it's a very important point because what happens a lot of the analysis that one sees, funnily enough, it denies agency for many, many actors that they have either no agency and either that no agency means they can't do anything or their agency is compromised because they're part of some kind of overall conspiracy or someone is pulling their strings, et cetera. So I agree, I think there is agency involved in all these levels and I think we really need to focus on that. So I think maybe we can talk a lot more about this. But perhaps. Shela, you want to say something more about the geopolitical dimension or the time that we have?
- [38:48]
Sheila Khan
Yeah, I think just to kind of rejoinder to what I said earlier about musliveness, I think, you know, Muslimness is a, it has to be identified with sovereignty and that's where it becomes a problem. But, you know, in 2003 we had the US invasion of Iraq and Iraq had nothing to do with Muslims. It was under the Baath Party, was under Saddam Hussein. So I think we do have to look at, at the wider geopolitical calculus as well in which Muslimness plays a part. But it is not the only determining factor. There is an attempt to kind of recreate or reinvent the region in a certain modality, if you like. And it is all really to do with autonomy, with sovereignty. And yes, Muslimness can play a part in, but it is not the only determining factor. And in terms of the, the sort of the politics. Sorry, sorry, did you want to come in before I go on?
- [39:46]
Salman Saeed
Yes. I think it's important to nail this, even if it means that we finish the program on this point here, because I think it's a really important point that you're making. So firstly, there's a kind of empirical problems here to some extent. How does Iraq feature in into all of this kind of landscape. Orientalism operates by projecting particular kinds of imaginaries. And part of the Orientalist picture is that those imaginaries fixate upon elements of Muslimness. Muslimness itself is not an empirical referent, so it can take on many different guises. So, for example, when Iraq is invaded at this point in time, one of the things that Saddam does is start perpetuating more and more his Muslim identity. So the idea that there's something called Muslimness and there's something called Orientalism, I don't think it actually works. Islamophobia is not just about people who are Muslim. So at the same time, no one is saying that that is the only motivation. What one is saying is that any kind of logic is really predicated on how particular ways we understand the world. So you could put this, and as many people do, in a longer kind of history, you could simply say that since, let's say, Bosnia, or since, for example, the nineteen, mid-1980s, how many US interventions have been directed against Muslims compared to. To other parts of the world? Like in the 70s and 60s, the US Imperial imprint was in South Asia. I'm not saying that, in a sense, Muslimness is the reason. This is not a question about the rerun of the Crusades, et cetera. Having said that, we do know that there are those who actually do see many of those actions in this apocalyptic terms. So I think it's still a question of determination. Nor is it that we can separate the kind of geopolitical calculation away from the way that we imagine the world to be be. So, yeah, so I think it's, you know, I think we've touched a number of important points along this discussion, and one of them has really been that the war against the Islamic Republic cannot be told without referencing the role that Orientalism and Islamophobia play, not only in its articulation, in relation to its representation, how a scene, but also in the way that makes it possible. We know, and, you know, you made the point about dehumanization. And in the face of a genocide, which is quite extraordinary, one of the things extraordinary about the genocide is that we are not able to call it a genocide. The value of those who've been killed in such a number doesn't seem to register. So that shows us that there is a logic going on here that the liberal order can accept kinds of genocides. So I think what is important that we see the war against the Islamic Republic of Iran not simply in terms of a war for oil, a war for resources, all of these things are there. It is also war predicated in imagining the world in a particular way and for a variety of reasons. The historical ontology of the world right now is predicated on Islamophobia. That doesn't mean that everything is about Islam or because Islamophobia is not only about Muslims. But it certainly means that Islamophobia structures more and more of social relationships in all kinds of ways of life. And in that sense, this war contributes to that, is made possible by that and accelerates that process. And if we have listeners who may feel of instinctively see this, it is properly to understand that the frames and the perspectives by which we understand this war cannot be independent of Orientalism. And that I think is really, really important. And we. I suppose one thing that Radio Reorient and the broader kind of Critical Muslim project tries to do is really see how we can undo Orientalism. And you can only undo Orientalism by taking it more seriously than it has been done as not simply as representation, but also constitution. Orientalism is about constructing historical ontology. I'd like to thank Mona.
- [44:44]
Sheila Khan
Thank you.
- [44:44]
Salman Saeed
I'd like to thank Jenna. Sa.