Grey Wool Knickers They breathe

A perhaps too-authoritative title for a post that is much more of the beginning of an exploration than an unequivocal pronouncement. I came across a number of readings over the past weekend that have piqued my interest in the subject. The first was a forthcoming essay (by a for-now-unnamed author) on neo-authoritarianism in Egypt and the second a 2003 thesis by Lindsey Wise on the “new preachers”, in which she explores the phenomenon of a new crop of lay preachers of Islam. Lastly, and, most especially, an article in Le Monde dipomatique on the same phenomenon, though much more brief, and with a stronger focus on the ways in which these preachers have enlisted not just the outward trappings of modernity, but the specific modes of articulation of business management.

This interests me because, for one, I have a morbid fascination with the encroachment of commodity relations generally and business and corporate culture specifically into ever more—and ever more “unlikely”—realms. I think a great many of us Americans, no matter what our position vis-à-vis capital, cling to this fantastic notion that Islam and Arab culture is, if not intrinsically antagonistic toward Capitalism, at least somehow impervious to many of its most pernicious and most modern logics. The practices of these “new preachers”, especially given their meteoric success, puts the lie to this notion and others like it. They render these prevailing ideas as ridiculous as Napoleon’s suggestion that the Deism of the French Revolution was “more or less a form of ‘Islam'” or analogous prevarications on the part of the Soviets. As it turns out, not only is capital flexible (and flexiblizing) enough to accommodate Islam, but Islam (at least some forms of actually-existing Islam) is likewise flexible enough to accommodate capitalism. The assumed symmetry expressed in this dynamic is another issue I would like to analyse, in a direction hinted at by the parenthetical statements.

Somewhat relatedly, I would like to explore to what extent the rise of these lay preachers can be compared with that of similarly “capitalism-friendly” American televangelists. In particular, I would like to discover the full extent, as well as likely boundaries, of the efficacy of that peculiar touchy-feely, self-improvement mode of corporate personnel management. What is it about that management style that it can lend itself so easily to religiosity of all stripes and be so easily absorbed into both Christianity and Islam? And, on the other hand, where is the point of intersection at which Christians and Muslims alike begin to find that style so distasteful. I think we may find that point (or, more likely, those points) of intersection in some unexpected places, not easily placed on our customary matrices of class, race, gender, age, etc. The purpose of all of this is not simply academic (despite the rarefied language I use here, for which I must apologize), but to find the weak points in this controlling process in order to disrupt it, and hopefully many more like it.

If anyone has any thoughts on this, please feel free to chime in!

Here’s another interesting link highlighting the debate in Islam surrounding one of the most basic means of capitalist accumulation: the charging of interest. This is a news story from yesterday in Al-Masry Al-Youm pointing out the equivocations of the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar, the Egyptian government’s most valuable asset (which perhaps overstates his usefulness) in its efforts to accommodate and control Islam.