Notes On The Secularity of Dissent

The above is a play on words inspired by the work of Saba Mahmood who arguably was the most insightful academic working on Islam in the Anglosphere in the shadow of the War on Terror. Time and again Mahmood got to the heart of the matter in a way that many of her peers failed to (sometimes due to a lack of ability, but perhaps other times due to a simple lack of courage). Most notably she articulated and exposed the religion building project of the neo-cons in trying to bend Islam to the contours of American unipolar primacy in her brilliant Secularism, Hermeneutics and Empire.

I now ask whether dissent as articulated by those in the Anglosphere should be considered as something secular or religious? First of all, dissent against what specifically? To put it in crude and simplistic terms, dissent would be articulated against the current iteration of the Fukuyaman Administrative State with its enormous and multifaceted technocratic manifestations. The 20s will be marked by attempts to hyperdrive the Administrative State into a Cybernetic one - leveraging data and exploiting it to create new forms of coercion and tyranny that are far more sophisticated and pervasive. Such algorithmic colonisation will naturally impact the type of religioisities that flourish within its borders.

Secular dissent in my estimation very often degrades and decays into the same pathologies that are involved in worship of the State to begin with. There is little emphasis in secular dissent on imagining a type of life beyond the confines and gaze of the State. Secular dissent is mere liberal nostalgia, wishing to turn the clock back to the early 2000s or late 90s, in very real terms it is a type of quaint liberal traditionalism, wishing to return back to a world of American primacy. This is emphasized that despite the tumultuous times in the wake of the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, there is no real religious movement, no spiritual fervour or awakening gripping the lethargic regimes across American Empire. There are of course very passionate secular heresies but squarely located within the logic of electoral politics. Given that conflict remains one squarely to be negotiated through electoral wrangling, the character and health of the Administrative State remains remarkably intact and healthy. Elections curiously are permitted to define the character and sentiments of a people, they have become periodic baptisms. Thus, Fukuyama's thesis remains strongly intact for the Anglosphere - he remains vindicated time and time again, there really is a lack of imagination beyond what is possible through the mechanisms of liberal democracy. A figure, that I believe encapsulates this lack of imagination perfectly is Thierry Baudet in the Netherlands.

Religious dissent however is altogether in spirit and outlook transformative. One is not dissenting so that political ambitions can be leveraged using the machinery of the State, not at all. For the Administrative State is an idol that requires breaking much like in the fashion of the Arabian Prophet's ﷺ return to Makkah. The Muslim understands that the current regime competes with Islam on a macro-level for the alleigance of one's actions and thoughts. Religious devotion and commitment can possibly create a new vector of imagination for what is possible looking beyond the machinations of electoralism.

There is of course a very serious challenge for religious dissent given that we have now lived in a world drenched in the triumph of the Administrative State, few if any of us have lived under and known anything else but this. The pressing challenge beyond the Administrative State, that religious dissent must confront is complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity of governing and acting in the world that is now in front of us. Even if the Cybernetic State fails to establish itself in the 20s, or is perhaps delayed by a few decades, it remains that the all of the events over the last 100-150 years have created a set of transformations that require confrontation. Retreating into Luddite protest is a recipe for extinction, because the world that has been created is here to stay. I don't think any of the processes wrought over the last century or so can be reversed in terms of political economy, in terms of technology, in terms of pharmaceuticals and much more. These are all fields, which admittedly were fostered under the shade of the Administrative State that are here to stay and committing epistimecide on such a large scale would be grossly irresponsible.

Complexity is a type of Pandora's Box, once opened it cannot be closed and I would argue that any attempt at quashing said complexity as a way of proving one's "dissent" may lead to even more tyranny and suffering - almost a consequence of staring far too long into the abyss as it were. Complexity for the Muslim dissident cannot be rolled back if the borders of the post-colonial Islamicate arrangement are somehow dissolved overnight or perhaps simply fall apart (as many rightly point out, much of these borders are indeed arbitrary and dysfunctional, but as a counter - time is a powerful force, and despite dysfunctional foundations, I would argue the Islamicate currently is a volatile hotbed of passionate and intense nationalisms that are very much real even if the borders may be deemed as fictions - another conundrum). Civilization is the burden of one's aspirations and beliefs - and the key to civilization in the years to come is facing complexity whilst looking after Bani Adam.

It is a vexing dilemma, and should give pause for thought in terms of imagining what a proper religious orientation should look like which is at once critical and distant from the current Cybernetic State building projects without lapsing into Luddite fancy.

Ibn Maghreb

And God knows best