As with any rhetorical program whose ambiguity is its greatest asset, the "War On Terror" has managed to an create an imaginary homogeneous enemy through generalization (at least unto very recently, it appears that most members of Congress, let alone the general public, knew of the difference sects within Islam and the all-too-important history between them). Thus a monocultural 'Islamist' was created, as well as a worldwide Islamic community seeking to destroy our many freedoms, freedoms which are, for the most part, equally as ideological as the ones espoused by Islamism.
But then something happened: the rhetoric employed by the U.S. had the opposite of its intended effect. It served as a point of cohesion for Muslims worldwide, turning reification into reality.
Well, sort of. It wasn't a total reification. After all, a 'totalizing' concept does exist in Islam: that of the Umma, or worldwide Islamic community. But that concept's salience depends on how much national, political, economic, ethnic, and sectarian differences are emphasized at the expense of a categorical, undifferentiated Islam. as is clear from the examples of Iraq and Lebanon, the Umma is still an elusive concept. But it an idea that has nevertheless gained some currency recently:
Umma nationalism seems to be, currently, a dominant mode of thought for many Muslims, in the west as well as the Muslim world. It conceives the political world as one of confrontation between Muslims on the one side and hostile Christians, Jews and Hindus on the other. It is a variant of the "clash of civilizations". It is a totalising vision which eliminates actual politics. The complexities of Iraq or Afghanistan or Palestine/Israel, of the ethnic politics of Europe, of the struggles of Chechnya, all these are collapsed to a single dimension of religious/communal confrontation.It faces the equally total and simplistic notion of the "war on terror". This discourse of umma nationalism seems to be widely held, not only by committed ideological or religious Muslims, but also casually by many nominal Muslims.
The great majority of Muslims probably holds these notions lightly and certainly doesn't act upon them, socially or politically. Would this, then, confirm the distinction between religion and ideology? It would in that many of those who partake of this ideology, whether casually or earnestly, may not be religiously observant. But few who are observant would eschew it.
Islamic religiosity, under current conditions, almost invariably entails an ideological vision. [my italics]
As Sami Zubaida notes, this tendency is a variant of Huntington's 'Clash of Civilizations' thesis, so in vogue in Neo/Conservative circles. I would only add, in addition to the conclusion that contemporary Islam necessary implies an ideology, that so does contemporary American Democracy--our State Religion--as interpreted by the Bush Administration. Thus these ideological perversions feed off one another, both annihilating moderation and rationality according to their own delusions, creating a conflagration that, by way off its own hunger, asphyxiates the rest of the world.
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