Daily Times

The word ideology is largely being used in social sciences, in politics, and in mass media since 20th century. Basically, ideology is an intricate rapport between human cognition and social conditions that gives it emergence at different junctures of history. Scholars have developed two distinct approaches to study ideology. The first approach studies the ideas on its own terms and the second approach stresses on the sociological environment and conditions that are responsible for evolving content and forms of ideology. It is because, ideology becomes apparent only by proper abstraction, juxtaposition and deduction of different relevant social entities.

Today a large population of the world is compelled to live with efficacy of “High theory”-that refers to various ideological clusters, that are in urgent need of rethinking in material and linguistic terms. Theodor Adorno misread Benjamin’s allegorical style as merely descriptive, what Adorno said, “The mediation which I miss, and find obscured by the materialistic-historiographic invocation is nothing other than theory, which your (Benjamin) study omits … if one wished to put it drastically, one could say that; your study is drastically located at the crossroad of magic and positivism-that spot is bewitched-and it is only theory that could break it”. Adorno demanded the return of theory but the impression is not clear.

The groups like Al-Qaeda and Daesh utilize a global religious language (theory/ideology) to create an understanding of global politics that divides the world into two sections-on one hand, there is the world of Islam: a place of goodness, where religious laws are upheld and Muslims are not oppressed. On the other hand, there is the world of war, where Muslims are oppressed by tyrannical regimes. To deal with this oppression, these groups have invented the high-theoretical concepts of “near enemy’ -which means tyrannical national regimes in Muslim lands and “Far-enemy” -refers to the global powers that support oppressive regimes across Muslim lands for their petty-interests. How these groups oblige their followers is that: these regimes ought to be fought and with this obligation, these groups have strategized the war by demonizing the latter: oppressive regimes both at home and abroad. In order to demonize the regimes, the strategy was first introduced by famous Cuban revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara against the US sponsored authoritarian regime of Batista in Cuba. The approach is known as Focoism, whereby terrorists imagine themselves as the vanguard of popular revolutions.

The groups like Al-Qaeda and Daesh utilize a global religious language (theory/ideology) to create an understanding of global politics that divides the world into two sections-on one hand, there is the world of Islam: a place of goodness, where religious laws are upheld and Muslims are not oppressed. On the other hand, there is the world of war, where Muslims are oppressed by tyrannical regimes

On the other hand, it is a fact that ideology brings different tides of the subconscious process of political socialization to consciousness. For instance, Islam as a religion promotes political culture rather a narrow interest-based ideology-what famous writer Edward Mortimer noted: “Islam is a political culture: it often provides the form of vocabulary of political action. It can greatly strengthen personal commitment to a cause. But it is not itself a sufficient explanation for the commitment or the sufficient content for the cause”. Consequently, in the case of Political Islam or Islamism as ideology, is the gross manipulation of the vibrant political culture of Islam to achieve the petty narrow political objectives, which has indeed no differentiation between self and reality. Perhaps, this brand of political Islam largely relies on a subjective and metaphysical explanation instead of a rational explanation.

In contrast, the latter criticism gives birth to a phenomenological framework, which connotes the evolution of religious ideas in its own terms leaving no space for discussion and discretion between essence and appearance, myth and fact. In order to supersede this “High Criticism”, we must bring the Hegelian contention to the forefront that: “it is not history that is significant, it is myth-popular belief is often the public internalization of that myth and it is through that, that the myths are socialized”.

Thus, if we want to understand the impression of ideology then the fact must be understood that what may be truth today, in certain part of the world may turn as falsehood at another juncture. This time the world needs to deconstruct ideology in order to dodge the violent language it has assumed-what Hegel once famously said; “When philosophy paints its gloomy picture a form of life has grown old. It cannot be rejuvenated by the gloomy picture, but only understood. Only when dusk starts to fall does the owl of Minerva spread its wings and fly”.

Published in Daily Times, January 26^th 2019.