Fundamentalisms

Mohammad Yazdi, a clerical member of Iran’s Council of Guardians, a constitutional body responsible for ensuring that legislation adheres to Iran’s Constitution, as interpreted by Iran’s religious scholars and Islamic law, and for vetting presidential candidates has announced that Iranian laws “do not allow women to become presidents”.

Not one bullet was fired, not one smoke bomb was dropped as scores of Muslims were attacked and some were burnt alive in Myanmar last week. The security forces just looked on. In a country where they routinely use brute force against political dissidents, villagers who protest land grabs and even monks, their passivity was sadly revealing.

The following is an exchange based on a recent Dissent article by Meredith Tax. To take part in the debate, you can visit Dissent’s Facebook page. In her essay “An Expedient Alliance? The Muslim Right and The Anglo-American Left,” noted feminist Meredith Tax makes a number of accusations. Most of them center on the Left’s “support of the Muslim Right,” which has in Tax’s view “undermined struggles for secular democracy in the Global South.” Tax argues that “left-wing alliances with fundamentalist groups” amount to a betrayal “of the majority of their co-religionists, who do not wish to be represented by extremists.”

Anthropologue, psychanalyste et essayiste, Malek Chebel est né en 1953 à Skikda. Il est l’auteur d’une œuvre imposante qui comprend une trentaine de titres dont «Le Corps en Islam» (Presses Universitaires de France, 1984), «Le Livre des séductions» (Payot, 1986 et 1996), «Histoire de la circoncision, des origines à nos jours» (Balland, 1992 et 2006), une «Encyclopédie de l’Amour en Islam» (Payot, 1995 et 2003) et plus récemment une traduction du Coran acccompagnée d’un «Dictionnaire encyclopédique du Coran» (Fayard, 2009) et enfin «Les Grandes figures de l’islam» (Perrin, 2011). La publication d’un «Dictionnaire des réformateurs musulmans» (Albin Michel), offre l’occasion d’interroger cet Algérien, courtois et raffiné, dont le combat contre les dérives totalitaires et obscurantistes d’un islam figé dans la violence et corseté dans l’intolérance focalise l’intérêt.