An Interview with Dr. Saladdin Ahmed – Independent Scholar and Researcher

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/12/18

You are a Canadian citizen. You were in Turkey, but complications did not permit working there. What is your story? What were the complications?

In September 2014, I moved to Turkey to teach in the Philosophy Department at Mardin Artuklu University and help found a graduate philosophy program in English. At that point, there was a fragile truce between Ankara and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Mardin, like the rest of Turkey’s predominately Kurdish southeast, was experiencing a cultural revival due to the relative increase of freedoms, but it was only a matter of time before the government would resume its extreme suppression of the people of the region.

To the south of the border, in Syrian Kurdistan, or Rojava, the war between ISIS (backed by Turkey) and Syrian Kurds (supported by the PKK) was at its peak. At the university, the same tensions were ever-present. While the student body generally sympathized with the Kurdish liberation movement, the state was growing more Islamist and anti-Kurd by the day.

Near the end of 2014, Mardin Artuklu University became one of the first academic institutions to be targeted by Erdogan’s renewed campaign of Islamification and de-Kurdification. The politically moderate rector of the university was removed from his position and replaced with a fundamentalist and open advocate of the revival of the Caliphate system. It was clear that the tide had turned, and we all anxiously waited to see what the new administration’s first move would be.

It came in June 2015 when 13 foreign instructors, including myself, were fired without any official explanation. In his social media posts, the new rector insinuated that we were spies and missionaries and expressed outrage that we had taken jobs away from Turks. Despite the mobilization of our students and progressive colleagues against the firing and support from Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) parliamentarians, we were left with little choice but to leave Mardin.

In the midst of Ankara’s renewed war on the Kurdish region, such scare tactics have considerably increased in frequency against progressive academics and public intellectuals in the country since the summer of 2014. Progressive faculty in Mardin, as in other cities across the country, are under increased pressure and scrutiny. Those who have taken public stances against the war, whether through signing peace petitions or speaking to the media, have been questioned by police and, in a growing number of cases, suspended or fired from their positions.

You earned a B.A. in philosophy, M.A. in contemporary continental philosophy, an M.A. in applied language studies, and a Ph.D. in philosophy. What were the research topics within those domains of expertise?

While studying philosophy as an undergraduate student at Carleton University, I became particularly interested in 20^th century continental philosophy. From there, I focused on the Frankfurt School and especially Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno while doing my MA in Philosophy at Brock University.

In my major essay, I looked at fascist regimes’ systematic use of images to create homogeneous spaces control. I argued that mechanically reproduced images not only lack the auratic quality of authentic art, as Benjamin argued, but also destroy the uniqueness of the spaces they invade.

I took a different direction with my MA in Applied Language Studies at Carleton, where I used Critical Discourse Analysis to illustrate the nuances of new-racism.

New-racism is more resistant to our traditional methods of diagnosis; contemporary racist discourses do not make direct reference to the term “race,” although racists still believe that there is such a thing as race. “Culture” now often takes the place of “race” which results in the anthropologization and othering of non-white disadvantaged groups.

Finally, my Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Ottawa developed out of my earlier research on Benjamin’s concept of aura in combination with my reading of Henri Lefebvre’s seminal The Production of Space. I theorized “spatial aura” and used this concept to build my theory of “totalitarian space.”

Essentially, I argued that when space is controlled, it is rendered transparent and flat, stripped of its uniqueness (spatial aura). As such, the inspecting gaze of power and systematic commodification of space have deprived us of auratic spatial experiences.

How have those informed personal and professional critique of religion?

Not a single course throughout my studies touched on anything resembling the critique of religion. Instead, the philosophy of religion comprises a growing sub-discipline. The absence of critical approaches to religion in Anglo-American philosophy schools is merely another symptom of the apoliticality of the discipline.

Indeed, since the 1980s, there has been a tendency to politicize everything that is not political and apoliticize everything that is. The critique of religion is something philosophy simply cannot afford to avoid, if for no other reason than because religion claims authority over the same territories of knowledge, such as metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.

The religious mystification of those fields will continue to marginalize philosophy and generate fatal social norms. If philosophy is ever to be relevant again to the actual world, it must confront religion.

What arguments seem most reasonable in support of religion?

Religion cannot rely on actual sound arguments, or it would negate its own foundations.

If one could put aside the psychological need for a comforting illusion, there is nothing clearer than the fact that the world is Godless, in the sense that it lacks universal justice. The most fundamental grounds on which religion is founded and embraced are psychological. If not for the psychological barrier, looking at any ethically unjustifiable event would be sufficient to disprove the existence of an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good supreme being.

Let us take an example.

If we agree that there is absolutely nothing that could justify what has been committed against Yezidis, then we must conclude that there is no God. For if there were a God, he either could not intervene or chose not to intervene to stop the atrocities (including the rape and murder of thousands of children). If God could not intervene, then God is not all-powerful, which contradicts the very definition of God. If God chose not to intervene, then God is not all-good, which also contradicts the definition of God.

Of course, believers would claim that “God” knows things we do not, so he must have had a reason for allowing the Yezidi genocide (and endless other genocides) to be committed. The main problem with such a claim is that it excludes reason itself from the deduction process. To argue that there is a higher reason that would contradict logic and that we should, therefore, accept the illogical assumption is complete and utter nonsense.

You see a problem with Islam, not Muslims, at this point in time. What is the problem with the ideas comprising Islam to you?

I take issue with all collective religious and nationalist identities insofar as they are intrinsically exclusionary and discriminatory. That said, the use of “Muslims” as a category is also deeply flawed. The differences between one Muslim community and another could be far greater than the differences between a Muslim community and a non-Muslim community.

Hence, the label “Muslim” does not say much about people. Furthermore, “Muslimhood” in today’s world is perceived as a racial category. It should not need to be said that a Muslim is a person who believes in the religion of Islam. Just as not every Mathew is a Christian, not every Abdullah is a Muslim.

As for actual Muslims – people who self-identify as such – there are hundreds of millions who do not understand a word of the Quran. Islamists, on the other hand, are Muslims who consciously use Islam for political ends, and Islam as a religion allows for that because it was designed as not only a set of spiritual values and practices, but also as a political ideology for conquest and governance.

From the emergence of Islam in the 7^th century all the way to the most recent Yezidi genocide, Islamic authorities have called for, encouraged, or, at the very least, implicitly justified the mass murder and enslavement of non-Muslims.

Because it was founded in the 7^th century, the Islamic worldview of politics and governance is naturally disastrous when applied to today’s world. This is the obvious problem of which many Muslims are aware. A less acknowledged problem is that even for its historical time, Islam was not as progressive and tolerant as Islamic scholars would like us to believe. It matters little how many good moral lessons a belief system expounds if that system is fundamentally sexist, discriminatory, and supportive of the violent conquest of other peoples.

These have been characteristic of Islam from the very beginning. Of course, many other religions have the same problems, and for that reason they should all be rejected. Unfortunately, Islam still dominates many social and political arenas, which poses a direct threat to basic human rights and freedoms.

Why the focus on Islam over other religions?

Because Islam is the main ideological source of Islamism, and Islamism is one of the most dangerous fascist forces in today’s world. Again, it should not need to be said that most Muslims are just ordinary people, at least insofar as the followers of any religion are ordinary.

Also, there are numerous none-orthodox interpretations of Islam that stand in opposition to political Islam in general. Still, none of that should mean that it is okay to encourage or even allow Islamic centers. All the good moral teachings of Islam and much more could be included in a secular ethics course.

Some might point to extreme nationalism, linguistic chauvinism, or ethnic superior-ism to support violence or discrimination against others. What makes religious extremism better or worse to you?

I do not think religious extremism is universally better or worse than other ideologies that justify discrimination. In the so-called Muslim world, secular forms of imperialist nationalism have been responsible for numerous genocidal crimes. For example, secular Arab nationalism, such as Baathism, and secular Turkish nationalism (Kamalism) have been just as barbaric as Islamism in terms of genocidal crimes and the brutal oppression of colonized peoples.

There are many Arab nationalists who are no less anti-Semitic or anti-Kurd than Islamist Arabs. Also, let us not forget that European fascism in Italy, Spain, and Germany was secular. Absolutism is fatal whether it is religious or not; non-religious fascism has its own sources of absolutism, so it matters little what those sources or symbols are called. For Nazis, Hitler basically functioned as God, just as for Kamalists, Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, functions as God.

What about the claims of despair? That is, some theologically illiterate individuals feel despair over crimes of Western countries, based on decision and policies of leaders destroying their livelihoods, and justify violent actions based on that context and co-opt religion for extremist purposes and, therefore, religion is not to blame. Does this seem reasonable to you to explain much of the religious extremism in the world?

To me, religion is first and foremost an institution run by a group of people who design its politics, in the broadest and strictest sense of the term of politics. Illiterate individuals are mobilized by religious authorities to do what they do. Those same authorities could distance religion from violence, but when they do not, then religion as an institution is to blame, among other things.

Islamic jihad cannot be emancipatory under any conditions because Islam itself is inherently oppressive, at least in terms of its organization of societal relations. There are many peoples who have been brutally oppressed by Western and non-Western countries, but their resistance remains progressive.

The Kurdish case is indicative of this point: Kurds in Turkey and Syria are among the most brutally oppressed peoples in the world. While Turkey enjoys extensive support from Western powers, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is blacklisted by Western countries. Tens of Kurdish towns have been completely destroyed by the Turkish army in the last twelve months alone. Kurdish political prisoners face unimaginable forms of torture in Turkish prisons.

Nonetheless, the PKK remains a progressive liberation movement and has not restarted to targeting civilians. In fact, fighters from the PKK as well as the ideologically aligned Democratic Union Party (PYD) have saved countless minority members from Turkish-ISIS aggressions in Iraq and Syria, including tens of thousands of Yezidis. Religious extremism has been on the rise in the rest of the Middle East precisely because of the lack of such progressive movements.

Any recommended thinkers or authors on the subject of Islamic extremism or religious extremism in general?

I am by no means an expert on the subject of religious extremism, so I am not in the position to recommend sources on the topic. That said, I have tremendous respect for Tarek Fatah, who is very knowledgeable on the subject and consistently takes progressive stances on issues related to Islamic domination. Another critic that I follow is Hamed Abdel-Samad, who is also outspoken about the problems of Islam, drawing attention to the numerous contradictions in the Quran and criticizing Islam’s social influence. There is a great need for more critical voices among white leftists in the West as well. I recently read an excerpt from Meredith Tax’s book Double Bind, which takes issue with the tendency of many in the Left to romanticize Islamist movements. The fact that the ultra-right in the West demonizes entire populations under the pretext of fighting Islamic extremism should not make the Western Left sympathize with Islamism. The ultra-right will remain racist with or without the Islamist threat. In fact, Islamism and the West’s ultra-right have far more in common than either party would like to admit. At bottom, they both rely on fascistic modes of reasoning to demonize the Other. The Left should be capable of rejecting both without any difficulty, which is what the revolutionary Left has done in the Middle East.

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