No Thanksgiving for Turki: Islamism, individualism, and the internet.

NO-THANKSGIVING for TURKI #1:

"Islamism, individualism, and the internet"

Interesting things are happening in the land of Istanbul Express re:the challenge to Islamism as ideology. It seems that even if Islam is used as a political ideology and rhetoric to install the post-modern state especially circa "Arab Spring" in MENA (Middle East and North Africa), after two decades or so it will still be subjected to a Kondratieff Cycle of bloom and decay. It will still be forced to go through the Khaldunish (re: Ibnu Khaldun's historiography) paradigmatic shifts of rise and fall. It will still have to go through a Marxist cycle of dialectical materialism: that thesis-antithesis-synthesis ideological karma.

From Tianamen to Tahrir to Taksim -- the trigger for mass protests might be different by the theme of renewal is the same. The technology used and how the culture utilizes it as a tool of transformation may be different but the threats to authoritarianism presented by "the masses composing of individuals" is the same: leaders that lead by the lethal power of laissez faire and the leit motif of religiosity are forced to go when individualism is threatened and when the internet rules.

The idea of an "Islamic state" as an alternative to the "secular state" that seemed appealing to Islamists seems to be under fire and has lost its appeal, as we see in the Arab Spring that sprung everywhere these days, somewhat finding a Tantric-yoga-like peacefulness in the anarchism of the hundreds-of-cities-strong Occupy Movement.

The "ummah" is an elusive concept. It has always been. As elusive as words such as "masses", "people", "rakyat", "state", "nation", or for that matter , anything -- if we look at language from a Satrean, Derrida-ian, Lacan-ian, Chomsky-ian, or Wittgenstein-ian point of view. Calls for revolutionary change under the banner of the "realization of an ummah-nation-state" is at best as meaningless as a act of waiting for an "Al-Mahdi" or a "Messiah" or an "Al-Masihi" to restore the world to its rightful state of spirituality to cleanse it from all these decades of filth done by the work of the "Devil" or the "Dajjal" or of "Gog and Magog" or whatever man has popularly characterize his/her demons Mara as -- demons that are within himself/herself that may have been threatening the sovereignty of the government of the Self Within.

I don't know ....

Interesting things continue to unfold in our world of perpetual revolutions. Who said secularism is dead? Maybe it is a naturally appearing antidote to religionista-ism, or in this case of No-Thanksgiving for Turkey, it is a force so natural given the power of personalizing, protest-enabling, and paradigm-shifting technology Man has at his disposal: the Internet.

What about the Malaysian condition? As a student of "revolutions of sort" I continue to be intrigued by the shape of things deconstructive, and how ideas flow transculturally and colonizes spaces of power and knowledge.

So -- we saw Tiananmen. We saw Tahrir. We are seeing Taksim. Tampoi and Tanjung Rambutan is what we should be observing ...

Alright folks .. here's my mid-morning thoughts from Walden III.

But what do YOU think of all these revolutions and street samba soul sacrifice santana-singing secularist sensations across our world of sewel-ism? (hmm.. these rhyme ... )

YOUR TURN.