I have always tried to make a distinction between the socially constructed IDENTITY of Islam and its Muslims, and the thread of submission or surrender (islam) that permeates all paths (so it seems), be they monotheist, polytheist, what have you. I actually believe this was the original understanding of Islam by Muhammad and only shifted as “systems” (i.e. Mecca) began encroaching and torturing people. (See below for what I mean by systems). Because this distinction I make between the social and the personal is often blurry (especially to a reader) I think I end up talking with people, the two of us coming from very different places and with different intentions.
These distinctions between the social and the always already impulse to surrender are beyond important to me, as I see the socially constructed identities not as identities at all, but rather as strategies. They are methods and means by which we work or manipulate a (the) system. The social (i.e. the culmination of American policy foreign or domestic) IS a system and only understands and can relate to other systems. (Which is why the US cannot confront terrorism as it is–a decentered no-thing composed of loose non-systems–because it only understands a state structure, notably Iraq).
So in order to partake in the system, we need to become systems ourselves. For instance: I want funding. Well where’s your system? Where does your organization meet? I want tax breaks. Well are you married? I want to go to school. What system have you inplace to pay for going to school? I want food. Are you a part of a system that gives you money after you perform a series of tasks?
Systems themselves are fairly closed structures that are simultaneously protective and violent. Protective in the sense that they are necessary as support for an identitfied group. Violent in that they are predicated on the idea that some are in and some are out–the haves and have not syndrome.
Working with systems, however, has manifested a most curious non-working binary (for me curiously pleasurable in its end-of-the-world flavor where nothing makes sense anymore, and for others it’s just hypocritical): us & them where “us” is necessary for solidarity, and “them” is perceived as an aggressive act of marginalization and/or essentialism. The obvious example is one where a person self-identfying with(in) a marginalized group (i.e. transgendered, African-American, et al…) may refer to “us” as a group that needs to work together. “We need to get our shit together and speak out.” The slippage occurs when someone perceived as outside this at times loose alliance at other times strict allegiance states, “They are getting their shit together and are speaking out.” The problem lies in the “they” of the statement. For some this perceived inequality of language “Hey how come you get to say ‘nigger’ and we can’t?” is actually merely a manifestation and the necessary sum total of an “Other-ing” society where two levels of existence are often misunderstood as one level of experience.
1. There is the social with its strategies, alliances, and methods.
2. There is the animate (the proto-human, pre-social) with its desire to be none other than a conglomerate of body-minds existing within a mutually assisted lifestyle.
Both are necessary and in effect co-exist, however Level 1 is often misunderstood to actually be Level 2, where the strategic is thought to be the essential, as if to say my “male-ness” precedes my human-ness. This is of course false, since male-ness is reconstituted with every age. So too is female-ness, color, the shape of the eyes, the language of the mouth, the dick in the ass, and the tongue in the kooch.
But this merely ups the ante. The struggle is now on two fronts. We embrace the methods by which we subvert the grand narrative (AKA gov’t administrations or petty wannabe gov’t administations in the guise of religions) by alligning ourselves with groups and identities that make sense to us. Simultaneously we recognize that these are merely methods by which we subvert other systems, to be dropped and faded out as the oppression of grand narratives is usurped.
This can be gradual or immediate. I think this is largely out of our hands.
And yet, how does this tie into Islam?
Islam is a model I use to demonstrate how “The System” (for example, Islam organized around a codified set of beliefs established by a male elite and maintained by an institutionalized mimicry of the Prophet pbuh) is mistaken for the always-already impulse to submit to the crushing is-ness of Reality (AKA lower-case “islam” as it is presented in the Qur’an before Muhammad pbuh was forced to establish stategic Islam to confront opression). However, the crushing is-ness of Reality will always mutilate a codified system simply by the very nature of it’s being–be it the subtle sneeze of an infant, or the reestablishment of once pristine coastline in Thailand by way of a tsunami. However, Islam in no way has a monopoly on codification. Sikhism has also seemed to go through a similar event where the original guru Nanak establishes a thoroughly UNcodified, UNidentity obsessive path, only to be regimented by “the five K’s” (including uncut hair, blade, comb, underwear, and bracelet). [However, I simply can’t accept that the Blessed Nanak, the man who attracted bth Muslim and Hindus as “sikhs” or disciples who still retained their identities as Muslims and Hindus, would have wanted to codify the discipleship into yet another religion.]
In the end, if the prophets were just talking about religion, it’s bullshit and uselfull only to power-hungry asshole men. If they were attempting to explode the systems in order to readdress our attention to the uncontainable, than I say Amen!
Otherwise, your dress code awaits. You can purchase your beliefs from the local imam. If you’re lucky enough, you might be able to codify your friends too!
And so-called faggots? Don’t worry. They won’t be allowed in your religious system. It’s a shame . . . so many assholes and not a man to fit.
