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<b>The Antinomies of Tolerant Reason</b><BR>
To many a Western historian of religion, Islam is a problem – how could it have emerged <i>after</i> Christianity, the religion to end all religions? Its very geographic place belies the cliché on Orientalism: much more than belonging to the Orient, the location of Islam makes it a fatal obstacle to the true union of the East and the West – the point made exemplarily by Claude Levi-Strauss:
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Today, it is behind Islam that I contemplate India; the India of Buddha, prior to Muhammad who – for me as a European and because I am European – arises between our reflection and the teachings which are closest to it /…/ the hands of the East and the West, predestined to be joined, were kept apart by it. /.../<BR><BR>The West should return to the sources of its torn condition: by way of interposing itself between Buddhism and Christianity, Islam islamized us when, in the course of the Crusades, the West let itself be caught in the opposition to it and thus started to resemble it, instead of delivering itself – in the case of the inexistence of Islam – to the slow osmosis with Buddhism which would christianize us even more, in a sense which would have been all the more Christian insofar as we were to mount beyond Christianity itself. It is then that the West has lost its chance to remain woman. [[A Glance into the Archives of Islam#Notes|1]]</blockquote>
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So what is Islam, this disturbing excess that represents East for the West and West for the East? In his <i>La psychanalyse a l’epreuve de l’Islam</i>, Fethi Benslama <a title="" name="_ftnref4" href="[[A Glance into the Archives of Islam#_ftn4">[Notes|4]</a> ] provides a systematic search for the “archive” of Islam, for its obscene secret mythical support which <i>ne cesse pas de ne pas s’ecrire</i> and as such sustains the explicit dogma. Is, for example, the story of Hagar not Islam’s “archive,” relating to Islam’s explicit teaching in the same way the Jewish secret tradition of Moses relates to explicit teachings of Judaism? In his discussion of the Freudian figure of Moses, Eric Santner introduces the key distinction between symbolic history (the set of explicit mythical narratives and ideologico-ethical prescriptions that constitute the tradition of a community, what Hegel would have called its "ethical substance") and its obscene Other, the unacknowledgeable "spectral," fantasmatic secret history that effectively sustains the explicit symbolic tradition, but has to remain foreclosed if it is to be operative. <a title="" name="_ftnref5" href="[[A Glance into the Archives of Islam#_ftn5">[Notes|5]</a]> What Freud endeavors to reconstitute in his Moses book (the story of the murder of Moses, etc.) is such a spectral history that haunts the space of Jewish religious tradition. One becomes a full member of a community not simply by identifying with its explicit symbolic tradition, but only when one also assumes the spectral dimension that sustains this tradition, the undead ghosts that haunt the living, the secret history of traumatic fantasies transmitted "between the lines," through the lacks and distortions of the explicit symbolic tradition. Judaism's stubborn attachment to the unacknowledged violent founding gesture that haunts the public legal order as its spectral supplement, enabled the Jews to persist and survive for thousands of years without land and common institutional tradition: they refused to give up their ghost, to cut off the link to their secret, disavowed tradition. The paradox of Judaism is that it maintains fidelity to the founding violent Event precisely by NOT confessing, symbolizing it: this "repressed" status of the Event is what gives Judaism its unprecedented vitality.<br><br>
Which, then, is the repressed Event which gives vitality to Islam? The key is provided by the reply to another question: how does Islam, the third Religion of the Book, fit into this series? Judaism is the religion of genealogy, of succession of generations; when, in Christianity, the Son dies on the Cross, this means that the Father also dies (as Hegel was fully aware) – the patriarchal genealogical order as such dies, the Holy Spirit does not fit the family series, it introduces a post-paternal/familial community. In contrast to both Judaism and Christianity, the two other religions of the book, Islam excludes God from the domain of the paternal logic: Allah is not a father, not even a symbolic one – God is one, he is neither born nor does he give birth to creatures. <i>There is no place for a Holy Family in Islam.</i> This is why Islam emphasizes so much the fact that Muhammed himself was an orphan; this is why, in Islam, God intervenes precisely at the moments of the suspension, withdrawal, failure, “black-out,” of the paternal function (when the mother or the child are abandoned or ignored by the biological father). What this means is that God remains thoroughly in the domain of impossible-Real: he is the impossible-Real outside father, so that there is a “genealogical desert between man and God”(320). This was the problem with Islam for Freud, since his entire theory of religion is based on the parallel of God with father. More importantly even, this inscribes politics into the very heart of Islam, since the “genealogical desert” renders impossible to ground a community in the structures of parenthood or other blood-links: “the desert between God and Father is the place where the political institutes itself”(320). With Islam, it is no longer possible to ground a community in the mode of <i>Totem and Taboo</i>, through the murder of the father and the ensuing guilt as bringing brothers together – thence Islam’s unexpected actuality.<br><br>
So it is not only Cain who wants the killing: Abel himself actively participates in this desire, provoking Cain to do it, so that he (Abel) would get rid of his own sins also. Benslama is right to discern here traces of an “ideal hatred,” different from the imaginary hatred of the aggressivity towards one’s double (289): the victim itself actively desires the crime whose victim it will be, so that, as a martyr, it will enter Paradise, sending the perpetrator to burn in hell. From today’s perspective, one is tempted to play with the anachronistic speculation on how the “terrorist” logic of the martyr’s wish to die is already here, in <i>Quran</i> – although, of course, one has to locate the problem in the context of modernization. The problem of Islamic world is, as is well known, that, since it was exposed to Western modernization abruptly, without a proper time to “work through” the trauma of its impact, to construct a symbolic-fictional space/screen for it, the only possible reactions to this impact were either a superficial modernization, an imitated modernization destined to fail (Iran Shah regime), or, in the failure of the proper symbolic space of fictions, a direct recourse to the violent Real, an outright war between Islam Truth and Western Lie, with no space for symbolic mediation. In this “fundamentalist” solution (a modern phenomenon with no direct links to Muslim traditions), the divine dimension reasserts itself in its superego-Real, as a murderous explosion of sacrifical violence to pay off the obscene superego divinity.<br><br>
A further key distinction between Judaism (together with its Christian continuation) and Islam is that, as we can see in the case of Abraham’s two sons, Judaism chooses Abraham as the symbolic father, i.e., the phallic solution of the paternal symbolic authority, of the official symbolic lineage, discarding the second woman, enacting a “phallic appropriation of the impossible”(153). Islam, on the contrary, opts for the lineage of Hagar, for Abraham as the biological father, maintaining the distance between father and God, retaining God in the domain of the Impossible.(149) <a title="" name="_ftnref6" href="[[A Glance into the Archives of Islam#_ftn6">[Notes|6]</a>]<br><br> Both Judaism and Islam repress their founding gestures – how? As the story of Abraham and his two sons with two different women shows, in both Judaism and Islam, father can become father, assume the paternal function, only through the mediation of <i>another</i> woman. Freud’s hypothesis is that the repression in Judaism concerns the fact that Abraham was a foreigner (an Egyptian), not a Jew – it is the founding paternal figure, the one who brings revelation and establishes the covenant with God, that has to come from the outside. With Islam, the repression concerns a woman (Hagar, the Egyptian slave who gave to Abraham his first son): although Abraham and Ishmail (the progenitor of all Arabs, according to the myth) are mentioned dozens of times in <i>Quran</i>, Hagar is unmentioned, erased from the official history. As such, however, she continues to haunt Islam, her traces surviving in rituals, like the obligation of the pilgrims to Mecca to run six times between the two hills Safa and Marwah, a kind of neurotic repetition/reenactment of Hagar’s desperate search for water for her son in the desert. - Here is, in <i>Genesis</i>, the story of Abraham’s two sons, this key umbilical link between Judaism and Islam – first, the Birth of Ishmael:</font></font></p>
Both Judaism and Islam repress their founding gestures – how? As the story of Abraham and his two sons with two different women shows, in both Judaism and Islam, father can become father, assume the paternal function, only through the mediation of <blockquotei>another<p align="justify"/i><font color="#73737b"><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" size="3">Now Saraiwoman. Freud’s hypothesis is that the repression in Judaism concerns the fact that Abraham was a foreigner (an Egyptian), Abram’s wife, had not given birth to any childrena Jew – it is the founding paternal figure, but she had an Egyptian servant named Hagar. So Sarai said to Abramthe one who brings revelation and establishes the covenant with God, ‘Since the Lord that has prevented me to come from having childrenthe outside. With Islam, have sexual relations with my servant. Perhaps I can have the repression concerns a family by her.’ Abram did what Sarai told him.<br> So after Abram had lived in Canaan for ten years, Sarai, Abram’s wife, gave woman (Hagar, her the Egyptian servant, to her husband slave who gave to be Abraham his wife. He had sexual relations with Hagar, first son): although Abraham and she became pregnant. Once Hagar realized she was pregnant, she despised Sarai. Then Sarai said to AbramIshmail (the progenitor of all Arabs, ‘You have brought this wrong on me! I allowed my servant according to have sexual relations with you, but when she realized that she was pregnant, she despised me. May the Lord judge between you and me!’myth) are mentioned dozens of times in <i>Quran<br/i> Abram said to Sarai, ‘Since your servant Hagar is under your authorityunmentioned, do to her whatever you think besterased from the official history.’ Then Sarai treated Hagar harshlyAs such, however, so she ran away from Sarai. The Lord’s angel found Hagar near a spring of water in the desert – the spring that is along the road continues to Shur. He saidhaunt Islam, ‘Hagarher traces surviving in rituals, servant like the obligation of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?’ She replied, ‘I’m running away from my mistress, Sarai.’<br> Then the Lord’s angel said pilgrims to her, ‘Return Mecca to your mistress run six times between the two hills Safa and submit to Marwah, a kind of neurotic repetition/reenactment of Hagar’s desperate search for water for her authority. I will greatly multiply your descendants,’ son in the Lord’s angel added, ‘so that they will be too numerous to countdesert.’ Then the Lord’s angel said to her- Here is,in <bri>Genesis</i> lsquo;You are now pregnant and are about to give birth to a son. You are to name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard your painful groans. He will be a wild donkey story of a man. He will be hostile to everyoneAbraham’s two sons, this key umbilical link between Judaism and everyone will be hostile to him. He will live away from his brothers.’<br>Islam – first, the Birth of Ishmael:
<p justify="" align="justify>blockquote>Tell me, you who want to be under the law, do you not understand the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. But one, the son by the slave woman, was born by natural descent, while the other, the son by the free woman, was born through the promise. These things may be treated as an allegory, for these women represent two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai bearing children for slavery;In <i>Galatians 2</i>this is Hagar. Now Hagar represents Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written:<br>‘Rejoice, O barren woman who does not bear children;break forth and shout, you who have no birth pains, because the children of the desolate woman are more numerous than those of the woman who has a husband.’<br>But you, brothers and sisters, are children of the promise like Isaac. But just as at that time the one born by natural descent persecuted the one born according to the Spirit, so it is now. But what does the scripture say? ‘Throw out the slave woman and her son, Paul provides for the Christian version son of Abrahamthe slave woman will not share the inheritance with the son’ of the free woman. Therefore, Sarah brothers and Hagarsisters, we are not children of the slave woman but of the free woman.”(4:21-4:<31)</p>blockquote>
<p align="justify"blockquote><font color="#73737b"><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" size="3">Paul stages here a clear symmetrical confrontation here: Isaac versus Ishmail equals The depth which the symbolic father (NameSpirit brings forth from within -ofbut only as far as its picture-thethinking consciousness where it lets it remain -Father) versus and the biological (racial) father, “the origin through name and spirit versus origin through substantial transmission ignorance of life”(147)this consciousness about what it really is saying, child of are the free woman versus child same conjunction of the slave, child of spirit versus child of flesh. This reading, however, has to simplify the biblical narrative in (at least) three crucial points:<br><br> (1) God’s obvious care for Hagar high and Ishmail, his intervention to save Ishmail’s life;<br><br> (2) the extraordinary characterization of Hagar as not simply a woman of flesh and lust, a worthless slave, but the one who SEES God (“So Hagar named the Lord who spoke to her, ‘You are the God who sees me,’ for she said, ‘Here I have seen the one who sees me!’”). Hagar as the excluded second woman, outside symbolic genealogy, stands not only for the pagan (Egyptian) fertility of Life, but also for a direct access to God – she directly sees God himself seeing, low which was not given even to Moses to whom God had to appear as a burning bush. As such, Hagar announces the mystical/feminine access to God (developed later in Sufism).<br><br> (3) the (not only narrative) fact that the choice (between flesh and spirit) cannot ever be confronted directlyliving being, as a choice between Nature naively expresses when it combines the two simultaneous options. For Sarah to get a son, Hagar has first to get hers, i.e., there is a necessity organ of successionits highest fulfillment, the organ of repetitiongeneration, here, as if, in order to chose spirit, we first have to chose flesh – only with the second son can be the true son organ of spiriturination. This necessity is what symbolic castration is about: “castration” means that the direct access to Truth is impossible- as Lacan put itThe infinite judgment, <i>la verite surgit de la meprise</i>qua infinite, would be the way to Spirit is only through Flesh, etc. Recall Hegel's analysis of phrenonolgy which closes the chapter on "Observing Reason" in his <i>Phenomenology fulfillment of Spirit</i>: Hegel resorts here to a metaphor which concerns precisely phallus, life that comprehends itself; the organ consciousness of paternal insemination, in order to explain the opposition of the two possible readings of the proposition "the Spirit is a bone" (infinite judgment that remains at the vulgar materialist "reductionist" reading - the shape level of our skull effectively and directly determines the features of a man's mind picture- and the speculative reading - the spirit is strong enough to assert its identity with the utmost inert stuff and to "sublate" it, i.e. even the utmost inert stuff cannot escape the Spirit's power of mediation). The vulgar materialist reading is like the approach which sees in phallus only the organ of thinking behaves as urination, while the speculative reading is also able to discern in it the much higher function of insemination (i.e. precisely "conception" as [[A Glance into the biological anticipation Archives of concept):</font></font>Islam#Notes|7]]</pblockquote>
Where, precisely, is here castration? Prior to Hagar’s entry on the scene, Sarah, the phallic-patriarchal woman, remains barren, infertile, precisely because she is too powerful/phallic; so the opposition is not simply the opposition of Sarah, fully submitted to patriarchal/phallic order, and Hagar, independent and subversive, it is inherent to Sarah herself, her two aspects (phallic arrogance, maternal service). It is Sarah herself who is too powerful, bossy, and had to be humiliated through Hagar in order to get a child and thereby enter patriarchal genealogic order. This castration of hers is signalled through the change of her name, from Sarai to Sarah. Is, however, only Sarah castrated? Is also Abraham not castrated? With Hagar, he is able to conceive a child directly-biologically, but outside the proper genealogy of symbolic lineage; this becomes possible only through the external intervention of God who “visits Sarah” – this gap between symbolic and biologic paternity IS castration.<br><br>
However, a good argument for Mohammed’s basic sincerity is that he himself was the first to doubt radically the divine nature of his visions, dismissing them as hallucinatory signs of madness or as outright cases of demonic possession. His first revelation occurred in during his Ramadhaan retreat outside Mecca: he saw the archangel Gabriel, calling upon him to “Recite!” (<i>Qarâ’</i>, whence <i>Qur’ân</i>). Mohammed thought he was going mad, and since he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life as Mecca’s village idiot, preferring death to disgrace, he decided to throw himself from a high rock. But then the vision repeated itself: he heard a voice from above saying: “O Mohammed! Thou art the apostle of God and I am Gabriel.” But even this voice did not reassure him, so he slowly returned to his house and, in deep despair, asked Khadija, his first wife (as well as the first believer in him): "Wrap me in a blanket, wrap me up in a blanket." She wrapped him up, and then Muhammed told her what had happened to him: "My life is in danger." Khadija dutifully solaced him.<br><br>
When, during the following visions of the archangel Gabriel, Mohammad’s doubts persisted, Khadija asked him to notify her when his visitant returned, so that they could verify whether he really was Gabriel or an ordinary demon. So, next time, Mohammed said to Khadija: “This is Gabriel who has just come to me.” “Get up and sit by my left thigh.” Mohammad did so, and she said: “Can you see him?” “Yes.” “Then turn round and sit on my right thigh.” He did so, and she said: “Can you see him?” When he said that he could, Khadija finally she asked him to move and sit in her lap, and, after disclosing her form and casting aside her veil, asked again: “Can you see him?” And he replied: “No.” She then comforted him: “Rejoice and be of good heart, he is an angel and not a Satan.” (There is a further version of this story in which, in the final test, Khadija not only revealed herself, but made Mohammad “come inside her shift” (penetrate her sexually), and thereupon Gabriel departed. , and she said to the apostle of God, ‘This verily is an angel and not a satan.’” The underlying assumption is that, while a lustful demon would have enjoyed the sight of copulation, an angel would politely withdraw from the scene.) Only after Khadija provided Muhammed with this proof of the genuineness of his meeting with Gabriel, was Mohammed cured of his doubts and could embark upon his career as God’s spokesman. <a title="" name="_ftnref8" href="[[A Glance into the Archives of Islam#_ftn8">[Notes|8]</a>]<br><br>
Muhammed thus first experienced his revelations as signs of poetic hallucinations – his immediate reaction to them was: “Now none of God’s creatures was more hateful to me than an ecstatic poet or a man possessed.” The one who saved him from this unbearable uncertainty, as well as from the role of a social outcast, a village idiot, and the first believer in his message, the first Muslim, was Khadija, <i>a woman</i>. In the above scene, she is the Lacanian “big Other,” the guarantee of Truth of the subject’s enunciation, and it is only in the guise of this circular support, through someone who beliefs in Muhammed, that he can believe in his own message and thus serve as a messenger of Truth to believers. Belief is never direct: in order for me to believe, somebody else has to believe in me, and what I believe in is this others’ believe in me. Recall the proverbial doubtful hero, leader, or other figure of authority, who, although desperate, fulfils his mission because others (his followers) believe in him, and he cannot bear the prospect of disappointing them. Is there a stronger pressure than the one we experience when an innocent child looks into our eyes and says: “But I believe in you!”<br><br>
This reliance on the feminine (and on the foreign woman at that) is Islam’s repressed foundation, its un-thought, that which it endeavors to exclude, to erase or at least control it through its complex ideological edifice, but what persists to haunt it, since it is the very source of its vitality. - Why, then, is woman in Islam such a traumatic presence, such an ontological scandal that it has to be veiled? The true problem is not the horror of the shameless exposure of what is beneath the veil, but, rather, the nature of the veil itself. One should link this feminine veil with Lacan’s reading of the anecdote about the competition between Zeuxis and Parrhasios, two painters from the ancient Greece, about who will paint a more convincing illusion. <a title="" name="_ftnref10" href="#_ftn10">[10]</a> First, Zeuxis produced such a realistic picture of grapes that birds were lured into picking at it to eat the grape. Next, Parrhasios won by painting on the wall of his room a curtain, so that Zeuxis, when Parrhasios showed him his painting, asked him: “OK, now please pull aside the veil and show me what you painted!” In Zeuxis’s painting, the illusion was so convincing that image was taken for the real thing; in Parrhasios’ painting, the illusion resided in the very notion that what we see in front of us is just a veil covering up the hidden truth. This is also how, for Lacan, feminine masquerade works: she wears a mask to make us react like Zeuxis in front of Parrhasios’ painting – <i>OK, put down the mask and show us what you really are!</i> Things are homologous in Shakespeare’s <i>As You Like It</i>, in which Orlando is passionately in love with Rosalind who, in order to test his love, disguises herself as Ganymede and, as a male companion, interrogates Orlando about his love. She even takes on the personality of Rosalind (in a redoubled masking, she pretends to be herself, to be Ganymede who plays to be Rosalind) and persuades her friend Celia (disguised as Aliena) to marry them in a mock ceremony. In this ceremony, Rosalind literally feigns to feign to be what she is: truth itself, in order to win, has to be <i>staged</i> in a redoubled deception. We can thus imagine Orlando, after the mock wedding ceremony, turning to Rosalind-Ganymede and telling her: “You played Rosalind so well that you almost made me believe to be her; you can now return to what you are and be Ganymede again.”<br><br>
It is not an accident that the agents of such double masquerade are always women: while a man can only pretend to be a woman, only a woman can pretend to be a man who pretends to be a woman, as only a woman can <i>pretend to be what she is</i> (a woman). To account for this specifically feminine status of pretending, Lacan refers to a woman who wears a concealed fake penis in order to evoke that she is phallus:</font></font></p>
<blockquote><p align="justify"><font color="#73737b"><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" size="3">Such is woman concealed behind her veil: it is the absence of the penis that makes her the phallus, the object of desire. Evoke this absence in a more precise way by having her wear a cute fake one under a fancy dress, and you, or rather she, will have plenty to tell us about. <a title="" name="_ftnref11" href="[[A Glance into the Archives of Islam#_ftn11">[Notes|11]</a></font></font></p>]</blockquote>
And this brings us back to the function of veil in Islam: what if the true scandal this veil endeavors to obfuscate is not the feminine body hidden by it, but the INEXISTENCE of the feminine? What if, consequently, the ultimate function of the veil is precisely to sustain the illusion that there IS something, the substantial Thing, behind the veil? If, following Nietzsche’s equation of truth and woman, we transpose the feminine veil into the veil which conceals the ultimate Truth, the true stakes of the Muslim veil become even clearer. Woman is a treat because she stands for the “undecidability” of truth, for a succession of veils beneath which there is no ultimate hidden core; by veiling her, we create the illusion that there is, beneath the veil, the feminine Truth - the horrible truth of lie and deception, of course. Therein resides the concealed scandal of Islam: only a woman, the very embodiment of the indiscernability of truth and lie, can guarantee Truth. For this reason, she has to remain veiled.<br><br>
This brings us back to the topic with which we began: woman and the Orient. The true choice is not the one between the Near-East masculine Islam and the Far-East more feminine spirituality, but between the Far-Eastern elevation of a woman into the Mother-Goddess, the generative-and-destructive substance of the World, and the Muslim distrust of woman which, paradoxically, in a negative way renders much more directly the traumatic-subversive-creative-explosive power of feminine subjectivity.<br><br>
==Source==
