The scene is chilling. A crowd of men watches as a 17-year-old girl wails in pain and humiliation as she is flogged by a masked man. Her punisher, unflappable and untouched by her remonstrations, does not pause as he metes out the punishment. Another man holds her down as she flails and writhes in pain. This is the Taliban justice at its best: a rapt crowd, a female victim crying out in pain, and a world stunned into silence. There is much to be said about the scene: its barbarity, its theatrics, and its channelling of the medieval are all visible in a tableau now being routinely enacted before the world by the Taliban and its affiliated groups.

The conspiracy theories of the video represent the unwillingness of some within the Pakistani establishment and news media to disregard the group’s barbaric onslaught on women and essentially provide a cover for its unabashed brutality. Questions abound about the act: westerners balk at the ability of the Taliban to carry out such public punishments with impunity, and Pakistanis question the devolution of justice in a country that was led by a woman a mere decade ago.

These are all important questions, with answers that can be located in structural explanations of economics, sociology, and history, all of which present pieces of the complicated denouement that has led Pakistan and the Taliban to this juncture. Beyond these structural explanations, however, lies the less visible saga of how the uneasy ideological relationships between the modern and the post-modern, the authentic and the inauthentic, and ultimately the indigenous and the foreign have colluded to produce the particular appeal of the Taliban in Pakistan. To investigate this ideological appeal, then, is not to deny the existence and pertinence of structural factors in the rise of the Taliban, but to point to the particular conglomerations of the critique of the modern, particularly in relation to the act of justice and power, that are operative in the modus operandi of the Taliban and its very particular construction of Islam.

In this regard, it is necessary first to appreciate the imagined Islam of the Taliban as an act of construction rather than reversion. Doing away with hundreds of years of jurisprudence of Classical Islamic law, of administrative procedures and methods of reasoning, of sources of law and juristic analysis, the Taliban has redefined Sharia as a performative tableau rather than a jurisprudential exercise. An entire judicial system thus is reduced to the application of hadd punishments, floggings, beatings and amputations. Thus the Qazi, arguably the most integral of those involved in justice provision, is nearly always invisible, while the crowd, the victim and those meting out a punishment play a central role. Justice is redefined as a means to subjugate and punish, with the entire collective crowd partaking in its pornographic enactment. There is no mention of the basis of the Islamic law applied, the deliberations which led to the application of the punishment, or any form of legitimacy that would associate the punishment with being Islamic. It is instead the anti-modernity of the whole spectacle, the absence of institutional safeguards, that makes the scene Islamic. The calculation is simple and persuasive: the more visibly different from the epithets of modernity that the Taliban can be, the more automatically Islamic it becomes.

It is this artificiality of construing the Islamic as the anti-modern that I wish to emphasise, since it allows one to appreciate the Taliban as a particularly post-modern response to the post-colonial crisis of identity. Its concentration on justice provision is one iteration of this project: Islamic justice is construed within its scheme not as what it may actually be according to doctrine, but as what it is imagined to be by those living 1400 years after the Koran was revealed. Its disregard for proving its Islamic credentials through any scholarly means demonstrates its ease with the artificiality of its project. The need to discern what is actually permissible or impermissible in Islam is deemed unnecessary before the power of a compelling spectacle that looks Islamic and hence must be so.

The attenuation of Islamic history, caused by the interventions of colonialism, thus allows the Islamic to be constructed conveniently and uncomplicatedly as the anti-modern and anti-western. Drawing this connection has translated into an act of political genius for the Taliban, enabling a vast and visible purge of society geared toward a promised return to authenticity, the raison d’etre of every post-colonial society. The burnt bonfires of cassette tapes and CDs, the visible enshrouding of living women, the forcible bearding of men all create marked and visible changes, all anti-modern and hence pristinely Islamic. Unlike the surreptitiously enslaving modern, post-modern power vis-a-vis the Taliban is visible, proclaiming loudly its final antinomy to the invisible panopticons of modernity.

Authenticity and spectacle thus are at the root of the Taliban’s appeal. It is important to recognise it not as existing independently of the rational enterprise of modernity, but rather in response to it. Post-modern critiques of rationalism, and of procedure as enslaving of power as surreptitious, are all visible here; Taliban justice and punishment involves no panopticon and no institutional prison. Equally visible is the romanticism of the rebel and the revolutionary, and a disdain for those that do not hold dear the constant and consistent ire toward all things western.

What post-modernism left undone was fulfilled by its cousin, post-colonialism; the reification of the indigenous even when it is repressive, and the adulation of the cultural are all forces that have sown the seeds for a particular affinity toward groups such as the Taliban. Tribal laws, feudal mores, despite their subjugation of women, their entrapment of the poor into powerlessness, are all deemed worthier, shorn as they are of the deleterious influence of westernisation and globalisation. It is indigenous, the post-colonial calculus says, so it must be automatically good.

Such then is the ideological reality of Pakistan, a post-colonial state 61 years hence. The beleaguered liberals, those arguing for constitutionalism and governance structures that give room for both the religious and the secular, have been discredited and devalued as inherently inauthentic, pandering to the maintenance of a colonial system that was repressive and inauthentic. Post-modernity and the western Left, enraptured with its potential for absolving the sins of colonialism, have contributed to this evisceration. If modernity was unquestioningly condescending to the non-western other, post-modernity is unfailingly committed to its exoticism. The result is an equally inhibiting caricature of what the non-western other envisioned as an embodiment of post-modern angst.

And that is indeed perhaps what the Taliban is presenting. Its anti-imperialism is unparalleled, its evocations of a pre-colonial past are persuasive in their brute simplicity, and its rejection of procedure is evident in its renditions of justice. In true post-modern form, the Taliban doctrine is unapologetically piecemeal and artificial, logic is secondary to purpose, and power is complete and arbitrary. In this regard, cellphones may be used to detonate bombs but not to talk to women, radio frequencies to issue directives to the population but not for music. In its rigidity, the Talibanised society mimics an authenticity that sounds and feels truly pure and Islamic and is greedily imbibed by a population that is hungry for answers.

The purpose of this essay is thus to explain the ideological positioning of the Taliban as a global ideological phenomenon produced and sustained as much by philosophical currents and attitudes toward modernity and rationality as by structural factors within Pakistan. I hoped to reveal how a symbiosis of western ideas of what an authentic Pakistani should be in relation to the West, post-colonial confusions about identity, and the malleability of religious doctrine have all colluded to create the phenomenon we see today. The imagined Islam of the Taliban markets itself as a virulent reaction to modernity, disregarding the doctrinal and historical realities to the contrary.

The post-modern romance with the rebel, with the indigenous and the authentic, has facilitated this construction, making anti-modernity, despite its barbarism, deserving of reverence. Under the post-modern calculus, universal discourses on human rights, on liberal tolerance, are all judged unworthy and inauthentic, giving little ideological support to those in Pakistan fighting to resist the incursion of such ideology. If authenticity is anti-western, and an avowal of self-worth a reification of tribal laws, then the Taliban would increasingly seem like the only authentic political expression.

An interesting thesis. I would suggest and include the possibility that the numbers of those engaging in the Taliban and similar groups in the immediate area are themselves victims of Soviet tactics of death and demoralizing maiming of large numbers of people in the region, post Soviet destruction and the continued effects of western incursions. All this, I propose, has ushered large numbers of people into a post-rational and liminal state which is highly addictive, maintains its own psycho-social structures and demands, as you state, the perpetual "spectacle" which feeds human appetites that have been monstrously reshaped and may never again enter the rational which is necessary for the formation of any human nation state. The likelihood of rational efforts to difuse and reintroduce such elements into a healthy functioning system, is small. Mass elimination of vast tracks of human beings from the area is, we pray, unthinkable to those considering what course they wish to take and how they feel justified in continuing to take action at all. This situation is not without precedent. Both the Mongol invasions, and the 20th century Holocaust produced people perpetually entrapped wihin the liminal state of collective memory of dehumanization based upon sustained and inhuman violence. We see how that has all worked out. What is witout precedent, is a strategy to reform a vast sector of human society and usher them into healthy and productive social models consistent with their native cultures and religion, and the accompanying existence of agents morally and legally entitled to do it. So we have a bit of a problem.

I lived for a few years in an area of the US that was under Klan terror. The ummah often looks to me like the KKK, only with more goats.

They wore costumes, had murder squads, threw bombs, beat up people not following their social rules, attacked churches... any of this sound familiar?

I spit on your dead cat!

>I lived for a few years in an area of the US that was under Klan terror.<

Yeah right, you must have felt right at home.

>The ummah often looks to me like the KKK, only with more goats.<

That's rather odd considering you're a lying European neo-Nazi troll. Waste like you loves stories like these to promote your hatred of anything Islamic.
Funny you speak of goats considering how common beastiality is in Europe and the southern U.S.

>They wore costumes, had murder squads, threw bombs, beat up people not following their social rules, attacked churches... any of this sound familiar?<

Yeah, sounds exactly like American mercenaries running around in Iraq or any of the other countries they've invaded and destroyed over the decades. Selective amnesia seems to run in your family stump.

>I spit on your dead cat!<

I spit on your hypocrisy, primate.

They said they were fighting for justice, defending women, and spouted supremacist garbage about the white race having invented and discovered everything.

They and those supporting them wanted to impose their social ideas on US society. They used atrocities, lynch mobs, intimidation, flogging. The police were sometimes members.

They were infiltrated, prosecuted, driven underground.

Now comes this thing of a similar stripe.

>They said they were fighting for justice, defending women, and spouted supremacist garbage about the white race having invented and discovered everything.

They and those supporting them wanted to impose their social ideas on US society. They used atrocities, lynch mobs, intimidation, flogging. The police were sometimes members.

They were infiltrated, prosecuted, driven underground.

Now comes this thing of a similar stripe.<

Nobodys got love for the Taliban loonies here, but you can't help but extrapolate that on the entire Muslim Ummah can you? Its erroneous to even compare them to the white supremacist mindset which rules the world today. Only the idiots wear the sheets now, the smart ones wear suits and pretend to be "civilizers."
Of course only an absolute ignoramus would buy the disingenuous nonsense that the wars in Central Asia have anything to do with securing the rights of woman as seen through the eyes of westerners(heroin anybody? Funny how the drug trade was next to nil under the Taleban).
Thanks to your international reign of terror the Taliban have become stronger and more reactionary then ever before. Not that the Northern Alliance you're best buds with are exactly the paragons of human virtue.

I read this essay with great interest. I live in India. I have met several muslims here who believe that Taliban is the vanguard of true Islam. This essay explains the reality in a clear manner.
It is wrong to see Taliban as the true representatives of Muslims all over the world. In India, the backwardness of muslilms is mainly due to their reluctance to pursue education and a tendency to isloate themselves from the mainstream society. Attempts to export the Taliban breed of Islam to other countries has to be resisted.
Modernity has its problems, but one has to be fair to it. There is no point in blindly denying the benefits it has given us; at the same time enjoying its fruits; it has made life easier for the vast majority of us. Post modern reaction is understandable, but it is sliightly exaggerated.
It is not easy to undo the damage done by Taliban, to muslims all over the world. Because of them, muslims are viewed with suspicion everywhere. They are trying to take us back in time, which is not possible. We have to live here, in the present, with all its limitations and imperfections.
The right wing Hindu reactionaries in India also seem to be pursuing similar methods. A group called Sri Ram Sena (army of Sri Ram)recently unleashed similar attacks on female students in the city of Mangalore in south India. They attecked a local pub, assaulted girls who boarded the general compartment of a local train instead of the overcrowded ladies' compartment. They beat up Hindu girls who were friendly to muslim boys. Reactionaris of all breeds have similar methods - hate speak, barbarism etc.

At least in the US, the KKK was not seen as the vanguard of anything, but as the reactionary barbarism that it was.

It is not just the Taliban that is arousing suspicion. Yes, I can extrapolate.

OK,
Brilliant insight in this essay, though I admit to being pleasantly surprised whenever I run across Muslims who seem to be familiar with Foucault and Baudrillard, and have actually learned something from them.

>>The post-modern romance with the rebel, with the indigenous and the authentic, has facilitated this construction, making anti-modernity, despite its barbarism, deserving of reverence.

Tell it, bro.

>>Under the post-modern calculus, universal discourses on human rights, on liberal tolerance, are all judged unworthy and inauthentic, giving little ideological support to those in Pakistan fighting to resist the incursion of such ideology.

Yes, but under the post-modern calculus, any universal discourse is judged inauthentic, and that would apply to the totalizing discourse of the Taliban. What Rafia does in this article is to begin to expose the constructed character of the spectacle of the Taliban. And this is indeed its weak point.

But to rein in the appeal of the Taliban ideology, one will need a combination of fierce rejection of the Taliban construction of imagined Islam together with unaffected projection of an uncompromised and historically normative, Islam.

>>If authenticity is anti-western, and an avowal of self-worth a reification of tribal laws, then the Taliban would increasingly seem like the only authentic political expression.

And we seek refuge in Allah.

I suspect that there is no "uncompromised and historically normative Islam" but if there is, by all means, drag it out.

Although locals would support the KKK and sometimes join it, the US had the Fed's strong opposition. Pakistan is caving in at the federal level. Imagine giving the Klan a piece of Alabama to manage.

It just looks like the magic of unrelenting violence doing its work in the world once more. Hopefully the charms of "the Islamic state" will fade as the charm of communism did. Your mosques might make good dance halls and skating rinks.

>>> Drawing this connection has translated into an act of political genius for the Taliban, enabling a vast and visible purge of society geared toward a promised return to authenticity, the raison d’etre of every post-colonial society.

The myth of counter-culture drawing its ugly head again. That somehow being opposite to an establishment is its cure. Black consciousness isn't black supremacy vs white supremacy. Similarly Islamic consciousness is NOT Islamic theology vs western philosophy. Why are we letting idiots run amock with our religion? 6 years indoctrinated in a Madressah does not qualify anyone to know more about the decency and humanity. It hardly qualifies anyone to think critically about Islam in the first place. One could say not thinking critically is the object of the modern madrassah! Its become a seminary school for Muslims .. of our own design! Why can't we school in the evolving and growing traditions of Ghazzali and Ibn-Sina? Why are we held with a yoke of truth rather than being guided by the light of it?

Yet in that same vain, I can't help but think that being anti-Taliban is not being pro-humanism. A random video does not constitute a full reality. We who watch these videos and read these stories, should know that most of Afghanistan isn't to different to the wild west. No amount of moralistic one-upmanship will change that socio-economic condition either. People are pointing fingers at "savages" who have developed a peculiar/frightening way of life, all around the world. From massai mara to indigenous American tribes, its all considered "ignorant". Yet why take such moral interest in a society, when noone gives a stuff if they can feed themselves or if climate change and corporations are bleeding them dry??

>>> Nobodys got love for the Taliban loonies here, but you can't help but extrapolate that on the entire Muslim Ummah can you?

I got rid of my TV set, but someone with pay TV gets French News and its absolutely mind boggling how so much of the Ummah is ignored by English news to tell this easy to digest 2 step approach to the good guys, the bad and the ugly. Excellent stuff. Its why I sometimes find that most of the anti-western pro-taliban types are in fact more a product of western misinformation than the anti-thesis that Allah favours they purport to be. They aren't more truthful, just counter-factual. But in the approach to tradition its becoming more and more destructive.


>> Imagine giving the Klan a piece of Alabama to manage.

That Eliza would make this an example of white-supremacism is typical of a seemingly civilised critique of a nation/people the United States didn't mind using to fight its proxy wars. Why must we accept that the Taliban resemble white supremacism rather than the more appropriate examples of the invasion of the Phillipines in 1989 or the invasions of Iraq or the current bombings in northern pakistan by the US government and its mostly white forces? ... Because thats not a gap in our understanding, its a huge gap in hers!

But this is nothing like the Klan and nothing like the fight against white supremacism. Pakistanis have died in the hundreds fighting a US initiated battle against many of their own citizens. The defeat of the traditional powers in these areas doesn't offer a better replacement at all and they will re-constitute as quickly as they did when the Arabs first started invading their provinces in the 7th century.

I won't understand why such a detailed analysis by a Muslim always ends up with a shallow Eliza-type saying "It just looks like the magic of unrelenting violence doing its work in the world once more." As if she had actually said something relevant and something true. It reaches a point where imagining some extremist bogeyman a million miles away (in the aftermath of western wars no doubt) is OK because you can put Islam as a tag. She even has the nerve to ask us to drag out an "uncompromised and historically normative Islam" when the entire article is a critique of the outlier. She took one look at the picture and posted a comment. How much more ignorant can you get when its purely wilful.

>In India, the backwardness of muslilms is mainly due to their reluctance to pursue education and a tendency to isloate themselves from the mainstream society<

Rubbish, this is the usual line we hear from India's so-called secularists. the plight of Indian Muslims is a result of Hindu communalism and caste politics which have not only denied access to education and jobs("go to Pakistan") but regularly engages in mini-pograms like the one we saw in Gujurat. This was going on long before the Taliban ever came into being.
The Sri Ram Sena is nothing compared to the RSS, VHP, Shiv Sena, BJP and the rest of the Saffron brigade who run the country.

>It just looks like the magic of unrelenting violence doing its work in the world once more. Hopefully the charms of "the Islamic state" will fade as the charm of communism did. Your mosques might make good dance halls and skating rinks.<

More nonsense from the Elizard neo-Nazi troll(depending on which personality she adopts on which ever web site she's trolling). The Taliban are no KKK(nor a monolith), just a reactionary movement to decades of foreign aggression, and thanks your terrorism in Central Asia you've ensured that they'll grow even more. Always funny to find the most violent genocidal maniacs the world has ever known lecturing the brown and black masses on civilization. Hypocritical Neocon arselickers rarely read their own history. The Islamic state you so love to hate is one which brought you out of the caves and brought about the Renaissance. Talk about ingratitude. "The West won the world," Huntington observes, "not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion . . . but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence."

The only dance halls and skating rings I see are the empty Churches no one goes to anymore. The good news is you and your bankrupt system are headed straight back to the European garbage bin you emerged from. Good bloody riddance.

The Islamic state you so love to hate is one which brought you out of the caves and brought about the Renaissance. Talk about ingratitude. >>>

True. But the Muslim world today does not foster the type of brilliance, exploration, experimentation, and excellence in the letters and arts that the middle ages did during the high adab culture of the 8th-13th century. Time to be great again and reclaim what made greatness then and always makes for greatness in all cultures, times, and lands.

2 women were flogged recently in Iran for labor union activity. Wonder if they did it the same way. Faugh, what degradation.

I don't think it matters who the Taliban resemble or why they got like this. Why can't the terrorized population get help in standing up to them? The pitiful stories coming out of there do indeed remind me of what went on under the Klan. The police and military seem very flabby.

I think many muslims do think the Taliban sort are the "vanguard" that will issue in a glorious Islamic world. I also think many muslims believe in violence, personally, politically and religiously. Beat the wife, shoot the politician, kill the kuffar.

You really think anybody wants to be your dhimmi? That jihad door swings both ways.

>2 women were flogged recently in Iran for labor union activity. Wonder if they did it the same way. Faugh, what degradation.<

I have no problems with flogging(as opposed to throwing someone in prison for 25 years for stealing a slice of pizza like they do in California under the 3 strikes law) as long as guilt is established by the proper authorities. All Nazis(including you Elizard) should be flogged.
That being said, I doubt you're a supporter of protests or trade unions. Nowadays you'd be labeled a terrorist in the West for protesting and shot on sight(as that poor fellow at the G20 protest), if not tazered till your nerves are fried. And really, do I need to go into spying, phone tapping, kidnapping people and torturing them in parts unknown to continue this bogus "war on terrorism"? WMDs anyone?
Give it up, you don't give a fig about anyone's rights.

>I think many muslims do think the Taliban sort are the "vanguard" that will issue in a glorious Islamic world. I also think many muslims believe in violence, personally, politically and religiously. Beat the wife, shoot the politician, kill the kuffar.<

Sounds more like the primitive behavior of typical European degenerates in addition to rampant sexual abuse of children and animals. No wonder some European governments are enacting legislation protecting animals from sexual abuse by the natives. Too bad kids will have to fend for themselves. Josef Fritzl comes to mind.
Nobody cares what you think, Nazi. Your little racist caricatures of Muslims derived from Geehad Watch aka Jewhad Watch mean nothing. Of course you can't debate because that was never the intent of your trolling. Your failed antics on Umar Lee's blog were nothing short of laughable. Your "arguments" can be sources back to your rectum.
You're only upset the Taliban destroyed the Opium trade and wouldn't let you build that Caspian pipeline. Western supremacists need that fix and cheap energy sources for their SUVs.

>You really think anybody wants to be your dhimmi? That jihad door swings both ways.<

Nobody is making a dhimmi(a tax evader are you?), cretin. Get off the Krusader kool aid before it kills what little brain cells you have left. That being said, we're not your colonial subjects and infidels, none of that "white man's burden" nonsense is going to fly.
Good riddance to lying, hypocritical, criminal thieving, genocidal Nazi Eurotrash.

it is too bad the West did not take advantage of the emergence of the Taliban to help the Afghani women. getting hijacked instead by their feminists. the taliban brought security to afghanistan, a failed state at the time. that is all they were capable of doing. the great satanists should have supplied them with no-strings attached free aid. medical aid. education aid. food aid.

whatever aid (no-financial) was poured into afghanistan, would eventually have trickled down to the women, who would benefit the most from the food, the education and the medicine. instead, what we got was "islam this islam that".

instead of supporting the taliban to bring peace and security to a difficult region, satanists bogeymaned them instead and now that the place has totally fallen apart and taken over by the drug trade. look whose to blame, taliban of course!

what a tragedy in inhumanity. hard to believe its the same americans who helped out against the russians a decade earlier with no strings attached. or perhaps the strings were there and we did not see them.

Long live the Great Satan.

You should get out of Canada, Greybeard, and go live in one of your Islamic paradises. The US is no doubt blundering about in the ME and needs you to advise them.

Yeah, the Great Satan is supposed to nanny everybody and is of course to blame for everything.

Years ago, when I saw a photo of Algerian schoolgirls murdered in their schoolyards, I thought, what a ghastly aberration. With the passing of time of course, it became clear that targeting women, schoolgirls, hairdressers, music stores, etc. is what islamic extremists do. The Greater Satan must be pleased.

The ME has their infamnia on backwards. Music, men and women in the same room, is bad - molesting children is ok.

>In India, the backwardness of muslilms is mainly due to their reluctance to pursue education and a tendency to isloate themselves from the mainstream society<
DM's response to this is
>Rubbish, this is the usual line we hear from India's so-called secularists. the plight of Indian Muslims is a result of Hindu communalism and caste politics which have not only denied access to education and jobs("go to Pakistan") but regularly engages in mini-pograms like the one we saw in Gujurat. This was going on long before the Taliban ever came into being.
The Sri Ram Sena is nothing compared to the RSS, VHP, Shiv Sena, BJP and the rest of the Saffron brigade who run the country<.

I fully disagree to this sweeping generalization made by DM. There is huge difference in the way muslims are treated in different parts of India. What is mentioned above may be true of Gujarat or some North Indian states. But in south India (especially in Kerala) the situation is much better. In most states muslims are able to live a free and fair life. No illtreatment is meted out specifically to them in the name of religion. Occassioal outbursts are there, provacations for these can be from either side. If a village boy like APJ Abdul kalam could rise to the level of becoming the President of India, it was the recognition for his merit. If Dileepkumar could convert to Islam and became famous as AR Rahman, no other testimony is needed to prove my point. A hindu in Pakistan may not be able to get this recognition. All hindus are not RSS-Bajrand Dal-Shiv sena stuff stuff.

the taliban brought security to afghanistan>>

How can a state where the citizens themselves are terrorized by the ruling cadre (Taliban) and live in fear be described as "secure?"

== molesting children is ok. ==

The United States Department of Justice estimates that pornographers have recorded the abuse of more than one million children in the United States alone. There is an increasing trend towards younger victims and greater brutality; according to Flint Waters, an investigator with the federal Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, "These guys are raping infants and toddlers. You can hear the child crying, pleading for help in the video."

== EXTENT OF CHILD PORN ==
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted on Combating Child Exploitation Act, sponsored by Sen. Joe Biden.

The bill would allocate more than $1 billion over the next eight years for a broad array of efforts aimed at tackling Internet crimes against children. It calls for hiring 250 new federal agents at the FBI.. ... agents have identified more than 600,000 unique computers allegedly trafficking in child porn and traced them to the US.

--------------------
how can anyone compete with the Great Satan on just about anything where you "consume something else!!!

== How can a state where the citizens themselves are terrorized by the ruling cadre (Taliban) and live in fear be described as "secure?" ==

Go and see Afghanistan now and you will have your answer!