The Quest for Meaning by Tariq Ramadan

Author:Tariq Ramadan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781846141522
Publisher: Allen Lane
Published: 2010-08-05T07:00:00+00:00

CRITICAL LOYALTY

The modern era is one of confusion and insecurity. The globalization of communications has globalized attitudes that were once mostly encountered at the local or national level. Simplistic and monolithic representations of the ‘other’ or the ‘foreigner’, who may well be a neighbour, once sustained certainties and a more or less conscious racism towards ‘him’ and ‘them’ that were reassuring to oneself (‘me’, ‘we’) and one’s own doubt. The phenomenon has spread and become more pronounced, and the twin phenomena of globalization and migration have, by increasing insecurity and fears proportionally, helped to foster attitudes that are often irrational, or at least unreasonable. Conversely, the circles to which we belong have become proportionally smaller and increasingly exclusivist: we must have an identity, belong to a community or group, and our loyalty to it must be absolute.

Contemporary obsession with the question of ‘identity’ appears to be a neutral way of asking questions about our affiliations and loyalties. Just as we should have ‘an identity’, our loyalties should be absolute: if that loyalty is not our prime consideration, or if it is critical of the group to which we belong, doubts begin to arise as to our intentions, loyalties and, ultimately, the nature of loyalty itself. The constructive and positive approaches to diversity outlined by philosophers and thinkers like the Canadian Charles Taylor, the Lebanese Amin Maalouf, the Indian Amartya Sen and the British sociologist Tariq Modood are both welcome and of fundamental importance. It is important to recall that our identities are multiple and fluid, and that our societies will not survive unless they can find positive ways of managing the wealth of their religious and cultural pluralism, and of celebrating it as it should be celebrated. These philosophical and sociological contributions are decisive, but we have to add a political dimension, and that dimension is, ultimately, tied up with the question of loyalty and power. The spectre of the identity we display masks, I repeat, the lingering, and important, question of which loyalty we are defending, and of which power we are defending it from.

It is not a question of denying our identities or betraying our loyalties. That would be strictly impossible, and probably dangerous. The important thing is knowing how to manage them, and how to situate ourselves in relation to ourselves and to the groups that are constituted, or which we constitute, around us. By using ‘I’ to refer to his identity and ‘we’ to identify his affiliations, the individual establishes spheres of judgement and power, and each person must imperatively ask himself about his relationship and the nature of his loyalty to this power and this judgement. What we have just said about the independence of ethics and the ethics of independence shows that only critical loyalty respects the principle of consistency that no individual and no society can escape. Being loyal to ourselves and loyal to our community requires us, at the ethical level, to be self-critical and to criticize our communities in the name of the values we – we and our community – have determined both individually and collectively.

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