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Critical Discourse Studies

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(De-)Rationalizing the irrational: Discourse as culture/ideology

Robert Holland
a a

Centre for English Language Studies, University of Birmingham, UK E-mail: Version of record first published: 22 Aug 2006

To cite this article: Robert Holland (2006): (De-)Rationalizing the irrational: Discourse as culture/ ideology, Critical Discourse Studies, 3:01, 37-59 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17405900600589366

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Robert Holland
(DE-)RATIONALIZING THE IRRATIONAL Discourse as culture/ideology

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This paper takes as its starting point the observation of quasi-religious, cultural characteristics in the dominant discourse of Western liberal democracy, and of ideological characteristics in the discourse of Islamism noting that both discourses rely, to some extent, upon the notion of rationality. Having provided working denitions of rationality, ideology, and culture, it goes on to argue that culture and ideology may be viewed as discursive macro-strategies which are related to the degree of power enjoyed by a given social system at particular historical moments in time: the former being associated with the consolidation of established power and the latter with a bid to acquire power. It suggests that the general function of cultural and ideological strategies is to mask the underlying irrationalities of free-market democracy and Islamism, respectively, and concludes by considering some of the implications of this view in the context of globalization and the war on terror. Keywords rationality; culture; ideology; Islam/Islamism; capitalism/freemarket democracy; meme-complex; discursive spin

Introduction: free-market democracy and Islamism

The central contention of this essay proceeds from an observation of general discursive trends on either side of the current war on terror: what I shall call an ideological turn in certain kinds of Islamic discourse, and a cultural turn in the discourse of liberal democracy which has led commentators such as Derrida (1994, p. 56) to liken it to a new gospel. These trends do not originate with, or derive from, the events of September 11, 2001 (though they have perhaps become more visible since then), but rather point to a historical-discursive evolution that has been taking place over some decades. In order to discuss these discursive trends, I require names for the two social congurations that they represent. Those I shall employ free-market democracy and Islamism are problematic: both, for example, might convey a misleading sense of homogeneity, masking the variegated complexity of the Western and
Critical Discourse Studies Vol. 3, No. 1 April 2006, pp. 37 59 ISSN 1740-5904 print/ISSN 1740-5912 online # 2006 Taylor & Francis http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/17405900600589366

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Islamic worlds. Moreover, free-market-democracy is what technologically advanced, late capitalist societies tend to call themselves, while Islamist is increasingly something that those same societies use for others, and a sobriquet that many Muslims would understandably wish to question. Nonetheless, these two terms capture something of what I want to suggest. By free-market-democracy, I refer not just to a system that is broadly capitalist in its economic organization and employs certain kinds of electoral procedure, but to the whole complex of consumer-oriented, media-rich, multinational institutions, relations, and discourses that characterize the West. I use Islamism to refer to a system of beliefs and actions which seeks to accentuate the Islamic in all aspects of social life and which, crucially, represents itself through an overtly political discourse. By Islamist I do not simply mean the perpetrators and supporters of 9/11 or of the Bali bombings: as I will show (and see Hoodbhoy, 1991; Manji, 2004), there are elements of Islamism within more mainstream Muslim discourse. And neither do I conate Islamist with Islamic: I wish to distinguish Islamism from a broader Islamic discourse, of which the former might (or might not) be seen as a subset. Both these social congurations invoke rationality as part of their respective claims to legitimacy: in the case of free-market democracy by way of a scientic tradition going back to the European Enlightenment and, in the case of Islamism, through a substantial and growing literature which makes detailed claims for the rationality of Islam, particularly in contrast to other religions and philosophies. As I will argue, however, both are irrational in important respects, and it is this underlying inconsistency that explains the discursive trends to which I have referred. Nothing is more dangerous for a certain kind of power than the tendency, among those subject to it, to ask the simple question: Why? The acculturating and ideologizing discourse practices of free-market democracy and Islamism, respectively, are to be seen as strategies whose purpose is to assert and/or secure power through the expedient of discouraging or deecting that question.

Rationality, ideology, and culture: working denitions

I have alluded to three notoriously difcult concepts: if culture is, as Williams (1983, p. 87) suggests, one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language, then rationality and ideology are surely candidates for the remaining one or two. There is no universal consensus on any of these notions: questions concerning the denition of each are subject to considerable disagreement, as are their respective roles in social life. But since the following discussion will attempt to relate culture and ideology (understood in quite restricted senses) to particular discursive strategies employed by irrational human systems, I must perforce outline for the reader some denitions however contestable of these terms in order to clarify the ways in which I shall use them.

Rationality
Rationality has a long and complex history of theorization and critique (see Brown, 1988; Popper, 1994; Sankey, 1997; Stein, 1996; Steuerman, 2000). I will not

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rehearse the arguments here and will, for the time being, set aside questions concerning the relationship between rationality and morality (e.g., Bartholemew, 1996; Nathanson, 1985), and concerning how reason may serve towards the emancipation, or oppression, of humanity in general. I shall, rather, distil from Elster (1983) a working denition that encompasses three basic requirements, each related to thin (R1) and broad (R2 and R3) theories of rationality: R1: Beliefs and actions within a system may be said to be rational as long as they are consistent with others in the same system. The system itself may be considered rational if its constituent parts are so related to each other and to the system as a whole. R2: A rational system admits evidence relevant to its constituent beliefs and/or actions from sources that are independent of the system itself. R3: If the weight of evidence changes, a rational system is prepared to change its constituent beliefs and/or actions accordingly. I am aware of the additional problems raised here by the introduction of concepts such as relevance and independence, and by no means wish to stake a claim to absolute truth or a sublimely disinterested objectivity. On the contrary, I think that all approaches to knowledge are inescapably interested to some degree. But nor can I subscribe to an unbounded relativism: a degree of internal consistency, along with a certain relationship to evidence, seem to be reasonable expectations of any system claiming to be rational. I shall thus take the three principles listed above (R1, R2, and R3) as prerequisite conditions for a rational system.

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Ideology
Ideology has been subject to numerous complex, and often conicting, denitions (see Eagleton, 1991). But its connection with some form of social programme, its conscious (whether or not falsely conscious) nature, and its rational or scientic claims constitute common themes in both conservative and radical formulations. Thus, we nd Williams (1983) observation that the pejorative, Napoleonic view of ideology remains common in the critique of policies in part or in whole derived from social theory in a conscious way (p. 154, original emphasis) and Gouldners (1976) formulation of ideology as a Marxist view of any belief system that makes pretentious and unjustied claims to scienticity (p. 9, original emphasis). In approaching the concept of ideology for my current purpose, I will for the time being suspend judgement on how justiable its claims to scienticity might be. The following, then, is a simple, and highly restricted, working denition: Ideology is a relatively conscious system of ideas/beliefs about social life and organization which lays claim to some rational or scientic basis.

Culture
There are two main strands in the historical development of the concept of culture. The rst, the classical conception of intellectual and/or spiritual development, is

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closely associated with that of civilization, and at times the two have been used interchangeably, though they are in some ways distinguishable (see Thompson, 1990). The second is the anthropological conception: culture construed as the way of life pertaining to a given society at a particular place and time. Within the broadly anthropological approach, there is a bewildering array of different views, priorities, and areas of focus on, for example, the material production of a culture or on its symbolic production (see Bourdieu, 1992; Thompson, 1990). But I do not wish to synthesize and critique extant conceptions of culture, still less to theorize culture entirely anew. I shall instead make a simple observation of a common thread in most such conceptions: that culture, however it is construed, relies upon some sense of shared identity among a particular group of social subjects and that this sense of identity is intimately connected to a complex of conventions and assumptions, similarly shared and typically taken for granted by members of the group. This sense of culture provides a useful contrast with ideology as I have dened it above, and it is in this sense that I shall use the term hereafter: Culture is a relatively unconscious system of ideas/beliefs about social life and organization which relies upon conventions, assumptions, and a sense of common identity, shared among social subjects.

Relating culture and ideology

In much Western discourse, culture has historically enjoyed positive connotations just as ideology has suffered from negative ones. There have been notable exceptions, where particular ideologies have embarked upon some form of cultural revolution, aimed at rewriting culture from scratch: Wenn ich Kultur hore . . . entsichere ich meinen Browning! (Whenever I hear [the word] culture . . . I release the safety catch on my Browning!) Johst (1933, p. 26)1 But on the whole culture evokes positive responses across a broad range of the political spectrum a sense of history, of tradition, of pride in shared achievements, and of values that are somehow unchallengeable. When invoked in support of narrow economic, nationalist, or colonial interests, this sacrosanct quality of culture can make it a highly dangerous thing: however one interprets Arnolds (1873) denition of culture as the passion for sweetness and light and (what is more), the passion for making them prevail, one would do well to place it in the historical context of European colonialism and genocidal policies in Australia and the Americas: What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and

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prosperous farms embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and lled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization and religion? (Jackson, 1830) The less ethnocentric view that became widespread during the twentieth century extended the sense of inviolability to cultures other than ones own. Thus, when pressed to justify his governments avowed ethical foreign policy in relation to its ties with Saudi Arabia, British Prime Minister Tony Blair evoked culture to defend the Saudis from charges of institutional torture and general oppression: Well, er, they have their, they have their culture, they have their way of life (BBC, 2002). It is hard to envisage Mr Blair employing ideology in the same way, just as it is difcult to imagine the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland arguing for its right to parade through Irish nationalist areas in order to celebrate our ideology;2 whatever the rights and wrongs on either side of a particular issue, culture is a better excuse for bad behaviour. I raise this point because I want to problematize the relation that pertains between culture and ideology an outstanding issue, I think, in studies of both. Are they, for example, to be seen as coextensive, or is either to be understood as a superordinate category, subsuming the other? How, exactly, are they related? The literature is often remarkably unenlightening on this issue. Neither Williams (1983) entry on culture (pp. 87 93) or entry on ideology (pp. 152 157) makes any reference to the other. Thompsons Ideology and Modern Culture (1990) contains both terms in its very title but while it makes an important contribution to contemporary social theory, it leaves the reader by no means clear on exactly what relation its author perceives between the two notions. Paynes (1996, pp. 252 253) denition suggests that conceptions of ideology may be placed in four broad categories: (i) the epistemologically negative ideology as a type of disturbed, false thought (for example, the consciousness of human subjects in capitalist society); (ii) the socially relative ideology as any set of opinions, beliefs, attitudes (for example, the world view of a social group or class); (iii) the restricted theoretical ideology (a more or less conscious system of ideas); (iv) the expanded practical ideology (the more or less unconscious medium of habitual behaviour). Two of these (ii and iv) clearly evoke certain conceptions of culture, but the relationship remains unarticulated. The general consensus, however, seems to be that the category of culture is broader than that of ideology. Thus, Geertz (1993) contrasts ideology with science, but places both within the cultural realm. In Eagletons (1991, p. 28) view, if ideology is dened very broadly as the general material process of production of ideas, beliefs and values in social life, then it might be seen as a

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near-synonym of culture. But while he considers this general denition useful insofar as it emphasizes a social basis for cognitive processes, he nds it otherwise (1991, p. 28) unworkably broad and suspiciously silent on the question of political conict. For Eagleton, a key distinction between culture and ideology is that while the former might be taken to include all signifying practices that contribute to the production and dissemination of ideas and values within a given society, the latter crucially involves a relationship between those signifying practices and the exercise of power.

Ideology and culture as discursive spin

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It is in precisely this respect that I wish to suggest a rather different conception of ideology and culture, as discursive strategies related to the establishment and maintenance, respectively, of political power. Taking the restricted denitions of the two concepts presented above or conating Paynes (1996) categories (ii) and (iv) and contrasting these with his category (iii) I would propose that cultural and ideological be taken as referring to two sides of the same coin, to two alternative spins that might be applied to discourse, or to units of cultural transmission conceived in genetic terms (see Dawkins, 1989; and below). Hence, cultural and ideological discursive practices are to be seen as differing from each other insofar as each typically deploys semiotic resources differently, as shown in table 1. Construed in this way, culture may be dened as historically (and discursively) sedimented ideology and ideology as historically (and discursively) potential culture. Thompsons (1990, p. 56) critical conception of ideology takes as its dening characteristic the deployment of meaning in the service of those individuals, institutions, or groups who occupy positions of power in society: To study ideology is to study the ways in which meaning serves to establish and sustain relations of domination. This formulation, while useful, is problematic insofar as it conates establish with sustain just as Geertz (1993, p. 231) conates establishment with defense, and Fairclough (1995, p. 14) producing with reproducing. It seems appropriate to distinguish between these pairs, because the discursive practices involved in the establishment of power are likely to be rather different from those involved in its maintenance and reproduction. Ideology (in the sense in which I use it here) is a discursive spin associated with pretension to power from a position
TABLE 1 cultural evoke implicit assumptions appeal to shared values appeal for stability provide common sense justications Patterns of culturally-oriented and ideologically-oriented discourse ideological make explicit propositions appeal to universal reason appeal for change provide scientic justications

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of relative insecurity and, as such, has nothing to lose by making its propositions explicit: it will, in any case, be perceived within mainstream discourse as ideological in the epistemologically negative sense (hence as dogmatic and/or deluded), to the extent that it constitutes a challenge to the established order. There is nothing new in this: the language of radicalism has always been more marked than that of the status quo. Culture, on the other hand, is associated with relative security, and has little to gain by formulating itself too explicitly in discourse. When Fairclough writes about ideology as propositions that generally gure as implicit assumptions in texts (1995, p. 14), he describes propositions grounded in rmly established power. In general, such power may better protect its interests by removing itself as far as possible from the realm of debate, by weaving itself into the social fabric in the form of assumption rather than proposition in short, by turning itself into culture. This idea, it seems to me, is implicit in much work in CDA (e.g., Fairclough, 1989, 1992, 1995), which may be seen in this narrow sense as an attempt to chart processes through which the ideology of capitalism is transformed into the culture of freemarket democracy. Culture, as a strategic discursive spin, has particular advantages in our kind of complex, highly mediatized, multicultural consumer society, where individuals are presented with an enormous diversity of choices and lifestyle options. Thompson (1990, pp. 7 8) argues against the view that a particular value-system is shared by the popular majority in advanced societies and that their relative stability is, rather, predicated on a lack of consensus at the very point where oppositional attitudes might be translated into political action. But it is here that a cultural discourse comes into its own: its value deriving from the fact that it is vague, evoking a set of principles that can have positive associations for an electoral majority precisely because they are poorly dened. The appeal to common values, then, is characteristic of a cultural discourse that permits a sense of community within a highly diverse population, while disguising the assumptions underlying its own power. An ideological discourse, by contrast, relies upon a relatively strong sense of community within a relatively homogeneous population (e.g., in terms of class, race, religion), and encourages conscious examination of assumptions underlying a system whose power it wishes to challenge. These two congurations are well exemplied by late capitalism and relatively
TABLE 2 Culturally-oriented and ideologically-oriented discourse

communities Late capitalist (cultural discourse) relatively heterogeneous membership relatively weak sense of community relative security in power New religionist (ideological discourse) relatively homogeneous membership relatively strong sense of community ambition for/sense of threat to power

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new, increasingly politicized, religious fundamentalisms (see table 2). It is to an examination of these or, rather, to two specic instances of them that I shall now turn.

Cultural discourse: free-market democracy and the vocabulary of vague values

Free-market democracy is irrational in terms of criterion R1 (see above): it is a logically inconsistent system, in that various social imperatives within it are in conict with each other and/or with the demands of the system as a whole. At a very general level, this may be understood as resulting from tension between the economic requirement for a high degree of individualism and the social need for a sense of community. The kind of destructive paradox underlying late capitalist society is neatly summarized by Edward Bond (1987, p. 69): We expect business to be ruthlessly aggressive. At the same time we expect people to be generous and socially considerate. And we expect trade unionists to be dutiful workers and moderate in their demands when theyre at work. When theyre consumers we expect them to be aggressive, to be competitive, greedy egotists our way of life demands it. . .. We need anti-social behaviour to keep society running but this behaviour destroys society. The worker must know his place in the factory but be an insatiable egotist outside it. The good citizen must be schizophrenic. This is not mere polemic: the social schizophrenia suggested here is instantiated in the discourse. When, in June 2003, British government minister Peter Hain was reported as suggesting a 50% tax rate for annual earnings above 100,000, the response of the UKs biggest-selling newspaper was to condemn him thus: Soaking the top earners, removing the incentive to work hard and the rewards of success, is the politics of envy (The Sun, 2003, p. 6). The politics of envy is a phrase commonly used by conservative politicians, business executives, and media commentators to indicate a fundamental aw in socialist thinking: The philosophy, however meritorious, that drives people into politics from the left tends . . . to crush the human spirit. . .. Sitting at the heart of such politics is an uncomfortable core of the politics of envy (Crispin Blunt MP, Conservative, Reigate; House of Commons, 2003); I have no time for the politics of envy (Blair, 1997). But envy is an indispensable part of a system dependent upon constant growth in consumer spending: members of a consumer society are encouraged to envy the glamour that certain products bestow on others and, through purchase, possession, and display of those products, to take pleasure in others envy of themselves (Berger et al., 1972, pp. 130131). Thus, while in some free-market-democratic contexts envy remains the deadly sin of old, in others it has a very different signicance. Gucci, for instance, currently produces a range of toiletries (perfume, deodorant, etc.) called Envy, and an internet search (http://www.yell.co.uk) for UK companies called Envy yields over 50 results.3 It seems reasonable to assume that the name would

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not be used if it jeopardized sales, and therefore that it is taken to have positive connotations within the intended market for those companies and products. In this way, free-market democracy is irrational because it is in conict with itself, and the internal conict is discursively manifest. Its culturally-oriented political discourse, centred on a lexicon of imprecisely dened common values, may be seen as a strategy that obscures its underlying contradictions and thereby serves to help sustain its power. It is a discourse that tends to be couched in a language of credo that is, quasi-religious statements of belief (see Derrida, 1994, pp. 56 59) within which particular (and particularly vague) key words appear to stand at the topmost rank of a hierarchy (see gure 1). Ranked immediately below is a cluster of rather more specic (but still vaguely dened) realizations of the values evoked at the level above. Public political debate in Britain is increasingly focussed upon a struggle over key elements of this cultural vocabulary, a struggle that has been central to the New Labour project under Tony Blair. Mr. Blair made the point explicitly in his address to the Labour Party conference in 1996, commenting that the Conservatives had never had the best vision for Britain, but had simply appropriated the best words which he intended to make New Labours own (Blair, 1996). He listed freedom, choice, opportunity, ambition, and aspiration as examples.4 Within this discourse, policy initiatives aimed at change, and any conict resulting therefrom, are likely to be characterized in cultural terms, rather than in relation to any struggle between more explicit ideas. A speech made by Alan Milburn in 2003 illustrates the trend: [T]he NHS has cultural barriers to progress that must also be overcome if it is to reach its full potential. The route to patient choice lies not through more healthcare charges but through big cultural changes: the cultural changes which redesign services around the needs of patients so that they are able to make choices about where and when and by whom they are treated. (Milburn, 2003)

FIGURE 1

A hierarchy of imprecision.

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The cultural turn is apparent in the public language of all the mainstream political parties in Britain. Milburns speech contained a high concentration of vague, cultural buzzwords (see gure 1),5 and of instances of the language of credo, now typical of mainstream British political discourse: The governments decision . . . is a declaration of that faith . . .; And yet in our hearts we know . . .; That is an affront to all that I believe in. Of course, one might argue that this is simply par for the genre, a result of the topic addressed, or of the linguistic predilections of the particular speaker, but it is remarkable how frequently this cultural lexis appears in the public discourse of British politics, regardless of topic or speaker and, most signicantly perhaps, regardless of the speakers political afliation. It is often said that ideology is something of which one accuses others: they have ideologies, while we have values. The point was clearly illustrated in a 2002 radio interview with Ian Duncan-Smith (then leader of the Conservative Party). But the interview also demonstrated an interesting contrast between the ways in which ideology and values are treated in the discourse: [T]he Labour Party had a thing called Clause Four. Er, that was a piece of paper and on it was written an absolute, that they would renationalise and nationalise industry . . . thats an ideology and they tried to dump it but they havent taken it out of their heart. . .. For us, the very idea of having such a prescriptive piece of paper is bizarre and wrong. . .. [W]hat we have, we have values and principles that make up the Conservative Party, strong values, strong beliefs. What we dont have is ideologies that dont change. Our principles stay, er, absolute, but what we do is apply them to new problems and new issues. . .. (BBC Radio 4, Today, 18 January 2002, emphasis added) Here, and elsewhere, the epithet absolute appears to have positive connotations (strong, principled) when applied to vaguely dened values, but negative connotations (prescriptive, dogmatic) when applied to a more explicit set of ideas represented as ideology. The values of free-market democracy are increasingly linked, explicitly or through collocation, with its economic basis (see also Fairclough, 2000, pp. 4648): . . . the direct link . . . between capitalism and freedom (Heffer, 2001, pp. 67); . . . it is not surprising that those who are steeped in the values of capitalism are prepared, in the last resort, to ght to defend freedom in their own countries and throughout the world (OHear, 2002, p. 12); . . .the new one [i.e., the new world after the collapse of the Soviet bloc], no longer bipolar in that sense, more concerned with freedom, democracy, free markets (BBC, 1997). As Martin Indyk, former National Security Advisor to President Clinton, put it (BBC, 2004b): American people have always considered that engagement in foreign policy involves not just protecting American security interests but also spreading our values, which are values of liberal democracy: promoting freedom and good governance and better opportunities for people through market capitalism.

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At the same time, in this era of globalization, they are also increasingly represented as universals: How can we get her [i.e. China] to accept common standards, common values? (BBC, 1997); Our values arent Western values. Theyre human values, and anywhere, anytime people are given the chance, they embrace them (Blair, 2002a); Members of Congress, ours are not Western values, they are the universal values of the human spirit (Blair, 2003). It is in the context of this cultural discourse that the ideological discourse of Islamism is perhaps best understood: as a response to the threat perceived in the global pretensions of free-market democracy.

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Ideological discourse: Islamism in English

In some respects, it is important to avoid the temptation to see Islamism as a single, monolithic entity or discourse. It is equally necessary to recognize that, given the international status of Islam and the central role played by Arabic in the Muslim world, a thorough analysis of Islamist discourse would have to take into account a broad range of interlingual, cross-cultural, and comparative rhetorical issues. But here I shall briey examine the discourse of Islamism only as this is manifest in English, in a small sample of texts. There are clear differences between the language of groups such as Hizb utTahrir, or the Islamic Truth Group (see below), and that of Harun Yahya (2001a, 2001b) markedly different stances, for example with regard to the concept of ideology. Yahya (2001a, p. 41), in line with common Western practice, tends to ascribe ideology to that which he opposes: These developments ought to have resulted in Darwins theory being banished to the dustbin of history. However, it was not, because certain circles insisted on revising, renewing, and elevating the theory to a scientic platform. These efforts gain meaning only if we realise that behind the theory lay ideological intentions rather than scientic concerns. By contrast, more extreme Islamist groups openly embrace the term: Before we begin it is worth mentioning that ISLAM is not a Religion but is a DEEN, which constitutes a Creed and a System of life. The nearest English word is IDEOLOGY (Islamic Truth Group, 2002); Reject the evils of freedom and democracy, the pillars of the west! Support Islam . . . the Supreme Ideology (Hizb ut-Tahrir, 1995). There is perhaps an element of gratuitous rhetorical antagonism here (My enemies lexical enemies are my lexical friends; their lexical friends my enemies . . .) and I do not want to overstate the signicance of the use, in Islamist discourse, of the word ideology itself. But there is a common discursive thread that connects the more moderate with the more extremist views within Islamism, and which leads me to characterize both as ideological. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the long and troubled history of contact and conict between Islamic societies and the West, and of the relationship of Islam, the Quran, and the hadith texts to science (see Hoodbhoy, 1991; Iqbal, 2002). But whether it is seen as an attempt to meet a perceived scientic challenge

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to faith, or as a reaction to Westernization, there has been a notable trend in the Muslim world during recent decades to argue the superiority of Islam on grounds of rationality and science, and indeed to Islamize science itself. This trend has spawned a voluminous literature (e.g., Ahmad, 1998; Bucaille, 1976/1987, 1991; Choudhury, 2001; Khourasani & Baines-Hewitt, 1961; Mutahheri, Makarim Shirazi, Mahdi Asi, & Amini, 1977; Yahya, 2001a, 2001b) attempting to demonstrate the compatibility of Islam with various scientic theories or, where that proves impossible, to debunk scientic theory on ostensibly rational, scientic grounds. An archetypal example of this discourse, and a text that is widely disseminated by proselytizing Islamic groups, is Maurice Bucailles (1991)6 The Quran and Modern Science. Here, Bucaille wastes little time in stating his basic thesis (pp. 1 2): that anyone who approaches a reading of the Quran in an objective, unbiased, unprejudiced manner will necessarily arrive at a particular set of conclusions which, stated in the most general terms, are that: [I]t is impossible to explain how a text produced at the time of the Quran could have contained ideas that have only been discovered in modern times. There is indeed no human work prior to modern times that contains statements which were equally in advance of the state of knowledge at the time they appeared and which might be compared to the Quran. (Bucaille, 1991, p. 1) By the end of his introductory section Bucaille is making direct assertions about the scientic contents of the Quran, which, he says, contains innitely more precise data which are directly related to facts discovered by modern science (p. 2). The text proceeds, under ve general headings (Encyclopedia [sic] Knowledge Necessary to Understand the Quran; Creation of the Universe; Astronomy Light and Movement; The Earth; The Creation of Man), to illustrate the claimed scientic precision of the Quran and, in a nal section (Quran and Bible), to contrast this with the Judaeo-Christian Bibles imprecision and inconsistencies. But the pamphlet provides no clear example of precise data, nor does it identify in the Quran any falsiable, scientic claim made in unambiguous language.7 It relies, rather, upon the reading of particular scientic interpretations into the Quranic text, illustrated here by Bucailles assessment of a verse from the sura Al Naba (78: 6 7), translated as: Have We not made the earth an expanse and the mountains stakes? Bucaille interprets this as follows: The stakes (awtad), which are driven into the ground like those used to anchor a tent, are the deep foundations of geological folds. Here, as in the case of other topics, the objective observer cannot fail to notice the absence of any contradiction with modern knowledge. (1991, p. 10)

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At the risk of seeming a less than entirely objective observer, I might wish to question why stakes (awtad) is taken to refer to the deep foundations of geological folds and state that, as far as I am aware, no geological process of mountain-formation could precisely be described as stakes being driven into the ground. I am no geologist, however, and so perhaps I should defer. But in linguistic and rhetorical terms, The Quran and Modern Science is interesting in its use of oddly mixed modalities In the Quran, the kawkab denitely seems to mean the planets . . . (p. 7, my emphasis) and in the way that it relies, particularly in its comparisons between the Quran and the Bible, upon an extended sequence of negatives (my emphasis throughout): . . . in contrast to . . . the Bible, the Quran does not lay down a sequence for the Creation of the Earth and Heavens (p. 5); . . . cannot fail to notice the absence of any contradiction with modern knowledge (p. 10 see above); As for the genealogies contained in the Bible, which form the basis of the Jewish calendar and assert that today the world is 5738 years old, these are hardly admissible either. It is absolutely essential, therefore, to note that the Quran does not contain any such indications as to the date.. . . (p. 16) Thus, when comparing the Biblical and Quranic narrations of the Flood (p. 16), Bucaille claims that there are absolutely no historical or archaeological objections to the narration in the Quran (p. 16), it comes as no surprise, since he has just explained why this is the case: The Quran does not locate the cataclysm in time (p. 16). These kinds of negation are also characteristic of Bucailles (1976/1987) original, lengthier, and more detailed text. In discussing, for example, the Quranic representations of the Sun and Moon: There is nothing in the text of the Quran that contradicts what we know today about these two celestial bodies (1976/1987, p. 162). The more recent, and very prolic, work of Harun Yahya8 addresses a broader range of more contemporary scientic knowledge, but is similarly selective and prejudicially inferential in its treatment: When studying the subject of electron shells, one must also think over a verse pointing to this subject in the Quran. There are 7 electron shells around the nucleus of an atom. On each shell are electrons in xed numbers. Could it be that the expression the seven heavens used in the Quran to describe the layers forming the heavens may also be pointing to the orbits of electron shells that are as if the heavens of the atom? He Who created the seven heavens in layers. You will not nd any aw in the creation of the All-Merciful. Look again do you see any gaps? (Surat alMulk: 3) This gure never changes. It never becomes 6 or 8. Here, the really miraculous thing is that this gure of seven electron shells is in total harmony with the verse. (Yahya, 2001b, p. 56)

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If Bucaille and Yahya are as scientically knowledgeable as they claim, then they must have been aware of the profoundly unscientic nature of their own assertions except insofar as, being Muslims, science was overruled by faith. But I am not so much concerned with such writers status as scientists as with the way in which their texts are woven into a discourse which presents Islam as being underpinned by demonstrable, scientic fact which serves, in other words, to turn faith into ideology. From a certain perspective, their scientic pretensions are something of a joke, but in the context of September 11 2001 and subsequent events in various parts of the world it is really not very funny. These arguments are dangerous, and feed directly into the so-called culture wars between the Western and Islamic worlds: violent Islamist groups thrive on this kind of discourse, incorporate it into an escalating spiral of aggressive rhetoric, and use it to manipulate impressionable young Muslims. As with any long-established religious faith, Islam has a certain cultural grounding, in the sense that it relies upon a number of sedimented beliefs, assumptions, and conventions which are taken for granted, and which are based upon (interpretations of) particular texts that are fundamentally unchallengeable. But Islamism makes claims beyond the religious, social, and moral framework of the faith, to argue the superiority of Islam on grounds of rationality and science while remaining highly selective in its admission and treatment of evidence from without (R2), and constitutionally unprepared to change its constituent beliefs and/or actions in the light of any such evidence (R3). This is a discourse that claims for itself an extraordinary objectivity. An introductory note To The Reader prefacing Yahyas (2001a) The Evolution Deceit baldly states: In these books, you will not nd, as in some other books, the personal views of the author (p. 3). It also commonly projects interpretations upon the reader (Yahya, 2001a): Even those who rigorously reject spirituality are inuenced by the facts recounted in these books and cannot refute the truthfulness of their contents (p. 3). This is interesting, since it suggests in the use of the word truthfulness a blurring of any distinction between domains of reality or between validity claims (Habermas, 1976/1996). In which domain of reality is this claim based? Is it a claim made on grounds of truthfulness (sincerity) or on grounds of truth (objective reality)? This may, of course, simply reect a poor choice of words, but is nonetheless indicative of a characteristic of fundamentalist religious rhetoric: the conation of sincerely held belief with scientically veriable fact. The rhetorical rationality that Neuman, Lurie, and Rosenthal (2001) claim for fundamentalist religious discourse can be rational only in the thin sense (satisfying criterion R1 but not R2 and R3) and within a specic discourse community; in other words, it may be perceived as rational, but only insofar as it preaches to the converted, or to those who want to be converted. Religious faith is by nature, and to some irreducible extent, non-rational or extra-rational; it becomes irrational when it insists otherwise.

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Towards a model of culture and ideology as discursive orientations

To summarize: the two discourse types outlined above, as exemplied by freemarket democracy and Islamism, might each be characterized as ideological from

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a broadly critical perspective, and each is clearly cultural in the wider sense of the word. Both are centrally involved in deceptive social constructions, sustained by means of concealed strategic action in the form of either conscious manipulation (as in the work of spin doctors) or relatively unconscious, but systematically distorted, communication (see Habermas, 1984). But the deception whether conscious or otherwise is effected differently in each case: while the discourse of Islamism seeks to rationalize, that of free-market democracy seeks to de-rationalize, that is, to remove certain key tenets from the domain of rational discussion. The former exemplies an ideological discourse strategy in the sense that I use the term here, the latter a cultural one. In attempting to theorize in more general terms, and to avoid a tangle of quotation marks and parentheses, I require a word that will serve to denote a unit of culture/ideology. Dawkins (1989) provides one: a meme, which he proposes as a unit of imitation a cultural unit transmitted from one person or population to another, or from one generation to the next, in a process analogous to that of the biological unit, the gene. There are problems with this analogy (e.g., Sperber, 1996), but I will retain Dawkins term, not because I agree with all the details of his hypothesis, but for its straightforward elegance. Let us suppose, then, that a given social system comprises a conglomeration of memes (a meme complex, in Dawkins terms), and that such a system may have one of two general orientations: the ideological or the cultural. In an ideological conguration, the system will tend to represent itself as a set of explicit social propositions, whereas in a cultural conguration it will tend to do so as a set of implicit social assumptions (see gure 2). The orientation that a system has at a particular moment will depend, to a large extent, upon its relation to power: the more securely powerful the system, the more cultural its political discourse is likely to be. My use of the phrase two general orientations suggests, perhaps, too static a model. I would prefer to view this as a historical process, through which ideological

FIGURE 2

A cultureideologyculture cycle.

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meme complexes become, over time, more cultural, and vice versa. I think it is possible to distinguish two broad categories of discursive practice. One moves ideologically congured memes towards a more cultural conguration, where they take on the status of assumptions, supposedly shared by an entire, if disparate, community. The other moves culturally congured memes in the opposite direction, transforming them into more explicit, rationalized propositions made on the behalf of a more or less clearly dened interest group. Thus we may regard culture as ideology with relatively deep historical roots and ideology as culture-in-the-making a set of cultural proposals. The two are similar in that both have a modality of should both suggest, This is how things should be, or, This is how people should live. The contrast becomes clearer when we ask of them why things should be thus, or why people should live in such-and-such a way. While ideology attempts to rationalize, argue, and explain, culture simply shrugs its shoulders and refers to a presupposed reality: Thats just the way it is. What I suggest is that ideology and culture represent two phases in the life-cycle of the meme, positions that it may occupy at a given time (depending upon its relationship to the socio-historical context in which it is found), and through which longeval memes may pass repeatedly in the course of their lives. This appears to be the situation with Islamism and with other religious fundamentalisms that are currently reinventing themselves as ideology. The ideological turn is equally apparent in the discourse of fundamentalist Christians (particularly in the USA, where they appear to be increasingly encroaching upon the mainstream political scene; e.g., Harris, 2003), in moves, for instance, to teach scientic creationism in schools. If we see religious fundamentalisms as meme complexes which, historically, have passed through a number of ideology culture cycles, their strength becomes apparent. When a meme complex that has already undergone a cultural phase (a phase of secure power) reaches a historical point (experienced as a threat to its power) where it needs to take an ideological turn (in order to protect, or re-establish, that power), it can draw upon considerable cultural resources. The discourse of such a meme complex may increasingly be oriented towards the explanatory, polemical, rationalizing practices that are characteristic of ideology, but any faults in its rational explanations will tend to be overlooked or dismissed at a cultural level. In other words, the more deeply embedded the meme complex has become during its earlier, cultural phase, the more likely it is that its ideological claims to scienticity will be accepted without question. We can identify, then, in culture and ideology, general discursive trends associated with given social systems at given historical moments. But to suggest that a particular discourse has a cultural or ideological orientation is not to say that it is cultural or ideological in all particulars. Culture and ideology, rather, are to be seen as large-scale discursive macro-strategies; at a smaller-scale, tactical level, a culturally-oriented discourse may display certain ideological features, and vice versa. In referring here to strategy and tactics, I do not mean to evoke an entirely conscious process, but nor would I wish to educe something entirely and unconsciously systemic: the discursive orientation of a specic system is likely to involve a complex interplay between its social subjects, vested interests, and features of the system itself.

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Just as an ideological meme may have deep cultural roots, so may a cultural meme have an ideological background. Underlying the current cultural turn in free-market democracy is a centuries-old intellectual history of argument supported by experiment and falsiable evidence. The free-market democratic system requires the cultural discursive orientation outlined above because it is irrational, but it cannot easily or straightforwardly dispense with these rationalist traditions. Thus, even as they proclaim capitalist liberal democracys nal triumph at the end of history (see Fukuyama, 1992), the proponents of free-market democracy are obliged to argue the case at length, in great detail, and in rational terms. The idea that all societies are evolving, in some unilinear process, towards the pinnacle of capitalist liberal democracy seems questionable to say the least, as does Fukuyamas (1992) view that market capitalism represents on an overcrowded planet with nite resources and fractious human populations a perfectly rational economic organization. An alternative, and no less plausible, explanation for its pre-eminence would be that it happens to constitute the economically and militarily strongest system at a point in history when levels of technology are such as to allow that system to impose itself on a global scale. For all its erudition, and its apparently ideological orientation, Fukuyamas thesis is underpinned by a pair of cultural presuppositions: that there is a necessary and inextricable link between democracy and its companion, economic liberalism (p. 48), and that liberal democracy in reality constitutes the best possible solution to the human problem (p. 338). As reected by Fukuyama, modern thought does indeed appear to have arrived at an impasse (p. 338) but one that is marked by a failure of imagination and by a quasi-religious capitalist zeal. The success of his book is perhaps a measure of how acculturated free-market democracy has become.

Concluding remarks: nothing to do with us

So: on either side of the current war on terror (or jihad, if you will) are the ideology-becoming-culture of free-market democracy and the culture-becoming-ideology of Islamism. If either is serious about the achievement of peace (as both claim), then there is an urgent need for each to undertake a thorough examination of its own underlying assumptions, and of the discursive practices through which these are expressed. But neither seems willing to do so; indeed, it may be that neither is capable of doing so. With regard to Islamism this appears to be due, in part, to the deeply cultural nature of religion. For those with a belief in the absolute, literal truth of a holy book (be it Torah or Bible or Quran), the problems, injustices, and crimes of the world cannot be related causally, in any way, to the faith. The literalist Christian approaches the Bible in precisely the same way as his/her Muslim counterpart approaches the Quran with an unshakeable, and thus fundamentally unscientic, assumption of eternal truth. Any apparent mismatch between the text and science is inevitably seen either as evidence of faulty science, or as a failure of human understanding or interpretation. The second of these views may offer a way forward in an approach to the problem of terrorism/jihad, but it is one that the more moderate Islamists seem reluctant to

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take. It is far easier to represent the extremists as being entirely beyond the pale (Yahya, 2001a, p. 24): The barbarism that is happening in the world today under the name of Islamic Terrorism is completely removed from the moral teachings of the Quran; it is the work of ignorant, bigoted people, criminals who have nothing to do with religion. This is a line of argument echoed by Western politicians, keen not to alienate Muslims within their own constituencies. But is it realistic to claim that the actions of people who deliberately y aircraft into New York skyscrapers, or who blow themselves up on a crowded Jerusalem bus, have nothing to do with religion? This seems unlikely, unless one feels compelled as Islamism clearly does to avoid any consideration of possible links between a certain kind of religious mindset and a murderous self-righteousness. Confronted with the fact of barbarity acting in its name, religious belief (at the level of culture) constructs (at the level of ideology) alternative scapegoats (Yahya, 2001a, p. 20): [T]the root of the terrorism that plagues our planet is not any of the divine religions, but is in atheism, and the expression of atheism in our times: Darwinism and materialism. An interesting if disturbing irony in the discourse of religious fundamentalism is its insistence upon scientic objectivity at a time when secular Western governments9 increasingly appear to be abandoning the language of science, insofar as this might be applied to their political and economic programmes. We may recoil, naturally enough, when Islamists baldly state, Our goal as Muslims is to rule the world by Islam, or speak of our key goal, Izhaar ul-Deen (The domination of Islam World-wide) (Islamic Truth Group, 2002). But should we not, then, consider the potential effects on others of passages like this (Fukuyama, 1992, p. 46): [W]hile nearly a billion people are culturally Islamic one fth of the worlds population they cannot challenge liberal democracy on its own territory on the level of ideas.10 In thrall to a monolithic modernity (Gray, 2003), but unwilling or unable to engage in detailed, public debate on what that modernity actually means, these governments turn instead to the discourse of vague values outlined above. The less cynical among Western politicians seem genuinely convinced, captivated by the culture of free-market democracy: belief overrides intellect and they really cannot see how others fail to share these principles. Again, terrorism can have nothing to do with us: nothing to do with US foreign policy, nothing to do with the economic activities of transnational corporations, nothing to do with Western interventions around the world (see Barnet, 1972; Chomsky, 1992, 2003). Within this discourse, all dissenting opinion is represented as backwardness or misperception: We must accept that there is a signicant part of the world that is, at present, deeply inimical to all we stand for and is so from a mixture of tradition, ignorance of our true motives and values and from a belief that we are governed by a one-sided view of what is just. I believe this view to be profoundly mistaken. (Blair, 2002b)

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Furthermore, these Western values are evoked in both the popular media (e.g., Almond, 1993) and in the publications of government-funded think-tanks (see Cooper, 2002) as justication for a new liberal imperialism, and are set above the letter of international law: It may well be that under international law as presently constituted, a regime can systematically brutalise and oppress its people and there is nothing anyone can do, when dialogue, diplomacy and even sanctions fail, unless it comes within the denition of a humanitarian catastrophe.. . . This may be the law, but should it be? (Blair, 2004)
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But what values? If the best defence of our security lies in the spread of our values (Blair, 2004), then surely we would do well to understand exactly what these are, and what they imply. In our hierarchy of imprecision (see gure 1), however, cultural vagueness permeates the discourse, and more thorough public consideration of key concepts and issues may be hindered more than helped by the central role of popular mass media, restricted as these are by a culture of soundbites and packages that will t into time-constrained slots. Within the mediatized public discourse of free-market democracy, any interrogation of the most general level tends to be answered only at the next level down, and questions addressed to that level (requiring explication of, for example, democracy) at the rank immediately below, and so on: Q. A. Q. A. What values? Freedom, democracy . . . Democracy? One person one vote. A choice between different political parties . . .

But what choice? In Britain and the USA, at least, choice between parties appears increasingly meaningless insofar as this relates to any substantive control over the broad political and economic direction of society. As consumers we are presented with an almost boundless range of choice, but as citizens our options are increasingly restricted. The market is king: modernity and democracy are discursively culturally equated with market capitalism, and voting for one party or another essentially comes down to a choice between management styles. In this context, those who have triumphantly heralded the end of history (Fukuyama, 1992), who have called for a philanthropic liberal imperialism (Cooper, 2002), and who continue to claim that liberal democracy reects the universal values of the human spirit (Blair, 2003), can only seem irredeemably arrogant to large sections of the worlds population. Above all, the claim to universality cannot be sustained if these values are inextricably linked to a global economic system that is widely perceived as unjust, socially divisive, and environmentally disastrous. If as the discourse of free-market democracy now insists capitalism and democratic values cannot be disarticulated, then we may nd that the best defence of our security lies not in the spread of our values, but in our willingness to refrain from imposing those values upon people who neither want nor can afford them.

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Notes
1 This line, from Act 1 Scene 1 of Johsts play, is commonly misattributed to Hermann Goering. But the association is understandable: Johsts work is dedicated Fur Adolf Hitler in liebender Verehrung und unwandelbarer Treue (For Adolf Hitler in loving admiration and unwavering loyalty). However, it does routinely assert this right in terms of celebrating culture (e.g., Grand Orange Lodge, 1998). UK companies called Envy, or with the word Envy in their names, include a chain of clothes shops, hairdressers, beauty salons, model agencies, jewellers, nightclubs, a London-based knitwear manufacturer (Envy Designs), a wedding services and stationery shop (Invites to Envy) in Edinburgh, and a gardening services rm (Green with Envy) in Ashtead, Surrey. Some eight years later, this remains a focus of Labours programme. See Alan Milburn MP (Newsnight, 2004), on the need to ensure that words like opportunity and choice are part of a New Labour vocabulary, in order to wrest the radical middle ground from the Conservative Party. In a speech of 3,702 words, there were 11 occurrences of the word value(s), 3 of principle(s), 1 of ideal(s), 15 of choice(s), and 7 of opportunity/opportunities. Bucaille (1991) is the text of a talk originally given at the Commonwealth Institute, London, in 1978. Since then, it has frequently been reprinted in various languages and (often undated) forms, and distributed by various Muslim organizations around the world. Page references in this paper are to the 1991 edition produced by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabias Foreigners Guidance Centre in Buraydah. There is one possible exception. Page 5 of The Quran and Modern Science quotes scripture in English translation: Your Lord is Allah Who created the Heavens and the Earth in six days. This, as far as I can see, is the only example of an unambiguous claim made in any of the Quranic quotations provided. It is followed immediately by a caveat regarding the Arabic word ayyam (days): We must point out straight away that modern commentators stress the interpretation of ayyam, one translation of which is days, as meaning long periods or ages rather than periods of twenty-four hours. Harun Yahya is a pen name (see introductory note About the Author, Yahya, 2001a, 2001b), although whether for a single individual or some form of collective is unclear. Exactly how secular some of those governments are is an open question (e.g., Lampman, 2003; McKie, 2002). An endnote adds: They can, of course, challenge liberal democracy through terrorist bombs and bullets, a signicant but not vital challenge.

2 3

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5 6

8 9 10

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Robert Holland has taught English and French in Darfur and Kordofan, in Sudan, and worked for language education projects in Indonesia. He now teaches Applied Linguistics at the Centre for English Language Studies, University of Birmingham, UK. [email: r.l.holland@bham.ac.uk]