ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter I put forward an argument that the emerging neo-
conservative imperialism in the USA is the single most important danger to
world peace, as evident in the blatant warmongering of its leading ideolo-
gues, rampant disregard for international law, and the trail of death and
destruction that over his two terms in office President Bush has left behind in Afghanistan and Iraq. That this, or any other, mode of imperialism must
be resisted by any means necessary is a self-evident fact. What is at issue
here is whether or not major world religions – Judaism, Christianity, or
Islam, in particular – can have a progressive role to play in resisting that
predatory imperial proclivity, instead of either aiding and abetting it, as it is
done in the name of Judaism and Christianity, or else launching insane acts
of violence further exacerbating instead of resisting that empire, as it is
done in the name of Islam. In the case of Islam in particular, over the last 200 years, roughly from the onslaught of European colonialism early in the
nineteenth century in North Africa and southern and western Asia, it has
had a major role in providing a combative anti-colonial ideology resisting
the European and subsequently American domination of Muslim nations.
Its positive role in contributing to that global resistance to brute power
notwithstanding, that mode of Islamic Ideology was formed and framed in
a dialogical opposition with a figment of perturbed imagination code-
named ‘‘the West.’’ As a self-raising/other-lowering category, ‘‘the West’’ was invented in the domain of colonial imagination but then corroborated
by Muslim and other non-Westernized people around the globe, in fact
getting into a combative mode of conversation against it.
