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Orthodoxy, Islam and the 'Problem' of the West: a Comparison of the Liberation Theologies of Christos Yannaras and Sayyid Qutb
Daniel Payne

Online Publication Date: 01 December 2008

To cite this Article Payne, Daniel(2008)'Orthodoxy, Islam and the 'Problem' of the West: a Comparison of the Liberation Theologies of

Christos Yannaras and Sayyid Qutb',Religion, State and Society,36:4,435 450

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Religion, State & Society, Vol. 36, No. 4, December 2008

Orthodoxy, Islam and the Problem of the West: a Comparison of the Liberation Theologies of Christos Yannaras and Sayyid Qutb

DANIEL PAYNE

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ABSTRACT In the context of the revival of public religion since the 1960s, the globalisation of the western world has forced Orthodox Christianity and Islam to make a choice between secularisation and modernisation or fundamentalism. Many have chosen the route of fundamentalism, leading to what Bassam Tibi sees as an inherent challenge to the nation-state system. The universalism of these two religions, represented in the concepts of the umma and the ecclesia, undermines the ideological bases on which the nation-state system rests. Consulting the thought of two of the leading antiwestern Orthodox and Islamic thinkers, Christos Yannaras and Sayyid Qutb, will provide justication of this theory. Furthermore, I argue that the fundamentalist or neo-orthodox thought represented by these thinkers is itself a product of modernity, oering alternative modern projects to the secularisation thesis that has dominated the social science literature. Globalisation and modernisation do not necessarily lead to secularisation but may elicit fundamentalist responses that oer alternatives to the modernist project itself.

Introduction In encountering the modern world, Orthodox Christianity and Islam face similar problems (Argyriou, 2007). They are confronted by the West with the choice either to secularise and join the modern world or to accept a religious fundamentalism as a backlash against western globalisation. Throughout the world since the 1960s there has been a revival of public religion, challenging the predominant secularisation thesis and the basis of the modern nation-state. Many of these religious movements have sought to replace the secular nation-state with a theocratic version (Juergensmeyer, 1993). However, as Bassam Tibi has argued, religious fundamentalism represents an inherent challenge to the nation-state political system (Tibi, 1998, p. 3). A comparison of the ideas of Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual father of Islamic fundamentalism (Tibi, 1998, p. 56), and those of Christos Yannaras, the most prominent neo-Orthodox thinker in Greece, will provide an interreligious basis for testing Tibis theory. Given that this institution [the nation-state] is Western in origin, says Tibi, the revolt against it is also a revolt against the West (Tibi, 1998, p. 3).1 The ideas of Qutb and Yannaras can be construed as liberation theologies opposing the western political ideas that have prevailed in their societies and that are
ISSN 0963-7494 print; ISSN 1465-3974 online/08/040435-16 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09637490802442942

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widely viewed as antithetical to the religious bases of their particular cultures.2 The universalist tendencies of both Islam and Orthodox Christianity come into a radical confrontation with the political and societal limitations of the modern nation-state, which is constructed along nationalist lines (Tibi, 1998, pp. 1519).3 Furthermore, the universal visions of Qutb and Yannaras conict with the universalisation of western culture in the process of globalisation. Both Qutb and Yannaras desire a return to the purity of their religions, escaping the nationalism that has divided the umma and the church.4 This call for a return to an imagined pristine community of the faith is itself a modernist project, demonstrating the interactive nature of neo-fundamentalist movements with modern, global civilisation.5 What the world is witnessing through these liberationist movements that challenge the authority of the secular nation-state system is the development of alternative modernisation projects that are perceived to be independent of western inuence, while in reality they are in a dialectical relationship with the West, which gives rise to new political visions and arrangements. Globalisation and Alternative Modernities
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In 1978 the western world was disconcerted by the revolutionary events occurring in Iran. No one had foreseen that a modern nation-state would succumb to radical religious fundamentalists. Such a possibility was beyond comprehension, since social scientists had wholeheartedly embraced a view of modernity that included an inaccurate understanding of the secularisation of the world. Since that time, social scientists have had to account not only for the resurgence of political Islam in Iran and throughout the Muslim world but also for resurgent public religions in countries across the globe including the USA, India, Russia and Japan. The well-known Casanova and his study of the role reformulation of the secularisation thesis by Jose of public religions throughout Europe provided the social scientic community with a means to understand the worldwide religious revival of the late twentieth century (Casanova, 1994). Following Casanova, Peter Berger (1996/97) renounced the secularisation thesis to which he had made a signicant contribution with The Sacred Canopy (Berger, 1967). In the face of such monumental studies as The Fundamentalist Project by Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby and an honest appraisal of the status of religion around the world, sociologists and political scientists could no longer dismiss the public importance of religion in modern society. Social scientists came to the realisation of two very important concepts in the late twentieth century as a result of the reformulation of the secularisation thesis and the concomitant understanding of modernisation. First, modernisation does not necessarily imply secularisation as religious decline. Instead, vibrant public religious expression may accompany modernisation. Modernisation as it was previously understood may itself be historically and culturally conditioned by the experience of the western world. Beginning with a reappraisal of religion and modernity in the works of S.N. Eisenstadt and Robert Hefner, social scientists began to suggest that it was not the case that only a single model of modernisation existed the western one but that a theory of multiple modernities might provide an answer to the plurality of seemingly modern nation-states that had followed alternative means of development, especially along religious lines.6 Second, social scientists realised the inherent relationship between the phenomenon which has come to be named globalisation and religious resurgence. According to Robert Cox the phenomenon of globalisation came to the attention of economists in the late 1970s as a result of the world nancial crisis of that decade (Cox, 1996, pp. 2123). However, the economic concept of

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globalisation became an ideology that promoted the inevitability of the market forces that were shaping the interdependent relationship of the world economies. This interdependent relationship of the economies of the world gives rise to contradictions within societies, leading to social polarization, the loss of autonomous regulatory power by states and the decomposition of civil society (Cox, 1996, pp. 2627). As a result of the social anomie that accompanies the loss of societal identity, people seek to arm their collective identity in the ultimate forms of legitimation, that is, religion and ethnicity. The focus of the people then devolves from the nation-state, which has lost its authority and sovereignty in the global system, to more local sources of identity that remain authoritative and check the power of the market forces. There is an open challenge as to whether new bases of political authority can be constructed from these fragments, says Cox (1996, p. 27). He notes that the process of societal fragmentation that accompanies globalisation and the resultant attempts at reformulating civil society in the wake of such fragmentation will not follow a uniform pattern but will follow civilisational understandings of political society, which are taken-for-granted by their members. According to Cox, Civilizations constitute the mental frameworks through which peoples understand and interpret their world and contrive their responses to the challenges that confront them (Cox, 1996, p. 28). (This is similar to the argument of Samuel Huntington (1996).) This societal fragmentation is occurring at the local level through what has been labelled glocalisation.7 As Victor Roudometof has pointed out (2005, p. 119), through the processes of internal globalization glocalisation itself leads to transnationalism by providing the spatial conditions necessary for the construction of transnational identity. In this manner, then, local identities are constructed through the very process that would be thought to undermine them. However, these local identities that are constructed through glocalisation are reinforced by the taken-forgranted nature of religious and national identities that are seeking to resist the processes of homogenisation of globalisation. Peter Berger has demonstrated that religious actors have three basic choices in the face of the challenge of modernity. First, they can choose to reassert the authority of a religious tradition in the face of modern secularity (Berger, 1979, p. 61). Berger calls this the deductive option. Second, they can choose to reinterpret the tradition in terms of modern secularity, which in turn is taken to be a compelling necessity of participating in modern consciousness (Berger, 1979, p. 62). This second choice is what Berger calls the reductive option. The third choice that religious actors can make is to turn to experience as the ground of all religious armations (Berger, 1979, p. 62). Berger calls this the inductive option. The rst option is the choice that fundamentalists have made in order to relate to an increasingly pluralistic world. The deductive approach of religion to modernity is presented as a rearmation of the tradition against modernity. This phenomenon is best witnessed in neo-orthodox movements, which are centred in the intellectual religious class. These movements seek to rearm the tradition in theory as well as in religious and sociopolitical practice (Berger, 1979, pp. 6768). Berger denes neo-orthodoxy as the rearmation of the objective authority of a religious tradition after a period during which that authority had been relativized and weakened (Berger, 1979, p. 79). Because of the fact that there has been a break in time since the period when the tradition was armed as authoritative, for the person of faith this creates a cognitive dissonance whereby he or she realises the contingency of his rearmation of the tradition. In this manner, the convert must make a decision for the faith, as opposed to his or her predecessors who accepted the taken-for-granted nature of the symbolic universe. In making a decision

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there is always the possibility that he or she could decide not to belong to the group. Making faith a contingency upon individual decision creates the violent defensiveness of some neo-orthodox groups as they seek to forget the interval of time when the tradition was not armed (Berger, 1979, p. 68). In order to buttress the decisions of the individual for the faith, communal ties are highly emphasised by neo-orthodox groups. In sociological terms, then, neo-orthodox groups tend toward sectarianism, as they seek to dene and justify themselves against the larger social group. Religion once again provides the legitimating function of the social world in which the individual lives, reifying his or her identity vis-a`-vis the larger social order. For the convert, then, although he or she has made the decision for the faith, the communal society allows for the objectivisation of reality, providing for its internalisation once again, and making his or her world meaningful. However, this religious world is always in constant threat of being undermined by religious pluralism in the modern marketplace of religion. Neo-orthodox or neo-fundamentalist movements are products of glocalisation (see Pasha and Samatar, 1996, p. 192). In being confronted with the conditions of globality and modernity neo-fundamentalist religious actors consciously make a choice to arm the tradition; yet this conscious act itself betrays the taken-for-granted nature of traditional religion. The conscious choice, then, is a hallmark of modernity. But in order for the rearmation of the tradition to have relevance in the modern world, neo-fundamentalists selectively choose what aspects of the tradition they will emphasise and what aspects of modernity that they will retain (Marty and Appleby, 1991, p. 825; Argyriou, 2007, pp. 7281). Marty and Appleby note that the privileged past is dened with a keen eye on the particular challenges of the present and the opportunities of the future. Thus fundamentalists do not simply rearm the old doctrines; they subtly lift them from their original context, embellish and institutionalize them, and employ them as ideological weapons against a hostile world (Marty and Appleby, 1991, pp. 82526). They therefore conclude that fundamentalists demonstrate a closer anity to modernism than to traditionalism (Marty and Appleby, 1991, p. 827). As a consequence of their envy of the modern world, neofundamentalists seek to best modernity, using the very tools of modernity to do so. Nazih Ayubi notes that this religion that the militant Islamists are using is not simply a traditional set of beliefs that is being retrieved; rather they are improvising a largely novel religio-political body. Political Islam is not an old doctrine that is being resurrected; rather it is a new doctrine that is now being invented. (Ayubi, 1999, p. 91) The same can be said for the political hesychasm of the neo-Orthodox movement in Greece.8 One of the chief issues with which many neo-fundamentalists concern themselves is the modern nation-state system. Marty and Appleby state that fundamentalists seek to replace existing structures with a comprehensive system emanating from religious principles and embracing law, polity, society, economy, and culture (Marty and Appleby, 1991, p. 824). In this regard, fundamentalism demonstrates a universal or totalitarian impulse. With the crisis of the international nation-state system resulting from the processes of globalisation, neo-fundamentalism represents an alternative socio-political system from which a society can operate (see Juergensmeyer, 1993; Pasha and Samatar, 1996). Instrumental in the challenge of the nation-state system is

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the failure of secular nation-states in the Near East.9 Islamic fundamentalists as well as the neo-Orthodox thinkers of Greece see that the formation of the nation-state on the western model destroyed the inherent universalism of the umma or the ecclesia. Thus the western nation-state system is itself antithetical to the universal cultures of Islam and Orthodox Christianity, which oer similar alternative political visions for humankind.10 The Political Theologies of Sayyid Qutb and Christos Yannaras Two of the most important theologians of the late twentieth century, Sayyid Qutb and Christos Yannaras, have each sought to present an alternative vision of political society based upon their religious traditions. Both Qutb and Yannaras have had enormous impact upon their religious traditions and subsequent theological reection. Each man is the primary spokesperson for a religious movement in his society. Each man believes that the western understanding of political society is an abomination, for it destroys the very unity of the human person and calls him to live in a dehumanising state. For Qutb and Yannaras the answer to the problem of the West is a return to the religious community as the basis for humanity and for society. For both these thinkers, their antagonism to the West was shaped by their experiences and studies in the West. Qutb studied in the USA from 1949 to 1951, where he witnessed the support for Israel against the Palestinians and racial prejudice against Arabs (Haddad, 1983, pp. 6869). He also formed a view of the USA as an immoral and irreligious society.11 According to Ahmad Moussalli, this trip armed his belief that Islam was a superior creed and ideology. Qutb came to the conclusion that the western model of civilisation could not be used for Muslim society; instead, what was needed was an Islamic revival (Moussalli, 1992, p. 30). Upon returning to Egypt in 1952, Qutb immediately acted on his rearmation of Islam as the true faith: he joined the Muslim Brotherhood. From this time we see in Qutbs writings the development of an alternative vision of political life for Egypt. In his works Qutb outlines a vision of Islamic society as an alternative to the various political and economic philosophies competing for the Egyptian soul (Haddad, 1983, pp. 6970). Moussalli points out that Qutb joined the Muslim Brotherhood as a result of the US celebration of the death of its founder Hasan al-Banna and also as a result of the inuence of a British agent who told Qutb that the Muslim Brotherhood was the only institution in Egypt capable of resisting the West (Moussalli, 1992, p. 30). Christos Yannaras, the most important theologian in the neo-Orthodox current of ideas in Greece, became similarly antagonistic to the West and its liberalism while studying in France and Germany in the 1960s. Yannaras was born in Athens in 1935. As a young man he had ardently joined the Zoe brotherhood, a pietistic youth movement in Greece. However, in the 1960s, under the inuence of the important lay Christian thinker Dimitrios Koutroumbis, he left the group because he had come to see its moralism and pietism as inauthentic to Orthodoxy. It was in Germany that he came under the spell of Heidegger. During his studies in Germany he completed a work entitled On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite. In Heidegger he found a criticism of western philosophy that he shared from his studies in the patristic theological tradition of the East. He noticed the theological and philosophical rift between East and West rooted in the thought of Augustine and conrmed in the Great Schism of 1054. For Yannaras only the East preserved authentic Christianity (Louth, 2003, p. 3). Inuenced by Vladimir Lossky, Georges Florovsky and the Russian diaspora theologians, Yannaras can be

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understood as attempting to fulll the call that Florovsky issued for the return of theology and the life of the church to the mind of the Fathers (Florovsky, 1987, pp. 15782). Believing that the contemporary Orthodox world has experienced a pseudomorphosis that threatens the very existence of that world, Yannaras oers a critique of the West and a programme for returning to the patristic world of Byzantium (Yannaras, 2006). He oers a political hesychasm drawn from the culture of fourteenth-century Byzantium as the alternative to the modern, liberal, secular state of Greece.

Qutb and the Problem of the West In his work Milestones Qutb argues that democracy in the West has failed and thus does not provide the answer for Muslim society. Mankind today is on the brink of a precipice, not because of the danger of complete annihilation which is hanging over its head this being just a symptom and not the real disease but because humanity is devoid of those vital values which are necessary not only for its healthy development but also for its real progress. (Qutb, n.d., p. 7) Likewise, Marxist socialism has failed to bring about the society which it promised. Qutb concludes, then, that humanity is in need of new leadership. This new leadership is to come from Islam. However, Qutb does not dismiss some of the greatness of the West, allowing for a blending of traditionalism and modernism: It is necessary for the new leadership to preserve and develop the material fruits of the creative genius of Europe, and also to provide mankind with such high ideals and values as have so far remained undiscovered by mankind, and which will also acquaint humanity with a way of life which is harmonious with human nature, which is positive and constructive, and which is practicable. Islam is the only System which possesses these values and this way of life. (Qutb, n.d., p. 8) In order to accomplish this task, says Qutb, the Islamic community must be restored to its original form (p. 9). The Islamic world must cast o the debris of the modern world that is not related to the Islamic teachings. Qutb argues that the entire world, including the Muslim world, exists in a state of jahiliyyah, or ignorance (pp. 1011). The Islamic world has reverted to this state as a result of living under a political and economic system that is foreign to the teachings of Islam and that does not recognise the sovereignty of Allah.12 In order to bring about a restoration of the umma and the Islamic way of life, a vanguard is necessary (p. 12). This vanguard has to live in jahiliyyah but must also keep itself at a distance from it. We must also free ourselves from the clutches of jahili society, jahili concepts, jahili traditions and jahili leadership. Our mission is not to compromise with the practices of jahili society, nor can we be loyal to it. Jahili society, because of its jahili characteristics, is not worthy to be compromised with. Our aim is to change ourselves so that we may later change the society. (p. 21)

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Qutb believes, then, that a struggle or jihad must we waged against the system of jahiliyyah in order to liberate the people from their oppressors so that they can do the will of Allah, which is found in the Quran. The new system should also come into the battleeld as an organized movement and a viable group. This group must be rm in its faith that it is indeed stronger than the system of jahiliyyah. It is for this vanguard, this select group of men, who will wage the struggle, or jihad, against jahiliyyah that his book is dedicated. An important inuence on Qutbs vision of Islamic society were the writings of Abul Ala Mawdudi, whose ideas, according to Haddad, reach their culmination in Qutb. Mawdudi argued that Islam and nationalism were diametrically opposed to each other (Mawdudi, 2007, p. 74). For Mawdudi Islam cannot be divided by nationality, race or economic class (Qutb, n.d., p. 20). Qutb takes up this idea in his description of the original umma, which serves as his model. In this great Islamic society Arabs, Persians, Syrians, Egyptians, Moroccans, Turks, Chinese, Indians, Romans, Greeks, Indonesians, Africans were gathered together in short, peoples of all nations and all races. Their various characteristics were united, and with mutual cooperation, harmony and unity they took part in the construction of the Islamic community and Islamic culture. This marvelous civilization was not an Arabic civilization, even for a single day; it was purely an Islamic civilization. It was never a nationality but always a community of belief. (Qutb, n.d., pp. 4950) As noted earlier, Qutb provided a reinterpretation of the Islamic understanding of jihad as struggle.13 The purpose of this jihad is the liberation of all people for the worship and service of God alone. Human beings are not created to be in servitude to other human beings and their institutions, which exist in the state of jahiliyyah (Qutb, n.d., pp. 5366). This struggle, which is to be waged against the jahili system, includes preaching and military conict (pp. 4950). The reason behind this is simply practical: the jahili system will not be convinced of the way of Islam through preaching alone. Instead, violence is necessary against jahiliyyah to remove the oppressive forces and powers that prevent the preaching and acceptance of Islam. Liberation from the powers of this world is to be accomplished by the destruction of those forces. In their place, Islam establishes a new social, economic, and political system based on the teachings of the Quran and sharia law (p. 61). Consequently the jihad against jahiliyyah does not end; it is a constant struggle against the powers of this world until the Day of Resurrection. In the meantime, the particular form of the movement does not matter; however, it must be founded upon the principles and values of Islam. Regarding the particular formation of the Islamic state, Qutb states: There is only one place on earth which can be called the home of Islam (Dar-ul-Islam), and it is that place where the Islamic state is established and the Shariah is the authority and Gods limits are observed, and where all the Muslim administer the aairs of the state with mutual consultation. (p. 118) The dar-ul-Islam or umma is not a country or a nation-state as is understood in the West. Rather, a Muslim has no country except that part of the earth where the sharia of God is established and human relationships are based on the foundation of relationship with God; a Muslim has no nationality except his belief, which makes him a member of the Muslim community in dar-ul-Islam; a Muslim has no relatives except

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those who share the belief in God, and thus a bond is established between him and other believers through their relationship with God (pp. 11819). The dar-ul-Islam is not a piece of land: The homeland of the Muslim, in which he lives and which he defends, is not a piece of land; the nationality of the Muslim, by which he is identied, is not the nationality determined by a government; the family of the Muslim, in which he nds solace and which he defends, is not blood relationships; the ag of the Muslim, which he honors and under which he is martyred, is not the ag of a country; and the victory of the Muslim, which he celebrates and for which he is thankful to God, is not a military victory. (p. 124) Thus for Qutb the dar-ul-Islam transcends national and political boundaries. It may exist in a country, yet it is not limited by that country. In this manner, Qutb understands Islam to be a transnational movement that does not recognise political and state boundaries, and thus does not recognise the given political authority of those nations because they exist in a state of jahiliyyah. The only political authority that it recognises is the sharia law which comes from God. For Qutb, then, Islam is to struggle against such political authorities that do not recognise sharia and that prevent the practice of Islam. The current nation-state system is thus antithetical to Islam and exists in the state of jahiliyyah, against which the faithful Muslim must struggle. The Political Hesychasm of Christos Yannaras In 1993 the Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington published his famous article The clash of civilizations? arguing that conict in the postcommunist world would centre around cultural and civilisational dierences. He followed this most controversial article with the book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. In both the article and the book Huntington argued that western civilisation had been shaped by the great intellectual developments of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment deriving from the acceptance of Hellenic philosophy, Roman law and Christianity (Huntington, 1996, p. 69; Yannaras, 1997, p. 11). In his book Huntington makes a controversial and audacious claim: Those with Western Christian heritages are making progress toward economic development and democratic politics; the prospects for economic and political development in the Orthodox countries are uncertain; the prospects in the Muslim republics are bleak (Huntington, 1996, p. 29). Furthermore, he orientalises the Orthodox nations, particularly Greece, declaring them to be not part of Western civilization (p. 162). While Islamic and Orthodox civilisations inherited the same elements of the classical world as did the West, it was nowhere near to the same degree (p. 70). In his book Culture, the Central Problem of Politics Yannaras takes exception to Huntingtons thesis. He argues that it is the West that has separated itself from its own roots in the so-called western tradition. Furthermore, it is the West which rst gave birth to the phenomenon of totalitarianism, together with the making of faith as an ideology, and the authoritarian imposition and unlawfulness of ethics (Yannaras, 1997, p. 12). The West, then, while holding itself to be the most developed civilisation of the modern world, by its own admittance has through its own ideology created the ideologies that have dominated the world. In his little book The Church in PostCommunist Europe Yannaras argues that there indeed is a clash of civilisations, but that it is not what Huntington believes it to be. Instead, the clash between East and West is a

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struggle between Christianity (Orthodoxy) and materialism (West); it is not a clash between two forms of Christianity, but between Orthodoxy and the illegitimate child of western Christianity (Yannaras, 2003, pp. 1011). Consequently, what Huntington understands as the dening characteristics of modern society are antithetical to the historical realities of the Orthodox people. These characteristics of modern society pluralism, tolerance of dierence, and recognition of human rights are based on philosophical and historical realities that did not occur in the East. Yannaras states that Huntington employs Historical Materialism as the criterion for determining the cultural dierences between East and West, the foremost characteristic being European mans anti-religious rebellion (Yannaras, 2003, pp. 1011). What does Yannaras mean by the term West? First, it is not a geographical term opposed to the Christian East, the Middle East or the Orient. Rather the terms West and Western man represent a basic human posture toward the world and toward history, a posture which has developed during the last centuries, growing out of the liberal spirit of the Renaissance and the rise of the positive sciences and technology (Yannaras, 1972, p. 115). The western attitude can best be summarised as the following: the priority of the conceptual explication of revealed truth; the dividing boundary between the transcendent and the worldly; the will to dominate nature and history; the banishment of God to an empirically unreachable realm; the separation of religion from life and the reduction of religion to symbols; the elimination of ontology, that is to say, dogma, and its substitution by Ethics. (Yannaras, 1972, p. 115) The West, therefore, is not concerned with authentic human existence, but rather simply with being a good person, regardless of truthfulness. The setting aside of metaphysics by the western tradition has led it down the path to nihilism and the rise bermensch. of Nietzsches U In a short explanatory article written in 1983 Yannaras provides the denition of what an Orthodox political theology should be: I mean by this a political theory and action that is not limited merely to social utility or to the conventional rules of human relations even if these are more ecient but has as its goal the truth of man and the authenticity of his existence (Yannaras, 1983, p. 54 (emphasis added)). Politics and theology are inseparable, for both deal with the meaning of man and how he relates in corporate society. Indeed, Politics can be considered a chapter of theology a true political theology when it takes upon itself serving man according to his nature and his truth; and consequently serving the political nature of humanity i.e., the power of love, which is at the heart of existence and which is the condition of the true communion of persons, the true city, the true polis. (Yannaras, 1983, p. 54) Because politics concerns human relations in society, it is necessarily joined with an understanding of the human person. If it is to relate to a true understanding of humanity, politics must be associated with philosophical and theological understandings of the person. The question that Yannaras raises to western liberalism is whether the liberal model is authentic to human being according to his ontology.

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Yannaras political theology, therefore, should be distinguished from that of the West. He states that in the West political theology is associated with Marxist and neoMarxist political theories. Furthermore, such political theology is an attempt to root itself in the pure theoretical epistemic eort of [arriving at the] political hermeneutics of the biblical community (Yannaras, 1976, p. 9). Western political theology nds in itself the classic problem of Western Christianity: the polarisation between the transcendent and the immanent, the abstract idealism of a unied ruling metaphysic and the immediate armation and worth of the material goods of life (Yannaras, 1976, p. 9). Instead of oering a political theology that is based on such polarisation, Yannaras want[s] to array a complete knowledge or hermeneutic of this term, political theology, that will be able to result in the truth of the EasternOrthodox ecclesiastical life and tradition (Yannaras, 1976, p. 10). For Yannaras such a political theology is simply a description of true ecclesial being. In and through the ecclesia, or church, the person is recognised. In an essay written for Ju rgen Moltmanns sixtieth birthday, Yannaras proposes an apophatic approach to politics (Yannaras, 1986, pp. 37479).14 Apophaticism means our refusal to exhaust knowledge of the truth in its formulation (Yannaras, 1991, p. 17). Apophaticism is characterised by communal understandings of knowledge expressed intersubjectively. One is not concerned about the accuracy or correctness of knowledge gained through the senses; rather, one is concerned with the conrmation of those sense contents within the communal context. Apophaticism is characterised . . . by the refusal to reduce the accuracy of knowledge to the formulisation of knowledge enabling the expression of opinion (Yannaras, 1986, p. 375). He continues, We reject the objectication of accuracy to a given type or code, which means we reject . . . the transformation [of logic] into an authoritarian function. Since apophaticism does not allow for the exhausting of knowledge, a person or society is not tyrannised by a set interpretation of reality according to a system of logic. Yannaras notes that such a scheme for interpreting reality poses a risk for politics, for the institutions of society which control social events can be drawn into question (Yannaras, 1986, p. 375). It also demonstrates that the use of pure reason must have a purpose and an aim that it must strive toward if it is to be used as a criterion for the control of social events and political power. This purpose that apophaticism points toward is the equation of true being with true community (Yannaras, 1986, p. 375). Apophaticism thus shifts the concern from the accuracy of knowledge to the reasonableness of relation. This move forbids every evaluating dogmatic understanding of correctness, every objectication and consequently also every authoritarian use of it (Yannaras, 1986, pp. 37576). In politics, this apophatic understanding of knowledge has a major consequence: it has the ability to provide politics with an understanding of true freedom. In the cataphatic approach to knowledge, freedom is dened as a subjective good and at the same time as an objective possibility (Yannaras, 1986, p. 376). This understanding of freedom results in subjective claims towards objective goods. Politics, then, must be about the protection of these subjective claims, so that the claims of one do not violate the claims of another. Consequently, such an understanding of freedom reduces it to a possibility directed to practical ends, which nds expression in elections (Yannaras, 1986, p. 376). In contrast, apophaticism understands freedom as refusal of necessity. Necessity prevents the person from being who he is, because of those elements of life (our physical nature, social factors) exercising imperious control over the self. This apophatic approach to society and its structures challenges the cataphatic approach of the West, which denies to the distinctive human hypostasis the

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exercise of true freedom. The cataphatic use of reason produces principles and standards upon which subjective claims and demands are settled and systematised. The result is the duty of the person to exercise his or her responsibility within the political scheme. The person is coerced by the logic of the political arrangement to adapt his or her demands to the system, in such a way that he or she loses the possibility of any self-determination. Criticism and doubt are met by the imperialism of the logic of the system, which subordinates them within the system. Apophaticism proposes an alternative to this tyranny of cataphatic reason. The liberal regime, which prides itself on freedom of choice, actually limits the true freedom of the individual person, because he or she must conform to the demands of the system of cataphatic logic. Yannaras argues that the liberal regime should rather concentrate not on freedom of choice but on the forgiving of, or respect for, human failure (Yannaras, 1986, p. 378). Human beings in their attempt to actualise their true freedom will at times fail in so doing, causing harm to themselves and others. Forgiveness for these sins allows the person to grow in his or her use of his or her personal freedom. Only the apophatic approach to politics secures the possibility of such an understanding of the human person and the protection of his or her subjective freedom. Without respect for human failure, we are crippling life itself and tormenting mankind (Yannaras, 1984, p. 213). Human beings in society may, through the use of their freedom, choose to enact despotic and unjust political arrangements. However, this freedom may also bring about revolution from such regimes. The right and wrong in each case, the good and the evil, can be judged only by the measure of the realization of freedom, which is sacricial self-transcendence and a struggle to attain communion (Yannaras, 1984, pp. 21617). The goodness of a given act of human freedom depends not upon cataphatic logic but upon relationship. Political society should not be about the moral improvement of society or man, but rather it should be about the securing of human freedom through the recognition of the uniqueness and distinctiveness of each person (Yannaras, 1984, p. 217). Attempts to produce more just societies or more virtuous citizens fail to take into account the fullness of personal distinctiveness and human failure. What is at stake is the personal truth of who man is. The modern democratic state, based on cataphatic reason with its own inherent logic, does not support authentic human existence. Instead, the aim of modern democracy is the utilitarian strengthening of individuals rights, assuring their quality of life and protecting their freedom of choice (Yannaras, 2005, p. 13). Modern democracy is simply a utilitarian eudaemonism. Removed from western common life is the pursuit of the salvation of the soul. Instead, we come to prefer the armation of earthly life, the celebration of matter and the body, the strengthening of the individual, the recognition of the equality of the natural rights of people, the opportunity for all to advance towards a life of ease and material prosperity, the subjection of nature to productivity as a benet to humanity. (Yannaras, 2005, p. 13) Religion does not disappear from society; rather it is transformed and serves the eudaemonistic proclivities of the person. Religion becomes moralism that supports the good life. It too is subject to consumerism, and becomes a matter of choice in such a society, where religion is consumed for enjoyment and pleasure, not for ontological transformation through ascetic struggle over biological existence. Such a society dismisses the possibility of a collective attainment of human ourishing. Because the person is designated as an individual, he or she is unable to exercise his or her true

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freedom in attaining to participation in God through the life of the community, which ceases to exist as a collective of ecstatic loving relationships. What, then, does Yannaras propose for the new paradigm? As an alternative to western secularised society, Yannaras seeks to retrieve the Byzantine autonomous communities that developed toward the end of the Ottoman Empire. The life of these communities was centred around the life of the church or monastery found in their midst. These communities continued the ancient patristic ethos of apophatic knowing and the accompanying cultural and social institutions that allowed for the experience of communal truth. Furthermore, the Byzantine tradition armed the identity of the person qua person, that is, not as an individual, but within the context of community. The ecclesial life thus becomes the basis for human society. Particularly, the monastic hesychast life provides the model for human society. Yannaras says that Monasticism will be revealed as a dynamic and real witness and reminder of the separation of the church from the world, of the exodus of the church from the imposition of the world. The ecclesiastical consciousness will recognise in the monastic life the lost truth of the charismatic union and the real confession of faith: the distinction of the church from the world will transpose progressively in the separation of the monks from the worldly Christians. Finally, the entire clergy, without denying its obedience to the worldly-political hierarchy, will be clothed in the dress of the monks, enlarging the chasm and its objective dierence from the popular or worldly Christians. (Yannaras, 1989, p. 204) For Yannaras, apophaticism allows for the full expression of the person since the person is not construed as an object of knowledge that can be comprehended, but as a subject that can be known through ecstasy and love. Only through a return to the ecclesial community, as a way of life according to the truth, can authentic human existence be achieved. For Yannaras, that community is none other than the Orthodox Church. Yannaras oers a political hesychasm as the solution to the problem of human civilisation. This political hesychasm is rooted in a universal understanding of the church that transcends national and political boundaries. Such boundaries are established through a cataphatic understanding of truth that betrays true human existence, which can be found only in the Orthodox Church. Yannaras ecclesial anarchism oers the church as the basis of human society.

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Conclusion It is has been my argument that neo-fundamentalism found in Islam and Eastern Orthodoxy represents a serious ideological threat to the modern nation-state system. Qutbs understanding of the universal nature of the umma and Yannaras understanding of the ecclesia as the location of true human existence are oered as alternatives to the modern political system of the West, which has been imposed upon the Orthodox and Islamic peoples of Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In order to be liberated from jahiliyyah or inauthentic existence, for Qutb a violent struggle with the powers of the world is necessary. Meanwhile for Yannaras, a simple removal from the political structures of society, especially as found in the monastery, provides for the ecclesial form of existence. Qutb seeks an establishment of the dar-ul-Islam

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throughout the world, while Yannaras simply seeks a return to the autonomous village life of the late Ottoman period. Qutbs thought has been appropriated by Islamic radicals, who see themselves as the vanguard in the struggle against jahiliyyah throughout the world. Similarly, neoOrthodox thought, through the dissemination of the works of Yannaras and other like-minded thinkers, especially Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos, Fr George Metallinos and Fr Vasilios Gontikakis, has had a large impact upon Orthodox thinkers worldwide. While neo-Orthodox thinkers have not articulated a violent overthrow of the western political system, they do oer an alternative position that taken to its logical conclusion does not recognise the authority of the nation-state and creates radical disengagement from modern politics. What each oers is an idealised reinvention of the past tradition, either the umma or the ecclesia, as the authentic basis of political society.

Notes
1 For the idea of a revolt against the West see Bull (1984). 2 Olivier Clement was the rst to label the neo-Orthodox thought of contemporary Greece as a type of liberation theology (see Clement, 1985, p. 71). 3 See Tibi (1998, pp. 1519). For the development of the nation-state, see Giddens (1987). 4 While it is generally considered that Qutb focused on the islamisation of the nation-state of Egypt, his vision is much more universal in scope, focusing on the umma and the larger Islamic civilisation, an idea that his successors have developed. 5 Tibi states that Muslim fundamentalists are truly bizarre modernists (Tibi, 1998, p. 94). On this whole subject see: Kepel (1994, pp. 112, 1984); Roy (2004, pp. 157); Anderson (1983, pp. 17); Lehman (1998, pp. 61315); an-Naim (1999, pp. 1045); Barber (1995, pp. 912); Berger (1999, pp. 1113) and Zubaida (1987, p. 48). 6 On this subject see: Eisenstadt (1999, pp. 28395, 2000, pp. 129); Hefner (1998, pp. 83104); Spohn (2003, pp. 26586); Wittrock (2000, pp. 3160); Makrides and Molokotos-Liederman (2004, pp. 45970) and Makrides (2005, pp. 179209). For a critique of multiple modernities theory see Schmidt (2006, pp. 7797). 7 On this subject see: Robertson (1992, 1995, 1994, pp. 3352); Giulianotti and Robertson (2007, pp. 13352) and Roudometof (2005, pp. 11335). 8 I use the term political hesychasm to mean the political and ideological use of the spiritual theology of the Eastern Christian Church by certain Orthodox thinkers who seek to return to the political culture of the late Byzantine and Ottoman periods of the church. For a more detailed understanding, see Payne (2006). 9 On this subject see: Tibi (1998, p. 14); Ayubi (1999, p. 75); Lewis (2002) and Esposito (2000, pp. 112). 10 On this subject see: Tibi (1998, pp. 1519); Zubaida (1987, pp. 2627) and Pasha and Samatar (1996). For the neo-Orthodox political vision, see Makrides (1998, pp. 14153, 1989, pp. 27989). 11 Particularly telling is Qutbs description of a dance sponsored by a church in Greeley, Colorado: see Moussalli (1992, pp. 2628). See also Haddad (1983, p. 71). The description of the dance can be found in Sayyid Qutb, Amrika allati Raaytu, and is quoted in Qutb (1983, pp. 84387). 12 Our whole environment, peoples beliefs and ideas, habits and art, rules and laws is Jahiliyyah, even to the extent that what we consider to be Islamic culture, Islamic sources, Islamic philosophy and Islamic thought are also constructs of Jahiliyyah! (Qutb, n.d., p. 20). 13 Islamic scholars had argued that jihad, understood as a physical struggle, could be waged only for defensive purposes. Here Qutb gives a basis for the oensive waging of jihad as a physical conict with jahiliyyah.
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14 For a more developed argument for apophatic reason in politics see Yannaras (1990, pp. 181336).

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