Contact Deborah Bineza at dbineza@nd.edu
I’ve been going through a “master of none” period in my life, where I find myself inspired by so many things yet called to nothing in particular. I dabble in photography, writing, cooking and yoga, but seem to fall out of each practice. And as a senior, this scares me. I want to feel called to something so in the midst of crises and job searches I can focus my attention back onto what I am meant to be, but knowing what exactly that is seems to be half my struggle.
My friends and I decided to ditch South Dining Hall (SDH) on Friday and venture off campus for dinner. After throwing our classics such as Cambodian Thai and Woochi out of the debate, we unanimously decided to try something new and go to South Bend Brew Werks for the first time.
As IS swept across the Near East, an international consensus emerged: IS and its ideology must be wiped out. Helpfully, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, America’s most pivotal ally in the region, proclaimed that IS and the ideas it represented “are not in any way part of Islam.” The stage for an ideological war seemed set: the constructive, just forces of Western liberalism and its allies versus regressive fanatics dedicated to destroying the entire region. Yet it is Saudi Arabia's Islam, where decapitation punishes offenses from apostasy to adultery, and women are forbidden from exiting the house without a male relative, so different from IS’s? IS and Saudi Arabia share a devotion to the austere Wahhabi creed of Islam, created by an 18th-century political-religious alliance between the Saud clan and Islamic scholar Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. IS “circulates images of Wahhabi religious textbooks from Saudi Arabia in the schools it controls.” Interestingly, as American officials and NGOs urge modernization, secularization and liberalization in Arab states, between America’s foremost Middle-Eastern ally and bitterest enemy, it is hard to imagine two polities that more thoroughly reject western liberalism. Perhaps rejecting modernity is better than accepting it. Of the various post-colonial project states imposed on the Middle East, all either lay dead (Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Palestine, Iraq, Yemen), dying (Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, Afghanistan), or mired in stagnation (Algeria, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon). The political prospects of states that have rejected Western paradigms of governance are brighter. Saudi Arabia, the world’s leading Sunni Arab power, stands tall as the guardian of Mecca and Medina. IS, although it appears to finally be snapping under the weight of the global coalition assembled against it, carved out a state in a stunning series of conquests, while becoming the central locus of hardline Islamic religious enthusiasm, thus gaining enormous social and political relevancy. Beyond their disconcertingly similar brands of Islam, Saudi Arabia and IS both reject the Western state order, as do two of the Islamic world’s other politically and economically dynamic societies, Turkey and Iran. Both states were, like Saudi Arabia, never fully colonized by European powers, and are presently led by Islamists politically well outside the norms of Western politics. Could it be that modern liberal democracy is a “historical derivation from the particular experience of modern Europe,” and unsuited for universal application?
As the jack-o’-lanterns adorning stoops everywhere begin to deflate and the costume box returns to the attic from whence it came, it can only mean one thing: Halloween is over, and the holiday season is approaching. But don’t fret, for there is something to look forward to before the inescapable barrage of Christmas music encompasses everything around you: Now that Notre Dame’s football team is in top form, the College Football Playoff rankings will provide ample entertainment all the way up to the championship game in January.
Solutions by The State News
