Neo-Liberalism and the ‘War on Terror’ Industry:
How the Free Market and Security Industry
Work Together To Terrorise the World

By Farish A. Noor

I. Neo-Liberal economics and the domestication of the Citizen as Subject-Consumer

The logic of neo-liberal economics operates on one unstated premise: That citizens are universal subjects who are both suppliers of alienable/alienated labour as well as consumers of the very same goods and services they produce. Free-market economics therefore requires the creation and reproduction of such subject-consumers whose own identities are left vacuous and without any particularities – be they historical, cultural, class, gender or religious identities. It is upon this universal notion that the market operates, and at the same time the market also seeks ways and means to render citizens subject to the law of the market where labour can remain an alienable commodity to be marketed as well, ‘sold’ by ‘free’ individual agents without Society/Culture mediating this process of commercial exchange.

When we look at the impact of the free market in Southeast Asia – and in particular consider the devastating impact of free movement of capital in and out of the region since the 1970s – we can see how the consolidation of the neo-liberal consensus has managed to radically alter the economic and socio-cultural landscape of the region as well. Owing to the Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) that were introduced via the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines many of the local producers there have been negatively affected by the sudden entry (and subsequent withdrawal) of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) since the 1970s. The IMF and World Bank’s intervention in the Philippines during the time of Ferdinand Marcos comes to mind as one of the best-documented instances of social upheaval and change occasioned by direct economic intervention by external forces at the behest of global market interests, that not only devastated local producers but also led to massive social unrest and unemployment that naturally benefited the forces of global capital that in turn turned the country into a source of cheap labour while effectively crippling any chances the Philippines ever had of becoming an independent producer and economic player in the ASEAN region.[1]

The economic restructuring of ASEAN, however, can be dated back to the formation of ASEAN itself 42 years ago when the countries of the region came together in 1967 to create a bloc that purportedly was ‘neutral’ in the Cold War but decidedly ‘neutral on the side of the West’. Economic restructuring and the introduction of free-market reforms came hand in hand with the war against Communism and the overthrow of populist governments including the government of President Sukarno (that was then regarded as being one of the most left-leaning governments of the region, thanks to the prominence that Sukarno had given to the Indonesian Communist Party, PKI). During the Suharto years that followed, Indonesia was one of the countries in the ASEAN region that led the way in the march toward free-market liberalisation and its economy was privatised according to the advice of the so-called ‘Berkeley mafia’ led by Western-educated technocrats such as B. J. Habibie.

Resistance to such free-market liberalisation came in many forms, some of which were couched in terms of a discourse of religiously-inspired ethics and others in the form of ethno-nationalist and/or religio-communalist resistance. Even the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) of the Philippines can be considered as one example of such an anti-liberalisation movement, as it was founded by Moro activists who were on the one hand Islamists and on the other Marxists in orientation and background.[2] Another example is the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (Free Aceh Movement, GAM) that was likewise founded on the goals of national liberation and regional autonomy, rather than Islamisation and religious communitarian politics.[3]

The local populations of the ASEAN region have therefore demonstrated time and again a conscious and sustained resistance to all forms of economic liberalisation disguised in the form of economic reform or developmentalist ideology; and the citizens of ASEAN themselves have demonstrated conscious rational agency in the ways and means through which they have resisted these liberalisation tendencies – at times even through active political resistance to both the powers of foreign capital as well as entrenched compradore elites who have served as the agents of foreign capital intervention in their respective countries.

Unfortunately the historian has to note that by and large the popular movements against neo-Liberalism have by and large been defeated, co-opted or domesticated throughout much of the ASEAN region over the past four decades; thanks in part to the superior technical, capital and military-logistical support given to ASEAN governments by the international community and the West in its war against Communism and Socialism worldwide: The near-total destruction of the PKI in Indonesia (in 1965) was as much the work of the Indonesian armed forces under the command of General-turned-President Suharto as it was the work of the regime’s Western backers, notably the United States and Australia. In the same vein the violent annexation of East Timor in December 1975 was done with the tacit approval of most of the ASEAN states and their Western allies on the ground that East Timor might have evolved to become the much-feared ‘Cuba of Southeast Asia’ and a staging post for Soviet activities in the region.

From a discursive angle it ought to be noted that during this crucial period when the forces of the free market were consolidating themselves in the ASEAN region as the war on Communism was being waged a particular form of political sensibility emerged that equated all forms of anti-liberalisation resistance with political radicalism that was subsequently defined in negative terms.

Thus at the height of the Cold War in ASEAN all forms of resistance to market liberalisation were deemed not only a threat to the economic-political status quo, but crucially, also defined as being beyond/outside the pale of acceptable social behaviour and the operative norms of domesticated normative subjectivity. A chain of negative equivalences was introduced that equated anti-market sentiments with radicalism per se, that was deemed as anti-social, destabilising, oppressive (that is, with authoritarian and/or totalitarian ambitions) and contrary to the logic of both market and social liberation.

Conversely, market-led liberalisation was cast and framed in terms of a positive chain of equivalences that equated the free market with freedom of choice, speech, behaviour and ironically even political affiliation and praxis. But as mentioned above, the logic of the free market then operated on the premise of there being a universal subject who was on the one hand free and willing to alienate his/her labour and to consume freely as well. This universal subject, as defined by the law of the market, was nonetheless a vacuous subject that was devoid of cultural/ethical/religious particularities or specificity whatsoever.

Looking at the socio-cultural landscape of ASEAN today we see how four decades of relentless market-driven reform has led us to a world of the Thatcherite neo-liberal consensus, where there is only the abstracted individual and the market, and where Society (as well as Culture, History and other variable subjectivities) are absent. The rule of the market in ASEAN today is one which sees everything as commodity and/or potentially so, and where freedom to produce and consume are rendered sacrosanct while all opposition or critique of the workings of the market are presented as being radically outside the discursive economy of accepted social normativity.

This process of abstracting society to the level of possessive individuals took place against the background of a concerted campaign (during the Cold War) to render all forms of political-economic resistance as ‘radical’ and contrary to the principles of individual freedom of choice; and with the consolidation and sedimentation of the two chains of equivalences noted above, such market-oriented sociability has been rendered normalised and deemed acceptable.

It ought to also be noted that the march of neo-liberalism in the ASEAN region has been relatively sophisticated in the manner it has been able to co-opt (and domesticate) other competing demands for political recognition and representation as long as they did not explicitly challenge the hegemonic grip of neo-liberal thinking. Thus in the ASEAN region today ‘soft’ forms of identity politics that can be co-opted into the parameters of the free market have been given space and the opportunity to flourish, as in the case of the nascent feminist movement, gay rights movements and other modes of identity politics that do not necessarily challenge the cardinal operative rules and norms of free-market economics. This not only demonstrates late industrial capitalism’s ability to adapt to newly emerging forms of social mobilisation and to new social landscapes, but also its ability to adjust itself in order to reflect the changing social relations of the time while at the same time further entrenching and consolidating its own hegemonic grip on the very society it seeks to transform. In this respect at least neo-liberalism’s transformative capability is something that needs to be acknowledged seriously.

Hand-in-hand with the hegemonic expansion and consolidation of the free market in the region came the domestication of society where new modes of social policing and the introduction of new social norms were facilitated by the workings of the market. Note, for instance, how the forces of neo-liberalism have adjusted to the prevailing social realities in predominantly Muslim countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, and have subsequently not only adjusted its praxis there, but also worked to co-opt (and thereby domesticate) potentials disruptive and antagonistic forces emerging from Muslim consumers. Rather than impose its values, norms and praxis in culturally-specific ways that would alienate it, free-market forces in countries like Malaysia and Indonesia have adapted themselves to local tastes and norms to suit the needs and wants of local consumers. From the commodification of Muslim popular culture (such as nashid music, which has become a major commodity as far as pop culture goes) to the creation of the so-called ‘halal hub’ industries, the forces of the market have worked closely with local cultures/societies in an effort to maintain its hegemony at all costs.

It is only in the case of active resistance to neo-liberal practices that the forces of capital will activate the negative chain of equivalences that equates resistance to radicalism of any kind. During the Cold War the diametrically opposed Other came in the form of anti-market forces; but today neo-liberalism finds its enemy in a nebulous abstracted form that is even more useful in the ways in which it can be instrumentally deployed: the threat of ‘terror’.

II. The Business of Terror: Neo-Liberalism and the ‘Anti-Terror Industry’

Since 2001, following the unilateral declaration of the global ‘war on terror’ by the (then) President of the United States of America, we have witnessed the development and expansion of what can best be described as the ‘anti-terror industry’ worldwide. Coming as it did at a time when the world was still reeling from the East Asian financial crisis of 1998 – which demonstrated in no uncertain terms the vulnerability of a global financial system that was operating with almost no legal or institutional restraint or a system of accountable checks and balances – the declaration of the global war on terror by the Bush administration was a godsend to many liberal-capitalist economies in the developed as well as developing world.

Elsewhere we have looked at the rise of the anti-terror industry and its skewered effect on the already lopsided development of many developing countries where neo-liberal economic reforms had reduced them to little more than service oriented economies or surplus resource providers for the more developed economies of the developed world. (Noor, 2006, 2007.a.b, 2008.a.b,2009[4]) The development of the discourse on the war on terror – and its warm reception by authoritarian regimes and compradore elites in many third world countries – further aggravated the economic problems of their respective economies that had been made worse thanks to decades of corrupt, lopsided development on the part of compradore elites who were happy to play the role of gatekeeper states to facilitate further capital penetration into their respective economies.

In many Asian countries such as Pakistan, further Western penetration was occasioned by the acceptance of the Musharraf government of security checks and the new security regime imposed at the behest of Western security and intelligence agencies such as the CIA and FBI.[5] It should be noted that during this period much of the so-called Western ‘aid’ that was pumped into Pakistan came in the form of joint military and security training as well as the installation of more intrusive surveillance infrastructure, despite the fact that the levels of education and illiteracy in the country remained low and that what Pakistan needed the most was funding for a working national educational system as well as a public health system.

In other countries such as Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines the near-hegemonic acceptance of the logic of the war on terror also contributed to the rise of right-wing nationalist leaders whose own murky historical links with violent nationalist groups, extreme right-wing paramilitary units, nationalist vigilantes and death squads was conveniently put aside to facilitate the entry of both security-related capital investment as well as Western (notably American but also Western European and Australian) intelligence co-operation. Leaders such as Thailand’s Thaksin Shinawatra[6] and Indonesia’s A. M. Hendropriyono[7] proved to be both willing advocates of Washington’s war on terror in Asia as well as ardent supporters of the development of the local security-industrial complex that – like in the case of Pakistan – led to the purchase of more arms and security-related ordinance and logistical support materiel.

Looking back at the developments in South and Southeast Asia over the past decade, perhaps one of the most important observations to be made is how religiously-inspired politics of all hues and tenor were systematically demonised and relegated to the register of radical and potentially violent politics. It was during this period that Southeast Asian governments (at the backing and with the support of their Western allies) were most conspicuously engaged in the deliberate and sustained campaign to demonise all forms of religious politics and to target social institutions that were linked to religious movements in their respective countries. In predominantly Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia scores of Muslim religious schools (madrasah, pondok or pesantren) were policed, controlled, regulated and in many instances closed down or even attacked. The same was the case for Asian countries with Muslim-minority populations where the fear of religion in general, and Islam in particular, was heightened and where there emerged the urban myth of Muslim religious schools as contemporary ‘dens of terror’[8].

From a political discourse analysis perspective, the most noteworthy aspect of this period was the manner in which Muslims were cast as problematic subjectivities whose own identity and presence in the context of modern liberal-capitalist society was rendered ambiguous and probationary, on the grounds that Muslims withheld a sense of identity that was nonetheless rooted in a transcendental ethics that did not conform to the flat and vacuous logic of the free market. In particular, the fact that many ordinary Muslims maintained a belief and commitment to a sense of the sacred and holy meant that there remained one aspect of their subjectivities that was out of reach and beyond the pale of the logic of commodification and market-value. Muslims, in short, were not entirely within the regime of liberal-capitalism as there remained a part of their identities that was literally not for sale.

Now this sense of identity rooted in non-commodifiable religio-cultural essentials posed a problem for both the advocates of unregulated liberalism as well as the hawks of the anti-terror campaign, for the obvious reason that such a sense of cultural specificity could also serve as the basis for communal mobilisation as well as political resistance. During the era of the ‘war on terror’ it was/is undeniable that Muslims worldwide were subject to new and more intrusive and totalising regimes of surveillance, control and policing; more so than any other global diasporic community in the world. The root cause of this fear and anxiety about Muslims was the suspicion that Muslims were somehow – religiously and culturally – different. But this difference was framed in negative terms as fundamentalism, fanaticism, obscurantism and most of all: radicalism.

III. Muslims at the Front Line of Neo-Liberalism’s ‘War on Terror’: Why the defence of Muslim particularity and identity is a defence of all cultural identities.

At no point in the history of Islam and normative Muslim life have Muslims been as monitored, controlled, patrolled, policed and suspected as they are today. Across the planet Muslims have been typecast, stereotyped and subjected to a mode of ethnic/cultural/religious profiling that would probably never be tolerated by/of any other community in the civilised world. Even in the safe haven of political correctness in the West, any public articulation of anxiety or suspicion about Africans, Jews or other communities would be deemed intolerable and objected to by liberals of all hues. Yet this intolerance for abuse stops short at the frontiers of the Muslim community, and today it is only in the case of Muslims that slander, stereotyping and typecasting of any kind is tolerated and sometimes even deemed necessary and pragmatic. Why?

The answer may lie in the fact that Muslim identity today has been rendered alterior according to the prevailing logic of neo-liberalism itself. Over the past decade we have witnessed the development of a vast corpus of literature on Islam and Muslims that has sought to locate the basis of Muslim identity in some form of primordial essentialist attachment to a belief system and moral order that was subsequently posed as being outside the discursive economy of neo-liberal values. Muslims have been scrutinised, studied, pathologised and diagnosed as if they were pathologically, ontologically and even existentially different to the universal subject that is the ideal type of subjectivity within the framework of neo-liberal thought.

Engagement with Islam and Muslims has therefore proceeded from and along these premises, as if speaking to Muslims was akin to speaking to aliens who are radically different from anyone else. As expected, in the course of this ‘engagement’ process which really sought to fix the meaning of Muslim identity, familiar strategies of co-optation and alienation were used in order to divide Muslims between the ‘good Muslims’ who could be dialogued with and the ‘bad Muslims’ who had to be eradicated.

Yet in both forms of engagement, the working assumption was that Muslims were distinct and different, and that engagement with Muslims meant having to coax, cajole or possibly coerce them to ‘play’ according to the rules of the neo-liberal game. The current debates in Western Europe, North America and Australia, where Muslims have become the focus of the debate on multiculturalism and the politics of assimilation, is a case in point: The alleged ‘failure’ of Muslims to integrate into mainstream Western life is often seen as proof that Muslims are unable and unwilling to abandon their sense of religious-cultural identity for the sake of integration and participating in a more plural and cosmopolitan public domain. From this simple flawed premise a series of other generalisations are drawn, such as the claim that Muslims cannot be reconciled with modernity, progress, development, democracy and universal human rights, etc. Once again we see the workings of two parallel yet diametrically opposed chains of equivalences at work: The allegedly ‘neutral’ public domain of neo-liberal economies as seen as inclusive, open, plural and welcoming, as well as the site of progress, development and personal freedom. Muslims on the other hand are cast as outsiders who reject such values and who – to quote former President Bush – are opposed to the values of liberal democratic society and who ‘hate such freedoms’.

Muslims have thus been demonised in the name of both the war on terror as well as the neo-liberal consensus as the antipodes to the values of both the free market and the free world. Having painted Muslims in such a corner, how can we ever expect to see any form of meaningful dialogue with Muslims if Muslims are already handicapped with such demonised stereotypes from the outset?

Allow me to get to the crux of my argument here: The ‘war on terror’ industry that has emerged over the past decade and which was spawned by the workings of neo-liberalism has sought to eliminate all opponents to the rule of the market and the security industry by casting them as fundamentalist, extremist, radical threats to the prevailing hegemonic order of late industrial capitalism. In the process of this struggle to eliminate and silence all opponents, the most fundamental civil liberties of free citizens of the world have been trampled upon by the combined forces of compradore elites and the forces of capital. At the front line of this assault are the Muslim communities of the world, whose daily lives have been rendered miserable thanks to the ever-expanding scope of security concerns and the manner in which state violence and power has been brought to bear on them: Muslims parties have been banned, Muslim schools closed down, Muslim businesses investigated, etc. As mentioned above, no community in the world has been made to suffer such indignation and the assault on their fundamental liberties as Muslims today; and the last time we witnessed such an orchestrated campaign at demonisation and policing was the global campaign to curtail and dismantle the anti-hegemonic forces of the Left across the planet.

It is for these reasons that we need to understand how and why the defence of Muslim subjectivity from the totalising grasp of neo-liberal thinking is a fundamental part of the global struggle to maintain, protect and restore the dignity of all human beings worldwide, and to forestall the further encroachment of neo-liberal hegemony in all aspects of our lives. For if the campaign to totally eliminate all forms of Muslim cultural resistance succeeds, and if the attempt to domesticate and co-opt other Muslims succeeds as well, then we will be left in a world devoid of one crucial form of counter-hegemonic resistance.

Islam, Islamism and Muslims are today – by virtue of their attachment to a moral logic that is transcental – one of the few remaining forces of counter-hegemony by default. By simply insisting on their right to be Muslims, Muslims demonstrate that for some people living in a globalised world does not entail the abandonment of ethics or moral values. One may not agree with some aspects of Islamism and some of its manifestations, but the deeper point that has to be made is the defence of any transcendental ethics that transcends the logic of commodification and the free market. In this respect, Muslims share more with progressive Christian liberation theology scholars and activists who likewise insist that Capitalism has to be brought under the control of Ethics. Both communities – and other communities that are likewise guided and determined by an ethical code that is not circumscribed by market laws – are counter-hegemonic communities in their own right, and ought to be recognised as such.

For the progressive Left to succeed, there is the urgent need to recognise and respect such forms of counter-hegemonic resistance even when it is couched in the discourse of cultural particularism and specificity.  Coming to the defence of Muslim identity in the face of the onslaught of the ‘war on terror’ industry and the forces of neo-liberalism is part and parcel of the Left’s struggle against the hegemony of the market and its totalising logic of domestication and social control. But the traditional Left must also learn to appreciate the fact that while such forms of cultural resistance may be based on the discourse and symbols of cultural-religious essentialism, they are nonetheless important by virtue of the symbolic power they wield as tools of social mobilisation and counter-hegemonic identity politics. Muslims are living proof of the possibility of a radically different social order where Ethics informs and controls the workings of the market, and in that respect they are closer to the Left than any other community today.

End.

Bibliographical references:

Robin Broad, Unequal Alliance: The World Bank, The International Monetary Fund and the Philippines, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1988.

Farish A. Noor, Quran and Cricket: Travels Through the Madrasas of Asia and Other Stories, Silverfish Books, Kuala Lumpur, 2009.

Farish A. Noor, Martin van Bruinessen and Yoginder Sikand (Eds.), The Madrasa in Asia: Political Activism and Transnational Linkages. ISIM Series on Contemporary Muslim Societies, University of Amsterdam Press, Amsterdam, 2008.a.

Farish A. Noor, Comment la “Guerre contre le Terrorisme” de Washington est devenue celle de tous: L’islamophobie et l’impact du 11 Septembre sur le terrain politique l’Asie du Sud et du Sud-est; in: Ramon Grosfoguel, Mohamad Mestiri and El Yamine Soum, Islamophobie dans le Monde Moderne. IIIT France and Berkeley University of California, Paris, 2008.b. (pp. 275-319.)

Farish A. Noor, How ‘Big Brother’ America Became the ‘Great Satan’: Changing Perceptions of the United States among the Muslim Communities of Southeast Asia. In: Ivan Krastev and Alan McPherson (Eds.), The Anti-American Century, Central European University (CEU) Press, Budapest and New York, 2007. (pp. 109-127)

Farish A. Noor, Writings on the War on Terror, Global Media Publications, New Delhi, 2006.a

Farish A. Noor, How Washington’s ‘War on Terror’ Became Everyone’s: Islamophobia and the Impact of 11 September on the Political Terrain of South and Southeast Asia, in: Ramon Grosfoguel (ed.), Special issue of the Journal of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self Knowledge. Vol V. Issue 1, Fall 2006.b.