Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

In  Zur Kritik der Gewalt (On the Critique of Violence)  Walter Benjamin argues that the intimate relationship of violence and law is twofold. Firstly, violence is the means by which law is instituted and preserved. Secondly, domination (violence under the name of power ( Macht )) is the end of the law: “Law-making is power-making, assumption of power, and to that extent an immediate manifestation of violence” (p. 248). Benjamin distinguishes between lawmaking violence ( rechtsetzend Gewalt ) and law-preserving violence ( rechtserhaltende Gewalt ) on basis of whether the end towards which violence is used as a means is historically acknowledged, i.e., “sanctioned” or “unsanctioned” violence (named respectively “legal ends” and “natural ends”). If violence as a means is directed towards natural ends—as in the case of interstate war where one or more states use violence to ignore historically acknowledged laws such as borders—the violence will be lawmaking. This violence stri...

"Can one speak meaning- fully of “Islamic violence”? As long as the Muslim actor is making his act of violence meaningful to himself in terms of Islam—in terms of Pre-Text, Text, or Con-Text of Revelation—then it is appropriate and meaningful to speak of that act of violence as Islamic violence. The point of the designation is not that Islam causes this violence; rather it is that the violence is made meaningful by the actor in terms of Islam—just as the prodigious violence undertaken by soldiers of democratic nation-states is made meaningful for them and by them in terms of the nation-state, and may, therefore, meaningfully be called “democratic violence” or “national violence” (or may meaningfully be designated in terms of the particular nation-state as “American violence” or “Israeli violence”). In the case of violence, as with everything else, one Muslim may disagree with another Muslim over whether his mode of meaning-making is legitimate—th...