I want to argue to you that in fact, politics and religion, which are the two primary factors -- not the sole, but overwhelmingly, the primary factors -- which are driving towards a war which looks extremely likely -- bordering on the inevitable at this point, whether one is in favor of that or not -- that politics and religion are, in fact, themselves better conceptualized as kinds of technology, and subject to kinds of questions that we regularly consider in the space of conceptual design.
我想論證的是:其實,政治和宗教-- 這兩個因素-- 雖非唯一,卻絕對是最主要的因素, 把我們推向一個戰爭的邊緣, 可以說是到了一觸即發的地步, 無論你喜歡這個說法與否, 政治和宗教本質上 都可被理解為一種技術, 我們可以用設計概念 去分析她們。
Here's what I mean. Politics and -- let's focus on the political system in particular question here, which is the system of democracy. Democracy, as a type of politics, is a technology for the control and deployment of power. You can deploy power in a wide range of ways. The famous ones -- despotism is a good one; anarchy is a way to not deploy the power in any organized way, to do it in a radically diffused fashion; and democracy is a set of technologies, which have the effect of, in principle, diffusing the power source to a large number of people and then re-concentrating it in a smaller group of people who govern, and who themselves are, in principle, authorized to govern by virtue of what the broader public has done.
讓我解釋一下, 先看政治制度的一種-- 民主政治, 民主,作為一種政治制度,是一種 用來控制和行使權力的技術, 我們可以用多種不同的方法使用權力, 人所共知的有「獨裁統治」, 「無政府狀態」是一種權力運用缺乏組織、 散漫無章的狀態; 而民主是一套科技, 原則上她要達到的效果是: 把權力來源分散到大眾, 再重新集合到負責管治的少數人, 而他們原則上是憑藉大眾所作的選擇, 而被授權去管治;
Now, consider religion -- in this case Islam, which is the religion that, in some direct sense, can be said to be precipitating what we're about to enter. Let me say parenthetically why I think that's the case, because I think it's a potentially controversial statement. I would put it in the following equation: no 9/11, no war. At the beginning of the Bush administration, when President Bush, now President Bush, was running for president, he made it very clear that he was not interested in intervening broadly in the world. In fact, the trend was for disengagement with the rest of the world. That's why we heard about the backing away from the Kyoto protocol, for example. After 9/11, the tables were turned. And the president decided, with his advisors, to undertake some kind of an active intervention in the world around us. That began with Afghanistan, and when Afghanistan went extremely smoothly and quickly, a decision was made through the technology of democracy -- again, notice, not a perfect technology -- but through the technology of democracy that this administration was going to push in the direction of another war -- this time, a war in Iraq.
現在來看看宗教,我以回教作論, 她可以說是一手造成 我們將要面臨的處境的宗教。 這可以是很有爭議性的說法, 所以讓我順帶解釋一下, 一言敝之:沒有9/11,就沒有戰爭; 在布殊上台之初, 當布殊總統還在競選的時候, 他明確的表示他沒有興趣在世界舞台上大展拳腳; 其實,當時的大勢是要撤離國際上的參與, 我們在京都議定書問題上退下來就是一例, 9/11之後,形勢改變了, 總統和他的幕僚決定, 在國際上要採取主動, 行動由阿富汗開始, 當在阿富汗的任務進行得那麼順利快速, 在民主的技術機制下-- 請留意,那不是完美的機制, 但是通過民主的技術機制-- 這個政府決定開始推展另一場戰爭, 這次戰場在伊拉克,
Now, the reason I begin by saying "no 9/11, no war" is that we have to acknowledge that Islam, as interpreted by a very, very small, extremely radical group of people, was a precipitating cause of the 9/11 attacks -- the precipitating cause of the 9/11 attacks -- and as a consequence, at one degree of remove, the precipitating cause of the coming war that we're about to be engaged in. And I would add that bin Laden and his followers are consciously devoted to the goal of creating a conflict between democracy, or at least capitalist democracy, on the one hand, and the world of Islam as they see and define it.
我之所以說:沒有9/11,就沒有戰爭, 是因為我們要認識到, 回教在一群很少數、很極端的人演繹之下, 成為了9/11襲擊的決定性導因, 她是9/11襲擊的決定性導因, 隨著事情的發展,她亦是 我們將要面臨的戰爭的決定性導因, 我要註明,拉登和他的追隨者, 刻意製造和挑撥民主和伊斯蘭世界間的矛盾, 一面是資本主義民主, 一面是他們眼中的伊斯蘭世界。
Now, how is Islam a technology in this conceptual apparatus? Well, it's a technology for, first, salvation in its most basic sense. It's meant to be a mechanism for construing the universe in a way that will bring about the salvation of the individual believer, but it's also meant by the Islamists -- and I use that term to mean people who believe that Islam -- they follow the slogan, Islam is the answer to a wide range of questions, whether they're social, or political, or personal, or spiritual. Within the sphere of people who have that view, and it's a large number of people in the Muslim world who disagree with bin Laden in his application, but agree that Islam is the answer. Islam represents a way of engaging the world through which one can achieve certain desirable goals. And the goals from the perspective of Muslims are, in principle, peace, justice and equality, but on terms that correspond to traditional Muslim teachings.
好了,回教在這個概念上又是那一門的技術呢? 首先,她的根本性是救贖的機制, 她的原意是演繹宇宙的一種方式, 讓信徒從而獲得救贖, 但對信奉回教的 伊斯蘭信徒來講, 伊斯蘭能解答各種問題, 無論是社會的、政治的、個人的或靈性的, 這類信徒組成 穆斯林世界的大部分, 他們雖然不同意拉登的手法, 卻同意在伊斯蘭能找到答案; 伊斯蘭代表一種處世之道, 她能讓人達到一些高尚的目標, 用回教徒的角度, 和平、公義和平等原則上都是他們所追求的, 但是要根據傳統穆斯林教化而詮釋;
Now, I don't want to leave a misimpression by identifying either of these propositions -- rather, either of these phenomena, democracy or Islam -- as technologies. I don't want to suggest that they are a single thing that you can point to. And I think a good way to prove this is simply to demonstrate to you what my thought process was when deciding what to put on the wall behind me when I spoke. And I ran immediately into a conceptual problem: you can't show a picture of democracy. You can show a slogan, or a symbol, or a sign that stands for democracy. You can show the Capitol -- I had the same problem when I was designing the cover of my forthcoming book, in fact -- what do you put on the cover to show democracy? And the same problem with respect to Islam. You can show a mosque, or you can show worshippers, but there's not a straightforward way of depicting Islam. That's because these are the kinds of concepts that are not susceptible to easy representation.
好了,請不要誤會, 我指出這兩個提議-- 應該說是這兩個現象:民主和伊斯蘭,都是技術, 並不表示她們是同一樣的實物, 一個解釋的好方法, 就是讓你替我想想,我在演講時, 在後面的牆上應放些甚麼, 我立即遇到一個概念問題, 你不能用圖片表達民主, 你可以展示口號,或者一個符號,或一個代表民主的標誌, 你可以展示美國國會大廈, 當我設計我的新書封面時 已遇到同樣的問題, 用甚麼圖像來表達民主呢? 對伊斯蘭亦有同樣的問題, 你可以用清真寺,或朝拜者, 但卻沒有一個直接描繪伊斯蘭的方法, 因為這些是 不容易表達的概念;
Now, it follows from that, that they're deeply contestable. It follows from that that all of the people in the world who say that they are Muslims can, in principle, subscribe to a wide range of different interpretations of what Islam really is, and the same is true of democracy. In other words, unlike the word hope, which one could look up in a dictionary and derive origins for, and, perhaps, reach some kind of a consensual use analysis, these are essentially contested concepts. They're ideas about which people disagree in the deepest possible sense. And as a consequence of this disagreement, it's very, very difficult for anyone to say, "I have the right version of Islam." You know, post-9/11, we were treated to the amazing phenomenon of George W. Bush saying, "Islam means peace." Well, so says George W. Bush. Other people would say it means something else. Some people would say that Islam means submission. Other people would say it means an acknowledgement or recognition of God's sovereignty. There are a wide range of different things that Islam can mean. And ostensibly, the same is true of democracy. Some people say that democracy consists basically in elections. Other people say no, that's not enough, there have to be basic liberal rights: free speech, free press, equality of citizens. These are contested points, and it's impossible to answer them by saying, "Ah ha, I looked in the right place, and I found out what these concepts mean."
亦因此,它們是深具爭議性的, 亦因此,世界上所有 自稱是回教徒的人,在原則上, 能信奉各種不同對伊斯蘭真義的演繹, 民主亦然, 換句話說,有別於那些辭--例如「希望」, 你能在字典上查到出處, 或能找到某種公認的用法, 這些名詞的概念本身就具爭議, 是人們在最根本的意義上有不同看法的, 由此, 我們不可以說: 「我對伊斯蘭的理解就是正確的版本。」 在9/11之後,我們親歷這個奇異的現象, 布殊說:「伊斯蘭即是和平。」 好吧,那是布殊的說法, 其他人會說伊斯蘭是其他東西, 一些人會說伊斯蘭即是「順從」, 其他人會說伊斯蘭是對神的管治 的認同和理解, 伊斯蘭的可以有很多不同的演繹; 似乎民主也是一樣, 一些人說民主基本體現在選舉中, 其他人卻不認同,認為這個解說不全面, 民主還要有基本的自由權利:言論、出版的自由和人民的平等, 這些是爭議點,我們不可以這樣回答: 「啊,我已經在適當的地方查過,並找出這些概念的意思。」
Now, if Islam and democracy are at present in a moment of great confrontation, what does that mean? Well, you could fit it into a range of different interpretative frameworks. You could begin with the one that we began with a couple of days ago, which was fear. Fear is not an implausible reaction with a war just around the corner and with a very, very high likelihood that many, many people are going to die as a consequence of this confrontation -- a confrontation which many, many people in the Muslim world do not want, many, many people in the American democracy do not want, many people elsewhere in the world do not want, but which nonetheless is favored by a large enough number of people -- at least in the relevant space, which is the United States -- to actually go forward. So fear is not a crazy response at all. And I think that that's, in fact, probably the first appropriate response.
如果,現在伊斯蘭和民主在這一刻, 來一個大對決, 那是甚麼意思? 你可以用不同的框架去詮釋, 其一是前兩天我們講過的, 那就是「恐懼」, 在戰爭一觸即發之際,「恐懼」並非不可理解的回應, 有很多人很可能因此送命, 由於這次對決-- 一個很多回教世界的人 不想見到的對決, 很多美式民主世界的人不想見到的對決, 很多世界各地的人都不想見到的對決, 但不論如何,卻有一班足夠多的人, 至少在關鍵的地方--美國-- 認為應該進行,所以「恐懼」並非不理性的反應, 而我認為,那其實可能是第一個合理的反應,
What I want to suggest to you, though, in the next couple of minutes is that there's also a hopeful response to this. And the hopeful response derives from recognizing that Islam and democracy are technologies. And by virtue of being technologies, they're manipulable. And they're manipulable in ways that can produce some extremely positive outcomes. What do I have in mind? Well, all over the Muslim world there are people who take Islam deeply seriously, people who care about Islam, for whom it's a source either of faith, or of civilization, or of deep values, or just a source of powerful personal identity, who think and are saying loudly that Islam and democracy are in fact not in conflict, but are in fact deeply compatible. And these Muslims -- and it's the vast majority of Muslims -- disagree profoundly with bin Laden's approach, profoundly. And they furthermore think overwhelmingly -- again one can't speak of every person, but overwhelmingly, and one can find this by reading any of the sources that they have produced, and they're all over the Internet and in all sorts of languages -- one can see that they're saying that their concern in their own countries is primarily to free up themselves to have choice in the spheres of personal life, in the sphere of economics, in the sphere of politics, and, yes, in the sphere of religion, which is itself closely regulated in most of the Muslim world.
但我想在以下的時間向你提出的是, 另一個回應是「希望」, 「希望」源於我們認識到 伊斯蘭和民主都是一種技術機制, 既然她們是機制,即是可以受操控, 在操控之下達致 一些極之正面的結果, 我的意思是甚麼呢? 在回教世界中,有些人 極之嚴肅的對待伊斯蘭,他們關心伊斯蘭, 對他們來說,伊斯蘭可能是信念、是文明、是深層的價值, 又或是強烈的個人身份認同, 他們認為伊斯蘭和民主其實並無衝突, 反而是深深的共融,他們並大力宣揚這個信念; 而這些回教徒--他們是大多數-- 徹底反對拉登的手法, 他們絕大多數的呼聲-- 雖然我們不能代每一個人說話,但他們肯定是大多數-- 但我們在各資訊媒體找到他們的呼聲, 在互聯網上很容易找到他們 以各種語言,宣揚他們的聲音, 他們所關注的,是在各自國家怎樣解放自己, 在個人生活上、經濟上、政治上、 怎樣有所選擇, 甚至是宗教上-- 一個在穆斯林世界中嚴密控制的範疇--有所選擇;
And many of these Muslims further say that their disagreement with the United States is that it, in the past and still in the present, has sided with autocratic rulers in the Muslim world in order to promote America's short-term interests. Now, during the Cold War, that may have been a defensible position for the United States to take. That's an academic question. It may be that there was a great war to be fought between West and East, and it was necessary on the axis of democracy against communism. And it was necessary in some way for these to contradict each other, and as a consequence you have to make friends wherever you can get them. But now that the Cold War is over, there's nearly universal consensus in the Muslim world -- and pretty close to the same here in the United States, if you talk to people and ask them -- that in principle, there's no reason that democracy and Islam cannot co-exist. And we see this among activist, practical Muslims, like the Muslims who are presently the elected, parliamentary, democratic government of Turkey, who are behaving pragmatically, not ideologically, who are promoting their own religious values, who are elected by their own people because they were perceived as honest and sincere because of their religious values, but who do not think that Islam and a democratic system of governance are fundamentally incompatible.
很多這些回教徒進而認為, 他們反對美國的, 在於美國在過去,甚至現在, 都站在回教世界中的專制統治者一方, 只為了提升美國的短期利益; 在冷戰時期,那還可以說是 美國自我防衛的一種取態, 那可以是一個學術討論, 可能在東西方的大角力中, 必須建立民主軸心同盟以對抗社會主義, 有必要讓這兩種東西在某方面互相對立, 於是,誰跟你做朋友,你也只好接受了, 但現在冷戰已經結束, 在回教世界裏,差不多所有人都有共識, 而在美國也是一樣, 如果你問他們, 原則上,民主和伊斯蘭沒有理由不能共存, 我們可見這些活躍的、實事求是的回教徒, 例如土耳其的穆斯林, 他們的國家都有民選的國會和民主政府, 他們作風務實,不流於理想主義, 他們推廣自己的宗教價值, 他們憑著自己的誠實和誠懇, 憑著他們的宗教價值, 由自己的人民選出來, 他們並不認為伊斯蘭和民主政制 有著根本的矛盾,
Now, you may say, but surely, what we've seen on television about Saudi Islam convinces us that it can't possibly be compatible with what we consider the core of democracy -- namely, free political choice, basic liberty and basic equality. But I'm here to tell you that technologies are more malleable than that. I'm here to tell you that many, many Muslims believe -- the vast majority, in fact -- in fact I think I would go so far as to say that many Muslims in Saudi Arabia believe that the core values of Islam, namely acknowledgement of God's sovereignty and basic human equality before God, are themselves compatible with liberty, equality and free political choice. And there are Muslims, many Muslims out there, who are saying precisely this. And they're making this argument wherever they're permitted to make it. But their governments, needless to say, are relatively threatened by this. And for the most part try to stop them from making this argument.
你或會說,我們在電視上見到沙地的回教徒, 明顯告訴我們,他們的價值 和我們認同的民主核心價值沒有可能共容, 包括政治上的自由選擇、基本自由和平等, 但我在這裏告訴你, 技術機制的延展性是很高的, 我想告訴你,很多很多回教徒-- 可以說是絕大多數的回教徒,我甚至敢說 很多沙地阿拉伯的回教徒-- 都相信伊斯蘭的核心價值--包括承認神的管治, 和神面前人們基本平等, 本身與自由、平等和自由政治選擇是同出一轍的, 很多回教徒都是這樣說, 他們把握每一個機會,提出這個論調, 但他們的政府當然感到一定的威脅, 而盡量阻止他們宣揚這個論調,
So, for example, a group of young activists in Egypt try to form a party known as the Center Party, which advocated the compatibility of Islam and democracy. They weren't even allowed to form a party. They were actually blocked from even forming a party under the political system there. Why? Because they would have done extraordinarily well. In the most recent elections in the Muslim world -- which are those in Pakistan, those in Morocco and those in Turkey -- in each case, people who present themselves to the electorate as Islamic democrats were far and away the most successful vote-getters every place they were allowed to run freely. So in Morocco, for example, they finished third in the political race but they were only allowed to contest half the seats. So had they contested a larger number of the seats, they would have done even better. Now what I want to suggest to you is that the reason for hope in this case is that we are on the edge of a real transformation in the Muslim world. And that's a transformation in which many sincerely believing Muslims -- who care very, very deeply about their traditions, who do not want to compromise those values -- believe, through the malleability of the technology of democracy and the malleability and synthetic capability of the technology of Islam, that these two ideas can work together.
例如,在埃及,一群年青的活躍份子, 打算組成一個叫「中心黨」的政黨, 鼓催伊斯蘭和民主的共容, 他們連組成政黨都不被批准, 根據當地的政治制度, 他們根本是被禁止組黨,為甚麼呢? 因為若果他們成功,一定會得到很多支持, 在穆斯林世界中,近期的選舉,包括 在巴基斯坦、摩洛哥和土耳其, 每一次, 那些走伊斯蘭民主派路線的候選人, 在每一處他們能自由参選的地方, 都吸去了大量的選票,遠遠拋離對手, 例如在摩洛哥,雖然他們只能競逐一半的議席, 卻能在選舉中排名第三, 如果他們能夠染指更多的議席, 他們肯定能做得更好, 我現在想說的是有希望的原因, 是我們快見到回教世界的真正轉變, 在當中,很多虔誠的回教徒, 他們十分關心自己的傳統, 他們不想在傳統價值上退讓, 他們相信,通過民主這個技術機制的可塑性, 和伊斯蘭這個技術機制的可塑性和整合性, 兩個概念能互相配合,
Now what would that look like? What does it mean to say that there's an Islamic democracy? Well, one thing is, it's not going to look identical to democracy as we know it in the United States. That may be a good thing, in light of some of the criticisms we've heard today -- for example, in the regulatory context -- of what democracy produces. It will also not look exactly the way either the people in this room, or Muslims out in the rest of the world -- I don't mean to imply there aren't Muslims here, there probably are -- conceptualize Islam. It will be transformative of Islam as well. And as a result of this convergence, this synthetic attempt to make sense of these two ideas together, there's a real possibility that, instead of a clash of Islamic civilization -- if there is such a thing -- and democratic civilization -- if there is such a thing -- we'll in fact have close compatibility.
那會是怎樣的呢? 伊斯蘭的民主會是意味些甚麼呢? 有一點可以肯定的,是那會和美國的民主 很不一樣, 那可能是好事,尤其眼見當今我們的民主制度, 帶來很多受到眾多批評的結果, 那也不會跟在座各位、 或外面世界的回教徒-- 我無意暗示在座沒有回教徒,其實很可能是有的-- 所想像的很不一樣, 她亦會把伊斯蘭改變, 在融合之下, 在兩個概念拼組之下, 結果很可能不是一場 伊斯蘭文明和民主文明的衝突-- 如果有這些東西存在的話 反而會是很親密的共存,
Now, I began with the war because it's the elephant in the room, and you can't pretend that there isn't about to be a war if you're talking about these issues. The war has tremendous risks for the model that I'm describing because it's very possible that as a consequence of a war, many Muslims will conclude that the United States is not the kind of place that they want to emulate with respect to its forms of political government. On the other hand, there's a further possibility that many Americans, swept up in the fever of a war, will say, and feel, and think that Islam is the enemy somehow -- that Islam ought to be construed as the enemy. And even though, for political tactical reasons, the president has been very, very good about saying that Islam is not the enemy, nonetheless, there's a natural impulse when one enters war to think of the other side as an enemy. And one furthermore has the impulse to generalize, as much as possible, in defining who that enemy is. So the risks are very great.
我開始時談到戰爭,因為那是一個我們不能迴避的問題, 我們不能假裝我們探討這些議題, 而能與戰爭無關, 在我解釋的模式中,戰爭帶出極大的危機, 因為很可能因為這場戰爭, 很多回教徒會認為, 美國並不是他們在政治體制上 想學習的地方, 另一方面,有更大的可能,很多美國人 在戰爭的狂潮中,會說、會感到、會想: 伊斯蘭是敵人, 伊斯蘭應該被定性為敵人, 雖然,由於政治策略之故, 我們的總統很刻意地強調伊斯蘭不是敵人, 無論如何,當我們進入戰爭,自然有衝動 去想對方是敵人, 並有衝動去把敵人的定義, 儘量的延伸開去, 所以那危機是很大的;
On the other hand, the capacities for positive results in the aftermath of a war are also not to be underestimated, even by, and I would say especially by, people who are deeply skeptical about whether we should go to war in the first place. Those who oppose the war ought to realize that if a war happens, it cannot be the right strategy, either pragmatically, or spiritually, or morally, to say after the war, "Well, let's let it all run itself out, and play out however it wants to play out, because we opposed the war in the first place." That's not the way human circumstances operate. You face the circumstances you have in front of you and you go forward.
另一方面,戰後可能帶來的良好後果, 也是不應被低估的, 尤其不應被那些 開始時對開戰很有保留的人所低估, 那些反戰的人應該明白,戰爭既然已成事實, 當戰爭過後, 在實際上、宗教上、道德上,都不能這樣說: 「好了,讓我們放手讓她自生自滅,想這樣就怎樣, 因為開始時我們都說不好開戰的。」 那不是人類社會的公理, 你應面對眼前的處境, 然後向前走,
Well, what I'm here to say then is, for people who are skeptical about the war, it's especially important to recognize that in the aftermath of the war there is a possibility for the government of the United States and the Muslim peoples with whom it interacts to create real forms of government that are truly democratic and also truly Islamic. And it is crucial -- it is crucial in a practical, activist way -- for people who care about these issues to make sure that within the technology of democracy, in this system, they exercise their preferences, their choices and their voices to encourage that outcome. That's a hopeful message, but it's a message that's hopeful only if you understand it as incurring serious obligation for all of us. And I think that we are capable of taking on that obligation, but only if we put what we can into it. And if we do, then I don't think that the hope will be unwarranted altogether.
好了,我在這裏想說的是, 對那些對戰爭有所懷疑的人, 特別要留意在戰後, 美國政府有可能 和那些和他們交往的回教徒, 會創造一種真正民主、真正伊斯蘭 的政府模式, 而很決定性的是,無論在實際上、主動上, 那些關心這事的人, 努力的保證,在這個體制的民主機制中, 他們行使他們的喜好、選擇和聲音, 去促進那發展成果, 那是一個充滿希望的信息, 但那需要你明白,我們所有人都分擔著很重大的任務, 才能感到的希望; 而我想我們有能力擔起這個任務, 但我們一定要盡己所能, 若果我們能做到,那希望便很有機會達到。
Thanks.
謝謝。