I have been giving a great deal of thought to the recent events in the Arab World. The most remarkable aspect of these events is their transnational character. An uprising against one despotic ruler or another, can be easily understood, but how is it that the process we are witnessing cuts a wide swatch across all of the nations generally classified as Arab?
In recent weeks, major uprisings have occurred in Tunisia, Egypt,, Bahrain and Libya. There are also ominous rumblings in Yemen, Jordan, Iraq, Algeria, and even Morocco. This social tectonic is also being played out in an even wider domain of Middle East Islamicism encompassing Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Even Turkey, who for a 100 years has straddled the line between Christian Europe in the west and Eastern Islamicism, has recently tilted east.
The synchronicity of these events cannot be ascribed to mere coincidence. We need to ask, what’s going on?
Last night I posed this question to my wife and she echoed what is currently the dominant American narrative. These events, she said, reflect a widespread aspiration among the peoples of the Arab nations to become more like we are in the West. In this narrative, the leveling forces of the Internet have awakened the youthful populations of the Arab world to the benefits of freedom, democracy, free market economics, and consumerism. So powerful is the force of their aspirations, that they are willing to give their lives to become “free”.
I’m not so sure about this explanation.
I do not doubt that young educated elites with laptop computers, IPhones, and Facebook accounts played an important role as instigators of these uprisings, but I believe there are deeper social and historical forces at work. The Arab world was only divided up into European style secular nation-states about 100 years ago. In the U.S., which has existed as a nation for only a few hundred years, 100 years sounds like a long time, but the nomadic Arab tribes united in lifestyle, have occupied what is now called the Arab World for thousands of years. And the Islamic Caliphate, founded around the 6th Century by the followers of Muhammad, united them in a singularly Islamic identity for 1500 years,
To grasp the sheer power of this Islamic social-historical reality, we need only think clearly about the all-pervasive power of Judeo-Christian myth in shaping our experience in the Western world. Even among Western non-Christians, the Judeo-Christian worldview dominates all aspects of Western culture. Central to the Judeo-Christian worldview is the idea of economic progress and individual accomplishment as the yardstick by which we prove ourselves good and worthy. Our competitive striving to have more and be more as a society and as individuals, is in our blood.
Islam was born in the vastness of the Middle East, where nomadic tribes wandered the deserts, occasionally coming together at crossroad cities, and then moving apart again. It was not striving that was valued but rather, The Law as prescribed in The Koran which created a unified worldview and orderly code of conduct. This is why the idea of a Western style secular state is abhorrent to the Islamic mind. The Law of the Koran is much more than a generalizable spiritual guide to man’s relation to God. It is a practical guide to the daily matters of man’s relation to other men. The Koran is an instrument for orchestrating the relationships between wanderers by prescribing universal laws of behavior and punishments for the violation of The Law. The Law is in the blood of the Arab world.
For example, a Christian who does not pray in accordance with a set of strict laws may still be a good Christian, but a Christian who fails to strive toward greater “goodness” is a bad Christian. A Muslim, on the other hand, is a bad Muslim if he fails to pray five times a day. Striving is not necessary so long as he follows The Law,
These deeply rooted social-historical myths give rise to self-created fall-lines along which large social movements occur. In the West they have tended to favor secular enterprise and rational self-interested practice by which competitive striving is encouraged and facilitated. In the East they have favored dogmatic compliance to Koranic Law and relations of honor that transcend secular state laws, business enterprise, and contract.
If we view the recent transnational uprisings through an Islamic rather than a Christian lens, we can see that the fall-line to the future points toward the renewal of an Islamic Caliphate ordered in terms of the region’s common social denominator—Islam.
Although the difference between Shi’a and Sunni are as real as the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, the Islamic worldview remains the overbearingly principal reality that sets the Arab World apart from the Judeo-Christian West.
As events move forward, there is one thing about which we can be certain. The mortal combat between these two irreconcilable worldviews —Judeo-Christian and Islamic—will produce increasingly cataclysmic conflict. The West is already embroiled in war in Iraq, Afghanistan and arguably, Pakistan. Conflict with Iran is on the drawing boards. The West’s supply of oil hangs in the balance, as does the survival of Israel.
We are witnessing first hand, the ongoing passion play triggered by the rise of organized world religion, specifically monotheism, in which the metastatic growth engendered by the Judeo-Christian myth of striving for grace is standing face to face with the renewed power of the Islamic world’s myth of transcendent Law applied in daily practice.
The prognosis is not a good one.
NOTE: I do not favor the myth of striving over the myth of The Law. Either one, taken alone, is a dysfunctional construct paving the road to self-destruction, but taken together they transform the road into a freeway.
Marc:
Your piece about the “Coming of the New Caliphate” is excellent. Great writing, provocative point(s).
You are probably right.
But you sure have a problem, and so do people who agree with you (e.g. me):
You deviate from the conventional wisdom, from the “dominant American narrative, ” the naive cheerleading for the nascent democratic tide over there, blah blah.
The problem is that the group most predictably opposed to this narrative are conservatives. The title of your article is literally taken out of Glenn Beck’s mouth – a loathsome, moronic demagogue. Same with Charles Krauthammer, a man only slightly less evil than the devil.
It’s Rush Limbaugh who warns us that Egypt, Libya et. al. are the next countries in line to burn the US flag and to call us Satan America. We are about to acquire a whole new bunch of enemies, we hear from the Right, and I am sure the Right is rejoicing at the fact that there is no end in sight to America being basically a garrison state, a permanently militarized society, like Rome was.
When Samuel Huntington wrote his “Clash of Civilizations” a few years ago, he was tarred and feathered by academicians, accused of racism, Eurocentrism, the whole nine yards.
So what is one to do?
You hint at what you would like to see happen – a cessation of world confrontation based on two hostile forms of monotheism. But you are pessimistic. Meanwhile, you DO agree with the “Clash of Civilizations” perspective.
This is a brave and unpopular position among “liberals,” e.g. among intellectuals and Europeans (the two are not synonymous).
http://european-americanblog.blogspot.com/
Marc, Thank you for your blog on the Caliphate. I am amazed at the ignorance of the Western press and the polly’s, with all due respect they do not realize a new war has been going on since at least 1956 (Suez). The current sweep through the Arab world of a tribal bid for freedom their way, is the evolution of Arab power to develop once again the Caliphate. We in the West think our system can beat all. Our competitor has a unique system not based on the individual but the cohesive force of a central banner the flag of Islam (Try Saladin). Their military management style is suited to the technology of the 21st Century whereas our style is more of the 19th Century. All Generals fight their last war, all Western polly’s their next election, our press the Breakfast show! The West will not be defeated by the Caliphate simply occupying our land but by a process of “Balkanisation” and or cultural partition or to the West a form of Apartheid.
Gloomy but the West is currently welcoming the incoming tide!
Eddy
Dear Marc, I was just reading Tom Kando’s comments. My comment is simple, the US perspective on everything (as per his comments) is a constant reminder of the Pompous attitude of the British as they were falling. This by the way is the way of all empires. I am personally a great admirer of the US empire which had a peak at the end of the Second World War and glided, until the the rate of descent, initially gradual, now as the ground is out there is getting steeper.
All nations and empires can deal with an external enemy as, most can defend their own home, but if the enemy is an invited guest, even our own law takes a different view.
Eddy
@tom kando and Eddy,
Read John Cassidy’s “The Prophet Motive” in this week’s New Yorker (Feb. 28th, 2011).
Mr. Cassidy, who would certainly include me among his later-day Weberians, argues that the Islamic worldview is not inherently hostile nor obstructive to the emergence of a modern Capitalist economy. Don’t worry too much. Be happy, he says, because the practical imperatives that drive scientific Western economic progress will carry peoples of every color and creed forward into a bright new future of secular striving. Soon, everyone will be just like us!
Mr. Cassidy misunderstands Weber’s analysis, which is not deterministic. Weber constructed a brilliant narrative that explains how widely held ideas and historical economic circumstances interact on a vast societal scale to produce an emergent socially-constructed reality that is consequential.
But worse than failing to understand Weber, he commits the error of placing the economic dogma of Capitalism (and Christianity) at the center of universe.
Chose your poison, dogmatic LAW or dogmatic STRIVING.
Cheers
PS – I hope to say more about this in my next post.
Dear Mark and interested, I do appreciate your article and the responses at this stage. My concern about your blog is that the subject soon leads to Obfuscation as every one weighs in with the “Thousand and one nights” rather than dealing with the intractable problems posed by Islam to the West. I have no concern (except I will not be able to use my car as much) that the Muslim world will throw off the despots propped up by Western interests; its their time. My concern is refugees, migration and the growing influence of Islam within our own borders. Our very liberalism is our weakness. We live in an age in the West, of short memories, where today is the focus and virtually all forget the lessons of history.
Remember 376 – 378 AD and Battle of Adrianople. Valens took in the Goths… My point is simple how can the West deal with a powerful external Super State who’s Ultimate leader is Allah, while the adherents who live in the West; who in the main are good citizens bend our Western culture to their needs through the ballot box.
In conclusion I return to my previous post “The West will not be defeated by the Caliphate simply occupying our land but by a process of “Balkanisation” and or cultural partition or to the West a form of Apartheid.
Gloomy but the West is currently welcoming the incoming tide!
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