Alternative Narratives in the Muslim Paradigm: Bin Laden's Caliphate Revisited
At the start of a New Yorker article written shortly after 9/11, Bernard Lewis writes the following:
So there's a lot that's really questionable about this--we Americans are to some extent animated and seek to self define ourselves by our own sense of US history, which is slanted and reductive. We base policy on these highly simplified historical perceptions all the time (Saddam is Hitler on one side, Iraq is Vietnam on the other.) And among Westerners the Americans are quite an ahistorical people. Most Greeks, for example, are vividly aware of their own historical narratives, and certainly use it to define their identities. In the Middle East much of the Arab Israeli dispute is a clash of two alternative narratives, a Jewish one and an Arab one, not one group with a keen sense of its own history and another that dismiss history as, in Lewis' words, "something that is unimportant". Does anyone know any Jewish person, let's say Western oriented, lets say American born, let's say who hasn't ever left US soil, who would dismiss the horrors of the Holocaust with a dismissive wave of "that's history"? Armenian Americans respecting a calamitous historical event no closer in time than the fall of the caliphate would they do that? Aren't they part of the West?
But it's the converse of this fallacy I wish to explore a bit more, not so much the importance to non Muslim peoples of perceived history (something I will call a historical narrative--a story spread among a people they use to define themselves, which ALWAYS is less nuanced and less complex than an historian would demand) but rather the supposed fascination of Muslim peoples in this one narrative that roots itself in the caliphate and the medieval world. A polity that defines itself as a "House of Islam" even as it is divided into nations, unable to come to grips with its own modernity.
Lewis' theory then dovetails well with SOME of my Islamic studies colleagues at law schools who actually despise him. This you see is why we pay so much attention to medieval theories of jihad. Because Muslims care about these! They remember well the destruction of the caliphate! These nations are artificial, they're fake, they don't even have a word for nation! These ideas range from simplistic to just false, the word watan means nation, in Arabic. I don't follow Lewis' etymology, and I don't really care. Words change meanings over time, and clearly clearly when an Arab refers to his watan, he means his nation. When Iraqis stand up and sign Mautani (variant of same word, watan), and fly their flags and wave their purple fingers and fill the streets of Baghdad when their team wins the Asia cup, against another Arab, Muslim country, trust me, that nationalist identity is far more central than something that happened in Istanbul eighty years ago.
Which doesn't mean that the fall of the caliphate isn't one thread, one narrative, that plays an important role in the Muslim world. Of course it is important to some. But it isn't the only narrative. In fact, as a Shi'i, as Lewis is reciting this narrative, I was reading it and thinking "not my narrative." See, in my narrative, the one I was raised with, all that happened in 1918 was one occupier, a Sunni Turkish one, was replaced by another occupier, a British Christian one. I don't care, I don't pretend to care. You tell me back up 80 years from 2001 what's an important Muslim event, I think the Iraqi Shi'i uprising against the British in 1920. THAT's my history. Yes it's informed by religion, but by nation too. I have no idea what the Iranians were up to then. It doesn't play a part in my narrative, as a Shi'i Iraqi. The caliphate wouldn't have made by top ten, so little attention is given it in my narrative.
Muslims want Islamic constitutionalism because it reminds them of the classical golden era, some say? That's why Iraq has a constitutional provision respecting shari'a, it's similar to political theories of medievals, they continue? Again, you've projected some other history onto mine. To the Shi'a, there WAS NO classical golden era. We hate all those guys--Ibn Taymiyya, Harun al Rashid, Abu Hanifa, anyone in between these aren't people we have any affiliation with. We're not putting stuff into a constitution we write because of them. Our historical narrative is important to understanding why the Shi'a are so suspicious of Sunnis in Iraq and have done far too little to include them, I think. But that narrative (discussed here) gets no press, the one we keep hearing about is somebody else's.
Same conclusion for the supposed fascination we have with Saladdin liberating the Holy Land from the Crusades, a history we cannot seem to escape we are told. Except it's not my historical narrative, not the one I learned. In my (simplistic, as all of these are) narrative, the Christian dudes who called us infidels were replaced by some Sunni bloodthirsty thug whose main military feats were directed against the Shi'i empire that controlled North Africa. And I'm supposed to be happy for him why?
Take secular Arab nationalists, and their narrative has nothing at all to do with the caliphate, they aren't captivated by it, they actively celebrate its fall as part of the Arab revolt during World War I. They are ecstatic about the Turkish defeat, their colonizer had British people roaming its capital so what? And sometimes these narratives bump up against each other, the Shi'i secular nationalist, for example, who has to balance the glorification of Sunni exploits against non-Arabs as against oppression of Shi'a. These are all competing stories, one as against the other and from the muddle a diverse set of peoples with a diverse set of beliefs emerges far more nuanced and complex than a supposed fascination with one version of the medieval period.
And we haven't even left the Middle East yet. I lived in Indonesia nearly two years, I don't know how many Muslims there could tell you when the caliphate ended, or care. In another land, I think the general (fair) complaint among my black Muslim friends is that we American Muslim immigrants are not doing enough to meld ourselves onto an Islam that grew up here on American soil, among some of America's oldest inhabitants, excluding Native Americans of course. That narrative is more infused with Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X than the final Ottoman caliph, whatever his name was, I don't even know, I'd have to look it up on Wikipedia to find out, and I don't think I'm alone on that. By contrast, most Iraqis who have never been to America barely know who Malcolm X is, they know black Muslims from the one they've seen--Muhammad Ali.
And sure the Wahhabi funded extremists have managed to spread the narrative Lewis is peddling about the humiliation related to a fallen caliphate, but I'm wondering, what about the other voices? Don't they deserve to be heard? There are a lot of grievances in the Muslim world, plenty of anger and rage and humiliation to go around, but maybe not all of it actually relates to one particular version of history. Perhaps more nuance, more complexity, more understanding of the different trends and threads and stresses and strains might actually lead to a more sensible policy, adjusted by geographic region, nation, sect, in an attempt to be more sensitive to the variations in the wide and vast Muslim world.
Then we can stop suggesting that anything Iraq wrote in its constitution had anything to do with a medieval period the Shi'a despised, that Indonesians want nothing more than to see some Turkish leader establish authority over them from Istanbul, that American Muslims are uncomfortable with liberal democracy because someone from a medieval era, at a time when black Africans were kidnapped en masse and enslaved by Muslim empires, said we're supposed to be one happy House of Islam, and somehow we think we're supposed to listen to that guy. I think we can all handle just a bit more complexity than what we've been given.
HAH
In his pronouncements, bin Laden makes frequent references to history.
One of the most dramatic was his mention, in the October 7th videotape,
of the “humiliation and disgrace” that Islam has suffered for “more
than eighty years.” Most American—and, no doubt, European—observers of
the Middle Eastern scene began an anxious search for something that had
happened “more than eighty years” ago, and came up with various
answers. We can be fairly sure that bin Laden’s Muslim listeners—the
people he was addressing—picked up the allusion immediately and
appreciated its significance.
Lewis then goes on to explain that the eighty year reference was to the fall of the Caliphate. Apparently Muslims remain haunted by this humiliation, and unlike Americans, who think of history that is something that is past and therefore unimportant, Muslims are continually animated by their (slanted, inaccurate, biased) versions of history.So there's a lot that's really questionable about this--we Americans are to some extent animated and seek to self define ourselves by our own sense of US history, which is slanted and reductive. We base policy on these highly simplified historical perceptions all the time (Saddam is Hitler on one side, Iraq is Vietnam on the other.) And among Westerners the Americans are quite an ahistorical people. Most Greeks, for example, are vividly aware of their own historical narratives, and certainly use it to define their identities. In the Middle East much of the Arab Israeli dispute is a clash of two alternative narratives, a Jewish one and an Arab one, not one group with a keen sense of its own history and another that dismiss history as, in Lewis' words, "something that is unimportant". Does anyone know any Jewish person, let's say Western oriented, lets say American born, let's say who hasn't ever left US soil, who would dismiss the horrors of the Holocaust with a dismissive wave of "that's history"? Armenian Americans respecting a calamitous historical event no closer in time than the fall of the caliphate would they do that? Aren't they part of the West?
But it's the converse of this fallacy I wish to explore a bit more, not so much the importance to non Muslim peoples of perceived history (something I will call a historical narrative--a story spread among a people they use to define themselves, which ALWAYS is less nuanced and less complex than an historian would demand) but rather the supposed fascination of Muslim peoples in this one narrative that roots itself in the caliphate and the medieval world. A polity that defines itself as a "House of Islam" even as it is divided into nations, unable to come to grips with its own modernity.
Lewis' theory then dovetails well with SOME of my Islamic studies colleagues at law schools who actually despise him. This you see is why we pay so much attention to medieval theories of jihad. Because Muslims care about these! They remember well the destruction of the caliphate! These nations are artificial, they're fake, they don't even have a word for nation! These ideas range from simplistic to just false, the word watan means nation, in Arabic. I don't follow Lewis' etymology, and I don't really care. Words change meanings over time, and clearly clearly when an Arab refers to his watan, he means his nation. When Iraqis stand up and sign Mautani (variant of same word, watan), and fly their flags and wave their purple fingers and fill the streets of Baghdad when their team wins the Asia cup, against another Arab, Muslim country, trust me, that nationalist identity is far more central than something that happened in Istanbul eighty years ago.
Which doesn't mean that the fall of the caliphate isn't one thread, one narrative, that plays an important role in the Muslim world. Of course it is important to some. But it isn't the only narrative. In fact, as a Shi'i, as Lewis is reciting this narrative, I was reading it and thinking "not my narrative." See, in my narrative, the one I was raised with, all that happened in 1918 was one occupier, a Sunni Turkish one, was replaced by another occupier, a British Christian one. I don't care, I don't pretend to care. You tell me back up 80 years from 2001 what's an important Muslim event, I think the Iraqi Shi'i uprising against the British in 1920. THAT's my history. Yes it's informed by religion, but by nation too. I have no idea what the Iranians were up to then. It doesn't play a part in my narrative, as a Shi'i Iraqi. The caliphate wouldn't have made by top ten, so little attention is given it in my narrative.
Muslims want Islamic constitutionalism because it reminds them of the classical golden era, some say? That's why Iraq has a constitutional provision respecting shari'a, it's similar to political theories of medievals, they continue? Again, you've projected some other history onto mine. To the Shi'a, there WAS NO classical golden era. We hate all those guys--Ibn Taymiyya, Harun al Rashid, Abu Hanifa, anyone in between these aren't people we have any affiliation with. We're not putting stuff into a constitution we write because of them. Our historical narrative is important to understanding why the Shi'a are so suspicious of Sunnis in Iraq and have done far too little to include them, I think. But that narrative (discussed here) gets no press, the one we keep hearing about is somebody else's.
Same conclusion for the supposed fascination we have with Saladdin liberating the Holy Land from the Crusades, a history we cannot seem to escape we are told. Except it's not my historical narrative, not the one I learned. In my (simplistic, as all of these are) narrative, the Christian dudes who called us infidels were replaced by some Sunni bloodthirsty thug whose main military feats were directed against the Shi'i empire that controlled North Africa. And I'm supposed to be happy for him why?
Take secular Arab nationalists, and their narrative has nothing at all to do with the caliphate, they aren't captivated by it, they actively celebrate its fall as part of the Arab revolt during World War I. They are ecstatic about the Turkish defeat, their colonizer had British people roaming its capital so what? And sometimes these narratives bump up against each other, the Shi'i secular nationalist, for example, who has to balance the glorification of Sunni exploits against non-Arabs as against oppression of Shi'a. These are all competing stories, one as against the other and from the muddle a diverse set of peoples with a diverse set of beliefs emerges far more nuanced and complex than a supposed fascination with one version of the medieval period.
And we haven't even left the Middle East yet. I lived in Indonesia nearly two years, I don't know how many Muslims there could tell you when the caliphate ended, or care. In another land, I think the general (fair) complaint among my black Muslim friends is that we American Muslim immigrants are not doing enough to meld ourselves onto an Islam that grew up here on American soil, among some of America's oldest inhabitants, excluding Native Americans of course. That narrative is more infused with Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X than the final Ottoman caliph, whatever his name was, I don't even know, I'd have to look it up on Wikipedia to find out, and I don't think I'm alone on that. By contrast, most Iraqis who have never been to America barely know who Malcolm X is, they know black Muslims from the one they've seen--Muhammad Ali.
And sure the Wahhabi funded extremists have managed to spread the narrative Lewis is peddling about the humiliation related to a fallen caliphate, but I'm wondering, what about the other voices? Don't they deserve to be heard? There are a lot of grievances in the Muslim world, plenty of anger and rage and humiliation to go around, but maybe not all of it actually relates to one particular version of history. Perhaps more nuance, more complexity, more understanding of the different trends and threads and stresses and strains might actually lead to a more sensible policy, adjusted by geographic region, nation, sect, in an attempt to be more sensitive to the variations in the wide and vast Muslim world.
Then we can stop suggesting that anything Iraq wrote in its constitution had anything to do with a medieval period the Shi'a despised, that Indonesians want nothing more than to see some Turkish leader establish authority over them from Istanbul, that American Muslims are uncomfortable with liberal democracy because someone from a medieval era, at a time when black Africans were kidnapped en masse and enslaved by Muslim empires, said we're supposed to be one happy House of Islam, and somehow we think we're supposed to listen to that guy. I think we can all handle just a bit more complexity than what we've been given.
HAH
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