Arabs, Muslim and the Secular State: The Dangers of Conflation
As I was sort of reading through the Noah Feldman book I just reviewed (again my review to be published at Middle East Law and Governance is online in draft form here, I came upon a sentence appears that startled me.
In the process of a general theme of linking Islamist movements throughout nearly all of the Muslim world to the desire for a rule of law, it said something to the effect that secular calls for rule of law and democracy that are divorced from Islam have not had much resonance "in the Arab world" and that "the only rallying call with staying power in the Arabic-speaking countries is the claim that the presidential governments in power have abandoned the teachings of Islam." (Lebanon is later exempted).
There are two problems with this evidence, though I'm less focussed here on the book and the context in which it was made than this one statement and the larger implications I can draw from it that really have less to do with the book. (The review deals with the book itself more thoroughly). I'll deal with one in this post, and the other in the next one I do, probably Wednesday. The first I think is perfectly obvious to any Pakistani, or Kurd (as my wife will attest), or Indonesian, or Iranian, or African, or African American or even Arab Muslim. Surprisingly though, I've found it shockingly zooms past most white folks, even the ones who are extremely well read in Islam.
Try it with Pakistanis--say "come on, democracy in the Muslim world cannot work without Islam, how many Arab countries do you know of where lawyers actually would protest the action of a dictatorial government in any significant way for any reason other than that it was not Islamic enough" and see the reaction you get, from the country whose Muslim lawyers have done the world of Islam proud. The answer will be, ummm, don't know about the Arabs, but as for us, well watch the damned news, friend. Indonesians as well, it wasn't the shari'a that brought down Suharto. They voted for a woman in large numbers, Iwas there, her face, unveiled, hair showing, was everywhere, the visage of the resistance.
The fact is that what has or has not happened in the Arab world is almost irrelevant to determining whether or not democracy and the secular rule of law is possible in a manner that will please contemporary Muslims. Why? Because the Arabs are an ethnicity, and Islam is a religion. And that ethnicity has a strong Christian minority and even as to its Muslims is composed of about 15% of the world's Muslims and not at all representative of the states working, sporadically and fitfully, but with some resilience, with democratic rule. I think if a Democratic pollster were to say "Americans are going hard for Obama, we project a 50 state sweep" and then used, even as a tangential piece of evidence, even as just one piece of a larger puzzle, that overwhelming numbers of blacks intended to vote for Obama and that proves it, well I think that would make The Daily Show. That kind of generalization is not the problem in America, the problem is generally the opposite, the media completely ignores the entire black community almost all of the time, except when Jeremiah Wright says whatever he says, and then it's news. When it comes to Islam, it's all reversed, the Arabs become the representatives of Islam, the central front in its authenticity. Yet there's less Arab Muslims by percentage than black Americans. Go figure.
It hardly begins here. From third grade, I've had to tell people what the difference is between an Arab and a Muslim, and while I can forgive Miss Diamond/Mrs. York (broke my third grade heart when she got married) for the conflation, it managed to repeat itself over and over again, to the point where I have to take a deep breath when a PROFESSOR at college responded to my offhand remark that George Mitchell is an Arab with "no, he goes to church." "Yes he's an Arab Christian" only got me a stare, as if I had just suggested he was a little green man from Mars.
To be clear, Noah Feldman knows the difference between an Arab and a Muslim and did no more I believe than commit an innocent and inadvertent error. This post really isn't about that. I cannot imagine that if one went through my works, they couldn't likewise find a mistake here or there. Actually, I can say more, I can think of mistakes I have made, in footnotes or even in text, or at least simplifications of ideas far more nuanced than I have allowed. But here, this error passed the notice of the reviewers, and the prestigious Princeton University Press, and as I said even people who should know better, it sort of glides on by when I say it. You point it out, and then they say "oh yeah . .. . " It's the nonArab Muslims who glare at me the Arab Muslim, saying with their eyes, you damn bigot, there's more to Islam than your benighted lands.
So why is this a problem, that Westerners, even learned ones, (as noted if this was one person it's one thing but really it's not, it's a general conflation that folks in the West can't help but make sometimes) can't keep the two straight or at least if not paying attention let it slip by? It is not just a civics lesson. It is because I think there is a movement, a growing one in the Muslim world, that has begun on its geographical edges and is working its way inwards (again, geographically) in which devout Muslims, sincere Muslims, praying Muslims, believing Muslims, are working secular democracies. Turkey's AK party is an example, and Anwar Ibrahim has clearly been working in this direction too. I would say the same of Yudhyono in Indonesia, who has as many Muslims in his country as there are Arab Muslims (meaning that if Indonesia is running a democracy, fitfully, with highly marginalized Islamist tendencies, even assuming the Arabs cannot do it, the Muslims are tied in terms of their ability to do it). Sure the Indonesians had a thing with banning the Ahmadis (posted here), but generally, you look at the law in places like Turkey or Indonesia, and making Islam more part of the legal system is not at all a prominent part of the agenda. I think that's making its way to Iraq, where even Sistani is not seeking to project shari'a much through the state. Or at least I can say there are plenty of calls for rule of law and more democracy among the opposition groups in all of these countries that are certainly not tied to a claim that the current regime is not Islamic enough. Even those who subscribe to AK or Anwar a hidden agenda (not me, not me) will concede that, even they claim the agenda is "hidden", if it was so resonant they wouldn't be so quiet about it you'd think.
Now I think the Arab/Islam conflation, which I think is just endemic in Western society no matter how many times explained in books or articles and the like, is quite damaging to this story. People aren't seeing this changing reality, that Islam IS developing a secular rule of law tradition, where religion is not marginalized, by any means, but faith separated from state governance. Theorists aren't thinking about how this might work, how Muslims might view it, how it is that hundreds of millions of the world's Muslims are now living in states with Muslim majorities and are both religious personally and not committed to the realization of shari'a in the state. How can this be? Why is everything assuming the law will reflect shari'a to any devout Muslim and so how do we change shari'a not to stone adulterers, why isn't anyone noticing nobody gives a damn in most Muslim countries about stoning adulterers, they have a transplanted criminal code they are happy with? Why are they happy, what's the theory that marries Islam, devout Islam, to a secular code? It's dramatically understudied in my view, and deeply and fundamentally undertheorized,and I think it's because, in our blinded world, nobody is looking past the Arabs, and the most extreme among them.
HAH
In the process of a general theme of linking Islamist movements throughout nearly all of the Muslim world to the desire for a rule of law, it said something to the effect that secular calls for rule of law and democracy that are divorced from Islam have not had much resonance "in the Arab world" and that "the only rallying call with staying power in the Arabic-speaking countries is the claim that the presidential governments in power have abandoned the teachings of Islam." (Lebanon is later exempted).
There are two problems with this evidence, though I'm less focussed here on the book and the context in which it was made than this one statement and the larger implications I can draw from it that really have less to do with the book. (The review deals with the book itself more thoroughly). I'll deal with one in this post, and the other in the next one I do, probably Wednesday. The first I think is perfectly obvious to any Pakistani, or Kurd (as my wife will attest), or Indonesian, or Iranian, or African, or African American or even Arab Muslim. Surprisingly though, I've found it shockingly zooms past most white folks, even the ones who are extremely well read in Islam.
Try it with Pakistanis--say "come on, democracy in the Muslim world cannot work without Islam, how many Arab countries do you know of where lawyers actually would protest the action of a dictatorial government in any significant way for any reason other than that it was not Islamic enough" and see the reaction you get, from the country whose Muslim lawyers have done the world of Islam proud. The answer will be, ummm, don't know about the Arabs, but as for us, well watch the damned news, friend. Indonesians as well, it wasn't the shari'a that brought down Suharto. They voted for a woman in large numbers, Iwas there, her face, unveiled, hair showing, was everywhere, the visage of the resistance.
The fact is that what has or has not happened in the Arab world is almost irrelevant to determining whether or not democracy and the secular rule of law is possible in a manner that will please contemporary Muslims. Why? Because the Arabs are an ethnicity, and Islam is a religion. And that ethnicity has a strong Christian minority and even as to its Muslims is composed of about 15% of the world's Muslims and not at all representative of the states working, sporadically and fitfully, but with some resilience, with democratic rule. I think if a Democratic pollster were to say "Americans are going hard for Obama, we project a 50 state sweep" and then used, even as a tangential piece of evidence, even as just one piece of a larger puzzle, that overwhelming numbers of blacks intended to vote for Obama and that proves it, well I think that would make The Daily Show. That kind of generalization is not the problem in America, the problem is generally the opposite, the media completely ignores the entire black community almost all of the time, except when Jeremiah Wright says whatever he says, and then it's news. When it comes to Islam, it's all reversed, the Arabs become the representatives of Islam, the central front in its authenticity. Yet there's less Arab Muslims by percentage than black Americans. Go figure.
It hardly begins here. From third grade, I've had to tell people what the difference is between an Arab and a Muslim, and while I can forgive Miss Diamond/Mrs. York (broke my third grade heart when she got married) for the conflation, it managed to repeat itself over and over again, to the point where I have to take a deep breath when a PROFESSOR at college responded to my offhand remark that George Mitchell is an Arab with "no, he goes to church." "Yes he's an Arab Christian" only got me a stare, as if I had just suggested he was a little green man from Mars.
To be clear, Noah Feldman knows the difference between an Arab and a Muslim and did no more I believe than commit an innocent and inadvertent error. This post really isn't about that. I cannot imagine that if one went through my works, they couldn't likewise find a mistake here or there. Actually, I can say more, I can think of mistakes I have made, in footnotes or even in text, or at least simplifications of ideas far more nuanced than I have allowed. But here, this error passed the notice of the reviewers, and the prestigious Princeton University Press, and as I said even people who should know better, it sort of glides on by when I say it. You point it out, and then they say "oh yeah . .. . " It's the nonArab Muslims who glare at me the Arab Muslim, saying with their eyes, you damn bigot, there's more to Islam than your benighted lands.
So why is this a problem, that Westerners, even learned ones, (as noted if this was one person it's one thing but really it's not, it's a general conflation that folks in the West can't help but make sometimes) can't keep the two straight or at least if not paying attention let it slip by? It is not just a civics lesson. It is because I think there is a movement, a growing one in the Muslim world, that has begun on its geographical edges and is working its way inwards (again, geographically) in which devout Muslims, sincere Muslims, praying Muslims, believing Muslims, are working secular democracies. Turkey's AK party is an example, and Anwar Ibrahim has clearly been working in this direction too. I would say the same of Yudhyono in Indonesia, who has as many Muslims in his country as there are Arab Muslims (meaning that if Indonesia is running a democracy, fitfully, with highly marginalized Islamist tendencies, even assuming the Arabs cannot do it, the Muslims are tied in terms of their ability to do it). Sure the Indonesians had a thing with banning the Ahmadis (posted here), but generally, you look at the law in places like Turkey or Indonesia, and making Islam more part of the legal system is not at all a prominent part of the agenda. I think that's making its way to Iraq, where even Sistani is not seeking to project shari'a much through the state. Or at least I can say there are plenty of calls for rule of law and more democracy among the opposition groups in all of these countries that are certainly not tied to a claim that the current regime is not Islamic enough. Even those who subscribe to AK or Anwar a hidden agenda (not me, not me) will concede that, even they claim the agenda is "hidden", if it was so resonant they wouldn't be so quiet about it you'd think.
Now I think the Arab/Islam conflation, which I think is just endemic in Western society no matter how many times explained in books or articles and the like, is quite damaging to this story. People aren't seeing this changing reality, that Islam IS developing a secular rule of law tradition, where religion is not marginalized, by any means, but faith separated from state governance. Theorists aren't thinking about how this might work, how Muslims might view it, how it is that hundreds of millions of the world's Muslims are now living in states with Muslim majorities and are both religious personally and not committed to the realization of shari'a in the state. How can this be? Why is everything assuming the law will reflect shari'a to any devout Muslim and so how do we change shari'a not to stone adulterers, why isn't anyone noticing nobody gives a damn in most Muslim countries about stoning adulterers, they have a transplanted criminal code they are happy with? Why are they happy, what's the theory that marries Islam, devout Islam, to a secular code? It's dramatically understudied in my view, and deeply and fundamentally undertheorized,and I think it's because, in our blinded world, nobody is looking past the Arabs, and the most extreme among them.
HAH
Perhaps this Arab/Islam conflation has empirical basis on the ground that non-Arab Muslims still look to the Islamic Middle East in a special way, primarily because of its geographic location as the birthplace of Islam. This is not to say the conflation is proper. Although of course the degree of influence varies, Muslims outside the Middle East are still affected somewhat by what happens in the region, and I think its because the concept of a worldwide umma still holds, even in this day and age when the trend in Muslim states seems to be in the direction of liberal constitutionalism.
Also, extremists loom large in Western consciousness for obvious reasons. And perhaps this is why theorists choose to use vocabulary that will speak to them, e.g. employing the God's-law-over human-law rhetoric therefore prompts responses of the Islam-and-democracy compatibility argument, although the unintended consequence is that it ignores the bigger Muslim world where such questions do not even figure in the debate.
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To some extent this is true, although I am not sure it is as true inasmuch as governance is concerned. That is, going to Hajj some significant number of Muslims in Indonesia I saw at Jakarta airport were dressed in full Arab getup, because presumably this was the thing to wear when you visit God's House. Similarly, Saudi by virtue of the Hajj almost unilaterally gets to declare the date on which the major Islamic holiday Eid al Adha falls. So many prayer leaders turn out to be Arabs. Again I'd break the monolith, I think Iranians definitey do not ascribe much value to Arab religious opinion, Shi'a Arabs are accused of the opposite phenomenon than that you describe (we supposedly are too tied to Iran), but yes, the notion that the Arabs have some level of authority in determining religious questions or matters has some play.
That said, I don't think Muslims turn to the Arabs when they are trying to figure out how to run a country quite as much, for obvious reasons. First, we're demonstrably bad at that. Second, once someone has decided that the state's involvement in implementing religious law should be somewhere between small and nonexistent, which seems to be all but consensus in places like Indonesia or Turkey, for example, (or even sharply limited to areas selected by the secular state and its rulemaking authorities, as in Malaysia), then the Arab primacy over religious issues necessarily is going to mean less to those countries in matters of law as oppposed to, say, religious obligation.
HAH
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The first thing I do when we discuss Islam in my class is ask students what geographic region is host to the greatest number of Muslims in the world.
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And how many think it's Saudi Arabia?
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Usually, they simply say, "the Middle East." They're also surprised to learn of Muslims in China, that some Arabs are not Muslims, that Arabic is not the spoken language of most Muslims....
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