What the House of Islam Might Learn From Europe
If you follow much commentary on Islam in the modern nation state, then you've probably seen an argument along these lines:
We equate a secular state with modernity, but this is a Eurocentric vision, based on the fact that Europe found itself decimated by endless religious wars over heresy and orthodoxy. The Muslim world is different, and has a different history. Therefore, the lessons applicable to Europe are not applicable as to the Muslim world and we should stop trying to insist that they are. Not every place needs to develop its state model on European lines.
It's a fairly common theme, by no means a ubiquitous one, but something like it is commonly expressed in defense of the religious nation state. Personally, I'm not as concerned about the House of Islam historically, though we've spilled a fair amount of blood over religious questions too. More, less, who knows, the historians can tell me.
My own incredulity relates to how anyone living in our times could credibly come to this conclusion. Are you watching the news? The Arab world rises in democratic fervor, demands are made related to national citizenship, to government reform, to democratic participation, and do you want to know where they falter? I can tell you. They end where the sectarian fault lines begin. It is there where the dictators survive, their hegemony unaltered absent the extraordinary act of American invasion as in Iraq. For however appealing the demand of the "people" to alter the government, however romantic the attachment to democratic and popular rule, however emotional the sights and smells of Tahrir Square, they don't hold a candle in a raging debate over whether Omar or Ali was the better caliph 1500 years ago.
Am I wrong? Find me a Sunni mosque, even a progressive one, even in America, where the right of the Bahraini people to demand the fall of the regime is mentioned. You'll hear Syria, you'll hear Libya, you'll hear Egypt, but you won't hear Bahrain. In fact, you might even hear as I have in social gatherings that we have to intervene in Syria or we will lose it to Iran "just like the mistake we made in Iraq." In Iraq, America intervened to create democratic rule. In Syria, it refrains from doing so. The only way that the failure to intervene in Syria can be understood to be a mistake "like we made in Iraq" is in sectarian terms--both the intervention in the one and the lack of intervention in the other are prejudicial against Sunni interests. National citizenship and democratic participation founder on the shoals of deeply rooted sectarian animus, which rules wherever it rises. The person making the comparison probably didn't even realize he had reverted from democratic ideals into sectarian commitments, how easy the slide is for us.
And it works both directions, let's be clear. Find me a Shi'i mosque where the right of the Syrian people to change their regime is extolled. There you'll hear Bahrain and all about Sunni double standards, never mind that Hafez the butcher gets a pass despite human rights violations that are starting to make Qaddafi look a bit soft hearted.
I'm told that the Arab revolt succeeds where the army stands with the people and it founders where the army is willing to turn its guns on them. True, but look deeper. Why would a military composed of national citizens wish to turn their fire on their fellow citizens demanding and asserting their right to rule themselves? What causes them to think of such people as, to use Qaddafi's term, "rats" who deserve to be exterminated?
Easy, they don't see them as fellow citizens, they seem them as sectarian rivals. That woman isn't my fellow national aspiring to democratic participation, she's a Persian leaning Shi'i who wants Iran to take over my country, an Ali worshiping traitor. Shoot her, or rape her, or do whatever you want, the similarity of her passport to mine is of no moment. That 14 year old young man over there isn't part of the rising youth of my nation, its hope and its future, aspiring to great achievements. No he's a Sunni supremacist who is going to import Saudi type Wahhabism to repress us and deny us the ability to visit the graves of our Imams and their families. Put a bayonet through his filthy neck. The multisect societies that do exist democratically (Lebanon, Iraq) are better, yet they are racked by continual political crises and unable to form strong governments because of the perduring tensions.
We escaped Europe's dilemma? We are living Europe's nightmare. There's one way out, and that is to begin to realize that the state and affiliated political loyalties cannot and should not be defined in religious and sectarian terms, that to attempt to do it fails. (And, to be clear, the softer version of the Islamic state popular nowadays--declaring that a state should be governed by the "goals" of the shari'a? All my other well publicized problems with it aside, in the states that are composed of the two sects, that's just a nice way of demanding Sunni supremacy. It's judicial review based on amorphous Sunni medieval theories--just how do you think that goes down among the Shi'a?) If we dropped the religious affiliation, if we allowed that people will have their religious loyalties and they may be embraced, even with fervor, but as a form of political affiliation and as a means to project values onto the state, they will only lead to intolerance and bloodshed--if we did all that, then we might just take that next vital step toward successful, peaceful, economically prosperous societies.
But to do that, we'd have to learn from Europe's mistakes.
HAH
We equate a secular state with modernity, but this is a Eurocentric vision, based on the fact that Europe found itself decimated by endless religious wars over heresy and orthodoxy. The Muslim world is different, and has a different history. Therefore, the lessons applicable to Europe are not applicable as to the Muslim world and we should stop trying to insist that they are. Not every place needs to develop its state model on European lines.
It's a fairly common theme, by no means a ubiquitous one, but something like it is commonly expressed in defense of the religious nation state. Personally, I'm not as concerned about the House of Islam historically, though we've spilled a fair amount of blood over religious questions too. More, less, who knows, the historians can tell me.
My own incredulity relates to how anyone living in our times could credibly come to this conclusion. Are you watching the news? The Arab world rises in democratic fervor, demands are made related to national citizenship, to government reform, to democratic participation, and do you want to know where they falter? I can tell you. They end where the sectarian fault lines begin. It is there where the dictators survive, their hegemony unaltered absent the extraordinary act of American invasion as in Iraq. For however appealing the demand of the "people" to alter the government, however romantic the attachment to democratic and popular rule, however emotional the sights and smells of Tahrir Square, they don't hold a candle in a raging debate over whether Omar or Ali was the better caliph 1500 years ago.
Am I wrong? Find me a Sunni mosque, even a progressive one, even in America, where the right of the Bahraini people to demand the fall of the regime is mentioned. You'll hear Syria, you'll hear Libya, you'll hear Egypt, but you won't hear Bahrain. In fact, you might even hear as I have in social gatherings that we have to intervene in Syria or we will lose it to Iran "just like the mistake we made in Iraq." In Iraq, America intervened to create democratic rule. In Syria, it refrains from doing so. The only way that the failure to intervene in Syria can be understood to be a mistake "like we made in Iraq" is in sectarian terms--both the intervention in the one and the lack of intervention in the other are prejudicial against Sunni interests. National citizenship and democratic participation founder on the shoals of deeply rooted sectarian animus, which rules wherever it rises. The person making the comparison probably didn't even realize he had reverted from democratic ideals into sectarian commitments, how easy the slide is for us.
And it works both directions, let's be clear. Find me a Shi'i mosque where the right of the Syrian people to change their regime is extolled. There you'll hear Bahrain and all about Sunni double standards, never mind that Hafez the butcher gets a pass despite human rights violations that are starting to make Qaddafi look a bit soft hearted.
I'm told that the Arab revolt succeeds where the army stands with the people and it founders where the army is willing to turn its guns on them. True, but look deeper. Why would a military composed of national citizens wish to turn their fire on their fellow citizens demanding and asserting their right to rule themselves? What causes them to think of such people as, to use Qaddafi's term, "rats" who deserve to be exterminated?
Easy, they don't see them as fellow citizens, they seem them as sectarian rivals. That woman isn't my fellow national aspiring to democratic participation, she's a Persian leaning Shi'i who wants Iran to take over my country, an Ali worshiping traitor. Shoot her, or rape her, or do whatever you want, the similarity of her passport to mine is of no moment. That 14 year old young man over there isn't part of the rising youth of my nation, its hope and its future, aspiring to great achievements. No he's a Sunni supremacist who is going to import Saudi type Wahhabism to repress us and deny us the ability to visit the graves of our Imams and their families. Put a bayonet through his filthy neck. The multisect societies that do exist democratically (Lebanon, Iraq) are better, yet they are racked by continual political crises and unable to form strong governments because of the perduring tensions.
We escaped Europe's dilemma? We are living Europe's nightmare. There's one way out, and that is to begin to realize that the state and affiliated political loyalties cannot and should not be defined in religious and sectarian terms, that to attempt to do it fails. (And, to be clear, the softer version of the Islamic state popular nowadays--declaring that a state should be governed by the "goals" of the shari'a? All my other well publicized problems with it aside, in the states that are composed of the two sects, that's just a nice way of demanding Sunni supremacy. It's judicial review based on amorphous Sunni medieval theories--just how do you think that goes down among the Shi'a?) If we dropped the religious affiliation, if we allowed that people will have their religious loyalties and they may be embraced, even with fervor, but as a form of political affiliation and as a means to project values onto the state, they will only lead to intolerance and bloodshed--if we did all that, then we might just take that next vital step toward successful, peaceful, economically prosperous societies.
But to do that, we'd have to learn from Europe's mistakes.
HAH
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