March 26, 2002

Andre Malraux in his Antimemoirs writes of the "East…likened to an old Arab on his donkey sleeping the inviolable sleep of Islam". Hegel too thought that the Orient was in a long winter sleep. For Marx the situation was worse. Since the Orient was dominated by despotism, there were no classes, so they were stuck in the Asian Mode of Production, a limbo where nothing of significance happened or could happen over the centuries.

Osama bin Ladin has certainly shattered those illusions. All of a sudden, the Americans, safe in their cocoon of North American "isolationism", have been rudely awakened to the dangers of "wars of civilization" almost like Star Wars in science fiction. Muslim "hordes" fired up with religious zealotry are said to be preparing to wage suicidal war on "the West". At least that is the impression one receives from watching American television since the tragedy of Sept.11.

The "west" has often had periods of paranoia about this supposedly "alien" religion. Spain has had a longer time to contemplate her relationship to Islam which had one of its most brilliant periods on her own territory. Seven centuries of Andalusian Islam is a remarkable historical legacy. At other times, the relationship with the West has ranged between hostility, curiosity, denigration, domination, disdain and now fear.

The problem of "modernization" in Islam needs to be placed into this witches cauldron of political attitudes towards Islam in the West. First of all, who are the Muslims? The variety of cultures from Senegal and Mauritania in Africa to the Philippines, from Zanzibar to Tatarstan in Russia, from Sarajevo to China, not to speak of Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam and Birmingham, Islam obviously covers a vast and enormously varied range of peoples. There is no central organization, no central authority. Each country has a somewhat unique way of handling "official" Islam, with its schools and legal traditions. Then there is "unofficial" Islam of ten taking the form of "Sufi" brotherhoods. These provide a tenuous network from one country to another, sometimes active, often dormant , but always present.

Is there an "Ulema", a learned college of Islamic savants, who can provide some order to this complicated scene? When the Ottoman Empire, the Safavid or the Qajar Empires in Iran, or the Mogul Empire in India - incidentally, all of them Turkish dynasties - were in action, there might have been some order to "official" Islam. With the break up of these empires all semblance of "official" order that all Muslims would agree on, has disappeared.

Instead we have the "official" Islam of Saudi Arabia, a rather puritanical affair - Wahabi - certainly not acceptable to Turks or Iranians or indeed to many Arabs, which is being exported to whoever is willing to listen. Billions of oil dollars can be very persuasive. They have been effective in getting their message through to Pakistan, Afghanistan and perhaps further East. Many educational institutions have been set up to promote this form of Islam in many places, Europe and Central Asia included. All this seems to go with the kind of autocracy practiced in Saudi Arabia which is rejected out of hand by Turkey, Iran and many others. Khomeini had another version, now being softened by President Hatami; this version is in hot debate even within Iran. But then, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt have their own versions of autocratic states with various approaches to "official" Islam. Unofficial, quietist, more individualized "brotherhoods" of Sufi Islam flourishes in all these countries. There is a strong current of interest in a more "personal" faith, less political, more spiritual and private. Some speak of it as a "protestant" Islam. "The door of interpretation &endash; closed since al-Ghazzali (d.1111) - must be opened", it is said. So, there is much talk of a "reform" in Islam especially in Turkey, and Turkish speaking countries in Central Asia, and other places.

Into this amazingly complex picture, then, comes Osama bin Ladin with his message of "war" and "struggle" (Jihad) against the "infidel". This falls on receptive ears across this part of the world already suffering from the immense difference between the rich and the poor, the deep poverty of the masses no longer tied to the soil, the vast metropolises of the "Third World" struggling to manage from day to day. As if these grievances were not enough, more fertile ground is available. We have the mind bending violence of what is going on in Israel, West Bank and Gaza, and the perceived suspicious role of Big Brother, the US. It is all a combustible mixture. Add on the bombing of Afghanistan, a country that was already ruined by decades of civil war, desperately torn between the ambitions of the Saudi's against Iran, Pakistan against India, not to speak of the games of Russia and China and you have the makings of really serious trouble.

Did you say "modernization" in Islam? The Turks have been trying it. They had learned much from Auguste Comte - "Ordem et Progresso" - a tradition which is very much alive among "secular" Turks. The subject is debated by many who take an entire range of theological positions every day in newspapers with circulations in the millions. The feminists too are much in evidence. The "secular" tradition has a long history going back into the 19th century. The "modernizers" in Turkey are watching all this ferment in the Islamic world from their perch in NATO (and their alliance with Israel). Where it will all go is not so certain.

One thing is sure, the more pressure that is placed on the freedom of expression, or the freedom of worship, the more the younger generations will turn to the symbols of Islam as a form of resistance. It is through resistance to "oppression" that religions grow. Resistance breeds solidarity. The opposite is also true: when it is the religious establishment that puts the pressure on, as now in Iran, then the young turn away from it. Did we not see all this in the French and the Russian Revolutions?

© TFF and the author

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