Islam in the eyes of the West
Islam in the eyes of the West
(essay)
The representations prevailing in the West about the Muslim
world stem from a complex elaboration process where historical and political
factors are intertwined.
Historical and geographical proximity always means complex
and competitive relations between the geopolitical entities concerned. And this
has certainly been the case between the European and the Muslim world since the
Middle Ages and implied handing over an historical memory of conflicts. The
rivalry between Islam and Chistianity, between Al-Andalus and the Christian
kingdoms, between the Christian and Ottoman empires triggered conflicts of
interests and ideologies tending to turn the other into the Devil. You just
have to read Amin Maalouf's book "The Crusades seen by the Arabs" or
to sea Youssef Chahine's film "Saladin" to realize that their
interpretation of such historic events is just the opposite of the one we have
built in the West with a reverse symbolism. Nevertheless, the distorsions
brought about by such a situation did not prevent the development of mutual
influence. The Bizantine Empire had close links to the Omeyas and th Abbasis in
the East (even closer than with the European Christian kingdoms), there will be
constant economic and cultutral exchanges between Al-Andalus and the Christian
kingdoms just as the westernization of medieval Islam is an undeniable historic
process (Sicily, the Iberian peninsula, the Balkans).
However, the modern and contemporary times witnessed the
development by the West of an ideology based on western cultural superiority,
which will be the corner stone of its relations with others, and more
intensively so with Islam, giving rise to what apparently looked like a cultural
gap but that had, in effect, deep political roots.
The time when Jews and Muslims were expelled from Spain, as
well as the discovery of America represent the starting point of a process
whereby Europe sees itself as a close identity and proclaims it is the only one
to possess the attributes of mankind, considering as a consequence other
peoples as inferior. The ideological elaboration process that supports this
European vision was completed during the Renaissance and is still at play
nowadays. It has to do with a selective interpretation of History, which
eradicates the East from European thinking and gives birth to the myth of
Greco-roman culture being its sole and only original source. In other words,
the founding mith of European thinking expelled radically the oriental
contribution, and within this contribution, the significant role played by
Muslim thinking in the safeguard and revitalization of hellenistic philosophy
as well as in the development of a rationalistic philosophy of its own. As a
result, the concept of two different isolated worlds that do not have the least
common heritage, flourished.
Later on, with the development of colonialism, we came to
consider European culture as superior to all others and to look upon the
cultures of colonized peoples as inferior. Since then, Europe is infused with a
deep cultural ethnocentricism through which it looks upon other cultures in an
essentialist manner (that is to say as if they were closed up, inmutable and
monolithic, incapable of progress nor evolution, in a way that is determinant
for their future). As a result we tend to consider that the notions of
progress, dynamism and innovation belong to European civilization, that was
then transformed in Western, and it should be universally imitated. At a later
stage, when the anti-colonial movement developed in Europe, it will question
the legimacy of the methods used (political domination and economic
exploitation), but not the vocation of the West to serve as the cultural model
that would enable the world to modernize. Progress and development could not be
but the identical reproduction of what had happened in the West.
In the Arab and Muslim world, the colonial vision at work
will look upon the native cultural heritage and trsnmit the idea that everything
that came from from the Islamic heritage was backward and contrary to progress
and modernity. From then on, the idea according to which Islam and modernity
are mutually exclusive gained more and more strength, the only valued
contribution will be the one coming from Arab and Muslim intellectuals who are
close to European thinking, since this is yet an other way to stress their
dependance vis à vis Western supremacy.
The problem is that the belief in such a supremacy prevailed
also among the nationalist elites that lead the way to independance and then
constitued the governments of the newly born Nation - States, which were
convinced that the ideal solution lied in the imitation of the West.
As a consequence, the post-colonial value system in the
Muslim world turned its back on islamic legitimacy and culture as it launched
its political and economic modernization process, and thus took over the
symbolic anti-islamic vision of the Western model. Far from renovating or
updating the pre-colonial legal, political and cultural framework, the
principle of "islamic authenticity", that was obsessively repeated by
the official propaganda, turned into the intouchable pilar of islamic heritage,
and remained completely left out of the process of building a modern State.
As a consequence, the State will leave behind, and even
suppress, just as the Europeans had done, thecmodernist trends within Muslim
reformist movements. On the contrary, it supported the more traditional ulemas,
and granted them official status through the "Councils of Ulemas"
that were set up by governments, so that their fatwas could be used as devices
to give islamic legitimacy to any position, opinion or decision taken by the
regime. In turn, The governments rewarded these ultra-conservative ulemas by
allowing them to control the social model of Muslim society. They became the
censors of society and caretakers of tradition, and thus prevented any change
or social reform as well as any modernist interpretation of Islam. This is how
the Arab States closed the door on new interpretations or readings of Muslim
tradition aimed at adapting it to the modern world, for the greatest
satisfaction of the Western world, convinced that the world od Islam is
incapable of producing modernity.
This concept shared both by the West and the westernized
elites of the Arab and Muslim world came to a crisis in the seventies when the
value system put in place by the first post-colonial generation revealed all of
its failures. The value system was based on the socio-economic model of the all
protecting state, on pan-arabism. socialism and anti-imperialism, focused on
the fight against Israel. The overall failure of such principles (acute
socio-economic crisis, corruption, authoritarian political system, loss of
political influence as a regional group within the international community and
striking defeat in the fight against Israel with the loss of the 1967 war as a
symbolic date) created a growing gap from the seventies onward between
government and society. And within society, the gap was even wider with the
most relevant sector, (in demographic terms) that is to say the young people,
the following generation who make up for the vast majority: over 60% of the
total population in the Arab world to-day are under 20 years of age. Confronted
with the overall failure of the political and ideological models derived from
the West, this new generation will feel attracted by a new model, that contrary
to what the first nationalist generation had done, was inspired by their own
cultural heritage and would build an up-dated model based on their own
cultural, historical and legal universe. This explains why, from the eighties,
this part of the world has gone through a process of Islamic cultural
affirmation, that politically identifies with the reformist islamist parties.
Or, to say things differently, after the experience of
failure, in terms of political and economic independance, there is in the Arab
and Muslim world to-day a strong feeling rising from the sphere that was long
most neglected by the nationalist elites who built the State, that is to say
the sphere of cultural identity and independance, which in the Arab world is
closely linked to the Islamic framework. This is where reformist islamism
anwers, in sociological terms, the need felt by a vast proportion of Muslim
populations to build a new, modern, democratic order based on their own culture
and identity. What is expected from the West is respect and acknowledgement,
however this revitilazation of Islam is not aimed against the West. What is
questioned is the way the specificity of the Western cultural universe has been
arbitrarily raised to the status of absolute universal standard. When islamists
express their resentement against the West, this does not mean that they
despise its values of progress and development, or of public liberties, but
simply that they reject the arrogance of the West, and the double standards
that it applies to question such as the fight for human rights, democracy or
the ever pending Palestinian question.
In the West, instead of trying to understand the causes and
depth of the social and political evolution going on in the Muslim world, we
have concentrated on "islamic fundamentalism" while focusing the
analysis of what happens in this part of the world on the cultural difference
between "them" and "us", with no proper attention as to
what consequences international politics have on the Middle East region.
The phantasm of "islamic fundamentalism" has proved
useful to feed prejudice and strengthen essentialist cultural visions of Islam
as well as legitimate authoritarian governments in many Arab and Muslim
countries. However, the most important aspect probably is the analytical
confusion around the notion of islamist fundamentalism which prevented western
societies to understand the diversity of the social and political situation in
the Arab and Muslim world and what the real problems in the area are. The
dominant opinion on islamists in the West has been unable to make the
difference - and this is where the problem lies - between reformist islamists
(the majority, respecful of law and opposed to violence), religious
ultra-conservative circles (supported by goverments themselves) and radical
islamists (a minority, blown out of proportion by the media). This lack of
insight reveals the great ignorance of Western public opinion about the Muslim
world.
The cultural explanation of political situations
In the beginning of the nineties, an other historic process
took place that reinforced Western superiority complex vis a vis Islam and the
overall anti-islamic vision presert in Western societies, I mean the legitimacy
of a one-polar world and in is wake, the globalization process. With this new
situation, the West set up a mecanism that tends to locate the origin of conflicts
in the cultural difference between peoples, eliminating thus other relevant
factors, such as the growing economic gap between various regions in the world.
Globalization means a global capitalist system but not a
global market, social problems are not a priority in development programs,
foreign investment mainly target developed countries, economic growth in the
developing countries takes place in a catastrophic social framework and as a
consequence does not have positive effects for the population. Globalization
also means giving up gradually the fight for human rights since economic
interests prevail over democratic political reform, it also means having to
face the consequenses of the ever growing depreciation towards non-Western
cultures (the Muslims being at the fore front, but we should not forget other
parts of the world, like the fight of nativeLatin American Indians).
As a consequence, the essentialist vision of the Others'
culture, and especially the Muslim's, will gain even more influence. The
framework of Islam is thought of as rigid, anchoring society in the past,
tending to regression, as if Islam alone determined the fututre of these
peoples. Islam is then often interpreted as the general source of History but
also of the future of Arabs and Muslims, and it is seen as determinist and
omnipresent. Such analysis think of Muslim societies as complete, close up
entities, as if they were not in constant evolution, transforming their
identities, their visions, their culture and institutions, according to new
circumstances and situations. These theories easily turn in an "islamic
exception" situations that in fact exist in many other parts of the world,
and that can be explained by a variety of political, economic and social
factors. It was not very difficult in such circumstances to convince public
opinion in the West that what happens in the Muslim world is always related to
an irrational wave of cultural and religious anti-western fanaticism, while in
reality governments themselves, strongly supported by the West, are greatly
responsible for the present situation mainly because of their resistance to
democratization.
One should not forget that the Gulf War was the first
instance staging this new order. It not only meant U. S. supremacy in the world,
it was also used to give more weight to Western domination over others, and
more specifically over Arab and Muslims. What was in theory a fight against a
specific tyran in a specific Arab country (even if it aimed at protecting other
tyrans from the area), turned also into a cultural world crusade against Islam.
This transformation was very useful in order to mobilize just
about everybody in the West, and define with general approbation the general
orientation of Western policy in the area. That is to say: to protect Israeli
interests as well as the energy sources in the Gulf, to support allied Arab
dictatorships that depend dramatically from the West, to build a new global
concept based on the existence of "legitimate" and "rogue"
states, whereby one can identify supposed and uncertain threats in order to
justify enormous military expenses in the region (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab
Emirates and Koweit alone spent 44,2 billion dollars beween 1990 and 1994, for
the great benefit of Western armement indutries).
The promotion of democracy and human rights were left behind
(read Amnisty International and Human Rights Watch reports), while the West put
together an ad hoc litterrature in order to avoid having to make a real
political analysis and to find a justification for its policies in the region,
focusing on the so-called "cultural question", that is so cherished
by Western public opinion. ( Samuel Huntington published his theory on the
"clash of civilizations" in 1993).
This theory will serve first of all as the ideological basis
on which Western supremacy will be solemnly consecrated while other cultures,
would be discriminated against in regions of the world where Western interests
are dominant, at political, economic and military level, and where active
forces refuse to accept such domination or superiority. The principle of the
cultural threat posed by the Other being thus sustained, it becomes possible to
dehumanize the sufferings expierenced by civilian populations that derive from
Western international policies. And more specifically, the fear around the
"islamic factor" will mean as a consequence that Western societies
turned insentive to the situation of the Kurds, the Palestinians, the Irakis,
the Afghans, etc... a situation that is rooted in the convergence of interests
of local dictatorial regimes and the West's.
In such circumstances, the Arab and Muslim populations resent
the situation with a deep feeling of "humilation" (a very far
reaching cultural notion, since it means that one is denied respect and
consideration), because of the number of conflicts where the "civilized
"international community does not show a real determination to solve
problems with justice and democracy. But this situation does not imply in our
societies a feeling of sympathy with the victims, on the contrary, because of
the anti-islamic cultural essentialist theory, the people are deprived of their
dignity and turned into fake enemies and potential massive threat,
"because they hate our civilization and our values".
All this brings us to the conclusion that the dominant view
that prevails in Western societies on the islamic threat or the civilization
conflict between Islam and the West is first and foremost a tool that is used
in order to justify the effects of Western policies on the Muslim world in the
eyes of our own societies.
There are many arguments that say that the Muslim world has
remained a prisonner of its historic memory, that it has not been able to go
beyond the trauma of colonialism, and renovate through the implementation of
the modern values that colonialism had revealed and the organization of an
extensive social and political debate; that it has not been able to solve the
question of political legitimacy because it did not succeed in developing
workable models, or because intellectuals did not play their role as critics
within society, and that all this is not the U. S. nor Europe's fault. But this
is only half true. The Muslim world is not an hostage of the past, since
foreign intervention was not limited to colonialism itself but has been ongoing
up to now, and even more so since the Gulf War.
There has also been a responsibility of the West in the
failure of all attempts to build political models oriented toward
democratization. The first attempts to set up a constitutional order in the
XIXth century in the Arab provinces of Tunisia and Egypt, or at the very heart
of the Ottoman Empire with the Turkish reforms, were torpedoed by France and
England. The experience of liberal government in the first half of the XXth
century in Egypt, Irak or Syria were to a great extent undermined, in their
democratic exercice, by the interests of those two European powers, that wanted
to keep control over their ancient colonies. In the case of Lebanon, the cause
for the disaster that plunged the country in a bloody civl war for 15 years is
to be found in the creation of a State that was conceived to grant political
supremacy to the Maronite Christian minority (that is to say France's main
clientele in the Middle East) over the Muslim majority. After the long
interlude of socialist governments that were up to the soviet autocratic model
they had adopted, the neo-liberal governments that followed, implemented
economic liberalization reforms coupled with a growing political despotism that
is "laundered" by their European and American allies, for the great
misery of the population who is submitted to a fierce repression. The most open
and transparent elections held in the region, took place in Algeria in 1991 and
they were reduced to ashes by a military coup that was supported by the whole of
the Western world.
Regimes that are in place in Algeria, Tunisia or Egypt, (to
take just the most striking examples) survive by using repression as a mean of
social control with European and American support, both at economic and
political level. The Western allies do not want to know of the ongoing human
rights violations that are denounced by all N. G.O. s.
The Gulf War against Saddam Hussein is immediately brought to
an end from the moment he could have been overthrown by the most representative
opposition movement in the country, simply because the resistance was led by
the Irakian Shiis, and this did not suit the strategic interests of the U. S.
in the region. The tyran thus remained in power and Irak was submitted to an
embargo that only weighs on the civilian population, who is furthermore exposed
to the impunity of a clannish governement, unable to act as a regional power,
but very capable of plundering society and the country's revenues. Double
standards are used as to the inforcement of the U. N. resolutions. On the one
hand, Irak is strictly required to comply with them. Whereas, Israel can go on
ignoring them with respect to the rights of the Palestinians, while its
strategic interests in the region are respected and its views followed as who is
or is not a terrorist.
At the end of the Gulf War, the Arab countries were more
divided than ever, while the dominant position of the U. S. in the region had
never been stronger, partly because most countries in the area depend from the
U. S.A., at economic and military level, but also because Europe does not, in
the least, represent a political challenge for the U. S. un the region, in
spite of its commercial competitiveness, and Russia prefers to compete with the
U. S. over Caucase and Central Asia, that has been rising since the end of the
XXth century as a main producer of energy sources, competing at strategic level
with the Middle East.
In fact, the result of the American views and action in the
Middle East, with respect to security and stability, has been to block all
attempts aiming at setting up multilateral institutions, that could have given
a better positioning to the region as a whole. As a consequence, it opted for
the creation of strategic axes and bilateral alliances. Irak and Iran being declared
rogue states, a policy of penalty (embargo and sanctions) and "double
contention" as of 1993 was applied. This meant that Iran has been
artificially separated from the Gulf States and that all attempts that could
have lead to a rapprochement in the perspective of a regional forum to set up a
dialogue among all the neighbour countries, including the ostrascised ones,
were frustated. As a result Irak still is ostracised, which has given rise to
large scaled smuggling networks with Jordan, and even more so with Turkey. At
the same time, the reformist sector in Iran, that promotes economics and
political liberalization, and defends a diplomatic normalization with its
Middle East neighbours as well as with the Western world, does not find enough
support abroad that would enable it so solve the socio-economic crisis and to
get a stronger position within the government vis a vis the "old
revolutionnary guard".
The influence of Israel's views on the stability of the
region and its obvious refusal to be integrated in the Middle East geographic
environment, as well as its role as inconditional ally of the U. S., explain
for the most part these contradictions, and which is worse, is greatly
responsible for the unending fragmentation of the region.
This priviliged relation with the U. S. explains how Israel
was able in 1995 to escape international pressure in order to become a party to
the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty and to take part in 1996 to the creation
of the strategic military axis between Israel and Turkey, under the American
umbrella, with the aim to weaken Syria's position in the region. The U. S. also
opposed the institutional setting up of multilateral groups that could have had
a determinant role to play in the Arab-Isareli peace process.
The countries that belong to the Gulf Cooperation Council
(Saudi Arabia and the Gulf oil producing countries) all signed bilateral
defense agreements and armament contracts with the U. S., Great Britain and
France after the Gulf war with the objective to protect themselves from future
threats. Since they do not trust their Arab neighbours and because of the
unquestionnable superiority of Western armies, the GCC members did not even
consider regional security arrangements, and they even stressed further the
importance of bilateral relations, since they did not conclude agreements among
themselves either. Furthermore, the massive investments in military eqipment
and defence, the enormous expenses resulting from financing Gulf war I (1980-88
between Iran and Irak), and Gulf war II (Iraki invasion of Koweit, 1990-91),
and the end of the oil prices boom, gave rise to a growing socio-economic
crisis that resulted in a very uncomfortable situation for governments. The
most illustrative example is the case of Saudi Arabia with its demographic rate
of 3,5%, which have had to reduce social benefits since the beginning of the
90s, while the middle class is growing in numbers and importance, and is more
and more dissatisfied with the regime's political "tribalism" that
does not represent them in any way, with the growing inadequacies in the fields
of education, health, housing, etc... as well as with Western military presence
in their country. The system based on oil revenues and the socio-political
balance that existed thanks to such income undergoes a crisis that in turn
increases the opposition to the regime.
These regional and international political developments have
had consequences for the clientelist and clannish governments in place in this
part of the Arab and Muslim world that are now in a situation of growing inner
and regional weakness. As a consequence, these governements depend more and
more on Western support in order to remain in power, and tend to act
individually, which means that they no longer have any sort of political
influence as regional geopolitical and economic group on the international
scene. From a Western perspective, such a dependance turn these countries in
faithful allies that are incapable to counteract in front of Western dominant
policies. It also enables the West to control the sources of energy that are
located in the area. (For example, recently, the Arab and Muslin oil producing
countries proved incapable to use oil as a a weapon to put pressure on the
international community in order to stop the brutal Israeli invasion in the
Palestinian territories). The Western domination is exercised at the expense of
the population governed by dictatorial regimes that impose anti-democratic
practises to societies that are moreover submitted to the enormous socio-economic
pressure of economic liberal reform and its structural adjustments.
What is truly appalling in this situation is that our
societies are so obsessed by the "cultural clash between Islam and the
West", so convinced that there is no democracy in the Muslim world because
of Islam, that the inequality between men and women comes from inmutable
constraints in the Muslim universe, that violence stems from an innate islamic
cultural-religious fanaticism, that they are unable to see what are the deeply
political causes for this lack of democracy, this inequality and this violence.
And what is even worse no one asks the question of what the West does to feed
such inadequacies and violence. It is true that there is no democracy, but that
is not because they are Muslims, but because an alliance has been struck
between the local despotic governing elites and the Western powers. It is true
that there is no processs of social modernization, but that is not imposed by
Islam, but comes about rather because of the complicity between dictatorial
regimes and ultra-conservative religious circles that preserve the patriarchal
and puritan social models (just as it occured in other dictatorships in
Southern Europe or Latin America). The only way to open up the doors of social
evolution would be to promote democratization and the Rule of Law. It is true
that there is violence, but not because "they are Muslims" but
because the State exerts its violence continuously and the feelings of
humiliation, despair and neglect that prevail in these societies constitute a
culture medium favorable to a social explosion and to extremism.
This is how we come to this paradox that caracterizes the
approach of Western societies toward the Muslim world. The cultural perspective
is supposedly used to fight fundamentalist islamic attitudes, but at political
level, we support those who defend and impose obsolete interpretations of Islam
and suppress the modernists. We proclaim ourselves to be the representatives of
civilization and of the model to be followed by all the others, while our
political action promotes at the same time depotism and assents to the
violation of human rights. This political stand of ours favours in the Muslim
world the players that give the most negative image of Islam in the West and
who even tend to a monopoly of this image, used as an overall discrimination
tool against a vast social majority that does not identify with them. Because
if such an unfair contradiction, feelings of bitterness and anti-western
resentment keep growing to-day in Muslim societies, that see how their cultural
heritage is generally despised and looked upon, while the self - proclaimed
supremacy of the West is used as an instrument of political and military
domination.