Is There An Islamic Problem?

Ithas become fashionable in some circles after September 11 to excoriate Islamas the source of the problems facing the Islamic world. The air is thick withtheories which claim that Islam has been paralyzed by a deadening obscurantismsince the twelfth century, and this paralysis will only end when Muslims decideto replace Islam with secular humanism. It is time these theories weredeconstructed.

A Matter of Timing

I will turn directly to the thesis of the early demiseof Islamic civilization: since the castigation of Islam often hinges on how andwhen this happened.

First, and this is very important, this thesis is quitewrong about the timing of the decline. It claims that Islam lost its creativepower in the twelfth century as a result of the twin blows dealt by orthodox 'Ulama-thereligious scholars of Islam-and the Mongols. These ideas have an Orientalistodor.

This canard was first challenged by Marshall Hodgson in The Venture of Islam(1974). He believes that the brilliant works, in architecture, philosophy, andthe visual arts, created during the sixteenth century-in Isphahan, Istanbul,Delhi and Agra-were not inferior to the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance.
The scientific work did not face sudden death either. In fact, George Saliba, inA History of Arabic Astronomy, extends Islam's golden age to thefifteenth century. After the Mongols are supposed to have devastated EasternIslam, major observatories were being set up as late as the fifteenth century.The astronomical tables computed at these observatories, together with the workof Ibn-Shatir (d. 1375), a time-keeper in the central mosque of Damascus, werepassed on to Europe, and are believed to have contributed to the Copernicanrevolution.

Did Islam Stumble?

If Islam did not suffer a decline in the twelfthcentury, when did this happen? The beginnings of this process, as well as itssources, must be sought not so much in Islam as in Europe. It wasn't Islam thatstumbled. Rather, it was Europe that gathered speed and moved ahead, in gunneryand shipping, starting in the sixteenth century.

Europe employed its maritime strength to plunder thegold and silver of the Americas, create an Atlantic economy, and dominate thecommerce of the Indian Ocean. This deepened Europe's commercial and financialcapital, while squeezing the trading profits of the major Islamic empires aswell as the smaller trading states in the Indian Ocean. Over time, Europe'military advantage became decisive. And by the beginning of the nineteenthcentury­in India even before that­Europe started its project of dismantlingthe Islamic polities in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.

Why couldn't Islamic-or other-polities resist thisgrowing European thrust? The Eurocentric narratives would have us believe thatthis was fait accompli: the simple working out of Europe's racial,geographic, climatic, and cultural advantages over others. Asia and Africa couldhave done little to resist.

A historical narrative tells a different story. Theircolonization of the Americas, their growing control over the trade of the IndianOcean, their mercantilist rivalries and incessant wars-all rooted in the anarchyof nation states-accelerated the dynamic of historical change in Europe,allowing it to outpace the more centralized, mostly land-based empires in Asiaand Africa. Europe's advantages were historical-and, in part, accidental.

Thwarted Recovery

This takes us to the troubling question of Islam'sfailure-unlike India and China-to mount an adequate recovery from the losses ofthe colonial epoch.

Why has Islam, which commanded several power centersbefore the rise of Europe, failed to reconstitute its lost power in thepost-colonial period? Once again, those who attribute this failure to Islam areinverting the order of causation.

As recently as 1750, Islamic polities stretched fromMauritania and the Balkans in the West to Sinjiang and Mindanao in the East. Butthis power lacked an adequate social base. In 1800 the Arab population in theMiddle East was quite thin. Elsewhere, in the Balkans and India, the Islamicempires ruled over mostly non-Muslim populations. The early collapse of Muslimpower in India and the downsizing of the Ottomans in Europe had much to do withthese demographic drawbacks.

The Ottomans, the Maghreb and Egypt faced anotherhandicap: they were only a few day's sail from Europe. This made them temptingtargets for European capital and cupidity, mixed with some of the old zeal foreradicating Islam. This mission was taken up successively by France, Britain andItaly. An early and determined Egyptian effort to industrialize­initiated in1810­was dismantled by the British and French in 1840. When the Egyptiansmobilized again in the 1870s, it led to their colonization in 1882. Britain,France and Israel mounted another invasion of Egypt as recently as 1956.

This suggests some sobering reflections for those whowould blame the present troubles on Islam's antipathy to modernity. Imagine ifthe Egyptian bid to industrialize had not been dismantled by imperialistBritain and France; it is then likely that an industrialized Egypt wouldeventually have led the entire region to industrial growth, prosperity andpower. This thought experiment explains why Egypt's industrial drive had to beaborted. An industrialized Middle East may have renewed the old threat of Islamto Europe.

The disarray of the Arabs in the post-colonial periodgoes back to two addi-tional factors: the Zionism and oil. The Zionist movementwas founded on a confluence of Jewish and Western interests in the Middle East.In time, this led in 1917 to Britain's support for the creation of a Jewishstate in Palestine, the dismantling of the Ottoman empire in 1919, thevivisection of the former Ottoman territories in the Levant, the British mandateover Palestine, and the creation of Israel in 1948. The Islamic Crescent hadbeen splintered, and part of it occupied by a Jewish colonial-settler state.

In the meanwhile, United States and Britain were makingarrangements in the Persian Gulf to ensure Western control over the richest oilreserves in the world. They decided to place the region under archaic,absolutist monarchies whose survival, against the rising tide of nationalism,would depend on United States. As part of this plan, when the Iranians overthrewthe monarchy in 1953, United States and Britain instigated a coup to re-instatedit. In 1967, with the decisive defeat of Egypt, Syria and Jordan-leading to theoccupation of Sinai, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza-Israel cut shortthe career of secular Arab nationalism. The Middle East straightjacket was nowsecurely in place.

The Iranian revolution of 1979 did not loosen thestraightjacket. On the contrary, by raising the specter of Islamist power, thisrevolution paved the way for an 'Arab' war against Iran, with the blessings ofUnited States. In time, after the collapse of Soviet Union, this led the corruptArab regimes to form a grand alliance-under the aegis of United States andIsrael-to control and repress their Islamist movements. When foolhardy Iraqdared to challenge this grand alliance, it was bombed back to the stone age andcrippled with comprehensive economic sanctions.

A new 'cold war' had descended on the Islamic world inthe 1990s. Its rules were clear. The United States would support the Islamicdespots-of whatever stripe-so long as they kept the lid on political Islam. Ifany country dared to depart from the terms of this contract, it faced economicand military sanctions; and, if these did not work, they would be followed byswift and devastating reprisals. Iraq showed to the Islamic world the price itwould pay for challenging this new contract. Similarly, Algeria stands as anexample of what happens when the democratic process threatens to empowerIslamists.

An explanation of why the 'democratization' of the 1990sbypassed the Islamic world might be found in this new cold war. Most Westerncommentators think otherwise: they choose to blame Islam. Their method isclassic-damnation by accusation. If Islam is obscurantist, anti-rationalist,fanatical, and misogynist, then, it must also be opposed to democracy.The Orientalist has spoken: the case is closed.

Those who believe that Islam is anti-democratic need ashort lesson in the modern history of constitutional movements in Islam.Muhammad Ali of Egypt appointed his first advisory council in 1824, consistingmostly of elected members. In 1881, the Egyptian nationalist movement succeededin convening an elected parliament, but this was aborted only a year later byBritish occupation. Tunisia had promulgated a constitution in 1860, setting up aSupreme Council purporting to limit the powers of the monarchy. But this wassuspended in 1864 when the French discovered that it interfered with theirambitions. Turkey elected its first parliament in 1877, though it was dissolveda year later by the Caliph; a second parliament was convened in 1908. Iran'sprogress was more dramatic. It started with protests against a British tobaccomonopoly in the 1890s, and quickly led to an elected parliament in 1906, withpowers to confirm the cabinet. A year later, however, the British and Russianscarved up Iran into their spheres of influence, a development that would lead tothe dissolution of the parliament in 1910. Nevertheless, the constitutionalmovement persisted until it was suppressed in 1931 by a new dynasty brought topower by the British.

Compare these developments with the history ofconstitutional movements elsewhere, not excluding Europe, during the nineteenthcentury-and the world of Islam does not suffer from the comparison. Incredibleas this appears to minds blinded by Eurocentric prejudice, Tunisia, Egypt andIran were taking the lead in making the transition to constitutional monarchies.The 'resistance to democracy' in the Arab world even today does not come fromtheir population. Quite the opposite. It comes from neo-colonialsurrogates-brutal military dictatorships and absolutist monarchies-imposed by aUnited States determined to safeguard oil and Israel.

A New ColonialContract

The US-imposed straightjacket has deepened thecontradictions of global capitalism in the Islamic world: a development that ispregnant with consequences which threaten to spin out of control.

During the Cold War, the elite factions in many ThirdWorld coun-tries-especially their military elites-competed to win the UScontract for re-pressing their populist movements. As long as they did theirjob, they enjoyed a degree of autonomy in managing their economies. A few ofthem in East Asia, the most favored ones, became showcases of capitalistsuccess. When Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, this contract was terminated. Itwas replaced by the Washington Consensus, enforced by the International MonetaryFund, World Bank and World Trade Organization. The elites in the periphery wouldnow compete to open up their economies for takeover by multinationalcorporations.

There are two versions of this new colonial contract.Countries in the non-Islamic periphery are generally encouraged to compete forthe contract through the ballot box. In countries that have strong Islamistmovements, this option is not available; they are allowed to keep theirdictators and monarchs. The excuse for this two-track policy is flimsy. It ischarged that the Islamist parties oppose democracy: that they will use theballot to shut down the ballot. The real reason is Western nervousness over theIslamist's twin goals: introducing an Islamic social order, and reversing thefragmentation of Islam.

This siege of the Islamic world is unlikely to producethe desired results. On the contrary, it has engendered contradictions that willonly deepen over time. After the rout of the Arab armies in 1967, the failure ofsecular, nationalist movements to reverse Arab marginalization was becomingtransparent. In 1973, with appropriate offers of American 'aid', Egypt made aseparate peace with Israel. In abdicating its leadership of the Arab world,Egypt wrote the obituary of Arab nationalism. From now on, the historic task ofliberating the Arab world would be assumed by the Islamists.

Although defeated, the corrupt Arab regimes remainedensconced in power. They owe their survival to the new colonial contract whichallowed them to keep their repressive apparatus if they used it to wage waragainst their own people. The turn around was quick, moving throughcapitulations at Camp David and Oslo, normalization of ties with Israel, andcapitulation to the Washington Consensus. The war against Islam intensified. TheIslamist parties were banned, rooted out of professional associations and tradeunions, and eventually their leaders were jailed, executed, or hounded out ofthe country.

This repression of Islamists has produced two results.Nearly everywhere, it immobilized mainstream Islamists who wished to workthrough the institutions of civil society: through political parties,professional associations, the media, the courts, and charities. The focus nowshifted to the extremists willing to engage in violent action to gain theirends. But the extremists too had little crawl space under the repressive Arabregimes. Those who survived were driven underground, or went into exile inAfghanistan, Pakistan, or the Western countries.
At this point, some of them decided to change their strategy.

They would target their problems at its source-andinflict damage on United States. They wanted to sting the United States intolifting its siege of Islamic countries. Alternatively, they hoped to startwars-like the one in Afghanistan-on the chance that this would spark rebellionsagainst the American surrogates in the Islamic world.

Giving Up 'FalseNotions'?

Of late, sagely voices-outside and inside Islam-havebeen counseling Muslims to give up the 'false notions' of Islam. I hope to haveshown that the false notions we need give up are the Orientalist narratives-ofan Islam that has been (mis)represented as irrational, misogynist, fatalist andfanatical.

Rational thinking did not begin with the Enlightenment.In fact, several En-lightenment thinkers turned to Islam to advance their ownstruggle against medieval obscurantism and the intolerance of an organizedclergy. It is time for alienated Muslim intellectuals to tear the Orientalistveil that obscures the face of Islam, re-enter the historical currents they haveabandoned, create a deeper understanding of the dynamics of derailed Islamicsocieties, and lead them into an Islamic vision of a world where all communitiesparticipate in a race to create works of excellence.

The West too must give up its false notions of Islam asthe irreconcilable 'Other', that must forever be battled and besieged. If Islamis a greater threat to the West than India or China, that is because ouractions-in large part-have succeeded in preventing it from reconstituting itscenter, its wholeness and history. More than a fifth of the world's populationseek their place in the world within a stream of history that flows from theQur'an. They want to live by ethical ideals that in the past have producednobility, magnanimity, sobriety, tolerance, science, mathematics, philosophy,architecture and poetry. Islam may do so again if only we lift the siege-andallow the light, freshness and sweetness at its core to find expression again ina contest of creative minds and soulful hearts, intertwined with reason andmercy.

Shahid Alam is aProfessor of Economics at Northeastern University in Boston. Copyright ShahidAlam