War and Peace inside Islam
Maybe it isn’t such a bad idea. Not that it’s likely to happen but what if it did? What we had a new Caliph? Could he get us out of this mess? Could he convene a council of respected scholars and get them to agree this is a bad idea? Would he even have to be Muslim? It was a pagan Roman Emperor who brought Christians to a common declaration of faith seventeen centuries ago. Could a Caliph do something like that for Muslims today? Could he calm things down?
Heaven knows they need help. This isn’t working. For more than a thousand years Muslims observed an unspoken internal agreement of a sort unheard of in Christendom. Over the centuries several schools of thought, and schools of law, came to prominence within Islam. For the most part they were accepted as equally valid. They differed significantly in interpretation of scripture and understanding the traditions and sayings of the Prophet and his companions. Still they were accepted. Islam never succumbed to the horrific religious wars that so plagued the West. Thousands and thousands of scholars spent lifetimes studying sacred texts. They reached varying conclusions but the strength of their intellect gave them prestige within the community that demanded they be heard, and they were.
Then came the Wahhabis or, as they prefer to be called today, Salafists, followers of original Islam. Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab founded the movement in the mid 1700s, rejecting all modern thinking as revisionist, preferring a return to what he saw as unfiltered devotion to the teachings of the Prophet and his friends. Time and circumstance transformed his ideas from obscurity to center stage in what has become one of history’s great religious conflicts. Al Wahhab was anything but tolerant. To him any Muslim who disagreed was a heretic, not Muslim at all, undeserving of the considerations guaranteed under the Koran, fit only to be slaughtered. His successors among modern Salafists carry on the tradition, justifying any depravity in the name of puritanical Islam, murderous in the extreme.
Modern Islam is in a near anarchic state. There is no one to negotiate with, to mediate disputes, or to declare with authority what is or is not Islamic. Anyone with a bit of charisma, a gun and a willingness to use it can set himself up as spokesman for the one true faith. All around the globe the fight to define Islam has spilled over into open conflict. The rest of us are caught in the crossfire.
Most of our public discourse on the war on terror has been concerned with the issues setting Islam at odds with the West, especially with the United States. Surely it’s worth more discussion to try to understand what it is that separates so many Muslim extremists from the so called main stream, why moderates don’t seem to be able to get their violent co-religionists under control, why they are so silent, and what might be done about it. As with fourth century Christians there is much that unites twenty first century Muslims but also like early Christians their disagreements cut to the heart of the faith.
Despite vastly different circumstances I think there may be some lessons to be learned from the Emperor Constantine. It was he who convened and presided over the First Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical conference of Christian Bishops, the synod that gave us the Nicene Creed and a concept of the Trinity that survives today. Maybe today’s Muslims need their own Constantine. Maybe we all need a Muslim Constantine.
Emperor Constantine I
He is remembered for three things. He moved the capital of the empire from Rome to Byzantium and gave it his name. He promulgated the Edict of Milan legalizing Christianity and ending the terrible persecution Christians endured through the period of late antiquity. He convened the council at Nicaea.
Constantinople survived as the capital of the Eastern Empire for over a thousand years. For much of that time it was the most important city in the world. Its fall to Ottoman Turks in 1453 cut off European access to the spice routes and in no small measure prompted Columbus’ voyage to the Americas. Christianity in effect replaced paganism as the official state religion. Despite many subsequent schisms it remains the nominal religion for much of the world’s population. The Nicene Creed is still the fundamental statement of what most Christians believe. It’s quite a legacy for a man most of us know very little about.
Constantine was born in 272 or 273 A.D. in what is now Serbia. His father was a Roman General and his mother a sixteen year old innkeeper’s daughter who would go on to become St. Helena. His parents remained married for about twenty years before the ambitious father left Helena in favor of an Emperor’s daughter and took a place in the Tetrarchy, a governing arrangement devised earlier by Diocletian in response to a crisis in the empire. There were in effect four emperors acting more or less as equals, each with his own provinces, each with his own army. It was awkward but it worked for a while as all four were preoccupied with external enemies.
Constantine stayed with his father and on his death in 306 took his place among the four. As external threats subsided the Tetrarchy became unstable and a series of civil wars developed. In 313 Constantine emerged with unchallenged authority in the West. He credited his success in part to the large number of Christian stalwarts in his army, issued the Edict of Milan, and persuaded his Eastern counterpart to accept it. There would be one final great civil war with Constantine victorious in 324, leaving him as undisputed ruler of an intact empire. He was then free to locate his capital wherever he chose, and had the prestige to call the great council.
It isn’t clear when Constantine became Christian, if he ever really did. Some historians believe he continued practicing paganism throughout his life. Perhaps he was hedging his bets. He was baptized on his death bed. Certainly his mother was an important influence. His enlightened treatment of Christians was at least partly in deference to her.
There is no question he was an effective governor. Once his own position was secure he turned his energies to rebuilding and reforming the institutions that had made Rome great, including the legal code. Among other things he limited the rights of slave owners, abolished the gladiatorial games (at least officially,) and made Sunday a day of rest. His economic reforms included establishing tenant farmers as serfs and laid the foundation for the feudal society that followed.
He was no success as a family man. In 326 he had his eldest son executed for having an alleged affair with his second wife Fausta. When he discovered the allegations were apparently false, a plot by Fausta to enhance the prospects of her own sons, he had the wife executed as well. Such was the man Constantine, to whom history owes a great debt, good or bad, but it is the council at Nicaea I am concerned with here.
The First Council of Nicaea
Constantine convened the council in 325 A.D. Newly ensconced as uncontested ruler of the greatest empire the world had ever known, he sent invitations to all1800 Christian bishops. It was to be the first general gathering of church leadership since the apostles met in Jerusalem to debate rules for the admission of gentiles. The bishops were to be provided with transport, safe passage, food, and lodging, all at state expense. Each was authorized an entourage of five. It isn’t clear how many attended. One participant counted 270, another 318. Most of them were from Greek speaking provinces. By one account as few as five were Latin. The Bishop of Rome was not among them though he did send emissaries. At least three came from outside the empire, one from Persia, another from what is now southern Russia.
The emperor called them together to resolve a number of issues threatening to divide the church, especially the Arian controversy. That was an esoteric debate about the precise nature of Jesus, whether He was eternal and of the same substance as the Father. It isn’t true anyone there questioned His divinity. There is no evidence for that. In the end all but two of those present approved the adopted creed and though it was amended by a subsequent council it still contains the essential language “…one in being with the Father.” The council also ended a disagreement on when to celebrate Easter, settling on Sunday to commemorate the resurrection rather than the Friday of crucifixion and choosing the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox so that it could never coincide with the Jewish Passover. It was not one of the Church’s more noble acts by today’s standards. They chose the time because they considered Jews to be Christ killers.
Whether Constantine was by then a Christian or not, most historians concede his primary purpose was political. Any division in the church threatened unity in the empire, a matter of no small concern given its recent history. But time would show that his own temporal power was far more important in preserving Pax Romana than any accord on church doctrine. As long as civil authority remained strong so did the peace. When it waned the empire fragmented and war broke out at every corner. In fact the controversies the council was meant to settle persisted for centuries, but the worst of the religious wars that came later were caused by new issues, ones not even conceived at Nicaea.
If Constantine’s motives were political what were the bishops’? Politics. Roman emperors had been feeding Christians to the lions since the days of Nero and here they were being feted by the very emperor who had ended those persecutions twelve years before. Many of them came from the east where the Edict of Milan had been honored mostly in the breach. More than a few of them bore the scars of torture. But there was a great deal to be gained in both religious and temporal terms. In less than one generation the Christian community moved from outlaw to main stream. They were free to evangelize as never before. They went from a persecuted minority to perhaps the empire’s most loyal citizens. In another generation it was paganism that found itself on the fringe of society. They had set a foundation for the faith that would endure. The empire would be secure for another century in the west, a millennium in the east. All in all the First Council of Nicaea was a pretty productive meeting.
Salafism
Retired Princeton Professor Bernard Lewis likens Wahhabis to the American Ku Klux Klan, neither one representative of the religious communities they are sometimes associated with. I think the analogy downplays the significance of Salafism. The Klan never had that much popular appeal, even in the reconstruction south. I grew up in a family with decidedly segregationist views but any association with the Klan would have been a serious embarrassment. We have a story about my great grandfather attending the funeral of a relative who lived in another county. The Klan came in full regalia to honor a fallen member. Our ancestor was shocked and would never speak of the incident. Family ties were strong but not that strong.
Salafists are different. For one thing they are religious to a degree the Klan never were. They are every bit as violent and they may even be an embarrassment to many fellow Muslims, but they are not on the fringe of Islam. They are more important than that. There are millions of them and their influence extends around the world, even among Muslims in countries where they are not the majority. The Wahhabis got their start in an alliance with the Saudi royal family and gained enormous prestige when the Saudis took over Mecca and Medina in 1926. That gave them control of the hajj, the most prestigious pilgrimage in Islam, maybe in any religion. Millions of Muslims participate every year. Perhaps most important, the discovery of oil in 1938 and subsequent explosion in oil revenues allowed Saudis to fund thousands of religious schools around the world, all of them strictly Wahhabi, all of them promoting a virulent and violent brand of Islam.
But there is more to it than money and pilgrimage. I prefer the term Salafist to Wahhabi because it is broader. The infamous Muslim Brotherhood is Salafist in its calls for an Islamic state patterned after the early community. The brotherhood began in Egypt in 1928, long before Saudis came to their present international prominence. There are reasons why so many Muslims are attracted to such austere and retrograde versions of the faith. They have to do with a foreboding sense that permeates much of Islam, a sense that something has gone terribly wrong, that the religion is under attack, a feeling that the community has lost its way, and it has. There was a time when Islam represented not only the world’s most powerful empire, but it’s most cultured society. Not any more. Arab Caliphates and the Ottoman Sultanate declined, fragmented and collapsed more from internal rot than external pressure. Society too stagnated and began its own decline, resisting even the introduction of the printing press. It was noticeable by the time of al Wahhab and it continues today. Despite fabulous oil wealth poverty is rife. Governments are brutish and totalitarian. As Christendom emerged from the Dark Ages and progressed through Renaissance and Industrial Revolution Islam watched and fumed.
Salafism represents a return to basics. Flawed though it may be, and many Islamic scholars have pointed out its errors, it appeals to a deep historical memory, a return to the right path, a resubmission to God in hopes that He will lead them to the just society He has always intended for them. If a little thuggery is required to bring fellow Muslims into line they aren’t the first idealists to adopt that kind of zealotry in service of a greater good. Nor are they the first to interpret scripture strictly but selectively. Intellectual consistency doesn’t seem to go hand in hand with idealism, religious or otherwise.
Arab Fascism
The police states that dominate much of the Arab world are a modern phenomenon, beginning with nineteenth century improvements in communication that made them possible. They got a big boost in 1940 when French authorities in the Levant aligned themselves with the Vichy government. They promptly installed a Nazi style regime for Syria and Lebanon. Similar governments spread through the region. They survived the cold war by allying themselves variously with Americans or Russians. It’s hard to see how they will hold on through another twenty years. Demographic and economics stresses are enormous. State control of commerce and industry is not a prescription for growth.
Many observers credit the clamor for an Islamic state as the single greatest destabilizing force among Arabs but I wonder if economic factors aren’t really behind it. Stagnant economies were the rule in North Africa and the Middle East long before despots came to power but some important things have changed. For one thing the disparity between east and west is greater and more apparent than ever before. It is on everyone’s television screen night after night. Even the poorest and least educated Arab can see that life in the west is more materially prosperous. Despite all the vitriol poured out against Israel it is painfully obvious that Israeli Arabs are doing better than the average Egyptian. The most startling political development of my lifetime was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Stalinist dictatorships in Eastern Europe. The stark contrast between glittering West Berlin and drab East Berlin was an important reason. People began to ask why. It is reasonable to expect Arabs to ask why too. They remember that it wasn’t always like that.
Harun al-Rashid was the most powerful of the Abbasid Caliphs, ruling from 786 to 809 at the apex of Arab Empire. He is best remembered in the west as the protagonist in 1001 Arabian Nights, the fantastic tales of Ali Babba, Aladdin, Sinbad, and others. Arabs remember him as the embodiment of their glory days. He is as well known to them as Thomas Jefferson is to us. Romans from Constantinople came to Baghdad every year to pay tribute with great pomp and ceremony. Charlemagne sent emissaries. Al-Rashid was an absolute Monarch but powerful as he was he never exercised the sort of control over civil life that Saddam Hussein did. Independent scholarship thrived in religion, art, science, and literature. Trade made his empire the richest in the world of its day. Modern despots haven’t delivered, not even those blessed with all that oil.
It’s time they did. Arab birth rates are among the worlds highest. So are unemployment rates. If European dictators couldn’t withstand pressure to reform there is no reason to think Arabs will either. If they don’t put mechanisms in place to do it peacefully they can expect it to be violent. Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak has lectured American diplomats for years that if he doesn’t suppress dissent a violent Islamic regime will come to power. Saudis say much the same thing. They may be right. It is hard for me to understand why large numbers of people would want to live under even more thuggish governments than they already do but Arab capacity to act contrary to their own best interest is apparently limitless. Recent elections in Palestine and the insane insurgency in Iraq are not encouraging. These are people who could, if they would, go peacefully about their business and prosper. That they don’t is testimony to a deep and abiding unrest that would appear to be ready to explode.
Authority in Islam
This is a difficult topic for me to understand. I suspect it is for most Christians. On one hand any Muslim can speak for all of Islam. On the other no one can. We are accustomed to conclaves and conventions where dogma is decided, questions of policy resolved, and leadership elected. Dissenters may leave and form splinter groups but by and large there are distinct denominations with hierarchies that can say with certitude what the group believes or doesn’t believe, or at least what the church teaches. If we decide to have an ecumenical conference we pretty much know whom to invite. In Islam there is in theory no priesthood, no rite of holy ordination. Anyone who knows the rituals can lead them. Everything anybody needs to know is written in the Koran and if one can read Arabic, one can see for himself what is good or bad, required or forbidden, true or not true. As a practical matter they of course do have a defined clergy holding appointed offices. They have their Imams, Mullahs, Muftis, and Ayatollahs depending on local practice and custom, but those officials don’t necessarily agree on matters of doctrine or policy.
I once asked an Imam how he got that title. His answer had more to do with what an Imam is not than what one is but he had spent many years in religious schools and on the strength of his education was invited to join a Chicago mosque. He was one of several prayer leaders and spiritual advisors in residence. I then asked what a Mullah was and was astounded that neither he nor any of the other Muslims present seemed to know. I didn’t know enough to ask whether they followed the teachings of a particular school but they were clearly Sunni, not Shia. To the Shia an Imam is something else entirely, a descendent of the Prophet and rightful Caliph.
The key to authority seems to be education and reputation for scholarship but it can sometimes be conveyed by appointment. The old Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was appointed to his office by the British Governor of the Palestinian Protectorate. Ayatollahs owe their status to the approval of their peers. Their role in governing modern Iran is an historical anomaly. Through centuries of tradition Islamic clerics and scholars have avoided any kind of direct rule, preferring to exercise influence independently. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential Shia cleric in Iraq, shares that preference and has avoided the Iranian model. Grand Ayatollah or not however, he has his rivals and his authority does not go unchallenged.
So far as I can determine there has never been a general meeting of Islamic leadership to address the sorts of doctrinal issues Christian Bishops agreed on at Nicaea, or to produce a clear statement on what the agreed doctrine might be. There is only the Koran with all its seeming contradictions and ambiguities, a body of literature regarding the sayings and customs of Muhammad and his companions, much of it of questionable authenticity, and centuries of scholarly thought, most of which is disregarded by today’s Salafists and Wahhabis. Individual Muslims and groups are left to follow whatever leadership most appeals to them. Of course something quite similar can be said of modern Christians. The difference is that millions of Muslims are listening to the most virulent and violent voices while countering views sit quietly by. It might well be that those countering views could be brought together to speak up but identifying them might also be the biggest challenge of all.
The Last Caliph
Islam hasn’t had a Caliph since 1923 when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk sent Ottoman Sultan Mehmet VI into permanent exile and proclaimed a Turkish Republic. There has not been one worthy of the title since two centuries before that. None has ever been universally accepted by Muslims. None has ever had the stature to convene the kind of conference Constantine called for Christians at Nicaea. The first four Caliphs are traditionally revered as “rightly guided” but even they had their rivals. All four were assassinated within thirty years of Muhammad’s death. Through the centuries every other Caliph came to power either through conquest, dynastic succession, or palace coup.
It wasn’t supposed to be like that. Leaders were to be chosen by consensus from the community at large. There was precedent for that among nomadic Arab tribes. They chose chiefs from the ablest and wisest among them. Tribal survival depended on it. But when Muhammad died there was no mechanism in place to ensure an orderly selection. For a while the community was still small and the most prominent members had enough respect for one another to reach a rough consensus, though Ali’s supporters (the Shia) never accepted anyone but Ali or his male heirs, the Imams. It was always an awkward argument because Arabs didn’t have the European tradition of primogeniture. Even if they had Muhammad left no surviving son. Ali was his cousin and son-in-law. The requirements were tightened afterwards to Ali’s male descendants in a direct line. There is disagreement among the Shia whether the line lasted seven or twelve generations. “Twelvers” believe the last Imam didn’t die but went into hiding. He will return in triumph at an eschatological end time. Current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad apparently believes the time is near and will not willingly give up Iran’s nuclear ambitions. In any case most Shia will likely never accept anyone as Caliph unless they are convinced he is that 12th Imam.
Most Muslims are Sunni however, and they traditionally accepted anyone who could amass enough temporal power to make a credible claim. At times there were multiple Caliphs at the same time presiding over different regions. Many of them made a show of legitimacy on accession by requiring heads of influential families to make a public declaration of fealty. Over time the various palace guards tended to acquire excessive power and their loyalty had to be bought. For several hundred years Ottoman succession was determined by fratricide. The first son to learn of a Sultan’s death kept it secret until he could have his brothers assassinated. The practice was codified into Ottoman law by Mehmet, the conqueror of Constantinople, as necessary to ensure stability. It was softened to imprisonment in the harem for the last several generations. Sure enough more than one brother was brought out to replace a Sultan dethroned in palace intrigue. Some of them had fared poorly in “the cage” and were in sorry shape to become Caliphs.
This is the institution many Sunni Muslims would restore. Osama bin Laden calls its abolition a humiliation (that word crops up a lot in Islamic rhetoric.) It is one of the reasons Ataturk is so despised by many Muslims. It’s easy to see why they would want a powerful Caliphate to lead them to complete their long sought world conquest. But no one seems to have serious ideas about just what reforms would prevent new Caliphs from again sliding into degeneracy, the same degeneracy that has claimed other monarchs in other cultures. That is left to God. This time piety will be enough.
The Next Caliph
There were at least three serious attempts in the twentieth century to create a new Caliphate. The British plotted to install a puppet regime in what is now Saudi Arabia during WWI. Gamal Abdel Nasser made a broadly popular run at Arab unity after WWII. Saddam Hussein came closest in his failed invasion of Kuwait in 1990. There will likely be more tries and it is not inconceivable that one of them will succeed. Whether the next Caliphate will be more effective than its predecessors is another matter.
In what could be called the high water mark of their empire, the Brits struck a deal with France and installed members of the Hashemite family as Kings over Syria and Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula. Had the Europeans not been so exhausted by the war the plan might have worked. There might have been a force that could have maintained peace in the Middle East indefinitely. But they were on the wrong side of history. Within three decades Britain and France were gone from the region and they left a mess. Fascist Ba’ath parties in Syria and Iraq are a French legacy. Today’s never ending conflict between Arab and Jew can be traced to British duplicity in promising Palestine to both Hashemites and Zionists. Hashemite defeat by Saudis in the Hejaz brought Wahhabis to world prominence.
Nasser and a group of officers deposed Egypt’s King Farouk in 1952 and for a while Nasser’s star burned brightly. He became effectively military dictator, removed the last vestiges of British colonial rule, nationalized the Suez Canal, and built the Aswan Dam across the Nile creating Lake Nasser, the largest man made lake in the world. In 1958 he joined Syria in forming the United Arab Republic with himself at its head and sparked a wave of pan-Arab sentiment across the Middle East. It didn’t last though. The region’s other despots were cool to the idea of course and in 1961 a Syrian coup dissolved the union. Israel put the last nail in the coffin of what became known as Nasserism in 1967. The Six Day War was a devastating humiliation to Arabs and Nasser never regained his prestige.
Saddam Hussein’s sudden takeover of Kuwait alarmed the world but it absolutely stunned the region. Had a less resolute American President been in office Saddam might well have taken the entire Arabian Peninsula. With all of that oil wealth he would have had economic if not military hegemony over the Arab world and a legitimate claim to the title Caliph. Lots of Arabs would like to see a new Caliphate but Saddam’s brand of fascism is not what most of them have in mind.
It’s hard to see how a new Caliphate might actually be created. None of the attempts of the last century really came close. The only strategy currently on offer is that put forward by Islamic radicals. Their idea is to create mayhem of the sort that brought the Taliban to power in Afghanistan. It involves far more chaos than the rest of the world would conceivably tolerate even if they could bring it off locally. Versions of the strategy are in play in hot spots around the globe but it isn’t working anywhere. Still, one never knows when a new, smarter Nasser might come on the scene. If one did and could offer Muslims ideas that might actually work things could be different. I doubt it though. The world has moved on from the days when one man’s vision could change history quite that dramatically.
Live and Let Live
Since it is unlikely a new Caliph will emerge anytime soon anytime soon to impose order it would seem that forces internal to Islam will be left to play themselves out. The traditional or moderate Muslim has a problem. So long as others obey the law regarding such issues as dress code or alcohol (non Muslims aren’t allowed to proselytize of course) he does not attempt to impose his beliefs on them. That’s a bad strategy when his opponent is a modern Wahhabi or Salafist who is determined to do exactly that. It is much like the dilemma the pacifist faces. It only works if everybody else exercises restraint. If no one is prepared to enforce the law lawlessness prevails.
The only successful pacifist political movements in history I can think of were Mahatma Gandhi’s drive for Indian Independence in 1947 and Martin Luther King Jr.’s peaceful protests leading to the American Civil Rights Act of 1964. Had either of those movements begun a century or even a half century earlier they would have been brutally repressed. But they took place at a time when neither American nor British public opinion would tolerate police brutality, and in fact both were inclined to sympathize with protestors. So those movements succeeded where none had in the past.
In a way, Islam faces the opposite situation. It is the advocates for change who are violent. Islamic public opinion not only tolerates brutality, much of it sympathizes with it. It is as if they are cursed with a cultural character flaw. When the worst atrocities occur Muslims can muster a sense of outrage only if the victims are Muslim and the perpetrators not. If the culprits are Muslim the community expresses at most a collective tut tut and if the victims are not Muslim not even that. They will accept the most despicable behavior from fellow Muslims so long as they themselves are not directly threatened.
So when Saddam Hussein gasses his Kurdish citizens Saudis utter not a word of protest. When he invades next door neighbor Kuwait they ask for American help lest they be next. When Arabs conduct campaigns of genocide in the Sudan, other Arabs are unconcerned. When American soldiers abuse Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Muslims riot in the streets. Exasperating as it is, the double standard isn’t so much the problem as the unwillingness on behalf of moderates to deal with their radical brethren. Modern Islam has been spiraling downward toward the least civilized common denominator.
It’s understandable at some level. Wahhabi and Salafi Muslims have one thing in common with American Christian fundamentalists. They are all trying to return to an earlier, purer version of their respective faiths that they believe their co-religionists have strayed from. I doubt any serious Christian wants to go back to the bad old days of Roman persecution but many do have an idealized vision of the martyrs that they try to emulate in the face of what they see as attacks on their faith. Some of it is true of course. There is a concerted effort from significant elements in American society and even from the courts to banish all reference to religion from public life, or at least Christian references. Back to basics movements are a response. That much is normal. They have happened time and again among Catholics and Protestants.
But Islamic radicals aren’t really going back to basics. They are going forward to a brand of Islam that is new and dangerous. For the past fifty years or so they have been carrying the day.
Time and Circumstance
Thomas Wolfe was right. “There are things you just can’t do in life. You can’t beat the phone company, you can’t make a waiter see you until he’s ready to see you, and you can’t go home again.” Muslims can’t go back to the days of Muhammad and Christians can’t return to the early church. We can only move on. Ours is a different world. Dramatic improvements in communication made the modern police state possible and have now proved to be its undoing. Globalization has made events in faraway places relevant in ways they never were before.
None of that means we shouldn’t learn from the past of course. Constantine I understood that dissention in the Christian church undermined stability in his empire and called a council at Nicaea to resolve disputes. Dissention in Islam is destabilizing much of today’s world. We have no modern Constantine. Powerful as the United States is it has very little influence over Islam, the United Nations is ineffectual, and the Arab League even less so. Time and again over the decades radical Muslims have murdered their more moderate opponents or intimidated them into silence. It happened in Saudi Arabia. It has been happening in Palestine for over eighty years. It happened in Afghanistan and is happening now in Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and a dozen other places. It is being tried in Iraq. Islam has been unable to stop it. It affects the rest of us because the radicals don’t just want to dominate Islam, they want to dominate the world and they expect to do it by creating chaos, the more mayhem the better.
Things may be changing however. A favorite tactic over the years has been to create an incident among non-Muslim neighbors, blow up a restaurant say, and provoke a heavy handed response. Then publicize the results in order to stimulate popular resentment. The tactic has worked over and over again, especially in Palestine to the point where Israel is universally despised among Muslims. Yasser Arafat built a remarkable career on not much more than that. But they may have gone to that well too many times. Palestinian orange growers have begun to recognize that when militants use their orchards to launch rockets into Israel they might as well aim their missiles toward Gaza. Palestinians may be tiring of irresponsible elements deciding for them when and how to go to war.
Something remarkable happened when the US invaded Afghanistan, or rather didn’t happen. There were no wide spread popular protests among Muslims, the predicted riots were missing. When Americans turned their attention to Iraq the protests from Europe were louder than those from Arabia. Even complaints about supposed American atrocities have been relatively quiet. Double standard or not, Arabs have noticed that American soldiers can be brought to justice when they commit crimes. Something even more remarkable is happening today in response to Israeli retaliation against militants in Lebanon and Gaza. More than a few Arabs are blaming the militants.
Recent elections brought Islamic terrorists to power in Palestine and into the government in Lebanon. Once there they behaved irresponsibly as is their want. Now that their attacks against Israel have produced the desired reprisals their Arab neighbors have not responded as sympathetically as they have in the past. They have no wish to be drawn into a war not of their choosing. It may not last but it is a positive sign. It may even be that Islamic public opinion has turned a corner. In today’s world that can be a force more powerful than any emperor.
Heaven knows they need help. This isn’t working. For more than a thousand years Muslims observed an unspoken internal agreement of a sort unheard of in Christendom. Over the centuries several schools of thought, and schools of law, came to prominence within Islam. For the most part they were accepted as equally valid. They differed significantly in interpretation of scripture and understanding the traditions and sayings of the Prophet and his companions. Still they were accepted. Islam never succumbed to the horrific religious wars that so plagued the West. Thousands and thousands of scholars spent lifetimes studying sacred texts. They reached varying conclusions but the strength of their intellect gave them prestige within the community that demanded they be heard, and they were.
Then came the Wahhabis or, as they prefer to be called today, Salafists, followers of original Islam. Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab founded the movement in the mid 1700s, rejecting all modern thinking as revisionist, preferring a return to what he saw as unfiltered devotion to the teachings of the Prophet and his friends. Time and circumstance transformed his ideas from obscurity to center stage in what has become one of history’s great religious conflicts. Al Wahhab was anything but tolerant. To him any Muslim who disagreed was a heretic, not Muslim at all, undeserving of the considerations guaranteed under the Koran, fit only to be slaughtered. His successors among modern Salafists carry on the tradition, justifying any depravity in the name of puritanical Islam, murderous in the extreme.
Modern Islam is in a near anarchic state. There is no one to negotiate with, to mediate disputes, or to declare with authority what is or is not Islamic. Anyone with a bit of charisma, a gun and a willingness to use it can set himself up as spokesman for the one true faith. All around the globe the fight to define Islam has spilled over into open conflict. The rest of us are caught in the crossfire.
Most of our public discourse on the war on terror has been concerned with the issues setting Islam at odds with the West, especially with the United States. Surely it’s worth more discussion to try to understand what it is that separates so many Muslim extremists from the so called main stream, why moderates don’t seem to be able to get their violent co-religionists under control, why they are so silent, and what might be done about it. As with fourth century Christians there is much that unites twenty first century Muslims but also like early Christians their disagreements cut to the heart of the faith.
Despite vastly different circumstances I think there may be some lessons to be learned from the Emperor Constantine. It was he who convened and presided over the First Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical conference of Christian Bishops, the synod that gave us the Nicene Creed and a concept of the Trinity that survives today. Maybe today’s Muslims need their own Constantine. Maybe we all need a Muslim Constantine.
Emperor Constantine I
He is remembered for three things. He moved the capital of the empire from Rome to Byzantium and gave it his name. He promulgated the Edict of Milan legalizing Christianity and ending the terrible persecution Christians endured through the period of late antiquity. He convened the council at Nicaea.
Constantinople survived as the capital of the Eastern Empire for over a thousand years. For much of that time it was the most important city in the world. Its fall to Ottoman Turks in 1453 cut off European access to the spice routes and in no small measure prompted Columbus’ voyage to the Americas. Christianity in effect replaced paganism as the official state religion. Despite many subsequent schisms it remains the nominal religion for much of the world’s population. The Nicene Creed is still the fundamental statement of what most Christians believe. It’s quite a legacy for a man most of us know very little about.
Constantine was born in 272 or 273 A.D. in what is now Serbia. His father was a Roman General and his mother a sixteen year old innkeeper’s daughter who would go on to become St. Helena. His parents remained married for about twenty years before the ambitious father left Helena in favor of an Emperor’s daughter and took a place in the Tetrarchy, a governing arrangement devised earlier by Diocletian in response to a crisis in the empire. There were in effect four emperors acting more or less as equals, each with his own provinces, each with his own army. It was awkward but it worked for a while as all four were preoccupied with external enemies.
Constantine stayed with his father and on his death in 306 took his place among the four. As external threats subsided the Tetrarchy became unstable and a series of civil wars developed. In 313 Constantine emerged with unchallenged authority in the West. He credited his success in part to the large number of Christian stalwarts in his army, issued the Edict of Milan, and persuaded his Eastern counterpart to accept it. There would be one final great civil war with Constantine victorious in 324, leaving him as undisputed ruler of an intact empire. He was then free to locate his capital wherever he chose, and had the prestige to call the great council.
It isn’t clear when Constantine became Christian, if he ever really did. Some historians believe he continued practicing paganism throughout his life. Perhaps he was hedging his bets. He was baptized on his death bed. Certainly his mother was an important influence. His enlightened treatment of Christians was at least partly in deference to her.
There is no question he was an effective governor. Once his own position was secure he turned his energies to rebuilding and reforming the institutions that had made Rome great, including the legal code. Among other things he limited the rights of slave owners, abolished the gladiatorial games (at least officially,) and made Sunday a day of rest. His economic reforms included establishing tenant farmers as serfs and laid the foundation for the feudal society that followed.
He was no success as a family man. In 326 he had his eldest son executed for having an alleged affair with his second wife Fausta. When he discovered the allegations were apparently false, a plot by Fausta to enhance the prospects of her own sons, he had the wife executed as well. Such was the man Constantine, to whom history owes a great debt, good or bad, but it is the council at Nicaea I am concerned with here.
The First Council of Nicaea
Constantine convened the council in 325 A.D. Newly ensconced as uncontested ruler of the greatest empire the world had ever known, he sent invitations to all1800 Christian bishops. It was to be the first general gathering of church leadership since the apostles met in Jerusalem to debate rules for the admission of gentiles. The bishops were to be provided with transport, safe passage, food, and lodging, all at state expense. Each was authorized an entourage of five. It isn’t clear how many attended. One participant counted 270, another 318. Most of them were from Greek speaking provinces. By one account as few as five were Latin. The Bishop of Rome was not among them though he did send emissaries. At least three came from outside the empire, one from Persia, another from what is now southern Russia.
The emperor called them together to resolve a number of issues threatening to divide the church, especially the Arian controversy. That was an esoteric debate about the precise nature of Jesus, whether He was eternal and of the same substance as the Father. It isn’t true anyone there questioned His divinity. There is no evidence for that. In the end all but two of those present approved the adopted creed and though it was amended by a subsequent council it still contains the essential language “…one in being with the Father.” The council also ended a disagreement on when to celebrate Easter, settling on Sunday to commemorate the resurrection rather than the Friday of crucifixion and choosing the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox so that it could never coincide with the Jewish Passover. It was not one of the Church’s more noble acts by today’s standards. They chose the time because they considered Jews to be Christ killers.
Whether Constantine was by then a Christian or not, most historians concede his primary purpose was political. Any division in the church threatened unity in the empire, a matter of no small concern given its recent history. But time would show that his own temporal power was far more important in preserving Pax Romana than any accord on church doctrine. As long as civil authority remained strong so did the peace. When it waned the empire fragmented and war broke out at every corner. In fact the controversies the council was meant to settle persisted for centuries, but the worst of the religious wars that came later were caused by new issues, ones not even conceived at Nicaea.
If Constantine’s motives were political what were the bishops’? Politics. Roman emperors had been feeding Christians to the lions since the days of Nero and here they were being feted by the very emperor who had ended those persecutions twelve years before. Many of them came from the east where the Edict of Milan had been honored mostly in the breach. More than a few of them bore the scars of torture. But there was a great deal to be gained in both religious and temporal terms. In less than one generation the Christian community moved from outlaw to main stream. They were free to evangelize as never before. They went from a persecuted minority to perhaps the empire’s most loyal citizens. In another generation it was paganism that found itself on the fringe of society. They had set a foundation for the faith that would endure. The empire would be secure for another century in the west, a millennium in the east. All in all the First Council of Nicaea was a pretty productive meeting.
Salafism
Retired Princeton Professor Bernard Lewis likens Wahhabis to the American Ku Klux Klan, neither one representative of the religious communities they are sometimes associated with. I think the analogy downplays the significance of Salafism. The Klan never had that much popular appeal, even in the reconstruction south. I grew up in a family with decidedly segregationist views but any association with the Klan would have been a serious embarrassment. We have a story about my great grandfather attending the funeral of a relative who lived in another county. The Klan came in full regalia to honor a fallen member. Our ancestor was shocked and would never speak of the incident. Family ties were strong but not that strong.
Salafists are different. For one thing they are religious to a degree the Klan never were. They are every bit as violent and they may even be an embarrassment to many fellow Muslims, but they are not on the fringe of Islam. They are more important than that. There are millions of them and their influence extends around the world, even among Muslims in countries where they are not the majority. The Wahhabis got their start in an alliance with the Saudi royal family and gained enormous prestige when the Saudis took over Mecca and Medina in 1926. That gave them control of the hajj, the most prestigious pilgrimage in Islam, maybe in any religion. Millions of Muslims participate every year. Perhaps most important, the discovery of oil in 1938 and subsequent explosion in oil revenues allowed Saudis to fund thousands of religious schools around the world, all of them strictly Wahhabi, all of them promoting a virulent and violent brand of Islam.
But there is more to it than money and pilgrimage. I prefer the term Salafist to Wahhabi because it is broader. The infamous Muslim Brotherhood is Salafist in its calls for an Islamic state patterned after the early community. The brotherhood began in Egypt in 1928, long before Saudis came to their present international prominence. There are reasons why so many Muslims are attracted to such austere and retrograde versions of the faith. They have to do with a foreboding sense that permeates much of Islam, a sense that something has gone terribly wrong, that the religion is under attack, a feeling that the community has lost its way, and it has. There was a time when Islam represented not only the world’s most powerful empire, but it’s most cultured society. Not any more. Arab Caliphates and the Ottoman Sultanate declined, fragmented and collapsed more from internal rot than external pressure. Society too stagnated and began its own decline, resisting even the introduction of the printing press. It was noticeable by the time of al Wahhab and it continues today. Despite fabulous oil wealth poverty is rife. Governments are brutish and totalitarian. As Christendom emerged from the Dark Ages and progressed through Renaissance and Industrial Revolution Islam watched and fumed.
Salafism represents a return to basics. Flawed though it may be, and many Islamic scholars have pointed out its errors, it appeals to a deep historical memory, a return to the right path, a resubmission to God in hopes that He will lead them to the just society He has always intended for them. If a little thuggery is required to bring fellow Muslims into line they aren’t the first idealists to adopt that kind of zealotry in service of a greater good. Nor are they the first to interpret scripture strictly but selectively. Intellectual consistency doesn’t seem to go hand in hand with idealism, religious or otherwise.
Arab Fascism
The police states that dominate much of the Arab world are a modern phenomenon, beginning with nineteenth century improvements in communication that made them possible. They got a big boost in 1940 when French authorities in the Levant aligned themselves with the Vichy government. They promptly installed a Nazi style regime for Syria and Lebanon. Similar governments spread through the region. They survived the cold war by allying themselves variously with Americans or Russians. It’s hard to see how they will hold on through another twenty years. Demographic and economics stresses are enormous. State control of commerce and industry is not a prescription for growth.
Many observers credit the clamor for an Islamic state as the single greatest destabilizing force among Arabs but I wonder if economic factors aren’t really behind it. Stagnant economies were the rule in North Africa and the Middle East long before despots came to power but some important things have changed. For one thing the disparity between east and west is greater and more apparent than ever before. It is on everyone’s television screen night after night. Even the poorest and least educated Arab can see that life in the west is more materially prosperous. Despite all the vitriol poured out against Israel it is painfully obvious that Israeli Arabs are doing better than the average Egyptian. The most startling political development of my lifetime was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Stalinist dictatorships in Eastern Europe. The stark contrast between glittering West Berlin and drab East Berlin was an important reason. People began to ask why. It is reasonable to expect Arabs to ask why too. They remember that it wasn’t always like that.
Harun al-Rashid was the most powerful of the Abbasid Caliphs, ruling from 786 to 809 at the apex of Arab Empire. He is best remembered in the west as the protagonist in 1001 Arabian Nights, the fantastic tales of Ali Babba, Aladdin, Sinbad, and others. Arabs remember him as the embodiment of their glory days. He is as well known to them as Thomas Jefferson is to us. Romans from Constantinople came to Baghdad every year to pay tribute with great pomp and ceremony. Charlemagne sent emissaries. Al-Rashid was an absolute Monarch but powerful as he was he never exercised the sort of control over civil life that Saddam Hussein did. Independent scholarship thrived in religion, art, science, and literature. Trade made his empire the richest in the world of its day. Modern despots haven’t delivered, not even those blessed with all that oil.
It’s time they did. Arab birth rates are among the worlds highest. So are unemployment rates. If European dictators couldn’t withstand pressure to reform there is no reason to think Arabs will either. If they don’t put mechanisms in place to do it peacefully they can expect it to be violent. Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak has lectured American diplomats for years that if he doesn’t suppress dissent a violent Islamic regime will come to power. Saudis say much the same thing. They may be right. It is hard for me to understand why large numbers of people would want to live under even more thuggish governments than they already do but Arab capacity to act contrary to their own best interest is apparently limitless. Recent elections in Palestine and the insane insurgency in Iraq are not encouraging. These are people who could, if they would, go peacefully about their business and prosper. That they don’t is testimony to a deep and abiding unrest that would appear to be ready to explode.
Authority in Islam
This is a difficult topic for me to understand. I suspect it is for most Christians. On one hand any Muslim can speak for all of Islam. On the other no one can. We are accustomed to conclaves and conventions where dogma is decided, questions of policy resolved, and leadership elected. Dissenters may leave and form splinter groups but by and large there are distinct denominations with hierarchies that can say with certitude what the group believes or doesn’t believe, or at least what the church teaches. If we decide to have an ecumenical conference we pretty much know whom to invite. In Islam there is in theory no priesthood, no rite of holy ordination. Anyone who knows the rituals can lead them. Everything anybody needs to know is written in the Koran and if one can read Arabic, one can see for himself what is good or bad, required or forbidden, true or not true. As a practical matter they of course do have a defined clergy holding appointed offices. They have their Imams, Mullahs, Muftis, and Ayatollahs depending on local practice and custom, but those officials don’t necessarily agree on matters of doctrine or policy.
I once asked an Imam how he got that title. His answer had more to do with what an Imam is not than what one is but he had spent many years in religious schools and on the strength of his education was invited to join a Chicago mosque. He was one of several prayer leaders and spiritual advisors in residence. I then asked what a Mullah was and was astounded that neither he nor any of the other Muslims present seemed to know. I didn’t know enough to ask whether they followed the teachings of a particular school but they were clearly Sunni, not Shia. To the Shia an Imam is something else entirely, a descendent of the Prophet and rightful Caliph.
The key to authority seems to be education and reputation for scholarship but it can sometimes be conveyed by appointment. The old Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was appointed to his office by the British Governor of the Palestinian Protectorate. Ayatollahs owe their status to the approval of their peers. Their role in governing modern Iran is an historical anomaly. Through centuries of tradition Islamic clerics and scholars have avoided any kind of direct rule, preferring to exercise influence independently. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential Shia cleric in Iraq, shares that preference and has avoided the Iranian model. Grand Ayatollah or not however, he has his rivals and his authority does not go unchallenged.
So far as I can determine there has never been a general meeting of Islamic leadership to address the sorts of doctrinal issues Christian Bishops agreed on at Nicaea, or to produce a clear statement on what the agreed doctrine might be. There is only the Koran with all its seeming contradictions and ambiguities, a body of literature regarding the sayings and customs of Muhammad and his companions, much of it of questionable authenticity, and centuries of scholarly thought, most of which is disregarded by today’s Salafists and Wahhabis. Individual Muslims and groups are left to follow whatever leadership most appeals to them. Of course something quite similar can be said of modern Christians. The difference is that millions of Muslims are listening to the most virulent and violent voices while countering views sit quietly by. It might well be that those countering views could be brought together to speak up but identifying them might also be the biggest challenge of all.
The Last Caliph
Islam hasn’t had a Caliph since 1923 when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk sent Ottoman Sultan Mehmet VI into permanent exile and proclaimed a Turkish Republic. There has not been one worthy of the title since two centuries before that. None has ever been universally accepted by Muslims. None has ever had the stature to convene the kind of conference Constantine called for Christians at Nicaea. The first four Caliphs are traditionally revered as “rightly guided” but even they had their rivals. All four were assassinated within thirty years of Muhammad’s death. Through the centuries every other Caliph came to power either through conquest, dynastic succession, or palace coup.
It wasn’t supposed to be like that. Leaders were to be chosen by consensus from the community at large. There was precedent for that among nomadic Arab tribes. They chose chiefs from the ablest and wisest among them. Tribal survival depended on it. But when Muhammad died there was no mechanism in place to ensure an orderly selection. For a while the community was still small and the most prominent members had enough respect for one another to reach a rough consensus, though Ali’s supporters (the Shia) never accepted anyone but Ali or his male heirs, the Imams. It was always an awkward argument because Arabs didn’t have the European tradition of primogeniture. Even if they had Muhammad left no surviving son. Ali was his cousin and son-in-law. The requirements were tightened afterwards to Ali’s male descendants in a direct line. There is disagreement among the Shia whether the line lasted seven or twelve generations. “Twelvers” believe the last Imam didn’t die but went into hiding. He will return in triumph at an eschatological end time. Current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad apparently believes the time is near and will not willingly give up Iran’s nuclear ambitions. In any case most Shia will likely never accept anyone as Caliph unless they are convinced he is that 12th Imam.
Most Muslims are Sunni however, and they traditionally accepted anyone who could amass enough temporal power to make a credible claim. At times there were multiple Caliphs at the same time presiding over different regions. Many of them made a show of legitimacy on accession by requiring heads of influential families to make a public declaration of fealty. Over time the various palace guards tended to acquire excessive power and their loyalty had to be bought. For several hundred years Ottoman succession was determined by fratricide. The first son to learn of a Sultan’s death kept it secret until he could have his brothers assassinated. The practice was codified into Ottoman law by Mehmet, the conqueror of Constantinople, as necessary to ensure stability. It was softened to imprisonment in the harem for the last several generations. Sure enough more than one brother was brought out to replace a Sultan dethroned in palace intrigue. Some of them had fared poorly in “the cage” and were in sorry shape to become Caliphs.
This is the institution many Sunni Muslims would restore. Osama bin Laden calls its abolition a humiliation (that word crops up a lot in Islamic rhetoric.) It is one of the reasons Ataturk is so despised by many Muslims. It’s easy to see why they would want a powerful Caliphate to lead them to complete their long sought world conquest. But no one seems to have serious ideas about just what reforms would prevent new Caliphs from again sliding into degeneracy, the same degeneracy that has claimed other monarchs in other cultures. That is left to God. This time piety will be enough.
The Next Caliph
There were at least three serious attempts in the twentieth century to create a new Caliphate. The British plotted to install a puppet regime in what is now Saudi Arabia during WWI. Gamal Abdel Nasser made a broadly popular run at Arab unity after WWII. Saddam Hussein came closest in his failed invasion of Kuwait in 1990. There will likely be more tries and it is not inconceivable that one of them will succeed. Whether the next Caliphate will be more effective than its predecessors is another matter.
In what could be called the high water mark of their empire, the Brits struck a deal with France and installed members of the Hashemite family as Kings over Syria and Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula. Had the Europeans not been so exhausted by the war the plan might have worked. There might have been a force that could have maintained peace in the Middle East indefinitely. But they were on the wrong side of history. Within three decades Britain and France were gone from the region and they left a mess. Fascist Ba’ath parties in Syria and Iraq are a French legacy. Today’s never ending conflict between Arab and Jew can be traced to British duplicity in promising Palestine to both Hashemites and Zionists. Hashemite defeat by Saudis in the Hejaz brought Wahhabis to world prominence.
Nasser and a group of officers deposed Egypt’s King Farouk in 1952 and for a while Nasser’s star burned brightly. He became effectively military dictator, removed the last vestiges of British colonial rule, nationalized the Suez Canal, and built the Aswan Dam across the Nile creating Lake Nasser, the largest man made lake in the world. In 1958 he joined Syria in forming the United Arab Republic with himself at its head and sparked a wave of pan-Arab sentiment across the Middle East. It didn’t last though. The region’s other despots were cool to the idea of course and in 1961 a Syrian coup dissolved the union. Israel put the last nail in the coffin of what became known as Nasserism in 1967. The Six Day War was a devastating humiliation to Arabs and Nasser never regained his prestige.
Saddam Hussein’s sudden takeover of Kuwait alarmed the world but it absolutely stunned the region. Had a less resolute American President been in office Saddam might well have taken the entire Arabian Peninsula. With all of that oil wealth he would have had economic if not military hegemony over the Arab world and a legitimate claim to the title Caliph. Lots of Arabs would like to see a new Caliphate but Saddam’s brand of fascism is not what most of them have in mind.
It’s hard to see how a new Caliphate might actually be created. None of the attempts of the last century really came close. The only strategy currently on offer is that put forward by Islamic radicals. Their idea is to create mayhem of the sort that brought the Taliban to power in Afghanistan. It involves far more chaos than the rest of the world would conceivably tolerate even if they could bring it off locally. Versions of the strategy are in play in hot spots around the globe but it isn’t working anywhere. Still, one never knows when a new, smarter Nasser might come on the scene. If one did and could offer Muslims ideas that might actually work things could be different. I doubt it though. The world has moved on from the days when one man’s vision could change history quite that dramatically.
Live and Let Live
Since it is unlikely a new Caliph will emerge anytime soon anytime soon to impose order it would seem that forces internal to Islam will be left to play themselves out. The traditional or moderate Muslim has a problem. So long as others obey the law regarding such issues as dress code or alcohol (non Muslims aren’t allowed to proselytize of course) he does not attempt to impose his beliefs on them. That’s a bad strategy when his opponent is a modern Wahhabi or Salafist who is determined to do exactly that. It is much like the dilemma the pacifist faces. It only works if everybody else exercises restraint. If no one is prepared to enforce the law lawlessness prevails.
The only successful pacifist political movements in history I can think of were Mahatma Gandhi’s drive for Indian Independence in 1947 and Martin Luther King Jr.’s peaceful protests leading to the American Civil Rights Act of 1964. Had either of those movements begun a century or even a half century earlier they would have been brutally repressed. But they took place at a time when neither American nor British public opinion would tolerate police brutality, and in fact both were inclined to sympathize with protestors. So those movements succeeded where none had in the past.
In a way, Islam faces the opposite situation. It is the advocates for change who are violent. Islamic public opinion not only tolerates brutality, much of it sympathizes with it. It is as if they are cursed with a cultural character flaw. When the worst atrocities occur Muslims can muster a sense of outrage only if the victims are Muslim and the perpetrators not. If the culprits are Muslim the community expresses at most a collective tut tut and if the victims are not Muslim not even that. They will accept the most despicable behavior from fellow Muslims so long as they themselves are not directly threatened.
So when Saddam Hussein gasses his Kurdish citizens Saudis utter not a word of protest. When he invades next door neighbor Kuwait they ask for American help lest they be next. When Arabs conduct campaigns of genocide in the Sudan, other Arabs are unconcerned. When American soldiers abuse Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Muslims riot in the streets. Exasperating as it is, the double standard isn’t so much the problem as the unwillingness on behalf of moderates to deal with their radical brethren. Modern Islam has been spiraling downward toward the least civilized common denominator.
It’s understandable at some level. Wahhabi and Salafi Muslims have one thing in common with American Christian fundamentalists. They are all trying to return to an earlier, purer version of their respective faiths that they believe their co-religionists have strayed from. I doubt any serious Christian wants to go back to the bad old days of Roman persecution but many do have an idealized vision of the martyrs that they try to emulate in the face of what they see as attacks on their faith. Some of it is true of course. There is a concerted effort from significant elements in American society and even from the courts to banish all reference to religion from public life, or at least Christian references. Back to basics movements are a response. That much is normal. They have happened time and again among Catholics and Protestants.
But Islamic radicals aren’t really going back to basics. They are going forward to a brand of Islam that is new and dangerous. For the past fifty years or so they have been carrying the day.
Time and Circumstance
Thomas Wolfe was right. “There are things you just can’t do in life. You can’t beat the phone company, you can’t make a waiter see you until he’s ready to see you, and you can’t go home again.” Muslims can’t go back to the days of Muhammad and Christians can’t return to the early church. We can only move on. Ours is a different world. Dramatic improvements in communication made the modern police state possible and have now proved to be its undoing. Globalization has made events in faraway places relevant in ways they never were before.
None of that means we shouldn’t learn from the past of course. Constantine I understood that dissention in the Christian church undermined stability in his empire and called a council at Nicaea to resolve disputes. Dissention in Islam is destabilizing much of today’s world. We have no modern Constantine. Powerful as the United States is it has very little influence over Islam, the United Nations is ineffectual, and the Arab League even less so. Time and again over the decades radical Muslims have murdered their more moderate opponents or intimidated them into silence. It happened in Saudi Arabia. It has been happening in Palestine for over eighty years. It happened in Afghanistan and is happening now in Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and a dozen other places. It is being tried in Iraq. Islam has been unable to stop it. It affects the rest of us because the radicals don’t just want to dominate Islam, they want to dominate the world and they expect to do it by creating chaos, the more mayhem the better.
Things may be changing however. A favorite tactic over the years has been to create an incident among non-Muslim neighbors, blow up a restaurant say, and provoke a heavy handed response. Then publicize the results in order to stimulate popular resentment. The tactic has worked over and over again, especially in Palestine to the point where Israel is universally despised among Muslims. Yasser Arafat built a remarkable career on not much more than that. But they may have gone to that well too many times. Palestinian orange growers have begun to recognize that when militants use their orchards to launch rockets into Israel they might as well aim their missiles toward Gaza. Palestinians may be tiring of irresponsible elements deciding for them when and how to go to war.
Something remarkable happened when the US invaded Afghanistan, or rather didn’t happen. There were no wide spread popular protests among Muslims, the predicted riots were missing. When Americans turned their attention to Iraq the protests from Europe were louder than those from Arabia. Even complaints about supposed American atrocities have been relatively quiet. Double standard or not, Arabs have noticed that American soldiers can be brought to justice when they commit crimes. Something even more remarkable is happening today in response to Israeli retaliation against militants in Lebanon and Gaza. More than a few Arabs are blaming the militants.
Recent elections brought Islamic terrorists to power in Palestine and into the government in Lebanon. Once there they behaved irresponsibly as is their want. Now that their attacks against Israel have produced the desired reprisals their Arab neighbors have not responded as sympathetically as they have in the past. They have no wish to be drawn into a war not of their choosing. It may not last but it is a positive sign. It may even be that Islamic public opinion has turned a corner. In today’s world that can be a force more powerful than any emperor.
posted by Onfoot at 6:11 AM
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