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Clash of Cultures The war in Iraq has brought
to glaring light a fundamental quality of the age – a clash of cultures
between the Near (or Middle) East and the West, between Islamic and Western
cultures. Ten years ago, suggesting
such a thing was politically incorrect.
Now books and articles explore the subject, a few of which are listed
at the end of this post. Indeed, the
subject cannot be fully explored in anything less than a very lengthy article
or post – but the longer the post the less likely it is read. So here I barely scratch the surface. Culture, at foundation,
might be defined as the values, behaviors, beliefs, institutions and thought
characteristic of a society, shaped over time by a shared history. When America invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam,
Americans expected Iraqis to embrace characteristically Western cultural
values and institutions – that, at a minimum, Iraqis would adopt as the
foundation of their newly-freed society the Western values and institutions
of democracy in government, equality under the law for all citizens, the
separation of religious and civil authority, and the primacy of the
nation-state as the basis of social identity and security. We encouraged Iraqis to vote a 'unity government'
into power, but not all Iraqis voted, and the government failed to unify the
nation. We encouraged Iraqis to write
a new constitution, and were appalled that it did not guarantee equality to
all Iraqis nor did it guarantee separation of religious and civil
authority. We insisted that a united
Iraq become the basis of national identity for all Iraqis, and are dismayed
by de facto Kurdish independence in the North and de facto Sunni/Shiia civil
war in the South. All this, I think, points to
a fatal flaw in the thinking of most Americans – believe it or not, not
everyone wants to be 'like us'. To
understand why, we have to understand something of the history of the Near
East, and how it shaped a culture so different from our own. A new religion largely
shaped Near Eastern culture from the Seventh Century onward. Arising on the Arabian Peninsula, Islam
united the indigenous, predominantly Arab populations under a new faith that
merged both religious and civil society under God's perfect, final and unchanging
law (Sharia). By contrast, the
predominant religion of the West (Christianity) began as a persecuted sect,
and only after centuries of perseverance achieved a place alongside civil
authority. At times Christianity vied
with civil authority for primacy, or civil authority sought to bend
Christianity to its purposes. But at
no time was Christianity and civil authority merged. The union of religion and
civil authority has always been a part of classic Islamic thought and
practice under Sharia law, the foundational legal code of traditional Muslim
societies. In the minds of most
Muslims today, there can be no separation of religious and civil authority. The primacy of Sharia as
God's perfect, final and unchanging law prevented the separation of religion
and civil authority in Islamic culture.
It has also hindered development of democratic ideals in Near Eastern
societies. Western society over time
emancipated, then granted equal rights under the law, to all its citizens,
without which democracy, in the modern Western sense of the institution, is
impossible. Some have attributed this
development, with good reason, in part to the teachings and example of
Christ. Sharia law, among other
things, institutionalized from Islam's founding the status of men over women,
the believer (Muslim) over the non-believer, and even the free over the
slave. Wherever Sharia prevails, the
social stratification embodied in the Muslim legal code is law; the Western
cultural ideal of legal equality regardless of religion, gender or social
status runs counter to Islam's foundational law. Further reinforcing Islam's
primacy in Near Eastern culture has been the Muslim experience with invading,
conquering armies from about the Tenth Century onward. At the crossroads of three continents, the
Near East since antiquity has suffered successive waves of foreign invasion
and occupation, a condition that plagued Muslim culture after its own rise to
dominance in the region. By contrast,
the history of Western Europe (at least since Roman times) is primarily the
history of Europeans fighting among themselves, while managing to keep the
invader largely at bay – a condition that eventually facilitated the rise of
native, ethnic nation-states of defined geographic and ethnic boundaries
(Britain, France, Prussia/Germany, Austria, etc.). Over time, Europeans began to identify with, and depend for
security upon, the nation-state, supplanting the ancient sources of both
identity and security – the family, the clan, the tribe and religion. In the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,
this gave rise to the Western values as nationalism, patriotism and
statism. The history of the Near East
is the history of Muslims fighting among themselves, but also contending with
successive waves of invaders from the East (Seljuk Turks, Mongols and Ottoman
Turks) and from the West (Christian Crusaders, the French and the
British). Under circumstances wherein
foreign domination came and went, individuals often were forced to cling to
the ancient sources of identity and security – the family, the clan, the
tribe and religion. That without exception all
invaders of the past either converted to Islam or were eventually ejected
further reinforced the primacy of Islam in Muslim society. Islam – along with the family, clan and
tribe – were (and remain) the foundational constants in a region continually
invaded and conquered by outsiders, and most recently by America. Indeed, the very concept of
the nation-state, such as it exists in Muslim culture today, is largely one
foisted upon a conquered people by French and British colonial powers in the
middle of the Twentieth Century. It
remains in the minds of many if not most Muslims (together with such concepts
as liberal democracy, legal equality regardless of religion, gender or social
status, and separation of religious and civil authority) the invention of the
Crusader West. 'President George W. Bush’s
vision for the Iraq War was nothing if not expansive. Liberal democracy and
popular sovereignty were to supplant tyranny not only in Baghdad, but in
nearby capitals as well. And the force of U.S. arms would not be needed to
accomplish the latter missions. As Bush asserted to eager applause at the
American Enterprise Institute on February 25, 2003, “a new regime in Iraq
would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations
in the region.” Democracy, the war party believed, would be contagious.' (from: Regional Implications
of the Iraq War by Chris Toensing | March 27, 2007 - Foreign Policy In Focus
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4109) That Iraq has not blossomed
into a Westernized, secular, egalitarian, democratic nation-state comes as no
surprise to the student of history.
But then, students of history rarely if ever make history – that is
the overwhelming purview of authorities, both civil and religious. Would that these from time
to time read a little history. Huntington, Samuel P. The Clash of Civilizations and the
Remaking of World Order (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1996) Khalidi, Rashid Resurrection of Empire: Western Footprint
and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East (Beacon Press, Massachusetts,
2005) Lewis, Bernard The Middle East, A Brief History of the
Last 2,000 Years (Scribner, New York, 2003) Lewis, Bernard What Went Wrong? The clash between Islam
and Modernity in the Middle East (Harper Collins, New York, 2003) Polk, William R. Understanding Iraq (Harper Collins, New York,
2006) National Geographic, Cradle
and Crucible: History and Faith in the Middle East (National Geographic
Society, Washington, D. C., 2002) National Intelligence
Council, Mapping the Global Future: Report of the National Intelligence
Council's 2020 Project (NIC 2004-13, December 2004) www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_globaltrend2020.html (accessed 7/25/06) Braden, Charles S. The World's Religions (Pierce &
Washabaugh 1965) Ruthven, Malise Islam, A Very Short Introduction (Oxford
University Press Inc., New York, 2000) Bickel, Bruce & Jantz,
Stan World Religions & Cults
(Harvest House Publishers, Oregon, 2002) |
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