Well worth reading

his is rather long but is an amazing history and documentation of events
leading up to todays problems.
Hillsdale is a great college - JDH
  _____ 

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September 2006

"Freedom and Justice in Islam"

Bernard Lewis
Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton
University

Bernard Lewis, born and raised in London, studied at the University of
London's School of Oriental and African Studies, where he earned a Ph.D. in
the history of Islam. After military and other war service in World War II,
he taught at the University of London until 1974 and at Princeton University
until 1986. He is currently Princeton's Cleveland E. Dodge Professor
Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies. For many years he was one of the very few
European scholars permitted access to the archives of the Ottoman Empire in
Istanbul. In addition to his historical studies, he has published
translations of classical Arabic, Turkish, Persian and Hebrew poetry.
Professor Lewis has drawn on primary sources to produce more than two dozen
books, including The Arabs in History, What Went Wrong? and The Crisis of
Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror.

The following is adapted from a lecture delivered on July 16, 2006, on board
the Crystal Serenity, during a Hillsdale College cruise in the British
Isles.

By common consent among historians, the modern history of the Middle East
begins in the year 1798, when the French Revolution arrived in Egypt in the
form of a small expeditionary force led by a young general called Napoleon
Bonaparte-who conquered and then ruled it for a while with appalling ease.
General Bonaparte-he wasn't yet Emperor-proclaimed to the Egyptians that he
had come to them on behalf of a French Republic built on the principles of
liberty and equality. We know something about the reactions to this
proclamation from the extensive literature of the Middle Eastern Arab world.
The idea of equality posed no great problem. Equality is very basic in
Islamic belief: All true believers are equal. Of course, that still leaves
three "inferior" categories of people-slaves, unbelievers and women. But in
general, the concept of equality was understood. Islam never developed
anything like the caste system of India to the east or the privileged
aristocracies of Christian Europe to the west. Equality was something they
knew, respected, and in large measure practiced. But liberty was something
else.

As used in Arabic at that time, liberty was not a political but a legal
term: You were free if you were not a slave. The word liberty was not used
as we use it in the Western world, as a metaphor for good government. So the
idea of a republic founded on principles of freedom caused some puzzlement.
Some years later an Egyptian sheikh-Sheikh Rifa'a Rafi' al-Tahtawi, who went
to Paris as chaplain to the first group of Egyptian students sent to
Europe-wrote a book about his adventures and explained his discovery of the
meaning of freedom. He wrote that when the French talk about freedom they
mean what Muslims mean when they talk about justice. By equating freedom
with justice, he opened a whole new phase in the political and public
discourse of the Arab world, and then, more broadly, the Islamic world.

Is Western-Style Freedom Transferable?

What is the possibility of freedom in the Islamic world, in the Western
sense of the word? If you look at the current literature, you will find two
views common in the United States and Europe. One of them holds that Islamic
peoples are incapable of decent, civilized government. Whatever the West
does, Muslims will be ruled by corrupt tyrants. Therefore the aim of our
foreign policy should be to insure that they are our tyrants rather than
someone else's-friendly rather than hostile tyrants. This point of view is
very much favored in departments of state and foreign offices and is
generally known, rather surprisingly, as the "pro-Arab" view. It is, of
course, in no sense pro-Arab. It shows ignorance of the Arab past, contempt
for the Arab present, and unconcern for the Arab future. The second common
view is that Arab ways are different from our ways. They must be allowed to
develop in accordance with their cultural principles, but it is possible for
them-as for anyone else, anywhere in the world, with discreet help from
outside and most specifically from the United States-to develop democratic
institutions of a kind. This view is known as the "imperialist" view and has
been vigorously denounced and condemned as such.

In thinking about these two views, it is helpful to step back and consider
what Arab and Islamic society was like once and how it has been transformed
in the modern age. The idea that how that society is now is how it has
always been is totally false. The dictatorship of Saddam Hussein in Iraq or
the Assad family in Syria or the more friendly dictatorship of Mubarak in
Egypt-all of these have no roots whatsoever in the Arab or in the Islamic
past. Let me quote to you from a letter written in 1786-three years before
the French Revolution-by Mssr. Count de Choiseul-Gouffier, the French
ambassador in Istanbul, in which he is trying to explain why he is making
rather slow progress with the tasks entrusted to him by his government in
dealing with the Ottoman government. "Here," he says, "things are not as in
France where the king is sole master and does as he pleases." "Here," he
says, "the sultan has to consult." He has to consult with the former holders
of high offices, with the leaders of various groups and so on. And this is a
slow process. This scenario is something radically different than the common
image of Middle Eastern government today. And it is a description that
ceased to be true because of a number of changes that occurred.

Modernization and Nazi and Soviet Influence

The first of these changes is what one might call modernization. This was
undertaken not by imperialists, for the most part, but by Middle Eastern
rulers who had become painfully aware that their societies were undeveloped
compared with the advanced Western world. These rulers decided that what
they had to do was to modernize or Westernize. Their intentions were good,
but the consequences were often disastrous. What they did was to increase
the power of the state and the ruler enormously by placing at his disposal
the whole modern apparatus of control, repression and indoctrination. At the
same time, which was even worse, they limited or destroyed those forces in
the traditional society that had previously limited the autocracy of the
ruler. In the traditional society there were established orders-the bazaar
merchants, the scribes, the guilds, the country gentry, the military
establishment, the religious establishment, and so on. These were powerful
groups in society, whose heads were not appointed by the ruler but arose
from within the groups. And no sultan, however powerful, could do much
without maintaining some relationship with these different orders in
society. This is not democracy as we currently use that word, but it is
certainly limited, responsible government. And the system worked.
Modernization ended that. A new ruling class emerged, ruling from the center
and using the apparatus of the state for its purposes.

That was the first stage in the destruction of the old order. The second
stage we can date with precision. In the year 1940, the government of France
surrendered to the Axis and formed a collaborationist government in a place
called Vichy. The French colonial empire was, for the most part, beyond the
reach of the Nazis, which meant that the governors of the French colonies
had a free choice: To stay with Vichy or to join Charles de Gaulle, who had
set up a Free French Committee in London. The overwhelming majority chose
Vichy, which meant that Syria-Lebanon-a French-mandated territory in the
heart of the Arab East-was now wide open to the Nazis. The governor and his
high officials in the administration in Syria-Lebanon took their orders from
Vichy, which in turn took orders from Berlin. The Nazis moved in, made a
tremendous propaganda effort, and were even able to move from Syria
eastwards into Iraq and for a while set up a pro-Nazi, fascist regime. It
was in this period that political parties were formed that were the nucleus
of what later became the Baath Party. The Western Allies eventually drove
the Nazis out of the Middle East and suppressed these organizations. But the
war ended in 1945, and the Allies left. A few years later the Soviets moved
in, established an immensely powerful presence in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and
various other countries, and introduced Soviet-style political practice. The
adaptation from the Nazi model to the communist model was very simple and
easy, requiring only a few minor adjustments, and it proceeded pretty well.
That is the origin of the Baath Party and of the kind of governments that we
have been confronting in the Middle East in recent years. That, as I would
again repeat and emphasize, has nothing whatever to do with the traditional
Arab or Islamic past.

Wahhabism and Oil

That there has been a break with the past is a fact of which Arabs and
Muslims themselves are keenly and painfully aware, and they have tried to do
something about it. It is in this context that we observe a series of
movements that could be described as an Islamic revival or reawakening. The
first of these-founded by a theologian called Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, who lived
in a remote area of Najd in desert Arabia-is known as Wahhabi. Its argument
is that the root of Arab-Islamic troubles lies in following the ways of the
infidel. The Islamic world, it holds, has abandoned the true faith that God
gave it through His prophet and His holy book, and the remedy is a return to
pure, original Islam. This pure, original Islam is, of course-as is usual in
such situations-a new invention with little connection to Islam as it
existed in its earlier stages.

Wahhabism was dealt with fairly easily in its early years, but it acquired a
new importance in the mid-1920s when two things happened: The local tribal
chiefs of the House of Saud-who had been converted since the 18th century to
the Wahhabi version of Islam-conquered the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
This was of immense importance, giving them huge prestige and influence in
the whole Islamic world. It also gave them control of the pilgrimage, which
brings millions of Muslims from the Islamic world together to the same place
at the same time every year.

The other important thing that happened-also in the mid-20s-was the
discovery of oil. With that, this extremist sect found itself not only in
possession of Mecca and Medina, but also of wealth beyond the dreams of
avarice. As a result, what would otherwise have been a lunatic fringe in a
marginal country became a major force in the world of Islam. And it has
continued as a major force to the present day, operating through the Saudi
government and through a whole series of non-governmental organizations.
What is worse, its influence spreads far beyond the region. When Muslims
living in Chicago or Los Angeles or Birmingham or Hamburg want to give their
children some grounding in their faith and culture-a very natural, very
normal thing-they turn to the traditional resources for such purposes:
evening classes, weekend schools, holiday camps and the like. The problem is
that these are now overwhelmingly funded and therefore controlled by the
Wahhabis, and the version of Islam that they teach is the Wahhabi version,
which has thus become a major force in Muslim immigrant communities.

Let me illustrate the significance of this with one example: Germany has
constitutional separation of church and state, but in the German school
system they provide time for religious instruction. The state, however, does
not provide teachers or textbooks. They allow time in the school curriculum
for the various churches and other religious communities-if they wish-to
provide religious instruction to their children, which is entirely optional.
The Muslims in Germany are mostly Turks. When they reached sufficient
numbers, they applied to the German government for permission to teach Islam
in German schools. The German authorities agreed, but said they-the
Muslims-had to provide the teachers and the textbooks. The Turks said that
they had excellent textbooks, which are used in Turkey and Turkish schools,
but the German authorities said no, those are government-produced textbooks;
under the principle of separation of church and state, these Muslims had to
produce their own. As a result, whereas in Turkish schools in Turkey,
students get a modern, moderate version of Islam, in German schools, in
general, they get the full Wahhabi blast. The last time I looked, twelve
Turks have been arrested as members of Al-Qaeda-all twelve of them born and
educated in Germany.

The Iranian Revolution and Al-Qaeda

In addition to the rising spread of Wahhabism, I would draw your attention
to the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The word "revolution" is much misused in
the Middle East; it is used for virtually every change of government. But
the Iranian Revolution was a real revolution, in the sense that the French
and Russian revolutions were real revolutions. It was a massive change in
the country, a massive shift of power-socially, economically, and
ideologically. And like the French and Russian revolutions in their prime,
it also had a tremendous impact in the world with which the Iranians shared
a common universe of discourse-the world of Islam. I remember not long after
the Iranian Revolution I was visiting Indonesia and for some mysterious
reason I had been invited to lecture in religious universities. I noticed in
the student dorms they had pictures of Khomeini all over the place, although
Khomeini-like the Iranians in general-is a Shiite, and the Indonesians are
Sunnis. Indonesians generally showed little interest in what was happening
in the Middle East. But this was something important. And the Iranian
Revolution has gone through various familiar phases-familiar from the French
and Russian revolutions-such as the conflicts between the moderates and the
extremists. I would say that the Iranian Revolution is now entering the
Stalinist phase, and its impact all over the Islamic world has been
enormous.

The third and most recent phase of the Islamic revival is that associated
with the name Al-Qaeda-the organization headed by Osama bin Laden. Here I
would remind you of the events toward the end of the 20th century: the
defeat of the Russians in Afghanistan, the withdrawal of the defeated armies
into Russia, the collapse and breakdown of the Soviet Union. We are
accustomed to regard that as a Western, or more specifically, an American,
victory in the Cold War. In the Islamic world, it was nothing of the kind.
It was Muslim victory in a Jihad. And, if we are fair about it, we must
admit that this interpretation of what happened does not lack plausibility.
In the mountains of Afghanistan, which the Soviets had conquered and had
been trying to rule, the Taliban were able to inflict one defeat after
another on the Soviet forces, eventually driving the Red Army out of the
country to defeat and collapse.

Thanks to modern communications and the modern media, we are quite well
informed about how Al-Qaeda perceives things. Osama bin Laden is very
articulate, very lucid, and I think on the whole very honest in the way he
explains things. As he sees it, and as his followers see it, there has been
an ongoing struggle between the two world religions-Christianity and
Islam-which began with the advent of Islam in the 7th century and has been
going on ever since. The Crusades were one aspect, but there were many
others. It is an ongoing struggle of attack and counter-attack, conquest and
reconquest, Jihad and Crusade, ending so it seems in a final victory of the
West with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire-the last of the great Muslim
states-and the partition of most of the Muslim world between the Western
powers. As Osama bin Laden puts it: "In this final phase of the ongoing
struggle, the world of the infidels was divided between two superpowers-the
United States and the Soviet Union. Now we have defeated and destroyed the
more difficult and the more dangerous of the two. Dealing with the pampered
and effeminate Americans will be easy." And then followed what has become
the familiar description of the Americans and the usual litany and
recitation of American defeats and retreats: Vietnam, Beirut, Somalia, one
after another. The general theme was: They can't take it. Hit them and
they'll run. All you have to do is hit harder. This seemed to receive final
confirmation during the 1990s when one attack after another on embassies,
warships, and barracks brought no response beyond angry words and expensive
missiles misdirected to remote and uninhabited places, and in some places-as
in Beirut and Somalia-prompt retreats.

What happened on 9/11 was seen by its perpetrators and sponsors as the
culmination of the previous phase and the inauguration of the next
phase-taking the war into the enemy camp to achieve final victory. The
response to 9/11 came as a nasty surprise. They were expecting more of the
same-bleating and apologies-instead of which they got a vigorous reaction,
first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. And as they used to say in Moscow: It
is no accident, comrades, that there has been no successful attack in the
United States since then. But if one follows the discourse, one can see that
the debate in this country since then has caused many of the perpetrators
and sponsors to return to their previous diagnosis. Because remember, they
have no experience, and therefore no understanding, of the free debate of an
open society. What we see as free debate, they see as weakness, fear and
division. Thus they prepare for the final victory, the final triumph and the
final Jihad.

Conclusion

Let's spend a moment or two defining what we mean by freedom and democracy.
There is a view sometimes expressed that "democracy" means the system of
government evolved by the English-speaking peoples. Any departure from that
is either a crime to be punished or a disease to be cured. I beg to differ
from that point of view. Different societies develop different ways of
conducting their affairs, and they do not need to resemble ours. And let us
remember, after all, that American democracy after the War of Independence
was compatible with slavery for three-quarters of a century and with the
disenfranchisement of women for longer than that. Democracy is not born like
the Phoenix. It comes in stages, and the stages and processes of development
will differ from country to country, from society to society. The French
cherish the curious illusion that they invented democracy, but since the
great revolution of 1789, they have had two monarchies, two empires, two
dictatorships, and at the last count, five republics. And I'm not sure that
they've got it right yet.

There are, as I've tried to point out, elements in Islamic society which
could well be conducive to democracy. And there are encouraging signs at the
present moment-what happened in Iraq, for example, with millions of Iraqis
willing to stand in line to vote, knowing that they were risking their
lives, is a quite extraordinary achievement. It shows great courage, great
resolution. Don't be misled by what you read in the media about Iraq. The
situation is certainly not good, but there are redeeming features in it. The
battle isn't over. It's still very difficult. There are still many major
problems to overcome. There is a bitter anti-Western feeling which derives
partly and increasingly from our support for what they see as tyrannies
ruling over them. It's interesting that pro-American feeling is strongest in
countries with anti-American governments. I've been told repeatedly by
Iranians that there is no country in the world where pro-American feeling is
stronger, deeper and more widespread than Iran. I've heard this from so many
different Iranians-including some still living in Iran-that I believe it.
When the American planes were flying over Afghanistan, the story was that
many Iranians put signs on their roofs in English reading, "This way,
please."

So there is a good deal of pro-Western and even specifically pro-American
feeling. But the anti-American feeling is strongest in those countries that
are ruled by what we are pleased to call "friendly governments." And it is
those, of course, that are the most tyrannical and the most resented by
their own people. The outlook at the moment is, I would say, very mixed. I
think that the cause of developing free institutions-along their lines, not
ours-is possible. One can see signs of its beginning in some countries. At
the same time, the forces working against it are very powerful and well
entrenched. And one of the greatest dangers is that on their side, they are
firm and convinced and resolute. Whereas on our side, we are weak and
undecided and irresolute. And in such a combat, it is not difficult to see
which side will prevail.

I think that the effort is difficult and the outcome uncertain, but I think
the effort must be made. Either we bring them freedom, or they destroy us.

Editor, Douglas A. Jeffrey; Deputy Editor, Timothy W. Caspar; Assistant to
the Editor, Patricia A. DuBois. The opinions expressed in Imprimis are not
necessarily the views of Hillsdale College. Copyright C 2006. Permission to
reprint in whole or part is hereby granted, provided the following credit
line is used: "Reprinted by permission from IMPRIMIS, the national speech
digest of Hillsdale College, www.hillsdale.edu <http://hillsdale.edu/> ."
Subcription free upon request. ISSN 0277-8432. Imprimis trademark registered
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