The Elliott School of International Affairs
The George Washington University
April 29, 2004
The Robert J. Pelosky, Jr. Distinguished Speaker Series
"Freedom and Justice in the Modern Middle East"
By Bernard Lewis
Dean Harry Harding (HH):
I am Harry Harding, Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs here at GW, and it's my great pleasure to welcome this standing-room-only crowd to the sixth in the Robert J. Pelosky, Jr. Distinguished Speaker Series, which is our flagship public event here at the Elliott School. The objective of the Pelosky Distinguished Speaker Series is to enable the Elliott School to serve as a venue for the discussion of major international issues by some of the world's leading thinkers. The guest lecturers, all well known in their fields, provide our audience of students, faculty, friends, members of the Washington community, with a greater understanding of world problems.
The sponsor of the series, Jay Pelosky, is an alumnus of the Elliott School, though he detoured and took his undergraduate degree in political science at Duke University before receiving his Master's in international affairs from us. He spent some 20 years on Wall Street, the last 12 at Morgan Stanley. His responsibilities ranged there from portfolio management to sell-side strategy in Asia, Latin America, and global asset allocation. And he was named the best in his field four times by Institutional Investor magazine. Currently, Jay is a private investor in New York City. His commitment to the Elliott School is reflected not only in his sponsorship of this series, but also in his chairmanship of our international council.
And before I introduce Professor Lewis, I'd like to ask Jay to come to the podium and say a few words.
Robert J. Pelosky, Jr.:
Good evening, everyone, and thank you very much, Harry, for that very kind introduction. My wife Masha and I are very happy to be here again at the Elliott School. It's always a wonderful occasion and particularly on a beautiful spring afternoon and evening.
Tonight we're very excited to host Dr. Bernard Lewis. Dr. Lewis brings to us an unparalleled vantage point in terms of understanding the Middle East gained from nearly six decades of study of that particular region. And in an era of sound bites and digital pictures, he provides us with reasoned analysis, something that seems so sadly lacking in today's day and age, particularly when we consider great topics such as the future of the Middle East and how it affects the United States. So tonight I look forward to just that, reasoned analysis, Dr. Lewis. And I will stop there and turn the podium back over to Harry.
Thank you all very much for coming.
HH:
Thank you, Jay. It's now my great pleasure and honor to introduce Professor Bernard Lewis. Introductions of distinguished speakers generally fall into two parts. The first section recounts the guest's career -- the positions he or she has held. Then there is the second part that lists the works he or she has published.
Often the length of these sections is inversely correlated. People who have held a variety of positions, especially in public life, may not have had the time to publish all that much. My introduction of Professor Lewis will fall into the opposite category. His career is extremely simple to recount, but his publications are too numerous to list in full.
Bernard Lewis received both his Bachelor's degree and his Ph.D. from the University of London. During World War II he served in the British Army, first in the tank corps and then in intelligence. He has held two distinguished positions in his academic career; first from 1949 until 1974 as Professor of the History of the Near and Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies, again at the University of London, and then, since 1974, as the Cleveland E. Dodge Chair of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. In association with his position at Princeton, he has also been a longtime member of the Institute for Advanced Study. He retired and assumed emeritus status at Princeton in 1986.
So that first part of my introduction was pretty simple. It took only a few sentences. But if I were to give a full accounting of Professor Lewis' publications, that would take us the rest of the evening. He has been an extraordinarily prolific scholar, specializing on Islam, the history of the Middle East, and the relations between Islam and the Middle East on the one hand and the West on the other. His works include such significant contributions as "The Political Language of Islam," "Islam and the West," "The Shaping of the Modern Middle East," "The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years," "A Middle East Mosaic: Fragments of Life," "Letters and History," and "What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response." His most recent book, "From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East" was published by Oxford University Press earlier this year, and it is a collection of some of the most important essays that he has written over the past several years.
The April 26th, 2004 issue of Time magazine identifies Bernard Lewis as one of the Time 100, a list of the 100 most influential people in the world today. And if you don't take Time magazine's word for it, you might be more convinced by the fact that he holds 14 honorary doctorates and is a fellow of the British Academy, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Philosophical Society.
We are extremely honored to have Professor Lewis with us this afternoon. Please welcome him as the sixth speaker in the Robert j. Pelosky Distinguished Speaker Series.
Bernard Lewis (BL):
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. I fear that after that introduction anything I have to say will come as something of an anticlimax, but I shall do my best not to disappoint you.
Let me first begin with some words about words, to explain the title that I have given to my talk. It is, I think, generally agreed among historians of the Middle East that the modern history of that region -- and don't ask me to explain what I mean by modern; that would take the rest of the day -- the modern history of that region begins, one can date it precisely, in 1798 when the French Revolution arrived in Egypt in the form of a small French expeditionary force commanded by a young general called Napoleon Bonaparte. They invaded, conquered, and ruled Egypt without difficulty for several years. When General Bonaparte and his force arrived in Egypt they proudly announced that they had come "in the name of the French Republic, founded on the principles of liberty and equality." Fraternity seems to have got lost in transit. This was, of course, published in French and also in Arabic translation. General Bonaparte brought his Arabic translators with him, a precaution which some of his successors have overlooked.
The reference to equality was no problem. Egyptians, like other Muslims, understood this very well. Equality was a basic principle of Islam from its foundation in the 7th century, in marked contrast to both the caste system of India to the east and the privileged aristocracies of the Christian world to the west. Islam really did insist on equality. There were, of course, certain exceptions to the equality, and notably three groups: slaves, women and unbelievers. But that is not so remarkable if we remember that this republic was founded and dedicated to the principle that all white male Protestants are born free and equal.
Here and there, there has been some, shall we say, extension and expansion of the notion of equality since then. Certainly by the standards of the time, equality was far more advanced in the Islamic world than in the Western world, and I think one can say with certainty that as late as the 19th or even the early 20th century, a poor man of humble origin and background had a better chance of rising to the top than anywhere in Christendom including post-revolutionary France.
Equality then was no problem, but what about the other one, liberty -- or, as we usually say in English, freedom? This was a problem and caused some puzzlement. Freedom -- in Arabic, hurriyya -- in Arabic usage until then, and for a little while after, was in no sense a political term. It was a legal term. You were free if you were not a slave. To be liberated or freed means to be manumitted from slavery, and the Islamic world, unlike the Western world, did not use slavery and freedom as a metaphor for bad and good government.
The insistence on freedom, therefore, caused some puzzlement, and this continued for a while until a very brilliant Egyptian found the answer. The brilliant Egyptian I'm speaking of is a certain Sheikh Rifa'a Rafi' al Tahtawi - a sheikh from al-Azhar -- unreformed; a scholar straight out of the Middle Ages. He accompanied the first Egyptian student mission to Europe. The ruler of Egypt had decided it was time to try and catch up with the West and he sent the first mission of students to Paris. Sheikh Rifa'a accompanied them. He was not a member of the student mission; he was their - I suppose in our language we would say, their chaplain. He was there to look after their spiritual welfare and to see that they didn't go astray, no mean task in Paris in 1826.
He seems to have learned more than any of his wards and he wrote a truly fascinating book giving the impressions of post-revolutionary France received by an Egyptian sheikh from al-Azhar -- and, as I said, the unreformed al-Azhar. He devotes a chapter to French government, and in this he mentions how the French keep talking about freedom. He obviously shared the general puzzlement about what the status of not being a slave had to do with politics. And then he got it, and he explained. When the French talk about freedom, what they mean is what we mean when we talk about justice. And that was spot-on; he had really hit the nail on the head. Just as in France, and more generally in the Western world, we thought of good government and bad government in the form of slavery and freedom, so in the Muslim word the contrasts were injustice or tyranny and justice. Tyranny serves for both; you can oppose it to either freedom or to justice, no matter. This may help us to understand some of the political debate in the Muslim world, which began with the arrival of the French expedition and has been going on ever since in a remarkable variety of forms.
The word freedom was also used in some other senses. In addition to the strictly legal sense, not slave, it also has a sort of social sense, carrying with it a connotation of privilege or exemption. We find, for example, in an Arabic-Spanish vocabulary dating from late medieval Spain when both Arabic and Spanish were still used in the peninsula, the term hurr, free, is translated - franco privilegiado. In other words, exempt and privileged. And we find other examples of the use of free in this sense.
The Turks had had earlier dealings with Europe before the Egyptians were invaded and on a number of occasions they needed to use the word freedom. We have descriptions by Turkish ambassadors to Europe of free institutions of one sort or another. Interestingly, they used Turkish words, the normal connotation of which would be exempt, privileged or something like that.
A little later freedom becomes associated with another related but very different notion, the notion of independence. And there again they use an old word with a new meaning: the word istiqlal. In traditional usage istiqlal really meant full powers. When a pasha was appointed to the command of an expeditionary force or to govern a region, if it was with istiqlal it meant with discretionary powers not subject to the usual constraints. When they needed a word for independence - and the earliest documented example of that that I know is from 1774 - this is the word they used, giving it a new change of meaning. So here we see how old words are given new directions but still without entirely losing their old meanings, and leading all too frequently to mistranslation and misunderstanding.
Now, as Sheikh Rifa'a rightly said, the Muslim ideal of good government is expressed in the term justice. This is represented by several different words in Arabic and other Islamic languages, but by two in particular, one of which, adl, means justice according to the law. Justice means that the law is strictly enforced, the law meaning, of course, God's law, the Shari'a as revealed to the Prophet and to the Muslim community. There is another word, insaf, which has a slightly different meaning, corresponding rather more closely to the meaning of the word equity in the English system, that is something other than the formal justice of the law books dealing with cases that are not covered by formal law. Both of these are part of Muslim, shall we say, jurisprudence.
Now, what is the converse of justice? What is a regime which does not mean the standards of justice? Here we come across two different questions. If the ruler is just as defined in the traditional system of rules and ideas, he must meet two requirements: he must have acquired power rightfully and he must exercise it rightfully. In other words, he must be neither a usurper nor a tyrant. It is possible to be either one without the other though the normal experience was to be both at the same time. The converse is zulm which is variously translated as tyranny, oppression, injustice and the like.
The Islamic notion of justice is very distinctive and goes right back to the life of the Prophet. If you have ever looked at the life of the Prophet Muhammad you will see that it falls into two main phases, both of which are reflected in his book of revelation the Koran. In the first phase he was still living in his native city of Mecca and was in opposition to the regime. He was preaching a new religion, a new doctrine opposed to the pagan oligarchy that ruled in Mecca. And the verses in Koran - and also relevant passages in the prophetic biography dating from the Meccan period carry a message of opposition - rebellion, revolution, call it what you like - against the existing order.
Then came the famous migration, the hijra from Mecca to Medina. In Medina, unlike most other founders of a religion, he became a head of state. This is the most striking difference between Islam and other religions that I know of. Moses was not permitted to enter his promised land. Jesus was crucified and his followers were a persecuted minority for centuries before they converted a Roman emperor and introduced the parallel processes of the Christianization of Rome and the Romanization of Christ. Muhammad conquered his promised land and not he but his enemies were put to death. He became a head of state and he did what heads of state do. He promulgated laws, he dispensed justice, he raised taxes, he made war, made peace, and so on and so on. And all this is reflected in the Koran itself and in the traditions of the Prophet which constitute the core of Muslim jurisprudence and theology. So you have in Islam a total identification of religion and politics which has no parallel in the Christian world.
In the Christian world there have always been two, God and Caesar, sometimes together, sometimes separate, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in discord, but always two. In the Islamic world there was just one and until fairly recently if you talked to Muslims about separation of church and state or separation of religion and state they would usually tell you that this is a Christian remedy for a Christian disease, of no relevance to Islamic conditions. I think now many - more and more of them -- are beginning to think that they may perhaps have caught this Christian disease and that it might be an idea to consider the Christian remedy.
Coming back to justice. In the second period, of course, the law is that of the ruler, and the political tradition, the political maxims, the political guidance are not on how to oppose the government, as in the Meccan period, but on how to maintain and extend the government, as in the Medina period. So from the very beginning we have in Muslim scripture, in Muslim jurisprudence and political culture two distinct traditions, one of which you might call activist, the other quietist; the activist tradition, dating from the Meccan period, the quietist tradition from the Medina period.
Let me give you some examples of both. The Koran makes it clear that there is a duty of obedience. "Obey God, obey the Prophet, obey those who hold authority over you" and this is elaborated in quite a number of sayings attributed to the Prophet. But there are also sayings which put strict limits on that. For example, two dicta attributed to the Prophet and universally accepted as authentic. One says "there is no obedience in sin." In other words, if the ruler orders something which is contrary to the divine law, not only is there no duty of obedience; there is a duty of disobedience. This is more than the right of revolution that we talk of in Western political thought. It is a duty of revolution, or at least of disobedience and opposition to authority. The other dictum to the same effect, "do not obey a creature against his creator" -- again clearly limits the authority of the ruler, whatever form of ruler that may be.
Now, these two traditions, the one quietist and the other activist, continue right through the recorded history of Islamic states and Islamic political thought and practice. It so happens that we are extraordinarily well documented on these matters. Because of the nature of the birth of Islam, Muslims have been interested from the very beginning in what we might call the problems of politics, the nature of governments. Such questions as, how does one acquire government; questions of succession, of legitimacy and the like, and also such matters as the limitation of authority. These, as I say, are very well documented in a very rich literature on politics of several types.
There is the theological literature; there is the legal literature, which we might call the constitutional law of Islam, again amply documented; there is the practical literature - the handbooks written by civil servants for civil servants on how to conduct the day to day business of government, again, a very rich and extensive and instructive literature. There are also quite a lot of - how should I put it, practical handbooks for everyday matters, and generally speaking written by retired pashas or viziers or the like. And, of course, there is also the philosophical literature, which draws very heavily on the ancient Greeks and is elaborated again through translations into a distinctly Islamic version of Plato's "Republic" and Aristotle's "Politics" and the rest. They greatly developed that which they had inherited.
In the course of time what I call the quietest trend or the authoritarian trend gets stronger and stronger. It becomes more and more difficult to maintain those limitations on the autocracy of the ruler which had been prescribed by holy scripture and holy law. And so we get more and more insistence on the need for order. A word which is used very frequently in these discussions is fitna, an Arabic term which can be translated as sedition, disorder, disturbance, even anarchy in certain contexts. The point is made again, and again, and again; tyranny is better than anarchy. That is one point of view but that is not the only one. In some times and in some places it's the dominant one. In other times and other places it is very much rejected.
Let me give you some examples, some practical cases. In 1786, that is three years before the French Revolution - the French ambassador in Istanbul, the ambassador from the king of France to the Ottoman sultan wrote a report to his government explaining why he was not making very rapid progress in carrying out his instructions. He tries to explain that it's difficult to get things done here. You can't do things quickly. And he makes an interesting observation. "Here, he says, "matters 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, and all this takes time. An interesting observation, as I say, three years before the French Revolution, and he was quite right in what he said. It did work that way, and the word "consult" is extremely important. I'll come back to that in a moment.
Let me give you another example of the limitation. The Ottomans laid down very elaborate ceremonial rules for court ceremonies, public festivals, and the like. We have very detailed descriptions of what is to be done on public holidays when the sultan receives the high officers of state. The sultan sits on his cushion on a dais, and the various dignitaries of the state call on him to pay their respects on these various public holidays - the chief of the army, the chief of the navy - they didn't have an air force - the chief judges, the chief of the treasury, and the like. And the manual of procedure says that when the chief judges come, the sultan shall rise to his feet to receive them to show respect for the law -- symbolic, true, but very important as a symbolic recognition that the sultan is not above the law; that the law is above the sultan.
This was by no means entirely theoretical. We have ample evidence, both from inside and from outside, that there really were limitations on the autocracy of the sultan, or the shah, or whatever ruler it was. Certainly, that rule was very authoritarian. You might even say it was autocratic in large measure. But it was not despotic and the Islamic tradition insists very strongly on two points. One is the rejection of despotism, which is called istibdad, a technical term which is reviled. This is regarded as something evil and sinful, and to accuse a ruler of istibdad is practically a call to depose him, to oust him and replace him, which happens not infrequently.
One other point, which is very important, is expressed in the term consultation. his is prescribed in the Koran - shawirhum fi1-amr. It is also mentioned very frequently in the traditions of the Prophet. It is the opposite of istibdad, of despotism. Bad government is despotism; good government is consulting.
Now, with whom do you consult? In practice this means with certain established interests in the society. In the earliest times one important aspect of it was consulting with the tribal chiefs, and this remains important in some places even to the present time, in Iraq, for example, and in Saudi Arabia; less so in countries like Egypt or Syria, which are more urbanized; consulting also with various groups in the city: the bazaar merchants, the scribes - a term which covers the nonreligious literate classes, mainly civil servants - the religious hierarchy, the military establishment, old established regimental groups like the janissaries of the Ottoman Empire and others; the rural gentry, again, a very important group.
The importance of these groups is, first of all, they do have real power. They can and sometimes do make real trouble for the ruler, even depose him. And the other point, which is very important, is that their heads are not nominated by the ruler. They come from inside the group. They produce their own leaders or representatives, the tribal chiefs, the heads of the guilds, the agas of the janissaries, and the like. So this system of consultation with groups is a very important part of the tradition of Islamic order.
There are some other principles which I shall mention briefly. The traditional system is both consensual and contractual. In the manuals of holy law, in the chapters relating to government, it is normally laid down that the ruler, the new caliph, the head of the Islamic community and state, is "chosen." Now, that is often translated as elected but don't think in terms of a general election. It means consultation with a small group of suitable, competent people who decide among themselves who is to be the successor. In principle hereditary succession is rejected by Sunni Islam, accepted by Shi'a Islam. In practice it was hereditary all the time.
Of the immediate successors of the Prophet, the four, so to speak, elected caliphs, three were murdered, which is not a very promising start for a new political order. One of those murders is of particular importance: the caliph, Uthman, murdered in 656, which started the first of a long series of civil wars to decide a crucial question. There was some who said he was the rightful ruler and killing him was murder, to be punished appropriately. There were others who said he was a usurper and a tyrant; killing him was a just act of retribution in accordance with God's law. That argument began in 656 of the Common Era. It is still continuing with some vigor, I may say.
Nevertheless, the consensual element is important. In theory, at times even in practice, the ruler comes to power with the consent of the ruled and remains in power as long as he retains the consent of the ruled. And the nature of his coming to power is described in the classical texts as a kind of agreement, a contract. The Arabic word bay`a is used to describe this. It is usually translated as homage, as the subjects paying homage to their new ruler. That is a mistranslation. Bay'a comes from an Arabic root meaning to buy and to sell. A "deal" would be a better translation of bay'a. In other words, it is a contract between the ruler and the ruled in which both have obligations. Nobody has any rights. Rights are another system of law. Only God has rights. Human beings have duties, obligations, but the ruler has obligations as well as his subjects.
Now, you may say, all that is nice in theory but we see in effect is a system of arbitrary, tyrannical, despotic governments all over the Middle East and elsewhere in the Islamic world. And, as some people put it, that's how they are, there's nothing we can do about it. That is a misreading of history, and I think one has to look back a little way to see how we got to where we are. I would put this in two phases. Phase one: the modernization of the Middle East, and this begins with General Bonaparte whom I mentioned before, continues through the 19th and 20th centuries when Middle Eastern rulers, usually with the best of intentions, tried to modernize their societies, beginning of course with their governments. Modernizing meant introducing Western technologies of communication, of warfare, of government, and the rest.
As I said, this was done mostly with the best of intentions and it was done mostly not by imperial rulers - imperial rulers generally tended to be cautiously conservative - but by local rulers, the sultans of Turkey, the pashas and Khedives of Egypt, the shahs of Persia, with the best of intentions but with disastrous results. Because modernization did two things. First, it vastly increased the power of the state by giving it methods of control, surveillance, and enforcement wildly beyond the possibilities of earlier rulers, so that by the end of the 20th century any tin-pot ruler of a petty state had vastly greater powers than were ever enjoyed by the mighty caliphs and sultans of the legendary past.
The second, in a sense even worse result of modernization, was the abrogation of intermediate powers-- those elements in society that I spoke of before, the landed gentry, the city merchants, the tribal chiefs, and the rest of them - these previous powers limiting intermediate powers which had effectively limited the authority of the state. These intermediate powers were gradually weakened and mostly eliminated, so that on the one hand the state was getting stronger, and on the other hand the limitations and controls were being whittled away.
This process is vividly described by one of the best writers on the Middle East that I've ever read, a British naval officer called Adolphus Slade, who was attached as an adviser to the Turkish fleet and spent much of his professional life there. He vividly describes this process of change, and he sums it up very nicely. He's talking about what he calls the old nobility; that is to say primarily the landed gentry and the city bourgeoisie, and the new nobility; those who are part of the state, derive their authority from the ruler, not from their own people. And he sums it up by saying, "The old nobility lived on their estates. For the new nobility, the state is their estate," a profound truth and still very much the case. One sees it all the time now in Middle Eastern countries where the state conducts a kind of command economy for the benefit of the ruler, his family, their cousins, their hangers on -- and so forth. And there is a story which is told - a current one of a man - in I won't say which Middle Eastern country - walking by the edge of the desert who sees a lamp of antique workmanship lying in the sand. He picks it up and says: this looks like a magic lamp. I mean, this could be the kind of magic lamp that Aladdin had. Let's try it! He rubbed the lamp, and sure enough a figure appeared but it wasn't the genie of the lamp. It was the younger son of the ruler of that country. And the man looked at him in astonishment and said, what is this? And he said, oh, we've gone into partnership with the genie.
A nice illustration through anecdote of how corruption works nowadays. This kind of corruption, this application of statecraft is largely a result of modernization done, as I said, with the best of intentions but with the direst of results.
The second stage we can date with precision. Let me remind you of a little modern history. 1940: the government of France decides to surrender. A new collaborationist government is formed and established in a watering place called Vichy, and General de Gaulle moves to London and sets up a Free French committee. The whole of the French empire remains beyond the reach of the Germans at that point, and therefore the various governors of the French colonies and dependencies have to decide: will they stay with Vichy or will they rally to de Gaulle? Most of them stayed with Vichy, and in particular the French mandated territory of Syria-Lebanon in the heart of the Arab East remained with Vichy, which meant that Syria-Lebanon was wide open to the Nazis who moved in there in force and made it the main base of their propaganda and activity in the Arab world.
It was at that time that the ideological foundations of the Ba'ath Party were laid, adapting - and it wasn't too difficult - adapting Nazi ideas and Nazi ideologies to the Middle Eastern situation. The actual foundation of the party came a little later but from memoirs of the time we know that this was where it was beginning. It was from Syria that they were also able to set up a pro-Nazi, pro-Axis regime in Iraq for a while, led by the famous, or notorious, Rashid Ali. Well, it caused a lot of trouble. It had a very considerable impact in the Arab world, but we were able to deal with it. At this point I feel entitled to say "we."
The Rashid Ali regime in Iraq was overthrown. Rashid Ali went to Berlin to spend the rest of the war as Hitler's guest with his friend the Mufti of Jerusalem. More recently he became a hero in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, posthumously. And it was then necessary to conquer Syria and hand it over from the Vichyite to the Gaullist French - and things were all right until the end of the war. At the end of the war, in '45, the West left and after a brief interval the Soviets moved in and most of these countries became part of the Soviet orbit.
The Ba'ath Party was easily switched from the Nazi model to the Communist model. It required only minor adjustments. This was a party not in the Western sense of an organization for fighting elections and winning votes. It was a party in the Nazi-Communist sense, part of the apparatus of government particularly concerned with indoctrination, surveillance and repression. The Ba'ath Party in Syria, the Ba'ath Party in Iraq continued to function along these lines, first together, then separately but not entirely in discord.
So what we have seen in the Middle East since 1940 and again after the arrival of the Soviets was basically the importation of European models, the only European models that really worked in the Middle East: the fascist model, the Nazi model and the Communist model. So some people say, talking of Iraq under Saddam Hussein or of other Arab countries, "well, it's hopeless to talk about democracy. That's how they've always been, that's how they are, there's nothing we can do about it." This is generally known as the pro-Arab point of view. Leave them alone; let them do things their way. It isn't, of course, a pro-Arab point of view. It is ignorant of the Arab past, contemptuous of the Arab present, and unconcerned with the Arab future, but that's another matter.
Talking about this as being the immemorial way of doing things in that part of the world is simply untrue. It is comparatively modern, comparatively recent and there are older rules, older traditions on which they can build.
What are the negative, what are the positive factors in the political history, the political tradition of the Middle Eastern Islamic world, with a view to developing or failing to develop democratic institutions in these countries? Let me start with the negative ones. This would enable me to end on a happier note. The negative ones - well, first of all, there is obviously this recent and now a couple centuries old past of autocracy amounting to despotism, but there are, as I said, older traditions, which are by no means entirely dead.
Another more serious negative aspect is the absence in the traditional political thought and practice of the notion of citizenship -- what we understand by citizenship, the role of the citizen, the very notion of politics implied in the world citizen or citizenship or city and going back to the Greek polis (city) or polites (citizen). There's no word in Arabic for citizen. In modern Arabic if they want to say he's a citizen of this or that country they use a word which really means compatriot. The word citizen, in that sense, simply doesn't exist. It doesn't exits in Turkish either. It does exist in Persian but it's a recent invention.
The very notion of citizenship and with all that goes with it - that is to say of the people participating, not just in the choice of a ruler but in the conduct of government - is an alien notion and a difficult one to get across; difficult, but not impossible. There is some experience of elections, though election in the sense of representation is again alien. They did elect in the sense of each group choosing its own leader, though this was usually within a certain family. But the idea of representation in the sense that I choose people to represent me in an elected assembly, is alien to their experience and their practice. But there are other elements and let me hasten to get on to the more positive ones.
First, the points that I've already made: consensual, contractual, limited government, and this is becoming again an issue at the present time. Let me give you an interesting example. I spoke before of the rejection of despotism, of istibdad. This is now being discussed again. There was a Syrian from Aleppo called Kawakibi, who wrote a book in the late 19th century called "Tabai al - Istibdad" -- "The Character of Despotism." It was an Arabic adaptation of a Turkish translation of an Italian book by Vittorio Alfieri, written in the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution. It's an interesting example of the route by which ideas travel.
This book was, as I say, written in Italian. It was translated into Turkish by one of the earliest of the young Turks who published it in Switzerland. It was read in Turkish by Kawakibi; he was a Syrian Arab, but under the Ottomans, so he knew Turkish. He did an Arabic translation of it, which he was able to publish in Egypt because Egypt was then groaning under the British imperial yoke and therefore enjoyed some measure of freedom of expression lacking in other parts of the Middle East before or since.
It's interesting that this book has long been unknown and out of print. As I said it was published in Arabic towards the end of the 19th century. Recently it has been quoted - it's being quoted all over the place and was quoted in the Report on Human Development in Arab Countries -- a rather remarkable document which I would strongly recommend if you haven't read it -- prepared by a committee of Arab intellectuals and published under the auspices of the United Nations. I can only assume that they didn't read it otherwise I can't imagine the United Nations publishing a document of this kind. In that they refer to Kawakibi's book and one finds other references to it elsewhere.
Again, the notion of consultation is being raised and brought to the fore. One sees this particularly in Afghanistan where they suffered from less modernization and are therefore finding it easier to revive the better traditions of the past, one of which is consultation with various interest groups. This is the meaning of the Loya Jirga which you may have heard of in Afghanistan, bringing together different groups, tribal, regional, professional, religious and the like. I think there are signs of a movement in that direction also in the Middle East.
Today we see other influences at work sometimes in surprising forms. Perhaps the most important single development is modern communications. The introduction, first of radio, then of television; the printing press and the newspapers, of course; all these have transformed the Middle East. Now, in the earlier stages modern communications have become an instrument of tyranny. They provide a weapon for state propaganda and control, but that cannot go on indefinitely. Many people agree, and I think so too, that one of the main reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union was the information revolution. Their old system depended on control, specifically on the production of information and ideas, the manufacture and distribution of information and ideas, and in the time of modern communications that was no longer possible.
I remember discussing this with a Bulgarian colleague who was high up in the Communist hierarchy before the collapse of the Soviet Union. I put this point to him. I said, the information revolution will do to you what the industrial revolution did to the Ottoman Empire. You must either accept it, in which case you cease to be what you are, or reject it in which case you fall behind the rest of the world. And to my utter surprise he said, yes, we are well aware of this; we're trying to do something about it. They tried and they failed, as you know.
One already sees the beginnings of this in the Middle East. Even the intensely propagandist TV stations that are available to people contribute to this indirectly and unintentionally by giving a diversity of lies. The mere fact of diversity is important and does arouse doubts and questions and the like. I feel that this is important and, of course, more particularly when it comes from outside.
When I was in Jordan a year or two ago I was told by some of my colleagues, professors at the university, that a lot of their students are learning Modern Hebrew. I was very surprised at this. I said why on earth do they want to learn Modern Hebrew? They never go anywhere near Israel. They never talk to any Israelis. They said no, that's quite right, but they regularly watch Israeli television. They're fascinated by it. In particular, they are fascinated by certain programs where they see great and famous people banging the table and screaming at each other, and they want to know what they're saying. They do have in their midst the spectacle of a very lively, vibrant, ill-mannered democracy at work. And I've heard many times from Arab neighbors of Israel, so to speak, of the impact that this is having.
Another one that I recall. There was a Palestinian-Arab boy who had his arm broken in some incident either by an Israeli policeman or an Israeli soldier, I don't remember which. And he appeared next day on television with his arm bandaged, denouncing Israeli brutality -on Israeli television. A group of people in Jordan watching this were utterly astonished, not at the brutality, but at the description of it on Israeli television. One of them was an Iraqi, an exile from Iraq living in Jordan. And he said, "I would gladly let Saddam Hussein break both my arms and both my legs if he would let me talk like that on Iraqi television." These things have an impact and this can only increase.
It's not going to be easy. Generally speaking, at the present time we have two perceptions of the possibilities for Iraqi democracy, for some order which would bring them both freedom and justice. One is the fear that it won't work, a fear frequently expressed in this country and almost a dogma in Europe; the other, much more urgent in the Middle East, is the fear that it will work. You must remember if it does work, a genuinely free society in Iraq would constitute a mortal threat to the governments of all its neighbors, and particularly to that shabby collection of tyrants whom we are proud to call our friends and allies in the region.
Thank you.
HH:
I'd like to call on Jay Pelosky to ask the first question and then I'll let Professor Lewis handle the questions from the floor. Since this is being recorded people who would like to ask a question should proceed out any of the doors around to this side. We have a microphone set up and we'll take the questions from the microphone over to the left in the order that the questioners appear. But let's start first with Jay
JP:
Thank you, Dr. Lewis, for what clearly did seem to be a reasoned analysis of the history of the Middle East and how it applies to the present day. I want to go back to one of your earlier books, "What Went Wrong," where you talked about one of the basic remedies of Islam, of going back to the good old ways. And I think in "What Went Wrong" you referred to that as being a negative, and yet I take from your comments tonight that going back to some of the good old ways - it would actually be a positive.
Can you elaborate on the differences between those two thoughts and help us understand how the good old ways that you referred to tonight would differ from the, I guess, more fundamentalist ways that you referred to in "What Went Wrong?" Thank you.
BL:
Yes, let me put it this way. People in the Middle East, and more generally in the Islamic world are becoming more and more keenly aware that things have gone very badly wrong. In the past, in earlier times they weren't really aware of the differences between their world and the rest. They didn't realize how far behind they were falling, not only behind the advancing West, but also behind the East - the Far East, India, Southeast Asia, practically everywhere else. Now in the time of modern communications and so on they are becoming very aware of that, and they are reacting in various ways.
Now, broadly speaking there have been two responses to this awareness of falling behind. One of them is what you might call the modernizers. They say we have fallen behind because we have not modernized. We have to modernize. We have to adopt modern ways in order to catch up with and become part of the modern world. That is the line which has hither to been dominant in the Turkish Republic, for example, and it commands considerable support in a number of other Muslim countries.
The other line is the exact opposite. They say no, our troubles are too much modernization and we have become poor and weak because we abandoned our true heritage. We abandoned the divine faith, the true faith that was given to us and we went aping foreign ways, importing sinful and corrupt foreign customs, abandoning our own laws and borrowing Western laws, and so on. And the remedy is the return to true authentic Islam. Now, that is what they mean by a return to the past, which is very different from the sort of thing that I was describing.
Now, that was the line of most of the so-called fundamentalist groups. It comes in various forms and it first became recognized as an important factor with the Iranian revolution of 1979. That was when it became a major force in Islamic politics. This was a revolution in the real sense of the word. The word revolution is very much used in Middle Eastern governments. In fact, it's the only generally recognized title to legitimacy.
What happens in other places is generally more accurately described by the French term coup d'etat, or the German term putsch, or the Spanish term pronunciamento; English history provides no equivalent. The revolution in Iran was a real revolution, a major change with a very significant ideological change, with a shift in the basis of society, and with an immense impact in the whole world with which they shared a universe of discourse, that's to say, the Islamic world. In other words, it's a revolution in the sense in which the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution were revolutions. And its impact in the Islamic world has been enormous. It now seems to be entering the Napoleonic, or perhaps more accurately, the Stalinist phase - drawing the parallel with those revolutions - but it did mark an important development.
The other one is the more Sunni type, associated predominantly though not exclusively, with al Qaeda. Their great moment was the collapse of the Soviet Union, which they see as their victory - not unreasonably, I may say. As they see it, it was the Islamic guerilla fighters in Afghanistan who destroyed the Soviet Union, drove the Red Army out to defeat and collapse. And, as Osama bin Laden puts it in various places, we have destroyed one of the two great infidel superpowers and the other will be much easier.
Questioner:
I'm Al Millikin, affiliated with Washington Independent Writers. If terrorism cannot and will not represent true Islam, should those who are not Muslim act and talk as if suicide bombing terrorists are Muslims just because they make that profession? For example, is it wise or consistent for enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay to be provided by the U.S. with a Muslim chaplain if they are not real Muslims?
BL:
Well, I'm not acquainted with any system of providing terrorist chaplains. Though, at least in one case this seems to have been done. No, I mean, obviously it is not for us or for any non-Muslims to say what is Muslim and what is not. Only the Muslims can say that. But I think one can arrive at some conclusions on the subject. Terrorism, for example, has existed in many different parts of the world. In Islam it is expressly forbidden by the holy law, which goes into such subjects as what we nowadays call collateral damage. It forbids the use of weapons which are likely to cause large-scale damage to noncombatants. The Islamic law expressly forbids suicide. Suicide is a mortal sin. Even if someone has lived a life of unremitting virtue and then commits suicide, he therefore forfeits his share of Paradise which he has earned and goes to eternal damnation, and this is set forth in great detail. The punishment of the suicide in hell is the endless repetition of the act of suicide.
So we know what these suicide bombers have to look forward to and they don't seem to be aware of that because we have - in the last century or so and more particularly in the last half century - an extensive rewriting of Islam by certain groups which were previously very marginal but have become very important, and I'm speaking in particular of the Wahhabis. The Wahhabis are - I was going to say a sect but that's a Christian word which is not really appropriate to Islam -- shall we say a school of Islam which arose in Najd in the northeastern corner of Arabia in the 18th century. It reappeared in the 20th century and became important when the tribal chiefs of that area, the House of Saud, conquered the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and created the Saudi monarchy.
This brought together two factors of the highest importance. One, the Wahhabi Saudis controlling the holy cities and therefore controlling the pilgrimage which gave them immense prestige and influence in the Islamic world. The other was oil and the money which arose from oil. The effect of this was to give worldwide impact to what otherwise would have been a lunatic fringe in a marginal country.
Questioner:
Professor Lewis, you spoke briefly about Iran and the revolution in Iran, and also of the potential impact of the success of some form of representative democracy or representative government in Iraq in the Middle East. How would you see the current government of Iran reacting, in general? What are their interests in the current situation?
BL:
Their interest is first and foremost survival. The current regime in Iran is very much in danger. It is universally detested by the overwhelming majority of Iranians; the evidence for this is overwhelming. And they have most to fear from the establishment of a working democracy just next door. The effect of this on their people would be enormous and they are well aware of that.
Questioner:
Professor Lewis, could you talk about the role of the Saudis over the next, say, five or 10 years in the success or failure of democracy in the Middle East?
BL:
I'm a historian. I find it difficult enough to predict the past - I don't like predicting the future. I don't mind predicting the long-term future when I won't be around. The near future is a different matter.
I don't see much sign of democracy in the Saudi Kingdom, nor do I see any movement in that direction.
Questioner:
If I might follow up, what about their influence in other parts of the Middle East?
BL:
Their influence is very considerable. It's of two kinds. On the one hand, the influence of the rulers of the holy places who control the pilgrimage which brings millions of Muslims from all over the Islamic world to Mecca and Medina where they can be suitably indoctrinated. But the other thing, which is much more important, is money. You have now, for example, large Muslim communities in what you might call the Muslim diaspora living in Europe, in North America, and even as far away as Australia.
Now, what is more natural than that a Muslim living in California or in Hamburg should want to give his children some basic education in their religion and culture? And all over these diaspora communities there are now Sunday schools, weekend camps, evening schools, and the like providing this basic grounding in Islam and Islamic traditions. A very large portion of them is owned, operated and funded by the Wahhabis. They have just the right combination of passion, money, and the total lack of scruples.
I'll give you an interesting example from Germany. In Germany religious instruction is provided in the schools but not by the state. The religious communities are given a place in the curriculum to provide religious instruction for members of their community, which is entirely voluntary. There is no obligation to attend these classes and the state does not involve itself in any way. When the Muslims, mostly Turkish, in Germany reached sufficient numbers they asked whether space and time could be allotted for instruction in Islam in the German schools. The German government said yes, that's reasonable.
The Turkish government said, well, we have good textbooks which are used in Turkish schools. Would you like us to provide these? The Germans said oh, no, no, no. We cannot allow government textbooks to be used in teaching religion. They must come from the communities themselves. With a result that the Islam taught in Turkish school is a rather modernized, almost secularized version of Islam whereas the Islam taught in German schools is the full Wahhabi Islam. Twelve Turks were arrested as members of al Qaeda. All 12 of them were born and brought up in Germany, not in Turkey. I think that tells you something.
Questioner:
Dr. Lewis, my name is Alison McConnell. I'm a student here at GW, and my question for you is would you please briefly explain the 'arc of crisis' strategy that you promoted in the late '70s, which was adopted by Brzezinski, and do you think that that contributed to some of the problems that we see in the Middle East today?
BL:
Yes, I think everything that was done has contributed to the problems of the Middle East. The eras of commission, the eras of omission -- I don't think one can really take one particular line in isolation -- no, I don't think so. That's known as evasive tactics.
Questioner:
Professor Lewis, you began your discussion tonight by talking about the importance of words and how those are understood and perceived in the Middle East. There's been a lot of tossing about in the case of Iraq with the idea of a federalism - of a federal republic and so forth. Could you comment on how terms such as federalism and republic would be understood, if at all, in the Middle East?
BL:
Well, the term republic is certainly understood. There are references at quite an early date to the republic of Venice and some other republics in Italy, and then, of course, from the time of the French Revolution onwards there is discussion of this in books, and from then onwards they also have newspapers of a sort. So the term republic is familiar and I think does convey more or less accurate meaning.
Federalism is something else and I think that for most people in the region it would be very difficult to explain what precisely one means. Obviously, educated people will know, people who know something about the outside world will know what it is. My own feeling is that something of that sort is too complex for the moment. One has to come to these things gradually.
I think one has to remember that democracy doesn't come as a set of separate parts in a box with a do-it-yourself assemblage kit. It has to be grown organically over a period of time and if you go too far, too fast, you risk causing the most awful troubles. You expose yourself, in particular, to two groups of dangerous people, people who have two skills: the one group, the skill of manipulation, and the other the skill of intimidation. And between the manipulators and the intimidators the process of democratization is very difficult.
If I may have a moment, I will explain what I mean by that. By manipulation I'm referring more particularly to the religious parties, more especially the so-called fundamentalists of various types. Now, in a free election they have enormous advantages. Advantage one: they speak a familiar language. Democratic parties use a terminology and an ideology which for the most part are strange to the ordinary man in the street, and nowadays one would say a woman in the street, in the Middle East. The religious parties use a familiar terminology, a familiar set of values both in criticizing the existing order and explaining what they want instead. This is very important.
Second is that they dispose of an enormously valuable network of meeting and communication. I mean, of course, the mosque and the pulpit. None of the other competing parties have anything like that. And third, perhaps most important of all, the democratic parties are bound by their very ideologies to allow the fundamentalists freedom of action. The fundamentalists suffer from no such disability. For them the democratic program was well summed up - I think it was by Edward Djerejian - as one man, one vote, once.
Questioner:
A point you alluded to in your very fine recent book, "The Crisis of Islam" - there's lots of references to the impact of the Crusades. Osama bin Laden rails against crusaders, and the clash of civilization goes - Huntington goes back to the Crusades. Does the Crusades still resonate as a burning issue in the contemporary Islamic Middle East, or is it just a cant like George Bush talking about terrorism?
BL:
The issue of the Crusades is very interesting. At the time of the Crusades, when the Crusaders went from Europe, went through Syria and down to Jerusalem and captured it, the immediate response in the Middle East was virtually zero. They were totally uninterested. The Crusaders captured Jerusalem, they set up a series of Crusader principalities in the Levant, in parts of what is now Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine. Nobody gave a damn. Before very long they were able to fit into the general pattern of Middle Eastern politics and form relationships, even alliances, with some of the neighboring Muslim states. People from Jerusalem sent appeals for help to Damascus, to Baghdad, to Cairo. Nobody gave a damn. Nobody helped them at all. The Crusaders, as I said, just fitted neatly into the pattern of politics and they played the political game with some skill.
Then came the greatest - I'd almost say the cosmic error of the crusaders. They invaded the Hijaz. What I can only describe as a brigand chieftain - in the Latin principality of Jerusalem -- started raiding pilgrim caravans; also by sea, raiding shipping, going to the ports of the Hijaz. Now, this was quite different. This was invading what for Muslims is the holy land, the holy land of Arabia in which no non-Muslim is ever allowed to set foot to this day. And that is what started the counter-Crusade. Saladin had had a cozy arrangement with the Latin king of Jerusalem, but after this he swore to evict them, and he did. I think we made something of the same mistake by having garrisons in Saudi Arabia. If you look at Osama bin Laden's declaration of war, published in February 1998, he sets forth his grievances in which that is the first and most important: the presence of infidel armies in the holy land of Arabia.
Coming back to the Crusades, at the time the impact was minimal until they started invading Arabia, and after that they forgot about it again. It has hardly any mention in the rich and varied historiographie literature of Islam. It reappears in the 19th century when they started translating European books and had a new perception of the Crusades as seen from the other side and with an importance which they had not previously attached to them. The emphasis on the Crusades, I think, is a clear example of European intellectual influence in the Muslim world, odd as that may seem.
Questioner:
Hello. It seems to me that the situation in the Middle East is so far - so confused and so misinterpreted by the West that there really can be no grasp of what the conflict is. You talked about disinformation and diversity; we have a tremendous amount of diversity and disinformation in our culture.
BL:
But we have learned how to deal with it.
(End of available audio)
Professor Lewis was warmly thanked by Elliott School Dean Harry Harding and the audience.
