Arab East Trilogy ii:‘Monsoon and desert Islam.’The fault lines of Islam
This is perhaps an exceptionally vital field that will have to be explored in the future. Samuel Huntington in his deeply flawed treatise, “Clash of Civilisations”, discussed at length the fault lines between civilisations by mentioning the litany of wars in Islam’s bloody borders. He continually referred to the Nargono-Karabakh conflict in the Caucasus and the Bosnian debacle in the Balkans to further his argument. Nevertheless what is even more pertinent to understand, for those who profess an interest in the Islamic Crescent, is knowledge of the fault lines within Islam itself and particularly that of the Middle East.
Islam’s nucleus has historically been and will continue to be the Middle East! To be cast out of this region is to be on the periphery of the Islamic Crescent. For Islam’s adherents are to be found primarily in the alluvial plains of South Asia or the tropics of South East Asia* nevertheless mere numbers cannot counteract the Arab “imperial”** hegemony within the Crescent. Pakistan is perhaps the only such nation to have any authority and influence in the Crescent***. Nonetheless the cliché is true, to know the Middle East is to understand the nature of Islam.
There are tautological observations that can first be made with even a sparse knowledge of the Middle East. Nevertheless it is vital to discern and peer through the nations states to elucidate the political and cultural fault lines.
The are three fault lines in the Middle East, two of them are minor and the other deep:
1. The Maghreb and the Levantine-Red Sea Coastal strip.
2. The intermediate buffer zone consisting of the northern Kurdish highlands and the southern Arabian Desert.
3. The Western Persian Gulf and Iran.
These are the centres of civilisation in the Middle East and form opposing spheres one that is quintessentially Sunni Arab whilst the other Shi’ite Persian. This is the fundamental duality that exists within the region and is reminiscent of the ancient geopolitics of the region****.
Maghreb:
The Maghreb is a regional entity in its own right and ranges from Morocco to the Libyan border with Egypt. North Africa, on the periphery of the Arab world, never regained its influence on the course of the Islamic crescent following the end of the Moorish kingdom. The nations are Arabicised only to an extent (following the expulsions from Spain the Arab-Moorish component formed ten percent of the North African population) with remnants of the Berber population forming significant non-Arab minorities in Algeria and Morocco. The wastes of Libya contrast with the fecundity of the Nile Delta in Egypt (a subtle indication of the validity of this fault line is the fact that the Egyptian-Libyan border also serves as the boundary between the two Arab Bedouin dialects) and was effective as a barrier to allow the Maghreb to develop as a distinct region in its own right. The Maghreb also has a much deeper history of European colonisation and interaction (Libya was an Italian colony, Algeria & Tunisia were French colonies while Morocco was partitioned into a French and Spanish protectorate) than the rest of the Middle East. This fault line is well known as the demarcation between North Africa and the Middle East.
The Arab Coast:
This coastal strip from Syria to Yemen is the fundamental nucleus of the Arab world. It is authentically Arab, with a historical heritage that dates back to millennia, which is characterised by the predominance of Sunnism. The first Pan-Arab Empire, the Umayyad dynasty, had its seat in Damascus and its shift under the Abbasids to Baghdad indicates the polity's transformation from an Arab republic to a Persian imperium in the early Islamic period. This can even be discerned today where the Red Sea-Levantine coast states tend to be Republics as opposed to the Persian Gulf Sheikhdoms.
Iraq for instance is Arab however its Persian influences imply that it has developed a cultural synthesis with the two traditions, which ultimately makes it a variegated state. Syria (note how the population is concentrated in the western regions) and Egypt tend to be bastions of Sunni Arabism and is it any wonder that these two nations merged under the short-lived United Arab Republic (even though this alliance was founded solely to counter Israel). The doctrine of Arabism and Ba'athism (which in fact was co-founded by a Christian Arab, Michel Aflaq) grew in Syria and the ideological attraction of the Egyptian Nasser swayed the Arab masses into hopeless fantasies. Arabs look to the Levant-Red Sea for a reaffirmation of their Pan-Arab identity and that is a factor as to why the Israel issue provokes such an emotional reaction (to elicit from an Arab any condemnation of India's actions in Kashmir is indeed quite a feat).
This region is composed of the Syria, Lebanon, Israel (as well as any putative Palestine emerging in the western wing of the Gaza and eastern wing of the West Bank), Egypt, the Hijaz region in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Traditionally these are Sunni populations that are inherently secular and the Arabs in the region possess cultural depth rarely equalled by others. The Persian Gulf is cosmopolitan because of its historic interaction with Europeans (especially the British and the Portuguese) as well as its naval & mercantile history however the Red Sea-Levant coast has a natural sophistication that has traditionally lent itself to tolerance to the minorities in the region.
Fanaticism does not have deep roots in this region however the creation of Israel and the chronic lack of economic development has led to the radicalisation of the population to the detriment of national harmony. For instance the Christian Arabs are traditionally found in this region (hence the fact that unlike other minorities Christians in the Middle East tend to be fervently proudly of their Arab identity) with the Maronites in Lebanon, Aramaic-speaking isolates in Syria and naturally the Copts in Egypt. The Christian have wielded an immense cultural influence on this region and tend to be well-integrated however the emergence of Islamism is leading to the high emigration rates in Lebanon not seen since the early 20th century.
Naturally there are Shi'ites in Lebanon and Yemen are critical populations that will shape the course of events on the future of the region. However the Zaydi sect (known as the Fivers) in Yemen are considered the politicised & "Sunni" version of Shi'ism and they are a quiescent minority. The Yemeni centres of population tend to be in the Sunni regions, which implies that the Shi'ites are assimilating in Sunni cities. The Yemeni state extends to the Indian Ocean however it has always been centred on the Red Sea and throughout Islamic history has been connected to the rest of Dar-ul-Islam through the Hijaz.
Lebanon's Shi'ites may be numerically dominant however the political and economic pre-eminence of the Maronites & Sunnis respectively will ensure that numbers alone will not determine the political future of Lebanon. The Shi'ites of Lebanon no longer resort to the tactics of a radicalised heretical minority rather their integration has continued apace ensuring that Iran's influence on them will continue to wane.
As to Israel since it is a relatively recent implant on the region, historical geopolitics cannot yield any significant analysis. However its influence on the rest of the Red Sea-Levantine Strip will be minimal since it is cultural & politically isolated from its Arab neighbours.
This region is the core of the Arab lands however its strategic utility to the globe will have to be further assessed in the final sequel of this trilogy.
The Kurdish highlands and the Arabian deserts:
The region of the Kurdish people intersects at the confluence of the two regions. It is the fundamental fault line within the Middle East, which is the primary reason as to why a political solution for the Kurds is not being agreed upon. Kurdistan has always been a battleground in the Middle East and was considered a no-man's land during the time of the Great Ottoman-Safavid rivalry. The Kurds (who speak an Iranian language, which strikes them out from the Arabic-speaking West, but profess the Sunni faith, which places them out of the intensely Shi'ite East) have been known throughout history as those “who waylay and raid”. Due to their thievery contact between the two Middle Eastern spheres was inhibited and the intense political rivalry within the Kurds themselves allowed for their incorporation into diverse nations (which is why their homeland is divided amongst Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran with isolate populations in Armenia & Turkmenistan).
South of the Kurdish lands is the Arabian desert, which comprises from the Syrian Desert (in West Iraq, East Jordan, and South East Syria) to the Nafud and Rub al Khali (known as the Empty Quarter) deserts in Saudi Arabia. This barren waste finally extends to the sparsely populated Hadhramaut plateau, the border region between Yemen and Oman.
The Arabian Desert is home to the Bedouins (these itinerants are oft considered to be derived from Saudi Arabia & the Arabian Peninsula however historically the settled population of Saudi Arabia has always outnumbered the Bedouin tribes) who reside within these wretched wastes at the periphery of Middle Eastern civilisation and isolated from urban culture. Whilst romanticised in Arabic poetry as the "Pure Arab" the Bedouins have historically been shunned by the cultivated and urbane Arab populations to the north (indeed until the rise of nationalism a century ago the term "Arab" was considered derogatory and reserved only for the Bedouin), however the rapidly encroaching deserts in the Middle East led to waves of Bedouin invasions and settlements on the civilised Arab world over the past few centuries. However their migrations have shaped the ethnic character and spurred the Arabicisation of many a Gulf Sheikdom. The descendants of impoverished 19th century Bedouins, thirsting for a reliant water source, form the dominant element in the populations of Kuwait whilst the Bani Yas federation (Bedouins who hailed from an oasis in the interior) are the ancestors to the populations of Abu Dhabi and Dubai (the two crucial sheikdoms in the Trucial States, also known as the United Arab Emirates). The ruling classes of Bahrain and Qatar derive from Bedouin invaders (the Al Khalifa and the Al Thani respectively) whilst the indigenous population is Shi'ite. Last but not least the Nejd region, the heartland of the Saudi royal family, is home to the Bedouin tribes in the Middle East and Saudi Royal family has extensive ancestral ties with the Bedouins.
The Arab Sunni minority of Iraq is primarily derived from Bedouin stock and hails from Western Iraq, which is coextensive with the great arid wastes. Indeed Saddam Hussein dropped his tribal name (which I believe was Tarkit or something to that effect) from his name in order to set an example and not endanger Iraq with "parochial loyalties".
Fundamentally the fiercely tribal Kurds and the nomadic Bedouins provides a formidable barrier between the Levant-Red Sea region and the Persian Gulf. Beyond the reach of either civilisation their way of life was unadulterated by cosmopolitan influences and was considered to be quintessentially “authentic” by Orientalists.
The Western Persian Gulf:
The Persian Gulf should also be known as the Shi’ite Gulf, which is divided into the Western Akhbari (Arab and Bahrani) and the Eastern Usuli (Iranian) sphere of influence. The “Twelvers” (Twelve-Imam Shi’ism or ithna’ashariyyah) are divided into the Akhbaris and Usulis, the former are traditionalists whilst the latter believe that the competence to arrive at original decisions and interpretations of the religious law in living authorities entitled the marja at-taqlid (“exemplars for emulation”) . This was the underlying rationale behind Khomeini’s Vali-e Faqih and follows from ancient Persian thought, which believed in the primacy of clerics in hermeneutics and exegesis.
This duality means that if Shi’ites are liberated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, at most they will be ambivalent to the Iranians. Indeed at the inception of new Shi’ite states (in Bahrain, Iraq and Eastern Saudi Arabia) there most definitely would be latent hostility between them and Iran. However there is a cultural unity to the region, which binds these nations together, and that is the Iranian influence on their historical development. The Western Persian Gulf has had an eventful history of being Iran's conduit to the rest of the world. The region was dotted with fishing villages, whose descendants formed the majority indigenous population in Bahrain, Qatar and Western Oman, which have intermittently been subject to intermittent Iranian-Iraqi control.
This region is critical to the future course of the Middle East for a sole reason, which shall be explored in the third sequel of this trilogy. However what can be discerned is that whilst the Western Persian Gulf has a minor fault line with Iran, because of the schism in Shi'ite thought, it has been historically been isolated by the Arab centre of gravity in the Levant.
Just as in the Levant-Red Sea strip there are important minorities in this region, which have fundamental ramifications for geopolitics. Oman is Ibadite (though its coastal area are cosmopolitan and Shi'ite because of the Iranian coercion under the Safavid Dynasty whilst its sparsely populated interior is relatively conservative and insular), which is an isolate sect distinct from both Shi'ism and Sunnism, whilst Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are two exceptionally prosperous & sophisticated Sunni states, which have no interest in Shi'ite liberation.
Indeed Kuwaitis are noted for their apolitical stance and their rampant materialism. In Kuwait the upper-crust reserve Fridays for the weekly retreat to their "chateau", the palatial manor located on the outskirts of Kuwait City, where South Asian chefs cook sumptuous repasts for the diwans, or informal councils. Kuwait***** does not have the intellectual or cultural sophistication, characteristic for a nation at a similar level of economic development, hence Kuwaitis oft vacation in Egypt (the Red Sea coastal strip in Egypt has become renowned for jet skiing & gambling) and Lebanon for a glimpse of the true nexus of the Arab world. Lebanon's economic recovery, from its long and debilitating civil war, was stimulated by the return of the Gulf vacationers to their Beirut haunts and properties. As I have stated the traditional gravity of power in the Arab has been Iraq, Egypt and Syria (or rather Greater Syria, a region comprised of the modern day nations; Israel, Jordan, Lebanon & Syria) and until the rehabilitation of Iraq & Syria into the global family of nations, Arabs consider Egypt, Lebanon & the Hijaz as the new Arab axis of culture.
Iran:
Naturally the last fault line in the Middle East is between the West Persian Gulf and Iran. As I stated earlier the religious divide between Sunni & Shi'ite, as well Akhbari & Usuli can be successfully interpreted as a varying gradation from the Arab to the Persic sphere in the Middle East. Iran's status as the pre-eminent regional power in the Persian Gulf will make any state, be it Sunni or Shi'ite, wary of its aspirations. For instance the recent dispute with UAE over the islands of Abu Musa & Greater and Lesser Tunb imply that Iranian hegemony will be fiercely contested by the Gulf sheikhdoms.
*Intriguing the vast majority of Islam’s adherents derive from nations, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Indonesia , which were historic components of the ancient Indic cultural sphere.
** I did not wish to use the word imperial since it has such negative connotations however there was no adequate substitute to explain the supremacy of the Arabic peoples in Islam. The Arab has become the archetypal Muslim to be emulated and respected. This introduces a complex in the convert who purges his un-Islamic past through Arabisation. Once the complete identification with Arab civilisation is possible then the final inhibition and barrier towards Islamic living has dissipated.
This is because when one ascends to Islam his entire sense of being is immersed in Arab culture, history and language. The Holy Quran has never been successfully translated from Arabic (though in the 18th Century it was translated into simple Persian by Shah Wali Ullah however its appeal ultimately remained quite limited) and Islam in its outlook is quintessentially Arab. Indeed a philosopher recently claimed that Islam’s purpose is to construct the perfect Arab society and the reformation of the Arab psyche. True or not his argument is certainly compelling for it is rooted in Islamic tradition, which states that Islam was sent to the Arabs as part of Allah’s mercy to every nation.
Islam is a civilisation in itself and the concept of distinct spheres of politics, religion or justice just does not exist. A polity thoroughly suffused with Islam, which is an all-encompassing way of life and considered by its adherents to be supreme, will render all other alternatives as inferior and summarily disregard them. Since Islamic life is regulated to a minute degree indigenous cultures tend to fade out in response to such absolutism.
Thus the Middle East Arabicised rapidly because of its proximity to the Arab core. However peripheral regions such as South Asia & South East Asia were the recipients of distilled and distinct variant of Islam, which had been synthesized with the more esoteric traditions of Near Eastern philosophy to allow for accommodation and fusion with indigenous cultures******. However due to the onslaught of Islamic radicalism emanating from the Middle East this spirit of harmony is rapidly waning.
*** Our South Asian history does mar our Islamic credentials in the eyes of the Perso-Arab elite. For instance in Kuwaiti society South Asians are indistinguishable from one another and denigrated as “Rafiq”, the donkeys who carry water, a demeaning reference to the labour of the Hindustani in the port city of Basra, Iraq, during the British mandate. Nevertheless Pakistan’s nuclear leverage and tremendous strategic importance to American interests ensures that it will carry some weight in the Crescent.
**** The feuds between the dynasties were simply a manifestation of the fundamental fault line in the Middle East between the Mediterranean Arab west and the Persic-oriented east. In ancient times the Mesopotamian-based dynasties would battle the Egyptians for control of the Levant. The imperial empires of the Hellenistic Diadochi and Romans were the rivals of the more oriental & traditional Parthians. The Hellenes, and the Romans after them, depended on the Red Sea route, whereas the Parthians relied on the Persian Gulf route (these two empires would use their respective proxies, Ethiopia & Yemen, to take control of the critical Bab e Mandeb strait in the Red Sea). Their successors were the fervently Greek empire of the Byzantines, centred in Constantinople with outlying territories in the Levant & Egypt, who contended with the fanatically Persian Sassanid who had their capital in Ctesphion, Iraq. Following the Islamic conquest the first few decades brought about an unity to these regions under the Ummayad dynasty however the Sunni Abbassid Caliphate in Iraq had to contend with the Shi'ite Fatimids Caliphate in Egypt. The Altaic (Turko-Mongol) invasions led to rise of Turko-Arab dynasties, such as the Ayyubids\Mamluks, pitted again Mongol Iran & Iraq. Finally the oft-celebrated Ottomans, who controlled the Mediteranean strip all the way down to the Hijaz & Yemen, found worthy rivals in Safavid Persia, which comprised of Iran and Iraq (though Iraq did eventually become an Ottoman province).
***** An indication of the culture of an Arab nation is to be found in their accents. As I commented in an earlier Al-Jazeera post the most pleasing Arab accent is the Levantine (Palestinian, Lebanese & Syrian) dialect however my mother vehemently disagrees since it is her estimation, which is shared by many Arabs, that the Egyptian variant of Arabic is by far the most refined and elegant. The Kuwaiti dialect is generally admired for its purity however I find it to be rather exasperating because of the stress it places on its lexicon. A poignant instance is the usage of the word yanni, which is the most widely-used Arabic word for it denotes "like" and "mean". Palestinians pronounce it lightly in a flowing fashion however the Kuwaitis inflect the word greatly and pronounce it (albeit correctly) as the tri-syllabic ya'aani.
****** Indeed in several Islamic nations, amongst them Indonesia and Malaysia, the indigenous code (adat) has historically superseded various injunctions of the Shariah and occasionally tribal law has supplanted the entire corpus of Islamic law.
Notes:
· Hindustani is a generic term implying north Indian Hindus and Muslims before partition. It is especially used to refer to the Urdu-speaking population of the Hindu Cow Belt.
· There is no clear and accepted delineation between imperium and sacredotium under Islam nevertheless the intricacies of Islamic laws ensures that there exists a clear gradation of religious influences on national life. In an Islamic theocratic state it is the Ulema (clerical body) that must dispense justice, elect the Caliph and guide him in statecraft. Yet the Qadi (the state-appointed cleric) never had the same status as Mufti (the independent religious cleric) for the former was considered to be a partisan whilst the latter was accorded great respect. The concept of the Sultanate (Sultan was first used to denote the state however later came to be synonymous with the sovereign) arose to act as a secular counterpart to the Caliphate. Under various Islamic Empires (such as the Rum Seljuks) the Sultan would be the temporal ruler of the nation whilst the Caliph was a constitutional monarch whose function was to preserve the Islamic character of the state. Since in Islam the question of nomination and limits of power has always stirred conflict (Shi’ism arose out of the clash between the Persian belief in hereditary kingship and the Arabian concept of Sheikh, the nominated & elected leader of the tribe, which was antithetical to the monarchical tradition) these two institutions were meant to act as a check and balance to one another.
Indeed the history of Islamic civilisation has seen the subtle division into the religious sphere and the political. For instance the Arabic word for justice is imbued with latent religious overtones whilst qanun\civil law has complemented the Shariah from the earliest of times.
The Shariah is cordoned into two sections one that regulates morality & worship whilst the other is geared towards the administration of the Islamic state. Islamic law is supremely idealistic since it not only presupposes the inherent tendency towards piety in human beings however it disregards all circumstantial evidence (witnesses or a confession from the perpetrator are needed for a conviction) thus rendering it rather impractical for criminal prosecution.
Shariah’s secondary purpose was disregarded and the state authorities were empowered with siyasa, the secular authority with which to improvise, supplement and update religious law by expanding its provisions to cater to all aspects of the state. In medieval Islamic societies the Shariah was enforced as a personal code, which regulated the lives of the believers, rather than one to be applied on state affairs. This duality between Shariah and the Qanun (this word is derived from the Ottoman Empire) has been implicitly recognised not only by Islamic scholars, with extensive experience in statecraft, but also by Islamic theologians versed in the Holy Law. Thus the recent radicals demanding the supremacy of the Shariah disregard the entire history of Islamic civilisation and the very essence of the Shariah. The Shariah’s implementation is not meant to bring an improvement to Islamic society rather it is the complement to the ideal Muslim state. It is a revealed code of laws (though in actuality it was inferred by Sunni scholars from the verses of the Holy Quran and practises of the archetypal Muslim state in Medina) that cannot be altered and is not suited for transitional societies. The Shariah rationale is to maintain the current state of affairs whilst Western legislature is geared towards not only maintaining order but to improve the general state of affairs through continuous evaluation and reform. In summary the Shariah is not meant to reform Muslims rather Muslims must reform their own societies to condition them in accepting the Shariah in its entirety.
Zachary Latif 22:10
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