Repressed Muslim Populations

It is commonly asked why Muslim states in the general vicinity of Israel (from Egypt to Pakistan including the Gulf states) have such intellectually repressed Muslim populations. A columnist at the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof, describes two distinct forms of Islam. One he calls "desert Islam" which promotes an "austere fundamentalism" and the other "riverine or coastal Islam" which is much more "outward-looking, flexible, and tolerant." As is suggested from Kristof's phraseology, the problem could be geographic. To someone like Bernard Lewis, the problem might in fact be ethnic. Huntington might suggest that Muslims were created to be intellectually repressed. Christian intellectuals from the region, like Fawaz Gerges or Edward Said, might attribute the problem to economic or political conditions. Islamic Politicians might blame all the world's problems on Israeli occupation. I thought I would suggest my own theory for those not satisfied with anything less than complexity.

Before I begin to answer this question, I would like to provide a short refresher on the history of Western Europe. After the fall of the Roman Empire and the formation of Christianity, two major authorities formed within the void. The Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church acted as the people's religious and political authority. (This discussion will remain in the West.) It was not until the 16th century that the Roman Catholic Church began to lose much of its political and religious authority in the region. Now here is where the description of historical accounts gets tricky. I will refer to the US non-denominational interpretation of European History to make my point. (My high-school European History teacher was Roman Catholic, so he had some interesting things to say about the Protestant Reformation.) It seems the Roman Catholic Church felt threatened by intellectual and theological inquiry not predetermined by the firmly established doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. Personalities such as Martin Luther felt immersed in restricted and unintelligent beliefs. Other intellectuals such as Gallileo, saw through observation that the Church's explanations were severly lacking. The Church was unable to keep a hold on its political, religious, and intellectual authority and underwent a painful separation with many of its followers. Years of turmoil followed the Protestant Reformation with nations warring each other on the basis of religious belief, along with many other things. This time period promoted political philosophers such as Hobbes to describe humanity's despicable nature. It was not until Christianity's theologians along with its political theorists came up with a solution that removed belief from the legitimacy of political conflict, that individual believers began to feel safe within their own societies.

Islamic history does not have a very different story than this, with two long-lasting Islamic empires undergoing a significant separation from its base. The first, the Abbasid Caliphate, though being obliterated by the advent of the Mongols, in fact lost most of its political, religious, and intellectual authority many years prior. At the time the Mongols invaded, most of the region was being run by warring Turkic tribes who had their own scholars of religion and their own political systems. A second empire, the Ottoman empire, was harshly rejected by nearly all of its subjects, from Turkey to the Arab states, nearly 100 years ago. This brings us to today.

History shows us that humanity's advancement is promoted by political, religious, and intellectual inquiry. As the populace progresses socially, intellectual inquiry decreases significantly and is replaced by intellectual stagnation. Religious, political, and scientific thought redevelop within this period of stagnation. As intellectual thought increases, the social order wishes to gravitate away from a repressive authority. The region is thrown into a period of instability. Politically ambitious groups advantageously use the confusion of this tumultuous time to establish their competing authorities over the region. Along with this, pressures from surrounding, continually changing empires add to the region's instability. And this story takes at least several hundred years.

For a social scientist whose thoughts are shaped significantly by the history of the United States, it might be uncommon to look thoroughly beyond a 300 year time period for a solution to some puzzle. Nonetheless, my answer to the question of why the states that once made up the Ottoman and Safavid empires are now in such disarray is that history is just being history. Am I suggesting then that there is no solution to this problem. Actually, I am offering a solution. It is just be patient, refrain from unnecessary violence and name-calling, work for human rights and conflict resolution, and things will work out in the end. In a sense, I suppose this is also a simple answer. Perhaps then I was being coy when I said I was going to be complex.

ali