Muhammad successfully unified a large portion of the Bedouin
living in the Arabian Peninsula in the late 7th Century.
Historically speaking, this was quite an accomplishment. These tribes were fiercely
independent by tradition, but much as the Mongols rallied around Ghengis Khan,
they would follow the banner of victory far beyond their ancestral homelands.
Unlike the Mongols however, the followers of Muhammad were not only
establishing an Empire, but also a religion. In my opinion this faith was
designed to be acceptable to the contumacious nature of the Bedouin. A big part
of this was that under Islam there would be no intermediaries between the
believer and God. For this and several other reasons I would argue that Islam
has never really been an ‘organized religion’, but rather a 1300 year long
debate about the meaning of the poetry and life of Muhammad, as well as social norms and morality. One of these
interpretations which I find particularly intriguing is that by submitting to
God you are thereby renouncing all allegiance to worldly authority. There is no
‘give unto Caesar’ passage in the Quran, and this no doubt is why Islam
fractured with such record breaking speed just a few decades after the Prophets
death.
Regardless of the various schisms Islam went through, the
faith and the empire spread none the less until Dar-e-Islam stretched from the
Hindu Kush all the way to the Atlantic by the 9th Century. During
this period there was a blossoming of learning and economic development that
was arguably the most advanced civilization seen in the West since the Romans.
People often forget the relatively tolerant nature of Islam throughout history
prior to the modern era. It was for this reason that scholars, poets, engineers
and all other manner of useful people flocked to the great cities of the Muslim
world. This period constituted one of the most stable and prosperous times for
the region, which was followed abruptly by the arrival of Turks, Crusaders and
Mongols, all of which wrought incredible destruction. Perhaps the greatest city
of its time, Baghdad, was razed to the ground by the Mongols in 1258. The Christian
Crusaders slaughtered the population of Jerusalem and a fairly large portion of
Palestine. It was apocalyptic times for Muslims, and one that
altered substantially the course of Islamic Civilization
After this
period of upheaval the Turks established their Empire and ruled the majority of
the Muslim world all the way up until World War I. This is important I feel
because it meant that during the period of full blown European Imperialism, when the rest of the world was being violently dominated and made the property
of European States, everything from Persia to Morocco was essentially left
alone. Of course the domination of the planet by Europeans had its
consequences, perhaps the most important of which was the end of the ancient
Silk Road as the primary trade artery in the Hemisphere. During these centuries
of Turkish Despotism the non-Turkish Muslims living under their rule chaffed
under the decadent Ottomans, bidding their time for when they could once again be
the masters of their own fate. The ability of Lawrence of Arabia to essentially
mimic Muhammad’s feet by mobilizing an army of Bedouin to tear apart the
Ottoman Empire speaks to the fact that these people were just as fiercely
independent as they were in the time of the Prophet, and just as willing to
rally to the call of Jihad. So it was that after the War the Europeans did what
for them was perfectly natural and logical, they divided the lands up
as they saw fit and installed various leaders (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq) or took
up direct colonial control (Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine). This was the
quickest and perhaps most unexpected of all European land grabs, and one that
certainly took the Muslim world by surprise.
It is hard to overestimate the incredible importance of this
period to collective psyche of the Ummah in the Near East and North Africa. They
had hated the Turks, but since they had converted to Islam and had ruled them
for many generations, it was familiar. Going from this archaic model to the
mechanized megalomania of late European Imperialism is a shock that I would
argue the region is still reeling from. What had been fairly isolated was now
once again a central and integrated part of the modern world order. With this
came a flood of ideas, technology and people that opened the region to things
it had little experience dealing with, all of which was imposed by the
non-Muslim overlords in Paris and London. It is not hard to imagine that what
followed was cultural chaos on a large scale; and that has continued right up
to the modern day. The countries invented in 1918 have amazingly stayed largely
intact, especially when we consider how arbitrary their borders are and how
unbelievably horrible their leaders have been. Now in their defense, the West
did a lot to support these regimes and gave them the military means they needed
to keep their populations in line; as well as the creation of Israel which has done more than anything else to ensure some semblance of legitimacy. So it was that even with this rapid
transition to modernity, the tradition of violence and institutionalized
injustice was clearly continued under the various new governments, furthering
the inherent distrust already deeply ingrained through centuries of lessons
learned.
Its understandable how Westerners have a hard time understanding that history is factor for the Arabs, and that this is the primary reason they hate the West, not religion. In a rather ironic way the modern Muslim extremist has become something of a mythological character of evil and cruelty, all the while Blackwater Inc. can have a Christian orientation and send troops to Arabs lands with the right to shoot anything in sight. I think the simplest and most likely answer is that in order for the West, Capitalism, the Elite, whatever, to have any sort of moral legitimacy they need an other against which to compare themselves. Given the sort of absolutely amoral and destructive nature of late consumer capitalism, this isn't really possible within the realm of reality without being ridiculously hypocritical. Luckily by demonizing the worlds largest religion requires no reality whatsoever, it can be done by simply manipulating the facts around a false narrative that claims Muslims are violent and dangerous. At this point it is virtually impossible to differentiate between the lie and reality, which is basically a win for all who want people fearful and obedient. One thing to consider though, all revolutions are based on food shortages, and prices keep climbing throughout the region. Add to this the tradition of the Arabs to not expect or need anything from their governments, and all this makes for a volatile situation that is much bigger than Israel, Iran, Oil or any other singular thing. The scariest possibility for me is that the uprisings will continue, the corrupt and impotent regimes will fall, and then the West will 'cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war'. All because at this point in history, as a group, Arabs are Anarchists by nature and Westerners are Imperialist.
