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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
November 3, 2002
Gone missing
The reader will be so kind to grant me for the next thousand words an exemption from the law against wild generalization. (Did I ever ask before?) My purpose is a particular one: to oppose another wild generalization that is gaining currency in the West. Partly because candid discussion of the relationship between "Islamist" terrorism and Islam itself falls under the index of "political correction" people are coming to their own conclusions about what is called sarcastically a religion of peace . As I've mentioned before I do have some acquaintance with Islam not only from where I have lived and travelled but from reading and thinking. I am no Koranic scholar but I have wrestled with the book in several English translations and examined such as Hadiths and Ishaq's "Sirat Rasul Allah". I am no Islamic historian but have the outline knowledge of a good history buff. I have looked into and been quite impressed by several of the great thinkers in the Islamic tradition such as Avicenna and Al-Ghazali and Ibn Khaldun so far as they were accessible in English; and I am partial to Persian poets. I am no Islamic scholar but I have spoken with several indisputable ones. So I am not entirely ignorant; though I would characterize my knowledge as broad not deep. The wild generalization I seek to oppose is the "centuries of darkness and fanaticism" hypothesis. What I am now hearing is an over-simplified version of what the great Turkish and Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis has been arguing in the media reinforced by disgruntled modern travellers from V.S. Naipaul to Oriana Fallaci. In the reduced popular version we confront a monolithic Islam that feels defeated and resentful which cannot come to terms with the ascendancy of the West which is incapable of self-criticism or of learning from its failure. A civilization which -- and I am now going beyond anything Professor Lewis ever said or implied -- has always been prey to religious fanaticism whether or not always in the throes. There is some truth in each of these propositions including the last but it is partial or less than half-truth. For the bigger reality is that before the discovery of the oil weapon and its use in spreading a violently simplistic version of the Wahabi creed Muslims were adapting remarkably peacefully and variously to the challenges that beset them in a much altered world. We believe in the West that the Muslims have a notion of Umma or "Islamdom" that is rather more ambitious than what they have or ever had. For only at the very beginning was Islam politically united and the definition of what is Islam itself fell early under the interpretation of competing worldly powers. The Koran itself we are beginning to grasp presents a text much-mediated not by religious but by political interests in the century-and-a-half after its ostensible inspiration. We are only beginning to learn about this because the Koran was never previously subjected to the kind of intense and sceptical textual scholarship to which our Bible was subjected in the last few centuries. This is very significant not only in itself but because it helps to explain a central phenomenon of historical Islam. It is true the Muslims have no way to distinguish "mosque" from "state" whereas "Church" and "State" were separated in the West from the moment Christ uttered the words Give unto Caesar. But the consequence is almost the opposite of what we assume from this. The unified states or empires of Islam have been over time much more "secular" and worldly much less dogmatically religious than the states of Christendom. This may well be the very reason Muslims long triumphed over Christians to their west and Hindus to their east in worldly affairs. For centuries they were the multinational businessmen we were the protectionists resisting market forces. They were rich and we were earnest. They had nothing like our own Biblical tradition our Fathers and Doctors of the Church; the biggest names in Islamic thought seem only to mention the Koran in passing and almost decoratively. There is surprisingly little continuity from one to another because they had nothing like our Church-sponsored universities or monastic orders to carry the threads. The patronage for learning was royal aristocratic secular in almost every instance. Likewise the patronage for art and spectacle including in most royal courts portrait painting and dancing girls and wine-drinking and song and everything that's explicitly banned in the Koran; interrupted by sudden explosions of puritanical iconoclasm (not unlike Byzantium). To exaggerate: the strength of Islam through much of its history was that it stayed in the background. The theology was too one-dimensionally monotheist frankly too boring to engage the finest minds for long. The great philosophers of Islam tend to ignore all that and are far more interested in "scientific" cosmology and the great political questions. So that where the finest minds of the Western Middle Ages are engaged in writing summas of theology those in the Muslim East were advising princes on how they should rule or how they could conquer. They explored things we tended to ignore such as plumbing and street-lighting and irrigation and new methods of banking. And the great Muslim travellers show a much broader anthropological curiosity; few are missionaries. Compared to Christendom very few apocalyptic visionaries and much less fire and brimstone from the pulpits. The little I have seen of traditional Muslim sermons reminds me of world-weary English vicars: . "Be nice." ... "Say your prayers more regularly." ... "Give some thought to the poor." . "We need money to repair the minarets." The Muslims in India for instance like the British after them were mostly content to rule without trying to convert anybody. They knew they were no match for the Hindus mystically and the Muslims of India easily syncretized. It took the Arabs who conquered Egypt at least five centuries to convert the bulk of the native population from Christianity and the job still isn't finished. And most of the Copts probably converted to get a break in their taxes. I am telling once again only part of the story; I am not even touching on moments of real spiritual depth of treasures emerging from a "pure" monotheism. I am instead pointing to a very large missing piece in our present understanding of Islam. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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