The Future of the Moslem Mind, Part 5

Winds of Change.NET Cairo correspondent Tarek Heggy (see his article archive, and read his book "Culture, Civilization and Humanity") is back with a new series. I have some issues with his analysis, especially when it comes to his take on American culture. Nevertheless, his articles are always thought provoking and so we're always happy to present them here.

The Future of the Moslem Mind, Part 5:
The Fall of the Oppressors and the Emergence of the Sword
by Tarek Heggy

Over the last few decades, many Islamic societies were subjected to various types of despots who ruled their countries with an iron fist in the context of widespread autocracy. This led in many cases to the downward spiral I described previously. Oppression killed social mobility; the absence of social mobility led to a widespread lack of competence; lack of competence resulted in the collapse of all institutions; this engendered feelings of despair and rage out of which was born the ‘mentality of violence’ that came to permeate many of these societies.

The problem is that no sooner are there changes that cause the downfall of the despotic ruler in these societies (Suharto in Indonesia, Saddam Hussein in Iraq) than there emerge on the scene symbols of the Wahabbi interpretation of Islam putting themselves forward as saviours! Some people are fooled into thinking that they are the only political power produced by those societies.

There is a compound error here: what produces this state of affairs is the despotic rulers and their autocratic regimes that kill social mobility, prevent the growth of civil society, generalize incompetence and divide political life into two levels: a level above ground (which belongs exclusively to the rulers and their cohorts) and a level below ground (which belongs to the symbols of Wahabbi Islam, who receive the best possible training in the art of growing underground in secrecy). As soon as the despot is removed, the only political force which existed underground emerges and, in the absence of civil society, the lack of social mobility and the prevalence of incompetence, the stage is set for a new set of oppressors who are at the same time incompetent. They will lead their societies to greater depths of backwardness, distance them still further from the modern age and sink them even deeper into social problems.

In short, both sets of oppressors, those operating above ground and those belonging to clandestine underground organizations, are products of the equation to which I have repeatedly returned in this article: an autocratic political system that paralyses social mobility and allows incompetent elements to take over the running of society’s institutions, thereby causing standards to deteriorate, despair to prevail and the mentality of violence to take hold. The educational and media institutions are incapable of righting this tragedy, because they too have been corrupted at the hands of incompetent elements.

A valid question here is why this is the only model that emerges whenever an oppressive regime falls in a Muslim or Arab country. The answer is simply that this is a natural result of the widespread despair felt by those living under an autocratic regime that allows no political activities above ground, so that the only organizations that can survive in its shadow are those operating underground. The cure must start with the first link in the chain, not the last.

Muslim Societies a Hundred Years Ago

To disprove the allegation that the violent groups and trends which turn their backs on modernity and call for a return to the Middle Ages are the true representatives of Islam, one has only to consider how some of the principal Islamic societies were functioning at the turn of the twentieth century. Countries like Egypt, Greater Syria (which included Lebanon at the time) and Turkey were models of tolerance, their majority Muslim populations living peacefully with minorities of other faiths. Famously cosmopolitan cities like Alexandria, Beirut and Cairo were home to a wide diversity of minorities. Acceptance of the ‘Other’ and of modernity, as well as a hunger for the great masterpieces of human creativity were features shared by all these societies. Intellectuals translated Homer, the plays of Ancient Greece, the best of modern European literature and the great philosophers like Descartes, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Diderot, Locke, Hobbs, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Although they were in complete harmony with the scientific, philosophical and artistic consequences of the Renaissance, they retained their identity as Egyptians, Turks and Syrians. It was a time when Muslims saw no contradiction between their religious faith and their enthusiasm for the material and cultural fruits of European civilization.

The peaceful and harmonious coexistence of devout Muslims with the religious minorities living in their midst, their equally harmonious relationship with the fruits of Western civilization proves conclusively that the adherents of real Islam are not violent fanatics and that mainstream Islam has nothing to do with the Wahhabi model of militant Islam, whose success in winning over converts is due to the declining conditions in many Islamic societies that lay the foundations for a mentality of violence (an autocratic political system leads to the total paralysis of social mobility which leads to the spread of incompetence which leads to a drop in standards which leads to despair which, in the context of backward educational systems, creates the mentality of violence and a cultural climate that accepts it.)

Thus it is not the Islamic system of belief that leads inevitably to violence and clashes with the ‘Other.’ Violence and fanaticism are features of only one fringe sect that was virtually unknown outside the deserts of Najd as recently as one century ago. Non-Wahhabi mainstream Islam prevailed in Islamic societies until two cataclysmic developments forced it to retreat: the first was the eruption of the violent model of Islam from behind the sand dunes, the second the decline in living standards in many Islamic societies which allowed it to spread.

Next: The Crisis Facing Non-Wahabbi Islam »

For more of Tarek Heggy's writtings in English, please visit www.t-heggy-site-contents.org and for Tarek Heggy's writings in French please visit www.metransparent.com/authors/french/tarek_heggy.htm.