The fallacies of the liberal-Western view of the Near East

Islamic failure and Western success

For centuries, Islam was a great culture that led the way in science and technology. From the 16th century onwards, however, this culture slowly began to lag behind Europe. And in the 19th century, the entire Islamic world was quickly destroyed by imperialist Europe. Militarily, the Muslims were defeated time and time again and even the once powerful Ottoman Empire was forced to conclude peace treaties dictated by Europe. The liberal Western economies also turned out to be much more powerful than those of the Islamic world. The Near East also no longer mattered politically. This led to a debate in the Islamic world about what had gone wrong.

The shift of the centuries-old trade and intellectual exchange between Europe and the Near East to the Atlantic Ocean marked the decline of the Near East. The discovery of America in 1492 changed the age-old trade routes, so that they no longer ran through the Near East: Europe now traded with Africa (slaves) and with its Asian and American colonies. Meanwhile, Europe also developed better weapons and the emerging capitalism gave colonialism a strong boost by mobilizing large capitals. The Near East continued to supply textiles to Europe until the end of the 16th century.

The modern history of the Near East begins in 1798 with General Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt and Palestine. Then the process of Islamic defeats and withdrawal had already begun in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. The French invasion taught the Islamic world that a European power could come in and do whatever it wanted with impunity. Even the departure of the French troops was not accomplished by the Egyptians or Ottomans, but by the British fleet of Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson, which meant a second lesson: only another European power could drive an invading European power out.

Thus, from the 18th century onwards, the Ottoman Empire weakened and Europe began to expand its sphere of influence there. The various religions in the Ottoman Empire each formed a 'millet', which meant that each faith enjoyed religious self-government. This facilitated European infiltration. The so-called 'capitulations', among other things, were very important here. These were treaties between the Ottoman Empire and friendly Western countries, as a result of which the subjects of the Western state in question were not subject to Ottoman criminal law, but were tried according to the law of their own country. The best-known treaty is the one between France and the Ottoman Empire from 1536, which evolved in 1740 into a combination of non-aggression pact, trade treaty and far-reaching privileges for French subjects throughout the Ottoman Empire. Since this capitulation also became perpetually valid in 1740, France could rely on it in the 19th century to intervene in the weak Ottoman Empire.

After examining the Islamic failure and Western success, reforms were initiated: modernization of the army (Western methods, weapons and training), industrialization of the economy and adoption of the Western political system. However, it turned out to be in vain. Throughout the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire sought to counter the growing imperialism of liberal and industrial Europe. Despite this, many Ottoman territories in North Africa and Southwest Asia became European colonies or zones of influence. Various reforms of Ottoman imperial structures took place to better defend the empire against foreign dominance. Although this led to thorough reforms of the judiciary, the military and the administration by the beginning of the 20th century, it also led to a growing European economic and cultural presence and to the emergence of nascent nationalist movements among many peoples in the Ottoman Empire, for example the Armenians, the Arabs and the Maronite Christians in the Lebanon Mountains. Over the past three centuries, the Islamic world has not only been surpassed by Europe, but also dominated and colonized by it.

The debate of 'ijtihad' in the Islamic world has also been going on for three centuries and continues to offer new explanations. 'Ijtihad' means reason, but this term mainly refers to the various movements that have emerged since the end of the 18th century and demanded change. These movements were primarily reformist Wahhabism and conservative Salafism; secondarily, the Islamic modernism of Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani and Mohammed Abdu; and finally the combinations that Rashid Rida and Hassan al-Banna made of it.

‘Clash of Definitions’

Samuel Huntington's 1993 book 'Clash of Civilizations' announced a completely new world politics, but is a myth. Huntington argued that until then war had been waged between ideologies and that international conflicts would henceforth have a cultural cause. These “clashing civilizations” – i.e. Western vs. non-Western civilizations – would henceforth dominate international politics. In doing so, he responded to the idea of ​​a 'New World Order' launched by President Bush Sr. and the upcoming turn of the millennium.

Huntington's thesis is a recycled version of the Cold War thesis that conflicts are ideological: for him everything revolves around Western liberal ideology vs. other ideologies. In other words, the Cold War continued as normal, but on new fronts (Islam & Near East). According to Huntington, the West had to adopt an interventionist and aggressive attitude towards non-Western civilizations to avoid dominance over the West. So, he wanted to continue the Cold War through other means instead of trying to understand world politics or to reconcile cultures. This bellicose language suited the Pentagon and the American military-industrial complex.

However, Huntington was not interested in the history of cultures and was also very misleading. After all, many of his arguments came from indirect sources: he therefore did not properly analyze how cultures work, because he mainly relied on journalists and demagogues instead of scientists and theorists. He even took the title of his book from Bernard Lewis' article 'The Roots of Muslim Rage': a billion Muslims would be furious with our Western modernity, but this idea of ​​a billion Muslims who all think the same versus a homogeneous West is, however, simplistic. Huntington thus took from Lewis that cultures are homogeneous and monolithic, as is the unchanging difference between 'us' and 'them'.

The West would also be superior to all other cultures and Islam would be anti-Western by definition: however, the fact that the Arabs had explored large parts of the world (Europe, South Asia, East Africa) long before Marco Polo and Columbus, didn't matter to him. Huntington also believed that all cultures (China, Japan, the Slavic Orthodox world, Islam, etc.) are enemies of each other and he also wanted to manage these conflicts as a crisis manager instead of solving them. We can ask ourselves whether it is wise to paint such a simplistic picture of the world and let generals and politicians act on that basis. After all, this mobilizes racial-cultural war mongering. Actually, we should ask ourselves why anyone would want to increase the risk of conflict in the first place!

Grotesque, vague and manipulable abstractions such as 'the West', 'Islam', 'Slavic culture', ... are now ubiquitous and penetrated racist and provocative ideologies, which are much worse than those of the European imperialism of the second half of the 19th century. Imperialist powers therefore invent their own cultural theories to justify their urge to expand, such as the Manifest Destiny of the US or Huntington's 'Clash of Civilizations'. These theories are based on struggles and clashes between cultures. There are also such movements in Africa and Asia, such as centrist Islamism, Israeli Zionism, the former South African apartheid regime, ...

In every culture, cultural-political leaders define what 'their' culture entails in such a way, which means that one should therefore speak of a 'Clash of Definitions' rather than a 'Clash of Civilizations'. This official culture speaks on behalf of the entire community. However, in every culture there are alternative, heterodox, unofficial cultural forms that challenge the orthodox official culture. Huntington's 'Clash of Civilizations' does not take into account this counterculture of workers, peasants, bohemians, outsiders, the poor, ... However, no culture can be understood without taking into account this challenge to official culture, because, as a result, one misses exactly what is vital and fruitful in that culture! According to historian Arthur Schlesinger, the American history of great politicians and ranchers should be rewritten and also take into account slaves, employees, immigrants and workers, whose stories are silenced by Washington, the New York investment banks, the universities of New England and the industrial oligarchs in the Midwest. After all, these groups claim to represent the discourse of the groups that have been silenced.

There is also a similar cultural debate in Islam and it is precisely that what Huntington did not recognize. There is no clearly defined, one culture. After all, each culture consists of interacting groups and each culture is also influenced by other cultures.

The suffering of the Islamic world

Muslims see the demise of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War as the ultimate humiliation. Yet the downfall had already started four centuries earlier as a painful and slow process (cf. supra). Although core country Turkey overcame this because the uprising of Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) in Central Anatolia drove out the Allied occupiers, this was not an Islamic victory, but a new Islamic defeat. After all, Mustafa Kemal was a secularist and he abolished the sultanate and the caliphate. Especially the demise of the caliphate was a disaster because it destroyed religious unity in the Sunni part of the Islamic world. Everyone in the Near East is very aware of this!

Today, the former Ottoman Empire is divided into nation states artificially created by France and Great Britain. However, Muslims do not see themselves in national and regional terms, but in terms of religious identity and political loyalty.

The Prophet Muhammad was born in Mecca and founded Islam in Medina, from where he also conquered Mecca. Non-Muslims are not allowed to enter these two holy cities or even the entire Hejaz in order not to dishonor the Prophet. According to some, this ban even applies to the whole of Arabia. That is why the presence of American troops (although not in the Hejaz) on the Persian Gulf is so problematic for Muslims. Moreover, from the birthplace of Islam, those troops attacked Iraq, which was the seat of the caliphate for half a millennium – also the most glorious period in Islamic history. Precisely for those reasons, the British never entered the interior of Arabia, but limited themselves to the peripheral areas (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Aden).

The Deceptions of Orientalism

British-American Jewish orientalist Bernard Lewis posited that there had been growing hostility from the Islamic world towards the US since 1990. Although Lewis retired in 1986, he remained very influential. Both the White House and the two American political parties asked him for advice on the Near East, which means that he exerted enormous influence on American foreign policy.

Bernard Lewis saw a battle between 'the’ Islam and 'the' West that would last already thirteen centuries (crusades, jihad, Reconquista, etc.), with sometimes one winning and sometimes the other. After the implosion of the USSR in 1991, he believes, there was only one major enemy left for Islam: the US. He even waved big words like “the survival of our civilization”. Since the US militarily occupied parts of the Near East, resistance has been growing. For example, Iraqi defense against the US in 2003-2011 avoided US dominance over Iraq.

Lewis also stated that the Western policy pursued towards the Near East until then had been wrong. His advice to the American government was: get tough or get out! 'Get tough' stood for continuing the 'good' work started in Afghanistan and therefore even more attacks on so-called 'terrorist' countries and groups. By 'get out' he meant that a substitute for oil had to be found, so that the Near East would no longer be important.

Bernard Lewis's simplistic theory of the 'Clash of Civilizations' goes back to Orientalism. What is today defined as 'Islam' in the liberal West through the theory of the 'Clash of Civilizations' was defined by Orientalism. This is a fabricated construction to create hostility against a part of the world that is important to the US because of its oil and competition with the West. Orientalism offers the West a certain image of the Near East, which makes Westerners believe they know how people behave there and what kind of people live there. As a result, they start to view those people from the 'knowledge' that they believe they have about them. However, Orientalism does not provide innocent or objective knowledge about the Near East, but reflects certain interests.

'Clash of Ignorance'

The apparently independent media in a liberal society are controlled by commercial and political interests: there is no investigative journalism, but only repetition of the government's position and of the most influential people within the government. They use Islam as an external lightning rod to cover up the serious social, economic and financial problems in Western societies. Because the media can so easily draw attention to one negative aspect of Islam, it was also very easy at the end of the Cold War to create a new foreign enemy and to continue to legitimize the enormous American military.

Americans don't know much about history, even not highly educated Americans. Therefore, they cannot make nor understand historical references. For example, when Osama Bin Laden talked about “the disaster of eighty years ago,” everyone in the Near East knew he was talking about the demise of the Ottoman Empire. However, Americans had no idea what Bin Laden was talking about. In addition, it is very difficult to find literature sympathetic to Islam in the US because Islam is considered a threat to the Jewish Protestant nation that the US is.

Edward Said's 'Clash of Ignorance' refuted Lewis's statements: every country in the Near East has its own history and its own interpretation of Islam. Moreover, the Near East should not be understood as separate countries, but through the dynamics between the various countries. Saïd's 'Clash of Ignorance' showed that Lewis' orientalism simplistically generalizes 'the’ Islam: after all, there are several types of Islam! Nevertheless, Lewis's ‘Clash of Civilizations’ dominates American foreign policy on the Near East. However, this liberal-Western view of 'the’ Islam is completely different from how Muslims see Islam! For example, there is a world of difference between Islam in Algeria, in Eastern Africa and in Indonesia! It is therefore extremely unwise to see that part of the world as one Islamic, irrational, terrorist and fundamentalist whole. According to Edward Saïd, one exclusive culture is impossible: we must therefore ask ourselves whether we want to strive for the separation of cultures or for the coexistence of cultures.

Epilogue

Huntington's version of Lewis's 'Clash of Civilizations' first appeared as an article in Foreign Affairs, because that way it could influence policymakers: this discourse allowed the US to continue the Cold War thinking pattern. Much more useful, however, is a new mentality that is aware of the dangers that currently threaten all of humanity: increasing poverty, ethnic and religious hatred (Bosnia, Congo, Kosovo, Nagorno-Karabakh, Ukraine, etc.), increasing illiteracy and a new illiteracy (on electronic communications, TV and Internet).

History should be denationalized and make it clear that we live in a very complex and mixed world, where cultures cannot simply be separated: history should be taught as an exchange between cultures, so that it becomes clear that conflicts are useless and only isolate people. Today, however, history education in the West still teaches that the West is the center of the world.

There must also remain a difference between cultures: neither wanting to level out cultures nor wanting to cause cultures to collide are good. We must strive for coexistence of different cultures, languages ​​and traditions and therefore preserve these differences instead of striving for one world culture or – like Huntington and Lewis – for war.

The erroneous Orientalist idea of ​​the 'Clash of Civilizations' must be combated by revealing what is really behind it, by debating it, through education and by making American and European intellectuals realize the enormous impact of foreign interventions from the West on other cultures.