Read Online Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World by Fatima Mernissi, Mary Jo Lakeland - Free Book Online
Authors: Fatima Mernissi, Mary Jo Lakeland
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Perso- Arabic culture. By about 1500, Islam was a major force in all of the Malaysian archipelago and along the Indo-Chinese coasts. 9
In 1987 I disembarked in Karachi for the first time, half asleep at four o’clock in the morning. What was my surprise to hear the customs agent, who gallantly offered to show me the city once day had broken, recite in a pure Arabic, when I rejected his offer: “O mankind! We have created you male and female, and have made you nations and tribes that ye may know one another.” This same verse was quoted to me in mangled Arabic with a strong American accent by a jazz musician whom I went to hear in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. This was during the 1970s, when I was a student, and at that time many blacks were converting to Islam under the influence of Malcolm X. As a matter of fact, it was during my student days in America that I discovered how attractive Islam was for oppressed minorities, something that had never struck me at home in Morocco, where inequality and lack of solidarity are the normal state of affairs.
The popular sympathy Iraq enjoyed among Muslim countries during the Gulf War had nothing to do with the personality of Saddam Hussein, who was never the object of a cult of personality as Gamal c Abd al-Nasir had been. Saddam Hussein’s war against Iran, in which thousands of Muslims were killed, left the masses in a state of confusion and disarray. The Arab masses are ripe for a leader; since President Nasir, who championed the idea of autonomy and sovereignty during the cold war before he began to imprison intellectuals, no one has succeeded in taking his place. The Green Book of President Qaddafi has been seriously read or commented on only by those who are guaranteed a job or an income if they do so. Other claimants to the role of leader of the Arab world have had the good sense not to be too persistent.
During the Gulf War it was not the personality of the leaders which carried weight in the decision to align on one side or the other. Rather, it was the taghiya schema that was operating, leading the masses to tilt to the side of Iraq. The emir of Kuwait and the king of Saudi Arabia, sitting on the oil wells that could change the power alignment if they were put at the service of the umma, both perfectly filled the role of the taghiya, for they were guided only by their individual self-interest. This is the way the Arab press and slogans depicted them: as pharaohs forgetful of the rahma that Muhammad’s Mecca promised the world. President Bush, by insisting on making the whole world participate in the war effort, forced the Kuwaitis and Saudis to expose for the first time the amount of money they were paying to various Western countries. Learning how much the emir of Kuwait had been paying for French weapons was the opening shot in an inter-Arab democratic debate as, thanks to CNN, the financial details of the princely budgets were revealed and the flood of petrodollars invested in arms was duly exposed. The people became conscious for the first time of the cost of an airplane or a tank, and every time one burned up on the screen the young shoemakers, their hands working the delicate leather, mentally calculated the amount of money going up in smoke and compared it with their miserable daily pay: “ c Aqabt, ya far c un “ ("Take that, Pharaoh!"). The medina was caught up by the full force of the sacred and by economic confusion that could only end in the condemnation of the tyrant.
Seen today as the culture most capable of channeling popular frustrations, Islam gives the faithful enormous expectations of social solidarity. The sacred, after long being utilized to pacify the masses and keep them quiet, is today taking its revenge on those who have manipulated it. It has become, as at the time of its birth, a force for the destabilization of privilege, whether regional or global. Harassed and hounded, the modern lay leftist movements coming out of socialism and
In 1987 I disembarked in Karachi for the first time, half asleep at four o’clock in the morning. What was my surprise to hear the customs agent, who gallantly offered to show me the city once day had broken, recite in a pure Arabic, when I rejected his offer: “O mankind! We have created you male and female, and have made you nations and tribes that ye may know one another.” This same verse was quoted to me in mangled Arabic with a strong American accent by a jazz musician whom I went to hear in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. This was during the 1970s, when I was a student, and at that time many blacks were converting to Islam under the influence of Malcolm X. As a matter of fact, it was during my student days in America that I discovered how attractive Islam was for oppressed minorities, something that had never struck me at home in Morocco, where inequality and lack of solidarity are the normal state of affairs.
The popular sympathy Iraq enjoyed among Muslim countries during the Gulf War had nothing to do with the personality of Saddam Hussein, who was never the object of a cult of personality as Gamal c Abd al-Nasir had been. Saddam Hussein’s war against Iran, in which thousands of Muslims were killed, left the masses in a state of confusion and disarray. The Arab masses are ripe for a leader; since President Nasir, who championed the idea of autonomy and sovereignty during the cold war before he began to imprison intellectuals, no one has succeeded in taking his place. The Green Book of President Qaddafi has been seriously read or commented on only by those who are guaranteed a job or an income if they do so. Other claimants to the role of leader of the Arab world have had the good sense not to be too persistent.
During the Gulf War it was not the personality of the leaders which carried weight in the decision to align on one side or the other. Rather, it was the taghiya schema that was operating, leading the masses to tilt to the side of Iraq. The emir of Kuwait and the king of Saudi Arabia, sitting on the oil wells that could change the power alignment if they were put at the service of the umma, both perfectly filled the role of the taghiya, for they were guided only by their individual self-interest. This is the way the Arab press and slogans depicted them: as pharaohs forgetful of the rahma that Muhammad’s Mecca promised the world. President Bush, by insisting on making the whole world participate in the war effort, forced the Kuwaitis and Saudis to expose for the first time the amount of money they were paying to various Western countries. Learning how much the emir of Kuwait had been paying for French weapons was the opening shot in an inter-Arab democratic debate as, thanks to CNN, the financial details of the princely budgets were revealed and the flood of petrodollars invested in arms was duly exposed. The people became conscious for the first time of the cost of an airplane or a tank, and every time one burned up on the screen the young shoemakers, their hands working the delicate leather, mentally calculated the amount of money going up in smoke and compared it with their miserable daily pay: “ c Aqabt, ya far c un “ ("Take that, Pharaoh!"). The medina was caught up by the full force of the sacred and by economic confusion that could only end in the condemnation of the tyrant.
Seen today as the culture most capable of channeling popular frustrations, Islam gives the faithful enormous expectations of social solidarity. The sacred, after long being utilized to pacify the masses and keep them quiet, is today taking its revenge on those who have manipulated it. It has become, as at the time of its birth, a force for the destabilization of privilege, whether regional or global. Harassed and hounded, the modern lay leftist movements coming out of socialism and
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