Sharia, Baby!

I remember the time (don't you?) when the Moslem world consisted mostly of "emerging" countries, that were "modernizing", and getting ready to take a seat at the table with civilized, respectable nations (you know -- like Western Europe and the U.S.). They had -- not without some ambivalence, but nonetheless with the best of intentions -- stepped up and declared their interest in joining the 20th-Century political, social, and technological stream. OK -- given that their governments lacked something in the way of "democracy"... but back then, that was nowhere near as important as not being communist (the way it's nowhere near as important today as being a captive of "world trade"). And yeah, some of their customs were a bit on the sketchy side... as were their clothes. I mean, Saudi leaders would show up for conferences in full desert garb, with a handful of wives in tow, along with hash pipes... ah well, anything for diplomacy! And remember when, among the best examples of "progressive" Islamic states was Iran? And Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt weren't far behind, with Syria and Iraq on the "watch list". Just about the only places that still looked like a movie set were the Gulf States and Yemen. (And Afghanistan, of course -- then as now.) And hopes were high for North Africa... except for Libya, I suppose... and for Pakistan as well. Only Bangladesh was considered a total basket case -- sort of the Haiti of South Asia. And Turkey -- I mean, gosh! They were so modernized they had a Western alphabet and drank alcohol... and "Arab"-style clothing was forbidden by law. If it hadn't been for the minarets, you'd have thought you were in Utah.

But then a funny thing happened on the way to the New World Order. All of a sudden something called "Islamic fundamentalism" reared its head -- starting most visibly in Iran, with the overthrow of the Shah, the taking over of the American Embassy, and the defenestration of Jimmy Carter. Next to regess to the Dark Ages was Afghanistan, as a direct result of the Russian invasion and occupation and the resulting counterattacks by the Taliban, which was created -- lest we forget! -- by Pakistan with our help.

And then all heck broke loose, with Islamic "insurgents" bubbling up all across the Moslem world, from East Africa to Indonesia. And all of a sudden, all this modernism, and Westernism, went out the window, and a great grassroots movement of Islamic fundamentalism made itself known... in every instance, of course, violently opposed to "degenerate" Western influences, Western culture, and especially American culture and "economic imperialism".

Now, you don't have to subscribe to any sort of strict "cyclical" model of history to recognize that -- as in physics -- when it comes to strife among nations, and strife within nations as well, for many, if not all, actions there is an equal and opposite reaction. So... to go back in our own history a bit, and that of Europe, we see that the Industrial Revolution, with its materialistic grounding and its tendency to dehumanize, helped give rise to the Romantic movement in art, literature, music, poetry, and so on... not to mention communism, which, in a broad sense, can be seen as the economic/political version of romanticism (as can fascism, for that matter -- but that came along later, and for other reasons). Not long after, the effects of industrialization and urbanization gave rise to various utopian or "back to the land" or agrarian movements (including distributism, which was the Catholic version). And where faith, society, and science intersect (and collide), we had a reaction to Darwinism in the form of Fundamentalism... and, much later, a reaction to secular/materialist influences in the church in the form of the Evangelical and Charismatic movements. Even within Judaism, it can be argued that the urbanization and secularization of large portions of the Jewish population of Europe helped give rise to the Hassidic (AKA "ultra-Orthodox") movement.

So if these things all occurred in our own, comparatively recent, history, what is so amazing about similar things happening in the Moslem world? Perhaps our confusion is based on our lack of understanding of how anyone, anywhere, could possibly want to refuse the many blessings of Western civilization and technology... and, by extension, culture. Who, for example would refuse to participate in Western "public health" programs (which, for some reason, always seem to include a unit on women's liberation) -- even if they also had to take American sitcoms, Hollywood movies, and Madonna CDs as part of the package? How unreasonable! How primitive... how "medieval". But clearly, many people in the Islamic world saw the flood waters rising... they knew they were losing the culture war that had been declared on them... and they decided, it was now or never -- either reassert the old values and the old customs, or lose everything. And of course, what stimulated their thinking in this regard more than any other single factor had to be the very large thorn in their side called Israel -- a colony of, basically, secular, urban European Jews plunked down by the Western "powers" right in the middle of what they considered to be their own traditional homeland, along with many holy sites, etc. -- which were now to be trampled under the Zionist boot. And they decided, perhaps, that they had been too soft, too compliant... too helpless in the face of all this. After all, the Holy Land had been in the care of the Ottomans for centuries, but that empire had basically withered and died, with World War I being the final blow... and then England and France moved in as occupiers, with the usual... um... "sensitivity" that they have always shown to subject peoples. Meanwhile, the Turks, in what was left of the Ottoman Empire, had sold their Islamic birthright for a mess of pottage. So what's a member of the faithful remnant to do? Watch, and wait... because sooner or later, cracks will appear in the Western/Israeli/imperialist armor. And sure enough, our follies in Iran provided firm ground for the Islamic Revolution... and Russia's follies in Afghanistan for their ejection and a takeover by the Taliban. And if it can happen in those places, it can happen anywhere, right? The domino theory with a vengeance. And, the main point is that, by rebelling against all the offenses and interferences from Europe and the U.S., they reassert the age-old unity (which we never really had) of land, blood, and faith -- and I don't mean the contrived kind that Israel represents, but the real thing. (And, by the way, the conflicts in the West Bank and Gaza can be seen as basically a subset of all of this -- not particularly unique, except that they are occurring within territory occupied by non-Moslems.)

So... anyone who wonders why the Islamic world "backslid", or became more "primitive", or reactionary, or "fundamentalist", only has to consider these events in the light of age-old cycles of action and reaction. You invade a country, let's say... or threaten a race, an ethnic group, a way of life... and let's say you're repelled. But things don't just go back to the way they were before; they go _way_ back to some previous period in history... perhaps a period when the culture in question was dominant... in its glory days... when it had integrity, and the respect of its neighbors. Why, for example, did the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s yield up "black power", and people exerting themselves to be "blacker" than they had been for decades... since the Civil War, in fact? And why the "back to Africa" movement, if not to assert "true blackness" in the face of perceived persecution and "cultural genocide" by whites? Why were the Irish-Americans who escaped the famine more Irish, in many ways, than the ones who stayed behind? And again, why does Christian fundamentalism loom so large on the American landscape, when the movement itself only goes back to around World War I? Action-reaction; that's all it is. And an understanding of this dynamic would, without a doubt, make our foreign policy (and domestic as well, for that matter) much more enlightened and effective -- not to mention humane. Which is precisely why it is unlikely to ever happen.