When analyzing politics and society in the Arab and Islamic world, it is admirable and important to break away from a Western-centered analysis. This move is not sufficient though. There is a temptation to continue to fall back on theories and rhetoric that have emanated from the west and have informed exactly that from which one attempts to break away. Furthermore, when discussing public discourse in the Arab world, it is imperative that one addresses the importance of Islam and its continuing vital role in Arab and Middle Eastern politics, despite Western scholarship’s tendency to suggest a historical end that involves the marginalization of religion. I appreciate Professor Challand’s posts in Deliberately Considered and the admirable move of breaking away from Western-centered analysis, but I think his posts suffer from theoretical temptation and an insufficient appreciation of the role of Islam.

It is true that civil-society is more than “NGOs and the developmental approach which imagines that the key to progress is when donors, the UN or rich countries, give aid to boost non-state actors, in particular NGOs, in the ‘developing south'” as Professor Challand asserts in his post “The Counter-Power of Civil Society in the Middle East.” I believe, though, that one must also conceive of civil-society and democratic institutions as more than a source for “collective autonomy” using other than secular slogans in the tradition of Tocqueville and Hegel.

Writing a history of democracy would have to include analysis such as de Tocqueville’s, but we should also remember that de Tocqueville wrote:

Muhammad brought down from heaven and put into the Quran not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels, on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and between man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, while Christianity is destined to reign in such ages, as in all others.

Tocqueville criticized Islam for allowing no deviation from its laws which to his mind covered all aspects of private and public life. But he failed to recognize the diversity of civil-society and the capacity for democratic institutions embedded in Islam’s structure and its ability to adapt to changing times, in part because it does not possess the characteristics of Catholicism. Ernest Renan later argued that Islam is not able to develop its own modernity, diverging from Tocqueville, but making the same mistake of essentializing Islam in a static history, laying ground for much of today’s claims that Islam and democracy are incompatible. These assertions often mobilize a rhetoric that promote tired tropes of “separation of church and state” and that democracy is contingent on secularism.

In fact, secularism has a much different meaning in the Arab world than it does in the West for two reasons. Islam never had a clerical hierarchy (although this phenomenon developed in Shi’ism later, albeit in a much different way than Catholicism) and therefore never had to answer the same questions regarding state-church relations that were prevalent in European political history. Despite this fact, Islam and the state did evolve separately due to negotiations of autonomy and the political domains of Islam and the state. “Secular” as European vocabulary to describe the dichotomy between Christ’s heavenly body and earthly body, once represented by medieval kingship and later by the Church, is not the same in Islam. In fact, the lack of a hierarchical authority in Islam and its partial reliance on consensus, or ijma’, is precisely what lends to it the ability to foster civil-society and diverse political groups, as well as various “schools” of law. An example is the mass proliferation of diverse Sufi brotherhoods in the fourteenth and fifteenth century. According to Richard Bulliet, “By the eighteenth century, there were thousands of Sufi brotherhoods reaching into every Muslim community and spreading knowledge of Islam into new lands.”

Furthermore, “secular” as a modern political concept in the Islamic world has come to mean the marginalization of the clergy and Islam in favor of modern military organizations, state-run schools, and state-sponsored religious institutions. The secular Arab dictatorships, which are currently undergoing fundamental changes, have implemented these practices and have been some of the most brutal regimes in the world. The attempt to relegate Islamic politics to the sidelines, a process which included the state’s co-opting of previously autonomous religious institutions, such as Islamic universities (al-Azhar University in Egypt is an example) and charities (waqf), only resulted in the alienation of segments of society that have been forced to take up alternative political methods, which sometimes include violence.

It is also untrue that the language of current opposition movements in the Arab world is a “secular re-imagining of the people as a united nation,” as Professor Challand calls it, presumably meaning that religious language is abandoned in favor of modern political vocabulary. Currently in Jordan, protests involve a number of groups, most notably the Muslim Brotherhood (or the Islamic Action Front, as it is called in Jordan), as well as many other opposition and counter-opposition groups. Many of these parties use discourse that is couched in Islam and ethnicity (especially Jordanian vs. Palestinian ethnicity and nationality).

In closing, Castoriadis’ analyses and modern political thought that relies heavily on Marxist theory, though they make valuable contributions to interpreting revolution and revolt, are simply inadequate to explain Islamic politics. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 serves as a lesson as to how intimately connected revolution, democracy and religion are now connected in the Muslim world. While secularism supposedly goes hand-in-hand with the development of democracy and the modern state, it was Islam that opened revolutionary potentials, democratic and anti-democratic. The Iranian experience revealed how transformational potential can be and has been heavily steeped in Islamic political theology. The revolution was not only a watershed in Islamic and Iranian politics but also a wake-up call for critical observers, who previously expected an unfolding of modern history that would increasingly push religion out of politics. In order to effectively understand the Islamic world, scholars and analysts must not only re-evaluate the theories on which they rely, as well as history and historiography, but also their rhetoric and the words that they mobilize.

These days, as I reflect on the explosive aftereffects of the incineration of copies of the Quran in a US military base in Afghanistan, I find myself re-reading chapters 1-11 of Book Two of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, where he offers his treatment of the passions (the Greek is pathē, from which we get all those “path” terms, like sympathy, empathy, apathy, pathetic, and so on). This “theory of moral sentiments” comes in the context of “a theory of rhetoric”: a reasoned discourse offering analysis and advice concerning the political use of composed speech in situations where persuasion is based on something other than “purely” rational conviction. Central to what Aristotle has to say  is that human beings experience anger on those occasions when they: (1) believe that they themselves or something that they hold dear (or, especially, most dear) has been belittled and (2) cherish a wish for revenge. The paradigmatic example is Achilles, who believing himself to have been robbed of his honor (which is what was most dear to him at that time) by Agamemnon, displays his anger precisely by predicting and praying for (and then enlisting the gods’ support for his predictive prayer) the devastation of the Greek army as a punishment to Agamemnon. This is especially exemplary in that, among other things, it shows why what we euphemistically call “collateral damage” is so endemic to “the work of anger.”

The terrible events that have followed the burning of the Qurans by insufficiently sensitive and ill trained personnel, sadly, were entirely predictable in terms of Aristotle’s account. The anger, with its destructive thirst for revenge, that a believer feels in seeing the testament burned unceremoniously as refuse is immediately understandable for someone who has taken the slightest moment to conceive of how a Muslim relates to the sacred word, and how it differs from the way in which a Christian relates to the sacred word. With just the smallest degree of education—precisely the kind of education Aristotle is trying to provide in his Rhetoric—one could see at an instant the grounds for the anger.

But wait, have I presumed too much? Have I, as Newt Gingrich recently asserted,“surrendered” by claiming that it was, in fact, an error to burn those Qurans—assuredly, in an entirely non-inflammatory and “instrumental” manner?” Am I hasty in suggesting that this is a sign of insufficient sensitivity and improper training on the part of the military and its contractors? No. And Aristotle points us to the reason why. Whoever steps into the public sphere and asks their fellow citizens—or the citizens of other lands—to listen to what they have to say about matters of public concern must have in mind what the character of those listening is like and also what kind of character they can be inspired to want to have. When our leaders uncritically respond to the inflamed and violent protests that have been going on (and make no mistake I find crimes against persons that have been committed in the aftermath of the original burning absolutely unjustified beyond any shadow of doubt), they are in effect telling us: yes, in fact, we are the people who burn Qurans with the rest of the trash, and we are going to continue being those people, and that is in no way in contradiction with our being lovers of freedom who wish to bring to the whole world the possibility of self-determination. Indeed, for some who subscribe to the “clash of civilizations” narrative, these events prove that it is precisely because we are the people who burn Qurans (in the service of removing “radicalizing materials” from a detention facility, and let’s not forget that piece of this tale) that we are the people who are on this democratizing mission.

But that, in this context, is exactly the problem. With rare exceptions (the re-emergence of Rick Santorum into the limelight has provided an instance), our political leaders, from left to right, prefer not to admit a basic fact. America is not (yet) a pluralist and universalist democracy based on ethical-humanist values. Nor is it, by any means, a secular country. Nor yet is it one “founded on Judeo-Christian” values, a hyphenated horror of a phrase I feel I have heard (well, seen) one thousand times in the past weeks. America—and forgive me, President Obama, as I know you’ve tried hard to make the opposite case—is a Christian land. It may be on its way to being something else, something more. Or it may be, actually, becoming more so a Christian land. But at this point it time, it is a Christian country.

In fact, I would claim that if it were “Judeo-Christian” (whatever that would actually mean), then this would not have happened. Why? Because to the extent that that “Judeo” part was in there, I mean was really in there, it simply would not have been possible for folks to be so deeply tone deaf to the significance of burning the word. A Jewish congregation lives in and through the Law; a community of Jewish believers without a building, without a Rabbi, without an institutional structure are all entirely possible. Without the scroll, without the Law, which is itself sacred, with highly ritualized rules for one’s conduct when holding it, or even in its vicinity, there is nothing. For Jews, as for Muslims, there is only God and only those with whom God has seen fit to work on earth, namely the prophets.

The roster may differ, but the structure and the theology remains the same. For this reason, though politically impossible at the moment, it would be much easier to imagine a Islamo-Jewish or Judeo-Islamic political community than a Judeo-Christian one. Theologically, Islam and Judaism are much closer to one another than either is to Christianity. But I digress.

The trace of the divine in the world, then, is to be found in the letter of the law, for Jews as much as Muslims. For this reason, a Jew might very well, and well we know it, burn a Quran. But never in what seems to have been the genuine ignorance at work in this instance.

Let me speak a bit more carefully. I do not know, and I suppose it is not currently known, precisely how far up the chain of command the order to burning these sacred (to some) texts went. Thus, it is irresponsible to speak about the faith traditions to which those individuals belong, or their nationalities. What I mean to address here is not the activity of the burning itself, and its causes, so much as the way that activity is understood by those in whose name it was carried out. And in this respect, I hope to have given us reason to consider the possibility that it is because the United States is a Christian country, and leads its allies in world affairs as a Christian country, that something like this “public relations disaster” could happen. If that is so, or even if it just might be so, then I think we have reason to consider the possibility that it is time for us to have some genuine religious education in the American, so that any (say) 12 year old would know what they would have been taught to believe about the sacred had they been brought up in (to begin with) each of the other Abrahamic faiths.

I have a very hard time imagining that in such a possible Christian—but self-consciously Christian—America, you would find very many 18-25 year olds who would not know that burning a Quran is for a believing Muslim very much unlike burning a “remaindered” King James Bible is for a believing Christian. And, for that reason, I find it fairly likely that in a world in which that America, rather than our current “Judeo-Christian” America, was active in world affairs, not only would Americans be better able to anticipate what makes others angry, but we might actually be able to help bring about a state of affairs where there was at least a little less anger in the world. Which would be a good thing.

Why is an Islamic community center dedicated to intercultural and interreligious understanding in any way a desecration to the memory of the victims of the attacks?

Why is the planning of the center provocative or insensitive?

There are problems with facts and truth, as I have reflected upon in my previous posts, but there are also problems with interpretation and evaluation.  Given the facts, the community center can only be considered an affront if there is something fundamentally wrong with one of the great world religions.  This center is clearly not the work of radical fundamentalists.  Its goal is dialogue and understanding.  If these are jihadists, all Muslims are.  If we publicly speak and act with such interpretation, we are effectively declaring a religious war, playing the game of the religious fanatics.

And isn’t it odd that it is now, 9 years after the attacks of 2001, and not in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks, that a broad fear of Muslims seems to be sweeping the country? So many major political leaders are complicit in the Islamophobia: from those who are stoking the flames, Gingrich and Palin and their media facilitators at Fox and company; to those who fear opposing the hysteria, Harry Reid and the like?

Even President Obama has not been clear about the problem (more about that in a later post).  I think that Islamophobia, not Islam, now presents a clear and present danger to American democracy, not only because it compromises our fundamental principles, but also because it challenges our security.  See for a report on this issue: U.S. Anti-Islam Protest Seen as Lift for Extremists