Middle East Strategy at Harvard

From Philip Carl Salzman

I would like to take up and elaborate somewhat Adam Garfinkle’s point (in a comment on an earlier post) about “a theologicalization of Islamic societies, defined as the process whereby the status of religion as a legitimate carrier of the public weal grows and the status of politics of a legitimate carrier of the public weal declines.”

The reason for this, I think, is clear [writes Garfinkle]: The pressures of modernization, greatly increased over the past few decades, are accentuating the internal divisions within most Muslim societies between secularists and nativists/fundamentalists, with traditionalists and the neo-orthodox… squeezed in between, and the vocabulary of dispute becoming increasingly moralist, in this case Islamic.

The tribal population of Iranian Baluchistan that I studied in the 1970s had, prior to conquest (or “state consolidation”) by Reza Shah in the 1930s, been entirely independent and had enthusiastically engaged in predatory raiding of Persian peasant populations. Since their “encapsulation” by the Persian state, they were forced to face the fact that they were militarily, politically, economically, and culturally weaker than the Persians, and that their pride as independent warriors and nomadic livestock owners could no longer be sustained.

Who were they now (after the conquest) and what could they take pride in? They turned to religion, not least because they were Sunni, and religion is a diacriticum between them and the Shia Persians. Religious intensification included increased and collective praying, going on the Hajj, and sending children to madrasse in Pakistan. The chief was no longer addressed as Sardar, his political title, but as Hajji, his earned religious title.

Perhaps this process of religious intensification in Baluchistan can serve as a miniature of what has transpired in the Middle East more generally. The Arabs, and Persians, and to a degree the Turks, have fallen in status, power, and prestige—and perhaps most important, in honor—as the West has ascended. (We must remember that honor in the Middle East rests with no less than full independence, and even better, with domination of others.) Middle Easterners were faced with trying to recover and reassert their position and standing. They tried nationalism, which failed (as shown in Fouad Ajami’s brilliant account, The Dream Palace of the Arabs), and they tried socialism, which, aside from transfers from the USSR, also failed.

What was left to them to try? How could they assert their equality, or, better, superiority? The answer, of course, is a turn, or return, to religion, for which it is ever possible to claim superiority. Religion of course is a diacriticum that distinguishes the Middle East from the West, and readily available is the non-refutable claim that Islam is superior to Western religion or non-religion, and therefore that the Middle East (and the Islamic world in general) is superior to the West.

It thus appears that a critical factor in “theologicalization” or religious intensification in the Middle East is Middle Eastern identity and its wounds under Western military, political, economic, and cultural superiority. The heartrending call among Arabs to save their honor is highly indicative. The re-turn to Islam and hope for redemption is the obvious consequence.