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Renewing Our
Faith in Common Ground Page 40 The
search for common ground is difficult in the face of the fatuous but
deadly assumption that the world is easily divided: East and West,
Muslim and Christian, Arab and European, good and bad. James Abdulaziz Brown reviews two
recent works that bravely challenge the intellectual status quo. But have you ever heard the phrase ‘Islamo-Christian civilisation’? Surely the fact that apparently no one has used it before historian Richard Bulliet in his new book, The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization, is not because of some inherent greater compatibility between Jewish and Christian societies. One has only to think of the Holocaust, repeated pogroms and medieval expulsions to realise the hostility that long combined with fruitful interaction before the apparent reconciliation neatly encapsulated today in the term ‘Judeo-Christian.’ In a thought-provoking and refreshing work, Bulliet has set out to reframe our understanding of history and modern society by arguing that Islamic and Western societies must be seen as twins, sharing similar roots and following parallel paths for many centuries. A professor at Columbia University in New York, his motivations spring directly from the failings United States policy post-September 11. The book is addressed to both the academic and the immediate political debate, challenging Samuel Huntington’s well-known ‘Clash of Civilisations’ thesis and demanding the recognition that “the Islamo-Christian world has much more binding it together than forcing it apart.” The book does not focus on the wider and more well-known scriptural relationship of Islam and Christianity (with Judaism) simply as ‘Abrahamic faiths.’ Nor does Bulliet attempt to link all Christian and Muslim societies. Rather he wants to establish a set of historical features and structures common to both the Islamic and Christian cultures that developed west of Iran and north of the Sahara: he argues that “the two faith communities can best be thought of as two versions of a common socio-religious system.” Bulliet’s argument begins by noting the initial spread of both Christianity and Islam into the world first linked by Hellenic culture and then the Roman Empire. He describes the parallel challenges of the diffusion of these religions from small elites into the wider population; their gradual institutionalisation; the clash of religious and political authority; the growth of popular spirituality. Bulliet is too subtle, however, to overstate his case, and he admits variation while positing similarity. Where the medieval Catholic Church clashed head on with European rulers over the rights of state and religion, for example, the Muslim ulema were generally more flexible - and more successful - in their similar efforts to resist secular control. The most salient variation today, of course, seems to be the contrasting attitudes in Islamic and Western societies to political authority and freedom. It was apparently for the sake of bringing freedom through Western-style democracy, remember, that the United States led the war into Iraq. In the second section of his book, Bulliet offers an important perspective here also. Instead of acquiescing to the view implicit in the title of Bernard Lewis’ recent book, What Went Wrong? Western Impact & Middle Eastern Response, Bulliet refuses to assume the West as the measure by which other societies must be judged. He asks instead, “What went on?” He argues that far from causing the lack of freedom sadly so evident today in many Muslim countries, Islam was in fact a bulwark against tyranny. In the ulama and the shariah, Muslim societies found their own means to resist arbitrary government. It was the relentless anticlericalism of the 19th and 20th century reformers inspired by Europe - Ataturk or the Pahlavis, for example - that eroded these. Whatever the merits of his arguments, Bulliet wants the reader to understand Muslim history on its own terms - not by the extent it has or has not measured up to the course charted by Europe and its descendants. The second half of the book changes tack as Bulliet offers an insider’s view on the weaknesses of American academia and its attempts to understand Muslims and Islam since World War II. From first assuming that Islam would rapidly become insignificant as the Arab world developed materially, he argues, American academics and policy advisers have veered to a near-hysterical view of it as a monolithic and dangerous force. Again he reminds us of the necessity of understanding others in their own terms as far as possible: “like latter day missionaries, we want the Muslims to love us, not just for what we can offer in the way of a technological society, but for who we are - for our values. But we refuse to countenance the thought of loving them for their values.” The final chapter offers some thoughts on the future by discussing what Bulliet calls the situation “on the edge” of Muslim societies - places and groups (such as diaspora communities) where what we call Islam is being renegotiated and renewed in ways we may not be able to anticipate. Some of his examples are surprising, even provocative, but with a historian’s perspective Bulliet can caution us against dismissing them too quickly; the development of madrasahs, Sufi brotherhoods, even the compilation of the major hadith collections - the impulses behind all of these resulted to some extent from the frontiers of, or the integration of increasing numbers of converts into, Muslim societies. In this brief and lively volume, Bulliet has made some important observations and raised some equally significant questions. Written with evident sincerity and without prescriptive answers, this work deserves wide reading. A second book comparable in motivation and perspective is Ahdaf Soueif’s Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground. “Awesome power,” writes Bulliet, “resides in the terms we employ.” In her new collection of essays and reviews, Soueif seeks to wield that very power against the persistent and damaging misrepresentation of the Arab world by the West. Although her perspective is more intimate than Bulliet’s historical sweep, she shares the same desire to undermine the fatuous but powerful and deadly assumption that the world is easily divided: East and West, Muslim and Christian, Arab and European, good and bad. This theme has been a preoccupation of Soueif’s previous writing. Her Booker Prize-nominated novel Map of Love, for example, traced the romance and marriage of an Englishwoman and a committed Egyptian nationalist during the British protectorate. In the semi-autobiographical In the Eye of the Sun, she wrestled with the rewards and the pains of living between two cultures. This new collection elaborates on the theme by bringing together writings that all ultimately contribute to her project to celebrate the ‘mezzaterra’, or common ground, of the title. In her introductory essay, Soueif makes explicit the link between this project and her own biography in a way that will resonate with anyone whose life combines diverse influences. Her mother was professor of English Literature at Cairo University. She grew up during the heady days of Nasser and Arab nationalism, when Egypt felt proud of its ancient heritage and new independence, secure enough at the same time to open itself to influences from Russia, France, Italy, South America and Britain. Work and life eventually brought her to immigrate to Britain, to marry a Scotsman, to have children here: no wonder, then, that “the common ground, after all, is the only ground that I and those whom I love can inhabit.” But the intoxicating mixture of cultures and ideas that seemed so normal in 1960s Cairo has by no means been easy to sustain. Although many prominent public figures and commentators in Egypt, for example, regularly read the European press and have studied in the West, Soueif resents the lack of reciprocity. Like the hundreds of thousands of Arabs or Muslims living in Britain, she is tired of “doing daily double-takes when faced with their reflection in a Western mirror.” After the steady drip-drip of misrepresentation she noticed in the 1980s and 1990s, now has come the rushing torrent of the American ‘war on terror.’ She embarks in this collection, therefore, less on a celebration of the common ground than a defence of it. The book begins with Soueif’s writings on Palestine, the ‘war on terror’ and the invasion of Iraq. Few writers combine passion with a literary sensibility like Soueif. This is especially compelling in her reports from Palestine. She evokes scenes in vivid snapshots, leaves the ears ringing with a snatch of dialogue, combining reflection and analysis skilfully borne along by the narrative. Human contact is her key to unlock the gates of misrepresentation and hostility cutting off one from another. The second half of the book collects mostly older writings, less obviously political but similarly concerned with the power of representation. The inclusion of some reviews of past books, perhaps now forgotten, might at a glance seem irrelevant or indulgent. In fact, each is an intriguing study in itself of how understanding can get lost amongst unquestioned assumptions and lazy language - something, as Soueif writes, that “was not a policy; it simply happened.” It is of course the unconscious opinion that is least open to doubt, so it is in her role as interrogator of the unquestioned that Soueif is most valuable. While presenting powerful arguments at many levels against the actions of Bush et al, her critique of the prejudices - in the full sense of the word - that determine those actions is even more important. Soueif’s writings are tinged with the pain and anger that sadly afflicts too many of our lives today. But their enduring passion and optimism is such that the book leaves you still believing in the common ground she holds so dear. Read both these books to renew your faith in human interaction rather than separation, to feel what can unite instead of divide. The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization, Richard Bulliet (Columbia University Press, 2004) £16.00. Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground, Ahdaf Soueif (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2004) £8.99 |