Sarah
01-07-2005, 09:29 PM
Romanticism of Islam, Arabia, and The Arcadian Myth
By Fatimah
July 05, 2003
Humans have always romanticized the past, "the good old days," when everything was perfect and the way it should be.
There's also the tendency to romanticize faraway, exotic places, peoples and rituals. You don't really see all the problems they have; you just notice how exotic it is, so it must be more interesting than what we have here!
I plead guilty to this kind of romanticization. Even though I know better intellectually, I still hold somewhat romantic notions of Islamic culture, Islamic dress, and so on. I believe this romanticization factor played a big part in my own conversion to Islam, since I had visions of the great mosques of the Islamic world, and also Mecca and Medina, all now open to me. Even after all the crap I read and the incidents I've seen about what really goes on there, what Islamic law really entails, the ugly truth of what Islamic "tolerance" and "respect for women" is, there is still this cartoony vision of the Islamic world I have, that it is "exotically different" and fascinating.
I know darn well that this view of Islamic civilization bears as much relation to reality as the Disney movie Aladdin does to the actually existing Islamic world:
http://img54.exs.cx/img54/521/aladdin6pd.gif
I suppose I'll need to actually make a trip there to once and for all disabuse myself of these romanticized notions. Perhaps I'll take a trip to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates and actually have to walk around in a black abayah and niqab (face veil) in the 120 degrees Farenheit heat, that will finally disabuse me of that bizarre feeling that somehow it must be fun to "dress up" like that, hidden behind a veil. I just hope it doesn't require something extreme like marrying into a Saudi family and becoming a prisoner in my own home to shatter what's left of my illusions.
This romanticization of the Middle East or "Orient" has been endemic in much of Western culture, specifically Western Europe, for probably the last 200 years, ever since Napoleon's Battle of the Pyramids, and the subsequent colonization of much of the Middle East. But what's less well known is that Muslims and Arabs themselves also often hold a very romanticized view of Islamic culture and history.
The cliched view of the "exotic" East, with carefree Bedouin riding on camels through the stark beauty of the Arabian desert, coupled with cities full of happy, educated people, of various religions, mixing in peace and mutual respect, dedicated to the goal of furthering human knowledge and the arts, isn't just the product of Western imagination; plenty of Arabs, Muslims, and others also swallow it whole!
Muslims typically romanticize their past, contrasting it with today, when Muslims are weak and powerless, the rulers corrupt and greedy, the people impious and adopting "degenerate" ideas. You can't look at a book or website about Islam written by Muslims without reading about how everything was "perfect," or at least close to it, in the time of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and how all the Muslims lived together in peace and harmony, were ready to lay down their lives at the Prophet's command, followed every one of his injunctions without fail, were united in their hearts, and all of that stuff. Even people who should know better fall for this "Arcadian myth," though, to be fair, this is something that all human societies have fallen prey to, thinking that this age is fallen and corrupt, and the past was a golden age.
Writings about the "Golden Age" of Islam, whether by Muslims or non-Muslims, often fall into the same trap. The world of Islam in medieval times becomes a paradise of intellectual ferment and free-thinking, with peace and prosperity reigning over a harmonious collection of diverse people of different religions, ethnicities, races and viewpoints. It's always fascinating to me to see how obviously Westerners paint what they would like to see onto the canvas of Islamic history, and Muslims, whether Westernized or not, do the same thing!
You'll often see Muslims or non-Muslims defending Islam by saying that, although the recent past has been bad for women, or non-Muslims, or for Muslims themselves, that's because Islam has been corrupted and hijacked from its "pure" form in the 7th or 10th centuries (any time is OK, as long as it is in the distant past), which somehow provides for all the things that citizens from the 21st century think desirable, such as:
voting rights for women
complete equality for women
a fair and equitable distribution of wealth and power
tolerance and peaceful co-existence for non-Muslims
banning of slavery
banning of racism
It gets kind of ridiculous, really. Take the claim that somehow Shari'ah provided voting rights for women. This is rather astonishing considering that anything that would normally be considered "democracy" did not exist anywhere in the Muslim world until the 20th century, which to this day is mostly ruled by dictators and despots. What is being claimed is that shura, the Islamic idea of "rule by mutual consultation," is the same thing as modern democracy, when in fact it consisted mostly of men who would approve or disapprove of any particular policy or law. If the people didn't riot over it, then that meant that they more or less approved. There were certainly no ballots cast by the populace at large.
Now, it may be possible to interpret the institution of shura in the Qur'an (42:38: where Muslims are described as "those who conduct their affairs by shura") as providing some approval for democracy in the modern sense, but 1) you'd have to get past the scholars claiming that Islam and democracy are incompatible, 2) the elected body would have to have real power, and most importantly 3) there needs to be a tradition of freedom of speech, thought, religion, and so on, as well as support for dissenting viewpoints, so that voters or potential candidates are free to debate issues, instead of being cowed by clerics forbidding any honest discussion of Islamic law, or denouncing people as heretics for their different interpretation of whatever law might be under discussion. In Jordan, a woman candidate for Parliament was attacked by clerics and others for questioning polygamy, and even brought to court on charges of apostasy. For real democracy, there needs to be a willingness to discuss all aspects of Islamic law and culture, and even whether Islam as it exists now is a good or a bad thing. It certainly doesn't go well with the idea that Allah's law cannot be changed by human will.
Islam is touted as offering all the good things that Westerners see as good, like tolerance, freedom, liberty, equality, women's rights, and so on, if only it were "applied rightly," or that it was all these things in some mythical past, before those horrible Western imperialists showed up. The rule is that everything that is good is because of Islam, everything bad is because of "culture" or "the corruption of Islam"--but unfortunately the latter claim is just a way to avoid discussion, since it's all too rare to see those claiming that honor killings, the oppression of women and the like as "distortions" of Islam actually fighting to have these practices banned, as well as protesting Islamic clerics who do approve of these things; usually it just functions as a way to deflect criticism and shut down discussion.
(Here I must acknowledge those groups, such as Sisters in Islam, who do fight to end any number of horrible practices like clitoridectomy, child marriage, honor killings and the like, even putting themselves in harm's way and risking claims of "apostasy" and "heresy" for contradicting the Islamic clerics, who all too often approve of these things.)
You'll also see writings proclaiming Islam Is The Solution, in which somehow the application of Islam to all aspects of life and society will solve all problems, and which will turn into a paradise on earth. But then why are actually existing "Islamic states" so miserable and poor? Shouldn't people be flocking to them if they worked? If Islam has all the solutions, shouldn't even the partial application of it result in a noticeable improvement? I'm reminded of the claim that the USSR and China should not be seen as "failures" of communism, because they weren't "really" communist!
Islamic History as Fairy Tale
Most books by Muslims for the general reader present a version of early Islamic history that reads like a children's fairy tale and strains credibility. According to this version, which Muslims today are presumably to emulate, the earliest Muslims, although facing plenty of problems from the outside, were perfect Muslims and observed Allah's commands and Muhammad's example with perfect faith and never missed a prayer, never ingested wine, never betrayed other Muslims.
Which makes what happened after Muhammad died absolutely inexplicable. Parties of Muslims were soon killing each other over who would rule, and three out of four of the "Rightly Guided Caliphs" were assassinated. Civil wars were a regular occurrence. The Umayyad caliphs was supposed to be very corrupt, evil men, getting drunk and carousing in their desert palaces at every opportunity. Only Umar II, the "Fifth Rightly-Guided Caliph," was the model of what a true Muslim ruler should be (there are tales about how during his rule there were no beggars on the roads, there was so much money in the public treasury that he ran out of ways to spend it, he lived in abject poverty wearing only the cheapest garments, etc.). This is why I am deeply suspicious of the early Islamic tradition: it just doesn't square with human nature!
If Muslims had been so pious before, what caused this to happen? It's likely that the later Abbasids rewrote the histories to show their predecessors as corrupt and unworthy of the throne. It should also be known that caliphs such as Harun ar-Rashid (the Rightly Guided), are also romanticized in this fashion (see the Arabian Nights, which only took its final form hundreds of years later, when the Abbasids were only a bittersweet memory).
The Arab conquests, described in many contemporary sources as bloody and given to spoils-taking and looting, are turned into "liberations," freely welcomed by the local inhabitants. (What really happened is that the "lucky" cities heard about what happened to those cities who resisted the Arab invaders, namely annihilation, and for their part decided to surrender without a fight, opening their gates to the invaders.)
The Ottoman Empire is also remembered as the neatest thing since sliced bread in many texts, where all peoples under its sway lived together in peace and harmony. The Ottoman Empire is seen as the model for Muslims and non-Muslims living together in an Islamic state. But if so, then why did the Greeks and other Christian minorities, as well as the Zionist Jews, launch independence movements if they were supposedly treated so well? Accounts of the non-Muslims by European visitors invariably show them as wretched, poor, and deprived of all rights. Then there's the devshirme, the annual levy of Christian boys who were taken from their parents to serve in the Ottoman army. If the Ottoman Empire is "how things should be" in an Islamic state, I'm going to have to say "no thanks!"
I frankly would have more hope for Islam and the Muslim world in general if so many "thinkers" and writers did not have such a childish view of the past and of the world today. There is no suggestion that the Muslim world had complex problems and was decaying from within; instead, all problems faced by the ummah are because 1) the Muslims were not obeying Allah and His Law enough or 2) they were caused and are entirely the fault of foreigners. Supposedly everything would be fine if the "Western imperialists," "Zionists" and others left, taking their un-Islamic ideas with them (good luck!), and the Islamic world came under the rule of a "true" Islamic government, which would be so successful because of its following of Allah's law perfectly it would rule the whole world.
How can you deal with such a simplistic view of the Muslim world's problems?
And this attitude by so many Muslims is not helped by the equally simplistic view offered by far too many Western "scholars" of Islam, such as John Esposito and Karen Armstrong, who also buy hook line and sinker the view that the Islamic world of the past was near-perfection (for example their writings on Andalusian Spain) and that all of the Muslim world's problems can be blamed on "Western imperialism" and/or "Zionism" (though of course "Arab imperialism" or "Turkish imperialism" is never a problem). Islamic fundamentalist and jihadi groups are sometimes lauded as brave fighters true to their beliefs by both Muslims and non-Muslims, romanticized as "freedom fighters" or as "fighting in the sake of Allah."
Many Muslims and non-Muslims alike do reject these views and look within for change, but with the lack of freedom of speech, thought, and belief, as well as the chokehold on any real discussion of Islam by the Islamic parties and clerics, is not very encouraging.
Secular Islam . net (http://www.secularislam.net/archives/000057.html)
By Fatimah
July 05, 2003
Humans have always romanticized the past, "the good old days," when everything was perfect and the way it should be.
There's also the tendency to romanticize faraway, exotic places, peoples and rituals. You don't really see all the problems they have; you just notice how exotic it is, so it must be more interesting than what we have here!
I plead guilty to this kind of romanticization. Even though I know better intellectually, I still hold somewhat romantic notions of Islamic culture, Islamic dress, and so on. I believe this romanticization factor played a big part in my own conversion to Islam, since I had visions of the great mosques of the Islamic world, and also Mecca and Medina, all now open to me. Even after all the crap I read and the incidents I've seen about what really goes on there, what Islamic law really entails, the ugly truth of what Islamic "tolerance" and "respect for women" is, there is still this cartoony vision of the Islamic world I have, that it is "exotically different" and fascinating.
I know darn well that this view of Islamic civilization bears as much relation to reality as the Disney movie Aladdin does to the actually existing Islamic world:
http://img54.exs.cx/img54/521/aladdin6pd.gif
I suppose I'll need to actually make a trip there to once and for all disabuse myself of these romanticized notions. Perhaps I'll take a trip to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates and actually have to walk around in a black abayah and niqab (face veil) in the 120 degrees Farenheit heat, that will finally disabuse me of that bizarre feeling that somehow it must be fun to "dress up" like that, hidden behind a veil. I just hope it doesn't require something extreme like marrying into a Saudi family and becoming a prisoner in my own home to shatter what's left of my illusions.
This romanticization of the Middle East or "Orient" has been endemic in much of Western culture, specifically Western Europe, for probably the last 200 years, ever since Napoleon's Battle of the Pyramids, and the subsequent colonization of much of the Middle East. But what's less well known is that Muslims and Arabs themselves also often hold a very romanticized view of Islamic culture and history.
The cliched view of the "exotic" East, with carefree Bedouin riding on camels through the stark beauty of the Arabian desert, coupled with cities full of happy, educated people, of various religions, mixing in peace and mutual respect, dedicated to the goal of furthering human knowledge and the arts, isn't just the product of Western imagination; plenty of Arabs, Muslims, and others also swallow it whole!
Muslims typically romanticize their past, contrasting it with today, when Muslims are weak and powerless, the rulers corrupt and greedy, the people impious and adopting "degenerate" ideas. You can't look at a book or website about Islam written by Muslims without reading about how everything was "perfect," or at least close to it, in the time of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and how all the Muslims lived together in peace and harmony, were ready to lay down their lives at the Prophet's command, followed every one of his injunctions without fail, were united in their hearts, and all of that stuff. Even people who should know better fall for this "Arcadian myth," though, to be fair, this is something that all human societies have fallen prey to, thinking that this age is fallen and corrupt, and the past was a golden age.
Writings about the "Golden Age" of Islam, whether by Muslims or non-Muslims, often fall into the same trap. The world of Islam in medieval times becomes a paradise of intellectual ferment and free-thinking, with peace and prosperity reigning over a harmonious collection of diverse people of different religions, ethnicities, races and viewpoints. It's always fascinating to me to see how obviously Westerners paint what they would like to see onto the canvas of Islamic history, and Muslims, whether Westernized or not, do the same thing!
You'll often see Muslims or non-Muslims defending Islam by saying that, although the recent past has been bad for women, or non-Muslims, or for Muslims themselves, that's because Islam has been corrupted and hijacked from its "pure" form in the 7th or 10th centuries (any time is OK, as long as it is in the distant past), which somehow provides for all the things that citizens from the 21st century think desirable, such as:
voting rights for women
complete equality for women
a fair and equitable distribution of wealth and power
tolerance and peaceful co-existence for non-Muslims
banning of slavery
banning of racism
It gets kind of ridiculous, really. Take the claim that somehow Shari'ah provided voting rights for women. This is rather astonishing considering that anything that would normally be considered "democracy" did not exist anywhere in the Muslim world until the 20th century, which to this day is mostly ruled by dictators and despots. What is being claimed is that shura, the Islamic idea of "rule by mutual consultation," is the same thing as modern democracy, when in fact it consisted mostly of men who would approve or disapprove of any particular policy or law. If the people didn't riot over it, then that meant that they more or less approved. There were certainly no ballots cast by the populace at large.
Now, it may be possible to interpret the institution of shura in the Qur'an (42:38: where Muslims are described as "those who conduct their affairs by shura") as providing some approval for democracy in the modern sense, but 1) you'd have to get past the scholars claiming that Islam and democracy are incompatible, 2) the elected body would have to have real power, and most importantly 3) there needs to be a tradition of freedom of speech, thought, religion, and so on, as well as support for dissenting viewpoints, so that voters or potential candidates are free to debate issues, instead of being cowed by clerics forbidding any honest discussion of Islamic law, or denouncing people as heretics for their different interpretation of whatever law might be under discussion. In Jordan, a woman candidate for Parliament was attacked by clerics and others for questioning polygamy, and even brought to court on charges of apostasy. For real democracy, there needs to be a willingness to discuss all aspects of Islamic law and culture, and even whether Islam as it exists now is a good or a bad thing. It certainly doesn't go well with the idea that Allah's law cannot be changed by human will.
Islam is touted as offering all the good things that Westerners see as good, like tolerance, freedom, liberty, equality, women's rights, and so on, if only it were "applied rightly," or that it was all these things in some mythical past, before those horrible Western imperialists showed up. The rule is that everything that is good is because of Islam, everything bad is because of "culture" or "the corruption of Islam"--but unfortunately the latter claim is just a way to avoid discussion, since it's all too rare to see those claiming that honor killings, the oppression of women and the like as "distortions" of Islam actually fighting to have these practices banned, as well as protesting Islamic clerics who do approve of these things; usually it just functions as a way to deflect criticism and shut down discussion.
(Here I must acknowledge those groups, such as Sisters in Islam, who do fight to end any number of horrible practices like clitoridectomy, child marriage, honor killings and the like, even putting themselves in harm's way and risking claims of "apostasy" and "heresy" for contradicting the Islamic clerics, who all too often approve of these things.)
You'll also see writings proclaiming Islam Is The Solution, in which somehow the application of Islam to all aspects of life and society will solve all problems, and which will turn into a paradise on earth. But then why are actually existing "Islamic states" so miserable and poor? Shouldn't people be flocking to them if they worked? If Islam has all the solutions, shouldn't even the partial application of it result in a noticeable improvement? I'm reminded of the claim that the USSR and China should not be seen as "failures" of communism, because they weren't "really" communist!
Islamic History as Fairy Tale
Most books by Muslims for the general reader present a version of early Islamic history that reads like a children's fairy tale and strains credibility. According to this version, which Muslims today are presumably to emulate, the earliest Muslims, although facing plenty of problems from the outside, were perfect Muslims and observed Allah's commands and Muhammad's example with perfect faith and never missed a prayer, never ingested wine, never betrayed other Muslims.
Which makes what happened after Muhammad died absolutely inexplicable. Parties of Muslims were soon killing each other over who would rule, and three out of four of the "Rightly Guided Caliphs" were assassinated. Civil wars were a regular occurrence. The Umayyad caliphs was supposed to be very corrupt, evil men, getting drunk and carousing in their desert palaces at every opportunity. Only Umar II, the "Fifth Rightly-Guided Caliph," was the model of what a true Muslim ruler should be (there are tales about how during his rule there were no beggars on the roads, there was so much money in the public treasury that he ran out of ways to spend it, he lived in abject poverty wearing only the cheapest garments, etc.). This is why I am deeply suspicious of the early Islamic tradition: it just doesn't square with human nature!
If Muslims had been so pious before, what caused this to happen? It's likely that the later Abbasids rewrote the histories to show their predecessors as corrupt and unworthy of the throne. It should also be known that caliphs such as Harun ar-Rashid (the Rightly Guided), are also romanticized in this fashion (see the Arabian Nights, which only took its final form hundreds of years later, when the Abbasids were only a bittersweet memory).
The Arab conquests, described in many contemporary sources as bloody and given to spoils-taking and looting, are turned into "liberations," freely welcomed by the local inhabitants. (What really happened is that the "lucky" cities heard about what happened to those cities who resisted the Arab invaders, namely annihilation, and for their part decided to surrender without a fight, opening their gates to the invaders.)
The Ottoman Empire is also remembered as the neatest thing since sliced bread in many texts, where all peoples under its sway lived together in peace and harmony. The Ottoman Empire is seen as the model for Muslims and non-Muslims living together in an Islamic state. But if so, then why did the Greeks and other Christian minorities, as well as the Zionist Jews, launch independence movements if they were supposedly treated so well? Accounts of the non-Muslims by European visitors invariably show them as wretched, poor, and deprived of all rights. Then there's the devshirme, the annual levy of Christian boys who were taken from their parents to serve in the Ottoman army. If the Ottoman Empire is "how things should be" in an Islamic state, I'm going to have to say "no thanks!"
I frankly would have more hope for Islam and the Muslim world in general if so many "thinkers" and writers did not have such a childish view of the past and of the world today. There is no suggestion that the Muslim world had complex problems and was decaying from within; instead, all problems faced by the ummah are because 1) the Muslims were not obeying Allah and His Law enough or 2) they were caused and are entirely the fault of foreigners. Supposedly everything would be fine if the "Western imperialists," "Zionists" and others left, taking their un-Islamic ideas with them (good luck!), and the Islamic world came under the rule of a "true" Islamic government, which would be so successful because of its following of Allah's law perfectly it would rule the whole world.
How can you deal with such a simplistic view of the Muslim world's problems?
And this attitude by so many Muslims is not helped by the equally simplistic view offered by far too many Western "scholars" of Islam, such as John Esposito and Karen Armstrong, who also buy hook line and sinker the view that the Islamic world of the past was near-perfection (for example their writings on Andalusian Spain) and that all of the Muslim world's problems can be blamed on "Western imperialism" and/or "Zionism" (though of course "Arab imperialism" or "Turkish imperialism" is never a problem). Islamic fundamentalist and jihadi groups are sometimes lauded as brave fighters true to their beliefs by both Muslims and non-Muslims, romanticized as "freedom fighters" or as "fighting in the sake of Allah."
Many Muslims and non-Muslims alike do reject these views and look within for change, but with the lack of freedom of speech, thought, and belief, as well as the chokehold on any real discussion of Islam by the Islamic parties and clerics, is not very encouraging.
Secular Islam . net (http://www.secularislam.net/archives/000057.html)