www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Of Tyrants, Peace, and Oil

Dear Professor Dan,

There's just no end of class in you, is there?

God bless!

Alex

May they become social democracies. The monarchs can be the figureheads and open hospitals etc

Dan --

It could be that an expatriate influx of capital could provide the basis for the development of a stable middle class in Iraq. Only time will tell. I don't think that the Christians will play a large role in the future Iraq, but I bet that the Shi'a will, and if that's the case that could lead to problems vis-a-vis the Persians next door.

My suggestion about the need to reform Islam from within was precisely that ... not as an aspect of US foreign policy (we can't do that, we're not equipped to do it even if we wanted to), but rather as an imperative for thinking Muslims everywhere. The religion has to be taken back from the fundies and given a reorientation ... something akin to an Islamic reformation. We can't do that for Islam, only Islam can do that for itself. And it may be what Islam needs to do to survive once the prosperity tide begins to sweep over the Islamic world, as will hopefully be the case eventually. Unless Islam changes, becomes less dominated by fundamentalists, the Islamic world will continue to lag the remainder of the world in development, in a self-defeating vicious cycle, because that brand of Islam is fanatically anti-modern and anti-progress, and is spectacularly succesful at preventing both from developing in much of the poorer countries of the Islamic world. And, of course, it doesn't help that the rich Islamic countries like Saudi are dominated by a clique of fundamentalists of their own stripe who hoard both the political and economic power.

It's an open question as to whether Islam is open to democracy. There aren't a lot of good examples. Iran under the Shah was not a democracy. Revolutionary Iran is a Republic, but hardly a free one. Saudi is an oligarchical monarchy. Iraq and Syria are, or were until recently, Baathist socialist dictatorships. Pakistan is ruled by a military coup. Afghanistan is largely lawless right now, and was previously ruled by the Taliban. Kosovo and Albania are lawless areas ruled mostly by thugs, supported by NATO troops. Turkey may be the closest thing, but they've managed to achieve what passes in Ankara at least for democracy by virtually banning the public exercise of religion and enforcing that ban with the Turkish military.

Is there a reason for this that is inherently Islamic, or are there other factors involved as well? Certainly the lack of development economically has created a fertile breeding ground for extremism. However, even the economically developed countries (Saudi, pre-Gulf War Iraq, pre-Revolutionary Iran, Lebanon) haven't developed democratic regimes. There has, in addition to development, been a serious crisis in the intellectual life of the middle east region. The liberal/national arab intellectuals earlier in the 20th century thought that they could recast the middle east not around the crescent of Islam but around the rallying call of arab nationalism (ie, a form of Pan-arabism). This didn't work, both because of the enduring strength of the old religion, as well as the disinterest in these totalitarian states in acting in any kind of pan-arab way. Problem is that there have been precious few, if any, arab intellectuals since then who are advocating anything along the lines of a reconciliation between Islam and modernity, of a framework by which the Islamic world can address its problems of economic and political development in a way that is both modern and Islamic. The result? The intellectual ground is seized by men like Khomeini and bin Laden, religious extremists who either advocate theocracy outright or advocate something rather close to it. There is an aspect to the crisis in the middle east that is very much a result of the deep crisis in the middle eastern intelligentsia, and a true failure of that class to develop a model that is a workable alternative to the message of people like Khomeini. That begs the question of whether such a model is possible (and people like Naipaul would say "no"), but it is amazing that it hasn't really been seriously attempted. It's almost as if when the secular arab intellectuals were more or less defeated mid-century they gave up and ceded the intellectual playing field to the Khomeini's of the world.

Brendan

A bird with one wing cannot fly. And that is an apt description of contemporary Islam, since the other wing--the wing that will enable Islam to fly--is our women.

Without the reforming spirit of our women, we are doomed to remain an anachronistic religion, the very thing the religion of the "Final Testament" accuses Judaism, Christianity, and other religions of being.

Hopefully, the revival of Islamic feminism within the Muslim populations of the Ottoman patrimonies of the Balkans, Turkeya, Cyprus, Central Asia, and the Caucasian republics, will serve as the leaven of reform within those Islamic cultures that share a common Ottoman historical and cultural past...and present.

Here we would have manifest the first step of a long journey.

For the first time in almost thirty years, the Greek and Turkish Cypriot authorities have jointly and cooperatively opened the border separating the two Cypriot communities, allowing Greeks to travel north and Turks to travel south.

Of course, many Greek Cypriots will be able to spend this Pascha in their ancestral villages and cities in the north of Cyprus, while Turks will also have the opportunity to visit their ancestral homes in the southern part of the island.


Blessed are the peace makers....of all nations and religions.