Before I jump into this week’s entry, I wanted to adress my lack of an update in the recent weeks. For those of you wondering why this is the case, it is because I am currently working on Graduate and Law school applications- a process that has commmanded much time and will continue to for at least 2 more months. The week that was to have another historical entry on something intriguing e.g. Shi’a Islam or the rise of the ayatollahs during the Iranian Revolution, was instead host to a variety of academia-related activities that included the December 3rd LSAT. I now return to my regularly scheduled column.
The following piece was written for History 106C on June 13th, 2002
When attempting to triangulate a position, or rather, hypothesize the path that a given entity may take, it is arguably best to construct an estimate based on supporting facts and logical analysis. So when some historians examine the thesis put forth by Samuel Huntington regarding his ‘clash of civilizations,’ that the pre-destined irreconcilability between separate civilizations (e.g. Western, Islamic) just ‘is’ that way, they tend to reject it outright. Some believe that throughout history, two ‘twin-pillars’ of the modern world, the world economy and nation-state systems, serve to synthesize into the grand forum in which we all live our lives. Any differences between certain locales, some contend, are just local variations on this synthesis on what the synthesis defines as ‘modern.’ While Huntington’s thesis may prove formidable in some circles, it is indeed the twin pillars of the nation-state and world economic systems theory that takes a more thorough approach. In explaining major events in the Middle East that spark the interest of Western scholars, the synthesis model can be quite useful, as the key to understanding these events lie within the region’s integration into the world economy alongside nationalistic trends associated with the nation-state framework. The synthesis model has a substantive application in dealing with the questions coming from the Middle East, most notably the Arab-Israeli Conflict, the predominance of authoritarian governments in the region, the Iranian Revolution, the emergence of popular Islamic groups, and the events of September 11th 2001.
The Arab-Israeli Conflict can definitely be explained in terms absent of Huntington’s thesis. Rather than being viewed as simply a ‘clash of civilizations’ or more often mistakenly as a holy war, the junction between the world economy and the nation-state system can take it into account. The effects of nationalism were in place as early as before WW1, when the Ottoman Empire was seeing the final days of it’s decent into history. As the Palestinian population was awakening to the idea of nationalisms, Zionist forces sought Palestine as a home via the auspices of Britain, who held the mandate for Palestine following the end of WW1. As Zionist migration swelled during the interwar years, Palestinian nationalism developed alongside as a reaction to Zionist encroachment, setting off what is fundamentally a real estate issue. The identity of the nation-state between the two peoples was and has been alive an well to this day, as both parties have vied for territory using both bullets and words. But despite the inflammation on both sides, the conflict is only over a territory that has been promised to them both by their respective nationalisms.
Saturated liberally across the Middle East are authoritarian regimes that, in the Western frame of mind, are mistakes of development gone awry. Their formation, however, is an often overlooked and thus breed incorrect conclusions. Regimes in the Middle East had developed from the first regimes of the landed elite’s desire to pacify the masses in order to gain support and legitimacy, essentially buying off the population (with whatever capital available) with subsidized consumer goods to a point where such services became integral to the state. As the post-independence regimes came into power their reliance on this welfare tactic remained, as between the population and the state, the traditional ‘democratic bargain’ (in which the government is the gaunter of such rights as personal freedoms) was replaced by a certain kind of welfare contract; a contract that the public favors even as these regimes resorted to repression and scare tactics to maintain power. Today, reintegration into the world economy is needed to keep these subsidies afloat and the regimes to keep their power. The stabilization and nationalist legitimacy of these regimes today rests upon the shoulders of the world economy.
The Iranian Revolution can be traced back to the nationalist callings of Muhammad Mossadeq, former prime minister of Iran during the early 1950s. Nationalist tendencies invigorated Mossadeq and like-minded reformers against the pressures of Western imperialism operating in the form of age-old oil concessions by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Seeking to take back Iran’s share of the oil, Mossadeq’s plan included nationalization of the nation’s oil industries- a move that would have empowered Iran immensely. However, the CIA and MI-6 feared such an event. In order to protect the West’s privileged position as an oil exploiter, Mossadeq was ousted and Muhammad Reza Shah was installed as the nation’s pro-West leadership. In retaliation to the repressive measures and vulgar opulence exhibited by the Shah, the Iranian people took to the streets and forced him to flee Iran in 1979, placing exiled Islamic Cleric Ayatollah Khomeini into power. Iranian national identity, at the time of the revolution, had been synonymous with breaking from Western control; a control that served as a fetter to genuine modernity. The dependence Iran had been placed into by its integration into the world economy, as a nation-state of the periphery had been unfavorable for quite some time; thus, revolution was needed to rectify Iran’s position.
The rise of Islamic groups within the region has sparked questions among observers in the region, mostly in regards to the aspect of political opposition to existing regimes in the area, or very well opposing modernity itself. Islamic groups, like that of social movements, have their roots within a social movement in reaction to a potential threat; in this case, the regime itself. As the nation-state system became the all-encompassing political unit, Islamic groups as early as the mid 19th century began to lose clout, as the institutions associated with the nation-state came to garner appeal from the masses. As time progressed, secular regimes in countries like Syria and Egypt had begun to introduce sweeping reforms in an effort to modernize their nations- mostly through Western methodology like rapid industrialization and adopting an ‘Arab socialist’ doctrine. The secular practices of the state equate it with the West, alongside the socialist connotations of central planning as being an import from the atheist USSR, thus creating a need to revert back to something that is authentically them. People that do not identify with the regime, or who have not benefited from such modernization movements have had to look elsewhere to form an identity, as the state was not representative of who they were. Islam provided an alternative. In this regard, the insurgence of Islamic groups is not unlike that of contemporary nationalisms, an identity of who one is not. Philip S. Khoury contends that despite their hatred for secular regimes that have tried to force modernization, Islamicists “don not reject modernization… On the contrary, they want these and more, but they also want to create their own framework to guide development” (Reader p.185). Islamic insurgence does indeed fall within the framework of the nation-state and the world-economic system.
The events of September 11th are also indicative of thinking within the framework of the nation-state and world economic systems. Throughout time, the population of the Middle East has come to view the vast majority of Western presence in the region with ill regard, as it is perceived as being completely ignorant of the indigenous population’s self interest. When the US inherited the face of imperialism from Europe, US actions in the region did nothing but validate this image in the eyes of many, as it was still ‘the West’ that had placed the Middle East into the periphery of the world economy, and imposed the artificial nation-sate system to divide the population. The image of the imperialist was one that some in the Middle East came to despise, especially the hijackers that demolished the World Trade Center and a segment of the Pentagon. Acting in whatever their self-interest may have been, the events of September 11th can be said to have occurred in retaliation to the disenfranchisement that the US placed the region into. The hijackers were not a part of the strata that profited from engagement into the world economy, and thus felt that armed retaliation was the key assertion of whatever identity they held to be theirs. The identity that was worth asserting was a pure reaction to the accumulation of feelings and sentiment generated by an unwanted presence by the West.
The combination of the world economic and the nation-state systems serves to illustrate the reasons behind a certain event, and to better explain it within the context of ‘modernity.’ The synthesis model has a substantive application in dealing with the questions coming from the Middle East, most notably the Arab-Israeli Conflict, the predominance of authoritarian governments in the region, the Iranian Revolution, the emergence of popular Islamic groups, and the events of September 11th 2001.
While it may be tempting to pull of a pre-fab explanation for a given event off of the shelf, it makes it entirely too easy to miss much of the picture you’re trying to account for in the first place. That’s why it’s always worth a deeper look into whatever the topic may be.
For now, that’s what’s Under the Tarboush.
