By John Munro
The trouble with academics, they like ideas. And the bigger the academic, the bigger the idea. This is a trait they share with politicians, who also like big ideas and sometimes they allow their enthusiasm for them to override reality. So, imagine what happens when big academics and big politicians get together. Actually, no need to imagine it. You can see the effect in Iraq.
Bolstered by Bernard Lewis’s big idea that the US should get rid of Saddam Hussein and impose secular democracy on Iraq, President George W. Bush made a pre-emptive strike against Saddam Hussein, under the pretext that he was harboring weapons of mass destruction and was a danger to the free world.
Of course, Bernard Lewis was not personally responsible for the US invasion of Iraq, nor for the disasters that fill our tv screens every day but he did provide what appeared to be an academically impeccable justification for what America’s neo-conservative political elite wanted to do. They believed that the world would remain unsafe as long as a “democratic deficit” existed in the Middle East; therefore the US had a responsibility to force the people living there to be free. They argued that the first step in the process would be to bring democracy to Iraq and the rest of the Middle East would then fall into line. Lewis was of the same mind and he argued his case forcefully in the media and elsewhere.
A British-born, liberal Jew, who had taught for many years at Princeton University, Lewis had caught the eye of such people as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, former Johns Hopkins academic, Paul Wolfowitz. Soon he was advising the Bush administration on Middle East policy. Vice President Dick Cheney was also a fan and last year at the Davos World Economic Forum announced that the world “must confront the ideologies of violence at the source, by promoting democracy throughout then greater Middle East and beyond.” Thus was President Bush’s Greater Middle East Initiave born.
Superficially, Lewis’ argument is persuasive but it is nonetheless dangerously flawed. For one thing, it is based not so much on what has happened and is happening in the Arab World but what happened in Turkey. Both regions may share the same religion but so do Arabs and the vast majority of Indonesians but one would hesitate to draw significant parallels between them. Moreover, Lewis’s idea is rooted in the distant past—that is to say, on things as they once were- rather than what they are. While Lewis may be sensitive to history, he is tone deaf when dealing with the volatile present.
Briefly, in his recent book What Went Wrong (i.e. with the Arabs) Lewis suggests that unlike the Christian West, Islam never went through a reformation, a reordering of religious thinking, which elevated the dictates of the individual conscience over the received wisdom of the established church. This has meant, according to Lewis in “The Roots of Arab Rage,” that Islam and Christianity have waged a centuries-long “crusade,” driven by hard-core, Arab radicals, who subscribe to an idealized vision of the Arab past and stubbornly refuse to embrace modernity. However, Lewis suggests, even diehard Moslems must recognize they are being left behind. Therefore, the age-old “clash” between Islam and the West is now in its dying throes. Osama bin Laden, whose unreasoning bitterness towards “infidels” has prompted him to wage a vicious attack against everything the West holds dear, is a contemporary aberration. If the free world were to help Moslem liberals now, the West will triumph and usher in a period of freedom and democracy in the Arab world, together with their attendant economic and social virtues. It is easy to see how Lewis got carried away. As a young scholar in the 1950’s, he was the first westerner to be allowed to examine the Imperial Ottoman archives.
The reforms that Kemal Ataturk had introduced after World War I were everywhere to be seen. He had curtailed the influence of Islam; he had banned the tarbouche and abolished Arabic script in favor of the Latin; and transferred Turkey’s capital from its historical seat in Istanbul to Ankara. A great leader had, it appeared, almost single-handedly, dragged Turkey out of its backwardness and brought it to the threshold of modernity. Lewis described these change with considerable enthusiasm in his important book, published in 1961,The Emergence of Modern Turkey. From here it is a relatively short step to Paul Wolfowitz’s assertion that Turkey would be “a useful model for the Moslem world” and the Pentagon’s embrace of Ahmed Chalabi, whom it apparently saw—however improbably—as the Kemal Ataturk of Iraq.
There are numerous reasons for rejecting the Turkey-Arab World analogy. Lewis may be correct in singling out the 1699 Treaty of Carlowitz as an important date in Turkey’s relations with Europe, for this was the year when the Holy League of Austria, Poland, Venice, Russia forced the Ottoman Empire to give up the majority of its Balkan dependencies, a humiliation that still rankles in Turkey today.
For most Arabs, however, the Treaty of Carlowitz is so far removed from their consciousness as to be meaningless. They are far more likely to be obsessed by the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, when France and Great Britain parceled out the eastern part of the Ottoman Empire, setting up dependent states beholden to the European superpowers. Drawing more or less arbitrary boundaries and, in the case of Iraq, cobbling together the provinces of Baghdad, Basra and Mosul to create a state that had never existed before, this was a recipe for disaster. Governed by rulers of doubtful legitimacy and dependent upon their European masters to stay in power, it was inevitable that many of them should crumble through coups d’etat , which opened up the way for despotic rule. Worst of all, as far as the Arabs were concerned, the Sykes-Picot agreement prepared the ground for the creation of the state of Israel. In short, while for Turkey its major challenge was to come to terms with the curtailment of its influence as an important, international (Moslem) power, the Arabs had to try to overcome the negative consequences which derived from their former colonial status.
In recent years, Turkey has loosened its ties with the Arab world and has clashed with Syria and Iraq over the Kurds and, since the construction of the Ataturk dam, over water rights as well. Meanwhile, Turkey has continued to be a member of NATO and is a candidate for admission to the European Union (EU). Turkey has even entered into a defense pact with Israel. True, Turkey’s ties with Israel have recently come under strain, as a consequence of Israel’s brutal incursions into Gaza, which Turkey has described as “state terrorism,” but Turkey’s Prime Minister Abdullah Gul visited Israel in early January in a bid to heal the rift. In short, there are many issues on which Turks and Arabs do not agree.
Finally, Lewis’ idea that we are entering a final phase of the long running crusade and Osama bin Laden is an aberration, are clearly suspect. Turkey has, in fact, experienced a resurgence of Islam, rather than a growing enthusiasm for secularism. The 2002 elections were won by the moderate Islamic Justice and Development Party and they are expected to be swept to power again in 2007. The party’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has showed few signs of wishing to reduce the importance of Islam in daily life. In fact, in line with his faith, he recently made an attempt to criminalize adultery, much to the consternation of the EU, which with some difficulty eventually persuaded Mr. Erdogan to think again.
In the Arab world, Islam is a more potent force than it was even five or ten years ago. In Egypt, young people are less likely to be turned on by western film stars like Johnny Depp and Leonardo di Caprio than the young charismatic preacher Amr Khaled, whose popularity has alarmed even the government of Hosni Mubarak.
As for Osama bin Laden, far from being regarded as an aberration, young Arab men throughout the region resonate to his message and while only a few may be inspired to become martyrs to the cause, most take covert pride in what he has achieved. In short, the idea that Turkey’s form of democracy could serve as an inspiration and model for the Arab world surely needs closer examination. Indeed, events in Iraq, which seem destined to bring about the installation of some form of Islamic regime more sympathetic to Iran than the US should help to dispose of what the Wall Street Journal has called “the Lewis doctrine” forever. Most Arabs recognize the need for change but that does not mean they are waiting for the West to show the way. When change does come it will come from within and will not be influenced by any external model, neither Turkish nor western.
