FrontLine, India
Volume 22 – Issue 01, Jan. 01 – 14, 2005
India’s National Magazine

REVIEW ARTICLE

Islam – a Russian perspective

A.G. NOORANI

“A victorious line of march had been prolonged above a thousand miles
from the Rock of Gibraltar to the Banks of the Loire; the repetition
of an equal space would have carried the Saracens to the confines of
Poland and the Highlands of Scotland; the Rhine is not more
impassable than the Nile or the Euphrates and the Arabian fleet might
have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames.
Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the
schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised
people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.”

– Edward Gibbon; The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; The Modern
Library, 1781; Vol. II, page 801.

GIBBON was relieved that “from such calamities was Christendom
relieved by the genius and fortune of one man”, Charles Martel. He
defeated at Poitiers (Tours), not far from Paris, in 732 the forces
of Abd al-Rahman. A few years later, the Arabs returned to invade
France, in alliance with Maurontinos, the Duke of Marseilles. But, by
759 their expulsion was complete.

When Prophet Muhammad died in 632, Islam was confined to the Arabian
Peninsula. After his death it spread with extraordinary speed from
North Africa to Persia. Muslims conquered Jerusalem in 638. By the
13th and 14th centuries Muslims ruled in India, Indonesia and parts
of China. In the 8th and 9th centuries Spain, Sicily and parts of
France were conquered. Reverses came not long after Baghdad fell to
the Mongols in 1055. In Spain, the Christian Reconquista movement
conquered the last Arab stronghold, Granada, in 1492. Arab rule had
lasted in Spain for nearly eight centuries. However, in 1453
Constantinople fell to the force of Sultan Mehmed II. In European
eyes, the Turks had taken over from the Arabs as “the Islamic threat
to Christian Europe”.

The Ottoman Empire spread from Turkey to Europe. The Turks twice
knocked at the gates of Vienna, in 1529 and 1683, but were repulsed.
For five hundred years the Ottomans were Europe’s most feared enemy.
In the first decade of the 19th Century, their Empire spread across
North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq,
and the lower reaches of the Danube. In 1918 the Ottoman Empire was
liquidated. The British and the French carved it up. Britain acquired
Palestine in order, as the archives have revealed, to establish
Jewish rule there. Thus was Israel born in 1948. For over 175 years
Christendom had launched seven Crusades against Muslim rulers from
1095 to 1270.

Over the centuries European writers from Dante to Muir denigrated the
Prophet of Islam. Defeat and humiliation of “the enemy” did not
arrest this trend. A school of European scholars, however, dissented
and enriched the study of Islam by its labours. Reading the Western,
especially the American, press after 9/11, one is struck by its
unconcealed prejudice against Muslims and Islam, which Edward W. Said
so thoroughly exposed. It is, perhaps, natural to hate those one has
wronged. History shapes perceptions, popular as well as scholarly;
except for scholars who rise above the past.

How did history shape Russian perceptions of Islam? Hitherto, we had
only the West European and American reactions to “the spectre of
Islam”. We now have a rare exposition of The Great Confrontation as
viewed from Moscow. Ilya Gaiduk is a senior research fellow at the
Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and
has also been a fellow of the Cold War International History Project
at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington, D.C. His book The Soviet
Union and the Vietnam War won high praise (Frontline, May 30, 1997).

President George W. Bush once famously called the “War on Terrorism”
a “crusade”. President Vladimir Putin has not far lagged behind in
his characterisation of the war in Chechnya. Fortunately there are
those who differ with him. C.J. Chivers and Lee Myers of The New York
Times reported the view held by “Russian and international officials
and experts” in Moscow recently: “Chechnya’s militant separatists
have received money, men, training and ideological inspiration from
international organisations, but they remain an indigenous and
largely self-sustaining force motivated by rationalist more than
Islamic goals” and “the principal motivation for Chechnya’s
guerrillas remains independence” (International Herald Tribune,
September 13, 2004).

It would be unfortunate if Russia were to emulate American attitudes.
A Report of the Defence Science Advisory Board, an advisory panel of
the Pentagon, criticised the U.S. for failing to explain its
“diplomatic and military actions to the Muslim world but it warns
that no public relations plan or information operation can defend
America from flawed policies” (International Herald Tribune, November
25, 2004). The U.S. is in a quagmire of its own creation in West
Asia. Russia can yet resolve the Chechen issue.

Ilya Gaiduk’s scholarly work offers a view of the past and the
present, which is refreshingly different from the view widely
prevalent in the U.S. and Europe. “The case of Chechnya well
illustrates the use of Islam as a tool to fulfil political ambitions”
(emphasis added, throughout). The idea for the book occurred to him
long before 9/11. He sought to study the diverse forces that worked
in history to create “a long and, at first glance, incessant war
between European powers and the world of Islam”. Was it religion or
power that tore apart the two civilisations? This idea of a clash of
civilisations between Islam and the West appeared initially in the
article “The Roots of Muslim Rage”, written by Bernard Lewis, and
published in September 1990 in the Atlantic Monthly. It acquired
worldwide popularity after the publication in Foreign Affairs of an
article by Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?”
Huntington wrote that in the years ahead the “clash of civilisations
will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilisations
will be battle lines of the future”. After 9/11, Lewis gave tutorials
to Vice-President Dick Cheney. Edward Said was not the only one to
censure Lewis.

William Dalrymple’s surgery is as effective in his brilliant review
article (“The Truth About Muslims”, The New York Review of Books;
November 4, 2004). He establishes with copious references that
“throughout history, Muslims and Christians have traded, studied,
negotiated, and loved across the porous frontiers of religious
differences. Probe relations between the two civilisations at any
period of history, and you find that the neat civilisational blocks
imagined by writers such as Bernard Lewis or Samuel Huntington soon
dissolve.”

By the late 18th century the Muslim world’s misfortunes had begun.
Intellectual stagnation preceded military and political decline. The
West’s progress in science, in which the Arabs were once more
advanced, had little impact on Muslim minds. In the 19th and 20th
centuries European colonial rule was imposed on Arab and Asian lands
with ease, thanks to achievements in science and technology.

“The Christian victories of the last two decades of the seventeenth
century and the shift of fortunes in the struggle against the Ottoman
Empire cannot be measured only in terms of military and territorial
gains. They must be placed in a broader perspective of trends in
European development, precursors of the coming expansion of Europe
and its future world dominance. After hard times dating from the
mid-14th century – when, as a result of the `closing of Europe’s
internal and external frontiers’, society had entered a period of
stagnation and even decline; when the Black Death had arrived from
central Asia and wiped out one-third of the population in a number of
regions and brought progress in every field to a standstill; when
Europe’s capitalistic innovations had proved inadequate and its
economy unable to survive the Hundred Years War and the advancing
Ottomans on its borders – the sixteenth century marked the beginning
of `an unstoppable process of economic development and technological
innovation’ which made Europe the world’s commercial and military
leader.”

MANDEL NGAN/ AFP

Friday prayers at a mosque in New York. The Western, especially the
American, press displayed unconcealed prejudice against Muslims and
Islam after 9/11.

Gaiduk is scrupulously fair in his recall of the past: “The Caliph
Umar entered the city in the company of the Christian patriarch
Sophronius, after having given him assurances that the lives and
property of the Christian population would be respected and their
holy places left intact. As if to confirm this promise, he prayed
outside the church of the Holy Sepulchre in order to prevent the
Muslims from claiming ownership of the church. He also visited the
holy places of Judaism and Islam, the Temple and the sacred rock on
Mount Moriah. From Umar’s behaviour it becomes evident that the
Muslims firmly intended to respect the rights of the Jews and
Christians for whom Jerusalem was likewise the Holy City” (vide Umar
by Shibli Numani; Oxford; pages 157, Rs.225).

HOW and why did the Muslim world lag behind the West? Muslims, in
India particularly, would do well to ponder over Gaiduk’s answer. It
bears quotation, in extenso: “For centuries the Muslim world had
displayed its superiority in political, military, and intellectual
activities. With a religion considered to be God’s final revelation,
proud of their conquests and achievements, the Muslims could afford
to be insulated. They despised other peoples who had not yet become
adherents of the true religion but who eventually were destined to be
included in the House of Islam, whether by force or voluntarily. Yet
Islam’s `iron curtain’ isolated Muslims from the outside world and
proved to be fateful. When history took a new turn, Islamic
civilisation’s response to new challenges was insufficient and
ineffective… .

“The decay of Islam was not unavoidable, nor can it be attributed to
inherent defects of religious obscurantism or political weakness. It
is reasonable to conclude that if the processes of modernisation had
not occurred in Europe when they did, they could have occurred at
another time in the realm of Islam. But events in Christian Europe
exerted a strong influence on Islam, compounding its internal
weaknesses and in many ways accentuating them. In other words, the
period of relative decay that the Muslim world entered in the
seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries, and that might have
been temporary or even transitory on the way to a new expansion, was
significantly transformed by a rapidly developing and expanding
Europe… . The Muslims deprived themselves not only of the knowledge
and experience of other peoples but, more important, of an
understanding of developments in other lands.”

It was a direct consequence of what Iqbal aptly called the closing of
the gate of ijtihad (reason) in the Muslim world. Even more important
than territorial acquisitions was the preponderance of the European
powers in technology, productivity, commerce and intellectual
activity. What Gaiduk writes of the Ottoman empire is as true of the
Moghul Empire, other rulers in India and, for that matter, other
countries in Asia. After tracing the expansion of Britain, France,
Germany, Italy and Portugal in Asia and Africa, he turns to another
European power, Russia. It “quickly expanded its possessions at the
expense of Muslim states. By 1828 the Russian Tsars had established
their rule over most of the territory that now forms three
Trans-Caucasian States – Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan – which had
previously belonged to the Ottoman or Persian empires or had been
contested by them. By mid-century the Russians were generally able to
crush popular resistance in the Caucasus, in the long war against
Adyges, Kabarda, Chechens, Ingush, and Dagestanis. They now turned to
Turkestan, inhabited by nomad tribes and a sedentary population, a
region of fertile oases controlled by the emirate of Bukhara and the
Khanates of Kokand in the Fergana Valley and of Khiva in Khorezm to
the south of the Aral Sea. The Russian conquest of the area began in
1855 when a column under the command of General Mikhail Chernyaev
moved into Turkestan, seizing Tashkent in May 1865 and Samarkand in
May 1868. After the defeat of his forces at the battle of Zerabulak,
the emir of Bukhara was obliged to sign a treaty by which his state
was placed under Russian protection. Khiva’s turn came in 1873, and
Kokand was invaded in 1875 and the Khanate – Russia’s most dangerous
enemy in Central Asia abolished. The conquest was rounded off between
1873 and 1881 by the occupation of the Turkmen country.” The great
game between British and Russian Empires had begun. It was to have
fateful consequences for India’s borders in the north-west.

The hour of decline did throw up Muslim thinkers of first rank bar a
few like Camal al-Din al Afghani, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Chiragh Ali
who was even more daring than Sir Syed. “As Islam lost its position
in the world and gradually retreated under the pressure of an
expanding Europe, Muslims sought explanations. Why was it that a
once-flourishing and powerful civilisation, which had demonstrated
its superiority for centuries and had radiated the light of its
cultural and spiritual achievements to the remotest corners of the
world, now had succumbed before the advance of a previously weak and
barbarous Europe?” That question haunts them, still; but it does not
prod much introspection, except among a minority.

And what a past it was: “Can one overestimate the great service of
Islamic civilisation? It preserved for Europe – when it was rapidly
disintegrating under the pressure of the barbaric invasions – ancient
Greek philosophy, geography, astronomy, and medicine; and it
supplemented these libraries of thought with its own knowledge, which
was respected by St. Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura da Bagnoregio,
and praised by the great medieval poet of the Divine Comedy, Dante
Aligieri. Islam played a key role in the formation of European
civilisation, though it did so unwittingly. Much depended on the
ability of Europe, like that of a pupil, to absorb what was useful
and develop it. Islam at first was a willy-nilly tutor, but it became
a willy-nilly pupil when Europeans preponderated in science,
technology, politics and culture.”

Gaiduk’s reflections on the present situation are tinged with
empathy. He criticises his country’s policies in Central Asia in the
past and explains how they fuelled fundamentalism and praises Iran’s
President Mohammed Khatami for his advocacy of a dialogue between
civilisations. His book is one of the most insightful works to appear
in recent years.

Andrew Wheatcroft’s book on the same subject, a product of a decade’s
labour, is a straightforward history of the conflict between
Christendom and Islam in many lands from 638 to 2002. His is also a
plea for dialogue and reconciliation. The book is ably researched and
profusely illustrated.

Malise Ruthven’s books Islam in the World and Islam: A Very Short
Introduction were highly praised. Azim Nanji is Director of the
Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. They have compiled a
Historical Atlas of Islam since its birth to the present times. It is
a work of learning and labour. Both, the texts and the accompanying
maps, help one to understand how history unfolded itself in the
far-flung reaches of the Islamic World from Africa to China, across
the Balkans, Central, South-East Asia. Merely to mention some of the
chapters is to appreciate the magnitude of the effort – Sufi Orders
1100-1900; expanding cities; impact of oil; water resources; the arms
trade; Muslims in Western Europe and North America; Islamic Arts;
Muslim cinema; Internet use; democracy, censorship, human rights and
civil society; modern movements, organisations and influences. It is
an invaluable and indispensable work.

POLITICAL confrontation and intellectual stagnation marked the recent
past. What of the present? Gilles Kepel, Professor of Middle East
Studies at the Institute for Political Studies in Paris, wrote a
notable work The Revenge of God describing the rise of fundamentalism
in the Christian, Jewish and Muslim world. His book Jihad takes off
from 9/11 to trace the emergence of “the militant Islamic movement”
in the last 25 years in what he calls “a religious era” in Egypt,
Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Algeria and various other
countries. He paints with a broad brush on a broad canvas, not least
in the chapter on Osama bin Laden. The point about the “decline of
Islamism” is well taken. Prof. Oliver Roy’s The Failure of Political
Islam remains by far the best work on this subject.

Kepel rightly avers that at the dawn of the millennium, the
initiative was with these regimes that had emerged victorious from
confrontation with the Islamist movement. Only, there was no central
Islamic movement in these countries, but local groups, which spoke in
the name of Islam to promote their political agenda. This is not to
deny liaisons; but the movement in Indonesia, for example, has
nothing to do with its counterparts in, say, Egypt or Afghanistan. He
ably demonstrates that “violence in itself… has proved to be a
death trap for Islamists as a whole”, but he does not reflect much on
the fragmented state of the movement.

The War for Muslim Minds is much more sound in its analyses. Kepel
begins with a thorough exposure of American neoconservatives’
calculations on redrawing the map in West Asia. These “self-declared
champions of Israel as a predominantly `Jewish State’ saw the Oslo
peace process as a trap” for Israel. In think tanks, in the media and
on university campuses they began drawing up schemes and proceeded to
lobby for regime changes in Iraq, Iran and Syria. 9/11 was seen “as a
tragic opportunity to sell their radical new deal for the Middle East
[West Asia] to the shell-shocked Bush Administration.”

MORTEZA NIKOUBAZL/ REUTERS

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, praised for his advocacy of a
dialogue between civilisations.
Islamism that used violence has failed. But its outlook and strategy
are not shared by young second-generation Muslim immigrants in Europe
who have never lived in a predominantly Muslim country and who have
experienced personal freedom, liberal education and economic
opportunity in democratic societies. Kepel insightfully opines “the
most important battle in the war for Muslim minds during the next
decade will be fought not in Palestine or Iraq but in these
communities of believers on the outskirts of London, Paris, and other
European cities, where Islam is already a growing part of the West.
If European societies are able to integrate these Muslim populations,
handicapped as they are by dispossession, and steer them toward
prosperity, this new generation of Muslims may become the Islamic
vanguard of the next decade, offering their co-religionists a new
vision of the faith and way out of the dead-end politics that has
paralysed their countries of origin.”

One wishes Kepel had considered the role liberal Islamists play in
moulding the minds of Muslims who are prepared to study and reflect.
It is only fair to point out that integration of Muslims in European
societies, especially the young, depends at least as much on European
governments and societies as on the Muslims and their leaders. Their
progress will be of immense relevance to Muslims of India and vice
versa.

There are, fortunately, men of wisdom and goodwill in both
civilisations, who advocate the path of conciliation. Vartan
Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York, who was
born to American parents in Iran, is a highly respected figure. He
renders service in drawing attention to two neglected features –
diversity in the Muslim world and the voices of moderation in its
midst. Among them is Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan. He does
not stop at dispelling myths about Islam and Muslims but proceeds to
advocate a “universal ethic of human understanding” in an effort to
promote inter-faith dialogue.

One can only hope that Muslims of India will bestir themselves and
reflect on the causes of their intellectual stagnation and the rise
of “leaders” who feast themselves on their sad condition today like
parasites.

——————————————————————————–
The Great Confrontation: Europe and Islam Through the Centuries by
Ilya V. Gaiduk; Ivan R. Dee, Chicago; pages 254, $26.
Historical Atlas of Islam by Malise Ruthven with Azim Nanji; Harvard
University Press; pages 208, $35.
The War for Muslim Minds: Islam & the West by Gilles Kepel; Harvard
University Press; pages 327, $23.95.
Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam by Gilles Kepel; Harvard
University Press; pages 454, $15.95.
Infidels: The Conflict between Christendom and Islam 638-2002 by
Andrew Wheatcroft; Viking; pages 443, £15.
Islam: A Mosaic, Not a Monolith by Vartan Gregorian; Brookings
Institution Press; pages 164.
To Be A Muslim: Islam Peace and Democracy by Prince El Hassan bin
Talal; Oxford University Press, Karachi; pages 82, Rs.250.