Posts Tagged ‘Misleading Legitimacies’
Discredited certitudes? Legitimacy, Ideologies and Religions and…
Posted by: adonis49 on: June 28, 2010
Discredited certitude?
Unregulated capitalism (liberal capitalism) is plainly discredited; communism was discredited way before 1989; the doctrine of the Christian religion was discredited since the French Revolution in 1787 ; Islam was discredited less than a century after the Prophet’s death, but can religion be eradicated from the spirit of the masses?
The power of current religions is that you don’t need to apply to any religious sect for fear of being ex-communicated, whether you are a believer or not, or whether your opinions are not compatible with the predominant ideology. (Radical sects still kill those who change religions)
Religion exercises its legitimacy once it combines the doctrines of “communism or socialism” for equal opportunities and the aspiration for independence against a usurper of our wishes. That is how extremist Islam has managed to package its ideology: an ideology targeting the poor and the disinherited who were deprived of dignity and were humiliated by the western powers.
The progress in Europe was established indirectly by a centralized Papal spiritual authority. Ironically, this spiritual centralization was acquired when the pagan Roman Emperor Constantine supposedly converted to Christianity.
Christianity could have evolved without any serious centralization if it was not ordered by the Roman ideological system of centralized power.
Hundreds of Christian sects existed in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Greece, and throughout the Roman Empire before the year 325: They were persecuted as “heretics” after the conclave of Nicaea (current Turkey) in 325 and several other conclaves within the century.
Papal Rome vigorously hindered progress and any changes for nine centuries, but once society expressed its willingness for change then it followed suit and even staunchly maintained the changes and supported them against any refracting bishops or religious Christian sects.
Centralized Papal Rome was a counterbalance to the tyranny of temporary authorities who had to compromise and rectify policies that challenged the dignity and well-being of the poor citizens.
Islam had no such centralized spiritual authority: Islam viewed with suspicion any kinds of religious centralization: Islam didn’t appreciate mediators between the believer and his God.
Thus, the political sultans and sovereigns dominated the religious spiritual power. In most instances the monarch grabbed the legitimacy of caliph. The counterbalance to tyranny lacked in the Moslem world: Any recognized cleric, ordered by a sultan, could proclaim a “fatwa” (an injunction for the people to obey) as a religious obligation. You could have several “fatwas” concurrently expressing injunction of opposite orders.
The problem in Islam is not in the source or the Koran, but the free interpretations of any monarch or leader at any period. There are no stable and steady spiritual legitimacy in any interpretations that can be changed or neglected at other periods.
The author Amine Maaluf recounts this story. A Moslem woman applies in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) for a private club that would allow Moslem women to meet and maybe share common hot baths along with sauna and Jacuzzi (hammam).
A week later, the municipality rejected the application on ground that the local Moslem cleric (Imam) had an objection to the club”. If the woman was European would the municipality ask the opinion of a Christian cleric? It would certainly not.
What this story proves is that, under the good intentions of respecting ethnic minorities, the European are exercising covert apartheid: They are sending the message that minority rights are not covered by the UN declarations which are supposed to be valid for all human kinds. The human rights approved by all States within the UN convention are applicable to all regardless of color, religion, sex, or origin.
What is fundamentally needed is that all States feel that the United Nation is a credible institution that is not dominated by veto power of Super Nations and that it has effective executive power to enforce its human rights proclamations to all world citizens and political concepts.
Let me resume my previous article on “Misleading Legitimacies“.
Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt managed to capture legitimacy in the emotions and spirit of the Arab populations as the leader of the Arab World by politically defeating the joint military attack by Britain, France, and Israel in 1956 to recapture the Suez Canal. The Arab populations were satisfied that their crushed dignity for over 5 centuries was re-emerging among the nations (the western nations).
Even the crushing military defeat by tiny Zionist Israel in 1967 maintained Gamal Abdel Nasser as the legitimate leader, and most of the Arab State leaders converged to him to help resolve their conflicts with their neighbors or within their State.
Abdel Nasser resurrected the spirit but failed in his social promises, and of freeing the Arabic minds from oppression and dominant central government doctrines.
After the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser (The Raiyess) in 1970, the goal of Arab leaders was to re-capture Arab legitimacy. The successor of the (Raiyess) in Egypt was Sadat who needed to rely on the legitimacy of the “Moslem Brotherhood” to strengthen his power and thus proclaimed to be “The First of the Believers (among Moslems)”.
All the Arab leaders realized that legitimacy reside in convincing victories against common enemies to the “Arabs”, or mainly any western nation and Israel as the closest geographically. The initial victory in 1973 on the Sinai front against Israel was cancelled out by bedding with the USA and “My Dear Friend Henry (Kissinger)”. Sadat was hated by most Arabs and no one shed a tear when he was assassinated.
Dictator Saddam Hussein enjoyed many potentials in Iraq: literate population, large army, and natural resources. He jumped at the occasion when the USA encouraged him to invade Iran of Khomeini in 1980.
This time, the enemy was the Persians who had re-captured lands that the Arab and Ottoman Empires had secured centuries ago and was called “Arabstan” or Khuzistan. After 8 years of mutual slaughtering in the battle field that resulted in over one million of victims, Saddam Hussein reverted to its neighboring “Arab” State of Kuwait and invaded it in 1990. Saddam was vanquished by the USA (the arch-enemy of the Arab spirit) and a coalition of European and Arab armies. Saddam lost his legitimacy.
Saudi Arabia’s successive monarchs endeavored to gain legitimacy in the Arab World through building thousands of mosques, appointing clerics who favored the Wahhabi sect, and lavishing petro-dollars for settling conflicts among the Arab States. Saudi Arabia has been working for the long-term by proselytizing their conservative extremist Wahhabi sect among the Sunni Moslems and gaining legitimacy by proclaiming that they are the “Servitors or Guardians of the Holy Kaaba and Medina (al Haramine)”.
Critique of Amine Maalouf’s “A World Adrift”
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 10, 2009
Critique of Amine Maalouf’s “A World Adrift” (May 10, 2009)
I read all of Maalouf’s 11 books in their original language French. I have already published eight posts with themes inspired from “Le Dereglement du Monde” (A World Adrift) with expansion and re-arrangement for logical flow and in a different style; for example “China and India Empires”, “Instantaneous Expediencies”, “Minorities in the Process of Disappearing: Iraq Case”, “Misleading Legitimacies”, “Imaginary Certitudes”, “A Way out of History”, “Move Inland, Son”, and “Three Global Temptations”
. I have already reviewed at least three of Amine Maalouf’s books; in addition to “A World Adrift”, I reviewed “Origins” and extensively reviewed “The Garden of Light”.
Amine Maalouf is from Lebanon by origin and settled in France during the civil war and has been a French citizen for 30 years; he received many book awards and acclaims of the highest honors from the French Academy of Literature.
My critiques are mainly focused on the style of his latest book. I had the visceral impression that Maalouf is an “imprisoned westernized academics” that has to prove at every turn that he is a western mind and thus, he has to insist on introspective paragraphs to settle his credibility as an impartial author who obeys the cretirion and restrictions of western demands on acceptability. I admit, if I were not a Levantine and fluent in French, I would have been lost and given up on finishing the book.
I was frustrated that Maalouf had to persist in almost every page that he is no scientist or has no scientif credentials to confirm that the climate is changing because of the over concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. He had to fall back on Pascal’s logic that the remedies for reducing CO2 are beneficial to earth climate even if this gas turns out not to be the culprit. All the western nations have been substituting CO2 emiting generators and vehicles with “clean” energy technologies for decades and they were not waiting for Maalouf’s Pascal logic to confirm the obvious in action. Maalouf has the intelligence and references and he did his research and he didn’t need to ruin a good chapter with convoluted excuses on his scientific shotcomings.or credentials. The reading becomes pretty boring unless Maalouf is trying implicitely to give literature a higher standard than sciences in human progress.
My example of clear style is that section on “Three Global Temptations”: it stated the dilemma and the resolution with a supportive practical story in a Levantine style. The fundamental global problems are established and they need to be read as a Bible for human future survival. That is what most people read and how they assimilate critical urgencies in ideas, the Levantine Bible style.
I stated in a previous post that “The Levantine style (basically the style of the Bibles) is characterized by direct pronouncements expressing feeling and describing what is seen, heard, and assimilated. The sentences are not encumbered by prefixes such as “I think”, “I believe”, “I am not sure”, “It is possible”, “There might be other versions”, “I might be wrong”, or “It is my opinion”, or what the western writers have adopted from the Greek “rational” style. The style in the Levant sounds confident, categorical, and conveying the total truth though it does not mean that the people cannot discriminate or feel the variations, possibilities, and uncertainties. The writers in the Levant simply feel that all these attachments are redundant since it is a fact of life that nothing is categorical or certain; thus, superfluous additions that disturb the flow of thoughts and ideas that need to be conveyed are not appreciated. Consequently, the author feels that the western readers of the Bible should tone down their uneasiness with “outrageous” direct and assured pronouncements in the Bibles.”
I claim that if you still need to add superfluous corrective, introspective, or “diplomatic” paragraphs then you might as well warn your readers that the piece is still in the draft stage, that you are still ruminating and reflecting, that you are still in the stage of talking to yourself, and that you need your readers to help you out finish the article. It is my position that when you are ready to publish then you should adopt the Levantine affirmative style, the style that confirm to your readers that you have thoroughly thought out your topic, that you have written several drafts, that you have regurgitated your positions in many scarp papers, and that all you need from your readers is their alternative opinions, positions, and their own personal experiences to round up the topic.
I recommend for the next edition that Amine Malouf add an introductory introspective chapter and then let the ideas and arguments flow un-interrupted. He may as well add a brief introspection to the beginning of a chapter that reflects his shortcoming that are relevant to the chapter (for example scientific credentials) and permit the reader to focus on the topic.
If Maalouf fails to re-edit his manuscript then I would be forced to re-write it under the title “The Bible of Global Problems: Global Resolutions”
Malouf add an introductory introspective chapter and then let the ideas and arguments flow un-interrupted. He may as well add a brief introspection to the beginning of a chapter that reflects his shortcoming that are relevant to the chapter (for example scientific credentials) and permit the reader to focus on the topic. If Maalouf fails to re-edit his manuscript then I would be forced to re-write it under the title “The Bible of Global Problems: Global Resolutions” heir own personal experiences to round up the topic. I recommend for the next edition that Amine Malouf add an introductory introspective chapter and then let the ideas and arguments flow un-interrupted. He may as well add a brief introspection to the beginning of a chapter that reflects his shortcoming that are relevant to the chapter (for example scientific credentials) and permit the reader to focus on the topic. If Maalouf fails to re-edit his manuscript then I would be forced to re-write it under the title “The Bible of Global Problems: Global Resolutions”
Posted Tuesday May 5, 2009
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 7, 2009
319. Jerusalem: Ur Salam (City of Peace) (May 2, 2009)
320. Bi-Weekly Report (#20) on Lebanon and the Middle East (May 3, 2009)
321. Misleading Legitimacies (May 4, 2009)
322. Imaginary Certitudes (May 5, 2009)
“A World Adrift” by Amine Maalouf (Book Review)
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 7, 2009
“A World Adrift” by Amine Maluf (May 6, 2009)
I have already published four posts with themes inspired from this book. I have already reviewed at least three of Amine Maaluf’s books. This French manuscript “Le Dereglement du Monde” is of 314 pages and divided into four chapters: Deceptive Victories, Misleading Legitimacies, Imaginary Certitudes, and A very long Prehistory. The main quote of the book is from William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) who wrote “Man has survived because he was too ignorant to know how to realize his wishes (desires). Now that he can realize his wishes, then he must either change them or perish”.
Amine Maluf is from Lebanon by origin and settled in France during the civil war. He writes in French and has published more ten books, most of them have been translated in Arabic and a few in English; he received the highest honors from the French Academy of Literature.
Two fundamental premises guide this essay:
First, the moral ascendance of values is inadequate to catching up with the exponential progress in sciences and technologies.
Second, most crisis are global and on world level but they are tackled on individual State’s interest, perception, regulation, management, and control.
The mains problems to analyze and resolve for the next generations are:
First, how the US and Europe reacted to the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
Second, how to brake and then break off the cycle for the disappearing minorities, their particular languages, and literature. (Visit my post on minorities in Iraq).
Third, how to resolve the recurring financial and economical crisis. (Visit my post on Third World War is tolling)
Fourth, how to resolve the climatic changes and environmental degradation.
Fifth, how to satisfy the legitimate desires for consumer goods for the expanding middle classes in China and India. (Visit my posts on China and India Empires)
Sixth, how to resolve extremist attitude in religion and nationalism (terrorism, genocides, racism, apartheid, weapons of mass destruction). Please visit my post on “Misleading Legitimacies” and “Imaginary Certitudes”
Seventh, resolving the problem of instantaneous demands, acquisition, communication, information around the world. Visit my post on “instantaneous exigencies”
Eight, the urgency to creating reference values for a sustainable earth because history did not offer us any reference moral values for our modern days global problems..
Imaginary Certitudes
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 5, 2009
Imaginary Certitudes (May 6, 2009)
The US republican notion of capitalism is plainly discredited; communism was discredited since 1989; the doctrine of the Christian religion was discredited since the French Revolution in 1787 and a century before that but religion cannot be eradicated from the spirit of the masses. The power of religion is that you don’t need to apply or fear to be ex-communicated whether you are a believer or not or whether your opinions are not compatible with the predominant ideology. Religion exercises its legitimacy once it combines the doctrines of “communism” for equal opportunities and the aspiration for independence against a usurper. That is what extremist Islam has managed to package its ideology; an ideology targeting the poor and disinherited who were deprived of dignity and were humiliated by the western powers.
Let me resume my previous article on “Misleading Legitimacies“. Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt managed to capture legitimacy in the emotions and spirit of the Arab populations as the leader of the Arab World by politically defeating the joint military attack by Britain, France, and Israel in 1956 to recapture the Suez Canal. The Arab populations were satisfied that their crushed dignity for over 5 centuries was re-emerging among the nations (the western nations). Even the crushing military defeat by tiny Zionist Israel in 1967 maintained Gamal Abdel Nasser as the legitimate leader and most of the Arab State leaders converged to him to resolving their conflicts with their neighbors or within their State.
After the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser (The Raiyess) in 1970 the goal of Arab leaders was to re-capture Arab legitimacy. The successor of the (Raiyess) in Egypt was Sadate who needed to rely on the legitimacy of the “Moslem Brotherhood” to strengthen his power and thus proclaimed to be “The First of the Believers (among Moslems)”. All the Arab leaders realized that legitimacy reside in convincing victories against common enemies to the “Arabs”, or mainly any western nation and Israel the closest geographically. The initial victory in 1973 on the Sinai front against Israel was cancelled out by bedding with the USA and “My Dear Friend Henry (Kissinger)” Sadate was hated by most Arabs and no one shed a tear when he was assassinated.
Dictator Saddam Hussein enjoyed potentials in literate population, large army, and natural resources; he jumped at the occasion when the USA encouraged him to invade Iran of Khomeini. This time, the enemy was the Persians who had re-captured lands that the Arab and Ottoman Empires had secured centuries ago and called “Arabstan” or Khuzestan. After 8 years of mutual slaughtering in the battle field Saddam Hussein reverted to its neighboring “Arab” State of Kuwait and was vanquished by the USA, the arch enemy of the Arabs. Saddam lost his legitimacy.
Saudi Arabia’s successive monarchs endeavored to gain legitimacy in the Arab World through building thousands of mosques, appointing clerics who favored the Wahhabit sect, and lavishing petro-dollars for settling conflicts among the Arab States. Saudi Arabia has been working for the long term by proselytizing their conservative extremist Wahhabit sect among the Sunni Moslems and gaining legitimacy by proclaiming that they are the “Servitors or Guardians of the Holy Kaaba and Medina (al Haramine)”
The progress in Europe was established indirectly by a centralized Papal spiritual authority. Ironically, this spiritual centralization was acquired when the pagan Roman Emperor Constantine supposedly converted to Christianity. Christianity could have evolved without any serious centralization if it was not ordered by the Roman ideological system of centralized power. Hundreds of Christian sects existed in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Greece, and throughout the Roman Empire before the year 325; they were persecuted as “heretics” after the conclave of Nicee in 325. Papal Rome hindered progress and change vigorously for long period but once society expressed its willingness for change then it followed suit and even staunchly maintained the changes and supported them against any refracting bishop or religious Christian sects. Centralized Papal Rome was a counterbalance to the tyranny of temporary authorities who had to compromise and rectify policies that challenged the dignity and well being of the poor citizens.
Islam had no such centralized spiritual authority; it viewed with suspicion any kinds of religious centralization; it didn’t appreciate mediators between the believer and his God. Thus, the political sultans and sovereigns dominated the religious spiritual power; in most instances the monarch grabbed the legitimacy of caliph. Thus, the counterbalance to tyranny lacked in the Moslem world and any recognized cleric, ordered by a sultan, could proclaim a “fatwa” or an injunction for the people to obey as a religious obligation. You could have several “fatwas” concurrently injuncting opposing orders.
The problem in Islam is not in the source or the Koran but the free interpretations of any monarch or leader at any period. There are no stable and steady spiritual legitimacy in any interpretations that can be changed or neglected at other periods.
The author Amine Maaluf recounts this story” A Moslem woman applies in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) for a private club that would allow Moslem women to meet and maybe share common hot baths with sauna and Jacuzzi (hammam). A week later the municipality rejected the application on ground that the local Moslem cleric (Imam) had an objection to the club” If the woman was European would the municipality ask the opinion of a Christian cleric? It would certainly not.
What this story proves is that, under the good intentions of respecting ethnic minorities, the European are exercising covert apartheid; they are sending the message that minority rights are not covered by the UN declarations which are supposed to be valid for all human kinds. The human rights approved by all States within the UN convention are applicable to all regardless of color, religion, sex, or origin. What is fundamentally needed is that all States feel that the United Nation is a credible institution that is not dominated by veto power super nations and that it has effective executive power to enforce its human rights proclamations to all world citizens and political concepts.
Misleading Legitimacies
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 5, 2009
Misleading Legitimacies (May 4, 2009)
Note: This essay on misleading legitimacies is a worldwide problem that is spreading chaos and instability. Thus, this essay can sustain more than one chapter. The first part will focus on the Arab and Islamic legitimacies in the Arab World.
Absence of legitimacy in any society creates a sense of weightlessness in the emotions and orientations of citizens that may spread havoc. The lack of credibility in authority, institution, and even an eminent personality in matter of moral standing can subject society to be doomed to the rule of the jungle: those perceived to be the strongest in military forces or in organizational stabilities feel legitimate as tyrants to exercise their violent tendencies and commit massacres and drive society into chaos.
I like to start with two examples not directly related to the Arab World. We have the case of Indonesia in the 1960’s. As Sukarno secured the Independence of Indonesia, the most populous of the Moslem world, Islam was oriented toward a secular State and was the most tolerant. The colonial mines of raw materials were nationalized and Sukarno was a pillar of the non-aliened States and normal relations with the Soviet Union and China were progressing without any serious popular opposition. Sukarno was endowed with popular legitimacy because he satisfied the sense of dignity of his people. In fact, Sukarno had the foresight to combine the doctrines of nationalism, Islam, and communism under the acronym NASACOM but it did not gel well in the short time of his legitimate authority. As the USA was bracing for a long protracted war in Vietnam, then the US Administration decided to secure the total adhesion of the neighboring States with Vietnam to its ideology; the same bipolar pronouncement “You are either with us or against us”. Thus, Suharto was propelled by a military coup and from October 1965 to the summer of 1966 over 600,000 of the Indonesian intelligentsia was executed in universities, the administrations, in the Capital Jakarta, and even in remote villages. By the end of this dictatorship that lasted over 20 years Islam re-emerged with a different sense of urgencies, more radical, and more zealot.
Let us consider the case of legitimacy in Iran. Mossadegh PM tried in 1951 to have a deal with British Petroleum for half its profit on its exploitation of Iran’s oil BP refused and Mossadegh nationalized this oil company by a vote in the parliament. Britain encouraged the US Administration to lead a military coup that brought back the young Shah to power in 1953 for 25 years of tyranny, security harassments, lavish expenditures on personal aggrandizement, purchasing the largest military hardware in the region, and fighting off the powerful Mullahs. The Shah succumbed to Khomeini when President Carter refused to support his “precarious” legitimacy. Iran reverted to an extremist conservative Chiaa Islam.
The concept of Arab nationalism is at least two century old and its resurgence was based on two critical factors. First, as the Ottoman Empire waned in culture and civilization by the 18th century the cultured intelligencia in Syria and Lebanon immigrated to Egypt for an environment more suited to their literary creativity and publishing. The climate of openness to various civilizations in Egypt sent a choc wave to the Ottoman Empire that was reverting to Turk nationalism; the successive political turbulence in Turkey considered the nations outside the boundaries of Turkey as nominal dominions that were not worth the investment in time or money. The parties and free minded people who proclaimed the need to revert to Arab culture and Arab language were persecuted and hanged.
Second, Iran of the 18th century has consolidated the power base of its Empire on the Chiaa sect that attacked the Caliphate legitimacy of the Ottoman Sultan. Many non-Sunni sects proselytized a return to conservative fundamentals of Islam (for example, the Wahhabit of Najd in the Arab Peninsula and the Yazd in Yemen) were censuring the dominant concept of Caliphate. This second chock wave in religious fundamentals of governing focused the attention of the Sunni Moslem toward Mecca and the Hashemi dynasty, supposedly descendent of the Prophet Muhammad. During the First World War, the British colonial power exploited this spiritual revolt into convincing the Arab Moslems into revolting and fighting the Ottoman Empire with lavish promises that it had no intention of keeping.
Consequently, the spirit of Arab nationalism started in earnest during the First World War when the colonial powers tried to ally the “Arab” Moslems against their co-religionist Moslems in Turkey. The colonial powers had no intentions of permitting the “Arabs” to instituting any sustainable State economically, politically, or strategically. King Faissal of Mecca was promised Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan but the French mandate chased him out. The British mandate allocated Faissal the “throne” of Iraq but Faissal was overturned and died at the age of 50.
The Syrian Nation spirit spread in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. First, the Syrian could not conceive why the urban societies in Syria should succumb to nomadic sovereigns selected in Mecca; second, as the Arabic civilization has died 5 centuries ago, even before the advent of the Ottoman Empire, it was necessary to dust off the previous civilizations to Islam and re-invent a national culture and civilization that reflected the urban spirit of fertile Syria. The Arabic formal language was fundamental to maintain, encourage, and solidify as the motherland language while maintaining the ethnic languages.
In 1936, the Syria National Social Party was founded by a Christian Orthodox Antoun Saadeh from Mount Lebanon. This political and ideological party focused on regional unities by adding Iraq to the Syrian Nation and uniting Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. The other nations would include the Arab Peninsula, the Nile nations, and then the northern Arab nations in Africa such as Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Antoun Saadeh recognized that this region is Moslem by a large margin and wrote a well researched book “Islam (submission to One God): One message Christ and Muhammad” The mandated powers of France and Britain were highly worried of this wild fire being disseminated in the Middle East. Thus, the mandated powers did the utmost to discredit this new ideology by rekindling confessional emotions and sectarian communities and spreading false information on the affiliations of its founders. The founding leader Antoun Saadeh was to be executed without trial by a military court.
In 1945, the Baath political party was founded by Michel Aflak, another Christian Orthodox in Syria. This new party excited the Arabic nomadic romantic spirit. By 1946 half a dozen States in the Arab World were recognized by the UN such as Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia of the Seoud dynasty. The Baath party took roots in Syria and Iraq and was ruled by Sunnis; this party was swept away when Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt came to power and galvanized the Arab populations into the feeling of a new identity and recapturing its dignity. The Baath Party was ready to include any new State recognizing Arabic as the State language into the Arab Nation. As one Arab State after another were recognized independent by the UN then Sunnis tried to galvanize the populations into uniting under a vast nation, from Morocco to Sudan to Yemen to Iraq, all in all 21 States reunited under the Arab League. The Sunnis were enthusiastic for any Arab unity since they form the vast majority in this region; they ultimately contemplated to re-institute the Caliphate.
When the military coup of Gamal Abdel Nasser recaptured power in Egypt it dethroned the King. Many Egyptians believed that “The Moslem Brotherhood” was behind this coup: the “Moslem Brotherhood” had legitimacy among the Egyptian population and had infiltrated the army. Then Gamal Abdel Nasser declared the nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1955 run by Britain and France. It happened that in the same period the Soviet Union invaded Hungary to crush a revolt again communism. The US Administration was in a serious predicament; if it allowed France and Britain to capture Egypt by a military alternative then what message it would be sending to the under developed States? That the ideologies of capitalism and communism are the same enemies to the new recognized States. Eisenhower pressured France and Britain to withdraw and Gamal Abdel Nasser emerged politically the victor and the symbol of Arab regained pride and dignity. The first move of the newly established “legitimate leader” was to crush his serious challenger to legitimacy, mainly the “Moslem Brotherhood” party.
Many political parties in the Arab World sensed the pulse of the emotional feeling of the masses; a few fought back this unpractical nation with the lame tool of rationality and others countered with the logic that nationality and religion were outmoded by the advent of communism. In fact, every military coup that was supported by communists turned against the communists in no time. Gamal Abdel Nasser set the tune and the tone; the Arab masses listened to their legitimate leader regardless of his set backs, pitfalls, critical errors, and his one party dictatorship ruling. The legitimate leader could be forgiven for crushing liberties, freedom of opinions, and sending thousands in prison and hundreds dieing under torture.
In 1965, the Palestinian Resistance under the leadership of Fateh’s Yasser Arafat (Abu Ammar) started re-taking its destiny and responsibility for the forgotten Palestinian aspiration to a motherland. Gamal Abdel Nasser understood that his legitimacy is being challenged for failing to deal with the Palestinians rights of return to their lands. This feeling of challenge to legitimacy was one of the main implicit factors that pressured Gamal Abdel Nasser to ask the UN peacekeeping forces to vacate Sinai in 1967 and the follow up crushing military defeat by the tiny Zionist state of Israel. (To be continued in Part 2).
Misleading Legitimacies (May 4, 2009)
Note: This essay on misleading legitimacies is a worldwide problem that is spreading chaos and instability. Thus, this essay can sustain more than one chapter. The first part will focus on the Arab and Islamic legitimacies in the Arab World.
Absence of legitimacy in any society creates a sense of weightlessness in the emotions and orientations of citizens that may spread havoc. The lack of credibility in authority, institution, and even an eminent personality in matter of moral standing can subject society to be doomed to the rule of the jungle: those perceived to be the strongest in military forces or in organizational stabilities feel legitimate as tyrants to exercise their violent tendencies and commit massacres and drive society into chaos.
I like to start with two examples not directly related to the Arab World. We have the case of Indonesia in the 1960’s. As Sukarno secured the Independence of Indonesia, the most populous of the Moslem world, Islam was oriented toward a secular State and was the most tolerant. The colonial mines of raw materials were nationalized and Sukarno was a pillar of the non-aliened States and normal relations with the Soviet Union and China were progressing without any serious popular opposition. Sukarno was endowed with popular legitimacy because he satisfied the sense of dignity of his people. In fact, Sukarno had the foresight to combine the doctrines of nationalism, Islam, and communism under the acronym NASACOM but it did not gel well in the short time of his legitimate authority. As the USA was bracing for a long protracted war in Vietnam, then the US Administration decided to secure the total adhesion of the neighboring States with Vietnam to its ideology; the same bipolar pronouncement “You are either with us or against us”. Thus, Suharto was propelled by a military coup and from October 1965 to the summer of 1966 over 600,000 of the Indonesian intelligentsia was executed in universities, the administrations, in the Capital Jakarta, and even in remote villages. By the end of this dictatorship that lasted over 20 years Islam re-emerged with a different sense of urgencies, more radical, and more zealot.
Let us consider the case of legitimacy in Iran. Mossadegh PM tried in 1951 to have a deal with British Petroleum for half its profit on its exploitation of Iran’s oil BP refused and Mossadegh nationalized this oil company by a vote in the parliament. Britain encouraged the US Administration to lead a military coup that brought back the young Shah to power in 1953 for 25 years of tyranny, security harassments, lavish expenditures on personal aggrandizement, purchasing the largest military hardware in the region, and fighting off the powerful Mullahs. The Shah succumbed to Khomeini when President Carter refused to support his “precarious” legitimacy. Iran reverted to an extremist conservative Chiaa Islam.
The concept of Arab nationalism is at least two century old and its resurgence was based on two critical factors. First, as the Ottoman Empire waned in culture and civilization by the 18th century the cultured intelligencia in Syria and Lebanon immigrated to Egypt for an environment more suited to their literary creativity and publishing. The climate of openness to various civilizations in Egypt sent a choc wave to the Ottoman Empire that was reverting to Turk nationalism; the successive political turbulence in Turkey considered the nations outside the boundaries of Turkey as nominal dominions that were not worth the investment in time or money. The parties and free minded people who proclaimed the need to revert to Arab culture and Arab language were persecuted and hanged.
Second, Iran of the 18th century has consolidated the power base of its Empire on the Chiaa sect that attacked the Caliphate legitimacy of the Ottoman Sultan. Many non-Sunni sects proselytized a return to conservative fundamentals of Islam (for example, the Wahhabit of Najd in the Arab Peninsula and the Yazd in Yemen) were censuring the dominant concept of Caliphate. This second chock wave in religious fundamentals of governing focused the attention of the Sunni Moslem toward Mecca and the Hashemi dynasty, supposedly descendent of the Prophet Muhammad. During the First World War, the British colonial power exploited this spiritual revolt into convincing the Arab Moslems into revolting and fighting the Ottoman Empire with lavish promises that it had no intention of keeping.
Consequently, the spirit of Arab nationalism started in earnest during the First World War when the colonial powers tried to ally the “Arab” Moslems against their co-religionist Moslems in Turkey. The colonial powers had no intentions of permitting the “Arabs” to instituting any sustainable State economically, politically, or strategically. King Faissal of Mecca was promised Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan but the French mandate chased him out. The British mandate allocated Faissal the “throne” of Iraq but Faissal was overturned and died at the age of 50.
The Syrian Nation spirit spread in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. First, the Syrian could not conceive why the urban societies in Syria should succumb to nomadic sovereigns selected in Mecca; second, as the Arabic civilization has died 5 centuries ago, even before the advent of the Ottoman Empire, it was necessary to dust off the previous civilizations to Islam and re-invent a national culture and civilization that reflected the urban spirit of fertile Syria. The Arabic formal language was fundamental to maintain, encourage, and solidify as the motherland language while maintaining the ethnic languages.
In 1936, the Syria National Social Party was founded by a Christian Orthodox Antoun Saadeh from Mount Lebanon. This political and ideological party focused on regional unities by adding Iraq to the Syrian Nation and uniting Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. The other nations would include the Arab Peninsula, the Nile nations, and then the northern Arab nations in Africa such as Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Antoun Saadeh recognized that this region is Moslem by a large margin and wrote a well researched book “Islam (submission to One God): One message Christ and Muhammad” The mandated powers of France and Britain were highly worried of this wild fire being disseminated in the Middle East. Thus, the mandated powers did the utmost to discredit this new ideology by rekindling confessional emotions and sectarian communities and spreading false information on the affiliations of its founders. The founding leader Antoun Saadeh was to be executed without trial by a military court.
In 1945, the Baath political party was founded by Michel Aflak, another Christian Orthodox in Syria. This new party excited the Arabic nomadic romantic spirit. By 1946 half a dozen States in the Arab World were recognized by the UN such as Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia of the Seoud dynasty. The Baath party took roots in Syria and Iraq and was ruled by Sunnis; this party was swept away when Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt came to power and galvanized the Arab populations into the feeling of a new identity and recapturing its dignity. The Baath Party was ready to include any new State recognizing Arabic as the State language into the Arab Nation. As one Arab State after another were recognized independent by the UN then Sunnis tried to galvanize the populations into uniting under a vast nation, from Morocco to Sudan to Yemen to Iraq, all in all 21 States reunited under the Arab League. The Sunnis were enthusiastic for any Arab unity since they form the vast majority in this region; they ultimately contemplated to re-institute the Caliphate.
When the military coup of Gamal Abdel Nasser recaptured power in Egypt it dethroned the King. Many Egyptians believed that “The Moslem Brotherhood” was behind this coup: the “Moslem Brotherhood” had legitimacy among the Egyptian population and had infiltrated the army. Then Gamal Abdel Nasser declared the nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1955 run by Britain and France. It happened that in the same period the Soviet Union invaded Hungary to crush a revolt again communism. The US Administration was in a serious predicament; if it allowed France and Britain to capture Egypt by a military alternative then what message it would be sending to the under developed States? That the ideologies of capitalism and communism are the same enemies to the new recognized States. Eisenhower pressured France and Britain to withdraw and Gamal Abdel Nasser emerged politically the victor and the symbol of Arab regained pride and dignity. The first move of the newly established “legitimate leader” was to crush his serious challenger to legitimacy, mainly the “Moslem Brotherhood” party.
Many political parties in the Arab World sensed the pulse of the emotional feeling of the masses; a few fought back this unpractical nation with the lame tool of rationality and others countered with the logic that nationality and religion were outmoded by the advent of communism. In fact, every military coup that was supported by communists turned against the communists in no time. Gamal Abdel Nasser set the tune and the tone; the Arab masses listened to their legitimate leader regardless of his set backs, pitfalls, critical errors, and his one party dictatorship ruling. The legitimate leader could be forgiven for crushing liberties, freedom of opinions, and sending thousands in prison and hundreds dieing under torture.
In 1965, the Palestinian Resistance under the leadership of Fateh’s Yasser Arafat (Abu Ammar) started re-taking its destiny and responsibility for the forgotten Palestinian aspiration to a motherland. Gamal Abdel Nasser understood that his legitimacy is being challenged for failing to deal with the Palestinians rights of return to their lands. This feeling of challenge to legitimacy was one of the main implicit factors that pressured Gamal Abdel Nasser to ask the UN peacekeeping forces to vacate Sinai in 1967 and the follow up crushing military defeat by the tiny Zionist state of Israel. (To be continued in Part 2).
Adonis Diaries 