Early
in the 12th century, the Crusaders rampaged through
Islamic lands with little initial resistance;
the emirs and sultans were more concerned with
their own internecine feuds. At this point, Ibn
al-Khashab, an Imam from Aleppo, took it upon
himself to jolt the Islamic world out of its suicidal
stupor. His passionate, eloquent and incessant
exhortations eventually shamed the would-be defenders
of Islamic lands into confronting the aggressors,
and laid the ground for an effective resistance
that culminated in the crusader's eventual ejection
from the Levant.
Since
the foundation of Israel in 1948, and later after
1967, the Islamic world has been under renewed
assault – this time from United States and
Israel (at times joined by lesser European powers).
This aggression also incorporates an ideological
assault – an ideological Crusade, as it were.
The twin objectives of the Zionists – to
demonise those it sought to dispossess and the
need to bring the imperial powers on board its
colonial enterprise – led them to revive
an ideologically driven discourse, Orientalism,
which by end of the Second World War had become
increasingly irrelevant. In its Zionist incarnation,
however, Orientalism is far more virulent.
A
sad legacy of prolonged Western domination has
been that few people read in Muslim world; fewer
still do so critically. This has left the field
wide open for Orientalists to extend their pernicious
influence. They have taken liberties with the
history, culture, traditions and beliefs of the
Islamic world and with the notable exception of
Edward Said, they have encountered little resistance.
In the tradition of Said, and in the spirit of
al-Khashab, then, Challenging the New Orientalism:
Dissenting Essays on the "War Against Islam"
is M. Shahid Alam's bracing riposte to the New
Orientalists.
Alam
covers expansive intellectual territory in this
collection of essays: from Islamic history to
global economics; Orientalist dogma to anti-Imperialist
activism; wars to Human Rights. His message is
universal: whether one is a historian, political
scientist, sociologist, economist, activist, member
of an ethnic minority, or a Muslim, the book has
plenty to offer. Its passionate, at times lyrical,
rendering makes this a highly readable book.
The
New Orientalism, the first of the book's three
sections, deals with the proliferation of literature
on the Muslim world by Orientalists – mostly
of Zionist provenance – whose scholarly pretences
barely conceal their deep-seated prejudice towards
their subject. While the earlier Orientalists
had produced tracts that aided the colonization
of the Orient by furnishing ideological pretexts;
the new version of Orientalism has taken on unabashedly
political overtones. Their Manichean view posits
an unchanging, retrograde, totalitarian Islam
in perpetual conflict with an enlightened, democratic,
egalitarian and free West. Alam's broadside against
the most influential protagonists of this project
– Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington –
is trenchant as it is lucid; he shows up a theoretical
edifice that has weak empirical foundations, one
that is barely held together by specious arguments
and defective logic.
With
advances in gunnery and shipping providing a decisive
military advantage and the Industrial Revolution
helping replace the feudal order, Europe's colonial
venture soon established and consolidated the
global capitalist system. This was dominated by
Core capital, comprising of Europe and America
(and Japan to a lesser degree), that lorded over
a Periphery whose markets and resources it relied
on for profits. Like the rest of the countries
that comprise the Periphery, the Islamic world
was caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of
neoliberal economics and neocolonial politics.
Far from being a proof of Islam's resistance to
modernity, aversion to science and hostility to
the West, the relative decline of Islamic societies
vis-à-vis the West is attributable to the
same economic, political, social and technological
factors that have contributed to the lag in the
rest of the Periphery. In fact, Egyptian, Ottoman
and Persian attempts at modernization and democratic
reform were crushed right at their inception by
European colonial powers.
Palestine
and Israel, the second section of the book, addresses
one of the most pressing issues of our time. The
essays in the section range from the history of
the conflict, contemporary political realities,
to the misconceptions and fallacies sown through
a systematically skewed media representation.
Alam argues that the advent of a colonial-settler
state, Israel, and the discovery of oil have fuelled
the resurgence of interest in the region which
has culminated in myriad interventions, contributing
to its continued instability. By aligning with
the hegemonic ambitions of the reigning powers
(first Britain, then France and now America),
Israel has appropriated their military and financial
strength to further its own regional goals. In
this, it has been assisted by a powerful lobby
in Washington, which not only exercises inordinate
influence over American foreign policy, but also
confronts dissent in order to suppress critical
voices. Alam 's personal experience in this regard
is instructive: signing a petition in support
of an Academic Boycott of Israel – a legitimate,
popular and non-violent mode of protest –
made him the target of a smear campaign headed
by Zionist extremists at Campus Watch (a McCarthyite
project which aims to discredit and intimidate
critical dissenters) with accusations of "encouraging
terrorist murderers". From there, the story
was relayed on to right-wing media and Alam found
himself the centre of much unwelcome attention.
While Alam has weathered this storm with courage,
not everyone has his fortitude; if the fraudulent
Zionist narrative still prevails in the American
mainstream discourse, it is because most choose
silence over jeopardizing their careers.
The
War Against Global Terrorism, the last section
of the book, addresses the historical provenance
of September 11, which Alam situates in the dynamics
of political-economic interactions between the
West and the Periphery in general, and the Islamic
societies in particular, rather than any claimed
cultural-ideological proclivities of the latter
for murder. Alam proceeds to dispel the ideological
fog that envelops the events and causes of the
tragedy. The roots of this conflict lie not in
profound hostility of Islam to modernity, freedom
and democracy, as the ideological cheerleaders
of the so called "war on terror" suggest;
but in mundane realities of imperial excess and
a deeply iniquitous economic system that sustains
the neocolonial grip of Core capital over the
Periphery. Alam exposes how the events of September
11 have been instrumentalized in the pursuit of
global hegemonic ambitions. Afghanistan was merely
a first step. With a pretext established, unchecked
imperial ambitions soon opened the way for American
conquest of Iraq, urged on all the way by the
neocon vanguard of the Zionist lobby. The fall
of Baghdad, an event with painful historical connotations
for most Muslims, is the spark for one of the
book's most searing essays. The concise, charged
rhetoric of "Iraq is Free" has an almost
poetic quality to it.
Alam
next dissects the semantics of Empire; the corrupted
discourse that presages – and rationalizes
– wars of aggression; the language that reduces
adversaries to mere labels and statistics. The
purveyors of violence have their propaganda agents
in the media and academia, who substitute the
sensory reality of war and occupation with a mythical
reality imbued with benevolence and high minded
ideals. Alam tackles the question of identity
in imperial USA; what it is like being a Muslim
in the age of war and terror – of being prejudged
and demonized by the likes of Thomas Friedman;
of being the centre of every bigot's leery attention;
of paying the price for departing from doctrinal
orthodoxy.
September
11 complicated things for many Muslims. The majority
chose to weather the storm quietly; some accepted
the role of native informers. Only a rare few
refused to accept the dominant narrative and challenge
the doctrinal assumptions. Prominent in this latter
group, Alam has had to bear a heavy toll.
Alam
ends the book with a topical essay on the escalations
in the Gulf that threaten a new war, this time
against Iran. He traces the roots of this planned
aggression to 1979 when the Islamic Revolution
brought down one of the pillars of American power
in the region: the regime of the Shah of Iran.
The revolution was a serious setback for US-Israeli
hegemonic ambitions; therefore Iraq was tasked
with neutralizing this potential threat. The Zionists,
on the other hand, had more ambitious plans; as
articulated by Oded Yinon in Kivunim, the World
Zionist Organization's main publication, they
aimed to break Iraq into ethnic-sectarian statelets
and neutralize regional challengers to Israel's
dominance one at a time. In the wake of the US
conquest of Iraq in 2003, Zionists immediately
started recycling the same falsehoods used to
justify the war against Iraq to sell the new war
– against Iran this time.
The
endgame in the case of US-Israeli aggression against
Iran is uncertain, but Alam's essay does an admirable
job of exposing the source and trajectory of this
policy.
As
with any collection of essays dealing with broadly
similar topics, repetition is inevitable and in
that respect this book is no exception. However,
that also means that each essay is self-contained
and offers complete context and analysis. My only
objection is with the use of the term "Islamicate"
[1], which is obscure and
lacks linguistic resonance; for instance, there
is no comparable word for other similar societal
configurations.
In
his later years, Aldous Huxley had complained
about the trend towards excessive specialization
in academia, which produces knowledge that does
little to improve the human situation. He emphasized
a need for bridges to rescue knowledge from the
sterile confines of academic exclusion back into
the service of human endeavour. In Alam 's writings
one finds that rare amalgamation of depth and
breadth, of scholarly rigor and activist zeal.
An accomplished economist, he is also an erudite
political scientist, engages complex sociological
debates, has a keen eye for textual analysis,
and writes with the passion of a poet.
At
a time when authentic narratives of the Islamic
world are being submerged under a vast proliferation
of Orientalist dogma, Challenging the New Orientalism
offers an invaluable antidote. Alam's insights
are indispensable; this book deserves to be widely
read.
Notes
[1] A terms coined by Marshall
Hodgson which refers "not directly to the
religion, Islam, itself, but to the social and
cultural complex historically associated with
Islam and the Muslims, both among Muslims themselves
and even when found among non-Muslims"
Muhammad
Idrees Ahmad is a member of Spinwatch.
His regular commentaries appear on The
Fanonite
