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February
4, 2002
John Chuckman
American
Politics of Grief
February
3, 2002
Zoltan
Grossman
War
and New Military Bases
February
2, 2002
Francis
Schor
Carlucci's
Strange Career
February
1, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
The
Great Ashcroft Cover Up
Jeremy
Voas
Why
We're Suing Ashcroft
David
Vest
10
Things I Know About Him
January
31, 2002
Rahul
Mahajan
The
State of the Union:
A New Cold War
Dave Marsh
Miles
Copeland, War
and the Future of Music
John Pilger
The
Colder War
Alexander
Cockburn
American
Journal:
Killer Dog, Weird Couple
Dr. Susan
Block
Blowback
and Daniel Pearl
January
30, 2002
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Linda
Lay, Hill and Knowlton and the Tears of a Clown
Jack McCarthy
Free
Noelle Bush!
Michael
Ratner
Memo
to Bush: Adhere to
the Geneva Convention
Jay Moore
Proud
to be an American?
Susan
Block
The
Great Pretzel Swallower
and Guantanamo Porn
January
29, 2002
Gary Leupp
Why
This War Was, and Remains, Utterly Wrong
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Birds of Kandahar
Patrick
Cockburn
Afghan
Opium Trade
Back in Business
January
28, 2002
Larry
Chin
Brosnahan
for the Defense
Mokhiber/Weissman
Tyranny
of the Bottom Line
George
E. Curry
Civil
Rights Nominee Called Affirmative Action "Racist"
Sen. Russ
Feingold
Campaign
Finance Reform?
Think Enron
John Chuckman
Liberal?
Media?
January
27, 2002
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Enron's
Drip, Drip, Drip
Tom Turnipseed
MLK
Jr.'s Dream Perverted
January
26, 2002
Norman
Madarsz
Adieu,
Bourdieu
January
25, 2002
National
Lawyers Guild
Know
Your Rights
Alexander
Cockburn
You
Call This Terrorism?
CounterPunch
Wire
Cal
Energy Crisis Hoax:
It Wasn't A Shortage,
It Was a Shakedown
Tariq
Ali
Kashmir,
Klinghoffer,
the Kurds and Chomsky
Nadine
Strossen
Protecting
MLK Jr.'s Legacy:
Justice and Liberty After 9/11
January
24, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Turkey
Targets Chomsky
Dean Baker
Lying
on Top:
Ken Lay One of Many
David
Vest
Idiot
Wind
January
23, 2002
Terry
Waite
Guantanamo
Prisoners:
Justice or Revenge?
Molly
Secours
The
Case of Abu-Ali:
Racism and the Death Penalty
Robert
Jensen
Speak
Out, Get Slimed
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
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February 4,
2002
How Different Are Islamic
Societies?
By M. Shahid Alam
There are two opposite visions that animate American
scholarship on Islam and Islamic societies. In the days, months
and years ahead, a great deal will hinge on which of these two
visions prevails in our foreign policy.
One projects Islam as an enemy that must
be destroyed, or it will destroy us. This is the camp of warriors,
led, among others, by Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes and Martin
Kramer. Their thinking is reductionist and ahistorical: they
believe that Islam is fundamentally at odds with the core values
of the West. These warriors urge United States to confront this
menace now, and contain it militarily before it threatens the
West.
The second camp takes the view that Islamic societies are diverse,
and each contains tendencies-religious, cultural and political-that
pull in different directions. They do not think that political
Islam rejects modernity: it seeks to indigenize modernity, to
give it a local habitation and a name. This is the diplomatic
camp, led, among others, by John Esposito, Richard Bulliet and
Robin Wright. They believe in engaging political Islam, and taming
its force, among other things, by adopting a more balanced foreign
policy towards the Palestinian question.
It is worth noting that, in the world of scholarship, the warriors
are a minority. However, together with their neoconservative
allies, they enjoy considerably greater political and media clout
than the diplomatic camp. This clout increased greatly after
the end of the Cold War. And now, after September 11, President
Bush appears to be embracing their objective of waging pre-emptive
wars against major Islamic countries. We know that in the present
climate of opinion, it would be all too easy to start these wars,
but they may be harder to stop.
I will review some of the charges leveled
by the camp of warriors against Is-lamic societies. I will examine
whether Islamic societies lag in economic development, face a
democracy deficit, and possess "bloody borders," a
phrase coined by Samuel Huntington. I will examine if these charges
are supported by the evidence. And if they are true-can we place
these charges at the door of Islam?
Economic Development
The Islamic world does face any number
of serious problems: it would be foolish to deny this. What we
need to determine is whether Islamic countries have done worse,
or much worse, than others with a comparable history in
pursuing economic growth, promoting equality between the sexes,
developing free institutions, and keeping the peace with its
neighbors?
First, consider the question of economic development. Judging
from their living standards in 1999, measured as per capita income
in international dollars-taken from the latest World Development
Report-it does not appear that Muslims have done too badly.
In several paired comparisons, Iran holds its own with Venezuela,
Malaysia is well ahead of Thailand, Egypt is modestly ahead of
Ukraine, Turkey only slightly behind Russia, Pakistan a little
behind-and Indonesia somewhat ahead-of India, Bangladesh is somewhat
behind Vietnam, Tunisia is well ahead of Georgia and Armenia,
and Jordan is significantly ahead of Nicaragua. It may be noted
that nearly all the comparisons concede the historical advantage
to the non-Islamic members of the pair.
The results do not change if the comparisons
are based on a broader human development index. In a ranking
that includes 162 countries in 1999-taken from the Human Development
Report, 2000-22 Islamic countries occupy ranks between 32
and 100. Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sudan rank lower down the scale,
but still ahead of several non-Islamic countries in Africa. Notably,
the Arab oil-rich countries are the leaders of the Islamic pack.
And incredibly, Saudi Arabia, the bastion of conservative Islam,
spends 7.5 percent of its national income on public education;
this places it in the same class as Norway and Finland.
The evidence does confirm the charge
of a gender bias in Islamic countries. Nearly half of them show
gender bias in their development indices. A comparison of the
human development index with the same index corrected for inequalities
between sexes-both taken from the latest Human Development
Report-shows that 17 out of 36 Islamic countries suffer a
loss of rank as we move from the general index to the gender-related
index. These losses are highest for Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman,
Sudan and Lebanon. Only Turkey improves its rank significantly,
by four places.
The cultural determinism of the warriors
extends to demographics. Observing the rapid growth of Islamic
population, they attribute this to a cultural resistance to birth
control. Once again, an examination of the evidence quickly dispels
this charge. Between 1970-75 and 1995-2000, nearly every Islamic
country experienced a decline in the total fertility rate: this
is the number of child births per woman over her lifetime. In
several, the decline was quite impressive. The fertility rates
for 1995-2000 were 1.9 in Azerbaijan, 2.3 in Tunisia, 2.6 in
Indonesia, 3.2 in Iran, 3.3 in Malaysia and Algeria, and 3.4
in Morocco and Egypt: compared to 3.3 for India and 3.6 in Philippines.
These low rates for the Islamic countries are more remarkable
because they were achieved over periods much shorter than in
Europe and Latin America.
Bloody Borders
We now turn to the matter about Islam's
"bloody borders." In his book, The Clash of Civilizations,
Samuel Huntington claims that "Muslim bellicosity and violence
are late-twentieth century facts which neither Muslims nor non-Muslims
can deny." In support of this thesis, he offers a list of
inter-civilizational conflicts on Islam's borders in the 1990s.
He also provides some quantitative evidence purporting to show
that Muslims had a disproportionate share in inter-civilizational
conflicts during 1993-94.
A more careful examination of the data
tells a different story. Jonathan Fox, in the Journal of Peace
Research (2000), has shown that Islam was involved in 23.2
percent of all inter-civilizational conflicts between 1945 and
1989, and 24.7 percent of these conflicts during 1990 to 1998.
This is not too far above Islam's share in world population;
nor do we observe any dramatic rise in this share since the end
of the Cold War. It would appear that Huntington's "facts"
about "Muslim bellicosity" fail to qualify as facts.
In any case, we have to be careful when
we talk about "bloody borders." A hard look at the
geography of civilizations soon reveals that the length of these
borders vary strikingly, and that Islam's share of such borders
is disproportionately large. On the one hand, Islam's geographic
sweep across the Afro-Eurasian landmass brings it into contact-both
close and extensive-with the African, Western, Orthodox, Hindu
and Buddhist civilizations. In addition, we must count the internal
borders between often large pockets of majority Islam within
non-Islamic countries and vice versa. It is my impression that
if we added up all of these borders, Islam's share of borders
might well exceed the combined share of all others. A recognition
of these facts might help to place observations about Islam's
"bloody borders" in a less prejudicial perspective.
The Democracy Deficit
Finally, there is the charge of a 'democracy
deficit' in the Islamic world: attributed by cultural aficionados,
like Samuel Huntington and Elie Kedourie, to an Islamic culture
that is seen as hostile to democratic values.
The proof of this is found in the latest
global rankings on freedom and democracy provided by the experts
at Freedom House: as if such complex matters could be ascertained
by examining snapshots of countries at any one point in time.
There is a further problem with these rankings: they are subjectively
determined. Concerned about the biases this might introduce,
the UNDP quickly discontinued their use in their annual Human
Development Reports after using them once.
The cultural determinism of Freedom House is also on proud display
in their most recent report. On the one hand, a quick review
of the trends on democratization reveals two waves of democratization-in
the 1950s and 1990s-data which point towards powerful international
forces regulating these movements. The first wave accompanied
the post-war dismantling of colonies; the second wave followed
the end of the Cold War. If some countries, or block of countries,
have not participated in these waves of democratization-or pseudo-democratizations
for the most part-this is attributed to cultural flaws. Thus,
the latest Freedom House report declares that "the roots
of freedom and democracy are weakest" in the Middle East
(emphasis added).
Nevertheless, let us take a closer look
at the latest numbers provided by Freedom House. Their data for
2001 show that only 23 percent of the Islamic countries have
electoral democracies; the comparable numbers are 38 percent
for Africa, 62 percent for Asian countries, 70 percent for post-Communist
countries in Europe and the CIS, and 91 percent for the Americas.
There are some revealing patterns within the Islamic countries.
Of the 16 Arab countries and six Central Asian Republics, not
one is democratic. When we exclude these two groups from the
Islamic countries-about a fifth of world's Islamic population-the
proportion of democracies in the remaining Islamic countries
rises to 47 percent. It may be noted that, in some cases, the
Freedom House classifications are questionable. If Iran and Malaysia
were classified as electoral democracies the last number would
go up to 59 percent, quite comparable to the number for Asian
countries.
Is there any rationale for excluding
the Arab and Central Asian countries from the Islamic count?
It turns out that in fact there are several. Since the end of
the Cold War, Western donors and multilateral institutions have
used their financial leverage to encourage democratization in
client countries. However, there is one significant exception
to this. These pressures are not applied to Islamic countries-mostly
in the Arab world-where democratization is likely to bring the
Islamists to power. On the contrary, the Arab despotisms-with
the exception of the 'rogue states'-have received political,
moral and intelligence support from Western powers in the repression
of their mainly Islamist opposition.
There are other factors stacking the
odds against democracy in the Arab world. Not the least of them
is Israel, a colonial-settler state, increasingly seen by Muslims
as the military fist of the United States in Zionist gloves.
After the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa, there is
no other conflict that can match the Israel-Arab conflict in
its durability or the way it has warped a whole region. The Israeli
presence in the Arab heartland magnified the security imperative
of the front-line Arab states, allowing them to build praetorian
states with the capacity to suppress all forms of dissent.
In the Arab world, oil has been another
negative factor. Of the sixteen Arab countries, nine are oil
rich, and all but three of them have quite small indigenous populations.
Their oil revenues and small populations have allowed most of
these countries to exempt their citizens from paying taxes. That
is one more strike against democracy: a citizenry that pays no
taxes lacks the moral authority to demand representation.
In addition, eight Arab countries are monarchies, and all but
two of them are also oil-rich. These oil monarchies were either
created by the British, or, in the case of Saudi Arabia and Oman,
they were supported and shored up by them, and, more recently,
they have been maintained as American proxies ensuring that Arab
oil remains in trusted hands. American commitment to these monarchies
was demonstrated during the Gulf War.
As for the six Central Asian countries,
we find that all of them are members of the defunct Soviet Union.
They have been run, since their independence, by former communist
bosses backed by Moscow. Russia maintains a military presence
in these countries, or has strong ties to their military, with
the intent of sealing their southern borders against Islamist
influence from Iran and Afghanistan. Thus, Russia now is playing
the same role in this region-opposing democratization-that United
States has played in the Arab world.
Yet Islam Remains A Problem
If Islam is 'normal', why is it still
a problem for United States?
This problem is born of a tension between a great power, United
States, and a historical adversary, Islam. United States enters
into this contest with its vast power, Christian evangelism,
the constraints of domestic lobbies, energy needs, and a vision
of itself as a civilizing force. Islam enters the stage as a
fractured, wounded civilization, humiliated by two centuries
of Western domination, divided into ineffectual political units,
without a core state, rich in oil resources it does not control,
with a colonial settler state planted in its heartland that daily
adds insults to its injuries. It appears that history has produced
an explosive dialectic.
And now this dialectic, in its most recent
convulsion, has produced a decentralized, secret, fanatical and
violent Islamist enemy which, because it cannot strike down its
domestic tormentors, has decided to attack the more vulnerable
United States. Having destroyed their only safe haven, and convinced
that the Islamists who intend to perpetrate terror are still
lurking in the shadows, United States desperately searches for
appropriate, accessible Islamic targets.
This is what is driving United States
into the camp of the warriors. The warriors offer us easy targets:
It's the Islamic world, stupid. Just get rolling and take
it out-root, stock and barrel. In the present climate, this temptation
will be hard to resist. It will be hard to resist because America's
evangelism, messianism, and civilizing missionary zeal have been
roused. Americans are also convinced of their overwhelming power
to inflict damage, without taking any losses.
We might perhaps take a leaf from Israel.
It too has long enjoyed the same overwhelming superiority of
power over the Palestinians. It too can rain down terror on the
Palestinians. But it has achieved neither security nor peace.
In this contest, the greater responsibility for restraint rests
upon United States. This burden lies with us because we are the
greatest power on earth-and this power lies in the hands of august
persons, educated, civilized, privileged, and possessing an understanding
of the world and the consequences of their actions which the
Islamist fanatics do not have. We must pray for United States
to carry this burden, and prove that is not only a great civilization-but
it also cares for civilized values.
Copyright: M. Shahid Alam. Shaid Alam
is Professor of Economics at Northeastern University. His recent
book, Poverty from the Wealth of Nations was published
by Palgrave (2000).He may be reached at m.alam@neu.edu.
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