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Islam and tribalism
by Irfan Hussain
WHAT do Afghanistan, Somalia,
Saudi Arabia, Mali, northern
Nigeria, Pakistan’s tribal areas
and Yemen have in common?
They all have Muslim
populations, are socially
backward, mistreat women, and
have a profound distrust of
reason and modern education.
Above all, they are tribal
societies that use Islam to
rationalize and uphold archaic
tribal values and laws.
Unsurprisingly, most of them are
caught up in violent conflicts
fuelled in equal parts by tribal
loyalties, faith and ignorance.
Shia-Sunni rivalry is one fault
line dividing the Muslim world.
The second one is the tension
between those aspiring to
democracy, and the autocrats who
oppress and misrule them.
But the third fault line derives
from history and social
development. Across the world,
nations that had nautical trade
links tended to be more
receptive to new ideas as ships
brought not just goods, but
books and travelers from distant
lands.
By contrast, societies that
evolved far from the sea tended
to be more inward-looking;
trading caravans covered
shorter routes in general, and
brought goods from similar
regions. And while Yemen traded
extensively for centuries, the
dominant north of the country
remained largely insulated from
the southern coast. The
trajectories that Muslim
societies took after their
conversion to Islam obviously
differed, but two broad
categories soon emerged.
Countries that had already
achieved a level of civilization
in their pre-Islamic period
retained their culture,
combining it with their new
Muslim identity.
Extremist Muslim groups have
given Islam a bad name
worldwide.
Persia, Cairo, Baghdad and
Damascus were all centers of
ancient civilizations and
retained their sophistication.
And after the Turkish
occupation of Constantinople,
the conquerors acquired features
of Byzantine culture. In India,
between the Sultanate period and
the fall of the Mughal Empire,
Delhi, Lucknow and Hyderabad
were synonymous with refinement
and gracious living. Perhaps
Islamic civilization reached its
apogee in Muslim Spain in
Grenada, Cordoba and Seville.
But Riyadh? Jeddah? Mogadishu?
For centuries, Muslim nations in
the hinterland played little
part in world affairs, and
contributed nothing to human
advancement. In fact, this
absence of creativity has
remained unchanged.
What has changed, however, is
their role in contemporary
affairs. In the case of Saudi
Arabia and the Gulf states, the
emergence of oil as an essential
source of energy a century or so
ago has transformed their
fortunes, and made them major
global players. But this stroke
of luck has done little to
change their tribal attitudes or
autocratic outlook.
The oil embargo of 1973 caused a
sudden spike in oil prices, and
gave Saudi Arabia a huge cash
injection that permitted it to
finance the export of its
literal, austere Wahabi version
of Islam around the world. It
has focused on madressahs in the
poorest Muslim countries where
children are made to memories
religious texts, but are taught
little else.
Wahabi influence and money has
thus transformed the social and
religious landscape across much
of the Muslim world. This vision
has fuelled extremism by
excluding other, less-rigid
interpretations of Islam,
deeming followers of different
sects non-believers.
The normal trajectory from
tribalism to liberal democracy
passes via feudalism and
industrialization. But as the
tribal societies mentioned here
have very little agriculture,
the feudal phase simply did not
emerge. And although oil has
transformed some of them into
wealthy urbanized states, this
change has not been accompanied
by a change in social attitudes.
Thus, while rich Saudis may
drive expensive cars and live in
lavish homes, most of them
remain Bedouins at heart.
This would be no bad thing had
it not been for the fact that
this adherence to a literalist
belief system, and the
conviction that anybody not
sharing these views is somehow
inferior, has major implications
for the world. It is no
coincidence that the majority of
the 9/11 bombers were Saudis.
While we find the self-styled
Islamic State’s violence
repugnant, we tend to forget
that it mimics the Saudi
penalties of beheading and
flogging, as well as the
repressive attitude towards
women. Harsh geography combined
with tribal laws often produces
a cruel penal system as we have
seen across the societies we
have examined briefly here. The
Taliban, Boko Haram, IS and Al
Qaeda are not that far from
Riyadh in the way they punish
those deemed as having
transgressed the rules.
Through mindless terrorism,
extremist Muslim groups today
have given Islam a bad name
across the world. Foreigners are
unlikely to analyze the fault
lines dividing the Muslim world
in an effort to understand what
lies behind the insanity
gripping so many Muslims.
And yet, by lumping the entire
Islamic world into one
monolithic whole, they overlook
the underlying tensions and
divisions. To this day, the West
has refused to acknowledge the
Saudi role in the export of the
toxic ideas that have inspired
two generations of terrorists.
Until we can learn to
distinguish between these
different strands of Islam, we
will not understand why and how
our faith has been hijacked.
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