Making sense of the Arab explosion

Pastoralist peoples exploding out of the their lands and conquering farming peoples is a recurring feature of human history.

Likely expansion of the Indo-Europeans

The Indo-Europeans did so with great historical consequences, expanding into Europe, the Iranian plateau and North India. They were the first of a recurring waves of steppe conquerors: Huns, Turks, and Mongols most famously. The Maghreb also generated at least two waves of Berber conquest across the Maghreb and into Spain.

The Arabian Peninsula produced the most startling, and also profoundly historically momentous, such wave of pastoralist conquest, the conquests of 632-750. But it did this only once. Only once was the Arabian peninsula the source of a major wave of conquest.

And the traditional story of how this happened, which is the Muslim traditional narrative, makes remarkably little sense. A story whose surviving textual sources start two centuries after the stated death of Muhammad in 632.

Mecca is an enormously implausible starting point. There is a dramatic paucity (pdf) of historical references to Mecca. (For the problems of the historicity of Mecca, see here, here, here, here and here.) It is a small settlement with a single well and no agricultural hinterland, that was not on any major trade route and well away from any imperial frontier.

Yathrib (Medina) is a bit better, but not much. It is larger, has an agricultural hinterland and is on a trade route. But is still too far away from the relevant frontiers and has no history of major political organisation. The Hejaz generally, particularly the section that Medina and Mecca are in, makes little sense as a breakout centre as there is simply not enough there. The most recent waves of conquest in the Arabian Peninsula, those of the al-Saud, go towards the Hejaz, not away from it.

Building a new history out of contemporary sources
This lecture by Peter von Sivers on the interactions between Christian theological controversies and struggles with what was happening with the Arabs in Northern Arabia, creates a hugely more plausible context. The action moves to the frontiers with the Roman ("Byzantine") Empire and Sassanian Empire. Both Empires had had Arab buffer-client states (Ghassanids and Lakhimids) that had been either much reduced or effectively eliminated by their Imperial sponsors by the start of the last and greatest of the Roman-Sassanid Wars, which lasted from 602 to 628. A decades-long struggle that exhausted both empires and left the Sassanian Empire mired in civil war and instability but the Arabs largely unaffected.

The unification of these former buffer states--areas used to significant political organisation and familiar with the practices, strengths and weaknesses of the exhausted Imperiums--into a single Arab kingdom provides a far more plausible basis for the Arab breakout.

Tom Holland's discussion of the broader similarities between the processes on the borders that saw the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the C5th with the Arab conquest of over half the Eastern Empire in the C7th fits nicely into this picture.

As does Dan Gibson's argument that Petra is the origin city, not Mecca. As indicated by the fact that the Qibla (direction of prayer wall) of all the original mosques point to Petra, not Mecca. (Of course, a self-published scholar does not have the same cachet.)

Nevertheless, Petra (a major trade and religious centre) is in the right place, has the right history and fits the descriptions of the city of the Prophet's birth.

That the Umayyads choose Damascus as their capital, and their successors, the Abbasids, built Baghdad as theirs, also emphasise the far greater strategic importance and value of Northern Arabia.

If we add in Prof. Fred Donner's lecture on trying to contextualise (i.e. assemble a history based on contemporary evidence) early Islam, we also get a picture compatible with what von Sivers and Holland are arguing (and, for that matter, Dan Gibson). Islam becomes a religion assembled out of the needs of imperial control to justify, first the Arabs as a ruling people, and then the Abbasids  ruling as a Muslim dynasty.

A process started by the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (r.644-705) who builds the original Dome of the Rock in 691-2, which contains the earliest Quran verses and the first explicit reference to Muhammad.

The written-down two centuries later, hundreds of miles away, traditional story of the origins of Islam and the Islamic conquests makes remarkably little historical sense. But we seem to be groping towards a picture, based on contemporary evidence, that makes a lot more sense.

It still leaves the Arab breakout and its consequences as a most extraordinary eruption into history. But not a nonsensical one.

[Cross posted at Skepticlawyer.]

Palestine's disastrous political leadership

I recently read Mark S. Weiner's The Rule of the Clan: What an Ancient Form of Social Organization Reveals About the Future of Individual Freedom. I heartily recommend the book, which includes various case studies--the comparison of the largely contemporaneous consolidation of state power against claims of kin, clan and lineage in Anglo-Saxon England with Arabia under Muhammad and the Rashidun Caliphs was particularly striking. Though Weiner seems to have largely missed the role of the Catholic Church's family revolution (such as banning cousin marriage) in the fading of clan in Latin Christendom.

One of Weiner's case studies is Palestine where, once again, we learn what a disaster Yasser Arafat was. Because Western colonial authorities came from liberal (in the broad sense) societies where clans were things of the distant past, their rule often had unfortunate effects on existing clan structures. (Though Afghanistan shows that the lack of colonial rule hardly improve matters.) Either way, the 2004 Arab Human Development Report (pdf) identifies "clannism" as both a problem and a response to weak states. As in the rest of the Arab world, Weiner notes that:

Traditionally, social and political power among Palestinians has been rooted in systems of lineage. These kinship systems include not only those of nomadic Bedouin tribesmen and the elite families who served as intermediaries between the Palestinian population and government administrators under the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate, but also hundreds of extended family groups of hamula, tracing their patrilineal descent to a common ancestor (loc 1342).

Such hamula:

... continue to play an important part in Palestinian politics and the administration of justice.
In particular, clans possess their own tribunals for resolving disputes within their lineage groups, and they abide by time-honored practices for reaching reconciliation and renewal  (islah) between disputing groups under recognised principles of customary law ('urn). They also observe a strict code of honour (mithaq al-sharaf) that requires members to take revenge (tha'r) against those who have injured their kin (loc 1342).

As Weiner points out:

The viability of a free and independent Palestinian state will depend not only on Israeli political will, but also whether these traditional systems of justice can be replaced with state institutions under democratic public control (loc 1355).

The first Intifada (1987-93) pushed Palestine in the direction of state building:

... it gave rise to a new generation of leaders known as the intifada elite, university-educated activists committed not to the interests of their kin groups but to the principles of nationalism. The intifada elite sought to advance the cause of Palestinian independent by developing the institutional structures of government and civil society. Their deep, grassroots connections gave them the authority and legitimacy to construct a modern, albeit revolutionary, state (loc 1355).

But then Arafat returned from his Tunisian exile in 1994, in the wake of the Oslo Accords. Anyone familiar with the history of the Palestinians as, in Abba Eban's words, the people who "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity" can guess what happens next:

To bolster his own power, Arafat undermined the institutions forged by the intifada elite and strengthened the power of the clans, which he could control directly through patronage (loc 1355).

Including an election law which, in the words of one scholar:

produced what is was designed to produce: a parliament of clan leaders, largely pliant to the wishes of Arafat and his cabinet (loc 1368).

The second Intifada (2000-2005) (including the Israeli response) then largely completed the process with the result that, as Weiner writes:

... clans now pose a major obstacle to practical institution builders seeking to establish the rule of law in the Palestinian Authority (loc 1368).

A problem that extends to Gaza:

The obstacle has been as vexing to the Islamists of Hamas in Gaza as it has been to the nationalists of Fatah in the West Bank. Although Islam has historically accommodated clan groups, at its heart it sets religious identity against tribal loyalty. Hamas is philosophically committed to this anticlan ideology, which regularly brings it into violent conflict with powerful Gazan families (loc 1382).

Choosing violence and hatred
But both Arafat and Hamas found conflict much easier than peace-building. Especially as it is such an excellent revenue source: the Hamas leadership appears to have become seriously wealthy from its anti-Zionist intransigence.

But choosing violence and hatred because it offers easier political returns goes back to the origins of the Palestinian "struggle". When Jewish settlers first started coming to Palestine at the time of the Ottoman Empire, they brought capital (physical, financial, human), raising local wages and expanding economic activity. Which then attracted migrants from other areas of the Middle East. (A proportion of Palestinians are also descendants of settlers: hence the UN definition of a Palestinian refugee only requires residence in Mandatory Palestine from 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948.)

Jewish settlers 1880s

The existing Palestinian elite had a choice: come to some mutually beneficial arrangement with the new settlers (Palestine was hardly crowded at the time) or play the ethno-religious hatred game. Some of the Palestinian elite was willing to do the former, even if it was just selling land to the newcomers.

Enter the new Grand Mufti (1921-1937) of Jerusalem, Mohammed Effendi Amin el-Husseini. Already implicated in anti-Jewish violence, he propagated an Arab nationalism that excluded the Jews--yet Jews had been residents of the region longer than Arabs. Hatred and violence pushed the Jews towards creating their own institutions, while defining a new Palestinian identity against Jews. Zionism was based on the principle that Jews were not safe in Europe (which turned out to be true), el-Husseini's approach made state-Zionism seem an increasingly necessary refuge in the Middle East as well. The 1929 Riots and even more the 1936-39 Arab Revolt further accelerated both processes.

Husseini saluting Muslim Waffen SS

Fleeing a British arrest warrant, el-Husseini ended up in Nazi Germany, actively supporting the Nazi war effort and a policy of expelling all Jews from Muslim countries (including Palestine). His continuing policy of no-compromise and no-place-for-Jews failed to build effective Palestinian institutions but greatly helped motivate the creation of Jewish ones. Culminating in the creation of Israel, the 1947-48 Israeli War of Independence and the fleeing or expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians (events known to Palestinians as the nabka, the catastrophe). It was record of utter disaster, which lost el-Husseini any credible leadership but never seems to have led to serious reconsideration among Palestinians--it was all the Jews' fault. His post-nabka All-Palestine Government was a shadow, lasting as long as it was convenient to Egypt and no longer.

Arafat's disastrous choices
In 1964, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) was formed. By 1969, Arafat became Chairman, a position he held until his death in November 2004. His only real achievement was survival. The War of Attrition (1967-1970) led Arafat's PLO to disastrous conflict with Jordan. Fleeing to Lebanon, the Palestinian military presence helped destabilise the weak Lebanese state, leading to the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990). Once again, the PLO was driven out, this time to Tunisia in 1982.

Arafat at UN 1974

The adoption of the PLO's Ten Point Program neither reassured the Israelis that negotiations could be serious nor united Palestinians, since the Rejectionist Front objected to any implied recognition of Israel. Based in Tunisia, Arafat was far from Palestine and seemed increasingly irrelevant.

Arafat was rescued by the First Intifada, which he seems to had nothing to do with. He negotiated the Oslo Accords, which allowed him to return to Palestine and proceeded, as noted above, to undo the best hope for an effective Palestinian state. Confronted with the consequences of sacrificing state-building for his own personal power, and his own inability to agree to any plausible peace deal with Israel, Arafat unleashed the Second Intifada which, as with all Arafat's resorts to violence, led to dead Palestinians (and rather fewer dead Israelis) and the Palestinian cause (yet again) going backwards, since it (including the Israeli responses) largely completed the process of reversing the building of effective Palestinian institutions.

Having rejected Israeli Premier Ehud Barak's peace offer without making any serious counter-offer of his own, it is no wonder that it became bipartisan US policy to wait for Arafat to die. Said death (November 2004) finally allowing the Second Intifada to end.

And so it continues
With an effective Palestinian state even further away, and Arafat's politics of patronage and corruption having rotted away Fatah's credibility, the openly genocidal Hamas decisively won the 2006 Palestinian elections. Which led to the further division of Palestine between Hamas-controlled Gaza and Fatah-dominated West Bank. With Hamas continuing the Arafat strategy of disastrous "victories".

A case can be made that the Palestinians have disastrous political leadership because they get the leadership they deserve. (In the words of a prominent Egyptian historian "they don't want to resolve their own problems".) But that same leadership either tolerates or approves religious preaching and educational materials that make it that much harder to reach any sort of agreement with Israel--both because it makes Israelis all that much more suspicious and fosters revanchist delusions among Palestinians.  Including making the Palestinian right of return an apparently untouchable totem of Palestinian politics while also clearly a terminal block to any peace agreement. Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, declared that:

... it’s better [that Palestinians] die in Syria than give up their right of return.

Yet the current spectacle of ethnic, clan and other mayhem and massacre in Libya, Syria and Iraq (and the fragility of Lebanon) provides a daily grim spectacle of why Israeli Jews would be mad to agree to any state where they became the minority. That even without the memory of what happened to Jewish minorities in the rest of the Middle East.

Yazidi refugees

By contrast with the disastrous record of Palestinian political leadership, the open, argumentative, democratic politics of Israel have been much more successful at, well, just about everything. Including absorbing hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab and Muslim country, when it has clearly been Arab policy to leave Palestinians as stateless sticks to beat Israel with. A policy the UN and EU have facilitated in various ways. (For example, Palestinians are the UN's only hereditary refugees.)

Nothing Hamas ever does, and little Fatah ever does, seemed to be seriously aimed in any way at convincing the Israeli electorate that a peace agreement can be had. By contrast, Nelson Mandela never seems to have lost sight of the fact that South African whites would have to be included in any final settlement. Mandela grasped that true victory was when the whites were no longer the enemy: there is no sign that the Palestinian leadership has ever even remotely grasped that. That contrast says all one has to say about the disastrous Palestinian leadership.


[Cross-posted at Skepticlawyer.]

The world has changed

A strain of thought I have noticed over the years with reference to international relations is "the world has changed" line: that circumstances have become so different that past fears or concerns are no longer germane to present realities. So much so, that such fears and concerns themselves have become the "real" problem.

Two cases where I have particularly come across it are the founding/continuation of Israel and concerns of neighbouring states about Russia. On this line of thought, the founding of the Jewish state was an unfortunate mistake and its continuation as a specifically Jewish state is an error. Similarly, the wish of Russian neighbours to draw closer to the West, either via joining NATO or the EU, is mistaken in that it just raises Russian fears and so perpetuates patterns that would die if said neighbours were more reasonable. Just as Arab responses are held to be "inflamed" by the existence of Israel.

The first thing to note is that it treats Arabs and Russians like children; squalling adolescents who have to be mollified and who are not really responsible if sufficiently "provoked". So, any continuation of past behaviour does not tell us anything about them or their societies, it's the fault of their neighbours for failing to "manage" them properly.

Strangely, this sort of logic does not get applied to, say, the United States.

Another effect of this reasoning, is that there is nothing that happens that will be permitted to justify the concerns of Jews or of Russia's neighbours. If Arabs or Russians misbehave, it is not because said concerns were justified, it is due to provocation, to failure to "manage" them.

Which is remarkable scapegoating, really. But it also has the effect of shielding the believer in "but the world has changed" line from any danger of being, well, wrong.

One sees, for example, the notion that Palestinian targeting of Jewish civilians is classic "asymmetric" warfare. The problem with that argument is that attacks on Jewish civilians predate the creation of Israel. What was "asymmetric" about any conflict then? Surely an alternative way of looking at the question is why persist with a strategy that has never worked for you, that has only driven your cause backwards? But that is a question you ask of adults (or potential adults), not permanent adolescents.

NATO enlargement

The original principle of Zionism was that Jews were not safe in Europe. Well, that turned out to be spectacularly true. Israel was founded a mere 3 years after the end of the Holocaust. Were Jews really meant to "come to their senses" in that time, to see that "the world had changed"?

Which was not the view of Jews in the Arab world, who fled to Israel and the West in large numbers. An experience which is either written out of history, or blamed on Zionism (the Arabs would not have misbehaved if it were not for …). Even though the mistreatment of Jews predated the creation of Israel. Nor is it merely a matter of specifically anti-Jewish massacres such as the Farhud in Iraq in 1941; the Hamidian massacres and Assyrian and Armenian genocides were hardly reassuring for any minority.

Since then, the experience of Lebanon, still less of Sudan, has also hardly been reassuring for the notion of mixed states in the Arab world. Nor has the experience of, say, the Copts in Egypt.

Now, we are seeing a Christian exodus from the Middle East. Predictably, also blamed on the existence of Israel. But that is what "the world has changed" line allows one to do: draw a line where not only does past history not count but neither does present behaviour; at least not for the folk for whom convenient scapegoats have been lined up.

It may also lead believers in "the world has changed" to mock concerns which turn out to be somewhat prescient. Sarah Palin in 2008 was mocked for suggesting a Russian invasion of the Ukraine was a possibility; while Romney seems to have read Russian policy rather better than President Obama. A Crimean crisis later, perhaps a little less scoffing would have been in order.

So, perhaps the world has not changed in the ways suggested. Perhaps Russian behaviour in past centuries does gives us an insight into the contemporary behaviour of the Russian state. Perhaps the never-goes-away Arab self-image as God's master race does continue to operate. Perhaps the inevitably fraught interaction between that latent (and not so latent) view, and the frustrations and temptations of modernity, were always going to be problematic for vulnerable minorities, unless they have something like the IDF to defend them. (A role that Arab Christians seem to be appreciating.) The Arab world has 5% of the world's population but generates 53% of its refugees, according to a recent UN report on Arab integration.

Two Bedouin Arab IDF soldiers

In which case, it is reasonable for otherwise vulnerable people and states to seek ways of becoming less vulnerable and better protected. After all, both the Sunni Arabs in Iraq and the Alawites in Syria concluded that the only safe strategy to being a minority was to seize the state themselves. Whatever the long-run outcomes, it was not a foolish belief; as subsequent events have demonstrated.

In both Syria and Iraq, minority-protection-through-state-domination was pursued through "secular" Ba'ath ideology. But in the Arab Middle East, "secular" can be just a way to obscure minority rule; or rule by military rather than mosque; or both. It is also why Arab nationalism has been a cause often taken up by Arab Christians, to elevate a common identity with Arab Muslims. Usually, however, by agreeing in the alienness of Jews. Not a path that has worked all that well; the Christians just became the next target in line.

Regarding the case of Israel, which is at least a Jewish majority state, and a democratic one at that, given that Palestinian politics only offers the corruption of Fatah or the fanaticism of Hamas, why would any Jew want to share a state with such? (Indeed, quite a few Israeli Arabs aren't keen either.) Just as all the Russian state offers is authoritarian corruption. (And sprucing national identity is a tried and true misdirection from other issues.) But expecting better behaviour is also an expectation for moral adults.

A recent UN report on Arab integration can't help but talk about Israel/Palestine with the normal "it's all Israel/Zionism's fault" grievance rhetoric. That most Arab countries do not permit Palestinians to become citizens--an obvious barrier to Arab integration one would have thought--does not seem worth a mention. (It has long been far easier for a Palestinian to become a citizen of the US or Australia than most Arab countries.) But keeping Palestinians as permanent refugees, as permanent sticks to beat Israel with, is the point. Hence third and fourth-generation "refugees".

Israel is also a very successful Middle Eastern state: perhaps worth learning a thing or two from? For example, how Israel was built, how Jewish refugees are integrated into Israeli society, why Israel is freer and more prosperous. But that would be an adult thing to do. Permanent adolescents don't ever get beyond pointing and whining; even when doing so would far better suit their cause.

But, then, being God's master race may get in the way of learning from lesser beings. Back in the C12th, ibn Jubayr noted that the Franj (i.e. crusader knights) treated their Muslim peasants better than the Muslim warriors did theirs. Rather than suggesting that his fellow Muslims learn from that, his response was "and that's why they have to be smashed". It is a real burden, being God's master race.

Believing the world has changed can be a very comforting belief. Especially when your analysis is organised so you can never be wrong. But putting entire peoples in the role of permanent adolescents, forever shielded from the role of being moral adults, is not a place worth going to.

NOTE: Since Israel/Palestine always threatens to become a Thread of Doom, civility and relevance will be particularly stringently policed in comments.

[Cross-posted at Skepticlawyer.]

The uses of grievance

The creation of Israel created two sets of refugees, one folk constantly talk about and one folk almost never talk about.

The one folk constantly talk about are the Palestinians. The one folk people almost never talk about are Jewish refugees from Arab lands. Both refugee flows were of similar size, but have had very different outcomes.

The Jewish refugees from Arab lands fled to Israel and the West, where they were accepted as citizens and have become part of the fabric of their new societies. Their acceptance and integration has been so successful, that they have effectively vanished from historical consciousness. Which has the effect of absolving Arab countries from any blame and Israel (and the West) from any credit.

Conversely, with the limited exception of Jordan, no Arab country has been willing to accept Palestinians as residents or citizens (via). They have no identity except as refugees; as people with a traumatic past but no future and so an endlessly empty present. They remain sticks to beat Israel with, the only sense in which their Arab “brothers” value them at all. The only future they are permitted to conceive is one where Israel is destroyed; that is the only way they are permitted to stop being refugees.

Indeed, their status as refugees is hereditary. Provided you have an ancestor who was resident within the 1948 boundaries of Israel for two or more years and then fled, you are a Palestinian refugee (according to the UN definition). Apparently, this status as a refugee is eternal, existing as long as Israel does.

So, this is next thing the vanishing of Jewish refugees from historical consciousness does: it absolves Arabs of any responsibility. Only Israel has responsibility.

The boxing of Palestinians into the status of permanent refugees is a wonderfully effective use of—indeed, insistence upon—grievance. One the international community is prepared (at least formally) to endlessly pander to.

There is a third thing the vanishing of Jewish refugees from historical consciousness does: it strips the context away from the plight of Christians in the Middle East. For, just as Arab nationalism drove the Jews away, defining them as “not Arabs”, so the rise of Islamic radicalism is driving the Christians away (via), defining them as drastically inferior to Muslims, as alien to Muslim society. Christians have dropped from 20% of the population of Muslims lands a century ago to 5% now. This process of driving the Christians away is occurring with particular intensity within Palestinian lands. In the West Bank and Gaza, they have dropped from 15% of the population to 2% in much shorter period.

The only Middle Eastern country in which Christians are flourishing is, of course, Israel where their proportion of the population has increased dramatically.

The Arab and Muslim Middle East has shown itself, over decades, to be hostile to minorities. As soon as they gained a measure of power, the Palestinians have shown themselves particularly so. Their sense of grievance is profoundly narcissistic. It is all about them; any sense of empathy for others (even for fellow Palestinians who fail to be Muslim) is patently impotent.

This is yet another reason why the One State “solution” to Israel-Palestine is such an obvious nonsense. What makes the situation of the Jews and Christians of Israel different from the (mostly absent) Jews and (increasingly vanishing) Christians of the rest of the Middle East is the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). The Jews and Christians of Israel can defend themselves in a way that Jews and Christians in the rest of the Middle East could or cannot. Take the IDF away, and they immediately become as vulnerable as the Jews and Christians have proved to be in the rest of the Middle East.

What the treatment of Jews and Christians in the Middle East—particularly in the Palestinian lands—shows is that the powerholders and their supporters in these countries have absolutely no interest in conciliating the Jews and Christians of Israel. They literally have nothing to offer them except oppression and exile. They make the case for preserving Israel and the IDF absolutely clear.

To truly understand the contemporary Middle East, you have to understand the story of the Jewish refugees from Arab lands. Once you do, the argument for preserving Israel and the IDF becomes overwhelming.

ADDENDA: Just to make my point, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia has called for all churches in the Middle East Arabian peninsula to be destroyed.

Why did the Middle East select for monotheism?

A variation on the Whig interpretation of history that still has surprising sway is of human religious history as having a “natural” progression from animism through polytheism to monotheism. It has led to such nonsense as the psychotic tyrant Akhenaton being written up positively solely because he was monotheist (or, at least practised monolatry: Kerry Greenwood’s Out of the Black Land provides a revealing fictional treatment). This animism-polytheism-monotheism “progression” is an interpretation that has nothing to recommend it, apart from monotheist self-satisfaction.

If one doubts that polytheism is perfectly compatible with highly sophisticated societies, I refer you to classical Rome and Greece; to India, China and Japan. If you doubt it is perfectly compatible with thoroughly modern societies, I refer you to Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. If you think monotheism is necessary for a highly compassionate morality, I refer you to Jainism and Buddhism.

Not only does the animism-to-polytheism-to-monotheism progression fail as a moral and intellectual claim, it fails as history in the quite basic sense that monotheism is purely a product of the Middle East. It spread from there around the globe (indeed, it is still doing so), but it evolved nowhere else.

The Middle East itself produced not one but several forms of monotheism: the proto-monotheism of Zoroastrianism; the monolatry-turned-monotheism of Judaism; the universalising monotheism of Christianity; the universal dominion monotheism of Islam; plus various offshoots of the above. Monotheism in its various forms now thoroughly dominates the religious landscape of the Middle East. So, what is it about the Middle East that it has repeatedly selected for monotheism?

Social geography
When looking to a recurring pattern in a particular region, it is a good idea to start with social geography; the patterns of interactions of people with the terrain.

By the time monotheism first arose, the enduring patterns of Middle Eastern social geography were already in place. River-valley civilisations dominated by major urban centres interacted with herding pastoralists living in the surrounding deserts, mountains, plateaus and plains. Their interactions were those of trade, raid and conquest: interspersed with retaliation and protection payoffs. The fear of the settled (and thus vulnerable) farmers had for the mobile (and thus dangerous) pastoralists is well expressed in the Biblical story of Cain and Abel.

The great conquering peoples of the Middle East after the demise of the last Mesopotamia-originating empire (also subject of a famous Biblical story)—the Iranians, Arabs, Turks and Mongols—were all pastoralist peoples. Pastoralist conquest became so much a pattern of the region that Abd-ar-Rahman Abu Zayd ibn Muhammed ibn Muhammed ibn Khaldun, statesman, jurist, historian and scholar, in his The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, written in 779 AH (1377 AD), famously developed his cycles of history based on it.

His analysis is that rule is based on the rise of group feeling (asabiyyah) that leads to rulership over others (pp 107-8). Having conquered urban lands, the ruling group becomes distracted by the luxuries available that weakens group-feeling and courage. This proceeds until it is swallowed up by other nations or dynasties (p.109).

Ibn Khaldun’s theory is based on internal dynamics and external response. Expenses grow (p.134), the ruling group become complacent and lose their edge (p.135), rulers become more isolated seeking people directly beholden to them (p.137) leading finally to dynastic senility and wastefulness, making them ripe for eventual replacement (p.142). Decay in authority usually starts at the edges of the dynasty’s territory (p.250). He repeats the theory in different words at various places (e.g. p.246ff), usually providing historical examples of the various processes. Russian demographer Peter Turchin has developed the theory further.

A review essay on a book on tribalism in the Middle East puts ibn Khaldun's model well:

… outlying tribes tied together by traditional kinship solidarities conquer, settle, and rule a state. In time kinship loyalties loosen, the rulers urbanize and grow effete, their state loses control over distant tribes, and the cycle begins again.

Precisely because herding life is mobile, kinship and lineage provide protective and support services. This provides a strong, but constrained, source of social solidarity. As the Arab proverb goes “me against my brother, my brother and I against our cousin, my brother and cousin against the stranger”.

What began as a response to the demands of pastoralism can also deal with other sources of social insecurity. In the words of an enlightening review essay on Pakistan:

At the heart of Lieven’s account of Pakistan is kinship, pervasive networks of clans and biradiris (groups of extended kin) that he identifies as “the most important force in society,” usually far stronger than any competing religious, ethnic, or political cause. Several millennia of invasions, occupations, colonizations, and rule by self-interested states resulted in a “collective solidarity for interest and defense” based on kinship becoming paramount in the area that is Pakistan.

Monotheism’s advantages
The aforementioned great conquering pastoralist peoples—Iranians, Arab, Turks and Mongols—were all, with the exception of the Mongols (who came from furthest away and were profoundly affected by the long history of interaction with China), in their conquering phase, monotheist. Monotheism offers a motivating identity and framework of expectations able to operate across lineages. The common identity of believer is, in the right circumstances, able to unite people across otherwise competing lineages—Muhammad’s success in being the first person to unify most of Arabia is a striking example of this.

The common identity of believer can also unite across the pastoralist-farmer divide and do so in a way which gives an identity to cling to in adversity: both clearly important in early Hebrew history. Given that the pastoralist-farmer barrier in the Middle East can be particularly porous, depending on circumstances, an identity that can be persisted with across it has clear selection advantages.

[Read the rest at Skepticlawyer or at Critical Thinking Applied]

Son of Hamas (1)

Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue and Unthinkable Choices by Mosab Hassan Yousef is a true story that is much more outlandish than any Hollywood scriptwriter would be allowed to get away with. The eldest son of one of the founders of Hamas (Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah: Islamic Resistance Movement) works for Israeli security (Shin Bet) and converts to Christianity.

His story starts with the young Yousef being stopped at an Israeli checkpoint, arrested, taken to an Israeli prison and beaten: Israelis being horrid to Palestinians, a familiar motif.

We then move to the story of his grandfather, Sheikh Yousef Dawood, iman of the village of Al-Jainya (population about 400) in Jordanian-ruled, Israeli-occupied West Bank and Mosab’s father, Sheikh Hassan Yousef, the favourite son who followed his own father, Sheik Hassan, into being an Islamic cleric. As Mosab explains, being a religious leader in Islam is a very broad and authoritative social role:

Because values and traditions have always meant more to the Aranb people than government constitutions and courts, men like my grandfather often became the highest level of authority. Especially in areas where secular leaders were weak or corrupt, the word of a religious leader was considered law (p.7).

Mosab’s father was assigned to a mosque in the city of Ramallah, where religious observance was very lax. He worked hard, with limited success, to build up the mosque. Sheik Hassan then sent his son to Jordan, for more advanced Islamic study (Pp5-8).

Mosab then takes us through the history of the Muslim Brotherhood; its founding by Hassan al-Banna, its struggles with the Egyptian monarchy, its involvement in Nasser’s coup and its suppression by Nasser. We get a sense of the power and effectiveness of the organisation based on the side of Islam that cares for widows, orphans and the poor, that engages in welfare and facilitates education as well as that side which leads to jihad (Pp9-11). Mosab’s father was trained in Jordan by the Muslim Brotherhood, energised and engaged by the positive side of Islam. Mosab doubts that his father has ever allowed himself to see the other side of Islam:

Islamic life is like a ladder, with prayer and praising Allah as the bottom rung. The higher rungs represent helping the poor and needy, establishing schools, and supporting charities. The highest rung is jihad (Pp11-12).

Muslims vary where they are on the ladder:

Traditional Muslims stand at the food of the ladder, living in guilt for not really practising Islam. At the top are fundamentalists, the ones you see in the news killing women and children for the glory of the god of the Qur’an. Moderates are somewhere in between.
A moderate Muslim is actually more dangerous than a fundamentalist, however, because he appears to be harmless, and you can never tell when he has taken that next step towards the top. Most suicide bombers began as moderates (p.12).

Mosab never felt able to talk to his father about where what he had sought had led, such not being done in his culture.

Then it is on to 1977-1987, when Mosab’s father was at the forefront of trying to breathe life into the stagnated Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. Mosab’s father married the sister of one of the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, who had come to Palestine with Mosab’s father. Mosab was born, the first of several children. We are introduced to the tragedy of permanent refugee camps: places not built to function properly because they are only “temporary”—physical inadequacy creating social dysfunction breeding pathological, grievance politics. Consider Al-Amari covering about 22 acres, one of 19 West Bank camps:

By 1957, its weathered tents have been replaced by wall-to-wall, back-to-back concrete houses. Streets were the width of a car, their gutters flowing with raw sewage like rivers of sludge. The camp was overcrowded; the water undrinkable. One lone tree stood at the center of the camp. The refugees depended on the United Nations for everything—housing, food, clothing, medical care, and education (Pp13-14).

Reading Son of Hamas, it becomes clear that one of the fundamental failures of Israeli policy has been failing to provide avenues for Palestinians to develop aspirations beyond the politics of grievance. (That UN, Arab and EU policy have all conspired to do the same is true, but beside the point—Israel bears the consequences far more than any of them.)

Mosab’s father, living simply on a limited income, was successful in reinvigorating the local mosque. In 1987, he took a second job teaching Muslim students in a private West Bank Christian school. His wife raised their six children (four sons, two daughters). Mosab briefly tells the story of his upbringing, raised in love, admiring his father greatly, the enormous local cemetery looming over his neighbourhood (Pp13-18).

Then it is back to the Muslim Brotherhood. It having expanded to include many educated and professional folk, a dispute erupted between the Gazan and the West Bank leaders, the former wanting to take a stand against Israeli occupation the latter not wanting to repeat the mistakes of the Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria where attempted coups had led to great repression. In 1986, a secret meeting in Hebron of seven people, including Mosab’s father, founded HAMAS, deciding to take the next step of civil disobedience. Mosab describes this as his father taking a few more steps up the ladder of Islam (Pp18-20).

Hamas was looking for a pretext to start an uprising. It came in typical Middle Eastern style, via a tragic misunderstanding. An Israeli was stabbed to death, four Palestinians died in a traffic accident, the rumour spread that they were killed in retaliation and the First Intifada was sparked off (p.21).

Mosab’s father is arrested by the Israelis and Mosab flirts with becoming a stone-throwing adolescent. The detention of Hamas leaders fails to suppress the Intifada, which becomes more violent: Palestine, and particularly Gaza, being a land with many grievances but a dearth of alternative aspirations. (And some of the resistance tactics seem to be designed to increase grievances and frustrate alternative aspirations, such as school strikes.)

Mosab contrasts the PLO, (“even as a young boy, I saw the PLO as corrupt and self-serving” [.p33]) and Hamas, which was rising in power and influence. The arrest of Mosab’s father meant his family lost the extra income he earned teaching Muslim students at a Christian school; the family struggled on little income with little or no support. His father was released, and they used Mosab mother’s dowry gold to buy a house: his father was to be continually re-arrested and released, putting the family under great strain. The Intifada became increasingly violent, as younger, more radical activists demanded blood for those (largely teenagers) killed by Israeli soldiers: Israel now faced attacks from within its own borders (Pp34ff).

The kidnapping and murder of an Israeli border policeman led to a massive Israeli crackdown on Hamas, which saw Mosab’s father deported to Lebanon. Mosab’s family were not cut off from Mosab’s father, except for occasional glimpses on news bulletins. The deportation led to Hamas and Hezbollah forging links (p.51). Then came the profound shock and surprise of the Oslo Accords, which polls found were strongly supported by Palestinians, but not Mosab’s father, who trusted neither the PLO nor the Israelis (p.52).

Baruch Goldstein’s massacre of 29 worshippers in a Hebron mosque while wearing his IDF uniform set off further cries for vengeance and was followed by the first official suicide bombing (Pp53-4). Arafat and the PLO made a pragmatic argument for the Oslo Accords as the best deal available in adverse circumstances: Hamas remained opposed (Pp55-6).

Mosab explains that Hamas was not an organisation in the conventional sense, “it was a ghost, an idea”. Gaoling, or even killing, its leaders did nothing to stop its growth. While the PLO was ultimately a nationalist body, seeking a national solution:

Hamas, on the other hand, Islamized the Palestinian problem, making it a religious problem. And this problem could be resolved only with a religious solution, which meant that it could never be resolved because we believed that the land belonged to Allah. End of discussion. Thus for Hamas, the ultimate problem was not Israel’s policies. It was the nation-state Israel’s very existence (p.58).

Mosab asked his father about a suicide bombing that had killed many civilians, including women and children. His father replied with a story about being unable to kill an insect. Suicide bombing was not something he would do himself, but he could rationalise somebody else doing it. “At that moment, my view of my father grew much more complicated” (p.59).

The assassination of Rabin, Arafat’s negotiation partner, led to the PLO repressing Hamas, imprisoning many of its leader and activists—including Mosab’s father in Arafat’s compound. Hating Israel and secular Palestinians, Mosab moved to trying to get guns. The classmate involved with him was stupid enough to talk about the guns (which turned out not to work) on the phone. He and Mosab were both arrested (Pp61ff).

In prison Mosab was tortured (fairly lightly, by the grim standards of the Middle East). Then he is interrogated, politely and respectfully, over a decent meal, by Loai, the Shin Bet captain for his area, before being moved into solitary confinement for days. Loai offers him the opportunity to work for Shin Bet, which Mosab accepts as making the best of a bad situation. Mosab continues to be imprisoned, ending up in Megiddo prison, dominated by Hamas (the various Palestinian organisations police their own inmates). Mosab’s story becomes a prison story, detailing the fetid prison atmosphere of fear and suspicion. He comes the clerk for the internal Hamas files on inmates, attempting to identify collaborators. Files that were highly pornographic, detailing bizarre sexual confessions (Pp98-9). He sees Islam at its most unattractive:

… the Muslims I saw in Megiddo bore no resemblance to my father. They judged people as if they thought they were greater than Allah himself. They were mean and petty, blocking a television screen to prevent us seeing a bareheaded actress. They were bigots and hypocrites, torturing those who got too many red points—though only the weakest, most vulnerable people seem to accumulate those points. Prisoners who were well connected walked with immunity (p.106).

Mosab’s father was released from Palestinian Authority detention, to be imprisoned by the Israelis in Megiddo prison. Mosab is sentenced and released at the end of his term.

Two months later, he is contacted by Loai. In various highly secure safe houses, he is simply engaged in conversation about life in general. He is steadily trained, experiencing it as a process of Shin Bet “building him up”, paid some money and then given his first assignment: go to university and get his bachelor’s degree. The Shin Bet staff are polite and respectful, including of his religion: he finds the person Loai most resembles is his father. Mosab’s worldview is profoundly shaken (Pp113ff).

Then, literally at Suleiman the Magnificent’s Damascus Gate in Jerusalem (where Saul of Tarsus had his famous visionary encounter), Mosab encounters an Arabic-speaking Brit who gets him interested in a Bible study group. The New Testament in Arabic becomes his reading companion, along with attendance at the study group and church services. The contrast between the morality of the Gospels, and the religious engagement of his new Christian friends, with his experience of Islam is a revelation that steadily eats away at him over the next few years (Pp119ff).


This review is concluded in my next post.

Why Latin Christendom overtook Islam (and Orthodox Christendom)

Scholars and others write about the golden age of Islam, how it created a brilliant, urban and urbane, sophisticated and scientifically curious civilisation when Latin Christendom was sunk in a Dark Age.

This is broadly true. Islam was the crossroads civilisation, the one in touch with all the other major civilisations of Eurasia, and so able to mix and match ideas. It had access to the achievements of Greek science. It had a common language of scholarship (Arabic). It used these advantages in a flourishing period of Classical Islam. Then Islam declined into a spreading stagnation—intellectual, scientific, technological, economic. So, the question arises, as Bernard Lewis famously asked, what went wrong?

What did not go wrong was the West. With exception of the Reconquista, Islam spent a thousand years generally advancing against Christendom until the Battle of Vienna in 1683. The stagnation of Islam was not caused by the West: on the contrary, it was the stagnation of Islam that allowed the West to counter-attack successfully and conquer most of Islam, to the extent that, by 1942, the only Islamic countries which were not protectorates or colonies were Turkey and Afghanistan. Even in 1453, when Sultan Mehmet II was about to take Constantinople, he was using guns which relied on infidel gunners.

So, what advantages did Latin Christendom, perched on a bunch of peninsulas on the edge of the Eurasian landmass, have?

The key factors are:
A range of political forms.
A range of legal forms.
Stronger use of the hereditary principle.
Effective competitive jurisdictions.
Belief in an ordered cosmos.
Ability to harness talent.

Most of these applied to also advantage Latin Christendom over Orthodox Christendom, which had the further disadvantage of suffering far more from Islamic and Mongol depredations.
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A range of political forms
Islam essentially only had one political model: autocracy. The autocrat might merely be a warrior king, or he might be able to claim extra religious sanction, but all Muslim rulership was autocratic. By contrast, Latin Christendom had republics, self-governing cities, hereditary monarchies and elective monarchies that varied notably within themselves and typically came to incorporate the representative principle, as it spread from the innovations of Alfonso IX of Leon and Castile. This political variety meant that Latin Christendom had far more institutional possibilities for the selection processes of history to work on.

A range of legal forms
Although Islam has a variety of schools of jurisprudence, it has only one basic set of laws, Shar’ia. While Islamic law was taken to come from God, in Latin Christendom, all law was human, even canon law. Latin Christendom had a wide range of legal system and laws, all of which were alterable. Latin Christendom had far more possibilities for the selection processes of history to work on plus the capacity to engage in legal experiments far more easily.

Stronger use of the hereditary principle
Not only was the hereditary principle much more widespread in Latin Christendom, applying strongly throughout the political and social structure, so much more stable across the society (since those who might attack hereditary suzerains were themselves holding their lands and service on the basis of the hereditary principle). It was also, with the evolution of primogeniture, much more stable in its internal operation within dynasties and landed families.

In Islam, warriors held tax farming rights, not lands, and these rights were revocable at any time, and were not heritable, being allocated according to the whim of the ruler. Amin Malouf contrasts the situation where peaceful succession occurred moderately regularly in the crusader states with the surrounding Muslim states thus:

Nothing of the sort existed in the Muslim states. Every monarchy was threatened by the death of its monarch, and every transmission of power provoked civil war … Let us note that in the Arab world the question is still on the agenda, in scarcely altered terms, in the latter part of the twentieth century.

Being landlords, the warrior elite of Latin Christendom had, compared to the Muslim warrior elite, much more interest in the long-term productivity of land and peasants, since that preserved (and hopefully expanded) their children(s) inheritance (what economists call longer time horizons).

Muslim traveller and chronicler ibn Jubayr noticed the difference, again contrasting the crusader states of Outremer with their Muslim neighbours:

Upon leaving Tibin (near Tyre), we passed through an unbroken skein of farms and villages whose lands were efficiently cultivated. The inhabitants were all Muslims, but they live in comfort with the Franj—may God preserve us from temptation! Their dwellings belong to them and all their property is unmolested. All the regions controlled by the Franj in Syria are subject to this same system: the landed domains, villages, and farms have remained in the hands of the Muslims. Now, doubt invests the heart of a great number of these men when they compare their lots to that of their brothers living in Muslim territory. Indeed, the latter suffer from the injustice of their coreligionists, whereas the Franj act with equity.

Incentives make a difference. There will be more investment in the creation and maintenance of productive assets, and better relations with people working those assets, the longer the time horizon of those controlling said assets. Over centuries, even a marginal difference in such things generation after generation will add up to major differences in economic outcomes and institutional development.

Effective competitive jurisdictions
Rulership in the Muslim world was autocratic. It was also unstable. The pattern of pastoralist conquest of settled river valleys establishing regimes which decay and are then replaced, as described by ibn Khaldun—and whose dynamics have been further explicated by more recent anthropological work, particularly by Phillip Carl Salzman—created fluctuating and unstable rulerships. This was not a good basis for institutional evolution. In particular, it was not a good basis for competitive jurisdictions to operate effectively in driving institutional development. Particularly once most of the Muslim Middle East became dominated by Ottoman rule.

Contrasting with the Middle Eastern pattern of isolated river valleys and coastal plains constantly threatened by nomadic hinterlands, Europe—as a mountainous peninsula of peninsulas, which inhibited unification ambitions while promoting the flow of ideas, goods, people and capital—had greater continuity in polities and in jurisdictional divisions. Competitive jurisdictions operated over time to develop institutions that embodied social learning including stronger defense of private property, more dispersed power arrangements driven by competition amongst jurisdictions to attract capital (financial, human, etc).

The same processes operated in the mountainous archipelago of Japan, but with less variety in law, political forms and cultural influences to work with. The Reformation—with its creation of greater religious variety—and the global break-out with the age of exploration making Latin Christendom the crossroads civilisation—the one in contact with all the others so able to mix and match ideas and capacities—magnified the effectiveness of competitive jurisdictions in driving technological, commercial and institutional development.

Belief in an ordered cosmos
From the C11th to the C13th centuries, all three of the Abrahamic monotheisms (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) struggled with the impact of Aristotelian philosophy on the tradition of scriptural revelation. In Judaism (as epitomised by Maimonedes) and in Christianity (as epitomised by St Thomas Aquinas) Aristotelianism—and the belief in an ordered creation—won.

Not so in Islam. There the Aristotelianism of Ibn Rushd aka “Averroes” (whose writings were very influential in Latin Christendom) was decisively defeated by the occasionalism of al Ghazali. Mainstream Islam turned its back on the notion of an ordered cosmos, without which the further development of science is impossible. Even in contemporary Islam, there are continuing difficulties with science and a low rate of research and development.

I would argue that this outcome in Islam was significantly driven by the context of tribal society and predatory autocracy encouraging a particular conception of God whereby to suggest He was bounded in any way was a slight on His honour. Conversely, the notion of God—as the ultimate Good Authority—creating a structured order rather than being an arbitrary tyrant fitted in with Classical, Germanic, Celtic and (ultimately) Christian and Jewish notions of proper authority. Though, in both Christianity and Judaism, there were adherents of untrammelled Godly authority, these have always tended to lose out over time.

This belief in an ordered cosmos, assisted by the religious diversity after the Reformation (where priestly control over printing in Catholic Europe encouraged printing of banned books in Protestant Europe), the reaction against the Wars of Religion, plus the wealth of information brought back by the voyages of discovery and by exploration of the cosmos undermining Aristotelian physics, set the stage for the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment and—coupled with the long-term effects of competitive jurisdictions and the diversity and forces for productiveness feeding into that—to Western economic, technological, intellectual and (for a while) territorial domination of the globe.

Ability to utilise talent
‘Islam’ literally means ‘submission’. A Muslim is ‘one who submits’. That is, submits to the word (and rule) of God. The trouble is, Islam is a system of layered submission, which turns it into a system of domination: believers dominate non-believers under the dhimmi system, men dominate women. In Latin Christendom, women were rulers and generals (Æthelflæd, Lady of Mercia, Mathilda of Tuscany), intellectual figures (Hildegard of Bingen), saints (Theresa of Avila), writers (Marie de France, Christine de Pizan) and so on in ways that were simply not true of Islam at the same time. There were far more women rulers in Middle Eastern history before Islam conquered the region than after.

Germanic law, Celtic law, Roman law before Christianisation all treated women much better than did Sharia. Even after Christianisation, Roman law and canon law were still better for women than Sharia. Which meant that Latin Christendom was better at harnessing the skills of its women than was Islam. As George Patton observed:

To me it seems certain that the fatalistic teachings of Muhammad and the utter degradation of women is the outstanding cause for the arrested development of the Arab. He is exactly as he was around the year 700, while we have kept on developing.

Latin Christendom used female talent much more than did Islam, an advantage that has accelerated over time.

In embracing new knowledge and technology, Latin Christendom became Western Civilisation. As a result of the Enlightenment, Western Civilisation also began to harness the skills of its Jewish population in ways that Islam had long since abandoned and far more than Islam had ever done. Consider simply how many Jews have won Nobel Prizes, particularly in science.

Islam as a system of domination
Classical Islam was far more tolerant (at least outside Arabia), and far better at harnessing the talents of conquered dhimmis, than later Islam. That was due to the shift in the costs of intolerance. When Muslims were a small ruling layer over a majority non-Muslim population, the costs of intolerance were high. As Muslims became a larger and larger proportion of the population, the costs of intolerance fell and its level rose. The long-term tendency of Islam has been to become less tolerant, not more. Ottoman rule was the most murderously intolerant at the end of its rule, not the beginning. Just as the Jews fled the Muslim Middle East after the creation of Israel, so Christians have also been leaving.

Which means that Islam is less and less able to harness the talents and perspectives of non-believers (except as guest workers).

One can see similar patterns within Latin Christendom of intolerance increasing as its costs fell (Norman-cum-Hohenstaufen Sicily; Reconquista Spain with the expulsion of the Jews and the Moriscos) but the dominant long-term tendency in Western civilisation has been very much the other way.

Winston Churchill, in his book on the Sudan campaign of 1898, The River War, famously wrote:

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries.
Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.
The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.

There is something in what Churchill says. Islam is a universal monotheism without the softening factors of “love thy neighbour”, “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” and natural law theory. The things that saved Christianity from itself do not operate in Islam. One will search in vain for a text in Islam of similar sentiments and similar authority as Pope Paul III’s 1537 encyclical Sublimus Dei:

… to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.

It is clearly in the intellectual tradition that fed into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Something that has not escaped the attention of, for example, the Islamic Republic of Iran:

In his 7 December 1984 statement to the UN General Assembly's Third Committee, the Iranian representative, Mr. Rajaie-Khorassani, again put on record his country's position on the UDHR:

In his delegation's view, the concept of human rights was not limited to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Man was of divine origin and human dignity could not be reduced to a series of secular norms [...] certain concepts contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights needed to be revised. [Iran] recognized no authority or power but that of Almighty God and no legal tradition apart from Islamic law. As his delegation had already stated at the thirty-sixth session of the General Assembly, conventions, declarations and resolutions or decisions of international organizations, which were contrary to Islam had no validity in the Islamic Republic of Iran.[...] The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which represented a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition, could not be implemented by Muslims and did not accord with the system of values recognized by the Islamic Republic of Iran; his country would therefore not hesitate to violate its provisions, since it had to choose between violating the divine law of the country and violating secular conventions.

Islamic countries have felt the need to adjust the Declaration, issuing the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam. It is precisely the universalism of the Universal Declaration (identified as “Judaeo-Christian”) that is objected to on Islamic grounds. (That there is an Organisation of Islamic Conference is revealing in itself: no one thinks to have an organization of Christian, Catholic or Buddhist states, for example.)

It is worth noting that as soon as the “love thy neighbour” precept is subverted, the behaviour of Christianity converges with that of Islam as the dynamics of universal monotheism—of supporting a (masculinized) divine sovereignty against which no human claims have standing—take over. Hence the Christian origins of dhimmitude, Georgian and Regency England and C18th Netherlands killing men for having sex at about the same rate as that of contemporary Iran as well as common law denial of property and other legal rights of married women.

Or sometimes even more so than in Islam. Consider the famous reaction of the Ottoman Sultan regarding the tens of thousands of Jews whose wealth and skills were now his to benefit from after Ferdinand and Isabella's expulsion of the Jews:

How can you call Ferdinand of Aragon a wise king, the same Ferdinand who impoverished his own land and enriched ours?

(Note the Sultan apparently does not consider Isabella worth noting as a ruler in her own right.)

Still, in its purest form, gospel Christianity bans one from using God to oppress one’s fellow human beings. In its purest form, the Islam of the Qur’an and the hadith permits, indeed requires, believers to use God to oppress their fellow human beings. People being people, Christians have often done precisely that, while many Muslims have failed to do so. But the underlying logics remain what they are.

Indeed, the most important dynamic in Christian history is that priests are the means by which Christianity is propagated but priests get their power from being “gatekeepers of righteousness”, from subverting love thy neighbour so that they can say who is in and who is out, who is up and who is down. Hence it is very apposite that the patron saint of preachers was a queer-hating, Jew-hating misogynist. That dynamic of propagating-but-subverting is at the heart of Christian history. Christ, after all, was crucified for subverting and denying priestly authority—what were the moneylenders in the Temple if not use of God to oppress one’s fellow humans?

The Quakers rejection of priesthood may not be coincidental to their very positive reputation. [Just as the oppressive history of the Catholic Church owes so much to its very elevated notion of priesthood.]

Plague and knowledge
The point is sometimes made that Islam suffered particularly from the effects of the Black Death. But, of course, so did Latin Christendom. The difference was that the Black Death in Middle Eastern Islam led to the undermining of commercial vitality and increased autocratic domination. Conversely, the Black Death in Latin Christendom had reverse effects: leading to more technological dynamism, commercialisation and mercantile power.

Similarly, Latin Christendom made massively more use of becoming the cross-roads civilisation than Islam had when it was so. Indeed, the exploration efforts of Prince Henry the Navigator, and Isabella’s sponsorship of Christopher Columbus, were both specifically aimed at outflanking Islam. At which they were spectacularly successful. (Henry and Isabella both being crusaders.)

The only reason the Muslim Middle East matters nowadays is because of oil: itself parasitic on Western technology. There are a lot of reasons for the long-term failure of Islam, but they are internal to Islam—to Islam as a religion and to the geography that created and moulded it. And oil itself is a curse as much as a blessing, since it entrenches autocratic rule and funds religious obscurantism in the same way silver flows undermined Iberian parliamentarism and entrenched autocracy and funded religious obscurantism in Spain and Portugal.

What is Middle Eastern Islam without oil? Try Afghanistan, or Yemen, or Pakistan, or Egypt. An American soldier makes the point very bluntly:

Had the Crusades not been waged; had the Habsburg Monarchy not turned back the Ottoman tide at the end of the 17th Century; had Isabel of Castile not driven the Moors from Grenada, you would not be reading this diatribe. You would be illiterate, ruled by a tyrant, and squatting on the dirt floor of a mud-brick shack picking your nose.

Perhaps the prospect of Muslim domination of Latin Christendom was not quite that much a near run thing. But its consequences would have been fairly grim. I doubt geography would have been enough, on its own, to counteract the other factors. As V.S.Naipaul observed, Islam is very thorough in its colonising of conquered lands.

All of which makes modernity very confronting for contemporary Islam. Hence the rise of Islamism and jihadi terror as modernising revolts against modernity both within Islamic countries and among Muslim émigré communities. Just as fascism and Nazism were modernising revolts against modernity in the period 1919-1945. Hezbollah, Hamas, al Qaeda, the Iranian regime are the equivalents of the NSDAP and similar movements.

No Islamic country has comparable power now to that of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan in the 1930s, but the organising and destructive capacities of modern technology provide their own level of threat. And there are far less bases inherent within Islam both for a full embracing of modernity, or to oppose said modernising revolts against modernity.

The reasons why Islam stagnated and Latin Christendom did not—indeed, came, as Western Civilisation, to dominate the globe—still operate. And continue to generate policy dilemmas.

ADDENDA This post has been edited to clarify and extend (but not change) arguments.