That honour thing

The last vestige in Anglosphere criminal law of the use of violence in defence of one's honour is the provocation defence. It is only a defence in mitigation, not exculpation, but it harks back to the historical role of honour as a social control mechanism.

The most recent controversy has been in NSW, where Yassir Hassan (54) was found guilty of manslaughter not murder when he stabbed his wife 14 times. In sentencing, Justice Garling said that Hassan:

was provoked into losing his self-control, which explains why he is guilty of the lesser offence of manslaughter and not murder.

Since the other version of provocation which has generated controversy recently is the "homosexual panic" defence, it seems that heterosexual manhood is deemed worthy of special sensitivity. 

Protecting status
In both manifestations of the provocation defence, the lower status person (women, gay male) is held to be responsible for the state of mind of the higher status person (heterosexual male), thereby lessening the legal significance of the lower status person's death. Hence the provocation defence is on the way out, as it has become a little too obviously an offence against equality before the law. (Note that this is not an argument for not differentiating between murder and manslaughter, just against building status games into legal practice.) 

The problem with the defence-of-honour status game is indicated by some of Justice Garling's other comments during sentencing:

Mr Hassan was provoked by Ms Yousif immediately before the attack, [but] he was not acting in self-defence. 

I see no evidence of remorse whatsoever... He regards himself the victim of what occurred and not the perpetrator.

Hassan clearly takes his honour as being more important than his late wife's life. In this state of mind, higher status does not grant more responsibility, but less, as the lower status person becomes responsible for the state of mind of the higher status person and so "guilty" of not showing proper respect. It is not people, but hierarchical relations that are being protected. 

Medieval honour
Separating honour from hierarchy can be a tricky thing.

In his Culture and Conflict in the Middle East, Philip Carl Salzman nicely defines honour as:

… a recognition of righteous behaviour, and a designation of high rank, while its absence is a recognition of failure to fulfill one’s duty, and a designation of low rank.

In medieval and similar societies, the implicit or explicit contract between warrior and lord both grants and recognises status. Any explicit oath invokes the honour of both parties. But the simple ability to provide such warrior service carries with its own honour and status.

The loss of honour can be a drastic thing. In Salzman’s words:

In the absence of honour, one is shamed, and one’s reputation in tatters, and one sinks to a low rank. The consequences are serious and can be severe: The willingness of others to work and cooperate with one, and to exchange children in marriage alliances … is based on reputation.

A person’s honour was a buffer against the actions of others, a personalised social space they were entitled to defend. One of the signs that Europe was moving out of the medieval—out of the society of franchised warriors—into a society of centralised states served by (employee) soldiers and police, is the decline in the standing that defence of honour was granted by legal systems. As the state took over coercion more and more completely, it took over the obligation of protection more and more completely. “He insulted my honour, so I killed him” steadily loses legal standing.

Hierarchy and violence
In one of his very informative papers on long-term trends in homicide, historical criminologist Manuel Eisner writes of honour that:

Much empirical research on the topic emphasizes the crucial role of insults in triggering situational conflicts. This is in accordance with a society in which ‘honour’ constitutes highly important social capital of the male person as a representative of his group (...). It requires retributive violence as a potential and culturally accepted means for maintaining one’s honour (...). Such a theoretical framework may help to better understand why the secular decline in homicide rates primarily seems to have been due to a decrease in male-to-male fights.  

In high homicide societies (pdf), over 90% of victims are male and high status individuals are frequently perpetrators of homicide. In low homicide societies, 30% or more of the victims are female and homicide is much more commonly by marginalised individuals.  

Hence the importance of how law and wider social norms regard the "social capital" of honour. In low homicide societies, violence is pushed to the social fringes and the intensely personal. In high homicide societies, violence is part of the protection of social standing. As Eisner discusses in his first above-cited paper, Emile Durkheim's argument that rising individualism helps lead to a decline in violence because people are less motivated by collective connections has considerable empirical support.

Which makes the provocation defence--at least to the extent that it gives legal significance to status games--look even more retrograde. Salzman notes that, in the lineage-driven societies of the Middle East, while men can gain honour (specifically, sharaf, fluctuating social standing), women can effectively only lose it (ird, the honour of female chastity and continence). If a women is seen as publicly shaming her lineage, that can lead to dishonour killing; the main targets of which are women and homosexuals. The very groups the legal significance of whose killing can be lowered by the provocation defence when it buys into honour-status games. 

In their different ways, both Norbert Elias, in The Civilizing Process, and Durkheim examine the social and personal aspects of the form of self-control that reduces homicide rates. The problem with the provocation defence--when it buys into status games--is that it gives legal standing to violent protection of personal honour in a way which works against the inculcation of that self-control by allowing defence of honour as a legally mitigating way to lose self-control.

[Cross-posted at Skepticlawyer.]

What a difference two extra words make

Governor Huckabee of Arkansas, speaking at the Republican National Committee's national convention, ignited an instant media and public controversy with the following comments:

If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing them for a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government

Let's run that again with two words cut out:

If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing them for a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their reproductive system without the help of government

The second version is a condemnation of socialising medicine. Slightly crassly worded perhaps, but otherwise unexceptional. The claim being that women of America can cope with paying for their own contraception. 

Put "their libido" back in and whole texture of the remark changes. Using contraception = slut becomes the invoked subtext. Now, whether it is read as a failure of media competence or possibly a sly way of playing to a specific audience with an eye to a future media career, the remark and the response points to the God's Police or Damned Whore dichotomy that has been such a perennial feature of monotheism in particular and patriarchal systems in general. 

Until the process of de-Chritianisation of law began in the C19th, the standard Christian teaching of no contraception, no abortion, no divorce and no rape within marriage almost entirely stripped women of control over their fertility. The only legitimate act of consent a women had to be actively sexual, or over her fertility, was to marry. 

Even without the whole package (Islam permitted divorce, Rabbinical courts came to recognise rape within marriage), in patriarchal system, policing a woman's sexuality and policing her fertility went hand-in-hand. With older female relatives being particularly involved in said policing. In particular, protecting a son's lineage and reputation made mothers-in-law policers of potential and actual daughters-in-law. Thereby being God's Police so that no Damned Whore sullied the family's lineage or reputation.

(Dis)honour killings come straight out of this concern for family reputation and lineage based on the underlying principle that, as Salzman puts it, women could never add to the honour of the family, they can only detract from it. 

Technology has changed these dynamics in all sorts of ways. (Though obviously less so in the Muslim world, particularly the Middle East.) Women have the means to control their own fertility, are independent income-earners and property-owners. Technology is constantly shifting the control of fertility to being more and more independent of sexuality. 

Teachings based on much earlier social dynamics have been having trouble coping with these shifts. Monotheism in particular is inherently inclined to strong gender and sex taboos. Whether Gov. Huckabee was just reflecting such taboos or pandering to them, it is a reminder of the intersection between attitudes to sexuality and stripping women of control over their fertility -- of the way policing sexuality has been both a means of stripping women of control over their fertility and providing cover for doing so.

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]

Tribalism, conquest and the benefits of canon law

That the Middle East is a region subject to regular conquest (both external and internal) has long seemed to me to be crucial to understanding the current Middle East. There is a sense in which it is a region whose volkerwanderung never ended.

Ibn Khaldun postulated regular conquest of urban centres by tribal peripheraries as being the central dynamic of history. A recent review essay of a new book (which I reviewed here) 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.

Regular conquest means regular "institutional flattening". One never moves out of the pattern of the predatory state:

… traditional Middle Eastern states are more like magnets, exerting force on territory near the center, while losing power with distance. The Ottoman Empire (and the British) ruled the tribes loosely, demanding an annual tribute but generally leaving them to govern themselves. ... The traditional relation of the state to the peasant, notes Salzman, "is that of the shepherd to his flock: the state fleeces the peasants, making a living off of them, and protects them from other predators, so that they may be fleeced again." Salzman asks us to think of traditional states as "cliques determined to impose their power for the pleasure of dominance and the profit of extortion."

I would argue it is no accident that it was civilisations on the unconquered fringes of Eurasia (Western Europe and Japan) which developed remarkably similar institutional arrangements, creating or speedily adapting modernity. States constantly confronted with the danger of pastoralist conquest (Russia and China) developed unifying autocracies in self-protection (not entirely successfully in the case of China, given two of its last three dynasties were conquering pastoralists) which proved somewhat less adept at dealing with modernity.

The problem for the Eurasian autocracies was, if central power became limited, the whole structure became susceptible to conquest. There wasn't the sustained social space to develop the dense web of institutional balances that generated modernity. Indeed, both Co20th Russia and China were then subject to internal conquest by a centralising ideology that engaged in yet another (and particularly virulent) round of institutional flattening. Leninism wasn't a release from the cycle, it was a particularly vicious manifestation of it.

So the history of the Soviet Union conformed to Ibn Khaldun's model of predatory rule. First, a group bound by common feeling (asabiyyah) seizes power (Lenin), then the ruler separate himself from the original group to entrench his own power (Stalin), then the system slowly decays as group solidarity fades and corruption erodes social resilience and regime power (Khruschev to Chernyenko) until it finally collapses (Gorbachev).
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This wider pattern of vulnerability was particularly strong in the Middle East. The stagnation of Islam is a striking feature of modern history. To take a particularly emphatic example; in 1450 Gutenberg created the first movable-type printing press in Europe. By 1500, over 200 cities and towns in Latin Christendom had printing presses. The first printing press in Muslim North Africa was not set up until 1832. It took a few years for the printing press to reach the Christian side of the Mediterranean, a few centuries for it to cross to the Muslim side.

There is something in the argument that natural law theory (the notion that God was a "constitutional monarch" who conformed to set rules in dealing with his Creation) gave Latin Christendom an intellectual advantage, particularly in the development of science, over an Islam where the mainstream view became that any such suggestion was an unreasonable limitation on Allah's absolute sovereignty.* But it was an advantage that Latin Christendom shared with Orthodox/Greek Christendom without having much in the way of beneficial intellectual and technological effects for the latter. Favourable institutional structures seem more important. Though that Islam had a single legal model (sharia) while Christendom was free to develop a much greater variety of legal models meant that Christendom had a wider range of possibilities for the selection processes of history to work on.

Confronted with regular conquests and states that were either strong and predatory or weak and predatory, the social response was the "balanced opposition" of tribalism. A network of lineages, tribes, clans and families that provide shifting networks of support to provide protection and status.

Which leaves the state marooned from positive associations:

The Ottoman Empire (and the British) ruled the tribes loosely, demanding an annual tribute but generally leaving them to govern themselves. To a remarkable extent, this holds true today. While the precise degree of centralized power ebbs and flows, tribes living in what are often quite large territories on national peripheries exist largely free of state power.
Far from viewing this as a disability, Middle Eastern tribesmen consider life beyond the state as the surest way to avoid dishonorable submission. Statelessness is an essential condition of dignity, equality, and freedom.

With all the strife that "honor codes" involve. And the pull of such codes is very strong:

Even when an individual is inclined toward modern attitudes, the need to protect the honor of the group draws him back to tradition. Salzman tells the story of a Druze serving in the Israeli army who shot and killed his sister to preserve family honor.
The young woman had lived in America for several years and returned to visit her family wearing Western garb. Her brother was inclined to ignore this, until his uncle's loud complaints about their endangered family honor were heard by the neighbors. Salzman's point here is that honor depends less on the action itself (e.g., wearing earrings) than on public knowledge and response. What's notable, however, is that the key characters in this honor killing are a relatively modernized young man and his sister. Experience in the Israeli army and time in America had worked a change on both. Yet the responsibility of each individual for the honor--and therefore the safety and prosperity—of the group as a whole makes it difficult to break away from tradition.

One can see why Middle Eastern Jews fled the newly independent Arab countries in such numbers. There was literally no place for them. No overlapping lineages, no common identity. One can also see how problematic creating Lebanon out of varied groupings has proved to be.

It also gives reason to be grateful that the Catholic Church had such strict rules about consanguinity. It shut off the re-braiding of kinship systems as an alternative source of protection and support in Latin Christendom after the Roman collapse. Instead, much more formal relationships became binding features of social life. Investment in maintaining and improving a common social space slowly and gradually created the dense institutional networks from which modernity arose.

To the extent that we take such things for granted (perhaps too much). It certainly becomes extremely difficult to enter into the mindset where such common social spaces are far more attenuated and subject to very serious competition for provision of basic social order:

Yet even settled tribes preserve the classic kin-based ideology of feuding and alliance, precisely because they might someday be forced by economic necessity—or by war with the state—to pick up and move. The further nomads are from the settled life of a state, the more they rely on kin-based, segmentary, balance-of-power principles to keep order. So even after settlement, Bedouin preserve classic segmentary kinship ideology as a kind of "social structure in reserve" for times of movement, crisis, and conflict.

Islam is a conquest religion, which is why it proved to be so suitable for a region of conquests:

In a sense, Islam's founding triumph was to raise the stakes of balanced opposition by uniting all the Arab tribes in an ultimate feud against infidel outsiders.

In its first 1000 years, Islam aggressed (generally very successfully: the Reconquista was the only successful sustained counterattack prior to 1683) against every single culture it came up against. It was only meeting more effective predators which brought that to a halt. And the jihadis think it is time for history to revert to its "proper" pattern.

How much the underlying tribal model pervades Islam is a fascinating question. One could argue that Bengali or Malay Islam is a rather different beast because it is in a very different social context. But most of the money for Islamic missionary work (including within Islamic countries) comes from a country where the underlying tribal model is very strong.

Whatever the answer, it is very important to understand the very different understandings of the state and political life that pervade much of the Middle East.

*It is worth noting that the relevant pictures of God conformed to the underlying social understanding of political authority which then likely fed back into said social understandings. This is connected to Avner Greif's point that Christianity grew up in a settled, law-bound Empire while the Prophet (and Islam) had to build political authority.

Moral universalism versus moral instrumentalism

One of the enduring divisions in the Western left has been between “anti-fascism” (that opposition to fascism is such an imperative any useful allies should be sought) and “anti-imperialism” (the central moral problem is the wrongness of the capitalist West).

The Euston Manifesto is a recent manifestation of the anti-fascism-is-trumps outlook. [So is Richard Just's recent essay in The New Republic (via Norm): he characterises the position as human rights being trumps, which is a more general label, though possibly somewhat American in terminology.] This outlook is one of moral universalism (i.e. a common set of moral principles for everyone) and having no truck with movements such as Hezbollah and Hamas nor regimes such as Saddam Hussein’s or the Assad's. [A nice statement of anti-imperialism not being enough is here. Clive James propounds a firm moral universalism and criticises the reticence of Western feminists and intellectuals over (dis)honourcide and non-Western repression of women here. In support of moral universalism, there is evidence that children engage in common moral reasoning across cultures.]

Marxist philosophers Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt’s book Empire is something of a flagship for the anti-imperialist tendency. One adherent of revolutionary socialism puts the matter very clearly:

To put the matter as starkly as possible: from the standpoint of Marxism and international socialism an illiterate, conservative, superstitious Muslim Palestinian peasant who supports Hamas is more progressive than an educated liberal atheist Israeli who supports Zionism (even critically).

As clear an example of “anti-imperialism” trumping “anti-fascism” as one could hope for.

Such a view also abandons any sense of moral universalism: the criteria of opposition to Western capitalism trumps all else. A form of what we can reasonably call moral instrumentalism: having some goal determining moral judgement.

This sort of view is often criticised as moral relativism, but that is not very accurate. So-called “moral relativists” typically conjoin moral absolutism about the evils of Western racism, sexism, global warming etc with moral relativism about other matters. What such folk are typically displaying is moral instrumentalism: the overriding goal in such cases usually being to establish their own membership of the moral elite. A form of moral instrumentalism entirely compatible with judging things according to the goal of the revolutionary transformation of society, for what are those who work for such glorious transformation other than a moral elite?

Buddhism and Christianity—both religions of moral order (i.e. their injunctions do not purport to be laws, however much they may hold that their moral perspectives should animate the content and implementation of laws)—are typically morally universalist religions. An example of this is Pope Paul III’s 1537 bull Sublimus Dei which held of the inhabitants of the Americas that:

… 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.

A moral perspective that leads quite naturally to such statements as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Conversely, Islam, a religion of social order (i.e. it does purport to provide binding laws) is typically a religion of moral instrumentalism: the goal of universal submission to Allah as sovereign legislator of the universe is paramount. This leads to a very different perspective on what may be done to non-believers in the furtherance of this goal and to have a moral and legal order which rates people according to how much they adhere to this goal. [It also means that apostasy is a form of treason, hence its traditional penalty being death.] This moral instrumentalism also leads critics of Islam to make much of the doctrine of taqiyya or deception.

Bertrand Russell noted the similarity between Islam and Bolshevism:

Bolshevism combines the characteristics of the French Revolution with those of the rise of Islam....Marx has taught that Communism is fatally predestined to come about; this produces a state of mind not unlike that of the early successors of Mahommet....Among religions, Bolshevism is to be reckoned with Mohammedanism rather than with Christianity and Buddhism. Christianity and Buddhism are primarily personal religions, with mystical doctrines and a love of contemplation. Mohammedanism and Bolshevism are practical, social, unspiritual, concerned to win the empire of this world".

Not only do they share having a universal goal, but they are also morally instrumentalist: making moral judgments about actions, institutions and people according to how much they adhere to their universal goal.
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Judaism, as a religion of community order (having religious laws which bind the community of believers but do not have any authority over non-believers: Ismaili Islam has a similar perspective) is legalistic but is not morally instrumentalist. Indeed, the Noahide laws provide a form of moral universalism.

Edmund Standing has a post on the group blog Butterflies and Wheels on the far-left campaign to silence critics of Islam. Standing is referring to the phenomena whereby criticism of Islam is taken to be criticism of Muslims so analogous to (or a form of) racism: hence the term Islamophobia. An ostentatious moral concern displayed by people who would never worry about criticism of Christianity being criticism of Christians nor either being any form of racism. [A nice tongue-in-cheek check-list for "Islamophobia"].

The “Islamophobia” nonsense seems to be just a fairly grotesque form of ideological hypocrisy, but makes more sense if one examines the underlying worldview. Particularly if we see it as a manifestation of moral instrumentalism.

Standing is examining patterns among adherents of various forms of Marxism, so starts his analysis there:

Marxism is, at heart, to use the 'buzz words', a 'totalising narrative'. It is essentially based around a deterministic view of history which has much in common with conspiracy theory and theology. The Marxist historical vision incorporates disparate historical events into one unified narrative through the notion of class struggle. Where the religious see the 'plan' and guiding hand of God as the underlying reality that ultimately 'makes sense of' history, the Marxist sees the ongoing phenomenon of 'class conflict' as being the glue that binds historical events and social changes into an intelligible, explainable whole. As with all totalising narratives, the Marxist vision is at heart a simplistic and often black and white system of thought that can be used to 'explain' any social phenomena as having relevance to the Marxist understanding of history and politics.

While there are followers of Marx whose world-view is rather more sophisticated than that, Standing is describing a strong tendency within Marxism—particularly Leninism and its derivatives.

This outlook means that:

An immediate problem with Marx's analysis of religion is that it greatly oversimplifies the phenomenon of religious belief. In this view, religion is not an end in itself but must always be seen as a 'cover' for something else, something politically intelligible. Marxist materialism overcomes religion, then, not through criticising religious texts and doctrines but by looking beyond them to what is perceived to be their underlying 'cause': political and economic oppression.

Just as the more obsessive monotheist believers might see the hand of Satan everywhere, such ardent Marxists are always looking for the “underlying” class reality. Needless to say, this is a massively impoverished (indeed delusional) way of looking at the world. In either case, however, the seekers always seem to find what they look for.

Of course, we can all engage in dubious framings:

Many Marxists see the resurgence of political Islam not as part of a rising tide of irrationalism but rather as an essentially political and rational response to the supposedly oppressive and intrinsically 'racist' and 'imperialist' nature of Western liberal democracy.

The resurgence of political Islam can reasonably be seen as something other than part of a “rising tide of irrationalism”. But Standing’s point about the falsity in obsessively seeing the West as having such great causal potency that it trumps everything else is a sound one.

Seeing religion as a mere epiphenomenon on deeper class issues has natural consequences:

It is rare to see the Marxist writers who currently engage in a McCarthyite denunciation of critics of Islam and Islamist organisations actively engage with the religion of Islam itself. This is unsurprising, as their concern is not defending Islam but rather (supposedly) defending 'Muslims' (often seen as a monolithic block), who are seen to be the latest victims of the Western bourgeois Capitalist conspiracy. In the strange worldview of these Marxist campaigners against 'Islamophobia', almost any criticism of Islam, Islamist politics, or Muslim organisations is seen to be little more than a thinly veiled form of 'racism'. The fact that these writers apparently cannot distinguish between legitimate criticism of a religious belief system and its texts and outright expressions of racial hatred says a lot about the simplistic nature of their worldview and their underlying anti-intellectualism. There is something sinister and totalitarian about the far-left's campaign against critics of Islam. It is a dishonest campaign that seeks to silence dissent and critical thinking that does not conform to the 'party line' through demonisation and name calling.

This stream of thought then feeds into wider hypocrisies. Notably the “rednecks have no speech rights” attempts to legislate against “hate speech”—laws that are offensive both on freedom of speech grounds and in the patent hypocrisy of their implementation. In practice, it is clear that the guardians of such matters only care about some types of “hate speech”—those instances offensive to progressivist opinion.

Attempts to use the cry of “racism!” against dissent has lots of problems:

False accusations of racism can have very serious repercussions, and falsely equating criticism of religion with racism is not only slanderous towards anti-racist critics of Islam and Islamism but also risks trivialising the very real phenomenon of genuine racial prejudice and hatred.

But what is really going on is trying to shore up various worldviews and de-legitimise dissent there from. Widening the definition of ‘racist’ narrows the range of acceptable discussion.

In this case, the object is to keep the focus on Western sins (real, exaggerated and alleged) rather than dealing with things in their own terms. The perspective that was maintained by all those who followed Stalin’s lead from August 24 1939 to 22 June 1941. Of course, that did not work out so well for Stalin, who found the Nazis were a much more serious military threat than the Western allies: just as jihadis can recruit far more easily from a much greater population base than Western revolutionary socialists. Including people with sufficient commitment to kill and die. Islamic radicalism clearly has greater appeal within Europe as an “ideology of contestation” and has supplanted radical secularism in its activist appeal within Muslim communities in Europe and elsewhere.

If the attempt to police public discourse is rational enough in an instrumental sense, the underlying world view is less so:

Far-left politics are not based on a realistic and rational assessment of the world. As I have argued previously, 'revolutionary' leftists are 'dreamers of the day': fantasists whose worldview is grounded in a conspiratorial and deterministic framework; black and white thinkers whose rigid idealism mirrors religious faith. Once this is understood, the current 'left-wing' campaign of demonising liberal, rationalist critics of Islam and Islamist politics is placed in its proper context. When liberal humanists and progressives find themselves routinely denounced for supposedly holding 'Islamophobic' (and by inference, 'racist') views, it is clear that the self-appointed witch finders throwing around such accusations have an underlying agenda – a political delusion based on faith in the existence an imagined 'racist imperialist' conspiracy and a conviction that they are a morally pure elite who will one day lead ' an aroused people' to revolutionary glory.

Yes, there is the animating sense of moral identity: that is very important to understand what is going on. But, as with religion, one has to understand that there are other hopes and fears involved. One of the notable features of our time is not merely the far-left effectively making common cause with jihadists (particularly Hamas and Hezbollah), it is people moving from Marxism to Islamism (including the full jihadi package). For Marxism and Islamism have a similar underlying appeal. What Francois Furet called the revolutionary illusion:

Modern society … is characterised by a lack of politics in relation to the private, individual existence. It is blind to the idea of the common good, since the members of society, consumed with relativism, have their own individual ideas of the common good and modern society can conceive of it only in terms of a taste for well-being, which divides its members rather than unifying them and thus destroys the community supposedly constructed in its name. The revolutionary idea is the impossible attempt to circumvent that calamity.

So is the Islamist idea.

Revolutionary Marxism and Islamism (including the jihadis) not only have common enemies, at the deepest level they have common ambitions and a common judgment that their end-goal is so worthy that it trumps all other considerations. They share a universalist ambition of achieving profound social harmony with moral instrumentalism and a sense of identity of being an elite validated by that. No wonder Islamism has been recruiting from former Marxists and no wonder so many Marxists (and similar) find even jihadis preferable to their mutual enemies. Deep calls to deep, as my old teacher David Stove would say.

Moral universalists of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but the chains of failing to understand what is going on.

ADDENDA This post has been updated, additions in [square brackets].

Culture and Conflict in the Middle East (I)

Every so often, one reads a book that clarifies a great deal. Anthropologist Phillip Carl Salzman’s Culture and Conflict in the Middle East is one such book. It examines the way tribal-pastoral societies work and their interaction with peasant farmers and state power. Much history is clarified by Salzman’s analysis, ranging from the Old Testament to the present day Middle East.

Salzman analyses Middle Eastern culture (particularly, but not only, Arab culture) in terms of balanced opposition (p.11) arising out of the demands of tribally-based pastoralism. What Salzman calls culture is often what economists would call institutions. His analytical model is usefully summarised at the end of the book. The key concept is

balanced opposition (each group of whatever size and scope is opposed by a group of equal size and scope).

It is based on

affiliation solidarity (always support those closer against those more distant).

In this structure of who you belong to being defined by who you are against

success in competition, conflict, and combat brings honor, while defeat brings loss of honour and shame

as it demonstrates the capacity to benefit you and yours. For

loyalty is always defined as support of one’s own group in opposition to another group (Pp210-1).

Such an arrangement is deeply particularist, a particularism not compatible with formal universalism (p.16).

Salzman's analysis is derived from extensive field work within the Middle East. At all times, Salzman is careful to convey the virtues and functionality of the arrangements. He also strongly defends looking at cultural arrangements in terms of general characteristics, and as having both strength and limitations (Pp206-8). It is not surprising that, early in the book, there is a short dismissal of Edward Said’s analytical framework (something I am hardly going to disagree with) – Salzman argues that not acknowledging differences in culture is to project one’s own set of values, ways of thinking and goals onto others but that it is entirely possible to still understand different cultures (Pp 14-15). We are all human, even if we do think in variant ways.

Salzman notes a fundamental, long-term, pattern of Middle Eastern history as being the waxing and waning of predatory central control (p.13). Salzman makes a point of noting the predatory nature of the Muslim conquests (Pp139ff).

Even though the tribal pastoralists are deeply integrated into trade based around urban markets (Pp29-30) – a key concern is to maintain herds large enough for economic viability – the tribal pastoralists live in very different social context than the controlled sedentary peasantry, as the peasants are socially atomised while tribal nomads are far more cooperative (using Ibn Khaldun’s term, have high levels of asabiyya) (Pp 31-32).

Pastoralism is based on group and personal property rights (Pp35-36). As both peasants and pastoralists live off their property, its defence is central to social arrangements (p.48).

A key difference is that the sedentary peasants are (generally) much more vulnerable to state activity (Pp39ff). But the relationship with the state is a complex one – there are controlled pastoralists and uncontrolled farmers (Pp42ff). Moreover, the boundaries can shift – peasants can flee to pastoralism if state activity becomes too oppressive, or too ineffectual to stop raiders (Pp44ff).

To achieve social order, two different strategies are on offer: “self-help” based on segmented (family, clan, tribe, confederation) lineages or “authority” based on controlled specialists (Pp50ff).

In security based on self-help, the most efficient defense is deterrence based on an image of cohesive group solidarity and successful bellicosity. Tribesmen wish to be respected and feared by other groups. (p.57).

These two strategies are not spatially distinct, but interweave and overlap.

Our map image of countries as large territories delineated by clear boundaries grossly misrepresents reality though much of history and in many parts of the world today. It is more accurate to think of state entities as centers of power, functioning a bit like magnets, which control areas close to them, but which lose holding power as the distance increases … Between state centers there are marginal regions, often quite large, not under the effective control of the state (p.59).

Thus

states tend to be strongest at their centers and weaker at great distances, and thus tribes on the peripheries tend to be more independent of the state … It would be more accurate to think of states and tribes as alternative forms of organization that shared space and power, compromising to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the circumstances (p.178).

Even nowadays, tribesmen seek to safeguard their independence by crossing state borders (p.63).

Tribesmen have four strategies for gaining access to the wealth of the state – trade, offering “protection”, raiding and conquest (p.65). Any or all of these may be used, depending on circumstances.

Various strategies are adopted to ensure lineages are large enough to be viable (p.93). These are based on intrinsic, internalised and extrinsic motivations (pp102ff). Marriages are arranged for the benefit of the lineage (p.114) with group solidarity, asabiyya and honour being closely related (p.115).

Interlineage conflicts arise because people feel they must defend themselves against all threats or become an open target (p.117).

The situation of the sexes is not equivalent. Men can add to their and the lineage’s honour, women can only detract from either (p.118). Naturally, in circumstances where one is defined by group loyalty and public perception, it is not the act, but the public knowing of the act that generates shame (Pp120ff).

Men’s honour comes from strength, women’s from childbearing contributing to the rank and strength of the lineage (p.128). Children and livestock are highly (and rationally) desirable (p.132). In other words, patrilineal arrangements based around, and designed to generate, male strength lead to male domination, with lower standing for female roles. Salzman’s analysis make “honour” killings (which he discusses [p.121ff] as part of a wider pattern of control) make perfect sense. (Such functionality gives the vile practice more staying power.)

The tribal context of Islam
Salzman very much sees Islam as arising out of, and reflecting, this tribal culture of balanced opposition. The default Islamic attitude to non-Muslims is one of conquest and dominance (p.146). A dominance universal in its nature, since Allah made everything (p.148).

Thus, Islam is universalist in its aspirations. Indeed, it is more so than Christianity not only because it is a territorial religion, but because it deems Islam to be the original religion, the religion of Adam and of all the Prophets (p.152). So Jews and Christians have always been in error, there was never a time when they represented the operating Covenant. And wilfully in error too, since Submission to God was always possible. Muhammad is merely the Seal of the Prophets, God’s message was always there. Thus the universalism of Islam is very much a layered universalism (Muslims over non-Muslims, men over women).

In this milieu of being defined by who you are against, Arab rejection of Israel becomes “overdetermined’ being based on conflicting material interests, use of Israel as an external enemy and scapegoat by Arab regimes, definition-by-opposition and challenged honor (p.163). Attempts to learn from Israel’s success are blocked. Indeed, the self-image of being religiously superior undermines any pressure for change (p.171), despite the Arab world’s poor performance across a wide range of social indicators (p.194).

Salzman assembles clear evidence of Muslim bellicosity – Muslims are far more involved in intercivilisational conflicts (the “bloody borders” problem) than members of other civilisations, while Muslim states are far more militarised and far more likely to resort to violence – and more extreme violence – than non-Muslim states (Pp172-3).

In this context, inter-tribal politics is “winner take all” with all social contests being zero-sum games (p.184):

At the top of the ruler’s priorities must be cementing relations with tribal groups and discouraging adventurism. He does this by constant travel and visits to tribal regions with his impressive entourage to persuade tribesmen of his worthiness as leader and his steadfastness against any challenge. These deadly serious royal parades take place within a general, agonistic cultural milieu, in which, at all levels, each and every relationship, engagement and transaction is a struggle between parties. It would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that, in these circumstances, might makes fight, and the winner is always right (Pp198-9).

The pattern of balanced opposition is so entrenched (precisely because it is functional) that its patterns extend way beyond tribal pastoralism.

Balanced opposition is not seen here only in the formal structure of tribes, but more broadly in society, throughout the range of social transactions. At the maximal level, the state apparatus is balanced against the weight of the surrounding tribes, and is constantly trying to keep its balance (p.199).

Arab culture inculcates strong virtues which are, however, not conducive to a formally ordered society. Turkish and Iranian cultures are both more amenable to the strategy of authority (p.200).

Rulership based on glory of the ruler, where all deference is humiliation, leads to regimes seen as unjust and illegitimate, hence the regular pattern of religiously-inspired insurgencies (p.201). Which, even if they achieve power, fail to resolve the problem as they inevitably fall prey to the exigencies and failures of politics – a pattern Salzman sees as currently operating in mullah-ruled Iran (p.202).

If constitutionalism (in the broad sense) and the rule of law are crucial to modernity, then the Middle East has a problem. For Arab culture in particular lacks the sense of overarching rules and formal structures because the frame of reference is always in terms of one’s own group and loyalty to it (p.205). This, Salzman argues, is extremely unconducive to democratic rule (p.209). Which will only prosper if individualism gains more sway against group loyalty (p.210). For

the particularism of Middle Eastern culture precludes universalism, rule of law and constitutionalism, all involving the measuring of actions against general criteria, irrespective of the affiliation of particular actors (p.211).

For progress to occur,

Middle Easterners will have to decide what they are for is more important than whom they are against (p.212).

I found Salzman’s book deeply enlightening, both about general patterns of history going back centuries, extending (both spatially and temporally) beyond Islam, and about Islam itself.