The Shaping of the Modern Middle East (12 page)

Some progress was made. A very small number of Muslim countries abolished polygamy, either by law or de facto, and a very few others imposed severe restrictions. But in most Muslim countries, while concubinage was in principle eliminated with the abolition of slavery, polygamy, child marriage, and divorce by repudiation remained legally and often socially permissible. Polygamy and child marriage, both abolished by the shah, were restored by the Islamic Republic in Iran. In general, the movement for the emancipation of women has achieved less and been more seriously threatened by the rise of fundamentalism than has either of the other two.

The emancipation of women has become a major theme in the writing and preaching of Islamic fundamentalists of all kinds. It figures in a prominent place, often in first place, among the evils that they denounce and intend to put right. Fundamentalists have paid much less attention to the other two. The revival of slavery is limited, surreptitious, and illegal, and no one has so far spoken out on its behalf. Non-Muslims have felt, and sometimes actually been threatened by fundamentalists, but except for specific local cases, this does not rank high on the fundamentalists' public agenda. The position of women does, however, and women have been the main sufferers wherever fundamentalists rule or even exert influence. It may well be that women, who have the most to lose from reaction and the most to gain from liberalizing reform, will yet be the strongest supporters of the nascent democracies of the Islamic world.

"Semites," says T. E. Lawrence, "have no half-tones in their register of vision ... they exclude compromise, and pursue the logic of their ideas to its absurd ends."' That there is something in this, no observer of Middle Eastern affairs can deny. But those who go on to argue that Arabs and other Muslims are necessarily incapable of democratic government are surely guilty of the same kind of absurdity. Some features of traditional Islamic civilization, such as tolerance, social mobility, and respect for law, are distinctly favorable to democratic development. Classical Islam succeeded, as Christendom never really did, in combining religious tolerance with deep religious faith, extending it not only to unbelievers, but alsoa far more exacting test-to heretics. The coexistence of differing schools of holy law, all regarded as orthodox, is another example of Islamic tolerance and compromise. Socially, Islam has always been democratic or, rather, egalitarian, rejecting both the caste system of India and the aristocratic privilege of Europe. It needed no revolution to introduce the "career open to the talents" to the Islamic world; it was there from the start, and despite the inevitable tendency to the formation of aristocracies, it was never really eliminated. Islamic theory has always insisted on the supremacy of the law and on the subordination to it of the sovereign. In the Ottoman Empire, the hierarchy of the ulema achieved considerable success in enforcing this principle. There remained, of course, the political difficulty-the total absence, despite the elective doctrine of the jurists, of any conception or experience of representative or limited government of any kind. It is this, no doubt, that underlies the theory that democracy cannot work in Islamic lands. That there is a predisposition to autocratic government among Muslim peoples is clear enough; that there is an inherent incapacity for any other has yet to be proved.

There is always something disquieting about a hypothesis that presumes a kind of political original sin in human societies. This one is, in any case, unnecessary, for there is enough in the recent history of the Middle East to explain the failure of constitutional democracy, without recourse to political theology. It is easy and tempting for Westerners to adopt an attitude of superiority, contemptuous or tolerant, and to ascribe the breakdown of distinctive Western institutions among other peoples to the lack on their part of some of the West's distinctive virtues. It is easy, but it is not wise, and certainly not helpful. Most Westerners no doubt share the belief that liberal democracy, with all its weaknesses, is the best instrument that any section of the human race has yet devised for the conduct of its political affairs. At the same time, they should remain aware of its local origin and character and try to avoid the primitive arrogance of making their own way of life the universal standard of political morality. "He is a barbarian," says Caesar of Britannus, the British slave, in Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, "and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature." Political democracy is a good custom. It has already spread far from its native land and in time will surely spread much farther. It is not, however, a law of nature and in some areas has been tried, found wanting, and abandoned. We must ask why.

In the Middle East, a serious attempt was made to introduce and operate liberal democracy, with written constitutions, elected sovereign parliaments, judicial safeguards, a multitude of parties, and a free press. With few and atypical exceptions, these experiments have failed. In some countries, democratic institutions are in a state of disrepair or collapse; in others, they have already been abandoned, and the search has begun for other paths to the pursuit of happiness.

Today, with the hindsight of history to guide us, we can see many of the causes clearly enough. A political system taken readymade not merely from another country but from another civilization, imposed by Western or Westernized rulers from above and from without, could not respond adequately to the strains and stresses of Islamic, Middle Eastern society. Democracy was installed by autocratic decree; parliament sat in the capital, operated and supported by a minute minority whose happy immersion in the new game of parties, programs and politicians was ignored or else watched with baffled incomprehension by the great mass of the people. The result was a political order unrelated to the past or present of the country and irrelevant to the needs of its future. The parliament at Westminster is the result of centuries of history, with its roots in the Anglo-Saxon witenagemot; it is the apex of a pyramid of selfgoverning institutions, with its base at the parish pump. It was evolved by Englishmen on the basis of English experience to meet English needs. The parliament of Cairo was imported in a box, to be assembled and put into use without even a set of do-it-yourself instructions. It responded to no need or demand of the Egyptian people; it enjoyed the backing of no powerful interest or body of opinion.

When a piece of expensive imported machinery falls apart in our hands, we are apt to lay the blame not on our own inexpert handling, but on the manufacturers and suppliers. The West, which acted in both capacities, has had perhaps more than its fair share of blame for the breakdown of democracy. It cannot, however, wholly disclaim responsibility. One fault was the failure to support adequately those who were its most enthusiastic disciples. Another lies in the mandatary system, which was supposed to provide training in responsibility, but instead gave advanced training in irresponsibility. The position was, if anything, worse in those countries that remained nominally independent, but subject to constant interference. There is a case to be made for as well as against the imperial peacePersian, Roman, Arab, Turkish, French, or British-as a stage in the development and spread of civilizations. There is little that can be said in defense of the so-called imperialism encountered by the Middle East in the first half of the twentieth century-an imperialism of interference without responsibility, which would neither create nor permit stable and orderly government. Perhaps one of the most significant distinctions in the ex-imperial countries of Asia and Africa is between those that were directly administered through a colonial or imperial civil service and those that were under some form of indirect rule or influence. The people of the latter group of countries got the worst of both worlds, receiving neither the training in administration of the colonial territories nor the practice in responsibility of the old independent states. The system of direct rule, apart from the useful legacy of an efficient modern bureaucracy, often has the additional merit of clarity. In British India, for example, the transfer of power and responsibility was clear, precise, and unequivocal. Until 15 August 1947, the British were responsible; thereafter, the British ceased to be and the Indians became responsible, and no serious observer has claimed or suspected otherwise. In Algeria, a long and hard-fought war with a decisive result achieved a similar clarity. In Egypt, it would be difficult to agree on the date of the effective transfer of responsibility within half a century. This situation, with its parallels in other Middle Eastern countries, produced a generation of politicians more apt to demand responsibility than to accept it, with a tendency to take refuge from reality that has not entirely died out. This finds expression in an addiction to conspiracy theories: to avoid any serious critical examination of their own societies and even policies and, instead, to place all blame for all evil on former imperial masters and on current enemies, both open and secret. The first at least, forty years after the ending of imperial rule, lacks even minimal plausibility. There are too many leaders who are willing to profit from that most insidious form of Western prejudice that shows itself by expecting and accepting a lower standard of behavior and performance.

There is, of course, more to the question of democratic viability than cultural traditions and political aptitudes. Israel and pre-civil war Lebanon, two of the exceptions to the record of failure, are not only culturally Westernized; they are also relatively well fed, well clothed, and well housed. A small and highly urbanized population in a small area, with good communications and a high standard of education and of living, gives democracy a better chance than do the sprawling impoverished peasant slums that make up a good deal of the rest of the Middle East. After Israel and Lebanon, Turkey has the highest per capita income, the greatest mileage of railway in relation to area, the highest rate of literacy in the Middle Eastalthough Egypt has more industry, more town dwellers, and until recently had more newspaper readers. There would seem to be some correlation between democracy and material progress, but which is the chicken and which is the egg is another question.

This much can be said with reasonable certainty: that many of the social and economic factors that helped make democracy work in other parts of the world are missing in the Middle East, or at least were missing in the crucial period when the experiment was tried. Society was still composed mainly of landlords and peasants. The commercial and industrial middle class, such as it was, consisted largely of foreigners and members of minorities, who as such were unable to play the classical political and cultural role of the bourgeoisie in Western societies. The new, Muslim professional class of lawyers, journalists, and teachers lacked the economic power and cohesive force to play any really independent role. The industrial working class barely existed; the peasant masses and urban lumpenproletariat were poor, ignorant, and unorganized, still unfitted for participation in political life. In such a society, no new and greater loyalty could arise to transcend the old and intense loyalties to tribe, clan, and family, to sect and guild; no tradition of local cooperation and initiative could develop to break the ancient habits of dependence and acquiescence. The liberals tried and failed, and the parliamentary system passed into the hands of those who controlled wealth and could command or buy obedience. They used it chiefly as an instrument to maintain their own power and to prevent any change or reform that they considered a threat to their interests.

In a long period of tranquillity, the peoples of the Middle East might perhaps have managed to adjust their imported political struc tures to their own conditions and needs. No such period was allowed to them. Instead, their young and untried democracies were subjected to a series of violent political shocks and stresses, of both internal and external origin, and confronted with the familiar AfroAsian economic problem of the demographic explosion. In most countries, the parliamentary system collapsed under the strain. All too often, the disappointment and frustration of leaders gave way to a cynicism and opportunism that outraged the moral and religious sense of those whom they professed to lead and brought the whole institution of liberal democracy into disrepute. For the average Egyptian, representative government meant not Westminster or Washington, but Faruq and the pashas, and who could blame him if he rejected and despised it?

For a while, the ideal of democracy was replaced by another, that of republicanism. There was a time when republic and democracy were thought to be two different ways of saying the same thing; modem Greek indeed makes the word demokratia do service for both. Today, of course, we know better. In an age of democratic monarchies and authoritarian republics, we are unlikely to confuse the two. Republic and democracy, far from being synonymous, seem barely compatible in many parts of the world.

In the Middle East, republicanism has not always been associated with libertarian ideas. The first Muslim republics were established in the Turkic territories of the Russian Empire, where the temporary relaxation of pressure from the center after the revolution of 1917 allowed an interval of local experimentation. In some areas, notably in Azerbaijan, this took the form of bourgeois nationalist republics, all of which were in due course conquered by the Red Army and incorporated into the Soviet Union. The Kemalist republic in Turkey and the French-style republics in Syria and Lebanon set new patterns, but it was not until after the Second World War that a new wave of republicanism was launched with the proclamation, by the military regime, of the Egyptian republic, in June 1953. This was followed by a number of others, not all of the same kind: Pakistan, an Islamic republic, in November 1953; the Sudan in 1956; Iraq, by revolution, in 1953; Tunisia in 1959; Yemen in 1962; Libya in 1969; and Iran in 1979. Today all but a handful of the states of the Middle East are called republics, although the common designation covers a wide variety of political realities. In Middle Eastern usage, a republic is a state with a nondynastic head. The term has no reference to the processes by which the head attains his office, or to the manner in which he discharges it. Republicanism meant the end of monarchy and of muchthough not all-that was connected with it. It had nothing to do with representative government or liberal democracy.