The Shaping of the Modern Middle East (23 page)

Khomeini's first step toward home was his removal from Iraq to Paris. Although the distance was far greater, the means of com munication were incomparably better. When King Ibn Saud in 1927 first introduced the telephone to his Arabian kingdom, there was a great theological debate before the ulema were persuaded of the lawfulness of this infidel invention. Khomeini and his followers suffered from no such compunction. From the first, they were ready to make the fullest use of modern technology, its military weapons, and, in the early stages more importantly, its media of communication. The Islamic revolution in Iran was probably the first revolution in modern history that was inaugurated by telephone, television, and tape recorder.

In Najaf, in Iraq, where Khomeini had lived for many years, communications were technologically backward and politically censored. In France, he enjoyed the full advantages of direct dialing and free speech. By telephone he could contact and instruct his many followers and disciples in Iran. Through tape recordings, he could bring his ideas, resonantly spoken in his own familiar voice, to far greater numbers than could ever crowd into a mosque. Thanks to television and to the willing compliance of those who operated it, he was able to win at least the acquiescence and often the lively support of important sections of Western public opinion and even of Western governments.

His return in triumph to Iran early in 1979 was the culmination of a long process extending over many years, during which the position of the shah and his regime was thoroughly undermined, both at home and internationally, while the revolutionary forces mobilized the hopes and aspirations of millions of Iranians and enjoyed the sympathetic support of a very large part of the international community.

After Khomeini's return and the establishment of the republic, Iran went through the classical stages of a major revolution: upheaval and repression, terror and revolutionary "justice," intervention and war, ideological debate and political conflict, and major social transformation. The price of revolution is familiar, and it was paid by the Iranians at a high rate. The returns are still unknown, and it will be a long time before they can be evaluated. This much, however, can be said. Among the many seizures of power that have been proclaimed as revolutions in the Middle East in the twentieth century, Iran has set a new pattern, by carrying through a revolution with a long ideological preparation, careful and elaborate planning, extensive popular participation, and a far-reaching impact in all the countries with which as Muslims they shared a universe of discourse. Compared with these events, earlier movements that claimed the name of revolutionary in neighboring countries pale into insignificance. Like the French and Russians in their time, the Iranian revolutionaries have played to international as well as domestic audiences, and their revolution for a while exercised a powerful fascination over other Muslim peoples outside Iran. While the appeal was naturally strongest among Shia populations, it was and remains very strong in many parts of the Muslim world where Shi`ism is insignificant or unknown. Like the Western radicals, who in their day responded with almost messianic enthusiasm to the events in Paris and Petrograd, events "that shook the world," so did millions of young and not-so-young men and women all over the world of Islam respond to events in Tehran-with the same upsurge of emotion, the same uplifting of hearts, the same boundless hopes, the same willingness to excuse and condone all kinds of horrors, and the same question: Where next?

The long and ultimately unsuccessful struggle with Iraq, the growing economic hardships at home, the inability of the revolutionary leadership to improve or even to maintain the standard of living, coupled with the sometimes harsh repression by which the regime maintained itself and enforced its rules, considerably diminished its appeal in the Muslim world, and no doubt also-though for obvious reasons, this is less evident-reduced its support at home. Nevertheless, despite all these setbacks, the radical Islamic movements are still able to express the fears and hopes, the discontents and aspirations, of the Muslim masses and, in times of crisis, to mobilize them for action.

This much is obvious. Of all the great movements that have shaken the Middle East during the last century and a half, the Islamic movements alone are authentically Middle Eastern in inspiration. Liberalism and fascism, patriotism and nationalism, Communism and socialism, all were European in origin, however much adapted and transformed by Middle Eastern disciples. The religious ideologies alone sprang from the native soil and expressed the passions of the submerged masses of the population.

Time and again, the fundamentalists have shown, against all their competitors, that theirs are the most effective slogans and symbols, theirs the most intelligible and appealing discourse, both to criticize the failings of an old and discredited regime and to formulate aspirations for a new and better order to replace it. Their old rivals, Marxist Communism and Arab socialism, have been discredited by their failures, the one in Russia and its satellites, the other in the Arab lands that tried it. Their new competitors, the exponents of human rights protected in a civil society and of economic progress ensured in a free economy, have yet to make their way. In their contest with the liberals, the fundamentalists have an immense advantage. The liberals, once in power, are obliged by their own philosophy to allow the fundamentalists to try to replace them, as often as they may choose. The fundamentalists, once in power, would admit no such obligation toward the liberals and would indeed see it as a dereliction of duty to allow free play to the enemies of God. Meanwhile, the religious movements can still release and direct immensely powerful pent-up emotions and give expression to deeply held aspirations. Aspirations are not programs, and the fundamentalists in office have so far shown themselves no better equipped than their predecessors either to solve the problems of their societies or to resist the temptations of power. But although all these movements have so far been defeated or deflected, they have not yet spoken their last word.

The governments of Middle Eastern and other Muslim countries have tried to give expression to Islamic loyalties and sentiments through international organizations. At an early date, they formed an Islamic bloc at the United Nations-something that no other religion has achieved or even attempted-and held periodic meetings of Muslim heads of state or other holders of office to discuss matters of common concern. After some years of discussion, the Organization of the Islamic Conference was constituted at a summit conference in Lahore in February 1974. The thirty-six founder states have since been joined by many others, bringing the total to fiftyone. The OIC has concerned itself principally with religious and cultural matters, but has had remarkably little political or even diplomatic impact. On a few relatively safe issues, the organization was able to take a united stand. On more delicate questions, such as the position of Muslims in the Soviet Union, in China, or in India, or such crises as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the organization has been very cautious in its policies and even in its public comments, and its members are often in sharp disagreement. The attempt of Muslim governments, never more than half-hearted, to make Islam an organizing principle of international relations led nowhere, and the foreign policies of Muslim, as of other, states were conducted to a different rhythm.

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The Middle East in
International Affairs

Foreign policy is a European concept. It arose in a world of multiple sovereign states, separate but interacting, engaged in multilateral and continuous diplomacy. Like most of the paraphernalia of modem public and political life, it was an alien innovation in the world of Islam.

For the Muslims of classical times, Islam was the one true, final, and universal religion. Ultimately all mankind would adopt it; in the meantime, they must be made to recognize the supremacy of the Muslims and the paramountcy of the Muslim state. The world was divided into two-the house of Islam (dar al-Islam), where the true faith prevailed and the Muslim caliph ruled, and the house of war (dar al-barb), where unsubjugated infidels still remained. Between the two there was a perpetual and inevitable state of war, which might be interrupted by a truce but could never be ended by a peace. It would end only when the whole world was brought into the house of Islam. To achieve this, the waging of jihad-usually translated as "holy war"-was a religious obligation, incumbent on every individual Muslim in defense and on the community as a whole in an offensive war. In either case, it was a prime responsibility of their sovereign. In the Muslim world, there was only one state, the caliphate, and only one sovereign, the caliph, the rightful, lawful chief of the Islamic community and the head of the house of Islam.

For nearly a hundred years this worldview was sustained by reality. Islam was a single state and empire ruled by a single head; it was advancing with giant steps and seemed well on the way to bringing the whole world within its grasp. There was no reason to doubt the rapid completion of the processes of conquest and conversion by which infidels became subjects and subjects became converts. The change began with the failure of the last great Arab assault on Constantinople, in the grand style, in 718. Western tradition has glamorized the Battle of Tours and Poitiers, in which in 732 the Frankish prince Charles Martel defeated an advance party of Arab raiders from Spain, and has presented this as the decisive battle that saved the West from conquest by the arms and faith of Islam. In the Arab historical tradition-on this point far more accurate in its perception-it was the failure to capture Constantinople that marked the limit of Arab expansion and forced the gradual acceptance of the idea that there was such a limit. In time, the Arabs came to realize that they would not conquer and absorb the Byzantine as they had conquered and absorbed the Persian Empire. The capture of Constantinople was postponed to an eschatological future. The Muslim caliphs of the eighth and ninth centuries and their successors became reconciled to living with a more or less stable frontier and a continuing power on the other side of it. Before long, they also had to accept the fact of division within the frontier-of the emergence of hereditary, autonomous Muslim states, giving only token recognition to the caliph.

The reality had changed, but the idea remained. Islamic jurists, deeply influenced by the events and ideas of the early formative phase, remained committed to the conception of the unitary and universal sovereignty of the caliph. In consequence they were unable to equal even the tentative gropings of medieval Christendom toward an international law. There was only one caliph; the question of relations between Muslim states therefore could not in principle arise. When it did, it was either ignored by the jurists or treated casuistically under the heading of dealings between the caliph and a powerful rebel. Relations with the infidel could, in theory, consist only of jihad, interrupted by short truces. In fact, these "truces" were often of long duration and did not differ greatly from the "treaties of peace" that punctuated the almost continuous warfare of the states of Europe.

Just as the house of Islam was one, so there was a tendency to treat the house of war as one. According to a tradition dubiously attributed to the Prophet, al-kufru millatun wahida (unbelief is one nation). This proposition, historically speaking, is patently false, but it accurately reflects a common Muslim perception. The really important division was between believers and unbelievers; the lesser subdivisions among the latter, particularly those of them who lived beyond the Muslim frontiers, were without interest or significance for Muslims. A noteworthy illustration of this attitude may be seen in the Arabic historians of the time of the Crusades, who rarely bother to distinguish among the different crusading states and nations, but lump them all together under the generic name of Franks. The same term was still in use among the Ottomans and has survived in popular usage to our own day.

As long as the Ottomans retained overwhelming military power, they did not need to concern themselves with the trivial factions among the enemy, and the question of a foreign policy hardly arose. It was sufficient to meet and defeat them in battle, and dictate terms to them, to last until the next stage in the inevitable and necessarily victorious advance of Islam.

A change began in the sixteenth century. In 1529 the Ottoman armies withdrew after failing to take Vienna and settled down to the long and bloody stalemate in Hungary. In Istanbul, the diplomatic representatives of the European powers began their long and intricate contest for positions of commercial and political advantage; in 1535 the sultan signed a treaty of commerce and friendship with the king of France, to whom alone, among the monarchs of Christendom, he conceded the sovereign title of Padishah. In 1606, in the treaty of Sitvatorok, the sultan conceded this title also to the Habsburg emperor, hitherto described in Ottoman documents as the "king of Vienna." For the first time, this was not a truce dictated by the victors in their capital, but a treaty negotiated between equals on the frontier.