good evening good evening walking very very much conversations where we're pleased to welcome to the program dr richard bullet and mr hall is director of the middle east institute at columbia university as a writer and a historian of the middle eastern part of the world and back with a walk a very very much conversation thanks for having me here one of you my share for myself and for the general television audience we want to talk in some detail about the islamic world as it were your historian maybe you could fill us in in a broad brush kind of way just on the very elemental  developments of the islamic culture i know off camera we said this isn't a very exciting time for members of the islamic world now after our history but maybe you could just share in a a broad survey kind of where the development of the of the of the islamic political and economic cultural force historically let me do this very sort of big chunks good first of all there are about eight hundred million muslims in the world today meow the vast preponderance of them do not live in the middle different areas of different times one of the reasons people focus on islam in the middle east now is because that's the first area i threw down mohammad is born somewhere around five seventy a d he has the sense that muhammad would be a messenger in the in a sequence of messengers that includes jesus moses abraham and so on so this message galvanized a group of supporters around muhammad then you have a great deal of disagreement as to what happens next some people argue that the the religious fervor of the people who gather on the ground mohammad led to a stunning series of conquests in which by the year seven eleven everything from the indus river in the east to spain in the west have been conquered by arabs and to some area in some areas also berber armies other people argue about the religion was not leave motive for for the average arab soldier but these were nomads from tribes or at least people with other motivations perhaps and that there were other factors involved and no one is really in agreement it  is an article of faith for muslims about islam during the lifetime of the prophet and of his close companions as they're called say in the first century from the beginning of  to the right around the earth seven hundred circle of faith that this is one of those with most perfectly other people say that might be true for a group of people who knew about islam who were the actual friends of muhammad who saw him knew how he inspired people knew how we prayed how he carried on his everyday activities but wasn't really for everyone because after all most people were not muslims and the question of whether or not it was a religiously inspired thing or more of a political cultural arab thing is very good one that is hard to tell if some this story and talk about the arab conquests some will talk about the muslim conquest was mama conquest muslim simply means a person who has made submission islam to use the mission is so it's the it's the the term for life that becomes not only just religious in a sense word separate in a certain for but has a has a very strong effect upon life on an everyday sounds and it but really does this is this called sort of live where where it's difficult to to explain it because islam doesn't come into being full blown it it is god's word supplement to them by the experiences of the direct contact people had with the prophet muhammad but the koran is a fairly compact book is much shorter than the bible so that it doesn't give you everything that gives you very inspiring things it gives you the seeds from which institutions can develop but in fact they could have developed in different ways  have muhammad had been born among the eskimos presumably you would have had a different society than if he'd been born in the middle east and islam would have accommodated itself to the needs of the people in a different fashion it was a  flexible religion in the way that all great religions are it took something like three or four hundred years for the bulk of the population in the middle east itself to convert to islam i see interesting you know they did it gradually there there was not forced conversion they weren't compelled to enter by economic forces you know some sort of absorbent taxation there was a tax on the muslims but it didn't basically cause them to convert they converted gradually over three or four centuries but until about the year one thousand islam didn't expand much further them starting around the year one thousand it began to move in the india in a series of conquests that went on for years and india gradually became ruled by muslim rulers back but the people who carried on those to traders or mystic wandering holy mountain carried islam so it has been carried by many different people in many different ways in different parts of the world and it's adapted to local conditions in certain ways so that while all muslims would agree that in principle islam is a total way of life both for this world and for the next with no division  state in state and so forth and so on the way in which it's articulate the way in which it's experienced differs in different parts of the world and the middle east tends to be a fairly unitary body by comparison with certain other areas so middle eastern islam is a bit different because it's the homeland it's where other muslims in a sense look to find the ideas and the tendency of the forces in the traditions but they draw upon for the development of islam in their own region whether it's in tremendous explosion in technology in commerce and things like that one of the major factors in the growth of the cities was a real orientation of wealth redistribution of wealth that came because the muslim armies extracted wealth and spent two different ways but a large part of it was because the people who converted to islam wanted to go to where the muslims were and the arabs had decided to rule from urban centers so you had a migration inward into some places and some place been fairly small from the grew into cities as muslims moved in to be in these centers so that the cultural development of islam after the initial period in arabia with you also had a translation into arabic which is becoming the language of all the muslims for literary purposes and for scientific purposes but a translation of works from greek from sanskrit from path of b the middle persian language from syria into arabic and so the eighth century it is golden in the sense that you have this burgeoning urbanisation movement you have translation the transmission of the lore of several different civilizations into the common language of  m of course what makes islam special is that it creates this this commonwealth in a sense in the middle east after centuries of being split with into empires speaking different languages now you have something that is drawing up together and i go on another three hundred years later starting around eleven hundred you begin to get out formalized institutions of learning which then take off and become universities but in fact many of the most  similarities however with europe that are rather striking universities come along at the same time certain types of religious movements at the same time and indeed one could make an argument if you look at this whole business historically by fourteen hundred that pattern is pretty well established you have a society by this time india has become heavily affected by islam and islam is pushing has taken over in turkey and pushed in the balkans and it's moving out into other parts of the world but the important thing about this traditional normative society that came into being by about fourteen hundred was that it was had complex and certain institutions that were closely in a related and people had a very strong sense of place it was one of in a sense i think one of the most successful social synthesis in history in the sense that people knew who they were and where they were now but at the cost of a d m facilis on individuality a d m facilis upon the accumulation of money purely for its own sake a d m facilis upon inventiveness so that the the values that now many of today's muslims look for in their religious political movements of community authenticity a sense of identity of place of knowing who they are and where they are those are sort of nostalgic memories of a time when all that was what they didn't have were the things that we have in the west at that time which we began to develop that's right which caused a strong difference between the two areas but of course one of the things that actually astonishing to me in the last few years is how often in news media people talk about in the middle east where people have been killing each other for centuries and have traditional feuds and wars and so on the middle east prior to about middle of the nineteenth century the middle east for a number of centuries internally was one of the most peaceful and safe parts of the world the people who've been killing each other for centuries are the europeans if you're happy and for the europeans and americans to turn around and talk about the middle east as full of wars and bills is utter irony where in the longest period of european peace emperor augustus i believe but that was a vast expanse all the way from spain indonesia as it were and there are many many geographical differences there were what would come to be called thought of in the modern experience national difference differences regional differences within that vast expanse geographically and called truly of the peoples that were under islam there were these differences one of the differences i wondered maybe you could share or perhaps clear it up for us is the  of opinion on where authority lies where the leadership of the muslim community called in arabic the one where that lies it's a dispute that has its roots back in the decades following the death of the prophet muhammad m six thirty two but what it boils down to is that some people believe that there is a god ordained source of authority an individual the people of tradition and consensus are the people are people who believe that the community in some sense always chooses its own leader and that it's not a god ordaine that the idea that this person is a is a temporal nominee of the community is important because he has a less spiritual less of a spiritual cachet or authority than the a man of the shiites now remember shiites is a particularly after fifteen hundred when the shiites become dominant politically in iran the notion of the amount who by this time is a person disappeared from human society messianic tradition that's right yeah now for the suddenly is they never really expect their rulers to be perfect and they perhaps have possibly a bit more toleration for imperfection but basically a disagreement on this issue but when you actually get down to the day to day living they agree on many many points but they disagree on a number ritual points on the nature of prayer the nature of pilgrimage the nature of certain things and sometimes when we focus abstractly upon these issues of the hidden the ma'am of the twelfth imam of versus the son the notion of a of a elected kalo for a community choice  until we miss the fact that sunni's and she's actually can get into quite serious disputes on much more arcane are well not arcane for them but but much more focused on low level issues the issue of temporary marriage was something they grew out of the decades as you say right after the the dispute after right after the death of muhammad and that it came to be that in the whole expanse of islam the sunni the shiites may make up maybe ten percent or something in that order fifteen percent of w for a long time it was a lot of a major issue sunnis and she's got along perfectly well together they maintain their separate ritual practices but it wasn't a big deal and it's really with the iranian revolution that all of this has boiled up again and i think that we have had a and interpretation of events since the iranian revolution that has over emphasized the sunday show you split and i think the reason for it is is because our take a break here we can never move come back and pick it up they're getting out more into the contemporary situation and so forth and i appreciate your helping set some of these things straight because there's a great deal of misunderstanding and it's an important fact that we all begin to try and understand better what the realities are their guest is we need you people who love freedom people who share our values of democracy back again with dr richard bullock columbia university it's interesting the history of historical development of that of that sort of islam itself the fact that we live now in the modern era and trying to understand islam in the modern era without perhaps drawing too will probably have to touch on the colonial experience with the west and the modern experiences lama suffered and so for experience and so forth but the event is a revolutionary event in your estimation that helps to make this period perhaps the most exciting period in islamic history even more so even back to the beginnings of the roots of and so forth would perhaps and make it a revolutionary period is the events in iran in terms of the overall law development of his helmet i wouldn't want to be him i wouldn't want to compare it with the beginnings of a slight note but but it it's a go more excitement in islamic religious circles in the political circles associated with them that there than has been in a long long time and the iranian revolution didn't cause this  manifestation of it and the spectrum of religious thinking both political and nonpolitical is very broad encompassing what you see in the religious tendencies in the iranian  revolution but also going far beyond it in different directions or in different countries a common theme to have maybe we should go if we don't mind to the fact that we had brought it up to the fourteenth century or so and islamic world but there was the intervening period of the growth of the european colonial powers and so forth in the modern experience that has that has had a strong impact upon the thinking of the people in the arab and islamic world the colonial experience of the european powers yes and so forth but even one thousand that even in the twentieth century has normal experience has been an important one or more for the middle east and more of the imperialist experience all right we have to recall most of the middle east was not colonized and we're not talking about latin america or africa or southeast asia ok good we're talking about areas where some places such as algeria from eight hundred thirty on were colonized and they had to fight a bitter fight with the bitter war to achieve their independence and they become a very distinctive country because about the most parts of the middle east and not experience that kind of colonisation through the ottoman the ottomans ruled in the area but then after world war one of the french the british moved into certain areas where the french the british never in most of the areas act by the thought they were going to move in a lot of people settle half plantations sell crops middle east wasn't worth a whole lot into oil came along and some of it experienced imperialism to inexperienced it have the humiliating previous generation achieved political independence and what is happening now is a new generation is trying to achieve cultural independence as a continuation from political fighting political imperialism to fighting cultural imperialism all right but it's a little more complex than that because are the governments of the middle east the ottoman government the government egypt in the one nine hundred century really in a way collaborated with europe they collaborated in wanted to diminish islam for religious reasons the government of the middle east wanted to diminish islam because it was a counterweight to their authority to their political right if they could diminish that they could become the you know the rule the sort of authoritarian rules r they wish to be if they use the european techniques they built european type armies used european communications methods used european totalitarian techniques to develop by the middle of the twentieth century and in the minds of many of the islamic people they were going against the precepts of islam and some of the traditional ira values that have been important to culture but up to in the nineteenth century now islam was being attacked from within and without so effectively it was in schools it's legal that was regarded as a he was called pharaoh by his opponents of egypt the using the term for one of the most evil people in the koran  killing pharaoh was the way they term the killing of saddam some of the most radical islamic groups feel that they are the only muslims around that all the other people who are muslims they can kill because they are simply secular people following secular government want to trace radical in the sense of the islamic world or the arabic world what we mean radical when we talk about the radicals the radicals would be those who would try and reclaim the claims of islam in terms of life against political authority or radical and of course the other revolution against the shah and so forth radicals the islamic spectrum of politics i say radical are the people who who believe that they can only achieve their goals through revolutionary overthrow through a revolutionary overthrow of these governments that were that have emerged in the quasar in the secular regime know when you're talking about secular governments like that of syria or iraq or egypt radical means governments that feel they can only achieve their political goals through the use it was it was splashed all over american magazines newspapers this was a kind of meth the fact of the matter was that you had a family that militarily seized power to legitimize themselves from the title shah and then proceeded to turn their country into an absolute monarchy and it worked there were i recall the last time i was there in one hundred seventy seven are actually for the one hundred seventy want to recall being astonished to be in an absolute what been going on for several decades particularly since one thousand to fifty three with the overthrow most of that and this led to a revolution and it brought to the fore ayatollah khomeini who was probably the most important political figure in the twentieth century at least within the islamic world interesting and he is in the shah tradition again you say you think it's overstressed maybe we should he's in the shiite tradition of of us of being representing is a certain i don't underclasses correct khomeini's position was made possible partly by his own personal background and intellectual political buildings partly by the fact that iran compared to other islamic countries was much less developed so that the religious institutions the framework of mullahs and so forth had more independence and more resources under the control than their parallel people did in the sunni world who most of the sunni world that's interesting that would be the the fact that within the shiite tradition they have a attitude toward authority in the religious fear that is different and more acute than the sum of the attitude so it made it possible for khomeini to to gain more prominence than perhaps he could have in the sunni world but also he had the network around him he had the other most of the other people who had congregations and schools under the control who acted as his network and who have actually removed from the center of affairs their independence their control of institutions their control resources has been stripped from them and they no longer power when you find leadership in the some areas it tends to be outside  the clergy outside the official people or with minor figures who are not holding government positions this is not inherent in some neighbors she this is simply a matter of the historical development of the shiite area  and the more economically developed areas in the sunny world the but the kind of authority any suddenly alan any suddenly religious leader can command doesn't have quite the intensity as a kind of messianic tradition in a certain sense being fulfilled lends itself to the to the to the for or of the of the of the iranian experience and one wonders what the attitude of the broader islamic world is toward the richard bullet from coming university and this question of the of the of the modern attitude of say the pins event of the iranian revolution and what it perhaps could be seen as a model for others or what the effects of it is what the attitude of the broader arab not to say muslim world is toward the rather unique experience of a very fervent and religiously oriented and religiously oriented iranian call to the we see now one of the general feelings that we read conflict not going to saudi people understand i would say just flat out that a tremendous number of muslims outside iran are really disgusted with the islamic republic of iran who are embarrassed a galvanizing kind of experience and you have other groups for particularly young people particularly student types around the arab world all throughout the islamic world and throughout the islamic who are excited  who say ok maybe it isn't going perfectly but it's a it is the first time in a sense that the muslims who are religious nuts have tried to run their country and here they've held it together without  collapsing they fought a war for years they have all the imperialist power humiliated the united states they have overthrown the shah look what they have achieved no one thought the shah's got that no one who dislikes the islamic republic except brotherhood in kuwait is a suddenly organization they will go to tehran because politically leaving aside something in the shade for people who want to see a fundamental change in the way the islamic world french you can look at this not at all that means you can look at the excesses of the reign of terror but if you were one of the people participated in the revolutions of eight hundred thirty or eight hundred forty eight you know in other parts of europe you w be thinking about the terror you'd be thinking about the overthrow monarchy you would be thinking about the the ideals the theories and in fact the people who use the french revolution as a model didn't use all parts of it they didn't use the revolting parts of it they didn't use napoleon but used only the parts they wanted and i think that that's one thing we have to keep in mind i'm looking at the islamic republic of iran and of the person of ayatollah khomeini is that we may see him whole because we're outsiders and we may see a lot that we really find revolting but there is a selectiveness in the way in which people who are with him a society  selected us in the way they use things and they aren't necessarily going to look at the same things that you or i would look out and i think that that revolution will become in some sense a model but perhaps we won't or can't even because here you have the religious authority that is in a certain sense being is it the religious at the the the religious values and religious tradition or the political authority and the economic authority and the political power that is being manifest by iran that is largely being  's now demonstrated to do this possible in the latter years of the twentieth century to establish a regime in which the the society the economy the politics revolve around islam to overlook it but it does have a parliament parliament does function you know there are things that khomeini is known to have supported that he has not been able to get through the parliament whom we focus so much upon the sort of magnetic and  malevolent image of khomeini that we overlook the way in which the government actually functions and but the people who use it as a as a if if not a model as an inspiration might not look might not overlook these things and we said earlier about there are people who might look with derision toward iran and so forth within the muslim world but there are also many people who look to it as a potential model and there are people in positions of authority who grab fearfully look at it as a model for sweeping yes i think over the what happened in iran could either in a revolutionary evolutionary way take over to other areas and it is very important in governing circles in the sonic world particularly in the arab world we're now in a kind of measure nicaean phase in the arab world where were customs twenty years ago to the idea of the countries are always fighting each other they don't fight each other anymore but they have been in that the air upon their morton all right but that's very important ok the struggle among this arab party a matter of party in this country in that country was at one time very common now all the arab governments even though they still disagree on things not really fighting each other because they're all threatened they are all fearful that something is creeping up on them that something being that something being the islamic tendency with iran as the model if not specifically the iranian form they don't want to become to destabilize themselves were getting into wars with each other and provide an opportunity for this something to overthrow them well no it's the same sound thing that you have with modern nick and europe the ideas let's not have any change and in fact we have extremely static governments throughout the arab world and it's we're even though we call some of the radical and some of the moderate they're all terribly conservative in many important respects the united states supports that idea this of course the conservative think about right now and then the united states is seen in traditional terms as the enemy against which so much of the vitriolic rhetoric and somewhat is directed on the part of the committee that is the embodiment of the evil in an ultimate sense since they're supporting some of these other forces that  in terms of things that we pay most attention to well yes but now in the time of the iranian revolution the people who were the enemy were the upper class who were associated with the shah's regime the  was good politics and there was enough subs substance to it both with our intrusion into iran into iranian politics nine hundred fifty three when we helped overthrow most of that and our letting the shah into this country for medical treatment this was enough and our lack of general policy is going to give us a positive role in that part of the world as you know that hasn't helped so we became a target we were not intrinsically a target and in the americans it's our many iranians it's still a rather remote sloganeering type thing and it's the internal revolution in a sense that has come home to the lives of people there more but we don't stress that because we are  touch upon us but now that we are aligned with this notion that we have to help the current arab governments preserve themselves in power in the sort of matter nicaean without without overloading of  necessarily in a revolutionary for my guess is that that kind of revolution will only happen once but gradually you will have the ruling groups or the dominant groups in countries turning more toward this to head off or to co opt this movement there must be among particular maybe among some of the young some of the radicals some of the disinfect disaffected some of the poor peoples and so forth there must be a sense of identification with the with the materialistic gains of the iranian revolution as they would see there are others who would speak for the underclasses of that part of the world against the rulers of that part of the world also the underclasses against the imperialist powers in general whether it's neo imperialism of the united states and so forth the poor third world peoples of the world so there must be a feel for that and there's pan arab ism this pan islamic sentiment among all of the peoples of the islamic world that has been in various ways expressed as national differences between them and there is even fighting between islam and iran iraq and so forth but the idea of a pan islamic or pan arab sentiment runs strong or could and does it run a different levels and if there are difficulties between the underclasses and the leaders of the various societies and is khomeini a threat but is appealed mostly to the underclasses the various arab states that now make up the arab and islamic were very complex sorry issues the governments of islam states the governments of states that have a predominantly muslim population have muslim rulers by and large are people who feel that they are threatened by this but they are threatened by a as  as an instrument of the lower class in particular some of these governments are socialist governments that have attempted to improve education to succeed in iraq which is essentially a police state nevertheless has done taken great strides in the improving education improving welfare in proving the situation of women and so forth in many ways it has helped the underclass and yet at the same time it has had to to  assert a police state presence in order to suppress the kind of undermining influence influences that they see stemming from the iranian revolution and even before that so that isn't a matter of  were landowners or who were mole those who were more conservative one of the things that khomeini and his closest associates have tried to get through the iranian parliament is a lab reform law they can't do it on their block by the conservative side so that this isn't that clear it is a revolution that has stripped an upper class of its privilege force them in exile and created a very sad situation for that group of people whom it has benefited to some degree a lower class and it is narrowed the the income spread so the richest people are not as rich as they were in the poorest people are a little bit better but it is not pan islamic can also occur at a lower level of people who seek power rather than those who have it and there's no question but what the islam of the groups of the islamic tendency the islam of political movements  don't really care in terms of the sort of building up a sense of momentum they did no one seems to talk about the idea of bringing all the islamic countries together and no great do not carry out they do not think not that does not emerge or as in the way of a single state i've never seen any group of police but they all feel that they're part of a single movement so they're fighting against forces within each of their separate societies some more than against forces from outside being imperialism or not necessarily all of its forms and all of its advantages but simply to get rid of its fundamental alienation from their muslim sensibilities so as their muslim their roots that they're going back to the roots of their own traditions that they want to recapture and so forth and the ideas of that are seen as being threatening to people who are in league as it were with some of the horrible progressive forces of the western experience or yes being me you know many of the sort of people will be opposed to a conservative monarchy like that of saudi arabia but they'll be po'd also opposed to a secular progressive party such as the bath party in iraq we're not dealing here with the spectrum of political ideology with a left right and center on that but we inherit from european politics we're dealing with a a different spectrum it's it's like oh this is the one way or another and be much more inclined toward islam a view of things not necessarily a model of the islamic republic of iran but picking up from last from that example and that's the reason i think that revolution is so incredibly important twentieth century that that is that that's a real major watershed you put it in the order with the front row volution i certainly do but it's amazing it's amazing amazing volatile part of the world it's just in it is it is a shame that we are also very ignorant of a by and large most of us here in the culture of the real and the united states and western world largely of the regions we ourselves could do well to develop a more enlightened policy toward that part of the world so we might be able to inform ourselves more appropriately in terms of a policy that we could be a den of fire and resonate with that made some sense in terms of american world interest that part of the world maybe is that we don't have a way of responding to this that we need to have better understanding but if there's a better understand to be had it seems to me and my welcome from you i thank you for helping helping  to our general understanding of his work it's been your pleasure to have the perceptions of richard bullet he's director of the middle east institute at columbia university here in new york city author of many many books on the area and so forth happy to unable to welcome you to conversations to