# ISLAM

## A. INTRODUCTION

### 1. The Integrity of Islam

In strictest terms it is valid to ask if there is any more a unity called Islam than there is one called Christendom. Although all devout adherents to this universal and missionary faith cluster around a common conception of the Divine, a religious system notable for its direct clarity and distaste for doctrine, and a similarity of custom, tradition, and law, there are many exceptions to the rule of Islamic integrity.

Where such integrity exists, we can assign it in the first place to the philosophical monism that makes Islam seem structurally so intact. By the determination of practically all commentators, the Muslim faith has had both supernatural and historical injunction to regulate the scope and nature of civil and customary affairs. In Islam no line divides the things that pertain to Caesar and those that are the property of God. A tradition of the Sunnah records the Prophet as saying: "Verily, I am only a human being. If I order you to do something on the basis of my opinion, I am only a human being. You know better your worldly affairs." But this is an exceptional example of Quranic apocrypha, and the main line of the tradition has been to consider all activities as germane to the practice of religion and answerable to religious interpretation. Such an attitude produced a rigid, age-old tendency to resort to historical mimesis in Islamic communities, especially once the age of decadence had set in. Efforts at the renovation of the structure of Islam were more likely to take the form of purification rather than modification of traditional patterns of authority (such as the Wahabbite movement in Saudi Arabia in the[O]aid-eighteenth century). The same trend is still to be observed today

in the faculty of Cairo's famous al-Azhar University and in other centers of
historic Muslim culture.

Where a cleavage between the things of Caesar and those of God occurred,
as was inevitable in the modern period, this was due not to any inner impulsion
of the Islamic system itself, but rather to secular and liberalizing pressures
imported from Western Christendom. Though the point would be hotly disputed by
many pan-Islamists, it seems just to say that by the end of the 16th century Is-
lam had lost the virtue of progressive self-renewal and that the impact of an
alien culture was required. In regions of the Islamic world where civil and
religious authority have become discrete, like Turkey, and in other places
where the battle is being heatedly fought, like Tunisia, we can perceive a sharp
qualitative distinction from the Islam of old. This is because it is nothing less
than a germinal theory of the civiliation that has been called into question.

Islam's heady success in the European Middle Ages, its dogmatic his-
torical recollection of its own era of brilliance, and the timeless tranquil-
lity of some of its traditional precepts have determined that old ideas should
die harder here than in other underdeveloped areas. The initiative ingenuity
of the Oriental is absent, as is the cultural lassitude which permits the Af-
rican to become swiftly Westernized. Nothing less than a ruthless, state-
dominated revolution over a period of a generation was required to shake Turkey
out of the habits of the past, and even after forty years of technical and edu-
cational upheaval the Turkish peasant is still much more Eastern than Western.
How much harder still it promises to be to plant the seed of change in the dog-
matic Arab heartland where the ideals of the bedouin perspective have not en-
tirely lapsed and where the cradle of the religion still rocks.

Thus, we see that in terms of the modernization toward which prac-
tically all nation-states of today profess to strive, Islam can impose a nega-
tive and restraining unity. Leaders like Nasser and Bourguiba are well aware
of this difficulty, but no leader in the Arab heartland has to date had the
stamina and resources to launch a frontal attack against the retrograde quali-
ties of the religion in the same way as Ataturk or Rezashah in Iran (another
Islamic but non-Arab country).

A second measure of Islamic integration is the historical memory of
conquest and cultural dynamism, But naturally this will mean quite different
things to an Arab, a Turk, or an Iranian. And it may mean little or nothing to
a Javanese or a Moro of the Sulu Archipelago or a Nigerian.

Thirdly, there is the aura of the Prophet and the notion of Mecca
itself and the pilgrimage to that holy place which the devout believer is en-
joined to make at least once in his life and which, according to the little
theology that Islam possesses, is supposed to serve as a propitiation for the
pilgrim's entire community. Mecca is still today a powerful vortex which draws
in the *timmā* (true believers) from all corners of the world (over 100,000 each
year) and underscores the idea of unity among them. Needless to say, it has
been no less useful to those who practice certain ideals of secular politics.
General Naguib, for example, while still the provisional head of the Egyptian
state in 1954, found that his pilgrimage gave him an excellent opportunity to
cement relations with King Saud, who, ironically, returned the visit in the
very week that Naguib was ousted from power.

A fourth, and extremely influential unifying factor in Islam is the
common recognition by the leadership of these areas that their economic as
well as their cultural and intellectual destinies are linked by bonds of mutual

dissatisfaction and frustration. In this sense, Islam emerges — increasingly
so — as one of the principal nuclei of the "third force." United, these coun-
tries have a chance of standing; divided, they must surely fall or be neutral-
ized in the world's diplomatic concourse.

2. Centrifugal Factors and Problems of Definition

There are, however, many contradictions to this principle which will
be evoked in detail in the course of this essay. They occur principally where
Islamic collaboration is controverted by economic, nationalistic, or pan-Arabic
factors. Briefly, some examples of this disunity might be mentioned. For example:

(a) The constantly flickering jealousies of the "have not" toward the oil-rich nations.

(b) Natural and historical antipathies between Turk and Arab, Kurd and Arab, Berber and Arab, and Persian and Arab.

(c) The Sunni-Shi'ite split within the framework of the Islamic in-
stitution.

(d) Modernizing versus static tendencies in the civil and political aspects of Islam.

(e) Particularized territorial disputes, such as that between Egypt and Sudan for the water resources of the Nile, or between Egypt and Iraq for hegemony over the Syrian land bridge to the "Fertile Crescent."

(f) Aspects of the Cold War itself, such as Turkey's accession to NATO.

It is interesting to note that the purest (i.e., non-political) Islamic fervor often seems to originate at points of the compass farthest distant from Mecca. Here, largely because of the consequences of the conversion, religion becomes more a pious undertaking and less a pre-emptive demand upon all aspects of life (Muslim Black Africa and Indonesia substantiate this point; Pakistan,

for particular reasons elicited in the survey of South Asia, denies it).

Finally, within certain extremely well-defined limitations (imposed
by the inherent nature of certain national states such as Turkey, Lebanon,
Tunisia, or the Muslim provinces of Russia and China), Pan-Islamic force is
proliferated by conscious agents in the measure that it is politically and
diplomatically useful. As a diplomatic instrument, it can cross boundaries
where nationalism and even pan-Arabism must stop.

The Islamic bond is, then, as we have tried to indicate, mitigated by
numerous particular factors, some of them going deep into the history of the
religious community and others surging forward as a result of uneven technology
and resources and differing colonial experiences. When we attempt, therefore,
to make a regional study of Islam, it is altogether proper to exclude certain
peripheral Muslim-majority areas, which, although they have often shared gen-
erously in and contributed to the collective culture, belong more properly in
other geographical spheres of influence. What we shall concentrate on in this
survey is the Arab heartland of Islam, extending from the base of the Atlas
Mountains on the Atlantic coast and flanking the southern shore of the Medi-
terranean until it erupts in the Near East and pursues divergent paths up the
Nile, into the Arabian peninsula and across the arc of the "Fertile Crescent."
It is convenient for purposes of contrast and reasons of historical unity to add
the modern non-Arab states of Turkey and Iran, and to exclude the nation of
Israel from all but oblique consideration. The largely tribalized, but to an
extent Persianized, state of Afghanistan is included, as is the Sudan, because
of its historic relationship to both pre- and post-Islamic Egypt.

3. <u>Components of Islam</u>

As a beginning it is well to delineate sharply between the three major

sub-areas of our discussion. The so-called Arab world refers, of course, to a
linquistic and scarcely to a racial concept. The substratum of most of the
Arab-speaking nations is either Berber, Copt, or Syriac, and the Arabs of the
peninsula are themselves a mixture of short- and long-headed types. This fact,
of course, does not alter, although it occasionally challenges, currents of
rampant "Arabism" in the nations of this region. The emotional unit of reference,
besides the religion, is the common language, which the spread of literacy is
gradually standardizing throughout the area; the historical nuclei are, of course,
the original Medinite conquests and the later caliphates of Baghdad and Moorish
Cordova - Sir Hamilton Gibb has very well said that the Arabs are a people "clus-
tered about an historical memory."

This Arab world has several compulsive centers of inspiration; if there
is hesitation in the West as to whether Rabat (Fez is more ancient and venerable)
or Tunis (Kairouan is more sacred) shall predominate, there is no dearth of
competitors in the East. Mecca is, of course, unchallenged as the holy city.
Baghdad evokes the historical memory of empire; Cairo remains the cosmopolitan
and feverishly political center of pan-Arabic agitation. But it is possibly
the attractive city of Damascus, centered at the crossroads of Arab commerce
and conquest, and fought over heatedly long before the Prophet's vision by what-
ever rulers possessed Egypt and Mesopotamia, that is both *par excellence* and by
by compromise the city of Islam. The striking phenomenon we observed in Asia
is no less germane to the Arab world; in countries that are 80% rural and pas-
toral the cities are nevertheless supreme and all-powerful. This can even be
demonstrated linguistically: the Egyptian *fellah* (peasant) customarily uses the
same word (*masr*) to refer both to his country and to its capital city. Further-
more, if the demographic demands on some of these countries (Egypt, Tunisia, and,

to a lesser degree, Morocco) are staggering, the major cities are sprouting at an even more incredible rate.

We shall delve more completely into the "Arab personality" and Pan-Arabism in a later section.

Turkey, in its incarnation of the Ottoman Empire, has parallel if somewhat later claims (Seljuk and Osmanli dynasties) to pre-eminence in the central Islamic world. However, with its renunciation of the historic caliphate under the revolutionary modernizer Mustafa Kemal in 1921, Turkey abjured its past as the seminal Islamic polity and turned with great realism to the narrower horizons of its own ethnic territory, a decision forced on it, moreover, by the experience of 1918. It would be wrong to imagine, however, despite the transformations of the past forty years, that Turkey was peripheral to the fundamental Islamic development. Instead, her role was indeed central, recalling the function of the Frankish Holy Roman Empire within Western Christendom at a time when the Roman Empire (which may be compared to the Arab caliphates) had been overthrown. Turkey in fact spread its suzerainty over the remaining Islamic lands of the Mediterranean littoral, where her rule was, however, most often by proxy and for purposes of tax-gathering rather than anything approaching a cultural or even political impregnation. Turkey, moreover, derived her political habits from the culture she had conquered as well as assimilating many techniques from prostrate Christian Byzantium.

In its latter days the sagging Ottoman Empire was very much the Islamic parallel of the Austro-Hungarian Empire - a multiracial concatenation, with certain rights guaranteed to the minorities under the millet system and capped by the principle of dynastic legitimacy. Law and customary practice were thoroughly Muslim, and the Turkish language was heavily burdened with sophisticated Arab

words and constructions that had no resemblance to the national *patois* of the people. It is a geographical paradox that Turkey had to withdraw into Asia to begin to look toward Europe.

Relations between Turk and Arab within the Islamic context are ambigu-
ous. It is a generally well known fact that the two races do not spontaneously
entertain good relations, in spite of their common religions heritage. There
is a continuous historical jealousy as regards the leadership of Islam, which
Turkey has of course today fairly well surrendered by default. There is also
the long relation of the conqueror and the conquered, which had its climax in the
famous "revolt of the Arabs" in 1916. However, by no means all the Arabs re-
volted at this time (especially the more backward communities), and it is by
no means proven that the Arab experience of Ottoman colonialism was, in terms of
the area, excessively oppressive. What the Hashemites and their allies seem to
have experienced primarily, abetted by the British, was the desire for the ac-
tual trappings of sovereignty, which are historically very dear to the Arab.
Undoubtedly the frustration of this ambition by the thin disguise of the League
of Nations mandate system played a considerable psychological role in deter-
mining that the post-World War II eruption of nationalism would be of the vio-
lent sort.

In the heyday of the Ottoman Empire, however, Turks and other non-
Arabs (the Mameluke pashas were, in fact, of Circassian stock) emigrated
widely to the Arab territories in privileged administrative or commercial ca-
pacities and intermarried with local stock, so that there is, even today, a
cosmopolitan and wealthy group in all important cities that is Turkish by ori-
gin and can be so identified by name. This circumstance provoked the rival
jealousy not so much of the Arabized populations but of the natural competitors,

the commercially minded seaboard Levantines, many of whom were Christian by religion.

Today, the traditional factors of discord between Turk and Arab are politically sharpened by Turkey's determination to participate in collective defense arrangements with Western ex-colonial powers, her dogmatic secularism, which seems, however, to have reached the high-water mark, and, especially, her reasonably cordial relations with Israel, to which state she extended diplomatic recognition in the 1950's. We shall expand on Turkey's strategic and psychological position in the Islamic world in an appropriate section.

Iran's role in Islam corresponds in many particulars with that of Turkey, although not to the same degree of magnitude. First of all, Iran, like Turkey, though Islamic and partly Arabized through cultural contact, has retained its own language (even if perhaps no more than 30-35% of the population speaks standard modern Persian) and, to a large extent, its own cultural ways which reflect a significant civilization antecedent to Islam. Persia's essential glories are all pre-Islamic; Turkish prominence, on the other hand, follows the conversion. This at once introduces a qualitative distinction between the two nations. With regard to Islam it has meant that Turkey could assert her national ethnic individuality only through suppression of all theocratic aspects of the religion. Persia, on the other hand, with cultural confidence in the wealth of her tradition could assimilate Islam somewhat to her own national uses without directly attacking its prerogative of intervention in mundane affairs. The Shi'ite schism in the sixteenth century, although based on historical controversy concerning the early caliphate, can be interpreted as Persia's way of reasserting her capacious national individuality without burning the bridges to Mecca.

Two aspects of Shi'ism are its rather conservative and puritanical nature and its proliferation of a virtual priesthood, the idea of which is basically alien to Islam, where directness of contact between man and God is emphasized. The static and liturgical aspects of the Shi'ite heresy undoubtedly have more than a little historical connection with Persia's earlier great religion, Zoroastrianism, with its ritual and priestly attributes, and we must guard ourselves against equating Shi'ism with European Protestantism. However, if we were to imagine a Protestantism composed in equal degree of aspects of the Albigensian heresy and of Calvin's theocratic state structure, we could concoct a Christian sect which, in its environment, would recall the Islam of Persia.

Another earlier contribution of the Persian spirit to the Islamic cultural ensemble was mysticism (Sufi'ism) with all its connotations of cultural creativity — verbal paradox, investigation of the nature of divine love, representative symbolic art, etc. This blossoming of mysticism, which has given Islam some of its most profound and pleasing works, is fundamentally at odds with the lineal spatial clarity of the Arab mind and its appreciation for an abstract that remains uncluttered with particularized objects.

There is probably little need to rehearse the pre-Islamic glories of the Persian Empire in any of its historical aspects — Persian-Median, Selucid, or Sassanian — except to note that the historical memory of such greatness has tended to prevail over the experience of Islam as a national value — the Persians were, after all, a conquered race speaking an Indo-European language. Relations with the Arab countries to the West have not usually been good, and there is significantly more fellow-feeling toward the Muslims of Pakistan and India. The inclusion of Iraq in a mutual defense pact with Iran, however transitory, was also a historic anomaly, for Persia has never felt particularly secure on her Western

border, expecially in the light of the trans-frontier Kurdish problem, which has
been incessantly invoked by all powers in the region wishing to gain territorial
advantages.

The lustre of ancient Persian history appears to have had particular in-
fluence on national ideas of kingship and the ordering of the state. Wish-dreams
of an Islamic caliphate are not in particularly good repute in Iran. The concep-
tion of the Shah-in-Shah replies not to the early history of Islam but to the
memory of Cyrus and Darius, and the definitions of the duties and obligations owed
the ruler are more absolute and autocratic than any which orthodox Islam could con-
sistently endorse.

Of course, 80% of Iran is peasant or tribal and illiterate, and it would
be foolish to think that these peoples have any clear notions of the ancient glo-
ries of the Persian Empire. Their conception of the Shah is more in line with
the demands of conventional patriarchal authority. Nonetheless, it is significant
that if we compare the two cases of Iran and Egypt, we find a much greater pre-
Islamic historical consciousness in the former country. The average Egyptian
does not worry in the slightest or know very much about the Pharonic splendors
of his country, despite the availability of imposing monuments; history for him
begins with the Hegira in 722 A.D. Persia is not Islamized to the same extent,
or in the same way.

Persia and Turkey, in the context of today, are natural allies, both as
regards the imperialistic excursions of the vast Soviet Union and the disruptions
of an Arab nationalism that has come to full boil. Curiously enough, this fact
links their destinies inescapably to that of Israel, a circumstance which both
countries are tacitly aware of but dare not proclaim. They are also in a sense
competitors for the American dollar, for military support and economic aid, a ri-
valry which occasionally provokes bad feeling between them. The anti-religious

revolution in both countries seems to have subsided somewhat, without for that
matter having ever made a real dent in Persia, where the Shi'ite clergy remains
one of the principal weights on the power balance.

These facts, which are by no means transitory in their origin or consequences, illustrate the fundamental split in the Islamic world and help to explain why Islam as a unit may not be an ultimately fruitful category of research. The indications are that with the passage of time, Islam — insofar as it retains any concrete political meaning — will become the tool and prerogative of the Arab core of nations and progressively more indistinguishable from Pan-Arab nationalism. The peripheral countries will guard their distances to an even greater degree. This proposition can be easily tested, if we observe the conduct of these states toward Israel. Turkey and Iran have both extended de facto recognition to Israel for a number of years, whereas, for example, Morocco, caught in a vortex of emotionalized and fanatic Arabism since 1957, has had to proceed to the persecution of its considerable Jewish community, which it had earlier sought to integrate in the national structure.

## 4. Geographical Imperatives

Within what we have somewhat uneasily described as the Islamic world,
geography and historical currents have exerted their own peculiar influences which
it would be as foolhardy to overlook as it is difficult to evaluate precisely.
Islam, after all, as dynamic a cultural stimulus as it was, is but one of many
historical disturbances that affected the character and development of this vast
area. Yet Islam is, and shall remain, for most of these territories the one event
that can be qualified as profound and revolutionary.

But let us see what some of the other factors are. Even in the Arabian
peninsula, as we have suggested, there is a mixture of racial types and no clear

notion as to what an Arab is in physical terms. Semitic, like Arab, is an es-
sentially linguistic classification. The Yemeni do not physiologically resemble
the inhabitants of the Nejd or the early invaders from the Fertile Crescent. Fur-
thermore, the Arabian peninsula is today far from politically unified (Yemen, Sau-
di Arabia, the British protectorates of Aden, Hadramawt, the "Trucial Sheikdoms,"
Oman and Muscat, Qatar, Kuweit), and it is interesting and not generally realized
that the spread of Arabic throughout this area has been slow and not, to this day,
entirely successful. Even where the Arabs themselves are concerned, there is
literary evidence of a sophisticated pre-Islamic civilization in the South of the
peninsula, which has commanded increasing attention. The fishers and traders of
the Trucial Coast and Hadramant have traditionally looked outward, to markets in
far-off India, Malaya, and Indonesia, rather than inward, to the core and center
of sacred Islam. The Saudite people and the Yemeni have been traditionally hos-
tile and remain so today.

Another case is surely that of North Africa, which is itself compart-
mentalized by geographical factors. Morocco is tilted on a geographical axis
that points in a northeast-southwesterly direction; her prevailing climatic in-
fluences are Atlantic and not Mediterranean at all. A fundamentally Berber na-
tion (40-45% of the population still speaking Hamitic dialects), she is the least
"Arabized" of the Arab states, even though she possesses some remarkable examples
of Arabo-Moorish architecture. Thence, one suspects, derives some of her extraor-
dinary fervor of the past year in trying, at least for political purposes, to try
to prove herself "more Arab" than some of her eastern neighbors, through her ardent
participation in the Arab League and her extreme cordiality to the diplomatic ini-
tiatives of the United Arab Republic.

Tunisia is still another case in point. It is almost less an Arab than

a "Mediterranean" country, and the policies of President Bourguiba do much to emphasize this fact. The suppression of the regency of the Bey of Tunis and the transformation of the newly-liberated nation into a Republic is not the most ar-resting of these developments. Tunisia has been, and must infallibly remain, a state attached to the destinies of the great sea which has formed her and on which she depends.

Strategically, nothing could be clearer. Tunisia completes the lower half of a vice which dominates the narrow Straits of Sicily. The Allies learned to their chagrin during the opening phases of World War II that if Gibraltar and Suez were historically more vital points on this vast, land-locked body of water, the Sicilian Straits could effectively control commerce and shipping between its two unequal halves. Thus, we can immediately comprehend that it is not from motives of sheer prestige that France wishes a continued domination of the naval base at Bizerte and that Tunisia desires even more fervently to wrest it away from her.

Modern strategy and geographical imperatives are, however, only secondary in determining the orientation of the Tunisian state. History, too, has vast and flexible resources. Overlaid successively on the Hamitic sub-stratum of the population have been the Punic and Roman invasions of ancient times, and more recently the Arab one. The fact that Arabization in Tunisia has, much more than anywhere else in the Maghreb, suppressed all hint of Berber particularism and that the Arab language is in almost universal currency does not conceal the fact that Tunisia is drawn historically to its experiences of the past. Although Arabic civilization, especially after the expulsion of the Andalusians from Spain, knew a brief but intense flowering in the medinas of Tunis and Kairouan before the stultifying Turkish suzerainty set in, reminiscences of Carthaginian and Roman times are to be conjured with. Today's Western orientation and passion for secularization and

modernization in Tunisia cannot simply be explained by the fact that her pres-
ent leadership is bent on driving her in this direction; it relates directly to
the automatic reflexes of her Mediterranean past, a past which is fundamentally
alien to the past of Morocco, even though that country lies farther east, on the
Atlantic.

Although emotional ties with Mecca and even Cairo may be strong, Tunisia looks out on its own sea and not into the eastern hinterlands. It is temperamentally avid for the profession of its Phoenician forefathers and as such is a psychological block in the way of trans-Mediterranean Arab unity. Egypt is only too well aware of this fact, and it is much more than simple politics or personality which have led Nasser to harbor the current Tunisian pretender Salah Ben Youssef in the encierro of Cairo or to woo the Sultan of Morocco with what one suspects are excessive promises of Maghrebian leadership and free rein for expansion into the Sahara. It is the fundamental issue of pan-Arab unity which is at stake, a context in which the political complexion of the eventual free Algeria will figure importantly.

Egypt itself is a paradox in Islamic terms. To begin with, it has para-
doxically taken up the reins of pan-Arab leadership since 1945 even though its
racial stock is only lightly touched by the genes of the peninsula. It has an
exceedingly ancient and essentially African personality which it ignores when
necessary and exalts (as now) when the moment seems propitious. Nevertheless,
its thrust has always heretofore been eastward, toward the Islamic heartland, with
the territory presently occupied by the state of Israel and its Syrian extension
the major prize in the acquisition of empire. But, totally unlike bedouinized
Arabia, which in the opinion of many inspired the monotheistic character of the
Islamic religion and its breadth and clarity, Egypt is par excellence a peasant

country, simultaneously the richest and almost the poorest (rivalled only by parts of India) in the world: richest in the total yield per acreage of its major export crop, cotton; poorest in its ability to support its alarmingly multiplying population.

Egypt is also, at least passively, a Mediterranean country. The Egyptians have never been reputed as great sea-farers (the debacle of the Egyptian destroyer in the Israeli War of 1956 is but the latest in a series of proofs of their naval shortcomings), but the historic pre-Christian maritime contacts with Crete and Phoenicia are a matter of record. In comparatively modern times the almost filial associations between Greece and Egypt (most pronounced during the Second World War, when many Greek troops were stationed in Egypt, and not in abeyance today, despite NATO and the Cold War) cannot pass unperceived. Nor, more strikingly, can the fact that Egypt's modern awakening was due in great measure to the Napoleonic invasion of 1798 and to the rule of an Albanian adventurer of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmet Ali, in the nineteenth century, be ignored. Conversely, despite the modernizing atmosphere which has steadily propelled the country forward for the last century and a half, there have been frequent if intermittent manifestations of the desire to "out-Arabize" the others, reflected in the attitudes of the learned ulema of al-Azhar or in such terrorist and para-political groups as the Muslim Brotherhood.

Again, the perspective changes as we move south up the great Nile to the contemporary nation of Sudan, a state composed of two seemingly irreconcilable halves, the northern one thoroughly Islamic and Arabized, Nubian in stock, the southern primitive, Negro, animistic or Christian in religion, and racially much more clearly attached to its neighbor Uganda.

On the old Phoenician littoral the most extraordinary type of racial

and psychological diversity exists, much of which has its substratum in immemorial
time and most of which precedes the experience of Islamization. The artificial
kingdom of Jordan becomes thereby a bridge between this Syriac diversity and the
Bedouin habits of Arabia proper. Iraq is yet another Arabized bridge, its peoples
living in perilous equilibrium with each other, balancing between the Syrian west,
the unsettled and tribal Turko-Kurdish north, and the schismatic Shi'ism of the
East.

Many of these observations are made here superficially only for purposes
of introduction, and will be taken up at a later point in a more focused and bal-
anced presentation. But the reader should already be able to perceive that Arab
unity, swift and thoroughgoing as it was in the time of the Caliphate, is by no
means an article of faith to be taken for granted. Dozens of particularisms and
historical memories complicate the issue and are still vital and susceptible to
their own manipulations. We have not yet offered any discussion of the particu-
lar nationalisms, but we may state categorically that it is presently impossible
to know with any clairvoyance whether they obviously supersede the pan-Arabic
thrust or not. Our temptation would be to say that they do and will continue
to, without however destroying the spiritual fabric of Arabic sympathy and unity,
a quality which is, moreover, more notably a mass phenomenon than a polestar for
the ruling elites.

One illustration may be offered in support of this latter argument. There
is ample historical justification for belief in considerable pan-Islamic solidarity.
The demise of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, which meant little in practical terms
to the inhabitants of British India, nevertheless brought forth the powerful Khi-
lafat movement among the Muslims, a case of mass action which foreshadowed the
pressures leading to the creation of contemporary Pakistan. By the same token,

sociological observers of the time report that the crushing defeat inflicted on "Chinese" Gordon's Anglo-Egyptian army at Khartoum in 1885 by the Mahdi Muslims of the Sudan was being discussed with great joy and fervor a few weeks later by the people in the bazaars of Marrakech.

Today this tendency toward inter-Islamic solidarity is greatly accelerated and reinforced by the techniques of modern communication and the rise of literacy. The execution of F.L.N. agents in Algeria provokes immediate demonstrations in the Levant. The people of Pakistan are immediately indignant at the British intervention in Suez. It would be unwise to dismiss such happenings as mere political manipulations. We have already referred to the agency of the holy pilgrimages to Mecca, where much information is exchanged across the entire Islamic world. It would not be exorbitant to claim that Islam had its own almost extra-sensory communications system.

## 5. Special Factors

Sympathy, solidarity, and religious patriotism would not, however, mean the foundation for consistent and concerted action in the Islamic sphere, even if we took care to except Iran and Turkey. The conditions for agreement are far more difficult to come by than the bases for a community of resentment. In this respect also Islam is an essentially negative force.

One sidelight which certainly deserves mention in the context of religious solidarity is the existence within the political boundaries of Islam of important minorities which are principally Christian. This phenomenon affects the Maghreb, where, however, the minorities are European and consequently not susceptible to modifying the psychological situation. But in Egypt one out of every eight natives is a Christian Copt; in Lebanon the combined Christian sects total over fifty per cent of the population; and there is a not inconsiderable minority

in Syria. These Christian minorities in the Islamic world were, for obvious reasons, the most forceful channels of Westernization and progress (if we except a few retrograde sects such as the Chaldean and Assyrian Christians in the "Fertile Crescent"). They militated strongly for Arab or national freedom in the period before the Second World War and often assumed dominant national roles, particularly in Egypt and the Levant. To a disproportionately high degree the fruits of independence and technical progress are due to their efforts.

But it is surely one of the characteristics of the post-war period that (except in Lebanon) the Christian Arab leaders have been shoved into the background and often treated as double-agents or duplicitous characters. The Muslims have pre-empted the totality of the leadership in the Arab world, and this, too, lends an emphatic Islamic quality to the systemic revolution through which these nations are passing and gives a theocratic air to the enterprise which was notably lacking in the past. Islam prides itself on its religious tolerance — especially for "peoples of the Book" (i.e. Christians and Jews), but the Arab Christians have, by and large, been alienated from political power in the new upheavals which have shaken the Middle East.

Another more global aspect of Islamic contradiction is the Asian-African tension in the community. Whereas historical Islam is centered on what we call the Middle East, that is to say, Asia or Asia Minor, there is today an increasing political tendency to look in new directions. The political deadlock in the Arab League from 1945 on between Egypt's pan-Arabic pretensions and the Iraqi plan (favored by the British) of a unified Fertile Crescent that would more than overbalance Egypt continues today, even after the overthrow of the hereditary Hashemite monarchy in Iraq and its swing into the neutralist camp. Events seem to prove at every juncture the age-old historical rivalry between Egypt and Mesopotamia for

the lands in between, and to suggest that the region can only be unified by military conquest. When, in the early fifties, Iraq seemed on the verge of implementing its Fertile Crescent scheme, a *coup d'état* in Syria removed all possibility for such a solution. Later, Nasser moved precipitously in advance of the Sovietization of Syria to link this disequilibrated country to his own empire in 1957. When the military junta under General Kassem came to power on July 14, 1958, in Iraq, it seemed that Nasser's policies might succeed beyond normal expectation. But the old balance was quickly re-established, with the rebirth of jealousy and disharmony between the two states and the disillusionment of the Syrians trapped in their new Egyptian bondage.

Stymied in the Fertile Crescent, the ambitious Nasser has now turned his gaze on the African continent, where conditions of upheaval promise many rewards to any state that pursues a consistent and aggressive policy. Close diplomatic ties with Morocco and some of the Negro countries have assumed priority over activities in Asia Minor. Such shifts of policy clearly reveal Egypt's essential role as a pivot in Islamic diplomacy and, beyond all demonstrations of political cleverness, point directly to her split personality as an Asian and African nation. To reap the possible rewards of both worlds, Egypt cannot at all times be as Pan-Arab as she would often like to appear, and must rather be interpreted as a strategically situated state with fundamentally nationalist pretensions. But Egypt sits at the center of the spider-web; literally speaking, there is no Pan-Arabism without Egypt. And since the deadlock of ambitions in the Middle East seems a basic condition in a period when Africa offers unlimited opportunity for maneuver, it may be expected that Egyptian diplomacy will be increasingly defeated from the sterile pursuit of pan-Arabism to the more promising quest for new goals to the south and west.

The problem of Islam and what it means politically and psychologically for the world today can perhaps best be approached not through the analytic description of any of its disparate components, but by setting it in a still larger context to which it seems to belong. This context is succinctly enough expressed in the terms "anti-colonial syndrome" and "colored bloc psychology." Underdeveloped or unevenly developed peoples have felt a natural sympathy for each other in the post-war period; their humane associations are exalted with an almost religious fervor, so long as the point of contact remains negative and abstract rather than concrete and competitive. Egyptians and Pakistanis are undoubtedly blood-brothers, so long as one does not bring up the point that both sell cotton; Brazilians and Ghanaians are shoulder-to-shoulder in their detestation of colonialism but inimical commercial rivals in the coffee market. Nevertheless, it is the generous and idealistic view of fraternity that usually wins the day, since the fluctuations of the market and the subtleties of diplomatic initiative are not familiar criteria to illiterate peoples.

## 6. Islam and Imperialism

The anti-imperialist complex of Islam is assuredly multiplex and baffles exact definition. One probably would need an intimate acquaintance with the region extending back into Turkish times to establish a series of correspondences which would set the contextual relationship. The following points, however, stand out as unmistakably clear:

1. The rural people at large had historically very little contact with either their Turkish or British rulers, who governed indirectly and usually through existing institutions. French rule in the protectorates was much more centralized and direct, although considerable reliance was placed on the caids and traditional chiefs in North Africa, whereas in the Levant the experience of the French mandate

was probably too short-lived to be decisive in terms of lasting influence. However, a large proportion of the population of Syria and Lebanon is urban, located in or near the cities of Beirut, Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo, and here the contact with the Europeans was often harsh and irritating. The same may be said for greater Tunis (one-sixth of the population of Tunisia) and the Moroccan cities of Casablanca, Rabat, and Port-Lyaney. The inescapable conclusion is that, in political terms, the revolution sweeping through Islam that includes as one of its main components a hatred of the colonial races is a city-oriented phenomenon, based, however, on a widespread but politically unfocused discontent in the countryside. Naturally, as "revolutionary" governments have carried their propaganda into the rural areas extensively, as in Egypt, or where the existence of a potential revolutionary army led to political consciousness in the maquis, as in Tunisia, the situation is somewhat modified. We shall return to this question.

2. Color feeling, much emphasized by the observed disparity in ways of life, has significantly affected relations between the Muslim world and the white races of Europe, even though the Semite is a relatively light-skinned individual in most instances and often, in this respect, indistinguishable from the Mediterranean populations of Italy, Greece, and Corsica. Such epithets as "wag," "bicot," or "raton" testify to this relationship. A subtle but prepossessing sense of color inferiority has helped to attach Islam psychologically to the destinies of the yellow and Negro races.

3. The anti-Israeli syndrome is a principal component of anti-imperialist feeling and threatens to penetrate it in time span and intensity far beyond what a normal evolution would dictate. If we compare, for example, the quality of anti-colonialist resentment and its vicissitudes and nuances in South Asia with that of the Arab world, we get some idea of the perniciousness of this factor. As already

pointed out, a fundamental distinction in approach to the Israeli problem has been
one of the major factors in disrupting the harmony of Islam and leading the Arabic
and non-Arabic countries in different directions. The attacks on Israel have ex-
traordinary mass resonance in the Arab world; where Arab leaders have tried to in-
flect their Israeli policy in a liberal sense, such as Nasser in 1954 or Bourguiba
consistently, they have had to proceed cautiously and surreptitiously behind the
back of an *envenomed* public. Conversely, greater popular intransigence can be in-
duced simply by the merest hint from official sources, as we have lately seen in
the case of Morocco. The existence of the Israeli state is inextricably linked in
the Arab mind to the maneuverings of the Western powers, and Israel is generally
considered an Occidental wedge aimed at splitting the Arab world asunder.

4. Anti-westernism is of course, as everywhere, in the underdeveloped world dependent on the "feedback" principle. To colonialism are rightly or wrong-ly ascribed the depressed economies of the Arab states and especially the lack of industrialization. Where commercial and industrial enterprise exists, as in Egypt and North Africa, there is a consuming psychological impatience for the expropriation of foreign ownership and control. Socialism in such circumstances becomes not an ideological principle but a pragmatic *sine qua non*, since domestic investment of capital in this area is still heavily and inflexibly oriented toward land purchase rather than industrial development, despite the high rate of income that such a practice invariably provides, *if the industrial scheme is rational*.

5. Where it is in the diplomatic interest of the Arab states to inflect public opinion against the West, the radio is an incessant instrument of this policy. It is the mechanical object *par excellence* of the Arab world. For example, there is one radio set to every thirteen persons in Morocco, according to 1957 estimates. In Egypt and other countries where extra-urban life is sedentary, peasant,

and village-oriented, the public square or café (where tea or coffee are sold) is usually equipped with a set that receives the fervent and undivided attention of many auditors. The oral traditions of inspiration in the Islamic culture may have some influence upon the high level of credibility which radio broadcasts induce, but we may also more simply say that the mass of listeners have little information of the outside world against which to compare the transmissions. The Algerian *fellagha* were roused to the bloody task of the Constantine massacre of September 20, 1955, by the slogans, "The Egyptians parachutists have landed" and "The Americans are with us," without suspecting the improbability of such circumstances. The misuse of public information -- certainly often on a scale that makes the Soviets look exemplary -- is one of the most distressing features of the domestic politics of the Arab world.

## 7. Nationalist Cross-Currents

Aspects of particular nationalism can be only briefly touched on here, but they both collide with and support pan-Arabism and pan-Islam in a multi-dinous variety of ways, and make the study of the politics of this area an exceedingly complex science, if indeed it can be called a science at all. Let us illustrate some of these cross-currents graphically, with the understanding that the schemes presented are partial and oversimplified:

### Demonstration A: Afghanistan

**Pan-Islamic factors:** Suspicion of foreign customs, Neutralist bloc support, Traditionalism, Retardation of Social Change, Isolationism.

**Nationalist factors:** Autonomistic balance of power politics, Conflicts with territorial neighbors, Construction of a strong centralist state, Modernization, Irridentism.

**Geopolitical factors:** Appeasement of Soviet Russia, Access to the Indian Ocean, Use of natural resources, Communications construction.

**Centrifugal factors:** Tribalism, Perpetuation of linguistic disunity, Personalist political structure.

In the case of Afghanistan, it will be easily seen that there is extreme internal disharmony regarding national objectives and the definition of national interest, and that furthermore many of the sets of influential factors clash heavily on each other. This is characteristic of a transitional society at the ultra-violet end of the change spectrum. But the principle will be no less clear for other Islamic nations at a more advanced stage.

Demonstration B: *Syria*

**Pan-Islamic factors:** Sympathetic unity, Historical memory, Traditionalism.

**Pan-Arabist factors:** Geographical position, Acceptance of the U.A.R., "Fertile crescent unity," Linguistic attachments, Wealth-sharing schemes, Anti-westernism, Neutralism but definite attachments in the neutral bloc.

**Nationalist factors:** "Greater Syria" concept, Individuality of the Levant, "Mediterraneanism," Resistance against being a "province of Egypt," Minority pressures, Political party pressures, Severe neutralism.

**Centrifugal factors:** Tension of geographical position, Tribalism (Druze minority), Pastoral economy.

In Syria's case, we can discern that the question of modernization is not so central as it was in Demonstration A: the decision to modernize has, in effect, been accepted by practically all influential elements. Other complicating factors are added, however, significantly the effect of "double colonialism," which we could observe elsewhere in connection with the Sudan. It is useful to point out also the consummate role of geography, a factor of virtually universal importance.

We see explicitly from the perusal of two cases that conflicts of interests are intense in the Islamic world, even if we exclude the majority of class, ideological, and economic tensions, as we have done. Particular nationalism and pan-Arabism (irrelevant to Afghanistan) are most frequently at odds, except where they are culturally attached on an abstract plane of values. But

culture is by no means all-powerful in a world where the disruption or discontinuity of culture as a means for fulfilling the pressure of social change exerts exceedingly heavy influence. This, in turn, must lead us to question the precision of another frequently used term, "Arab nationalism," and to pose the essential question of whether precipitous and self-conscious modernization can be made to augment Islamic solidarity and cross-boundary Arab unity. We do not believe in the present scheme of reference that it does, but rather, as the case of Egypt and Syria gives some proof of, that it may instead lead to a second-generation imperialism, which, if history repeats, might be expected as a logical consequence of the over-ebullience of second-generation nationalism. This problem, too, we shall examine at greater length.

## 8. Modernization

The phenomenon of modernization toward which most of these societies explicitly strive is another feature that merits a most detailed discussion. It will suffice to point out in this introduction that the modernizers in Islam are essentially split into two camps: those who believe that the acquisition of Western technology must inevitably be accompanied by the thorough Westernization of basic institutions (such is, for example, the premise of Dr. Charles Malik of Lebanon), and those who insist that it is possible and indeed essential for Islam to reject and discard Western influences that are not purely technical and instrumental. The first of these tendencies (aside from what it denotes in Occidental-Islamic relations) is clearly secularizing, if not agnostic (and in this, as well as other senses, has certain theoretical parallels with Islamic communism); whereas the second upholds the idea of the preservation and reinforcement of Islam, through its own inner capacity for modification. No extreme statement of the first position will of course fit the present political realities

of the Near Eastern world, On the other hand, extremism of the second variety
frequently becomes a hypocritical political façade beneath which intransigent
and short-sighted nationalist aims are pursued. Often the pragmatic solution,
carefully concealed by propaganda and formalistic methods of various sorts, lies
somewhere in between the poles. Also we have cases like Turkey and, more recently,
Tunisia, where modernization is pursued within the context of a frankly Western-
oriented development, without, however, sacrificing the inspiration of national-
ism. This alternative seems to be viable in a society where the government
(through force or consent) remains steadfastly devoted to secular principles, and
it usually involves the transformation of other institutions. Hence, it is not
far removed from the Malik hypothesis, the exception being that it is anti-
cosmopolitan.

9. <u>Analysis of Institutions and Value Structure</u>

When we speak of the institutions of the Islamic world, our reference may
be to many social, corporate, or political entities. Some of these are tradi-
tional, others are modernizing, and there is a frequent clashing between these
spheres of activity, also magnified by certain vague notions of distinction be-
tween the religious and secular realms of Islam. Traditional units can probably
best be distinguished by referring them to two dichotomies: that between the
sedentary (peasant) and nomadic (pastoral) forms of existence, and that between
the spiritual and economic modes of activity. Modernized institutions, of course,
bring in the whole potential spectrum of categories that pertain to contemporary
social organization and political life.

Institutions are, of course, directly or indirectly attached to values
or value systems, which determine viability, priority, and expendability, and
often give birth to the forms themselves. Thus, the values of Islam as expressed
in the Quran have proliferated certain (although contested) ideas of leadership

and a certain mode of legal operation and jurisdiction (through the Shar'iah).
The values of modernization have, on the contrary, led to experimentation with
political forms of parliamentary government (a concept psychologically rather
far removed from Islam) and to the very subtle and impalpable progression from
traditional authoritarianism into practices closer to totalitarianism. But this
is to state the obvious. It is especially when values from traditional and
modern systems become intermingled and thrust forth hybrid institutions that we
are faced with a demanding type of analysis. The role of military authority in
Islam is, for example, a clear illustration of such a case, as is the nature of
agricultural reform in many of these countries.

Without wishing to be dogmatic about the limits or definitions of such
a compilation, we could illustrate our distinctions with the following list:

**Values - Traditional:** Spiritual community; individualism (nomadic) —
collectivism (sedentary); religious and mundane functions in close association;
political indifference; leadership by prowess, heredity, or economic power; a
literal legality, etc.

**Values - Modernizing:** Lapse of spiritual community, agnosticism or
personal religion; individualism (bourgeois) — collectivism (proletariat);
secularist separation of religious and mundane functions; political conscious-
ness; leadership by organization and technique; a socially-conscious legality, etc.

**Values - Mixed:** Spiritual community superficialized; split collectivism;
some categories of mundane activity removed from the province of religion (e.g.
penal code); assumption of certain political demands and abdication of others to
a smaller elite; leadership by exhortation and dogmatic persuasion; revolutionary
legality, etc.

It can be concluded from the above scheme that the pattern of mixed

values is by far the most tempestuous and dangerous, but that it has nevertheless
all the logic of a transitional phase through which societies inevitably pass.
There is, of course, the historical possibility born out of the experience of
some of the Western nations that the transitional phase may be mitigated owing
to the prior existence of some of the philosophical bases of the modernizing ten-
dency. But it is by no means certain that this phenomenon can be transplanted.

We come now to a brief examination of institutions (again selective),
which, as we have stated, are the functional objectifications of values. The
following list does not carry the implication that the phenomena in any cate-
gory are simultaneous or obligatory; moreover they do not reproduce the exper-
ience of any individual state in the Islamic world. In Turkey, for example, legal
reform was many years in advance of agricultural reform, while the trade unions
have never passed through a frankly agitational stage. Furthermore in many coun-
tries these "institutions" have a lateral coexistence, for the process of change
is by no means smooth and is often discontinuous. Nevertheless, it is felt that
the list -- within its limitations -- fairly summarizes the kind of transforma-
tions through which Islam is passing:

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>Traditional</th><th>Modernizing</th><th>Mixed</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Tribe</td><td>Urban conglomerate</td><td>Extraurban encampment</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Functional village</td><td>Urban conglomerate</td><td>Village cum urbanization</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Craft structure</td><td>Employment market</td><td>Craft structure in decay</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Shari'ah</td><td>Secular courts</td><td>Arbitrary courts</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Party of notables</td><td>Party of mass articulation</td><td>Clandestine party</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Quranic schools</td><td>State secular schools</td><td>Mixed schools, secular currents</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Tribal or regional assembly</td><td>Cooperative or parliamentary assembly</td><td>Legislative suspension or junta</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Guild system</td><td>Trade union tied to central state</td><td>Trade union agitation</td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

10. The National Character

Our brief glance at the patterns of evolution affecting values and in-
stitutions in Islam leads us to the tendentious problem of considering the Arab,
the Turk, and the Persian as individuals in a psychological and cultural milieu.
What are their traditional norms of behavior? How can they be expected to re-
spond to modernization, or to political and economic change and disruption? What
are the constants in their "racial personality" and what are the variables? These
questions and others like them are again not easy to treat, especially if one has
a somewhat dim view of the optimism of the behavioral sciences. Also, there have
been no consistent methods of observation applied to these peoples for a long
enough time to establish any very exact criteria or notions of personality change.
Public opinion polls -- many of which have been conducted specifically in Turkey
and Lebanon -- that request the subjects to recall their values and attitudes of
the past are generally unscientific and misleading. In the last resort, it is
perhaps best to say that the "personalities" of peoples, insofar as they are of
use to political science, are inextricably attached to their values, which may
themselves be deduced from a close and unprejudiced scrutiny of the institutions
that are their objectification. The study of institutions (interpreted in the
broadest sense to mean patterns of existence) is perhaps ultimately more relia-
ble than the incessant questionnaires of the poll-takers. For one is not com-
pelled to construct the questions in advance; rather, they suggest themselves.

Where institutions do not exist, or rather exist surreptitiously, as in
many Middle Eastern village communities, only the trained eye of the sociologist
can compensate for the lack of political objects of study. Furthermore, it is
admitted that unpredictable lags exist between the modification of the psyche,
the transformation of social forms, and the repercussions on a political scale.

In some cases, the normal procedures are reversed. Turkey is the prime example of a case where alien forms were imposed on the national psyche from above. It would be useful to have some clear notions of the time span involved in these linear reactions, but we are probably not in a position to assume that we are close to solving this problem. Governmental action on the domestic level and the influential pressure of foreign events are variables which seriously affect any such equation.

Without coming very much closer to defining the way in which an Islamic state transforms itself in the contemporary period, we have nonetheless sought to furnish a diagrammatic scheme of the relationships we believe to be important. The sketch is intended to be provisional, and it disclaims any attachment to the sociological fallacy; its function is descriptive and not remedial. Due recognition is made of the fact that the picture is somewhat falsified by the failure to include possible or potential diagrams of the interacting functions of other states in an international system (balance-of-power hypothesis). At least the complexity of the problem is demonstrated in a legitimate way, with these reservations stated. (See diagram next page.)

We refrain from a descriptive analysis of the diagram, feeling that the associations it indicates are basically self-explanatory. Specific references to the scheme will, however, be made in the sections dealing with particular countries. The particular cases themselves are not random, but rather chosen to illustrate particular historical and political problems of the area. One of the considerable difficulties we note in the use of generalized typologies for political science is the characteristic inability to add the historical dimension, and we have made an effort to rectify this failure, both through the furnishing of empirical descriptive material and emphasis on process sequences such as the tripartite scheme of social and institutional development suggested earlier.

## 11. Limitations of a Model Typology

Our concern for a modest and tentative typology in which the development of the Islamic world might be treated invariably leads one to inquire whether this scheme, if valid, could not be applied to other geographical areas. We admit, in this sense, that we have constructed the scheme on our understanding of Islam without intentional reference to other territories. Undoubtedly the basic mechanism is similar elsewhere; probably the categories are general and central enough to be of use in approaching other parts of the underdeveloped world. But it is equally clear that there might be a fundamental shift in qualitative emphasis and that some of the lines might have to be redrawn for new purposes. The unique peculiarity we sense about Islam is, of course, the fact that we are dealing with a religious as well as a geographical community. To say this is to beg the principal question, obviously, but the important characteristic of our arbitrary choice is not that we have subordinated geography (which is only true relatively speaking), but that we have perceived that a common theological background (one that is not even historically very old) is a major concern in the selection of materials for study. This immediately affects the character of our typology if we extend it to encompass inter-state relations. Even individual national state patterns are modified, in the sense that the internal factors acting upon the definition of national character are in a peculiarly tense and (by comparison with other societies) disproportionate relationship.

The significance of this observation is immediately made apparent if we refer to the standards of other societies. A basic theological unity exists also, for example, in Latin America, or even in Western Europe, but it will be immediately felt that these cases are qualitatively different from that of Islam. This is primarily due to the degree and scope of secularization and to the traditional Christian separation between affairs of Church and State. It is

legitimate to ask whether secularization in Islam will not proceed fundamentally
along the same lines, but, as we have already seen, it is difficult from the
present vantage point to know the answer. Moreover, the moral implications of
this development (the *ought*, rather than the *is*, factor) are being hotly debated
within Islam itself. The severe and radical monism of traditional Islam is the
philosophical *point de départ* that isolates this cultural community from certain
considerations affecting Christian society or the essentially fluid and poly-
theistic societies of the Far East. Unquestionably, Islam partakes generously
of the generalized qualities of the anti-colonial revolution and attendant
modernizing stresses, but it includes significant tensions peculiar to itself.
We shall take up this line of agrument once more in the concluding section.

Methodology and typology are obviously worthless and misleading unless
the components which are to fit the pattern are strictly analyzed. Categories
like "traditional factors" or "national values" are subject to wide ranges of
definition, some of them inevitably at odds with each other. Other complica-
tions may be illustrated by the fact that there are currently in Islam two con-
ceivable types of nationalism as well as the possibility of a new imperialism
that is flexing its muscles while vestiges of the old remain. It is for this
reason that we have avoided the introduction of both these abstract conceptu-
alizations into our typology.

It is hard, then, to locate the precise sorts of raw material with which
a conceptual mold is to be filled; it is even more difficult to proceed to
quantitative and qualitative analysis in the equation. Furthermore many influ-
ential factors are comparatively transient in the weight they may bring to bear
at a given moment: a society, for example, does not always look inward or out-
ward in the same degree; or it may for a long while disregard certain aspects of

its development in favor of others, as Turkey did with heavy industry as opposed
to modernized agriculture in the inter-war period. This is why the concepts of
process and historical milieu are of fundamental importance.

To give an introductory example of what we mean by filling the mold, we
could very well return to our earlier premise that careful institutional examin-
ation can reveal important truths about national personality and national values.
We should have added that institutional research will seem superficial and per-
haps false if we do not simultaneously take into account the active factors which
underlie the articulation of institutions: namely the types and structures of
authority and their historical and philosophical origins. The existence of a
parliament means nothing at all if we are not aware of what it is composed, what
it is supposed to do, and why. We could make the same observation with regard
to more primitive levels of institutions and authority, such as the village
structure, but we would be compelled at the same time to observe the qualitative
evolution of the passage from semi-conscious to highly conscious elaboration of
forms as the political unit becomes more complex. At the lower levels of organi-
zation the economic and spiritual motives (often joined) seem of greatest im-
portance and are often highly self-regulating; but in the context of the nation-
state higher forms tend to become political in nature, often self-conscious,
frequently anticipatory rather than reflective, and sometimes vigorously at odds
with prefabricated modes of existence or at least directed against the interests
of retrograde or ineffectual parts of the society. And this feature of quali-
tative (no ethical judgment is implied) evolution of structures and of modes of
authority is itself one of the inevitable patterns of our investigation.

Forms of authority in Islam exist for many reasons, among them: tradi-
tional injunction, mimesis, perpetuation of power, desire to effect fundamental

changes in the national and state character, performance of a mediating role,
etc. Often these impulsions overlap, sometimes in logical, sometimes in para-
doxical ways. Little is "pure," and little is tangible. But the trend toward
an eventual institutionalization is unmistakable, a process that some would
argue is born out of inchoate elements of the past, one which others would de-
scribe largely as a transvaluation of organization from previously institutional-
ized spheres.

12. Islam and History

Finally, we may generalize about Islam by saying that its crisis would
not be so severe if it were not so perplexed by the past. If, for example, the
key word in understanding the propensities of the cosmos of India is "accultur-
ation," that of Islam is obviously "history," history both in the time-liberated
sense of ideas and in the chronological sense of events. This may be true of
the Arab world, some may say, but what about Turkey, a nation which has brutally
and deliberately annihilated many vestiges of its past history? We would argue
that the necessity for the annihilation proves the point, that an historically
inflected society must resort to desperate measures when its past becomes too
great a burden to carry. Islam, despite its universality of context, is rooted
in historical time and is essentially ill-at-ease in the timeless. If one of the
paradoxical motives of Christianity is the axion: "Before Abraham was, I am,"
Islam must content itself with being a higher historical revelation of the ethi-
cal life and not an explanation of the creation of the universe. The signifi-
cance of this factor is ambiguous but unmistakable: assuredly the "Islamic
Kingdom" is of this world.

13. Approaching the Problem

In the following two sections, we shall deal more fully in particularities.

We have seen no reason to discard our customary approach of contrasting hori-
zontal and vertical treatment, in the first case that of institutions or stra-
tegic factors and in the second of nations. However, it is our hope to apply
more method to the horizontal and more discretion to the vertical. The stra-
tegic factors and institutional phenomena are intended either to illustrate
basic points of geography, which are descriptive and essentially changeless, or
of conscious social and political forms, which are the essence of change. The
case studies of nations, on the other hand, are chosen for their ability to re-
veal principles which bear heavily on the essay as a whole. The conclusion will
attempt to summarize the substance of this data in terms of the methodology
which has been projected.

## B. Special Features

### 1. Strategic Waterways of the Islamic World

It would be excessive to claim that the points of strategic interest within our area of treatment have specifically inflected the institutions of Islam in a describable pattern. But they have been a secondary cause in its development by determining in large measure the character of contacts Islam has had with the technologically advanced West. It is essential to remember that much of the Islamic world borders the Mediterranean lake, which, from the days of "More Nostro rum" onward, assured and expedited a substantial portion of the world's commerce. In Roman times, the Mediterranean cosmos was essentially an integrated one, with one joint economy, one political system, and one rule of law. Later events cannot disguise the paramountcy of this supreme geographical fact. So long as the littoral of Southern Europe remains largely in the hands of the Western alliance, much of Islam will be bound to it in a permanent geographical sense. This can induce either realistic recognition of inalterable circumstances or extreme frustration at the lack of proximity to some more desirable international system.

Today, the Mediterranean is, however, no longer exclusively a Roman or a British or a European sea. The reflux of colonialism has left many of its critical points exposed or under the influence of the politics and predictions of Islam. There are essentially in the area of

our consideration six strategic points lying athwart what
is probably the world's most important system of waterways.
Of these, four belong to the Mediterranean system proper.
None is today under the total control of a European power,
although one is largely regulated by a close ally of that
system, Turkey. The points are as follows: Straits of
Gibraltar (Britain-Morocco); Straits of Sicily (Italy-
Tunisia); Turkish Straits (Turkey); and Suez Canal (Egypt).
To these must be added the passage at the nether end of the
Red Sea (British protection-French Somaliland) and the
Persian Gulf (Britain-Persia).

We shall not undertake a laborious rehearsal of the
history of these waterways, except to point out a few vital
facts. The major lifeline for oil, to which the economy
of Western Europe is still attached directly concerns three
of these strategic points, Persian Gulf, Straits of Aden,
and Suez Canal, and indirectly the two others in the
Western Mediterranean. History has already demonstrated
that this basic commodity is so essential to Western Europe
that her component states will practice a notably aggressive
policy to insure its availability. Until atomic energy or
some other closer and strategically certain source of fuel
comes into general use, there is little chance that this
factor can be appreciably altered. Present oil contracts
with the states of the Arabian peninsula and with Iraq and
Persia have, on the average, about forty years to run. As

we have seen, however, sudden political change can jeopardize these relations. Nonetheless, even the revolutionary government of Iraq made haste to honor its agreement with the quadripartite oil cartel that was exploiting the resources of the country on a fifty-fifty basis. Renegotiation is a more likely prospect than confiscation in the immediate future.

The possibility of Persian interference with cargo shipping is negligible, but Egypt has the ability at any time to practice interference with oil transport in the Suez Canal. Being an oil-poor country herself, she would have nothing tangible to lose except certain Suez revenues and her intervention could conceivably be prompted by factors of inter-Arab diplomacy. Nevertheless, such an action would undoubtedly summon the chance of military reprisal and the consequent threat of general war. Economically squeezed as she is, Egypt would be running a grave risk in closing the Suez Canal to oil shipping. Still it is germane to point out how vulnerable Western trade is to prospective Egyptian interference, should Egypt feel herself strong enough to act in this way or receive sufficient assurances of support from the Eastern bloc: seventy per cent of Suez traffic is outbound from or inbound to a NATO country.

The potential of disruption in the Straits of Aden is more nuanced. No one would hazard to predict that the

present political situation in this area will long endure. Djibouti is a part of Somalia Irredenta, and the leaders of this new and miserably equipped country can be expected to exert every sort of ulterior pressure in the UN and elsewhere for the acquisition of the French colonial territory. It is said that Communist China already possesses a considerable network of political agents in Somalia. As for Aden, which is subdivided into a crown colony and a British protectorate of sixteen sheikdoms, nobody again can say how long this particular situation will last. Evolutions of this kind are usually speedier than we are prone to anticipate. In short, the Straits of Aden could become a danger point for Western shipping in the matter of a fairly brief time.

In the same measure that the change of control at Suez envisages a situation where the Western alliance might be hard-pressed in a war or crisis situation to utilize the Eastern Mediterranean as during World War II, it is threatened in the West by Moroccan control of Ceuta and Tetuan, opposite to Gibraltar. This interference could not, of course, be as decisive as Suez, but it would be at the least troublesome. A concerted Arab foreign policy, if it could be achieved, could seriously affect Western naval and commercial activities in a sphere often considered central to their own civilization. This represents a fact of highest significance and some ominousness for the future.

Finally, with regard to the Straits of Sicily—the least important of the points that dominate the Mediterranean —the port of Bizerte remains in the hands of the French and is a constant running sore between France and Tunisia, which is otherwise the most Western-oriented of the Arab countries. It is likely, however, that some mutually acceptable agreement will soon be reached regarding the administration and control of the naval base, especially if an Algerian solution is forthcoming in the near future.

The Turkish Straits are indeed a separate and complicated problem, one that has troubled European diplomacy since 1774. They do not lie athwart the vital oil lifeline from the Persian Gulf to Western Europe, but they substantially affect Russian strategy and commercial activities. 30% of Russian foreign trade has traditionally passed through the Straits from the Black Sea. Russian failure to secure control of this waterway or even a dominant position in its administration (except for the brief period 1833-1841, when the Ottoman Empire was at an exceptionally low ebb) has been a source of lingering frustration. The Soviets sought to implement such a change after the Second World War, but were baulked by the combined policies of Britain and the U.S. in support of Turkey. International activity in the Straits is still regulated by the Montreux Convention of 1936, whereby Turkey exercises fundamental jurisdiction over the waterway and the U.S.S.R. enjoys some,

but not extensive, riparian rights. The Straits is still
a potential bone of contention which Soviet diplomacy
might choose to resurrect at any time. However, with the
advent of the missile age, the passage of Soviet naval
forces into the Mediterranean is no longer a matter of the
most primary urgency.

Soviet territorial drives have also been historically
exercised in the direction of the Persian Gulf (the latest
in 1945), and it is possible that a weak and crisis-ridden
Iran could tempt the adventure once more. The arrival of
the Russian hegemony on the shores of the Indian Ocean
could have a profound effect on Indian and Arab politics
alike.

What one notices most conspicuously about the prin-
cipal waterways of the Islamic region is that despite
technological change and new strategic patterns they have
scarcely lost their importance. Britain and France sub-
stantiated this estimate in their Suez action. The second
principle is that the control of these points or at least
the potentiality of their neutralization has drifted into
the hands of countries that are not on the friendliest of
terms with the West. It is doubtful that the Arab nations
can use their advantage in as dynamic a fashion as the
Europeans, but the sale of Soviet submarines and aircraft
to countries like Egypt and Morocco must provide food for
thought. The balance of power has been steadily altered
in the Mediterranean itself, the "Western sea" *par excellence*.

It is not estimated that Western Europe can develop
its own sources of fuel and energy to a degree that will
substantially reduce its dependence on Middle Eastern oil
until 1975. In the interim it will be extremely vulnerable
in its lines of supply and extremely sensitive to provoca-
tions. As of today, the oil-producing nations show little
determination to end their circumstantially profitable
commercial relations with the NATO countries, largely because
there is an absence of alternate markets. The principal
immediate danger to the disruption of this arrangement that
we perceive is a possible Soviet-Egyptian rapprochement,
with a joint policy directed against both Western Europe
and the oil-rich countries, designed in the latter case to
enhance the fulfillment of an Egyptian hegemony within the
context of pan-Arabism. But the Soviet Union seems to pre-
fer its divide-and-weaken tactics for the present. We
should not, however, exclude the possibility of maritime
interference in the Canal, with aid to Israel conceivably
used as a pretext. Nasser has been known to overextend
his activity before.

The Turkish Straits is an opposite case, a strategic
salient thrust into the heart of Russia's sphere of primary
interest and presently the most plausible and critical
access to her heartland. There was surely every reason to
place Turkey under the umbrella of NATO in view of this fac-
tor alone. One cannot conceive of any geopolitical situation
which the Soviets could be more interested in rectifying.

Finally, we must remark that prolonged interest in
and acquisition of the key maritime points of Islam by the
West was a major factor in introducing modern culture and
technology to the region. The West came to Islam essen-
tially not in search of markets or trade (oil was not crucial
or available, and there were few commodities to trade in),
but rather to guarantee its maritime lifelines to the more
opulent Indies. Today the West is in reflux, but its influ-
ence has survived both by example and in reaction. The
still critical necessity of keeping this lifeline open by
some means for the transport of oil has on occasion led the
European nations to practice more forward policies in this
area than elsewhere. Thus the change of "oil imperialism"
has become a manifesto to the Cairo Radio and many of its
listeners throughout the area. Islamic-European relations
are exasperated, not only by the existence of Israel, but
by such facts of life as these. Waterways demonstrate how
strategic factors govern the choice of political options
in Islam, and how this in turn affects criteria of develop-
ment and alliance policy, and, by indirection, ideological
choice.

2. Israel

The background and implications of the existence of
the state of Israel are well known and generally understood.
It is not the purpose of this section to rehearse them in
tedious detail. But no study of the Islamic world, its

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attitudes, susceptibilities, and institutions can be com-
plete without some mention of this factor.

In the present state of world politics, the Arab
nations, rightly or wrongly and in greater or lesser degree,
look upon Israel as a primary menace for a number of affili-
ated reasons:

1. It represents, through its successful armed actions in 1947-48 and in 1956, the measure of their military impotence and the illustration of their lack of political solidarity.

2. It is a strategic wedge driven into the heart of the historical land-bridge to the Fertile Crescent, where it has been traditionally most difficult to forge the crucial link of Arab unity. Throughout most of recorded pre-Christian history this territory was the logical no-man's-land in the Egyptian-Mesopotamian rivalry. It later served the same purpose during the comparatively brief period of the Crusades. Today it is seen as thwarting the logical extension of Arab territories into a compact and lasting unity, and naturally is a frequent scapegoat for irreconcilable discords between the component states of the Arab League.

3. The long and circuitous history of the Balfour Declaration, the policies of the British mandate in Palestine, and the pro-Israeli United States policy of the post-World War II period have suggested to the Arabs that Israel is a Western-oriented imperialist state placed in their midst for purposes of subverting their culture and political aspirations.

4. Israel, as both a tradition-based and modernizing state *par excellence*, excites Arab jealousies by representing exactly what most of them would like to become. Both its progressive agricultural and industrial policies are a constant reminder of the comparative lack of imagination and failure of development and growth in the Arab sector. The attractiveness of Israeli methods of modernization to many (and even some Islamic) parts of the underdeveloped world disturbs Arab *amour propre*. Finally, Israel's crack military forces are privately admired and feared and publicly castigated as an imperialist instrument.

5. Israel's frankly expansionist nature, most strikingly illustrated by demographic policy, raises Arab fears that Israel will seek further territorial acquisitions at the slightest excuse, particularly in the east and in Sinai and Gaza. This probably influences Nasser to mitigate his pressure on King Hussein's Jordanian monarchy, because this pressure, pushed beyond the point of toleration, would probably send the Israeli armies marching eastward. The Arab states are not politically unified enough to face such a crisis resolutely.

6. The ethical, racial, and religious connotations of the Palestine refugee problem—a constant running sore in the Middle East and the factor always instantly alluded to by Arab statesmen when questioned on the Israeli problem. This is also the point most conveniently adopted to whipping up mass frenzy.

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7. The inescapable fact that, as year succeeds year, the existence of a dynamic and moderately prosperous Israel is confirming essential splits in the Islamic world. Turkey and Iran have extended de facto recognition to the Jewish state. Even certain Arab countries, such as Tunisia, are less than relentless in their condemnations of Israel. The prospect is that as time goes on this trend will continue. Israel will seem increasingly a valuable trading partner and even, potentially, a worthwhile military ally.

Arab plans for the elimination or "Vaticanization" of Israel have never been able to jell because of military inadequacy and because of the virtually continuous conflict in aims between Egypt and Iraq. The results of the January 1961 meeting of the Arab League give no reason to believe that any of these essential discords have been resolved. Behind the superficial mask of Arab fraternity and harmony a cutthroat brand of power politics continues unabated.

Unfortunately, the West has done little or nothing constructive to mediate between the parties. Sufficient energy was not applied to the refugee problem while there was still time. If the late King Abdullah of Transjordan once envisaged the regularization of relations with Israel and if even Nasser himself in 1954 and the Moroccans in 1957 were conceivably amenable to negotiating solutions, the time of flexibility has passed and the absolute rule of intransigence has set in. In the meantime Israel's

position in the Near Eastern world of which she is a part
has been somewhat stabilized.

Arab opinions expressed publicly and privately on
this subject generally extend between the two extremes of
liquidating Israel as a national entity and compelling her
to accept her 1947 borders, strictly limit immigration,
and provide full restitution of lands to the Arab refugees
from Palestine. Beyond this latter position no Arab in
a post of political eminence would be willing to go. It
is just as evident that no basis for lasting agreement can
be found within this spectrum of solutions.

For the time being, it is fair to state that Arab
political disharmony and Israeli militance will probably
suffice to keep the situation within the bounds of a tense
status quo.
But any significant relative increase in Arab
strength and harmony or Israeli irridentism could relight
the powder keg.

Two contingent factors which it is relevant to men-
tion are: (1) the emotional and propagandistic uses to
which Arab politicians are able to put the Israeli ques-
tion in dealing with their own peoples; and (2) the invari-
able tendency to castigate the West for its presumably
nefarious designs in supporting the state of Israel. In
both senses, the Israeli problem heavily inflects Arab
domestic, regional, and foreign policy.

3. The Arab League

Formed on March 22, 1945 at the instigation of the British Foreign Office, the Arab League or Treaty of Arab States (Syria /to 1958/, Transjordan /later Jordan/, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon /though only half-Muslim/, Egypt /later U.A.R./, Yemen, Morocco, Libya, Sudan, and Tunisia /passim/) has since that time largely conducted policy on the minimal basis of redirecting its own internal rivalries and bitterness outward against any foreign (usually Western) intrusion in Arab affairs. Although the countries included are perhaps culturally much closer than those, for example, in NATO, the League's unifying force has been mostly in negative terms. Accord has assuredly been reached on such matters as the undesirability of Israel, support of the independence of Morocco and Tunisia, and later Algeria, and condemnation of Western imperialism and exaltation of Islamic ideals, but these measures of agreement have not led to a unified Arab foreign policy.

The capacity of the League is, for all intents and purposes, strictly advisory, although bilateral and multilateral contracts may be worked out in its presence, such as the pledge by Egypt to stop inflammatory radio broadcasts to Jordan or Iraq and reassurances of amity by these countries. There are no extraparliamentary or supranational institutions attached to this body. The League, however, does retain the theoretical right to resolve common disputes

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and commit the contracting parties to war under certain cir-
cumstances. The poverty of this mechanism was already
apparent in the Israeli War of 1947-48. A measure of the
inflexibility of League action is the provision that only
unanimous decisions are binding on the member states: a
redundancy of expression if there ever was one.

The early features of the League's interior balance
were: (1) The Egyptian drive for supremacy in the League;
and (2) The heated competition between the Hashemite-
Fertile Crescent bloc (Western-oriented) and the Saudi-
Egyptian bloc (neutralist). In this rather naked power
competition Syria struggled along as the moderator or pivot
of the balance of power and, incidentally, the prize. The
internal instability of Syria, where governments and coups
d'etat succeeded each other with extraordinary frequency
testified to the fantastic amount of external Arab pressure
directed toward the small state. Lebanon remained aloof,
moderate, and suspicious of any attempts to establish a
Pan-Arab hegemony that would be in basic conflict with her
Mediterranean outlook and religiously balanced raison
d'etat.

As one might expect in an organization composed of
countries with cultural, linguistic, and religious simili-
tudes, the emphatic aspects of propaganda became immediately
more influential than practical programs. The unity of
the Arab world was proclaimed as an ideal, and nobody dared

to dispute it (even little Lebanon could not well afford
very vigorous outward shows of disapproval). The only
question was, then, the context in which it should be
achieved. Egypt saw the problem in terms of a vast plan
of unification in which she would be the natural leader,
one that would unite the oil-rich and oil-poor countries
in a harmonious balance. Half-measures were excluded, and
were opposed as worse than nothing at all.

Iraq's plan of "Fertile Crescent union" was such a
half-measure. The inspiration for such an idea goes far
back in history and roughly parallels the scope of the
Babylonian Empire, but the immediate stimulus probably
came from the fact that the lands of the nations whose
union was envisaged (Syria, Transjordan, Iraq) had all
been originally promised to the Hashemite family by the
British in 1916. This arrangement was later overruled by
the Sykes-Picot Agreement, in which the British allowed for
French paramountcy in the Levant. In short, the "Fertile
Crescent Plan" (pushed by Nuri es-Said and now backed by
the British forcefully in view of their deteriorating post-
war relations with Egypt) was in fact the disguise for an
extended Hashemite kingdom. It also rudely shut the door
on Egypt's plans for expansion into oil-rich territories
by means of federation.

Egypt's immediate reaction was to form an alliance
with Saudi Arabia and to conduct prodigious agitation in

Syria against the acceptance of such a formula. Iraq was not slow with counter-measures. This, abetted by the ruthless competition of political clans and personalist parties in the Syrian parliament, helped to bring the political mechanism of the country to a state of virtual collapse in the mid-1950's. One ephemeral attempt by Syria to accept the "Fertile Crescent" scheme was rebuffed by popular opinion and shelved. Syria then drifted gradually into the Egyptian orbit and, threatened by Soviet subversion, eventually joined its destinies with the larger country in the U.A.R.

The revolution of July 14, 1958 in Iraq shattered the Egyptian-Hashemite standoff, which had been confirmed in the superficial merger of Iraq and Jordan, but it only briefly interrupted the historical Egyptian-Mesopotamian rivalry, to which Soviet interference was now added as well as traditional British diplomacy. Skillful Egyptian maneuvering of the incipient religious and political tensions in Lebanon helped to bring about the simultaneous crisis in that country, which resulted in the landing of U.S. forces near Beirut. All these battles were fought out heatedly or implicitly behind abstract declarations of solidarity in the deliberations of the League.

Egypt's original role as Arab-unifier, which was exposed shortly after World War II and pursued as a central policy under both the monarchy of Farouk and the revolutionary

oligarchy of Nasser was based on conditions of prestige, geography, and economic necessity. As a "have-not" Arab nation, Egypt desperately needed a more favorable economic context in which to develop. As a centrally located territory at the crossroads of Asia and Africa she was in a position to spread-eagle her pan-Arab influence into both the Fertile Crescent and Libya and the Maghreb. Finally, she believed herself to be most suited to the task, both as the intellectual and political cradle of Islam.

Her aspirations stymied finally in Mesopotamia and by the reluctance of Saudi Arabia and other peninsular states to go more than a part of the way to satisfying the imperious Egyptian economic necessity, she has launched out on a new African tack of diplomacy, in which the League plays an important but no longer fundamental role. The context of action is now, at least temporarily, that of the "Casablanca powers," African nations all and including only the single other Muslim state of Morocco. The focus of inter-Arab tension has therefore somewhat shifted away from the League and its activities. Iraq and Egypt, despite fraternal professions from time to time, remain severe competitors in the old context. Lebanon remains fearful of impingements on its liberty, and the Syrian province is restive under Egyptian rule. Jordan is conceivably spared only because its overthrow would create many new and difficult problems for Egypt. Saudi Arabia lies quiet

and plays a waiting game, no longer as close to Cairo
politically as she once was.

The re-entry of Tunisia to the Arab League may be
taken as an indication of the waning of Egyptian influence
or the current disinterest of Egyptian policy in the League.
Pressure has been very strong on Tunisia, as an Arab nation,
to join the fraternity. The approaching settlement of the
Algerian war and Tunisia's intermediary role in the negoti-
ations both give her leverage in the League's councils and
make it imperative for her to share in the League's discus-
sions of the problem. Moreover, she has received the friend-
ship of Iraq as a sponsor, which cannot fail to be an
enlightening development. Nonetheless, Nasser continues
to guard Bourguiba's dangerous rival, Salah Ben Youssef,
in Cairo; and beneath the surface of apparent change and
cordiality, things are not so different from what they were
before.

There are certainly as many instances of internal
battles in the Arab League's history as there are cases
where a unified League has carried its policy to the outer
world. As an instrument of diplomacy it has been faulty
and ineffective. It may have moderated the interior dis-
putes of Arab countries somewhat, but it has surely magni-
fied others. In a certain sense, however, it has responded
to a definite emotional craving of the Arab masses (who
are probably more unionist than the politicians, because
they cannot grasp geopolitical and other factors). If the

League were to dissolve (for which there is no evidence,
though there are equally no signs that it will begin to
play a very positive role), the individual Arab states
would find their ability to affect events even more limited
than today and their antagonisms difficult to control.
Intense national frustration and precipitous action might
be the result—this to the advantage of nobody except
possibly Israel.

4. Oil and the Middle Eastern Economy

Three-quarters of the world's known sources of raw
petroleum lie within the area of our consideration. The
states of Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, and the protected
sheikdoms of Kuwait, Bahrein, and Qatar account for prac-
tically the whole of this figure. Egypt produces oil to
meet about one-half its domestic needs. Scarcely developed
and vast, unprospected territories of Libya and the Maghre-
bian Sahara give promise of still other rich reservoirs.
Oil is indeed Islam's capital and virtually only important
strategic resource.

We have already commented on the fact that Western
Europe is greatly at the mercy of the Middle East for its
present fuel supply and will continue to be until at least
1975. The situation in the early and mid-1950's was
especially crucial in view of the fact that the dollar sur-
pluses which today would easily allow the purchase of

considerable oil in the Western hemisphere did not exist at the time. The oil drama, which led to aggressive European intervention for reasons of primary security, took place in two basic stages.

The first of these was the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. (primarily a British holding) by the National Front government of Dr. Mohammed Mossadeq in Iran on March 20, 1951. It is curious in a sense to reflect that the first initiative of this kind came not from an Arab country but from a nation that is currently supposed to be a staunch ally of the West. A second interesting observation is that no subsequent nationalization of this variety has since taken place.

The memory of the Anglo-Iranian oil dispute is easily lost in the passage of time, but it is also instructive to consider the fact that the crisis lasted for two and a half years. Mossadeq's overthrow by General Zahedi's Army coup came in August 1953. In the meantime Britain was seriously if not mortally inconvenienced, while the Iranian treasury sank to nothing and galloping inflation and poverty consumed the land. Much of the turbulence of this oil crisis was due to the fact that neither contending power nor the United States had any experience in handling a dispute of this nature and in limiting its abusive effects. The situation quickly got out of hand, and Iran fell into the grip of extremist elements of both Right (Nationalist) and Left (Tudeh), whose primary attitude

was either intransigence or the eventual seizure of power. It is remarkable under the circumstances that after an experience of this character Iran should have recovered a certain measure of stability, although it is no less true that the stability which exists in Iran today is exceedingly fragile and permeable.

In appearance, many things were learned from this bitter experience. A certain quota of politicians in Iran who, in 1951-53, were attached to the Mossadeq line of policy became convinced that intransigent nationalism, if an appealing policy, was nevertheless a bankrupt one in terms of the national interest, because of the fragility of the country's economy and the influence of foreign pressures on it. The Shah seemingly learned that he must rule as well as reign to stave off chaos in the nation (a two-week exile in 1953 may have been a valuable and chastening experience). The Arab countries undoubtedly became aware that though they might twist the tail of the British lion (or the Americans, French, and Dutch), they could not banish him, because their own technicians and resources were unequal to the task of running an oil industry. The British, too, learned that to put one's back up and freeze foreign assets is not a sufficient answer to this dilemma. These conclusions were well represented in the aftermath of the Iraqi revolution of 1958. Britain, despite its almost filial attachment to the Nuri es-Said regime and

the Hashemite dynasty, was not slow to deal with the regimes of General Kassem and to continue to sell them arms. Nor was the revolutionary junta loath to go on selling oil to the British, despite its alleged Communist or Nasserite leanings, although it reserved the hope for a more favorable renegotiation of the contract.

Many wise foreign observers criticized Britain for courting Kassem when the United States was seeking better relations with Nasser. But a quick look at the map gives reason to the British Foreign Office. Iraq is capable of an oil return of about $260,000,000 per year, much of which goes to Britain (both the commodity and the profit), and is located dangerously near the sheikdom of Kuwait, whose own production is almost 50% greater. Egypt, on the other hand, has no oil to export. The conclusion is elementary. Western Europe, in fact, accounts for about 75% of the consumption of Middle Eastern oil. Mutual self-interest between Britain and Iraq, regardless of what type of government rules in the latter country (we know at least that it is a confused and corrupt one) has undoubtedly been one of the factors in keeping Iraq out of the literal Soviet orbit for two and a half years, when each prediction regarding its evolution was more dismal than the last.

Before the intensely realistic and illustrative Anglo-Iraqi experience took place, however, the second stage of the oil crisis arose. This grew out of the almost

hysterical fear in the British Foreign Office that Nasser
would use his control of Suez (which he had nationalized
in the summer of 1956) to impede oil shipments at will to
the British Isles. At any rate, his potentiality for doing
so was disquieting enough to the British to encourage their
eventual policy of intervention. The commercial consequences
of the Franco-British intervention of November 1956 were,
of course, the blocking of the canal and the demolition
of the Syrian pipelines. Purchases of Venezuelan oil and
laborious transport of Persian Gulf oil via the Cape of
Good Hope tided Western Europe over the crisis.

This was, it seems in retrospect, a British misread-
ing of Arab policy. In 1956 Nasser was in the midst of
his dreams for leadership of an Arab hegemony that would
include the oil-rich countries. He probably recognized
that these states could not financially support a policy
of nationalization and cessation of shipment to Western
Europe, and he was trying to reassure them economically,
not throw them into panic. To be sure, the Hashemite kings
had to be overthrown (a policy which the Saudis endorsed),
but, as for the rest, Nasser would soon put a stop to in-
cipient revolutionary chaos in the interests of the general
harmony. However, there was probably a clear distinction
here between intended policy and revolutionary propaganda
spouted daily over Radio Cairo, and the British failed to
sense the distinction. For example, the Cairo radio broad-
cast thus on March 6, 1956:

"The Arab rulers granted the exploiting imperialist countries a host of rights and concessions at the expense of the people struggling against them. The Arabs allowed the crude oil to go to the countries of their enemies and colonizers. We do not want United States dollars, British pounds, French francs, or Dutch guilders....Oh Arabs, our oil is plundered by aliens, it is seized by your enemies. Remember oil—it is our last wealth! Oil is for the Arabs!"

One is perhaps not justified in evaluating such an inflammatory remark, beamed day after day at Iraq and the Persian Gulf, as misleading. Certainly whatever interpretation one attaches to the Nasserite policy of the period, it must be a tactical and not an ethical one. We believe, however, that the primary target of this radio subversion was the political power—the British-sponsored Hashemites —which was a prerequisite for Nasser's extension of power. The oil could come later, and after Egyptian and Levantine needs were satisfied, there would still be the problem of revenue-producing foreign markets. Unhappily, Soviet Russia was oil-rich and could not foot the bill, as the Aswan Dam episode was incidentally to prove.

This conflict of interpretation we evoke does, however, point up the fact that the Arab Middle East is divided into "have" and "have-not" territories, determined chiefly by oil resources. Strange as it may seem, petty sheikdoms like Kuwait and Bahrein have theoretical per capita incomes that compare favorably with many European countries. But the distribution of wealth is appalling

and difficult; thus a quotient of revolutionary discontent
resides in even the most favored territories, which has
been especially susceptible to Cairo propaganda.

Egypt's Machiavellian propensities in all directions,
while destabilizing, can be very largely justified in
terms of her economic position: extreme population pres-
sure and limited resources. It would, in fact, be highly
abnormal if she had not pursued a highly aggressive and
irridentist foreign policy under such circumstances. In
this respect, Nasser is simply more capable than Farouk
and his toadies. By dint of circumstances, one very
rarely hears inflammatory talk about "oil imperialism"
over today's Baghdad radio, unless it be for purposes of
renegotiation. The "have's" know where their bread is
buttered, the "have nots" are equally aware where the
butter is to be found. The economic rivalry is a new and
considerable factor added to the Egyptian-Mesopotamian
controversy of antiquity.

Oil is thus at once the curse and blessing of the
Middle East: the blessing, because it promises eventually
a reasonable standard of life for at least parts of this
unfruitful region; the curse, because it inflects politics
along demagogic and unproductive lines and exacerbates
the disharmony of the area. Outsiders play on these sus-
ceptibilities, mostly for ill, and the Arab world recipro-
cates with much passion and irrational fury. Worst of all

is perhaps the fact that the Arab masses have become pro-
gressively intoxicated by the two subjects of oil and
Israel. It is now hard to see how even their governments,
if they wished, could adequately proceed to the "demystifi-
cation."

5. Arab Nationalism

As has been already pointed out in the Introduction,
Arab nationalism is a mood of uncertain force and uncertain
locus. The most important factor about it probably is that
it is a preralent and deeply felt mood, one, moreover, that
touches all segments of the population and unites them,
though it is probably demonstrable that the mood slackens
as one moves westward from Cairo. We have shown briefly
in connection with the subjects of both Pan-Islam and
nationalism what some of the strengths and limitations of
the Pan-Arab consciousness are, and in the section on the
Arab League we have further demonstrated the basic ineffi-
cacy of a unified Arab diplomacy. Now we intend to go
more deeply into the philosophical and psychological struc-
ture of the problem.

An obvious question that presents itself is the
following: in what measure is Arab nationalism indissolubly
linked to Islam? This is not easy to answer and could be
subjected to much detailed analysis. First we would have
to locate Arab nationalism for purposes of comparison. Let

us describe it tentatively at one extreme as a behavioral
mood which the Arabic-speaking peoples hold in common that
distinguishes them from others and creates a self-conscious
attitude toward the distinction. At the other extreme are
the pressures (generally cultural and psychological, not
political) for the creation of a unified Arab polity.
Within the spectrum are other considerations, which we
shall pass over for the minute.

The *rapprochement* of this mood with the idea of Islam is not so simple. Here, we must probably distinguish between two planes of definition: the physical and the spiritual. In the first instance, it is quite evident that Arab nationalism and Islam do not coincide, because all Muslims are not Arabs and many have antipathies toward the Arabs. Also, as we have learned, many early and distinguished fighters for Arab nationalism and theoreticians of it were Christians. However, we are speaking of today, when this influence has virtually disappeared, and we must remember that while advocating an essentially secular state, most of the Christians recognized the special position of Islam in it. Their thinking probably proceeded out of the experience of the Ottoman Empire, where religious minorities were granted special rights.

On the spiritual plane, we perceive many correspondences. In fact we cannot conceive of a united Arab polity that would not be Islamic at the core of its inspiration,

much more so effectively than a European federation would
be Christian, despite the remonstrances of the Catholic
parties. The Islamic habit of the inseparability of
eternal verity and daily policy is too ingrained to be
swept away by secular currents, especially when the Arab
world is in a state of conscious revolt against the West,
its ideals and its institutions.

Furthermore, the Arab historical memory goes back
invariably to a time when united "Arabia" was a fact and
based on severe Islamic principles. Emotionally, it can
conceive of no other solution. The intention has never
been to build a new state out of contemporary bits and
pieces, but to reconstruct on the foundations of the old.
Of this, more below.

Finally, if Islam is both a *raison d'état* and a
way of life to the Arab, it is also the sentimental yoke
that links together the unsophisticated and unlettered
masses who would be the substance of the new empire, bridg-
ing many fundamental gaps between herdsman and peasant,
rural dweller and city dweller. It responds to their emo-
tions and is consonant with their expectations.

It is undoubted, therefore, despite state rivalries
and modernizing secular nuances, that the pith and core
of Arab nationalism is Islamic and figures to remain so.

It would not be hard to argue, in fact, that it is
Islam in its conservative aspects, the Islam that is resistant

to change, which feeds a steady stream of vital impulse
into the pan-Arab movement. For, as we have seen earlier,
that which is secular and modernizing tends to fragment
into the different administrative and economic techniques
of the various states and create both formal and psychologi-
cal barriers to Arab unity. This could be demonstrated
easily in a profuse variety of ways.

Arab nationalism, of course, looks backward into
history—to the Medinite state for its political philosophy
and to the great Caliphates for its historical justifica-
tion. This does not mean turning the clock back to those
times. But it does illustrate a search for national worth,
for prestige and glory, on a scale somewhat magnified but
comparable to France's present musings about the Carolin-
gian Empire as a basis of Western European unity. Regarding
this Arab propensity for history, Nuseibeh provides us
with a particularly evocative description: "Without the
assurance that stems from association with a worthy past,
without the consciousness of forming a distinctive perso-
nality with, perhaps, a distinctive mission, a nation loses
its basic support, its raison d'être. It is not, therefore,
the appurtenances of a civilization but the consciousness
of it and the pride in its possession that serves a vital
national purpose. It is the feeling of 'partnership between
those who are living, those who are dead, and those who
are to be born.'"

The more contemporary Arabs, abetted by their sense of the glory of the past and their despondency at their present lot, have in general written history very badly and, to say the least, unscientifically. Often they have done this simply in order to hold their heads high in the world; sometimes it has been because they were working out of a theocentric tradition in which scientific accuracy had no more place than in a saint's life of medieval Christendom. Today the situation is improving under the stimulus of Western methods, but it must be said that the Arabs still experience a certain discomfort when historical facts jar with their preconceived notions of former times. For example, it is well established that the splendid Umayyad Caliphate was generously sceptical and anti-religious in temper, but this is not a fact that fits very well into the Arab world view. Of course, this tendency to make of the past what one wants is by no means the exclusive pre-rogative of Islam; one recalls as recently as thirty years ago the monumental French historian Hanotaux, who declared frankly that all his writings had but one object—France.

For the bulk of Arabs history is, of course, nothing more than the anecdotes of the Quran and Sumah, learned perhaps during brief attendance at a religious kuttab, supplemented by village tales and the inevitable radio. But it is curious and important to determine—as we cannot presume to do—how the elites, especially the politicians,

read their own history. In a period of violent nationalism,
it is to be imagined that they read it as it suits their
own designs. Not all these designs are, of course, Pan-
Arab. And the last few years have seen the appearance
of significant amounts of Marxist historical interpreta-
tion and historiography in cultural centers like Cairo
and Damascus.

One way in which the Arabs are especially prone to
read history is to find in the continuous evolution of
Islam significant factors of dynamism and change. The
argument here is specifically designed to counter the ac-
cusation (which we believe to be just) that eighteenth-
century Islam was in a critical and moribund condition
and could only be renewed through contact with a vigorous
alien civilization (Battle of the Nile-1798). According
to the Pan-Arabists, the Islamic awakening would have oc-
curred with or without the West, and presumably in a more
wholesome fashion without it. Yet it is curious to note
that the first stirrings of Arab intellectualism seem to
coincide remarkably with Napoleon's adventure in Egypt.
The Pan-Arabists point instead to such indigenous movements
as the Wahabbite (Puritan) revival in Arabia. But it is
difficult to see what came, or could have come, of such
phenomena other than purification of religion and the dis-
sipation of some sloppy accretions of indolence. Gibb
and Bowen state the problem very nicely:

"We shall never know, in any probability, whether some Arab Jacquard devised an improved loom or some Turkish Watt discovered the power of steam, but we can confidently assert that, if any such invention had occurred, it would have been entirely without result. The whole social organism, in fact, was one characteristic of, and only possible in, a stationary or retrograde civilization. It is not an exaggeration to say that after so many centuries of immobility the processes of agriculture, industry, exchange and learning had become little more than automatic, and had resulted in a species of atrophy that rendered those engaged in them all but incapable of changing their methods or outlook to the slightest degree."

In short, individual brilliances may not have been lacking in Islam at any given moment, but by the turn of the nineteenth century the civilization was so run-down as to engulf any remnants of creativity. And it is simply begging the question to lay the blame for this on the Ottomans, as some Arab historians have found it convenient to do.

Westernization is then, not surprisingly, the key to our understanding of the Arab awakening, with its revolutionary ideas of commerce, industrial technique, and government. This obliges us to answer the question of why Arab nationalism became reinvigorated, why the West did not prevail in all spheres. The solution is to be found in many places, of course, among them: the currency of the common language, the Quranic tradition, and, necessarily, the historical memory, which had slumbered but never slept. Politically, the awakening consciousness of imperialism—

another common bond—helped to settle the issue, both
from its Ottoman and its Franco-British sources. But it
is proper to point out that cultural identification had
played a large role long before imperialism was considered.

The first modern conceptualization of a unified
Arab state grew logically in the Hashemite mind out of the
prospects of the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire. Although
the Turks divided their Arab subjects into various provinces
(vilayets), the boundary lines in the Levant, the Fertile
Crescent, and the Arabian Peninsula were still indistinct
enough to suggest a single polity. And indeed there are
few natural reasons why it should not have come about (ex-
cepting perhaps the Syro-Lebanese coast), but for the
designs of the European powers and the intrigues and rival-
ries of the Arab sheiks. Egypt at this time (a British
protectorate from 1882) was busily pursuing its own destiny,
and the North African states (under French protection or
co-sovereignty) were, needless to say, far out of the
picture. Cairo had, however, always been an intellectual
center of Pan-Arab and Pan-Islamic foment (largely because
of the University of al-Azhar), and we have already seen
what motives impelled Egypt to take the lead as Pan-Arab
unifier in 1945. North Africa remains, to this day, some-
what aloof from central Pan-Arab currents, although Egypt
made a bold attempt (1954-56) to control the Algerian
National Liberation Front.

It would not be fair to say that the touch of
Westernism awoke a sleeping giant in this case; at least
it took a century and a half of yawning and stretching.
But it is quite clear that a recrudescence has occurred,
and that much of its dynamism is specifically Islamic and
not Western. Whether this amounts to a reinvigoration or
a reinvention is open to dispute; probably the truth lies
somewhere in between.

What today describes itself as Arab nationalism is
based essentially on four factors. The first is language,
which is self-evident, and its resultant, a common literary
culture. The second is historical memory and common tra-
dition, which we have discussed. Thirdly, there is a
similarity of folkways and a basic community of interest
at the lowest common denominator, which is often belied by
the attitudes of elites and by government action (cf. the
oil problem). Finally, there is Islam—the religion and
all it denotes and connotes. Arab secularists and those
anxious to display toleration would contend that this
fourth factor is not legitimate. It is perhaps not the
ideal criterion of a happy and just society, but it is
massively evident in all aspects of the nationalist per-
spective. As we pointed out earlier, Arab Christians no
longer share an honorable place in the nationalist move-
ment. The Egyptian government no longer caters to the
Copts by offering top positions. Even behind the mask of
secularization (though Tunisia is a contrary case), what

amounts to an Islamic secularization takes place. Religious courts have been abolished in Egypt, but their secular substitutes are based almost totally on Islamic law. After a brief period of tolerance, Morocco no longer finds it expedient to include a Jew in her cabinet.

In addition to these theoretical and deeply ingrained supporting factors, we may add the phenomenon of mass feeling, mightily abetted by radio transmissions. Nasser does not blast the Iraqi Arabs; they are brothers. Rather he attacks their unjust government which is lavishing oil—our oil, Arab oil—on the cynical Western imperialists, who would soon be brought to heel without it.

Finally, there is the curious fact that an almost congenital disdain for political theory in Arab writings has contributed to the pan-nationalist impulse. The Quran is not very clear on forms of government and neither are its commentators. Monarchies and republics and dictatorships co-exist inside Islam without great philosophical stress. It is the law and not the form of the polity that tends to be highly contentious.

Opposed to these trends, we can list some very formidable adversaries that influence Islam in the direction of its particular nationalisms and make it difficult for states to combine. The following factors are probably of greatest importance:

1. The formal influence of the European state systems.

2. Customary differentiation of institutions and

techniques that accompany modernization.

3. Economic discrepancies between states.

4. Secularizing vs. religious trends.

5. Peasant vs. pastoral mentalities.

6. Interior power politics.

7. Foreign interference.

We do not see the political unification of the Arab lands or even a major part of them as an immediate prospect. We might (more readily) anticipate the break-up of the U.A.R., even by mutual consent. But it is conceivable that what has not been, and may never be, formed politically is close to achievement in certain other ways. Cultural cohesion is the cement of the Arab lands, and, were they to adopt a true stance of neutralism, world politics might drive them steadily closer together.

## 6. Culture and Education in Islam

We have already pointed out in what ways the Arab world is a cultural community, and what political implications this fact may hold for the future. There is also a wider Islamic world that shares this fundamental cultural cohesion to a varying degree, if not by political standards, at least as a conscious historical discipline—like Christianity, or Roman law, or parliamentary government in the West. Arabic remains today the "language of the Book,"

the cultural *lingua franca* of this wider community, and it
is well recognized from the etymology of names and from
historical record that many non-Arabs contributed much
over a period of centuries to the corpus we style classi-
cal Arab literature.

In contrast to this condition, we have the violence
of the modern Turkish experience. The shrinking of con-
temporary Turkey within essentially linguistic and ethnic
boundaries provided volatile fuel for the chauvinistic
revolution of Ataturk. The disintegration of a multi-
racial state always threatens to release extremes of frus-
trated energy in its surviving core. The success of the
Nazis in the Austrian remnant of the Hapsburg Empire would
be a somewhat different illustration of the same principle.

By all odds, the physical and spiritual renunciation
of the Islamic Caliphate by Turkey could scarcely have
avoided producing a severe counter-reaction. This is not
to submerge Ataturk's personal role amid mechanical his-
torical factors, a thesis which the truth will not bear;
it is simply to point out that vast changes in world out-
look were inevitable in post-World War I Turkey, whatever
the character of its rulers. Modernization and the con-
tinuity of Islamic values have not proceeded hand-in-hand
in Turkey because of the quality of the reaction and its
various causes.

Where Turkey (especially in the villages) tends to
remain attached to Islam, it is scarcely modernized; and
vice-versa. But we must not overlook the fact that the

medium of the Arab language never penetrated rural and re-
ligious Anatolia; Arab remained rather the plaything of
the cosmopolitan and stylish court, of the religious insti-
tutions and the *ulema*. Thus a true cultural cohesion, in
which language and religion were part of a single pattern,
never existed in Turkey at a popular level, as was true of
the Arabized countries. Rather, the elements were mutually
imitating within the context of a frustrated chauvinism.
This is an observation of first importance in determining
qualitative distinctions in the Turkish case.

Turkish speakers at the Princeton Colloquium on
Islamic Culture in September 1953 uniformly defended their
place in the Islamic tradition, while insisting neverthe-
less on the thorough secularization of cultural activities,
legal systems, and education. None of their colleagues,
however susceptible to the modernizing spirit, were pre-
pared to go this far. For them, unlike the Turks, there
was no fundamental conflict between the values and atti-
tudes of Islam and the benefits of a modern technological
society. In fact, the view was frequently expressed that
Islam's particular mission in the world today was the
guardianship of spiritual values against the sterility
and dehumanizing aspects of Western technological culture.
We have already encountered this and like arguments in the
political debate surrounding the creation of the state of
Pakistan; they are also being constantly stressed in all

the Arab countries. Turkey, then, is committed to sweeping aspects of Westernization in the sense of the Charles Malik argument (see Introduction); the other countries feel they are not and intend to avoid the implication at all cost.

The larger question then becomes: Is Islam retrograde as a socio-religious system, or does it contain to procreative force to beget progressive forms while its traditional and historical aspect remains undisturbed? A great deal of the discussion and controversy on this point centers around the two concepts of *ijtāhad* (interpretation) and *taqālid* (imitation). There is an unmistakable tendency in Islam to take things at their face value: thus we find, at the two extremes, arguments for blind imitation and for anarchic interpretation. Most intelligent and pious Muslim intellectuals, however, will chart a course between the two extremes. *Ijtāhad*, it can be surmised, is a powerful Quranic weapon in the hands of the modernizers, provided that they have a capacity for imagination. However, even *ijtāhad* is bounded by the cognizance that it is not everybody's privilege to interpret; furthermore, *ijtāhad* presumes the infallibility of the interpreter, who is an *alim*, or learned man in the religion. *Ulema* are not characteristically the most progressive force in the Islamic world.

Culture, we might say in any case, is not something that is forced or settled by colloquiums of the intelligentsia. Rather it is something that is born spontaneously from

the organic and creative well-springs of a society. This
much is true, but it is no less true to observe (especially
in our age of mass and instantaneous communications) that
culture can be generously inflected by specific policies
brought to bear on cultural components.

An example of this might be literary forms. This
is not a state matter, but it is often one in the Islamic
world where the writers reflect chauvinistic preoccupations
in their choices of style, vocabulary, and genre. For
example, both conflicts and points in common between the
Western style of the short story and the traditional Orien-
tal tale or anecdote have affected modern Turkish, Arabic,
and Persian literature. If the intellectual trend is to
condemn everything Western, surreptitiously admired Western
art forms may sneak in through the back door, justified
on the premises of traditional revival. Much Turkish and
Arabic poetry of today resembles neither the barren didac-
tic verse of early Islam nor the mystical raptures of
Persian Sufi'ism, but rather the simple pre-Islamic lyri-
cism and, incidentally, the more poetic suras of the Quran.
But the fact that it also bears a striking resemblance to
Western imagistic verse is not to be overlooked. The prob-
lem is further complicated when we realize that this is
not just blind imitation, imparted from the halls of
Sorbonne and the University of Chicago, but the striking
conjuncture of a real East-West cultural correspondence.
For fundamental Arabism (and Turanianism) is a psychology

of the image: the palm tree in the desert, the caravan
crossing the undulating mountains of sand—in short, an
imagination where the object is set off harshly and
critically from its background, where life and its crea-
tures do not axiomatically flow together.

Another periodic problem is the Arabic script, which
is difficult for people to learn, even Arabs. Its utility
may be further questioned when it has to represent the alien
sounds of the Persian or Urdu languages. Furthermore,
Arab does not customarily write its vowel sounds, which
are of critical importance in determining not the meaning
of the word but its syntactical function. This makes
written Arab somewhat a language *in becoming*, a miraculous
exercise for the practice of *ijtāhad*. The Turks overcame
this problem neatly by simply abandoning the script. Other
non-Arab countries are dubious about following their example.
And the Arab countries (while admitting that vowel letters
might be invented) are usually scandalized by the sugges-
tion. For to them the script is sacred in the same measure
as the Book that employs it; it keeps the infidel away
from God's doorstep and brings the true believer to his
bosom. Furthermore, the script, like the Chinese charac-
ters, has an independent artistic value that is much ap-
preciated.

We spoke of history in the last essay, and said that
Arab and Islamic history were in flux. Patriotism and

cultural pride traditionally made of Islamic history a
kind of Near Eastern counterpart of Froissart's *Chronicles*,
a heroid interpretation of deeds according to a complimen-
tary plan. Today Western historiography has rushed in to
cope with the puzzles of the Islamic past and scientific
criteria are being increasingly applied. But there is
every possibility that these "scientific" modernizers will
be forestalled by the Marxian interpreters, whose number
seems to be increasing rapidly and who have the dubious
talent of being able to compliment the Arab past uncritically
while alleging a scientific and modern framework for their
readings of all history.

Finally, we must consider the crucial point of
future Arabic development in culture: education. Educa-
tional currents of today are mixed and chaotic. In Islam;
educational ideals are in sharp conflict. At the highest
level secular universities vie with the tradition-based
institutions like al-Aghar and its counterpart in Morocco.
On the one hand, the currents of modern technological
society and the inquiring ideals of Western democratic
and socialist philosophy are taught to an anxious and
combative young elite; on the other, the ideal of an
"Islam guided by socio-religious practices." But the
core of the battle is at the elementary level, where frankly
modernizing countries like Egypt and Tunisia are replacing
the traditional Quranic *kuttab* with the state secular school
at all deliberate speed. This does not in itself mean that

there is not popular psychological resistance to government educational policy, or that village schools do not, in many cases, revert to the quasi-Islamic context of education. In such a civilization, anything that is strange and disorienting will have troubles in sinking its roots. The omnipresent radio has perhaps done more to bridge the chasm between religious and secular education than any other instrument of government policy.

There are still other nuances. In North Africa, for example, there are still the excellent French lycées which attract the children of the upper bourgeoisie and all elite groups that sense the importance of European culture and a European language. And along the coast of the Levant and in Turkey there are Western colleges and schools that form a previous means of contact between Islam and the West, of which the American University in Beirut and the Robert College in Istanbul are only the most renowned in the United States.

We should perhaps have done more to avoid the implication that secular education was modernizing and good, and that Islamic teaching was retrogressive and bad. The case is naturally not nearly so simple. A civilization cannot divorce itself from its traditional well-springs of inspiration by a mere snap of the fingers. In terms of technique, what has been traditionally bad about the Quranic schools is that they induced a method of learning by rote and repetition that was abusive to free intellectual

development. On the other hand, there is a generous current of liberal intellectual inquiry in Islam, which is perhaps best expressed in the Sufi'ist apothegm: "He who knows his mind, verily he knows his Creator."

Nor is it any more true to say that Islam institu-
tions induce reverence and escape from modern problems.
They are just as often vital sources of pan-Arab and,
indeed, intra-state nationalism. The fanatic, para-political
Muslim Brotherhood is estimated to have had the sympathies
of at least 30% of the student body and faculty of al-Azhar
in 1954. The religious institutions in Morocco played a
similar role in the independence of that country.

Secular schools, on the other hand, may produce
something very far from the free inquiring spirit. They
are under close government control, and tend to become
precise instruments of government policy. Objective learn-
ing, especially in the field of history, tends to become
the blatant propaganda of the aims of the state; this is
nothing unique to Islam. Its grip on secular education
especially gives a government the facility of summoning
"spontaneous demonstrations," whenever it desires. At
the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the salutary
example in Turkey, where the students and academic community
in general took the lead in denouncing progressive impinge-
ments on freedom by the Menderes government.

The educational policies of Islam and their effects on the regional culture are, then, mixed and ambiguous. Serious conflicts rage around the point of whether vital points of Islam must be relinquished in the drive for the advantages of secular civilization. The question is surely as much emotional as it is academic, and will never be resolved by deliberate decision but only through a process of drift and compromise.

Another matter that is worth mentioning is the role that labor organizations have played as both political and cultural educators in certain parts of the Islamic world. This has been especially true in Morocco and Tunisia, with their comparatively early traditions of European-inspired syndicalism. It will become increasingly true elsewhere in the measure that the governments of the day allow a spontaneous trade union activity to go on. A Moroccan syndicalist has expressed the opinion that the trade union will be "the university of the future," and it is conceivable that there is more than a grain of truth in the observation, to be demonstrated as industrialization accelerates.

Culture, we may say in conclusion, is at a crossroads in Islam today, with Marxism and Westernization in specialized aspects contending vigorously with the socio-religious substratum of the past. It is being consciously inflected by governments through such instruments as educational policy. Hesitation and pluralism of outlook (sometimes