Voices of Islam (273 page)

The very last paragraph of
What Went Wrong
starts with this sentence: ‘‘If the peoples of the Middle East continue on their present path, the suicide bomber may become a metaphor for the whole region
.. .
.’’
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In reading Lewis’ verdict, one cannot help but wonder if at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it would be acceptable for a noted public figure such as Lewis to describe any other group of humanity apart from Middle Easterners
as a whole
as being represented by the suicide bomber. One can only imagine the outrage that would be felt and heard from many corners if instead of talk- ing about Middle Easterners (read: Muslims), a public scholar of Lewis’ rank had described all Chinese, all Africans, all women, all Jews, or all Hindus in such a derogatory fashion. Nonetheless, this characterization is perfectly con- sistent with Lewis’ trajectory from his earlier scholarship. Absolving the West of all guilt and the responsibility to help, Lewis concludes by putting the fault and the responsibility for fixing ‘‘what has gone wrong’’ entirely on the Mus- lims: ‘‘For the time being, the choice is their own.’’
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207

Samuel Huntington

Whereas Lewis casts a long and dark shadow over the fields of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, Huntington is even more implicated in policy circles. As the past president of the American Political Science Association, and a University Professor at Harvard, Huntington is a figure whose political theories deserve a serious engagement. It would be hard to overestimate the level of influence that he and his ideas have had on public policy circles and successive administrations. The perspective of Huntington carries a great deal of weight with many Neo-conservatives in George W. Bush’s administration, such as Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, and so on.

Huntington published his widely read and highly infl al essay titled ‘‘The Clash of Civilizations?’’ in the 1993 edition of
Foreign Affairs.
It is important to review and critique this much-discussed thesis. According to Huntington, the primary source of confl ct in the emerging world order was to be not ideological or economic, but rather cultural. He further identi- fied the various civilizations that were to be the agents of this process:

Civilization identity will be increasingly important in the future, and the world will be shaped in large measure by the interactions among seven or eight major civilizations. These include Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American, and possibly African civilization.
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There are at least two points worth noting from this list: first, some civiliza- tions are identifi based on religious identity (Islamic, Confucian, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox), whereas others are based on geographical location (Japanese, Western, Latin America, African). It is not clear from Hunting- ton’s list why some—but not all—civilizations are identifi d based on religion, a feature that he identifi as the most important differentiator of civilizations. Many critics have pointed to the profound racism of this schema, which seems deeply uncertain as to whether or not Africans deserve to be named as having their own civilization: ‘‘and possibly, African.’’
31
This revelation of Huntington’s underlying racism was quickly covered up in the 1996 book version, where Sub-Saharan Africa was listed as African civ- ilization, without any qualifiers. Between 1993 and 1996, he seems to have recognized the inappropriateness of describing all Chinese as ‘‘Confucian,’’ and renamed that civilization as ‘‘Sinic.’’ Likewise, for him, Buddhists had emerged as their own civilization between 1993 and 1996.

In discussing the interaction among these civilizations, Huntington relies on a favorite metaphor, to which he returns time and again: ‘‘fault lines.’’
32
The language of ‘‘fault lines’’ comes from geology, where the tectonic plates on the Earth’s crust shift ever so slowly, inching along till they bump into each other, causing earthquakes. He applies the same concept to civilizational units: ‘‘The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the

208
Voices of Change

future.’’
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The choice of the metaphor is particularly intriguing, as it reveals Huntington’s conception of civilizations as rock-solid, distinct entities that go bump in the night—causing a clash of civilizations. What is so intriguing about this depiction is that it bears almost no resemblance to the way that people who study cultures and civilizations—sociologists and anthropologists—often talk about these entities. Anthropologists in particular are mindful of the fluidity of civilizations, and are particularly aware of the adaptability of each culture. Huntington’s work bears almost no indication of having engaged that whole body of scholarship.

By the publication of the book bearing the title
Clash of Civilizations,
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Huntington attempted to tease out some of the assertions in the earlier article. For example, he offered a flowchart in which he traced the develop- ment of what is termed ‘‘Eastern Hemisphere civilizations.’’ What is termed ‘‘Classical (Mediterranean)’’ civilization is said to give rise to both the Islamic and the Western civilizations (both of which also receive input from the ‘‘Canaanite’’ civilization), as well as the Orthodox (Russian) civilization.
35
What is missing from this crude evolutionary schema is any sense of interac- tion
among
civilizations. There is no sense of how Islamic civilization may have interacted with, contributed to, and learned from Western civiliza- tion.
36
The chapter which is supposed to deal with ‘‘intercivilizational issues’’ engages only weapons transfer and an obsession with immigration, without any possibility of intellectual, aesthetic, or other mutually beneficial cultural exchanges.
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For Huntington, the primary mode of interaction among civilizations is one of conflict and clash. He states:

The civilizational ‘‘us’’ and the extracivilizational ‘‘them’’ is a constant in human history. These differences in intra- and extracivilizational behavior stem from:

1. feeling of superiority (and occasionally inferiority) toward people who are perceived as being very different
   

2. fear of and lack of trust in such people;
   

3. difficulty of communication with them as a result of differences in language and what is considered civil behavior;
   

4. lack of familiarity with the assumptions, motivations, social relationships, and social practices of other people.
   38
   

But is this historically what has happened throughout human history? What is one to do with the transmission of Greek philosophy to the Western world through Muslim commentators? What about places like Andalusia, where Muslim, Jewish, and Christian religious communities lived side by side in peace, while their scholars engaged one another in pluralistic academies?
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One could point to countless other examples. While there have of course been many situations of superiority/inferiority complex exasperated by con- fl it also is the case that many civilizations have sought to study one

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another and have strived for a pluralistic coexistence. These ‘‘non-clash’’ situations and possibilities do not register for Huntington.

Huntington, following Lewis, has a problematic relationship with Islam. The main problem from Huntington’s perspective is not Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or the Wahhabis, not that ever present bogey-man of ‘‘Islamic fundamentalism,’’ ‘‘Muslim terrorism,’’ and so on. The problem for Huntington, simply, is
Islam
itself, the entire religious tradition, the full spectrum of interpretations, practices, and so on. He states:

The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.
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In Huntington’s formulations we also have the classic markers of difference, ‘‘a different civilization,’’ with the typical superiority/inferiority association. Taking his cues from Lewis’ assertion that the Muslims hate ‘‘us’’ (that is, the West) not for what the West does but simply for what it is, Huntington goes on to assert:

The problem for Islam is not the CIA or the U.S. Department of Defense. It is the West, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the universality of their culture and believe that their superior, if declining, power imposes on them the obligation to extend that culture throughout the world.
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In the 1993 article Huntington had made the infamous assertion that ‘‘Islam has bloody borders.’’
42
While that statement was criticized heavily, it did not prevent Huntington from expanding upon it in the book version:

In all these places [Palestine, Lebanon, Ethiopia, bulge of Africa, Sudan, Nigeria, Chad, Kenya, Tanzania], the relations between Muslims and peoples of other civilizations—Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Hindu, Chinese, Buddhist, Jew- ish—have been generally antagonistic; most of these relations have been violent at some point in the past; many have been violent in the 1990s. Wherever one looks along the perimeter of Islam, Muslims have problems living peacefully with their neighbors.
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This assertion is a serious one and obviously is tied to a reading of Islam and Muslims as being essentially incapable of living in peace with those different from them. The most substantial and thorough factual critique of this assertion by Huntington is that offered by the Harvard historian Roy Mottahedeh. Mottahedeh, a leading Middle East historian, rightly points out that Huntington selectively picks the historical episodes that fi his model, while neglecting parallel examples that would undermine his argument.
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Voices of Change

Huntington’s thesis is predicated on a number of assumptions about authentic American identity being white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant. While his misgivings about Islam betray part of this racial/racist anxiety, it is his more recent writings that have made this point painfully clear. Case in point is his 2004 article called ‘‘The Hispanic Challenge.’’
45
The summary for this article reads:

The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream

U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves—from Los Angeles to Miami—and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream. The United States ignores this challenge at its peril.

Even more troubling is the conclusion of the essay, in which Huntington even seeks to deny Mexican-Americans the right to dream in their mother tongue if they wish to be participants in the American dream: ‘‘There is no Americano dream. There is only the American dream created by an Anglo- Protestant society. Mexican Americans will share in that dream and in that society only if they dream in English.’’ Nowhere in Huntington’s worldview, not about Muslims and not about Hispanics, is there an awareness of culture in the way that anthropologists, sociologists, and scholars of religion discuss: the notion of overlapping, fluid spheres of identity. Possibilities of bilingual- ism and multiculturalism are indeed anathema to the Huntingtons of the world.

One can criticize Islamophobes such as Lewis and Huntington, and indeed both deserve serious engagements. Yet the measuring stick of the ethical demands of Islam is the amount of change Muslims can produce in lived communities, urging all of us toward ever-higher ideals of justice and plural- ism. In doing so, one has to acknowledge the fundamental challenges that the American Muslim community faces.

CHALLENGES TO NORTH AMERICAN ISLAM

Participation and Representation in the Media and Cultural Productions

American Muslims form the fastest growing block of citizens in the United States. In 1970, there were a scant 100,000 Muslims in America. By 2006, accurate estimates put the number at more than six million. This 60-fold growth in slightly over 30 years represents a phenomenal achievement. It is due to both the immigration of Muslims from South Asia and the Arab world to the United States and the mass conversion of many Americans (largely African Americans) to Islam. Yet when one compares American Muslims with

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other religious groups with similarly large populations, there is a noticeable gap. The most frequent comparison, one fi with admiration and envy, is with the American Jewish population. Comparisons by Muslims with American Jewry are fi with admiration for their political clout, envy for their civic institutions, outrage at the support of U.S. government for Israel, and hope for achieving exactly the same level of prominence. Being weary of charges of anti-Semitism (and not always innocent of them), these com- parisons with the Jewish community are usually voiced inside the Muslim community.

By now, many scholars of religion such as Diana Eck have noted that num- bering at six million, there are as many American Muslims as American Jews, more Muslims than Episcopalians, and more Muslims than Presbyterians.
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There is no shortage of Muslims on TV, but most portrayals are in the con- text of either terrorism or political leaders of other countries. Both of these reinforce the erroneous impression of Muslims as quintessentially ‘‘other,’’ fundamentally different from ‘‘us’’ Americans.
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One is hard-pressed to think of a single Muslim intellectual, artist, or musician who is nationally known at the level of ABC, CNN, NBC, or CBS. (Fox ‘‘News’’ is beyond hope.) The only American Muslims that most Americans would be able to name come from the realm of sports: Muhammad Ali, Hakeem Olajuwon, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and so on. There are no high-profile Muslim journal- ists (apart from the half-Iranian Christiane Amanpour who does not self- identify as a Muslim) on these TV shows. In short, American Muslims are in the society but have almost no representation in terms of popular culture aside from negative stereotypes.