Arab Animosity

[I intended to shelve this post after I had written it for fear of being too judgmental. However, recent experiences on my travel to Istanbul through the Middle East have cemented my opinions and made me decide to publish this post]

What makes Arabs such a charged, hyper tensed race of people? Readers will rightly argue that I am generalizing here since there are bunches among the Arab race who are the calm-composed types. But having experienced the Middle East, during my growing up years, I have time and again come across Arabs who seem to have very little of  attributes like patience, composure and diplomacy. Don’t get me wrong; Arabs are in general, honest and hardworking people, but they lose their cool more often than not, bickering about the most trivial of things. It is no wonder that countries like England and U.S who descended upon the Middle East with imperialistic intentions regret it for the most part even to this day!!

Many Anti-islamists have blamed Islam to be the reason for such attributes citing evidences of how the religion spread through the sword. Whether Islam spread through the sword is a topic for another day but my view is that Arab animosity comes from a variety of related factors, religion contributing very little. A few years ago, shortly after the Danish cartoon incident, I ran an experiment with some friends who belonged to various ethnicities and religions. I showed them two cards, one with the picture of a silhouette holding a sword and the other of the exact same silhouette meditating- sort of in a saintly pose. I asked them to identify in their opinion which one represented the prophet of Islam (pbuh) more accurately. 90 percent (including a few muslims), chose the card with the sword! It demonstrated to me that often great people in history are misconstrued by popular belief rather than facts. Arabs today are seen through the eyes of the media portraying violence and chaos which may indeed be the case for some countries but not all. This has unconsciously fed the minds of people to think that an Arab prophet could be violent.

The fact is that Muhammed(Pbuh) was introduced to Islam in a cave while he was MEDITATING. The fact is that he never had intentions to fight where force was not required. The fact is he used his sword only where his near and dear ones needed protection and to these near and dear ones, he treated them with respect, honour, humility and kindness. If not anything, the religion he bought turned a race of barbarians into a people with substance whose expanse traversed from central Asia all the way to Europe. At the time, a muslim was identified as one who would leave an ownerless gold coin lying on the road untouched. Where then did these divine attributes disappear in the Arabs of today? 

 The truth is that these divine attributes turned human and thus came about divisions within the religion and a quest for power, fame and wealth. These characteristics passed on from generation to generation inciting hatred and disunity. The discovery of oil in the 19^th century created more chaos with imperialistic powers meddling in the affairs of the Arab folk. In the end, the Arab society who were identified by tribes at one point where now identified with wealth. Wealth disparity is so widespread in the middle east, it’s only natural for the common Arab man to be so pissed about everything! After all, while he struggles with unemployment to make ends meet, his tribe member who was once considered an equal, now owns oil fields and enjoys the finer things in life

Personality profile: Umar Ibn Al Katthab

Over the next couple of weeks, I hope to be introducing a new series of posts in my blog that will talk about leading figures in Islam and history in general. Ideally I would have liked to start with our beloved prophet (PBUH), however given the man that he was and his achievements, I want to take time to research and make it relevant  and special for readers. I therefore start the series with one of his close aides, the second caliph according to the Sunni tradition- Umar Ibn Al khattab. 

Much has been said about the man, and stories relating to his piousness are a part of every Muslim gathering and event.  Encyclopedia Britannica describes Umar as follows : 

“ʿUmar I, in full ʿumar Ibn Al-khaṭtāb    (born c. ad 586, Mecca, Arabia [now in Saudi Arabia]—died Nov. 3, 644, Medina, Arabia), the second Muslim caliph (from 634), under whom Arab armies conquered Mesopotamia and Syria and began the conquest of Iran and Egypt.

A member of the clan of ʿAdi of the Meccan tribe of Quraysh (Koreish), ʿUmar at first opposed Muḥammad but, by about 615, became a Muslim. By 622, he had become one of Muḥammad’s chief advisers, closely associated with Abū Bakr. His position in the state was marked by Muḥammad’s marriage to his daughter Hafsa in 625. On Muḥammad’s death in 632 ʿUmar was largely responsible for reconciling the Medinan Muslims to the acceptance of a Meccan, Abū Bakr, as head of state (caliph). Abū Bakr (reigned 632–634) relied greatly on ʿUmar and nominated him to succeed him. As caliph, ʿUmar was the first to call himself “commander of the faithful” (amīr al-muʾminīn). His reign saw the transformation of the Islāmic state from an Arabian principality to a world power. Throughout this remarkable expansion ʿUmar closely controlled general policy and laid down the principles for administering the conquered lands. The structure of the later Islāmic empire, including legal practice, is largely due to him. Assassinated by a Persian slave for personal reasons, he died at Medina 10 years after coming to the throne. A strong ruler, stern toward offenders, and himself ascetic to the point of harshness, he was universally respected for his justice and authority.”

As described correctly, a large part of Sunni Islam as we see it today has roots in policies that were implemented by Umar during his reign. For this reason, my view is that he is easily attributed to be one of (if not the only) true architects of modern Islam after the prophet (PBUH). Many practices that you see today including the Tarawih prayers during the holy month of Ramadhan and the compilation of the Quran into the book we know of are as a result of orders given out by Umar during his reign.  Among the various stories that are prevalent on his humbleness and fairness as the ruler of Muslims (amīr al-muʾminīn), there are two that distinctly fascinate me.

The first one relates to the power he bestowed on the administrative officials of his state during his reign as the second caliph of Islam. Here was an all-powerful ruler, leader of over a billion people, who placed so much trust in his administrative officials, that he himself had to ask permission and seek approval from these officials if their services were to be availed. The story begins on one of the days of Ramadhan when Umar approached the official in charge of the people’s treasury seeking a loan. Despite being the ruler, Umar lived a most humble life and on the advice of his wife decided to take a loan from the treasury to buy his daughters some new clothes on the occasion of Eid. Umar asked the official if he could borrow some money with the intention of repaying once his salary was received at the end of the month (The fact that a ruler at the time received a salary from the treasury and the fact that he had to seek permission to take a loan itself is fascinating for me). But the story goes on to show how capable the people whom Umar placed his trust on were. The official replied that he would gladly give Umar the loan from the People’s treasury provided Umar signs a written affidavit that he would not die till the end of the month!! The official then goes on to say that the treasury was made up of the people’s contribution and to take this money without the guarantee of repaying would be a grave sin. Umar immediately realized his mistake and recalled his decision to take the loan.

The second story, similar in context and equally riveting goes something like this: It was late evening when Ali, the son-in-law of the prophet approaches Umar’s house to talk to him on an urgent issue. Umar had just wrapped up a meeting with his administrative officials. On seeing Ali and learning of his purpose of visit, he immediately enquires if the matter he would like to talk about is regarding the state or something personal. Ali replies it was the latter. On hearing this, Umar extinguishes that lamp that was already lit, and lights another lamp. Puzzled by this rather odd reaction, Ali asks for a reason to which Umar replies “ My dear Ali, the oil that burns in the first lamp has been bought with money from the treasury i.e the People’s treasury. To use this lamp while we speak of personal matters would be highly unfair and unethical. For this reason, we can have the conversation at my expense i.e using the second lamp which burns of oil bought from my salary.”

How many of our present day leaders follow such an honest and fair path? How many of our present day leaders can be so accountable? Is this not what the Arab spring set to bring about ? Both these stories coupled with his achievements in history to take Islam far from the lands from where it was born and more importantly to rule these lands in a such a just and right manner makes him in my view one of the greats in Islam’s 1400 year old history. Though there is much controversy among Shia Muslims on his genuineness, they would agree that if not for this ‘commander of the faithful’ and the solid foundations that he laid, Islam today would have not survived the long list of events that took place in the very lands in which he ruled.

 

Middle Eastern Mess

Early in 2010, I ran a research assignment via internet sources to figure out the most prominent countries featured in news headlines over the past 10 years (2000-2010). Given that the decade was most remembered for Sept 11 and its aftermath, and the steady economic growth of China, it was of no surprise that the results yielded U.S and China in the top 2 spots.

Among the top 5 however, were also Israel/Palestine and of course Iraq and Afghanistan among others (Full results here). At the time, there seemed to be a sense that something big was around the corner for the Middle East and the people in that region hoped for something positive.

Cut to 2013, the Middle East is still in the news with changes expected thanks to the Arab Spring. Yet in spite of expecting things to be better, sectarian violence continues in Iraq and Syria, Administrative issues continues to plague Egypt, Tunisia and Libya and a gloom of uncertainty hangs over Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi Arabia among other countries. It begs the question- What went wrong?

The reasons in my opinion are many and solutions unfortunately too few. That said let me try to tackle a few. Gaddafi, Saddam, Ben Ali and Mubarak are no longer in power yet the regimes that took over from these nepotistic leaders seem to be no better. Leaders like Assad and his Bahraini counterpart Khalifa are walking on a tightrope held together by the delicate thread of sectarian peace. Assad and his forces are already in the midst of war and will soon reach the breaking point. I predict Bahrain will be the next in line.

If you analyze the structure of countries in the Middle East, there are two main factors that make up stability – Good (or fair) leadership and Sectarian tolerance.  Take away one or more of these, and you end up with an explosive situation. Good leadership translates to happy citizens and sectarian tolerance translates to enlightened citizens.

Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan, Turkey, Qatar, Oman, Iran, Israel and Morocco have minimal sectarian divisions and thus good leadership is the only Achilles heel that they should be concentrating on. To some extent Yemen falls in this category too. Egypt, Libya and Tunisia have a new threat in the horizon i.e. the Salafi movement which is steadily taking control and is feeding into the politics of these countries thus fuelling a leadership war. As long as the competition is healthy and with their old leaders gone, at least there is HOPE of a more organized and efficient government.

My assessment is that the worst countries in Middle East currently would be the ones that have both the leadership issue and the sectarian issue namely Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Bahrain. Among these, Bahrain is so far relatively calm but my gut feeling is that the largely Shia dominated population governed by a corrupt Sunni leadership is a catastrophe waiting to take place.

Most unique among the countries in the Middle East is the tiny nation of Lebanon. After years of sectarian conflict, for a very brief period till the Syrian crisis began, they seemed to have found a ‘eureka ‘moment where-in sectarian violence was at an all-time low and the government seemed to be stable and efficient. It’s not a perfect solution, but it was a solution where for the first time in so many years, a troubled Middle Eastern country was in the news for right reasons. Tourism was at an all-time high, trade was booming and the people where ecstatic.  Other Arab countries especially the ones with the dual problem of leadership and sectarianism should take a leaf out of Lebanon’s note book to analyze how they did it. Who knows it could lead through to a breakthrough in peace for the Middle East.