Yo! Muslims! You Had Best Read History--Yours And Ours

Islamic societies have never been big on history.  They tend to be worse in consulting the past than even Americans.  Islam qua Islam argues against the study of history alleging that there was nothing worth knowing of the past before the arrival of the Prophet and that, since the revelations, nothing is worth knowing other than the lives of exemplary Muslims who merit study due to their living lives of faith, virtue, and conquest.

In a major way this absence of any pervasive understanding of the past, the history of Muslim societies and polities as well as that of the West, is pivotal in the rise of fear driven violent political Islam.  Muslims have felt with great accuracy for many years that people in the West have mocked and derided them and their faith, have presented one dimensional stereotypes, have trivialized, marginalized, and patronized Muslims generally and Arab Muslims in particular.

The pervasive feeling of deprecation and the sense the West has ridden roughshod over the desires, needs, aspirations, and, most importantly, dignity of Muslims and Muslim majority states has fueled the fear which has propelled violent political Islam to its status today--the greatest single threat confronting not only the West but the globe.  Even though most of the insults have been both unintended and inadvertent--such as the portrayal of Arabs as lascivious sheiks on horseback carrying off beautiful (presumably) Christian maidens to their harems--or the more recent all Arabs are dark, sinister terrorists--the effect upon even Westernized, multilingual European and American educated Muslims has been hurtful.  Hurt breeds fear.

Fear inevitably expresses itself in attempts to coerce respect from the disrespectful, acceptance from those who have been disdainful, or at least anxiety on the part of the contemptuous.  None of this, none of the dynamic which has resulted in the current global insurgency mounted by those whose antidote to fear is the espousal of violent political Islam would have been necessary had only Muslims understood their own history and possessed some knowledge of that of the West including the Great Satan, the US.

There is an old cliche to the effect that those who do not learn from history are condemned to relearn the lessons of history from their own mistakes.  Like all cliches this one contains a sizable grain of truth.  Had Muslims taken a look at the sorry blood soaked record of the Christian West in which the people of the word took recurrent counsel of their fears with the result that war became the normative condition of life for centuries, they might have concluded that regardless of the positive effects ultimately created from the windrows of corpses, there was no need for Muslims to repeat the process.

Had Muslims coupled the study of the European record with an examination of the long years of the Ottoman Empire, they might well have concluded, with accuracy it should be added, that their religion had given a base for a period of remarkable peace, noteworthy internal tolerance, and an environment of tranquility which may not have resulted in the technological and organizational advances of Europe and the US during the same time but did provide an acceptable quality of life for the vast majority of Muslims living under Ottoman sway.  The history of the Ottoman Empire as well as the lands and people on its periphery provide a powerful argument in favor of the contention that Islam was superior to Christianity as practiced in the West.

As the flames of Muslim conquest faded to cool ashes and stability under an admittedly ramshackle empire, the main feature of life that ensued was the preeminence of the mystical,  inward looking, liturgy rich Sufi school with its emphasis on inner peace being reflected in interpersonal harmony, charity, compassion, and empathy.  The "wordless" approach of the Sufis brought interpersonal peace quite unlike the "wordy" Christian understanding with recurrent wars over the precise words, doctrine, and dogma which defined a particular group.

If the primary goal of any religion is the assurance of a better state of inner and outer peace, a community exhibiting compassion, empathy, and charity as well as the feeling on the part of the believer that the will of the deity is being followed, the Islam of the long centuries between the end of the Western crusades and the encroachment of the West less than two centuries ago passes the test by any standard.  If the same standards are applied to the Christian West, the assessment must be that Christianity failed.

It is true that the West drove technological development, mastered new forms of governmental process, invented the essentials of modern economics, created entirely new forms of social, political, and economic organization while the Muslims were static in all these areas.  But, it deserves noting that stasis or a very slow pace of change are normative across the entire sweep of human history to the extent that the Western explosion following the Seventeenth Century is without precedent or equal.

It is true that wherever and whenever the West has placed its heavy foot on a traditional society, the results have been severely disruptive particularly so when the traditional society reacts by attempting a forced draft emulation of the West.  On occasion--think Japan and China--the arrival of the West and the response to that arrival has been bloody and destructive.

The wise Muslim might benefit from examining the history of the consequences of the encounters with the West experienced by both Japan and China as well as the immediate aftermath of the encounters.  Then this hypothetical wise Muslim might ask if he wanted his people, his society, to go the same route or is there a better way, a way which takes the best from Muslim history in a way which allows features of Western origin to be absorbed and employed with greatest benefit.

In considering the history of the relations between Japan and the West following the mid-Nineteenth Century, it is important for our hypothetical Muslim student to consider the history of the US, in particular how the US embodies in concentrated form the predominant feature of the Christian West, a feature which was the necessary product of centuries of war, wars of religion and nation.  That feature is simply a capacity for what can be best called "absolutism."

In the real world of history, the term "absolutism" means that the US, to an extent which may surpass the standard set in Europe, pursues victory in war with an intensity which almost surpasses description.  As the war in the Pacific demonstrates clearly, the American people once roused, will fight with a degree of ferocity and resolve which is either most admirable or most despicable depending on one's point of view.  We showed in the Pacific war a willingness to dehumanize the enemy of the highest sort.  This tendency to absolutism not only rests close to the surface of the American public, it is what gave US troops the capacity to win against what normally would be considered unbeatable odds.

When the absolutist button is pushed, the Americans and Europeans (particularly the British) have demonstrated time after time a willingness to use virtually all means necessary to win.  Our hypothetical Muslim student might wonder at what point the button marked "absolutism" will be pushed in today's conflict with the practitioners of armed political Islam.  He might wonder if the redress of fear will be worth the ultimate butchers' bill if the Americans are pushed too far.

History also shows that the American public is slow to reach the absolutist point, but it always gets there, if pushed long and hard enough, particularly by people whose behavior is inexplicable to most Americans.  This was evident in the war with Japan.  Before that it was part and parcel of the centuries of war against the Native Americans.  A close reading of the record of these wars should convince any observer that the Americans have a limit which cannot be crossed without great and negative consequences.

The historically literate Muslim would have a unique vantage point.  From this point he can easily see the greatness of his own faith over a long sweep of time.  He can see as well the potentials of seeking to out do the West using only the tools of the West.  He can understand the risks being taken by the adherents of violent political Islam, risks which will be widely distributed on Muslims generally.  He can (or should be) see the potential benefits of combining the inner directed faith of the Sufi understanding with desirable features of Western provenance such as democracy, an independent judiciary, the concept of the King's Peace, an open press and so forth.

In short, the historically aware Muslim would be in a perfect position to meld the best of his faith tradition with the most worthy of Western products for the good of all both Muslim and non-Muslim.  But none of this is  possible for those Muslims whose awareness of the past is limited to fear producing Western insults and slights no matter how unintended.  The historically blind are condemned to undercut the interests of their own people and empower the most implacable enemies of Islam in the West.

It is far better to hit the books and get smart than it is to build a bomb and get dead.  Words to the wise.

Violence Never Settles Anything!

To which the Geek replies, "Like hell it doesn't!" For definite proof simply channel the Carthaginians as to what matters were like for them after the Third Punic War. Or, if channeling isn't your thing, simply look at the maps of Europe at various times during the Twentieth Century.

Look particularly at Germany. Notice how it expanded and contracted according to the fortunes of war.

Then consider Poland. You see how the whole damn country moved west as the guns fell silent in May 1945. The Soviets simply took a goodly chunk of the eastern marches of Poland. As compensation, (that's right, the fine old word, "compensation" which decorated so many treaties ending the multifarious wars of Europe in previous, presumably less enlightened centuries), Poland was given a nearly equal sized section of Germany--Silesia.

This dual land grab was sanctioned not simply by the greed of Stalin but by the good wishes of the leaders of the other Great Powers, Great Britain and the US as well as the pretend Great Power, France. No one blinked over the ethnic cleansing which accompanied the move of the borders. No one was perturbed over the loss of lives, mainly those pesky Germans, which resulted inevitably from the forced relocations.

Wars are noted as real estate transactions. Indeed, that has been their primary characteristic and major reason for existence. And, contrary to the popular assumption, most settle the questions of who owns what and who lives where.

Even countries such as the UK and Japan, which are fortunate enough to be defined geographically by their status as islands, owe their identity to aggressive warfare. In each of these cases as in so many others including the US, the indigenous population was invaded and defeated by outsiders. Whether exterminated or banished to remote and unpleasant locations as well as political and social marginalization, the result was the same. A new nation existed by virtue of war.

Filled with the adrenaline of success against the deeply fractionated and demoralized Christian populations of the Mideast and North Africa, the Muslims made a play for Europe. They were stopped at Tours in France by Jeff the Hammer and his boys but held fast to the Iberian Peninsula for a goodly spate of years. In the fullness of time, however, the Muslims were ejected after a very long and quite bloody war of reconquest by the Catholic Spanish. Since the late Fifteenth Century there has been no question about who owns the Iberian Peninsula.

(Admittedly there has arisen within the more primitive minded sort of Muslim the strange and specious notion that Islam must reassert its "historic" sovereignty over the Peninsula. These Koranic fantasists dream of undoing the verdict of war fought hard and long to say nothing of reasonably fairly and quite openly with a campaign of terror, kidnapping, and assassination. These Mighty Warriors of Allah must be partaking of the same hashish which gave the original Assassins their name.)

Then, of course, there are the more than simply annoying Muslims who fail to acknowledge that the Israelis beat them fair and square in a series of wars between 1948 and 1973. None of these wars were necessary. In particular the first wars, those of Israeli Independence, were the result not of Jewish greed or Western machinations but rather of pure, unadulterated Arab Muslim stupidity and obstinacy to say nothing of an unrealistically high belief in their own military competence.

Having failed at both war and diplomacy to settle who owns what and who lives where, the irredentist Muslims have practiced the low and dirty craft of terror coupled recently with an even more abysmal effort at provocation and delegitimization. Unlike other populations who have experienced the nation defining effects of war--for good or for ill--the Muslims of the Mideast driven by the primitively violent diatribes of a religion from the barbaric wastes of the Arabian Peninsula cannot accept the verdict of battle.

The Arabs lost. The Israelis won. What is so hard to understand and accommodate?

The Ottoman Empire died in war. The recent effort by Erdogan in Turkey to resurrect in effect if not in name the golem of the Ottoman Caliphate and Sultanate is an effort to deny that history happened. That the Ottoman welter of bureaucratic inefficiency, fiscal mismanagement, and pure military incompetence allowed the Empire to expire in the throes of defeat in no way matters to Erdogan the Muslim Revanchist.

A case can be made for the desirability of an Ottoman Restoration. Under the Ottoman loose hand, the Mideast was stable and comparatively peaceful. Islam was worn lightly. The dreams of conquering Vienna had faded before the need to secure Istanbul against the Russians, the Bulgars, the Greeks. The fringes of the Empire slept quietly, quaint destinations for tourists.

Unfortunately, that halcyon past can no more return than can the days when the crescent and scimitar flew over Cordoba. Violence settled the Ottoman Question just as it created the secular Turkey which Erdogan desires to expunge.

Muslims are not the only folk eager to rewrite the decisions of battle. The Mexicans (who can rival a Muslim in fine fettle when it comes to whining about history) want to pretend the war between their country and the US either did not happen or was the result of Gringo aggression. As long as one overlooks the simple reality that the Mexicans wanted war, were so proud of their war plan that they published it and were assured by both the British and French embassies that their fine army would clean Anglo clocks, the Gringos-Did-It-To-Us thesis passes muster.

In point of fact the Mexicans promoted war expecting victory. Their plans were good. Their estimate of the impact of political divisions within the American population bang on. Much of their army was good and their cavalry excellent.

It didn't matter. They lost. The Yankees won. As Mexico was prostrate, the US could have sought to occupy the whole damn place. Being smart enough to understand the sheer impossibility of absorbing a very large number of Spanish speaking Catholics into an American population which was not only predominantly English speaking but afflicted with profound fear and loathing of all things "Papish," the Gringos took only California (not for the gold but rather so as to have a face on the "Ocean of Tomorrow," the Pacific) and the sparsely populated future states of New Mexico and Arizona.

That's history for you. The war did settle who owned what and who lived where. It is a ground truth that cannot and will not be reversed by "migratory rights." The Mexicans have no real choice but that of accepting that what happens on their side of the border--for good or for ill--is the sole responsibility of Mexicans. The freight cannot be offloaded onto the back of Uncle Sam.

The Mexicans and the Muslims have to get a grip on the same reality as have so many others (including that portion of the Geek which is forever Apache.) Here it is, boyos, war, which is to say, "violence" does settle a lot. In particular it settles who lives where and who owns what.