Considerations

I recently watched “The Road to 9/11,” a one-hour PBS doc­u­men­tary that suc­cinctly presents the his­tory of the mod­ern Mid­dle East from 1918 to the present day. I highly rec­om­mend it to any­one who wants to under­stand the com­plex region. (Net­flix sub­scribers can find it here.)

With apolo­gies to the pro­duc­ers of the film, I’ll sum­ma­rize the film’s depic­tion of the his­tory here.

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The Ottoman Empire, an Islamic power for roughly 1,300 years, controlled most of the Mid­dle East until 1918. In World War I, it joined the Cen­tral Pow­ers — the even­tual losers. Fol­low­ing their vic­tory, the Allies dis­mem­bered the empire, deposed the sul­tan, occu­pied the cap­i­tal, cre­ated new provinces, and chose pro-Western lead­ers to rule them. Many of these new provinces were com­prised of com­pet­ing Sunni and Shi’a Mus­lims, as well as com­pet­ing tribes and eth­nic groups, because the Euro­pean colo­nial strat­egy at the time was to divide — and then con­quer – peo­ples. (These divi­sions would become increas­ingly important.)

Soon, peo­ple began riot­ing for inde­pen­dence. The first coun­try to become inde­pen­dent was Turkey. In 1919, Mustafa Ataturk, who led the insur­rec­tion, wanted to mod­ern­ize Turkey and bring it into the twen­ti­eth cen­tury by abol­ish­ing the Caliphate, mak­ing the coun­try offi­cially sec­u­lar and ensur­ing that women were equal. Ataturk was suc­cess­ful. It is hard to over­state the sig­nif­i­cance of these reforms to many reli­gious Mus­lims. They believed that Islam was not “whole” with­out a Caliphate, and they were angry that Turkey’s growth was a result of hereti­cal notions and “for­eign ideas” imported from the West. These Mus­lims despise Ataturk and every­thing he represented.

In the 1920s, the House of Saud was con­sol­i­dat­ing its con­trol over what would become Saudi Ara­bia. To secure its con­trol, the royal fam­ily formed an alliance with rad­i­cal Islamic cler­ics who were opposed to mod­ern­iza­tion and lib­eral Mus­lim thought. These cler­ics were allowed to do what­ever they wished as long as they sup­ported the gov­ern­ment. In Egypt, a new group named the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood was formed in response to the view that Mus­lims would lose their faith and her­itage if they embraced “West­ern­iza­tion” and fem­i­nism. The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood wanted to restore the Caliphate and gen­er­ally had two wings who sup­ported dif­fer­ent strate­gies: one was ded­i­cated to per­form­ing char­ity and good works, and the other focused on dras­tic, vio­lent means. The Broth­er­hood would be the inspi­ra­tion for sim­i­lar groups — like al-Qaeda — in other countries.

In the 1930s, Arab lead­ers allied them­selves with the Nazis in Ger­many because, as the Arab say­ing goes, “the enemy of my enemy of my friend.” After all, the Nazis were fight­ing the Allied coun­tries who had col­o­nized the Mid­dle East and, in their view, brought for­eign and hereti­cal ideas. Anti-Semitism had actu­ally been rare in the Mid­dle East until the Nazis began spread­ing their pro­pa­ganda in Arab countries.

Fol­low­ing the dev­as­ta­tion of World War II, Great Britain was unable to keep its colonies in the Mid­dle East. So inde­pen­dent states were formed — includ­ing Israel in 1948. To Arab coun­tries, the exis­tence was Israel was yet another exten­sion of colo­nial Europe — even though the Arabs rejected a plan that would have cre­ated another inde­pen­dent state for the Arab peo­ple known as Pales­tini­ans along­side Israel. Imme­di­ately after Israel declared its inde­pen­dence, the Arab coun­tries declared war — and lost. This defeat was viewed as an utter humil­i­a­tion because five whole coun­tries could not defeat 500,000 Jews. Soon after the war, most of the lead­ers of Arab coun­tries were deposed or killed.

In the 1950s, a new gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers arose in much of the Arab world who built author­i­tar­ian, repres­sive gov­ern­ments that were founded on ani­mos­ity towards Israel. In Egypt, Pres­i­dent Nasser wanted to unify the Arab world under an anti-Western, social­ist platform. Nasser allied him­self with the Soviet Union, which wanted to increase its influ­ence among Arab coun­tries as a way to gain addi­tional sup­port against the United States. The United States began to sup­port Israel as a coun­ter­weight. (The Cold War was a global chess game.) Nasser mar­gin­al­ized the oppo­si­tion Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, and he jailed or exe­cuted the group’s lead­ers. How­ever, the group grew on the street — not in the least due to sup­port from the United States.

Nasser’s social­ist poli­cies failed mis­er­ably, plung­ing the coun­try into eco­nomic chaos. To raise his sup­port and deflect crit­i­cism, Nasser was about to lead sev­eral Arab coun­tries into the Six-Day War against Israel in 1967. The Jew­ish State, how­ever, pre-emptively attacked and won. This was yet another humil­i­a­tion for the Arab and Mus­lim world. (Fun­da­men­tal­ists blamed it on the fact that Mus­lims had turned away from Islam.) Fol­low­ing this defeat, some of the most repres­sive dic­ta­tor­ships arose in the Mid­dle East.

In the 1970s, oil began to affect the geo-political sit­u­a­tion. Coun­tries that became rich from oil rev­enue, like Saudi Arabia, had lit­tle moti­va­tion to cre­ate a func­tion­ing, free-market econ­omy. These author­i­tar­ian gov­ern­ments used the prof­its to sti­fle dis­sent and cement rela­tion­ships with rad­i­cal cler­ics, who were allowed to preach what­ever they wanted. Soon, the new, rad­i­cal phi­los­o­phy of Wah­habism — which advo­cated for a “jihad” against every­thing mod­ern — arose, and it would even­tu­ally inspire peo­ple like Osama bin Laden and the future lead­ers of Hamas and Hizbol­lah. The Saudi Ara­bian gov­ern­ment funded Islamic mosques and schools around the world only if they would preach the views of these cler­ics, who rein­ter­preted Islamic law to per­mit sui­cide even though tra­di­tional teach­ings had deemed it a “mor­tal sin.”

By the mid­dle of the 1970s, fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam was begin­ning to be viewed as the only pos­si­bly alter­na­tive to tyran­ni­cal rulers. The Islamic Rev­o­lu­tion in Iran in 1979 was ini­tially led by lib­eral, West­ern­ized reform­ers, but Aya­tol­lah Khome­ini — and his extreme view of Islam, viewed by many tra­di­tional Mus­lims as hereti­cal – soon took over. This was the first theoc­racy in the Islamic world. Komeni gave polit­i­cal teeth to fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam, which had slowly been grow­ing for decades. This inspired Islamic extrem­ists across the Mid­dle East, lead­ing to the assas­si­na­tion of Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Anwar al-Sadat — who was pro-Western and made peace with Israel — and the cap­ture of the mosque in Mecca. Fol­low­ing the assas­si­na­tion, gov­ern­ments clamped down on extrem­ists — lead­ing to even more extremism.

In the 1980s, many rad­i­cal Mus­lims went to Afghanistan to expel the Soviet Union from Afghanistan because this was viewed as another attempt at a col­o­niza­tion of a Mus­lim coun­try. Osama bin Laden was one of these Mus­lims, and they were helped by Saudi Ara­bia and the United States. The defeat of the Soviet Union was viewed as a vic­tory for Islam (which had been on a string of losses since 1918), and it inspired future attacks on “the West.” Osama bin Laden formed al-Qaeda.

The Pales­tin­ian refugee sit­u­a­tion that has existed for decades has also inflamed Islamic rage. This cause, which is used by author­i­tar­ian gov­ern­ments to direct the people’s anger towards some­thing else, has united peo­ple in Arab and Mus­lim coun­tries who would have oth­er­wise had no other con­nec­tion to each other. Although neigh­bor­ing Arab gov­ern­ments have done lit­tle to help the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple besides pro­vid­ing lip ser­vice, the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple are viewed as yet more vic­tims of West­ern colonialization.

In the 1990s, bin Laden decided to attack the United States since the coun­try was viewed as the “head” of “the West.” In addi­tion, it is much more dif­fi­cult to con­duct ter­ror­ist oper­a­tions in a police state like that which exists in most Arab coun­tries. It is also hard to over­es­ti­mate bin Laden’s pop­u­lar­ity. The Saudi peo­ple — as well as many through­out the Arab world – had few role mod­els because their gov­ern­ments were cor­rupt, self­ish autoc­ra­cies. Bin Laden, on the other hand, embraced Islam, eschewed mate­r­ial wealth, lived in a cave and opposed “the West.” And we know the story from here.

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The his­tory I’ve described is very com­plex, but there are com­mon themes of anger, frus­tra­tion and shame. Many Arabs and Mus­lims on the “street” are angry because they feel as though they have been vic­tim­ized since 1918. The West, in their view, destroyed the Ottomon Empire and the Caliphate. The West col­o­nized Arab lands and forced a Jew­ish state in their midst. The West pol­luted Islam by intro­duc­ing the ideas of sec­u­lar­ism, ratio­nal­ism and fem­i­nism. The West only cares about Arab coun­tries because of their oil.

Arabs and Mus­lims are frus­trated because their own coun­tries and lead­ers — fre­quently sup­ported by the West — have failed them. Most of their lead­ers are harsh, author­i­tar­ian dic­ta­tor­ships who have done lit­tle to help the peo­ple, build func­tion­ing economies or cre­ate civil soci­eties — and they are divided along reli­gious and eth­nic lines. Arabs and Mus­lims are shamed because coun­tries with other reli­gions — the West and Israel – are doing much bet­ter than those that are Islamic. (Peo­ple take pride in their reli­gions.) Above all, Arabs and Mus­lims — like all peo­ple — want dig­nity and respect, but they have nowhere to find it. So many turn to extremism.

But what can be done? That’s some­thing the next U.S. pres­i­dent will need to determine.

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Related posts:

1. Israeli Set­tle­ments
2. The Arab World
3. Pes­simism
4. Strat­for on Israel
5. A Third Intifada?