A WAR FOR THE ARAB/MUSLIM SOUL

I have, on many occasions, had my disagreements with Thomas Friedman, the distinguished columnist for the New York Times.

He was, in many ways, prescient about globalization when he began writing about it twenty or so years ago. But he failed to see that the primary beneficiaries of globalization would be those who operated in the rarified air of the financial sector and the penthouse offices of corporate CEO’s. In lesser economic climes, it has, as a rule, occasioned further cultural stratification along socio-economic lines.

My guess is that, like most of us, he gave far too little credence to the possibility that Ronald Reagan’s loathsome “Greed is good” statement would become not only a cultural meme but also the gold standard of an emerging global corporate value system.

Setting aside those occasional disagreements, however, it is a fact that, when I am looking for a clear-eyed, cogent, and thoroughly historical analysis of religious/societal/cultural/political dynamics in the middle east and across the Arab world, I begin by searching for that which Mr. Friedman has most lately written. Having read, late last Monday night, his column---”ISIS Crisis”---published the following day in the New York Times, I am, once again, not disappointed.

Using recent articles by highly-respected Arab journalists and scholars such as Hisham Melhem, Turki al-Hamad and Hanin Ghaddar as the foundation for his thesis, Mr. Friedman finds a kernel of hope in the fact that “The rise of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is triggering some long overdue, brutally honest soul-searching by Arabs and Muslims about how such a large, murderous Sunni death cult could have emerged in their midst.”

He further notes that these progressive Arab voices---delving into a painful and pathological Arabic past in their search for a redemptive Arabic future---have become fully cognizant of the fact that theirs “is a civilization in distress” that can no longer afford to seek solutions to its problems through the diplomatic efforts of western super-powers or, worse, through the decimating and demoralizing effects of western military power.

The “debilitating sectarian and political differences” of the Arab world have reduced Arab civilization to what Hisham Melhem terms a “rotting, empty hulk” which now serves as a petri dish in which the violent, nihilistic sickness of ISIS-style jihadists is conceived, born and carefully nurtured. “Every hope of modern Arab history,” he observes, “has been betrayed” by the “civil wars, ethnic, sectarian and regional divisions,” and the consequent fanatical extremism that now reigns supreme in the Arab Street. And, he concludes, the winds of this societal/cultural/religious maelstrom can be calmed only by those who have authored the storm.

This line of thought lends credence to an old friend’s perspective on President Obama’s present anti-ISIS strategy of limiting American involvement to pinpoint tactical targeting of vulnerable ISIS logistical/combat operational centers from the air while insisting that the Arab/Muslim world provide the ground forces to do the really dirty work of war.

My friend and colleague is a Sunni Muslim whose research, teaching and writing have been in the field of comparative religion with an emphasis on Islam and its relationship to the other Abrahamic religions.

A devout man, he has, for many years, suffered---and no word more clearly describes what he has experienced---as he watched from afar the dissolution of what he knew to be the essence of authentic Sunni belief and life.

Though I have known him for many years, he still surprises me with insights that border on the revelatory. Such was the case a week or so ago, when his analysis of the present Arab/Muslim dilemma in the middle east eerily presaged the publication of Mr. Friedman’s column.

He thinks this to be an existential moment of enormous historical import for the Arab/Muslim world---a defining moment during which Arabs/Muslims in the middle east and beyond have had their eyes opened to the possibilities inherent in communal self-examination, self-consciousness and self-awareness.

As he wrote in an email to me, “It is no longer enough to say that the murderous psychopaths who make up ISIS and related groups of disaffected wannabes are not reflective of the people or traditions of Islam. The very identity of Islam and the Muslim people is at stake. We must transcend the cultural, ethnic and sectarian divisions which have enslaved us for centuries and then fight together on both literal and figurative battlefields against the forces of evil which parade about as the protectors of piety. And we must then individually and corporately manifest our traditions in lives that reflect who we truly are and what we truly believe. The wisdom of President Obama is in knowing that we cannot and must not ask the West to fight our battles for us. It is not their war. It is our war. And we must claim it as such. For it will only be in fighting this battle as one people determined to re-establish an authentic Arab/Muslim identity that we can earn the right to build the foundation upon which a 21st-century Arab/Muslim world can be built.”

The wisdom of his words is self-evident to anyone who has given serious thought to Arab/Muslim history and culture (which, unfortunately, rules out the vast majority of Americans---an important conversation for another time), though I confess that the complexities and contradictions of the Arab Street render hope for the transcending of “the cultural, ethnic and sectarian divisions” of the Arab/Muslim world hard to come by.

After all, Saudi royals begging the West to face down the newest threat have looked the other way for years as wealthy Saudi oil chieftains have funded those very jihadis. The “moderate” Syrian rebels whom the West talks about training and arming to fight ISIS is even now allied with ISIS in the Syrian insurrection against the sadistic Assad regime. Turkey is loathe to get involved for fear of Kurdish autonomy. And on and on and on.

Nonetheless, President Obama, progressive Arab/Muslim scholars and my old friend are right: This war---that can only ultimately be won with “boots on the ground”---must be fought, if it is fought at all, not by the West but by the Arab/Muslim world. For inherent in the fighting of it is the possibility that the Arab/Muslim soul just might be recovered. And that is something neither the West nor anyone else can do for the followers of Allah.