Muslim peoples across the Middle East have
struggled with separating modernization from Westernization without
compromising themselves.
The West, and in particular America, has still not grasped a
fundamental truth about the Middle East: The Middle Eastern world does not want
to be Westernized. This is not to be confused with modernization, as in
efficient sewers, clean water, cheap and reliable electricity, or abundant food
and goods. The Middle East fundamentally rejects Westernization because we so
often attempt to sell them on the notion that secularization, democratization,
and prosperity are synonymous concepts.
In the West,
sepia photos of Iranian, Egyptian, Syrian, or Iraqi college students in
miniskirts sans hijab—I own similar ones of my parents in their younger
years—are passed around the Internet with lamentations of, “They looked just
like us, and now….” Laments are in
order over the Middle Eastern world, but you know not what you mourn, my fellow
Americans. Those photos of modern, “liberated” peoples were almost all taken in
times of monarchies or political strongmen.
Much of the Arab world and Persia (or broadly and colloquially,
the “Middle East”) has been in civilizational pangs trying to understand itself
and the modern world. Heirs to historic and legendary empires, they seek to
keep themselves viable on the international stage without being manipulated and
used by foreign nations, and to figure out if there’s any viable option between
the poles of fanaticism and relativism.
This endeavor, finding the balance between fanaticism and
relativism—that is, between fideism and reason-separated-from-God—is their
overarching struggle.
Westernizing Involves
Too Much Secularizing
When
Napoleon Bonaparte’s men-o’-war filled the Alexandrian harbor on July 1, 1798,
Ottoman Egypt not only entered a three-year period of occupation by the
conquering French army, but was treated to Napoleon’s “civilizing mission.”
Napoleon had brought along with him savants, scholars,
to study the Egyptian civilization and impart to Egyptians the technology of
the Industrial Revolution and the ideas of the French Revolution.
Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti (1754-1824), an intellectual and
eyewitness to this time period, wrote extensively on the interaction between
the French and Egyptians. To Napoleon’s proclamation that “all men are equal
before God; that wisdom, talents, and virtues alone make them different from
one another,” Al-Jabarti wrote a refutation. He said the idea that all men are
created equal is “a lie and stupidity.” He wrote: “You see that they are
materialists, who deny all God’s attributes. The creed they follow is to make
human reason supreme and what people will approve in accordance with their
whims.”
Since that time, the Muslim peoples across that region have struggled
with separating modernization from Westernization without compromising
themselves. This includes Iran, though it is not an Arab country. They struggle
with the ideas of the secularized West, no matter what particular form of
government each country has taken or to which it aspires.
In fact, the religious component takes primacy in the region. In
“Democracy In Iran: Why It Failed and How It Might Succeed,” Misagh Parsa
quotes Ayatollah Khomeini saying, “preservation of Islam itself is more
important than the lives of Muslims.”
Iran has tried to democratize since the Constitutional Revolution
of 1905-1911. If we think of democratization as the process that enables people
to influence their government’s structure and policies, and thereby hold their
government accountable for oppression, then we can all agree that is good for
mankind. For a variety of reasons, Iran’s democratization has failed time and
again over the last century. Not least of which because some of its
revolutionary leaders deceived the people until they were in power—a case in
point is Khomeini during the 1979 revolution.
Iran Can Win Without
Becoming a Western Democracy
From the first day of the latest riots, which began on December
28, many people took to the Internet cheering on what they believed—or more
likely wished—to be the democratization of Iran via revolution. An incisive
scholar and writer, Yoram Hazony, attempting to inject some reality into the
exuberance over the protests in Iran, wrote:
It’s disturbing that so many American commentators
can only think in binary: Anyone opposed to dictator must be a friend to
democracy. Iran is a multi-national state that has only been held together by
dictators. A less vicious autocracy would still be an improvement for the
people living in Iran and for their neighbors, even if it’s not going to be a
democracy.
If what
we’re seeing is a true revolution, we should probably expect that any
post-revolutionary Iranian regime will be less Shiite-Trotskyist—that is, less
engaged in promoting foreign wars or agitation in the service of spreading Shia
Islam. But realistically we might also expect it to remain autocratic in
practice. This is not necessarily a bad thing for the Iranian people.
We quickly forget that the people of other countries value their
own identity. Iraqis, Iranians (Persians), Syrians, Lebanese, and others love
their heritage, and want to be the best of themselves. They’re not interested
in becoming Americans, but they are interested in finding a way toward being
happier as Iraqis, Persians, Syrians, etc. They know that freedom is necessary
for a happier and well-ordered society, yet they have watched as freedom became
untethered from ethical structures in the West, and they don’t want that for
themselves.
How to Reconcile Reason
and Religion
So what’s the answer? How can a country like Iran attain to some
form of a healthy democracy? That’s what the Muslim world is trying to figure
out as its religion and reason jostle about seeking a state of equilibrium. Wrote
Jeane Kirkpatrick, “right-wing autocracies do sometimes evolve into
democracies–given time, propitious economic, social, and political
circumstances, talented leaders, and a strong indigenous demand for
representative government.” Yet she also cautioned:
Hurried efforts to force complex and unfamiliar
political practices on societies lacking the requisite political culture,
tradition, and social structures not only fail to produce desired outcomes; if
they are undertaken at a time when the traditional regime is under attack, they
actually facilitate the job of the insurgents.
Given that we have a bad track record of foretelling and midwifing
democracy in the Middle East, I urge some caution. It very well could be that
the democratization of Iran will only come through a disruptive revolution
rather than reform, but let’s not forget the outcome when we have given our
help to topple oppressive regimes.
Luma Simms
is a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. She writes on culture,
family, philosophy, politics, religion, and the life and thought of immigrants.
Her work has appeared at First Things Magazine, Public Discourse, The
Federalist, and elsewhere. Follow her on Twitter: @lumasimms.