Secularism is Not Islam Dunk

When World War I final brought down the slowly-eroding but once-powerful Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk created a new Turkish state, predicated on a clear separation of church and state. That secular movement has endured until in recent years, with Turks facing a rebuff from the European Union (3% of Turkey is actually in Europe) and believing that the West is actually at war with Islam, there has been a steady rise of pro-Islamic Turkish elected leaders looking to bring their faith back into governmental practices.

Egyptian strongman, Hosni Mubarak, has used brutal force and repression to maintain his secular control over his nation despite a rising tide of powerful Muslim fundamentalists who seek to create an Islamic republic to replace the existing “elected” dictatorship. Pakistan’s secular democracy seems to have created an unholy alliance between politicians desperate to remain in office and Muslim fundamentalists seeking to spread their vision of Islam through mindless madrassa (intensely fundamentalist primary and secondary schools) and repressive control at a local level.

The fear of every secular leader in the Muslim world is embodied in the Islamic republic, where “elected” leaders are clearly controlled by and subordinate to religious leaders and where religious edicts cannot be overturned by parliamentary or popular vote. To many, it is a four-letter word: Iran. The notion of a pan-Muslim government harkens back to the Prophet Muhammad’s conquests – which continued after his death in 632AD – and which spread Islam and a relatively unified Islamic government throughout North Africa and into Europe through one or more “caliphates” that ruled for centuries.

Sunnis – representing 85% of the Islamic world who believe in a literal interpretation of the Qur’an – believe that such caliphates are not the Islamic religious leadership but are instead the “protectors of Islam.” Shiites – representing 15% of the faith (including virtually all of Iran and a majority in Iraq) – believe in both a mystical interpretation of their holy book and, for some, the blurring of government and religion into one unit. Iran’s model, based on this Shiite view of faith, is every Muslim secular leader’s worst nightmare, and as even Sunnis are beginning to be attracted to this blurred religious/political form of government, balancing maintaining power with placating the masses willing to produce martyrs by the thousands if they perceive their fait h is being attacked is no mean feat.

Syria may be the most interesting example of this balancing act. The Ba’ath Party – and notably the Assad family – has ruled this strategically located (bordering Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, and Turkey), Middle Eastern nation for over three and a half decades. Bashar al-Assad (pictured above), an ophthalmologist who became president after his father Hafez al-Assad (who ruled for three decades) passed away in 2001, was hoped to be a liberalizing breath of fresh air to this repressive and almost anachronistic Muslim nation. The rising tide of Muslim fundamentalism put a stop to notions of significantly democratizing Syria, and religious clerics were given wide berth to preach an increasingly conservative brand of Islam. To solidify their hold on the body politic, Assad gave in to such rising religious fever and accommodated the elevation of important clerics to evermore important roles in public life.

This report, from the April 6, 2006 New York Times, explains: “The Syrian government has gone further to accommodate religious conservatives than in the past, officials and religious scholars said. It has appointed a sheik - not a secular Baathist - to head the Ministry of Religious Affairs; has allowed, for the first time, religious activities to take place in the stadium at Damascus University; and has permitted a speech emphasizing religious practices and identity to be given to a military audience... President Bashar al-Assad also has inserted references to religious identity and culture into his recent speeches.” That was then. The religious right seemed ominously bent toward moving the country away from the secularism that empowered the Assad family… Bashar took notice. The pendulum began swinging back.

“The government has asked imams for recordings of their Friday sermons and started to strictly monitor religious schools. Members of an influential Muslim women’s group have now been told to scale back activities like preaching or teaching Islamic law. And this summer, more than 1,000 teachers who wear the niqab, or the face veil, were transferred to administrative duties… The crackdown, which began in 2008 but has gathered steam this summer, is an effort by President Bashar al-Assad to reassert Syria’s traditional secularism in the face of rising threats from radical groups in the region, Syrian officials say.” New York Times (September 3^rd).

For extreme Muslims, the imposition of Sharia – Islamic law which can embrace harsh penalties like stoning to death for adultery or chopping off a hand for theft – is a natural outshoot of blending government with religion; God has already created the legal system (actually created and interpreted through “divinely-motivated” religious scholars) so why mess it up with inferior, made-made laws, they argue. As the West struggles to understand this rising Muslim fundamentalism, with its increasingly vituperative anti-Western invectives and fatwahs, likewise, incumbent secular leaders walk a fine line between alienating enough of their constituency to invite rebellion (much like the 1979 efforts that toppled the Iranian monarchy) and empowering a growing conservative leadership wi th “regime replacement” on their minds. The dance is worthy of note, and while this may appear a sideshow to most Americans, as the ugly Israeli-Palestinian peace process creaks to a start, it is essential to note the regional realities in which any such “peace” would have to exist.

I’m Peter Dekom, and small changes can often lead to very big results.