A cold wind is blowing from the Middle East. It may have been caused by the re-emergence of Gaddafi loyalists in Libya, or the continued bloodshed in Syria, or the Rushdie mania at the Jaipur Literary Festival. But whatever the source, many Westerners are having second thoughts about the Arab Spring, and their scepticism is partly inspired by an age-old unease about political Islam.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the world of books. Jonathan Benthall wrote in last week’s TLS:
‘It is not irrational for those who accept Enlightenment values to be phobic about the laws against apostasy and blasphemy current in some major Islamic states.’
He wrote that while reviewing seven newish books* on Islamophohia, extremism and interfaith dialogue.
It could have been many more than seven. In After the Arab Spring, John R. Bradley extends the arguments he made in the Spectator last year. The promise of the Arab Spring is being appropriated by Muslim reactionaries, who would impose illiberal religious laws on fledgling democracies. Ian Black, the Guardian’s veteran foreign correspondent, has branded the Bradley school of thought ‘a sub-category…of hugely overstated arguments’, while David Blair, the Telegraph’s chief foreign correspondent, was more temperate: labelling Bradley as ‘the voice of pessimism’.
If Bradley is the pessimist, then Adhaf Soueif is the optimist. Her account of the Tahrir Square protest, Cairo: My City, Our Revolution, has received rapt reviews; but, writing in the Spectator, Anthony Sattin sounded a note of caution:
“There is nothing here that envisages the current state of affairs. That the Muslim Brotherhood could win a majority in any election was always a possibility, but there is no suggestion that the extremist Salafis might win over 25 per cent of the poll, as now looks likely. Then there is the naiveté of the assumption that ‘all the ills which plagued our society in the last decades have vanished overnight’. Perhaps most striking of all is the innocence of the thought that ‘the army will guarantee peace and safety’.”
Plainly, the Arab Spring is still unfolding, and its complexities and distant origins are not fully understood. The renowned translator Peter Clark hinted at this during his appearance on the Guardian’s recent books podcast. Clark argued that a cultural exchange is underway between the Middle East and the Islamic diaspora in Europe, which is broadening Arab identity. He pointed out that ‘Arabian writing’ now appears in English, German, French and Dutch, as well as in the vernacular. This is fostering the growth of liberalism, but progress is slow. He related how one of his Syrian friends writes formally in Arabic and satirically in English. Perhaps the time will come when Syrians can safely compose satire in Arabic; and indeed when there is an audience for social, political and religious criticism in the country — free speech is not being suppressed by state censorship alone.
Clark’s cultural exchange is not one-way. Human rights lawyer Sadakat Kadri’s Heaven on Earth: A Journey Through Shari’a Law is being praised for disabusing Westerners of their misconceptions about shari’a and its history. James Mather’s Spectator review noted:
‘Kadri draws unfavourable comparison between the law as it has been applied throughout most Islamic societies of the past and at least some of its manifestations now. The horrendous corporal punishments for which the shari’a is most notorious — stoning, for instance — were little used until three decades ago and remain confined to a handful of Islamic states.
‘Kadri approaches these themes with unstinting humanity and intelligence, as well as great fluency. Some will feel that he pulls his punches in the face of the depressing developments of recent times. Yet the real value of the book consists in its broad eschewal of controversy. The question of the place of shari’a, domestically and internationally, will become all the more divisive in years to come. Kadri offers the basis of a more informed debate, even if its fractiousness seems unavoidable.’
Mather implies that a peaceful future between East and West lies in pluralism, which is a theme of many of the books Jonathan Benthall reviewed for the TLS. But the fractiousness alluded to by Mather runs deep. Benthall writes:
‘Ibrahim Kalin, one of the editors of Islamophobia: The challenge of pluralism in the 21st century, reports that Yusuf al-Qaradawi (a reformist Egyptian cleric based in Doha) refrains from addressing the problem of Muslim extremism because of a fear that his writings could be used by Islamophobes to serve purposes contrary to his intentions.’
All of which is regrettable, not least because al-Qaradawi’s definition of extremism would have been mind-bending given that he’s been known to praise Hitler’s Final Solution and support suicide bombings against Israelis. In light of those facts, Benthall’s use of the phrase ‘rational debate’ is touched by a depressing irony. There are legal absolutes, enshrined by international conventions. Pluralism is objectionable if it’s merely a byword for cultural relativism.
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*Those books are:
Islam and Christianity, by John Renard
Allah: A Christian Response, by Miroslav Volf
Islamophobia, by Chris Allen
Countering al-Qaeda in London, by Robert Lambert
The Missing Martyrs, by Charles Kurzman
Talking to the Enemy, by Scott Atran
Islamophobia: The challenge of pluralism in the 21st century, edited by John L. Esposito and Ibrahim Kalin.
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