Imagining the Arab Other: How Arabs and Non-Arabs View Each Other 9780755609901, 9781845113841

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Preface

As a construction in the imagination of a given culture, the image of the other does not identify with reality. It necessarily reflects, however, a reality that is, first and foremost, that of those who build it. It is in this sense that the other is the other facet – even the damned other facet – of oneself, and the search for oneself passes through a search for the other. As such, it is vital to ‘invent’ the other under one form or another, including under the form of the enemy. Despite having many constants and stereotypes, the representation of the other as a social product is always subject to the rectifications of history. This is how, for instance, a powerful, open and confident Arab culture was able, not only to build a pluralistic otherness, but also to recognize and admire the contributions and qualities of ‘big nations’. Read such great authors as Al Jahiz (died in 869) and Abu Hayyan Al Tawhidi (died in 1009), and you will be struck today – yes, today – by their openmindedness and courage to relativize the contributions and merits of their own culture even when it was at the climax of its world prosperity. This ‘humanism’ had surprising expressions among other Arabs like Ikhwan Al Safa or ‘Brothers of Purity’, who believed that the ‘ideal human being’ was of Persian origin, Arabic religion, Hanafi ritual, Iraqi behaviour, Hebraic mythology, Christian approach, Damascene asceticism, Greek sciences, and Hindu lucidity ... As history would have it, the West – i.e. Medieval Europe – which was not of interest to the Arabs (not because they were not curious enough about it, but rather because the West did not have anything to offer them), became, ever since the colonial intervention, the other Enemy by excellence. Therefore, the perspective from which the Arabs viewed others, in plural, became sharp in the both meanings of the word. Today, in the ‘us and the other’, this ‘other’ is nothing but the West, and the West alone. It is as if there was nothing else left in the world but the West. Should we reiterate that in a society that feels dominated, even humiliated, and that

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in a great culture that finds itself destabilized, this vision of the West is not the result of a ‘mental structure’ that belongs to the Arabs, but that of an inflicted relationship that is deemed unjust? In the field of research, Arab sociologists were the first to transform the otherness, as a social result, into an object of theoretical analysis and empirical research. This initiative corresponds to a specific moment: the Gulf War, which added to the gravity of the old misunderstandings and also resulted in some factual evidence. Therefore, it is no surprise to notice that the Arab culture is, at the same time, very different and closest to that of the West. We become aware that between these cultures, there is not, and probably has never been, a ‘good neighbourhood’. This is why the memory of both parties is always ready to unveil its stereotypes and reformulate its revenge. The Gulf War has persuaded the Arabs that the ‘misrepresentation’ of their image in the Western rhetoric – a misrepresentation that they have always grumbled about – was not the complete truth since their own rhetoric also seemed misrepresentative. The proof was persuading: the constituents of the ‘coalition’ no longer correspond to the typology of the Westerners that the rhetoric and the collective imagination had built and maintained in the Arab world. Hence, from the interrogation about what the West does, there was a shift to interrogation about what the West is. The disparity between representation and reality is huge and flagrant, mainly in the eyes of those who have always believed in the West’s values. Yet, it was totally expected that the West would unite as a system. However, the biggest ‘cultural surprise’ was undoubtedly the emergence of this Arab-other which defied the established norms of cultural belonging and forged an alliance with foreign powers in order to confront the ‘brother’. This surprise did not only trigger a political debate, but also theological controversies regarding the legitimacy of alliances with the conquerors. It is in this context that the Arab Association of Sociology organized in 1993 its first international colloquium on the ‘image of the other’. A significant ‘cultural fact’ must be highlighted about this colloquium and that is: while non-Arab colleagues from different areas of the world responded to the organizers’ proposal of indicating how their respective societies viewed one another, almost all Arab colleagues opted for the inverse; that is, they chose to explain how other societies viewed Arabs. Undoubtedly, Arab colleagues perfectly understood what was suggested to them since they lack neither the knowledge, nor the theoretical and methodological approaches for that matter. However, the historical context forces on them

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a sort of pursuit of oneself, even within otherness. In this aspect, they resemble the 19th-century Arab travellers who used to visit European countries in order to ‘retrieve’ the signs of their own countries. Therefore, another colloquium dealing with the same issue was organized in 1996, yet was exclusively destined for Arabs. Surprisingly, that same proposal was respected this time! Consequently, the following conclusion is worth being highlighted: having become fragile, the Arab culture can no longer bear the intimidation of the look. This brings to mind the image of the woman whom Montesquieu described as having a perfect walk, yet limped every time she was looked at! This is neither a quality nor a flaw. This is a situation. The aim of these chosen texts is particularly to reflect the crossing look between two cultures that are globally called Arab and Western. This book contains only a reduced sample of the Arabic edition. The section dealing with the exchange of images between Arabs themselves has been excluded. In a rather theoretic approach of otherness, the light is shed on the contexts and mechanisms of ‘invention’. Jean Ferreux attempts to prove that the ‘self’ that would not exist without the other is a late historical invention since it is tied to the emergence of self-conscience. Before this emergence, there was the ‘us’, and the ‘tribe’ with its other. The other of ‘us’ has been transposed throughout history in different representations of the enemy. Every culture has its own history of animosity. The Finnish researcher Vilho Harle traces back some of this animosity’s roots to the European culture. He supports the idea that the establishment of the European community is not a ‘European identity’ since the latter only exists in its Christian form; rather it is the reviving of some traditional animosities, including those against the East. For some, the invention of the other dates back to the European discoveries and finds its roots in the rhetoric that this invention has produced regarding cultural difference. Just like Todrov in ‘the discovery of America, the question of the other’ (in fact, he showed that America was not discovered but invented), Mondher Kilani insists on the prejudices that orient the anthropological observation and that have the power to transform the other. Since the discursive reasoning about the other is essentially a discursive reasoning about difference, it is necessary to have questions regarding oneself. Yet, according to Kilani, the dominant Arab discursive thinking only responds to this necessity by substantializing identity. Islamists push identity substantialization to the extreme, not only when it comes to the West, but also regarding other Muslims, the Islam of which they find lacking credibility. The Sudanese sociologist Haydar Ibrahim

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shows how the Islamist ‘catharsis’ has transferred, in the heart of the Arab society, the old antagonism between ‘house of Islam’ and ‘house of war’. This has divided the Muslim society into two communities: one which is open and pluralistic, the other which is ‘integrated’ in an absolute consensus. How do Arabs view others? Four texts throughout the history of the Arab-Islamic world indicate a few moments of articulation and, at the same time, of change in this view. By comparing two moments or two ‘scenes’, I tried to demonstrate that at the moment when the Arab culture was at its climax, the field of otherness was so large and pluralistic that the ‘exterior’ other was viewed, by analogy, as a continuation of the sociocultural distances witnessed in the Arab society itself. In fact, only the unknown amounted to something strange, to absolute otherness. With the internal regression and the external challenges, the angle from which others were viewed became limited to the moment when the angle only showed the West. This is why we assume that the current withdrawal into oneself and the rejection of the other that we see in some backwardlooking tendencies has no solid origin in the history of Arab culture before it was marked by regression. Undoubtedly, like any other culture, the Arab culture has its own scapegoat. Historically, it is the Black. By reconstituting the image of the other, both close and far, Helmi Charaoui shows to what extent the characteristics of the black man are marked, stigmatized and reproduced. Charaoui notes that Arab sociology as a whole did not contribute to rectifying this image because it could not break free from the colonial anthropology of the Nile basin. Travel stories are of paramount importance, not only in terms of the information they provide, but also because they are the remaining evidence of the first Arab initiatives to explore the West. Reiterating incessantly that it was thanks to Napoleon that the Arab world had its first contact with modernity is forgetting that the ‘clash’ had happened long before Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt. Moroccan sociologist Abdessalam Himar underlines the change in the image of the West – i.e. Europe – in the eyes of Moroccan travellers between the 16th and the 19th centuries: in general, until the 19th century, they noticed the progress yet without developing any feeling of inferiority whatsoever. The difference was only seen at that time from a religious perspective. The admiration or fascination for the West is neither felt nor expressed until the mid-19th century. Rather than this fascination, Hassan Hanafi prefers to highlight in Tahtaoui’s stories of his travelling to Paris in 1826 the concern of looking in the other’s mirror. According to him, the destination of the trip was not

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Paris but Cairo. He believes that the ‘self’ eventually remains the geographical, historical and ethnic reference of otherness. Inversely, how is the Arab perceived in the West’s rhetoric? Each in its own way, the three chosen texts converge on the difference which is viewed as a source of threat. First, what is threatening about this difference is its constants. Marlene Nasr, author of a well-known book about the image of Arabs and Muslims in French school textbooks, here describes the permanent tendency to view the Arab as having a rigid profile and hardly marked by evolution. This profile traces back its traits in periods as old as the Arab conquest, the Crusades or colonization, and aims at exacerbating the antagonism between the two cultures. The Italian sociologist Enzo Pace adopts the same line of thought but adds a similarity between the Muslim and the Jewish in the vision of Europe’s Catholic Church. The violence of controversies with Islam is reminiscent of those with the Jewish and reiterates the same invective. Using this image, without wanting or willing to nuance it, the West builds its collective imagination. And this same image is the West’s biggest fear. For Sigurd Skirbekk, there is rather an exchange of two types of fear: with its modernity, the West creates fear in a traditional culture that is still anchored in the Arab society, while the Arabs threaten the West with destabilizing the relations that it seeks to establish between man and the environment by creating immigration waves. Naturally, greater and more global threats have emerged on both sides ever since Skirbekk formulated his hypotheses. It is true that immigration remains a complex problem for Europe to solve, yet, behind the economic, political and legal aspects of this problem, there are concealed cultural and ethical aspects that still need to be comprehended. Robert Calvin shows how and why French society – like any other society – is in need of an enemy, and specifies that France’s ‘suitable’ enemy had to be the ‘Arab’. In fact, the Arab’s presence as an immigrant makes it easier to transform him into a scapegoat. The universe of literary and artistic creation allows us to convey the ‘real world’ with special twists that are typical of that universe. It allows itself a freedom with no boundaries to build the space, time, characters and relationships that establish a conceived otherness. A hypothesis seems verifiable to me: if, in the Arab world, the literary and artistic production seems to be more open than analysis works on the didacticism of the ‘self’ and the other, the total opposite marks the intellectual production in Europe and America where literary and artistic productions seem to be more attached to reproducing prejudices and stereotypes. Just like ‘orientalist’ painters, yet often lacking their artistic qualities, some novelists and film-makers seek to persuade the public that their fiction refers, without

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mediation, to an immediate Arab reality that should be condemned. Decoding this trick of literature, as used in Quinnell’s novel, The Mahdi, the Saudi anthropologist Abu Baker Ahmed Aba-Qadir finds the vulgar and vulgarized archetypal of a Muslim who is fanatic, backward and stupid: an American agent succeeds in persuading Muslims of Mecca that he is their Mahdi, their awaited Messiah. Astonished by his ‘miracles’ which he carries out thanks to sophisticated technology, they end up bowing to him! The stubbornness of the prejudices and misunderstandings from which the inter-cultural dialogue still suffers today is not typical of the traditional opposition between the East and the West. The images that Arabs exchange with Turks or Iranians are much more nuanced, but still carry the heavy aftermath of history; they even aggravate them with reference to the current geopolitical conflicts. This is the general conclusion which leads us to the analysis of the Turkish press and the interviews with Arab immigrants in Istanbul in the article of Ibrahim Al-Daququi, and the analysis of the content of Arabic and Iranian school textbooks in Talal Itrissi’s article. Here too, the ‘crossing’ look only happens through broken mirrors. Tahar Labib Honorary President of the Arab Association of Sociology

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List of Contributors

Jean Ferreux

French Scholar

Munzer A. Kilani

University Professor, Luzanne, Switzerland

Haidar Ibrahim Ali

Director, Centre for Sudanese Studies, Cairo, Egypt; Secretary-General, Arab Association of Sociology

Pierre Paolo Donatti

Professor, University of Bologna, Italy

Tahar Labib

Director-General,the Arab Organization for Translation; Professor of Sociology; former President of the Arab Association of Sociologists

Helmi Sharawi

Director, Centre for Arab Research, Cairo, Egypt

Hassan Hanafi

Head of Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University, Egypt

Abdul Salam Heimer

Professor, University of Meknas, Morocco

Michael Suleiman

Professor of Political Science, University of Kansas, USA

Marilyn Nassr

Lebanese Scholar

Anzo Patchi

Professor, University of Padua, Italy

Sigurd N. Skirpekk

Professor, University of Oslo, Norway

Abu Bakr Ahmed Bakadir

Professor, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Ibrahim Al Dakuki

Professor of Arabic Language and Literature

Talal Atrissi

Director, Institute of Social Sciences, Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon

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CHAPTER 1

The Other as an Historical Invention Jean Ferreux ‘... this gregarious absolute of the consciousness of being: hate towards the other’ Michel Rio

The main thread of this chapter is relatively simple. Yet its development is more complex. It might be useful to indicate as a guide at the beginning of this reflection what its guideline will be. The essential condition if not the sole one for an other to exist is the existence of an I. Nevertheless, this I, which is to say the least our thesis and the main subject of our study, is a historical invention. Moreover it is also relatively recent (at least in the Mediterranean world), for it does not seem to go back beyond the 1st millennium preceding our era. What we want to say is that this process had appeared and was achieved at the beginning of the 1st millennium. Therefore its elaboration lasting for about ten centuries is quite credible. Furthermore, it is obvious that there is not a clearly marked starting line. It is in fact in that period according to Julian Jaynes (1982), to whom we owe the origin of our hypothesis and a part of our argumentation, that Western man invented consciousness. Starting with consciousness, we continue Jaynes’s theses surely about the self and therefore inevitably about the other, but also about a few derived products such as time and death, to which we will come back later. The other not existing but subsequently or better else concomitantly to the I does not seem to cause a problem in its definition, thus a lexicographical problem if one can say. The I needing consciousness to be able to stand as a subject might constitute discussion material, yet we should overlook such discussions. To reach the heart of our study, we must first make a necessary detour to ask ‘What is consciousness?’

What consciousness is not (and what it might be) Consciousness is in French to say the least one of the most polysemic words ever to exist. Even if we examine its meaning by reference to its English equivalent (excluding moral conscience), we find that its meanings are numerous. Since we have chosen to proceed at first by exclusion, let us

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exclude the medical meaning of the word whose opposite would be unconsciousness or even coma. At this stage everyone feels more or less at ease: one is considered, more or less, conscious during waking periods as long as one acts and is responsible for one’s acts. Yet it is precisely at this point that an error in our meaning comes to exist for, even if there are as many definitions for the consciousness as there are philosophers and psychologists, adhering to a common meaning the question remains ‘When am I conscious?’ Or said in a different way ‘When could I function without consciousness?’ I who is speaking now? I certainly cannot. And if I am conscious of what I am saying (which might occur since the text I am writing mentions what I am saying), the outcome would be nonsense or silence. Words come out of my mouth without me hearing myself talk, following guiding lines (what Jaynes calls ‘structions’) that are certainly determined beforehand yet consciously. Similarly, you listen to me without any particular consciousness, in fact your state of consciousness does not exceed that needed to listen to the radio or watch television.

Yet since we pretend to be conscious, what is consciousness? For a start let us look up the word in a general dictionary: ‘the ability man has to know his own reality, this knowledge of reality’ (Robert dictionary). The definition would be quite simple were it not for its second part which could trigger a never-ending reflectiveness. To know a little more, we look up the meaning in a dictionary of philosophy: ‘Intuition (more or less complete, more or less clear) the spirit has of its states and of its acts’ (Lalande). This definition can only be approximate for consciousness is defined as basic information to thought, which cannot be decomposed into simpler components. This definition is frankly not clear and it seems to us that the author does not know that much, which he confesses. That is why at this stage it is wiser and more expedient to adopt the more pragmatic approach we adopted at first, rather than the lexicographic approach. When and in which activities is one conscious? Or, to be more precise, in which activities is it necessary to be conscious? A question that makes us conscious of our consciousness, but being conscious of consciousness is not consciousness. And ‘consciousness is neither what is preferably called reactivity, which includes all the stimuli our behaviour take into consideration in one way or another ... while we are conscious of our reaction only from time to time’ (Jaynes 1982: 22). It is automatism at work that results in a number of our actions.

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Is consciousness necessary for memory? No, because most of our memories are accumulated without us knowing, and a conscious recall does not only bring back memories saved consciously. Moreover, this recall will be no matter the probability a reconstruction (what Jaynes calls ‘narratization’), which makes one see oneself, for example, swimming but does not make one see and feel what one saw and felt as a swimmer then. Reading the preceding phrase leads one almost automatically to take the point of view of the ‘subject’ rather than that of the ‘object’. Is consciousness necessary for memoir? The case is to the contrast, because our memoir one most kept against our will. It is inexact to say that no one has ever seen a tree, but a particular tree or another, and that tree is therefore a concept that can only be formed in the consciousness. In fact, concepts are simply classifications of equivalent objects from the behavioural point of view, and it is when one should be conscious of trees in general to be conscious of one tree in particular. Is consciousness then necessary for learning? Not always and possibly not at all; it might even constitute an obstacle to learning. It is sufficiently clear that the learning of signals (Pavlov’s learning method) has no need for consciousness, so it would be a waste to insist upon this fact. The same applies on learning everything, which is manual, from typing to playing the piano, where learning is rather organic. Numerous experiments have proven this right. Jaynes relates an amusing story about this subject: Psychology class students were asked to offer compliments to every girl dressed in red in the faculty. At the end of the week, the cafeteria was full of girls in red and not one of them was conscious of having been influenced. Another class, which had the same teaching about unconscious learning, tried it on the professor. Every time he moved to the right, students would listen to him attentively and laugh hard at his wisecracks. They even succeeded at making him go out without him being conscious of anything unordinary.

Related to this subject, the biologist Lyall Watson (1988: 80–81) tells an interesting story of Japanese sorters of chicks, knowing that it is impossible to distinguish between male and female chicks: All arts, in Japan, are taught by example, by living and working side by side with a ‘Sensei’, a master, long enough to master the taught art. And the sorters of sex are not taught differently. According to what I saw in Japan, I am certain that any conscious effort could not get even close to such efficiency or such phenomenal speed. These techniques seem to be acquired unconsciously without any formulation and their mastery is hindered and obstructed by any intervention of reason.

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The author concludes: ‘When confronted with particularly delicate tasks, those who felt or acted intuitively had an advantage over those who undertook it consciously and thought all the time.’ Is consciousness at least necessary for thought? Yes, Lalande affirms (unless one considers that one cannot manage without basic information). No, we continue to say following Jaynes. And not only when thought is floating and when the question ‘What are you thinking about?’ brings one to consciousness, yet also when thought has to produce comparisons. One does not need to be conscious to say that this is bigger than that. For example, it is enough to hold in each hand two glasses unequally filled and consciousness will be able to provide one with indications about the shape, the texture and the temperature; but the perception of weight is produced automatically by the nervous system and is not made conscious until after. Thought would be therefore an automatic process, consciousness not intervening except at the beginning of the process to provide it with instructions and information (Jaynes’s ‘structions’), and then, finally, to reap the result. To end with the activities that are generally associated with it, it seems that consciousness is also not necessary to reasoning to which it is also an unconscious process. Reason – logic – would have but the function of shaping the results we reach unconsciously. However surprising, this seems to us totally true, especially in all phenomena of discovery, of invention and of solving a particularly complicated problem. There is of course as in thought a conscious phase at the beginning and at the end of the process, yet, between the two, consciousness is an obstacle. Thus, great discoveries from Archimedes to Einstein have been made and it is as such that those who have been creative in their work proceed at present and everyday. This brief presentation might seem a bit shocking for it turns some habits upside down, but in thinking about it consciously one believes that consciousness in our waking life intervenes less frequently or less continuously than one might believe. We can sum up by saying that the existence of people similar to us in all points – not zombies or androids from science fiction – able to talk, think, learn and therefore live in community, without being conscious, is not inconceivable. For neurophysiological reasons that seem to us contestable (at the least outdated), Jaynes calls these beings, our ancestors then, bicameral. He supports in fact what the model says of two brains, which was worth a Nobel Prize in Sperry, was, three millenniums ago, not a model but a reality.

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The birth of consciousness It is at the dawn of the second millennium before our era – the day before yesterday in other terms – that, it seems concomitantly but without there being necessarily a diffusion of phenomena, a certain number of peoples from the Mediterranean region (Greeks, Mesopotamians, Hebrews, etc.) acceded to consciousness. Would that affirm that these peoples were previously unconscious? Not so, because unconsciousness, or lack of consciousness, supposes the preexistence of consciousness. Rather ‘ascious’, if we can use this neologism – Jaynes uses the term ‘bicameral’ (the title of his work and the reserves we make above), referring to cerebral physiology and functioning, with an abundance of details, which our ignorance of the subject does not allow us to recount.

‘Ascious’, what does it say? ‘Ascious’ means that individuals are not truly individuals in that they do not have precisely a conscious being separated from, to be brief, the cosmos (or of their environment, if one prefers to say so). This thesis, however heterodox it might seem, is nevertheless in congruence with recent works of neurophysiology. Antonio Damasio (2002: 47) affirms in fact: In a previous period, organisms that executed complicated operations ignored the whole existence of these operations and actions because they even ignored, in the exact meaning of the term, their own existence as an individual ... Life was there as well as its representation, but the potential and legitimate owner of each individual life ignored completely that life existed, because nature had not yet invented an owner. There was a human being, but there was not any knowledge. Consciousness had not yet started.

What we call ‘ascious’ Damasio calls nucleus-consciousness: consciousness is not monolithic, it can be divided to simple and complex species, and the neurological information demonstrates this division in all its transparency. The most simple species, the nucleus-consciousness, provides the organism with a feeling of oneself relative to a moment, now, and a place, here. Nucleus-consciousness does not project the future, and it only lets us catch a vague glimpse of the past. There is no elsewhere, before or after. According to Damasio, to this nucleus consciousness that serves as a substratum to consciousness as we know it there is always a

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corresponding proto-self. The proto-self is the deep roots of oneself, including the elaborated self that covers identity and personality, that should be found among the set of brain mechanisms, which continuously and unconsciously maintain the body state in the narrow limits and relative stability necessary for survival. These mechanisms represent continuously and unconsciously the state of the living body as well as a number of its dimensions. It is certainly extraordinarily difficult for us as individuals endowed with reflexive consciousness, and to a certain limit impossible, to imagine. So, to help, we would like to propose a metaphor detour: that of time. For us all, in its regular meaning, in daily life, time is something that passes more or less quickly according to circumstances but is in any case something continuous, something that has a beginning and an end. Yet it is somehow an asset of culture or more precisely of civilization. In fact, certain ethnological monographs show that different peoples have different conceptions of time. We can take for example the work that EvansPritchard has dedicated to the people of Nuer who have different times not related to each other. Evans-Pritchard (1940) seems to have some difficulty in realizing this phenomenon, a difficulty which is quite normal. In this case, having the conception of time we have, we find it impossible to imagine another. This is thus the time metaphor that will help us understand ‘asciousness’ or the proto-self. Imagine a series of points in no particular order on a blackboard; each one of them stands for a task (milk the cows, water the cattle, …) or an activity (eating, hunting, ...) and their placement on the blackboard is of no particular significance. If a talented mathematician were to come and discover the function that connects these points, he would invent our time and would make it impossible for us from then on to see these points in a way other than that of them divided according to the given curve, even after the curve has been erased. And the same applies to consciousness. Once consciousness is invented, one can no longer conceive that it could not exist. This brief time detour has an additional advantage other than that of its metaphoric value. Our hypothesis is that time and consciousness are connected, and, according to Jaynes, one of the main reasons for the emergence of consciousness is the invention of writing. Writing allows the phrase to be dissociated from the one who pronounces it (beyond the auditory memory, and even beyond auditory hallucination according to Jaynes), thus introducing at once continuity in time by the permanence of the written on the one hand and the birth of consciousness on the other, since I can see what I am saying is external to me.

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By way of conclusion: the other-I and the other-us This long and slow process ends up hence in the existence of the I (and it is what Greek mythology believes – yet there exist without a doubt uncountable other examples – the myth of Narcissus), and subsequently and inevitably the existence of the other. This other will have in our Western imagination an ambiguous posterity: an enemy (the legend of Cain and Abel) or a double (all the myths referring to twins). This original ambiguity is found in relations I maintain with the others. In addition to that, there is a phylogenetic complication, which comes under what Arthur Koestler used to assign to the limbic brain. In fact, if we take in the model of the ascious man, this man has for perimeter of consciousness the tribe (or family, clan or horde). This means that there already exists an other – according to each case, the stranger, the neighbour, the enemy, the one who did not have the same territory, the same ancestors, the same gods, even the same language – and also explains what we made reference to speaking about the invention of death. As long as I exist as a member of phylum, my death is but a normal process that does not affect the survival of this called phylum; this phylum lives on beyond my existence. On the other hand, when I exist as an individual, my death becomes my own and not a normal incident in the life of the tribe. And that which I call the other-us as opposite to the other-I, the subject of this essay, exists before the invention of consciousness and is certainly contemporarily at work in the events of the Middle East, in tribal struggles in Africa, in combats tearing Iraq and more daily in racism or ordinary intolerance. And without a doubt, only the other-I (for the moment), whose most adequate political expression seems to be democracy, is able to impose reason on the other-us.

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CHAPTER 2

Orientalism and Occidentalism: Invention of the Other in Anthropological Discourse Munzer A. Kilani

The rhetoric of anthropological speech: universality, comparison and hierarchy It is a well-proven fact that the discovery of America marked the beginning of modernity in the Western world. It also paved the way for the emergence of speech about the other, which has always been indispensable to European thought. Influenced by Christopher Columbus and the first discoverers, the anthropological discourse has drawn its truth from the depth of the eloquence of the ‘Vision’. The newly seen was constantly attributed to the old known. After Christopher Columbus, the objects seen of the New World were evaluated after being compared with the known and tested in the Old World. The Torah, the Greek–Roman age, Ancient Egypt and the Islamic world were tools one had to resort to in order to describe the newly seen. The grand edifices of the Incas and the Mayas were thus compared in their grandeur and perfection to the pyramids of Egypt or to Roman architecture. The temples of the Aztecs were compared with mosques. An Indian belle was compared with a Morisco one. The llama was considered to be at the same time a donkey, a sheep and a camel. To go beyond its limits and reach the essence, the vision has therefore to carry a part of itself it previously adopted in its journey of discovery. It has to give in to imitation and let the descriptive theses be its guide. These theses would be those the traveller had acquired before his journey and by the means of which the eye would assess and classify what is visual. Columbus came up with a speech about the other without ever seeing him because he would not have been able to really see the other had he not had a discourse about the other prior to the actual contact with him. Columbus and his contemporaries had a preconceived idea about what they would see. From the beginning he was charmed and spellbound by the true purpose of the journey and by the legend behind it: the search for

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paradise. He expected to see naked locals living primitively. He did not describe what he saw; he described what he would see or even better what he expected to see. His description therefore conformed to that of the legend of the lost paradise. The invention of America is therefore deduced from a series of comparisons. The discoverers invented the New World by attributing the newly seen to the old known. This descriptive procedure has since taken hold of speech about the other in the Western world. The other is shoved in the usual imaginary descriptions; then tamed and neutralized by means of his own culture. This is how the other is understood and perceived through the eloquence of alterity whose statements and objectives belong to no other than the observer himself. To write about alterity, since its beginnings in the 16th century, as it was described in the narrative journey is to be an informer who draws through writing a copy of what he sees. From Christopher Columbus to Bougainville, and in all the narrative journeys, which were many in the ages of discovery, writing from a distance modified the newly seen objects. Writing usually demands reference to the original and transparency in description, yet it allowed the 16thcentury traveller, as it allowed the 20th-century anthologists afterwards, to name other humanities and other communities and grant them a certain status in the cultural diversity. The modern anthropologist is obliged to play the role of a creating god who sees with his own eyes objects never before seen by a human. Field monograph has the power to change the face of the other and invent him an image which is either noble or wild, pacific or aggressive, friendly or repulsive. Anthropology makes and spreads images about cultures and peoples which become with time a constituent of the general knowledge of the average person living in the Western world and a repeated commonplace often visited by curiosity of what is foreign. Whose interest is not aroused at the mention of Masai shepherds, the Dogon masters of wood carving, the sexual liberty of the Fijians and the Samoans, Papuan headhunters, the friendly Pygmies of the tropical forests, the blue men of the Tawariq tribe, the kind Bushmen of Kalahari desert, the sad people of Namaqualand and the cunning inhabitants of Normandy under German occupation? Eloquence in alterity, which is rarely comprehensive and often constitutes a threat to the one who is the subject of its speech is an art mainly based on unlikeness. There is no likeness between the observer, in this case the anthropologist, and the observed, the native of the country. In anthropology, the difference between the observer and the observed puts

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a distance between them. Furthermore, this difference is the factor that renders the anthropologist’s fieldwork licit and legal. About difference, Francis Affergan said: ‘What makes me notice these people is that they are unlike me.’ The understanding of the other is always reached through the eloquence of alterity where everyone has their own perception of its statements and conclusions. The book America as Seen and Dreamt of clearly demonstrates how generations of travellers, pioneers, builders, managers and missionaries have described the Indian person or more precisely how every generation had its own description of the Indian person without ever getting in contact with him. The same applies to 19th-century French literature and other works of art and thought, for the Orient in these arts is presented as the Orient of dreams. This imaginary Orient was destined to summon the same image of the other each and every time. ‘A Journey to the Orient’ is an expression invented by the Romantics by which to limit the other. A journey like this has a circular path that takes its writer back to the starting point and adds to his training in writing skills. It also allows reference to the basics of Western culture and praises its values, placing the other on the margin of history. In travel and literature or in travel and anthology, the dream of the other or imagining the other preceded his actual discovery. The perspective that the 16th-century pioneers of the literature of fantasies and the 20th-century anthropologist had of the place of the other included certainly a cultural aspect. This aspect bestows upon the place of the other density and sense. Therefore, the perception of reality is not a direct one. This perception is often achieved through the images reflected by the culture. The traveller or the anthropologist does not have a fresh look at the facts before his eyes. His perception of the new is always guided by a prototype whose existence precedes that of the new. This examination gives an excellent example of the interpretive aspect of the work of the anthropologist. It annuls the naive positivist considerations that lead to believing in the transparency of the reality and of the prototype that is set to explain the reality. Instead of this mechanical epistemology, the anthropological speech should be considered as an interpretive openness. The anthropologist should be the one who defines the difference between the two parties of the relation; he should not detach himself from the relationship. He should ponder upon his own identity and upon what makes him an anthropologist and ask himself such questions as, ‘Who am I?’ ‘Who could the person standing before me be?’ ‘From which position and by which creative manner does the anthropologist, who is I, describe the other culture?’

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According to this perspective, it is impossible to consider comparison, the base of anthropology, being able to establish a relation between two neutral parties, between the ‘we’ and the ‘they’. Nevertheless, some still believe it possible. The relation between these two parties is more than that: it is a relation between the ‘they’ and the ‘we’ who are studying the ‘they’. When one defines the difference between the ‘we’ and the ‘they’, which is not an anthropological difference but a revealing historical one, one can admit that the happening in Western culture is the source of universal reference in anthropology. At the same time, one can also accept the happening as the sole and first condition to be met in order to have any anthropological work done, at least for the time being. Regardless of the obvious paradox, colonization and domination in general have led to a forced knowledge of the other. For a field anthropologist, the material or practical condition to acquire the knowledge he seeks is to belong to a dominant culture: in other words, to be American or European. When one accepts this hypothesis, one can criticize the anthropological work for being an interpretation of a racial central relation. When one consents to the history of the anthropological work, one discovers its true nature as a continuous effort to clarify and rectify and to set a distance between it and the conditions to it. The mission of the anthropologist becomes then the study of the ‘I’, which occupied up until now the centre of the speech. His mission consists of applying the questions he applied to the other to the ‘I’. The other which was in traditional anthropology the Oriental, the African, the Indian and the Moroccan. The method by which the anthropologist widens his field of work to include the Western world requires a sufficient experience in Universality, studied in a proper methodical context or in a perspective in which the comparing mind is not only the modern Western mind but also a mind that includes all the other minds. This should be achieved in a perspective in which the comparing mind is not just close to the other minds but is an explanation that clarifies the hierarchy which distinguishes the relations between different communities and between different cultures. When one consents to the equality between cultures, as does a kind of postmodern anthropology, one ends up discarding the balancing forces that bond the cultures together; a thing which leads one to admit to the existence of equality within difference or equality with no hierarchy. Nevertheless, can one assess difference without referring to a universal standard or a culture of reference? Can one admit difference without referring to a certain hierarchy that distinguishes the ideological and historical relations between communities and between the groups that exist in these

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communities? The confessions out of belief that the relative stand declares in saying equality within difference are wrong in principle. A Moroccan immigrant might recall in vain the glory his culture once knew in the past or knows these days occasionally, yet that will not change a thing in the bitter reality of today. The social hierarchy puts Western cultures at the top of the list, while putting Moroccan, Arabic, Islamic and developing countries’ cultures in general at the bottom. This immigrant has to master the use of the dominant cultures and to be totally a part of them, as other minorities have done in France, for his culture or parts of it to be recognized and acknowledged some day.

Orientalism and Occidentalism: illusions based on identity The reason why criticism of the colonial science has failed might be because it did not sufficiently take into consideration the non-comparative aspect on which the anthropological speech is based. Neither did it find it necessary to explain this aspect in order to be able to treat its subject matter. The opponents of Orientalism or those who call for creating a local anthropology were satisfied with studying one party of the relation. They naively believed that it is sufficient to change their position in the relation and to occupy the position of the concerned party for the hierarchical relation between the self and the other, which is the base of the anthropological speech, to diminish. In this kind of sociology, the researcher resorts to the other to save himself the effort of wondering about his own position in the speech and about the conditions to his involvement in the speech. The result of such an act would be the absence of the dialectical aspect of the relation between the self and the other and the emergence of a static image of the identity, a unified one. A most famous example of the criticism of Orientalism would be the works of Edward Said, which have played a major role in pointing out the ‘dominating self’ in the anthropological speech, the product of the works of the Western elite specialized in the study of the Orient since the 18th century. They have also set straight the effect this elite had on the oriental mode of thought and action. Yet even though Said’s sole aim was to refute the one-sided approach of the anthropological speech, he adopted it in the end. As a matter of fact, his vision denied various works on Orientalism any independence. It also often seeks one-sided interpretations to limit these Orientalism works to Western domination and attribute Orientalism to colonization. A position similar to this contributes to considering the other a thing to be invented. The other or the one belonging to the Western world is

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confined to what could be called by comparison Occidentalism. If, without ever wondering about the nature of the ‘dominating self’ or its background or how it came to be what it is, Edward Said proves the one-sided nature of the Occidental ‘dominating self’; he would be applying the same incomprehensive approach applied in Orientalism. Whatever the case may be, it is clear that some do not want to acknowledge the dialectical process in the moulding of identities. Said’s position is based on a major misconception. When he denies the presence of a reciprocal relation between the ‘dominating self’ and the subject of speech, no matter how sceptic and doubtful this relation is, he tends to deny the subject the ability to put the ‘dominant self’ in question and forbids it to impose an alternative prototype. This position leads to a dead end on the methodical level because it eliminates the dialectical relation between the ‘dominating self’ and the subject that applies to every social construction and every intellectual project. Is it necessary to evoke the Hegelian example or the dialectic of the master and the servant, where the actual identity of the master is drawn from that of the servant and vice versa? This example can be taken into consideration to incite the Orient to admit to itself once and for all that it played an active role in moulding its image and its identity within Orientalism. In other words, the West is not solely responsible for moulding the Orient in a meaningless alterity mould. There must have been a kind of complicity between Western and Oriental cultures that made the Oriental identity exotic. When some Arabic modern sociological tendencies seek to organize the social construction according to the identity requirements, they tend to associate with Orientalism after having refuted it, for it strengthens the identity and creates another Arabic or Islamic alterity. Such a sociology, whether based on a national axiom or a confessional one, functions as a mirror to realize the Orientalism position it reveals or criticizes. Therefore, those who criticize Orientalism for being responsible for the overexaggeration of difference of the Oriental image and for the radical dissociation of the Arab world want today to reconsider these exaggerations in difference under the pretext the Arabs should be the ones who decide upon these differences. Anthropology has put in question this identity misconception and proved that there is no one sole identity. Every self has elements in common with the other. Even if every self is interested only in its own problems, it will not be able to solve these problems unless it shows interest in the problems of the other. This analogy incites one to not isolate the private in a certain society from the universal current it belongs to. To refuse that the other is present in the self and that identity is formed by the interaction between them is to diminish the epistemological aspect

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on which the social sciences approach is based. This approach consists of establishing within the universal reference in a conscious and critical manner a hierarchical relation between the self and the other, between the centre and the extremities and between the observer and the observed. Clarifying the various aspects that establish the anthropological relation and mastering these aspects gives the researcher the chance to go beyond the orthodox exaggerated method of defining an identity and to evade the trap of a national social science or that of a national anthropology.

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CHAPTER 3

The Other’s Image: The Sociology of Difference Haidar Ibrahim Ali

Studies about the other have always concentrated on the ethnically or racially or culturally different in a broader sense. Researchers have not taken much interest on the sociological level in the intellectually or ideologically different within the same race or culture or society. Therefore, there is difference within what one calls, as a generalization, the ‘we’, for the thought or the ideology or religion could become a common ground or a society that groups all its followers. The current situation in the world shows that the brothers–enemies difference on intellectual and ideological issues could be more bloody and hostile than any other difference. History has demonstrated how people of the same nation have engaged in conflicts fiercer than wars against foreign colonization. Their conflicts would often even become undeclared civil wars. The other is not necessarily geographically distant or a historical opponent, for a constant rival for the self can turn against itself and be in conflict with itself. Marxism has created class struggle within the same society. There also exist two cities within one city or two societies within one society due to difference in the way of life or behaviour or standard of living. In this day and age, there is not one single homogeneous society. Even though there has been talk about the end of ideology, the end of history and the death of man, religious ideology in Arab societies is increasingly spreading among different individuals and groups. This religious ideology is trying to reshape the Arab Islamic societies or to go back to their origins. It claims that it possesses the ideal model for the soughtafter Islamic society that existed in Medina during the days of the Prophet Mohammed. This approach is based upon an introspection of the past, and history repeats itself and goes back in mind to the days of the Islamic pagan conflict. Therefore, the new Islamists have created an image of the other, which differs from them ideologically, and was overloaded with signs, symbols and meanings. They have also created a self-image and set it as a reference with which the other is compared and evaluated. Ethnocentrism

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here is the discriminatory tool used to determine the other according to the centre standard. The same concept applies with a slight modification to the religious ideology or as it is called fundamentalism or Islamistic, rather than Islamism, for Islamistic means the over-politicization of religion and the use of it as a pretext for mass and army mobilization. This chapter will treat some concepts from the sociological point of view by studying models of religious or Islamic groups and movements and issues, such as the quest for purity or the establishment of a perfect homogeneous society or the society of unanimity and union. It also studies religious and non-religious pluralism, the right to difference, how to manage intellectual difference in practice, not just on paper, and the actual consequences of this difference. In such a study, one must treat issues such as using apostasy and calling people unbelievers as a means to achieve the purity of the sought-after society. One must also treat the idea of jihad and of putting in question the existing society and accusing it of paganism. At the end, one must ask if these fundamentalist puritan monotheistic movements could stand in the age of globalization and modernization, or whether pluralism and relativism will reign in the world and pave the way for the humanity of truth and society. Social and political extremists, idealists, fundamentalists and puritans base their theories on the hypothesis of the duality of the world or the existence of a world of darkness and evil and a world of light and good. They therefore explain existence as a struggle between these two elements that ends in the victory of good or light. This vision of the world conforms to the idea of a unified homogeneous society for it suggests a struggle or a contradiction between chaos and order. This homogeneous society of common beliefs and values, what is often called a consensus society, is considered a Utopia. Yet societies throughout history have regularly been dysfunctional. Nevertheless, a number of philosophers have set voluntary consensus as a primary condition to prove truth and the existence of God, to establish the natural right, to arouse the need for a wholly unified society worthy of consensus and then of the fusion of emotions with the mind.1 After being undermined and refuted by Descartes, this concept was revived with a slight modification by the positivists and the followers of SaintSimon. Bossino says that they have dreamt of a new social and moral order based on a new consensus more solid than the old one, a new order that manages this modern wide complicated divide to several opposing groups of society. This order would be able to withstand disorders resulting from industrialization, legitimacy crises and, in short, conflicts and contradictions caused particularly by the lack of common lofty spiritual values.2

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Religion in general and ‘written’ religions in particular are considered an open invitation to consensus or to unification, and are perceived as responsible for establishing an image of the intellectually different other by giving it negative characteristics such as disbelief, sin and satanism. These characteristics are far from having any cultural context and thus they differ from those previously given to the other. The Romans and the Greeks gave the other characteristics such as savagery and barbarism. Belief in God or religion has thus become a distinctive standard and a privilege believers have in contrast with the other. Jews are ‘God’s chosen people’, Christians are ‘the salt of the Earth and the light of the world’,3 and Muslims are ‘the best of people to have evolved to mankind’.4 The emergence of fundamentalist movements in all religions is tightly related to social, economic and cultural changes which have had a major effect on the world. Having noticed that chaos seemed to reign in the world and that society was breaking up, the fundamentalist movements thought it necessary to resort to God. Kebbel notices that these movements strive first to demonstrate the disorder and chaos afflicting the world, then come up with religious terms and statements to describe the modern world and finally present projects to transform and change the social order and make it conform to the values of the Torah or the Koran or the Bible. According to these movements, the religious values are the sole means of salvation and enforcement of justice in the world.5 Researchers consider that the emergence of religions led to the emergence of a social group in its earliest form as a family, as a clan, as a tribe, as a union of tribes and finally as an urban community. Therefore, the first organic group, the family, is a religious group. Mensching affirms this conclusion considering that the individual has no existence unless within a group whose solidarity is based upon religious sanctity and magic. Furthermore, all acts performed in common, mainly eating, should be characterized by a religious ritualistic aspect. As a result, an individual who does not belong to the group is not allowed to participate in any act performed by the group.6 Before prophetic religions appeared, regional gods unified their followers. With the appearance of prophetic religions, the distinction between the ‘I’, the faithful follower, and the ‘other’, the unfaithful, became clear with theology. With that clear distinction, social control and group protection mechanisms emerged: accusations of heresy and apostasy; and firm punishment such as burning, stoning and cutting off body organs. At the same time, minorities and outsiders living in the religious state or empire were considered of a lower status. Acceptance of the other was based on what was called the humiliation theory invented by theologians and a theology of contempt. Qurm considers that the reason for

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such a status would be the inflexible religious unification and the strict faith that did not allow any development to take place for syncretism to be achieved. On the contrary, a legislation was issued to contain groups that were not followers of the official religion and to ensure the long-term dominance of the religion of the prevailing group.7 Religions use various mechanisms to defend their faith. A fundamental development often takes place inside religions for they ask the man to protect the divine. For the divine to be protected, monotheist religions guarantee the union of their followers by their absolute condescending aspect. Monotheist religions differed from paganism, which was conciliatory, because its truth was not complete and it put the higher interests of the state before the interests of its belief.8 The assertion of the absolute religious identity is faced with two opposing societies: the society of union, consensus, purity and harmony against the society of pluralism, difference and tolerance. In this case, the identity issue is of major importance since it becomes equal in importance with the ‘I’ or the self issue. It is also a problematic case since it raises several difficult questions. Is the religious identity in particular conflictual or communicative? Is it able to accept the other? Is it exclusive or inclusive? Religious identity might transform in the religious context from a sociocultural concept or even a political term to a fixed nature. This nature might feel threatened when interacting or communicating with the other out of fear the other might disturb its purity. Therefore, it is important to resort to the distinction mentioned earlier. Yet to what extent does this identity accept what is called religious pluralism? Religious people often refuse this pluralism, considering the term a political one and of no relation to faith. They consider it related to issues such as the accountability and liability of a democratic society for the distribution of power and political forms. They also find it related to issues such as having a diversity of ethnic groups and needing to ensure their representation in influential social associations, or needing to distribute political power to the greatest number of people. In particular, they refuse this pluralism for they believe it has a corrosive effect on faith and the potential for spreading doubt among believers. Pluralism breeds relativism, and thus divides faith into a wide variety of options. The Vatican has used the term pluralism in its broad meaning. The term is often used in a contradictory and limited manner since it means diversity in a unified system of power.9 Some explain pluralism as related to the idea of equality before God. Others warn against the dangers of basing one’s identity on the denial and elimination of the identity of the other. Shygan says:

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the most dangerous of identities is the one that is built on the ruins of the identity of an other. My identity should be in peace and agreement with the identities of the others, it should not refuse them or threaten to eliminate them.10

The introversion and self-isolation of Islamic fundamentalism is thus refused since it calls for the return to the first mythology of the ancestors and of the golden age. This return forces upon its followers a hostile position towards others or a declaration of war against others. It is therefore aggressive, impulsive and based on illusion.11 Finally, the religious identity stands unified in the face of which division? How can it achieve unification in a reality based on distinction and division? Religion here becomes an ideology that plays, by means of various mechanisms, the role of social cement to the religious group. The most important of these mechanisms would be the dogmas that claim to possess the absolute truth. An ancient example of this kind of ideology would be the testaments. On the creation of the Hebraic people, it is well known that the Israelis were not a homogeneous ethnic group, descendants of common ancestors, and that they did not increase in number only out of biological reproduction. The semi-Bedouin tribes who migrated to Egypt where they were taken as slaves were religiously and politically united by the Sinai testament or the Ten Commandments.12 Another important mechanism would be the assertion of difference awareness, the superiority felt by the individuals and groups of religious identity that might signify abilities superior to those of the other and distinction from the other.

Creating the society of return and purity The realization of this unified homogeneous society requires social activists who own the previously mentioned characteristics and most importantly are aliens to their reality. One finds this characteristic in the Hadith of the Prophet Mohammed: ‘Islam started as an alien and will return as an alien, so blessed be the aliens.’ When asked about the aliens, he answered: ‘The aliens are those who will keep my Sunna alive after my death.’ He called these aliens fundamentalists or puritans or strict believers. According to the religious conception, it is the duty of those to wage the war of good against evil. Every religion has its own puritans. Researchers have defined puritans by a number of characteristics. Puritans tend to self-justify their judging of others. They feel they have a calling to deny themselves the pleasures of life and to change the world. They have a strong urge to purify the world and themselves from evil. They therefore

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draw the line that separates them from others. Furthermore, their call announces explicitly or implicitly the coming of judgement day. They exploit this dimension of their call to the mass of believers and religious people. Puritans group themselves in solid organizations with strict methods that ensure social control according to clear standards of education and re-education. They group around a strong charismatic leader or chief. They tend to achieve within the group economic independence, social solidarity and mutual support.13 Some call puritanism a greedy ideology that is never satisfied or fulfilled. There is always an evil to conquer and, as a result, its battles never end, for good is always weak in the face of evil, sin and corruption. Puritanism gets deeply involved in all aspects of life, for a puritan should never fear confrontation and should always be ready to draw his sword. The puritan search for Satan14 shows an inhumane side of puritanism and excludes any possibility of adaptation or tolerance towards the other. Puritans or fundamentalists are characterized by abstaining from life, refusing any progress in history and being infatuated with death. Puritanism denies its followers the right to dispose of their physical existence or body, for it is the property of God or the party or the movement. One of the most important mechanisms of puritanism or fundamentalism for achieving purity and the ideal model of society is defining the enemy and drawing the lines that separate the other or form the image of the enemy. The enemy is often mythologized and described with much imagination and emotion; he is named a pagan, an unfaithful, a disbeliever and an unbeliever. In modern Islamic thought, a perfect example of the creation of the image of the other is given on the individual and group level. As Manichaeism divides the world into light and dark, modern paganism divides the world into pagan and Islam. This duality will not end unless Islam returns and conquers the paganism of the 20th century. Said Kotb establishes an image of the other by assuming that Islam knows but two kinds of societies: Islamic and pagan. He presents the following definition: The Islamic society is a society in which Islam is applied as a faith and as a practice, as a law and as an order, as a conduct and as a moral constitution. The pagan society is a society in which Islam is not applied neither is its faith nor its conception, its values, its law, its order, its conduct or its moral constitution. An Islamic society is not a society that includes Muslims but does not apply the Islamic law even if its members fulfil the Islamic religious duties.15

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Kotb presents a new division. A society might be unified racially, ethnically and religiously, but this sets a new criterion inside one single religion and a homogeneous society to divide people. This division is neither related to class nor to any social or economic disparity. Kotb seeks the purity of religion and society. This puritan criterion that has no place in reality nor in life has acquired power and strength in a group claiming to be pure and able to achieve purity of the world in the future. This division is not a sectarian disagreement about Islam nor is it disagreement about the explanations and branches of Islam: it is a complete new vision that attempts to define the true authentic Muslim. This is one of the mechanisms to exclude the other and list a number of specific characteristics to distinguish the intruder, the alien and the unbeliever from the authentic and the believer. Kotb has tried to expand and clarify the criteria to identify both the Islamic society and the pagan one and to be accurate in setting easily identified criteria to determine Muslim and non-Muslim. Kotb is aware of all of that, for he says that the pagan society is represented in different images, all of which are pagan: The pagan society may be represented by a society that denies the existence of God, explains history by a materialistic dialectic view and applies scientific socialism as a law. The pagan society may also be represented by a society that does not deny the existence of God but makes of heaven and not of earth his kingdom, for it does not apply his law nor does it judge by the values God made fixed in the life of humans. Although this society believes in the existence of God and allows its members to fulfil their religious duties in churches and mosques, it is a pagan society.16

Islam has known the division of the world into the house of Islam and the house of war. Yet Kotb and Islamic groups after him were not satisfied with this division, so they adopted what they called the 20th-century paganism and with it accusations of disbelief flourished. Those accused of this crime would sometimes be sentenced to death. The accusation of disbelief was an easy accusation to make. In Iranian literature, the term Taghoot was used to mean pagan and it was used to describe countries, regimes and individuals. The division even goes further when Kotb says: ‘The Islamic world in being Islamic is the only civilized society, and the pagan society, regardless of its form, is an underdeveloped society.’17 Kotb uses here a term which is not new but frequently used. In his book Milestones on the Road, Kotb considers that the liberation of Islam makes it civilized since the right to judge belongs to God alone:

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When in a society the superior judgement belongs to God alone (superior judgement represented by the divine law), its members are fully and truly liberated from the slavery of man. Humanistic civilization is thus achieved. Civilization of man requires the complete and true liberation of man and the absolute protection of the dignity of every member of the society.18

Kotb tried to realize by this division a new identity and a different belongingness that go beyond all previous conventional ties. He affirms the strength and the high development of these non-materialistic ties: If the bonding ties of a society are religion, conception, ideology and way of living, the members of this society will be submitting to a superior authority, God, and not to man authority which is a form of man slavery. These bonding ties will be representing the most sublime characteristics of the soul and mind. Yet if the bonding ties of a society are gender, colour, nation and land, they will not be representing the sublime characteristics of man for man is man regardless of his gender or his mind.19

Kotb assumes that man can change his belief, his way of thinking and his way of living, but he can change neither his colour nor his race or his origin. He concludes by saying: a society whose members come together out of free will and free choice is a civilized society; as for a society whose members come together by an element which is beyond their human will, it is an underdeveloped society or, in Islamic terms, a pagan society.20

Kotb considers actual society far from being the sought-after society. It is a corrupt society with no future and does not represent the yearnings of the human soul. According to Kotb, the reasonable reaction to such a conclusion would be the elimination of this society, hence the fulfilment of a religious duty and a divine assignment. Since all building processes start with destruction, the current mission of true Muslims is therefore to conquer the evils and corruption of society. Evil is not an individual epidemic, but a social one. Modern institutions represent to Islamists the source of all evil and corruption. Islamists or puritans are divided into two currents: one calls for the Islamic upbringing of individuals in order to create an Islamic society and an Islamic government ruled by the law of God; the other sees the need to overthrow the ruling government in order to be able to impose change on individuals and on society. Therefore, war is declared on the pagan

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government. The latter is the most widespread and adopted among active Islamist groups. A call for the religious duty of fighting against pagan governments has spread in countries that are considered Islamic. Hence, the term ‘absent religious duty’ or jihad has spread. Since the beginning of the 1980s, the concepts of the culture of death and of jihad have developed both in theory and in practice. Therefore, the possibility of difference and tolerance has been narrowed to make space for the possibility of physically eliminating the intellectually different other. The Algerian example clearly demonstrates how intellectuals and innovators such as writers, actors, journalists and theatre and media people were slaughtered, as are foreign soldiers fighting Islamic militants. The death concept finds its roots in the writings and speeches of Imam Hasan El Banna, the founder of the first inspiring Islamist movement in the Arab world. El Banna says about the calling of jihad:21 Brothers, the nation that masters the industry of death and knows how to die an honourable death is granted by God a satisfied life on Earth and eternal bliss in the hereafter. Love of life and hatred of death are illusions that humiliate us, so prepare yourself for an act of greatness and adhere to death because then life will be given to you; work on dying an honourable death because then you will be granted complete happiness. May God bestow upon you and us the pride of dying for the sake of God.22

Some see that jihad does not only consist of fighting, at least at the beginning. It is the spiritual jihad that counts and it consists of disassociating oneself from the pagan society. Therefore, there was a call to separate and distance oneself from society; this separation is somehow similar to the Hegira in the Prophet Mohammed’s life. Some associate this situation with that of the separatists in Islamic history, who are considered the sole survivors in the Hadith: Jews were divided into seventy-one sects, Christians into seventy-two sects and my nation is divided into seventy-three sects. ‘All sects are going to burn in hell except for one sect,’ said the prophet. ‘Which sect will achieve victory?,’ they asked. ‘My companions and I,’ answered the prophet. ‘One sect will survive and the rest will be doomed,’ said the prophet. When asked which sect, he answered, ‘My companions and I.’

This Hadith was promoted in order to forbid difference in opinion and justify the oppression of the other by giving this oppression a religious

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cover. Opposition in ancient Islamic history claimed to be the righteous sect, therefore it disassociated itself from the government and considered a disbeliever who submits to its authority and supports it. This phenomenon of separatists is an ancient phenomenon repeating itself today in a historically and socially different context. Modern Islamists have preserved a few concepts of the ancient separatist ideology in their war against the ruling government in particular concepts such as hegira, innocence, sect and adherence. The first separatists used to meet in mosques away from the eyes of the government. If they came to expect an unbearable harshness, they would go out in public and then leave the country. Innocence therefore means to consider the opposition innocent of the prevailing corruption and its doers and separate from it. The separatists would then adhere to sects that share their ideology.23 Puritans and fundamentalists started to form their own society, separate from the rest of society in mind and emotion. This was an attempt to purify their ideology and protect it from the ideas of the disbelievers and the hypocrites. According to them, it is a successful mechanism to eliminate the influence of the other and draw away mutual influence. Their society is a breeder of ideas and individuals getting ready to declare war. Said Kotb, who calls for separation from the pagan society, says: When the believers in this ideology are three, this ideology tells them that they are now an independent Islamic society, separated from the pagan society that does not believe in the ideology and in which the fundamental values of this ideology are not applied.24

In this way, the Islamists try to create a society within a society. Their society is characterized by the purity of its ideology, which is, to them, the most important component for building a new society. The experience of the Medina society in the days of the Prophet is thus repeated in context and in form. In the first experience, the number of followers were few, yet after the calling the Islam flourished and became a major religion. About this development and transformation, Kotb says: Before achieving the main objective, the battle would have started between the newborn society and the pagan society. The newborn society would separate from the pagan society in belief, in concept, in values, in considerations, in existence and in being. As for the pagan society, it would be the society whose members have been taken away from it. Returning to the movement, it would have succeeded, all the way from the start point to the point of totally independent existence, to distinguish between each and every member of the society.25

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This battle is responsible for developing, during the past two decades, the ideology of jihad as a means of settling disagreements that are supposed to be disagreements of an intellectual and religious dimension. Yet the ideology of jihad does not allow any disagreement or separation or tumult. The most dangerous thing about this ideology, therefore, is that its followers believe that it is the sole means to guide people to Islam. They cite the following Koranic verse as a justification for their act: And fight them on until there is no tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God altogether and everywhere.26

One of the objectives of jihad is to oblige people through argument; Jihad is inevitable in confronting the pagan systems and the Satanic forces for these systems, relations and laws hinder the return to the true religion: The mission, the objective and the end of jihad is eliminating all pagan systems, relations and laws and putting man on the path of freedom of choice without any constraint or coercion.27

To Franz Fanon, jihad is equal to armed struggle since it is a tool of selfliberation that at the same time liberates others from the ‘disturbance of political oppression, economic injustice and narrow social adherence.’

The means to fanaticism and expiation The Islamist ideology that political Islamic groups take up works mainly by including highly distinguished individuals in their movement. They are not satisfied with individuals who are only different: they insist on their being excellent, distinguished and powerful: ‘A powerful believer is better than a weak one.’ The idea of superiority is frequently repeated in the writings of Islamists based on the Koranic verse: ‘So lose not heart nor fall into despair for you must gain mastery if you are true in Faith.’28 Islamists consider that the idea of superiority should lift the spirit of Muslims during periods of weakness and decadence. In the introduction of ‘What the world has lost in the decadence of Muslims’, it is said: Islam is a religion of superiority, its basic characteristic is that it arouses in the soul of its believer a feeling of pride but not arrogance, a feeling of selfconfidence not self-conceit and a feeling of assurance not reliance. It also arouses in the believer a sense of responsibility for mankind. Guided by the light bestowed upon him by God, the believer feels responsible for mankind

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all over the world and feels the need to guide lost souls to the religion of values and straight path and to get these lost souls out of the darkness to the light. ‘You are the best of peoples, evolved for Mankind, enjoining what is right, forbidding what is wrong and believing in God.’29

This feeling of superiority is aroused in the soul of the Muslim because God preferred him to others, for he is distinguished from pagan others by his faith. The believer thus feels superior because his faith has set him apart from others. This idea of the self grows from the feeling of possessing God’s whole absolute truth. The person who thinks he owns the absolute final truth finds it impossible to discuss or modify his beliefs because they are sent from God. This way of thinking leads directly to fanaticism. About this kind of person, Kotb says: In a society full of ideologies, concepts and values different from his, the Muslim feels superior and think of the others as inferior. Full of pride and confidence, he looks to them with sympathy and compassion and the need to guide them to the good he possesses and uplift them to the horizon he lives in.30

This feeling is not different from the hysterical state the Nazi was in due to his feeling of superiority. The puritan or fundamentalist separates himself from reality and thinks he lives in a pure world. He thus mistakes imagination for reality. He struggles with his human character to impose the illusion of his celestial character inside of him; he then fights the world around him without ever leaning: The hysterical does not know but his good intentions, when he becomes unable of denying his bad intentions he becomes superman who does not stick to any moral value and thinks that the greatness of what he is after makes him of nobility.31

Puritans and Islamists, the engaged and the deeply engaged, present a perfect example of fanaticism not only of enthusiasm. They want to destroy civil society and replace it with the kingdom of God. The difference between the engaged and the deeply engaged is that the first thinks that God inspires him while the second acts in the name of this inspiration, reaching the state of violence and terrorism. As for fanatical governments, they have tools offered to them by violent institutions; it is also per se. Violent tendencies increase at government, society and individual level,

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and grow from a physical level (killing) to a verbal one32 (accusation of disbelief, apostasy and infidelity), for dialogue and tolerance become nonexistent. Even the limited relative political openness is not accompanied by any intellectual openness. On the contrary, the list of forbiddens grew despite the relative decrease in the number of per se regimes. Parliaments were established in the most conservative of these regimes, but did not have any consequences for culture or thought. It is a paradox that Arab civil society deeply opposes expanding the circle of liberty of different opinions, for it has created a new authority by which it uses the arms of accusations of disbelief and apostasy. A few religious groups have revived the atmosphere of these accusations that prevailed during certain periods of Islamic history, even though accusations of blasphemy was practised by other religions when facing social crises and changes and the emergence of intellectually liberated movements. In recent times, these accusations have expanded to include various fields of thought, art and ways of dressing and living. A fanatic has no need of accurate criteria to define the terms of apostasy or change of faith. Religious jurisprudents have agreed upon the meaning of the Hadith: The killing of a Muslim is allowed for three reasons only: if a Muslim is guilty of adultery he is stoned to death, if he killed a Muslim on purpose (a soul for a soul) and if he forsakes Islam and fights against God and his Messengers, he is killed or crucified or exiled.

But with the overcoming religious obsession that has swept Arab societies, fanatics have no need of an agreed religious reference to allow the shedding of blood in vain. The obsessed fanatic attempts to destroy the world under the pretext of seeking the perfect world. The Algerian writer Boujadra presents an artistic description of this conduct: The conscious young bearded abide by the inflaming speeches of their Imams who invite them to dine with the Prophet if they die as martyrs after killing a young lady for not wearing the Islamic veil or a communist or a cursed atheist.

There are those who plant in the minds of the young the seeds of violence by their intense speeches: Speeches incite them to commit crimes in return for the guarantee that as martyrs they will go directly to heaven where they will be relieved from the sorrows of life and all forms of deprivation and frustration.

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The writer wonders: How can the audience of these speeches be able to disfigure the face of a beautiful graceful young lady knowing that some of them are celibates who quench their sexual instincts by killing. The cut on her face will become a scar, symbolically the other will not be killed just eliminated. This is then a ritual of implicit origin dug deep in religiousity and believing in superstition.33

At the beginning of the 21st century, Arab societies are witnessing new courts of investigation that use accusations of disbelief and apostasy against all forms of intellectual and creative difference. An Islamist, a religiously enlightened one, talks about ‘wrapped apostasy’. This term is an expandable term that can define any intellectually different person, and allows interpretation of the meanings behind what a writer or researcher has produced and not just interpretation of his explicit text. Qardabawi writes: We must not fail to notice a kind of apostasy, which is not made public and obvious but is wrapped with various wrappings to sneak into the mind as a disease sneaks into the body. Only the highly educated and the religiously enlightened can perceive such an apostasy but can do nothing against professionals who have no control of themselves. It is the intellectual apostasy that haunts us every day in newspapers, books, magazines, radio talks, television programmes, trends and governing laws.34

The siege that can surround spoken and written forms of expression is now set clear. This new extensible term now haunts every creative mind and judges him according to the intention the other thinks he has and not according to his own true intentions. The culture of accusations of apostasy and disbelief is no longer limited to specific secret circles, but has become public and is promoted by various information media and books in the market. For example, after the assassination of Foda, Mohammed Ghazali and Mahmooud Mazrouaa, the head of the ideology department in El-Azhar made declarations and statements that proves the apostasy of Foda and affirm that he deserved what happened to him. The latter said that Foda had dedicated his life to fight Islam, therefore one of the citizens of this nation was allowed to execute the sentence of apostasy in order to avoid tumult and corruption.35 He meant that an individual could execute the sentence of apostasy without getting an order from the court or from the government because those in charge of justice did not do their job. As a justification, Mazrouaa said:

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if this apostate misguides people, spreads corruption and had dedicated his life to fight Islam, he would then be paving the way for others to become apostates. In this case keeping him alive would be like setting fire in a society, therefore it is allowed for people of this nation without doing great damage to execute the sentence of God.36

Obsession with apostasy accusations has led to several repeated assassination attempts such as the stabbing attempt on Najib Mahfouz in 1994. The first accused of these attempts, Mohammed Naji Mohammed Mustafa, confessed that he had never read any of Mahfouz’s works, but based his judgement on a fatwa issued by the prince of the Islamic movement, Sheikh Omar Abdulrahman, in 1990. He added that he chose Mahfouz because after he won the Nobel prize he had become an icon for a corrupt group of people. Executing an assassination attempt against him would be a lesson for all writers not to take his path. As for the second accused, he said he based his choice on a fatwa issued in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia after Khomeini had issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie. The Saudi fatwa said that it was more important to kill Mahouz first because he mocked God and the Prophets in his works.37 It is obvious that difference and tolerance stand weak in front of physical and verbal violence. Difference in opinion has been condemned, accusations of laicism and apostasy has led to the assassination of the other, whether actual, literal or symbolic. Dialogue has been silenced by the sound of gunshots. In an interview with one of the college professors who led the campaign against Nasr Abou Zied, Abedulsaboor Shahine was asked: ‘What do you think of the sentence of separation as a punishment for apostasy?’ Shahine answered: He (Abou Zied) had to repent a thousand times, he is not better than that. Others before him repented and they were much better than he is. Taha Hussein who is thousands of times better than he is came to the court and repented.38

The phenomenon has become contagious. A Kuwaiti professor, Ahmed Baghdadi, received a death threat letter because he had a disagreement with the Islamic Society magazine and filed a complaint against it. Although members of the Social Reform Association, publishers of this magazine, denied the letter, an Islamic leader commented on what Baghdadi said as follows: it is the saying of members of the extinct party of laicists and baby orientalists who emerged out of nothing.39

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The Islamic Yemeni writer Ibrahim Bin Ali El-Wazir gives a list of the intellectual Doctrines mockingly: ‘Corruption Doctrine, Donkey Doctrine, Sheep Doctrine, Cave Doctrine, and Ancestral Doctrine.’40 The evaluation of the thought of the other using this method is a repetition of an old tradition practised by Muslims at various periods of history. Examples of such a tradition would be the following books: Burning Thunderbolts on the Lost, the Corrupt and the Apostate of Ibn Hajr El-Haithimi, and Iron Chains to Confine the Iron Man. Up until now similar books are found: The Strict Dedicated to Refute Curses against the Prophet and Divine Thunderbolt as Refutation to Wahabia.

Conclusion Arab societies are facing the challenges of modernization and globalization which break down barriers between thoughts, not only at the level of countries and nations but also at a universal level. The Arab world gets into the controversy of relativism and privacy. Relativism in a culture means the absence of separating barriers and definitive judgements. Simultaneously, privacy sets clear lines of distinction and self-assertion. There have been major quests to promote human rights and cultural and political pluralism. These values became predominant in discussions, assemblies and international institutions. Under the pretext of particularity and the diversity of cultural authorities, religious in particular, some Arab countries oppose a number of articles in the international human rights charter. These countries live in contradiction between refusing pluralism and freedom of speech and accepting the conditions of world market and consumer society. This is the traditional dilemma that separates the technological and material aspects of civilization from its cultural and ideological aspects. These societies import products of science such as machines, but exclude theories, methods of thinking and analysis based on science. Regression in accepting the other and in intellectual tolerance could be considered as defence mechanisms in facing modernization and its consequences. Attempts to preserve the ethical and religious purity of Arab Islamic societies represent self-defence and a means of seeking protection in the known past against the continuously changing unknown. Fanaticism and violence automatically increase with the growth of modernization and globalization. The phenomenon of hysteria in refusing the intellectually different other could grow into terrorism out of fear and illusion of danger. There are those who dream of a perfect world and an absolute truth, but who live in an ever-changing reality where truth becomes absolutely relative.

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Notes 1. Giovanni Bossino, Naqd Al-Maarifa fi Ilm Al-Ijtimaa (Critique de la connaissance en sociologie), trans. by Mohamed Arab Sasila (Beirut: al Muassassa al-Jamiiyya li Dirassat wa-Nashr wa-Tawzii, 1995), p.102. 2. Ibid., p.105. 3. The Bible, Matthew, ch. 5, 13–17. 4. Quran, Al-Omran, 110. 5. Gilles Kepel, Yaum Allah: al-Harakat al-Usouliyya al-Muasira fi al-Diyanat alThalath (Le jour d’Allah, les mouvements fondamentalistes dans les trois religions), trans. by Nassir Mruwa (Cyprus: Dar Qortoba, 1992), p.207. 6. Georges Qorm, Taaddud al Adyan, wa Andhimat al Hukm: Dirasa Sosiolojiyya wa Qanuniyya Muqarina (Religious Pluralism and Ruling Systems: Comparative Sociological and Legal Study) (Beirut: Dar Annahar, 1992), p.43. 7. Ibid., pp. 318–9 also p.10. 8. Ibid., pp.17–8. 9. Kieran Flanagan, ‘Theological Pluralism: A Sociological Critique’, in I. Hamnatt ed., Religious Pluralism and Unbelief: Studies Critical and Comparative (London, New York: Routledge, 1990), pp.86–94. 10. Daryush Shayegan, ‘Al Hawiyya: Al Jamaa wal Jamaat’ (The Identity: Community and Communities), Al Mawaqif, no. 65 (Spring 1991), p.60. 11. Ibid., p.60. 12. Georges E. Mendenhall, Law and Covenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East (Pittsburg: Biblical Colloquium, 1955). 13. Walter E. A. van Beek, The Quest For Purity: The Dynamics of Puritan Movement, Religion and Society, 26 (Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1988), p.30. 14. Ibid., pp.4–6. 15. Sayyid Qotb, Ma’alem Fi Al-Tariq (Signs on the Road) (Cairo: Dar alChourouq, 1983), p.116. 16. Ibid., pp.116–7. 17. Ibid., p.117. 18. Ibid., pp.118–9. 19. Ibid., pp.119–20. 20. Ibid., p.120. 21. Mohamed Abdul Salam Faraj, ‘Al Faridha al-Ghaiba’ (The Absent Obligation), appendix in Nimatallah Junayna, Tanzim al-Jihad: Hal Huwa al-Badil al-Islami fi Misr (Al-Jihad Organization: Is it the Islamic Alternative in Egypt) (Cairo: Dar Al Huriyya, 1988), p.223. 22. Hasan Al-Banna, Majmuat Rasail al-Imam al-Shahid Hassan Al-Banna (Collection of Letters of Imam Martyr Hassan Al-Banna) (Alexandria: Dar al-Dawa, 1990), p.291. 23. Radwan Al-Sayyid, Mafahim al-Jamaat fi al-Islam: Dirasa fi al-Sosiologia alTarikhiyya lil-Ijtimaa al-Arabi al-Islami (Concepts of Communities in Islam: A Study of the Historical Sociology of the Arab Islamic Union) (Beirut: Dar Attanwir, 1984), pp.54–7. 24. Sayyid Qotb, op. cit., p.130. 25. Ibid. 26. Quran, Al-Anfal, 39. 27. Mohamed Mourou, Al Jihad fi Sabil Allah: Hizb Allah Namuzajan (Jihad for the Sake of Allah: Hizbullah as a Model) (Cairo: Markaz Yafa li-Dirasat wal-Abhath, 1996), p.48.

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28. Quran, Al-Omran, 139. 29. Abu al-Hassan al-Nadwi, Maza Khasira al-Alam bi-Inhitat al-Muslimin (What did the World lose from the Deterioration of Muslims) (Cairo: Maktabat al-Sunna, 1990), p.186. 30. Sayyyid Qotb, op. cit., p.186. 31. Carl Gustav Jung, Al-Naziya fi Daw’ Ilm Al-Nafs (Nazism in the Light of Psychology), trans. by Nihad Khayyata (Beirut, al-Muassasa al-Jamiiyya li-Dirassat wa-Nashr wa-Tawzii, 1992), p.54. 32. Dominique Colas, ‘Al-Ta’assob: Sirat Kalima’ (Fanaticism: Memoir of a Word), Al-Mawaqif, no. 65 (Spring 1991), pp.41-2. 33. Rachid Boujedra, Fis: Tarikh Al-Dam (FIS (Islamic Salvation Front): History of Blood) (Marrakoch: Dar Tawasulat, 1994), pp.132 and 135. 34. Youssef Al-Qardhawi, ‘Awdat al-Ridda wa-Muwaiahat al-Murtaddin’ (Return of Apostasy and Confronting Apostates), Minbar Al-Sharq, no. 10 (November 1993). 35. Al-Shaab (Egyptian newspaper), July 2, 1993. 36. Ibid. 37. Al-Arabi (Egyptian newspaper), December 19, 1994. 38. A-Musawar, no. 3698, June 23, 1995. 39. Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, October 29, 1996. 40. Al-Ahram, October 28, 1996.

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CHAPTER 4

The Other, the Self and the Idea of Citizenship Pierre Paolo Donatti

The one who masters the knowledge of the other and his presence is the one who is able to make decisions, and free is the one who makes decisions face to face with the I.

Citizenship is a medium between different social and cultural identities The image of the other is always a common social image. Among the factors that define the relation between the I and the other, there is the feeling of either belonging to a certain citizenship or not belonging. As soon as one senses a threat towards his identity, to its signification, its meaning or to it as a whole, one changes one’s image of the other and takes more interest in it. In fact, citizenship is a criterion to define whether individuals should be integrated in a certain political entity or expelled from it. It is this characteristic of citizenship that defines the personal identity of those who belong to a certain political entity. Being a citizen usually means total participation as a member in a political entity, whether a city or a country or a nation state.1 One does not find in modern history a clear example of super-national political societies that established super-national citizenship. The European Union is currently trying to achieve such a citizenship, but is facing some difficulties. Some might speak of a universal citizenship making the world closer to a Utopia and farther from reality. Citizenship from a social point of view is what is common between individuals of a certain people sharing the right to fully behave as citizens within the public space. Yet the question remains: What is common between the I and the other when each discovers that they are not equal citizens or in other words not citizens of the same country? One could generalize on this question by asking how valid is the feeling of citizenship towards a certain country in the interaction with the other.

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When the I sees the other as belonging to another country, this other automatically becomes a foreigner, but not at the beginning of this interaction: it is only later that he or she becomes a foreigner in the eyes of the I. The I as human being comes before the I as citizen, and the same applies to the other. We must ponder upon the means by which the other becomes a foreigner when not seen as a citizen of the same political entity. In previous decades, for example, it was common among native citizens of northern Italy to treat visiting citizens from southern Italy as secondclass citizens. Later on, their fanaticism towards the North and its individuality grew deeper and made them consider Italians of the south as foreigners. This phenomenon is tightly linked to the national identity crisis. The establishment of a political movement called the Northern League brought into the open feelings of fanaticism. Yet these feelings of fanaticism often do not stop here. Natives of the North are often more inclined to accept foreigners than they are inclined to accept citizens of the South; they even consider both foreigners and citizens of the South as potential citizens of an equal degree. This example shows that citizenship causes a deep change in the interaction between the I and the other. There are historical reasons for this, yet I cannot expand my study to include them, except to point out that citizenship of such intensity might hinder communication with foreigners. Is it possible to come up with a citizenship that could be the means by which people deal with the other in a different more humanistic manner? Is there a way to let go of racial movements? If there is a way, it might help in creating a citizenship different enough2 to change societies and political orders, and in establishing new conventions from which will come social practices able to create a different relation between the I and the other and a different exchange of image between the two.

The present crisis of citizenship as a medium Citizenship as a medium in the relation between the I and the other is in crisis almost all over the world, but mainly in European countries where the other is from countries outside the European Union. Europeans have to determine clearly the issues they will have to face in the near future and the reasons for facing them in order to reorganize their political societies. According to De Bernart,3 the most recent immigration into the European Union from non-European countries has shaken terribly the concept of citizenship. In Europe today, citizenship is deeply in crisis concerning its content, its legitimacy and its function. Is it possible, as De Bernart suggests, to speak of a casual citizenship for nationalism?

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Modern citizenship as defined and drawn by T.H. Marshall4 is often brought up. The cultural aspects that Marshall spoke of are that of civilization and not of culture: zivilisation not kultur as Germans say. Marshall saw citizenship as a fundamental guarantee for a civilized life similar to that of the English gentleman, but he failed in considering the nature of the cultural principals of citizenship within different societies. The failure of the concept of modern citizenship becomes crystal clear with the emergence of the postmodern society. To avoid overemphasis on the legal and political definitions of citizenship as a political status determining the nature of rights and duties, citizenship can be defined as a set of practices that make individuals active elements in a certain social entity.5 Citizenship can thus be considered as: • • •

•

a set of social, legal, political and cultural practices; these aspects build citizenship as well as define it; it is possible to institutionalize it with time as a standard social organization; it defines the membership of a certain social entity according to results and consequences.

Such a dynamic approach is more appropriate to face related issues since it helps to overlook the narrow approach set previously by Marshall. B. Turner6 spoke of a cultural citizenship composed of social practices that allow citizens to fully and effectively participate in the national culture. He reminds us that cultural citizenship still identifies educational institutions, mainly universities, as elements indispensable to socially prepare children to enter the system of national values. Turner repeats thus what Barsons said before him. For a deeper understanding of the cultural aspects of citizenship, there is what K. Mannheim called the democratization of culture. Turner admits that modern understanding of cultural citizenship led to:7 •

•

•

nurture as a kind of cultural colonization: the means by which cultural citizenship was understood and practised in modern societies was to destroy the native culture and marginalize their cultural habits; overpowering and excluding popular culture by the cultural elite close to the ruling class; structured cultural participation in national culture in a way that does not reveal the malice of the most powerful forms of effective exclusion.

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Barsons thought that the Western educational revolution would have been able to overcome all shortcomings. He was influenced by Marshall’s vision of citizenship and saw this vision as a paradigm that considers citizenship as an institutionalization of the social aspect of the variations of the model. To him, citizenship was an earthly principle for membership of an emergent society that considers social distinction and the institutionalization of success as the most important value in modern capitalism. Yet today we admit that the state/the home country is no longer the most appropriate or suitable political framework for life in which the complicated component of citizen rights, mainly cultural ones, can find refuge and settle. The traditional language of citizenship home country/state is a language opposed by the discourse of human rights, which considers humanity as the highest standard model for political adherence. Turner thinks that this idea is old, and reminds us that Durkheim in Professional Ethics and Civic Morals proved that the moral system of the government can pave the way for universal humanistic morals. As we know, this is also the ideal perceived by Kant. We also know that this ideal is long forgotten and is not new at all. But to speak of cultural rights as human rights is totally new and different. To understand the point I suggest we go back to the image of human nature and establish in advance a new distinction between the humanistic and non-humanistic, and apply it to the interaction between the I and the other in order to create a new vision of what is common between human beings in their position to the dangers of the system and the surrounding and their disorders. As Belohradsky8 says, we are entering a society based more on distinction between similarity and dissimilarity than on distinction between equality and inequality.

Two answers to the question: the United States model and the European model We should treat the following question: How can one manage cultural rights in the modern component of citizenship? There are two perfect models for an answer: the United States model and the European model. a) The United States model makes reference to the melting pot theory. It indicates that all minor cultures can live together on condition that they adhere to a national creed that functions as a minor common

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status. This status is considered as a pact or a social–cultural agreement to which those who want to join the system adhere and it is thus that it gains its power. Yet Americans grow more and more unsure of the form of their citizenship, at least because it excludes people rather than includes them under the umbrella of false welfare. b) The European model establishes a national citizenship based on similar ethnic foundations, where blood relation is given importance and where the other is acknowledged as a citizen if there is a blood relation (lineage) or a similar relation. Of course, minor cultures have always been there and are still living side by side with cultural minorities, yet they have been neglected or ignored. As a matter of fact, its members were considered as second-class citizens, which is usually explained by the influence of the Catholic church, which, however, has lost a major part of its power in modern society although it struggled to raise the dignity of the human identity above identities as mere citizens. Is the first model better than the second? If so, why? Are the two enough? Is the United States model the best imagined? On first consideration, the United States model seems to be better than the European one. There is no doubt that it is characterized by a number of qualities related to the ability to bring together various different cultures and to spread tolerance. According to a number of scholars, the United States citizenship is a system more able to deal with cultural and social differences while the European model faces difficulties in this field.9 Yet one must consider that the relation between the I and the other as a whole in the United States is characterized by the following: • • •

a high level of standardization; a high level of social and cultural discrimination; a weak protection of social rights (minimum welfare).

In fact, both models face difficulties today. Nevertheless, what I would like to emphasize is that both models seem to be inappropriate. In addition to the fact that they are both in crisis, neither really represent what is actually happening in postmodern societies and what we are seeking. The Citizen’s Pact in the United States based on the American creed was and still is not ensured. As for Europe, citizenship on the basis of blood relation is not possible any more. Where are we heading? My suggestion is to consider what the social theory calls community citizenship.10

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Towards a new model of citizenship between different ethnic groups 1. Citizenship cannot be an element of communicative dialogue (able to manage a democratic society) if we consider cultural rights as educational rights only or as rights to knowledge only or the ability to acquire knowledge (mainly when it is considered from the success perspective). It cannot become so unless we establish cultural rights according to human rights having in common the following characteristics: • that people not consider cultural rights as tribal rights, but refer

them to the nature of human beings while distinguishing between human and inhuman (meaning continuously referring to the natural right as dictated by the theory of Lévi-Strauss); • that this vision be able to distinguish between the Aliud other (a thing even if set to communicate) and the Alius other (another person); • that the concept of cultural rights be able to perceive that the relational nature of human beings is a particular social nature (the concepts of Zemmel and Bober can be useful). We can say according to a modified version of Agil’s graph that cultural rights cannot be referred to rights oriented towards educational success. It is represented in a process where a deep differentiation takes place over and over again until humans are more humanistic. The different dimensions according to Agil’s graph: A Economic rights Court law

G Political rights Parliament

I Social rights State welfare

L Cultural rights (Educational rights) Human rights

If we were to understand the relation between the I and the other as a relation governed by human rights as a solid foundation to a new interethnic citizenship, we would need another approach to define human rights and their product. The approach should be at equal distance from cultural rights and a complicated system of citizenship. We should look for new forms of interaction between the I and the other where people end up in identifying themselves as citizens of a common political society that goes beyond their own national identities.

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We cannot notice these processes if we do not have the ability to reveal and analyse what is produced in order to go beyond prevailing concepts of human rights. Prevailing concepts of human rights present them as things that serve the interests of the present social order (the way by which most human rights11 scholars present them). Human rights in fact oppose reality.12 In certain situations, people end up considering themselves subjected to opposing currents that go beyond any known definition of a person’s identity. In this way, they resort to setting a new moral core for citizenship distinct from the component of rights by our social and legal order. 2. To which extent will postmodern societies (United States and Europe) orient themselves towards such a model? Are there any signs to justify such a demand? And if there are, are the currents divergent or similar? We can mention two new conclusions that could be considered as two positive points: a) Interactional citizenship:13 people are redefining citizenship by their exchanged interaction. On this level, what is humanistic and common is much more than what is not humanistic but particular. b) The concept of citizenship as a common relational interest:14 it is an interest that can only be produced and used by those who participate in it. Those can be others to each other at the beginning of the interaction yet they become a we the more they are guided by a common interest. By these conclusions, we can hope that a new horizon be reached where a new kind of citizenship based on inter-ethnic foundations be closer to achievement. We can call this citizenship ‘local universes’. If we have a look at what is happening in the course of exchanged interaction where people come to redefine citizenship, through their mutual understanding (the interaction of their souls and their actions), we could hope more that a new super-national citizenship be acknowledged and institutionalized. In the heart of a possible super-national citizenship, we cannot find more than a new distinction between the humanistic and non-humanistic that might help humans to create a new vision of what is common between all human beings or human rights above racial and ethnic differences. If any ethnic mobilization theory in a multicultural society15 is aimed at going beyond the old Marxist call, it needs such a distinction. If such distinctions were to be found among the roots of some of the

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racial social orders,16 it does only mean that we need distinctions and that there is no escape from them starting with the relation between the I and the other. 3. In conclusion, if we consider that citizenship is a form of dealing with the image of the other or a producer of the image of the other, we would become able to notice what only a few people see. We would be able to see a process by which interactional citizenship builds new political entities. Above all, effective citizenship does not mean taking in charge social burdens assigned to the public as a result of the lack of social security provided by the government. Such a behaviour should be called differently. Effective citizenship implies in fact that civil society has to invent a new kind of public space where socially and ethnically interactive citizenship is possible. If we consider citizenship more of a cultural, well-informed, well-oriented moral and less of a security or a guarantee, we could see again the relation between the I and the other as a human experience by which humans together build cities. Citizenship was in ancient times a group of tribes agreeing not to interfere in each other’s affairs. Modern citizenship brought with it more than that: a common universal world, but it did not succeed in bringing people together. It was a function of the state and not an achievement carried out intentionally by the civil society. Yet, today, cities can be cities grouping human beings, but that depends on how public relations are defined (the content of citizenship). It is important that tribes be not denied but transformed from inside by their own will, until they can express what being a human being is or in other words express being human beings.

Notes 1. Bryan S. Turner, Citizenship and Capitalism: The Debate over Reformism, Controversies in Sociology, 21 (London; Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1986), pp.134–6, and ‘Outline of a Theory of “Citizenship,” ’ Sociology, vol. 24, no. 2 (May 1990), pp.189–217. 2. Perhaps, I can call it interaction citizenship according to P. Colomy and J. D. Brown, ‘Citizenship: Rudiments of a Research Program,’ paper presented at The ASA Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, 11–15 August, 1990. 3. M. de Bernart, ‘Migrazioni, culture, diritti umani: Questioni preliminary ad una cittadinanza societaria,’ Studi Emigrazione, vol. 24, no. 107 (1992), pp.488–506. 4. T. H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class, and Other Essays (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1950).

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5. Bryan S. Turner, ‘Preface to the New Edition,’ in Karl Mannheim, Essays on the Sociology of Culture, Routledge Sociology Classics (London; New York: Routledge, 1992), p.xxii. 6. Ibid., p.xxii. 7. Ibid., p.xxiii. 8. V. Belohradsky, ‘Della dissimiglianza,’ Studi di Sociologia, vol. 28, no. 4 (1990), pp.415-34. 9. Jeffrey C. Alexander, ‘Core Solidarity, Ethnic Out-Groups and Social Differentiation,’ in Jeffrey C. Alexander and Paul Colomy, eds., Differentiation Theory and Social Change: Comparative and Historical Perspectives (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), chap. 8. 10. P. Donati, La Cittadinanza Societaria (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1993). 11. See C. Pollmann, ‘The Recourse to Human Rights in Order to Overcome Them,’ paper presented at The EGSDSC Annual Meeting, Padua, 3–6 September, 1992. 12. R. Van Swaaningen, ‘Human Rights as Contra-factiveness,’ paper presented at Ibid. 13. P. Colomy and J. D. Brown, ‘International Citizenship: Rudiments of a Research Program’. 14. J. Waldron, ‘Can Communal Goods Be Human Rights?,’ Archives européennes de sociologie, vol. 27 (1987), pp.296–322, and Donati, La Cittadinanza Societaria. 15. J. Rex, ‘Ethnic Mobilization in a Multicultural Society,’ Innovation, vol. 5, no. 3 (1992). 16. C. Guillaumin, ‘Une société en ordre, de quelques-unes des formes de l’idéologie raciste,’ Sociologie et société, vol. 24, no. 2 (1992), pp.13–24.

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CHAPTER 5

The Other in Arab Culture Tahar Labib

What is suggested here is a presentation of two scenes: a contemporary scene and a medieval scene. In the first, research exists about the ego, which might transform sometimes into its pursuit in the desolated field of ‘otherness’ where nothing is seen but the enemy. However, in the second, the field of ‘otherness’ is broad and diverse as a regular extension of the experience’s range and diversity. The aim of showing the divergence between the two scenes – which is intellectual more than temporal – lies in clarifying the relation between ‘the other’s’ image and its historical context. This image – which is variable – is first of all an expression of the condition of the society in which its culture is constructed. The comparison between the two scenes renders it difficult to accept what the contemporary perspective might claim about the strong origins it shares with Arab culture before its regression and recession as the society declined and lost its immunity. Here is a question regarding the factors of the transformation from the plural ‘otherness’ to the singular ‘otherness’. This is a slow transformation where ‘the other’ became ‘the West’, after being ‘diverse’ in the past all along the known world. In order to answer this question, we need a specific study, which refers the factors to what is beyond the ‘colonial shock’. However, this answer is necessary to identify the other flattened or metamorphosed face of the culture’s identity. Imagining the other is not a part of the constants of what could be called Arab mentality: it is a sociological product. In this sense, it might become a sociological issue.

First: the first scene If the motives lying behind the Arab trips to Europe during the 19th century were declared ones, such as in general (learning about the aspects of progress and some of its secrets so as to take it into consideration in the renaissance process), travellers – from Tahtawi’s Takhlis Al Ebriz fi

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Talkhis Paris to Tunisian Muhammad Belkhoja’s Selouk Al Ebriz in Masalek Paris (issued in 1900) – carried with them visions, opinions, values and desires which oriented, drew the attention or maybe stopped their discoveries. These were present to an extent that the ‘discovery’ often showed research about the ‘ego’ more than about ‘the other’, but research about the ego or its confirmation through the construction of the other’s images is not an issue related to one culture excluding others. Todorov’s remarks regarding ‘the discovery of America’ are persuasive in this context: there is no discovery. Christopher Columbus found America as he wanted it to be. He knew previously what he would discover. He wanted the Indians to be like him, i.e. to become Christians.1 Régis Debray affirmed this idea in his book on 1492, that America was known by heart ... the rest is cinema ... where ‘the essential in this issue is the trip’2 from the available knowledge to the convenient interpretation. It was necessary to prove what was lying in the imagination. There was a need to place ‘what was inspected’ on the margin of what was examined.3 Thereby, Columbus saw nothing but what he thought.4 The picture preceded the event: Just as in the legend circulated by Arab texts regarding the last king of Spain who found a house with twenty-four locks, which was the number of kings who preceded him, and insisted – unlike what his predecessors had done – on opening it, he found in the house pictures of Arab people on their horses with their turbans and arrows. The Arabs entered Spain in the same year when that house was opened.5

‘Columbus also, just as America itself, was born after his death, since the hero and the continent are consequently born to history’,6 so the most famous Arab travellers had, after their death, someone who extended or prolonged their trips in a way it embraced his imagination of the ego and the other. This is for example the case of Takhlis Al Ebriz fi Talkhis Paris for Rifaa’t Rafi’ Al-Tahtawi.7 Tahtawi’s trip, which took place in 1827 within an official scientific expedition, was considered by some of its presenters as ‘the first fruitful relation between the East and the West during the contemporary age’.8 At the same time, they also saw that from France’s picture we could perceive Egypt’s picture. Aren’t its characteristics manifested through stabilization, sorrows and wishes urging the writer’s pen? That is a picture of Egypt during its renaissance as taken by a young man of its good children.9

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Hassan Hanafi, who saw that the trips to the West increased during the period of the ‘civilized debate between the ego and the other’ and who considered Tahtawi’s book ‘as a research about the other’,10 noticed also that the objective isn’t in describing the other but in reading the ego through the other’s mirror. The aim doesn’t lie in reading Paris in particular but in reading Egypt in Europe’s mirror. The aim isn’t visiting Paris but returning to Egypt. The aim isn’t education but benefiting from knowledge ...11

In this sense, Hanafi concluded – from what he found – in Takhlis Al Ebriz fi Talkhis Paris that: 1. ‘The ego is a geographical framework of the other’ since there is no particular geography for Paris but one in comparison with the geography of Alexandria or Cairo which Tahtawi called Egypt.12 The timing in Paris refers to the timing in Cairo and some of its features refer to Cairo’s features. As for Marseilles, it refers to Alexandria ‘comparing the known to the unknown and the absent to the present’. 2. ‘The ego is a historical reference of the other’ because ‘the history is used to describe the ego and not the other. The other is nothing but an occasion to show the ego’.13 Hanafi notices that Tahtawi ‘places the ego in the AH path’ (that is, he dates it according to Hegira). He also criticizes Tahtawi’s explicator for mentioning the year AD which corresponds to his expatriation.14 3. The ego ‘Arabicizes’ the other. ‘The ego was able to Arabicize the other more than the other was able to give a French form to the ego,’15 because the ‘ego language appears as if it were the container of the other’s language’.16 There is a focus on the Arabic language when talking about the French language, the fact which has rendered the French language simply an occasion. The French language is the apparent subject while the Arabic language is the real subject.17 Due to the greatness of the Arabic tongue presented by Tahtawi, who had seized the French opportunity, ‘then the translation from French to Arabic gets the French language out of the darkness of infidelity towards the light of Islam’.18 Hanafi tries to specify a ‘critical’ distance between himself and Tahtawi who saw in his book Impression of an Azhar Scholar Who Came Under

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the Impact of Cultural Shock.19 He also criticizes him for being overwhelmed by the West and pleased with its challenges since Tahtawi considers the West as the perfect mirror through which the ego’s defects are reflected. It’s not a subject to be studied but rather the black face of the mirror which reflects nothing.20

Although it seemed to him that he was able to find it in the ego reference. The West being a subject for study was the aim of the ‘occidentalism’21 project. Hanafi wrote ‘an introduction’ about its ‘science’ (An Introduction to the Science of Occidentalism).22 What is important here is the fact that what Hanafi wrote regarding the sources, the beginning, the peak, the end of the beginning and the start of the end of the European consciousness ended in referring to the ego while talking about the destiny of the European consciousness.23 For this reason, it’s not useful by its content as much as it is useful by the sense of its tendency. What draws attention, in particular, is that the ‘debate of the ego and the other’ is in fact the act of recalling the other in order to ‘be liberated from him – by expulsion or imprisonment’. What Hanafi calls ‘the debate of the ego and the other’ is based on the presentation of two paths of the ego and the others in the form of two lines intersecting every 700 years, such that if the ego’s cycle was at the top, the other’s cycle would be at the base; and if the ego’s cycle was at the base, the other’s cycle would be at the top.24

While proceeding on purpose the use of Hanafi’s language, the other would rise seven centimetres above the Arab-Islamic ego and then would descend with the ascension of the ego at the birth of the Islamic civilization until ibn Khaldun. Afterwards, history imposed a switch of positions until the contemporary intersection, since the dawn of the modern renaissance, the end of the 20th century AD and the beginning of the 21st century AD with respect to the other, and the end of the 14th century AH and the beginning of the 15th century AH with respect to us.25

It is a crossroad that announces the ascension of the ego and the descent of the other for seven centuries to come ... This perception of the relation between the ego and the other – which is precisely the West – reveals, at the end, the imagination carried by the

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great desire to get rid of this other and seek revenge by mean of ‘occidentalism’, which transforms him from ego to subject: The shortness of age required that I first take out the snake from under my shirt then describe it accurately, examining its length, width, thickness, and colour. [Scientifically,] I would take all the Western philosophers and group them in a column where I would be the leader, guiding them, mobilizing them and reviewing their movements, selections and salutations as I wish and according to my strategies, plans and goals; I would even take the enemy battalions after besieging them, putting them into custody and placing each group in a dungeon and closing the doors of prison, consequently we would no more fear the enemies.26

The validity of this text is pitiful. The scene which describes the act of taking out the snake reminds us of the story ‘Me and Him’ from Alberto Moravia. And perhaps taking out the devil is more popular than taking out the snake in the contemporary Arab oration. Whether the extracted thing is a snake or a devil or ‘him’, the scene is that of alienation.27 The fact of considering Hassan Hanafi, in his commentary about Tahtawi or in his ‘occidentalism’, is a consideration of a phenomenon not its situation. It is not a mean to introduce his thought but rather a mean to clarify the persistence or, more accurately, the increase of the Arab focus on the ego in a ‘scientific’ oration whose subject is the other. It is an oration of a professor in philosophy with an unquestionable status and knowledge. From here came the specific signification of his image about the West and his attitude regarding it. Hanafi’s criticism regarding Tahtawi’s impressionality, generalization of judgements, irrelevancy, etc., did not concern the imagination of the relation between the ego and the other, and its encounters and differentiations and imaginations increased due to their interpretation and means of presentation before reaching their climax in the Introduction to Occidentalism. There was a great concern in extracting a proof to the ego in a trip which aimed at discovering the other. It is a concern leading to a contradiction of ‘occidentalism’ which renders otherness an empty one since at the end it is an otherness without other. The denial of the other is based on a picture built by its owner as was built the picture of the snake or devil. It is important to know that the subject of denial is the other’s picture. The picture is different from reality even though the conflict concerning it is based on the bets of reality. Therefore, justifications for the attitude toward the other – which are not here a question of study – might not find their source in the conscious in its reality as much as they might find it in the relation with its picture.28

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It is also important to know that the other’s picture refers to its builder’s reality and expresses him more than it refers to the reality of whose picture was constructed.29 It is true that the West has created its own East but it is also true that the East has created its own West: each from its own position and by its own means and mechanisms. According to Edward Said, if the invention of the other prevented, in both cases, his perception, then the answer to Orientalism would not be ... The prevalent characteristic of the Arab way of handling Orientalism is the rejection of the picture it has created regarding the Arab and Muslim and the search for contexts and motives. However, this rejection is not accompanied by any question related to the picture which the Arab created about the West and its relation with the Western reality. They complain about the ‘distortion’ of their picture by the West but they don’t notice that the West’s picture might not be less distorted in their imagination and speech. This might indicate that while they want to be the ego they continue their imagination and talk as if they are targeted objects.30

The criticism of Orientalism remains a pursuit of the ego. It is a purchase of the ego outside its own familiar spaces. This may happen by means of advanced cognitive tools and great intelligence, as is the case in Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’. However, the relation with the oriental text remains similar to the traveller’s relation with the country he goes to when he seeks himself. ‘Talkhis’ in the conclusion of ‘Takhlis’ is almost restricted in mentioning constants that Tahtawi, before his travel, marked on Egypt and the Arab culture: his trip made him return home. It is a ‘return’ expected from Tahtawi, not in order to stay away from the other, but to be close to him so as to justify adopting from him. It is the subject of his trip. Mentioning Egypt and the Arab culture aims at showing the similarity that lies behind the difference.31 However, Hanafi did not notice this fact and stuck to an ego denying the other. This continuous research about the ego in the field of otherness extends to different domains such as knowledge: what the Arab students achieved in Europe concerning the latter is insignificant with respect to what they produced about themselves in Europe. It is known that, at their countries, they are considered neither more specialists in Europe nor in America that determines their destiny and causes disasters. What they authored there about those countries remained less than that they authored about themselves. Edward Said, who revealed the relation between knowledge and power, saw that ‘the mere presence of a field like Orientalism which has no equivalent at the East gives

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an inspiration about the relative power of the East and the West’ 32 and that the cultural hegemony persists with the satisfaction of the Orientalists as continues the direct economic pressure from the United States. This calls us to think about, for example, finding institutions in the United States which study the Arab-Islamic East while there is not a single institution in the East for studying the United States, although this latter has the primary economic and political impact on the region.33

Ali-el-Kenz pointed out that what seemed to him strange in the attitudes of Arab sociologists living abroad was their continuous scientific concern about their societies without paying attention to the cases of the societies, where they reside until being forced to leave his country and be an immigrant in Europe and thus became more understanding.34 If we consider north-west Africa for example, and precisely its sociologies, we could say that the main issues that attracted some researchers to some aspects of Europe’s situations was that of immigrant workers. It is ‘exceptional’ in order to affirm the rule: the most important studied category in Europe is that of ‘citizens’ while considering them – until lately – as ‘returnees’. In return, institutions and researchers from Europe and America are spread in Arab countries, studying its phenomena (and essences), resorting, according to necessity, to agents in knowledge and guides in the field provided by the region. This research about the ego ‘here’ and ‘there’ has a paradox between not bearing the other’s perspective – unless being ‘positive’ – and ego’s vision through this perspective especially if it was negative. The other’s perspective is repelled by two cultures: the first one whose majesty cannot accept ... underestimated, the second one whose weakness cannot accept gloating over his misfortune. It is noticeable also that if the vision was from ‘the inside’, then all its angles would be possible including ‘the ego’s lashing’: there is today among what the Arabs say and write about themselves what could be considered as racial attacks against the Arab if said or written by others. There are many examples which need no research.35 The fact of not bearing the other’s vision – which is at the origin of not bearing criticism in general – prevented the inclusion of this vision in a critical speech about the ego even if it was through imagination in literary and artistic innovations. Montesquieu is frequently mentioned in saying that Ibn Khaldun preceded him in showing the impact of climate on people or to reject his thoughts about the East’s dictatorship. However, the principle constituting the basis of the ‘Persian letters’, which is the need of the other’s vision, is not mentioned. Montesquieu

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invited Ouzbak and Rica to travel from Isfahan to Paris – that is in an opposite direction to the travellers from whom he took his information about the East – and to consider their vision as a source to understand and criticize his society. He had a feeling that his society resembled that woman he used to know and who used to have a straight walk but limped when someone looked at her!36 However, the speech that cannot afford the West’s vision about the East cannot dispense with it, for it uses this vision as a source for much of its vision or inspiration. This was called by Abdullah Laroni ‘the other’s presence’. The three types of pronouns which were presented, each in his way, answered him about: Who are we? Who is the other? It seemed that Western thought was present in the element of the answer. Moreover, there was behind the vision of the religious man, the politician and the technician a Western class struggle: There exists behind each one of our new prophets a king who inspires him with his answers and appeals: Luther behind Mohammed Abdo, Montesquieu behind Lutfi al Said and Spencer behind Salamah Moussa.37

Therefore, each judgement regarding one of those is a judgement on one of the West’s periods. Unlike the contradicting dialectic, Laroni considers that the relation with the West, which is present in us, necessitates a vision from the intersection of the images exchanged between the West and us, since it is not enough for us to know that one situation needs dialectics. It is also inevitable to ask whether it is necessary to have a vision for this dialectic which renders it a curative mean more than a rational methodology. Are we doomed to live the dialectic as an ideology without the power to use it as a methodology? This is the problem.38 The Western other offers the Arab or Muslim the means for identifying and resisting the latter. In general he provides him with the references of the critical thought once it is critical. For this reason, despite the continuous rejection of the Orientalism vision, its impact motivates the ‘modern East to participate in his Orientalization’.39 There is no cognitive alternative for this situation until now. The paradox – or what seemed a paradox – in the intellectual position from the West is an expression of the coincidence between enmity and admiration at least since the Orientalist started to wonder about the secret of his retardation and the West’s progress. We say the West because the other is the West, precisely, in the contemporary Arab and Islamic speech. Larouni affirmed this perspective during the 1960s40 and we could verify it in the field today.41

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But how could the field of otherness be to that extent reduced to a singular other, which is the West? How did the other become the West? In order to answer this question, we present, with some details, a second scene, which is clearly different from the first by the diversity of the plural and by time.

Second: the second scene Orientalists were familiar, and familiarized others, with the use of comparison between Islam and the West (at a lesser degree between Islam and Europe). It is a comparison where one of its two sides preserves its religious content, while the other would be geography, society and politics. It is in many writings an explicit or implicit extension of the old comparison between ‘Islam’s country’ and ‘enemy’s country’, which supposes – despite the ‘conciliation’ and ‘engagement’ mediations – total rupture of relations and continuous enmity. What is important in this comparison within the limits of our subject is that it prevented, according to some people, the discovery of Christian Europe by the Muslims. This was mentioned, for example, by Bernard Louis in a book in which he wanted to explain precisely how Islam discovered Europe:42 there is an Islamic disregard and cognitive inattention regarding Europe faced by a European curiosity. If these two aspects were not present during the 18th century, it was 19th-century colonization which imposed on the Muslims their knowledge about Europe. Bernard Louis wondered about the secret behind the difference between Muslims and Christians in their positions regarding their knowledge about each other. He also indicated that the reason behind the Christian’s orientation towards the cognition of Islam was not the Christian tolerance, because Islam was much more tolerant for religious, historical and scientific reasons, and was not the necessity of learning from Islam, since this had been controvertible since the crusades. In fact, this cognitive tendency had with respect to Louis nothing but implicit justifications in his entire book, which is love of knowledge. As for Muslims, ‘their total refusal of the West’ results from the fact that ‘during the period when Islam was continuing its expansion and was still ready for reception, Europe had almost nothing to offer’. On the contrary, it was nurturing the Muslim’s arrogance with a scene of clear inferiority culture. It is sufficient for this culture, anyway, to be Christian so as to lose its quality.43 Afterwards, Islam declined, but, until recently, Muslims still considered their civilization as the most superior civilization in the world. Since the civilization here is in principal a religion, it’s not proper to

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compare Islamic population and others such as Japan in its relation to Europe: Europe, like the rest of the world, was first seen from a religious angle. It was not Western or European or white but Christian. The Middle East, contrary to the Far East, knew and despised Christianity.44

While presenting the contemporary scene, we mentioned that the domination of the speech focusing on the ego had prevented the development of scientific knowledge in the West, despite the attention paid to it and despite its presence in the conscious since the 19th century. It now needs classification that might take it out of the domain of doctrinal comparison, which is still present until today and which is nurturing some strategic visions about the ‘clash of civilizations’ especially after ‘it became familiar, since the end of the cold war, that the next world ideological conflict might take place between Islam and the West’.45 1. There is a general agreement that the Muslims of the Middle Ages did not care about knowing the West, compared with the Christian’s interest in the Islamic world. This interest remains limited: regardless of its non-innocence, analysed by Edward Said regarding Orientalism, the interest in the Islamic world wasn’t continuous during the medieval period because it was related to the necessities of the historical conditions including the internal conflicts.46 In general, the West was searching for Greek knowledge and not for Islam’s cognition in itself.47 It is the cognition to which had mingled the legendary that was requested by the Christian public and that had expressed, since the beginning of the 11th century, ‘the ignorance of the victorious imagination’.48 The renaissance itself – whose humanities are based on a combination of Christian doctrine and Greek heritage, a combination which denied the presence of the Arab-Islamic heritage in the European cognition – concluded pictures of enmity and disdain that had no cognitive basis, such as those formed by Petrarch about the Arabs and even about their bad poetry which he ignored. Among the best-known examples is the picture of the Prophet Mohammed until the 18th century.49 The Islamic concern, contrary to an identity explanation, was not a position taken regarding Christianity. Christianity was one of the cultures of the Arab-Islamic society, where Muslims coexisted with it as a conquering minority. It is, in fact, coexistence ‘for religious, historical, and practical reasons’. In spite of the responses to the Christians, the special relation between them and the Muslims is

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recognized in many writings. Despite his responses to Christians too, Al-Jahiz mentioned: the reasons for which Christianity became closer to the common people than the magi, more integral inside, more friendly and less disastrous, less infidel and less painful.50

Among the reasons he gave was the nearness of the Jews which caused enmity,51 whereas the Christians did nothing and had no deceit or intention of war because they were far from the place of origin and place of emigration of the Prophet (God’s blessing and peace upon him). This was the first reason why Muslims were firm with the Jews and more flexible with the Christians.52 Then among the Arab kings were some Christians such as ‘al Nuhman’s Christianity and Ghassan’s kings, which were famous in the Arab world and known by decent families’53; moreover, ‘Christianity was prevalent and dominant in the Arab world’ except for Mudhar.54 There is perhaps in the case of Byzantium what attenuates the intensity of the religious comparison. This borderline or fortified borderline region between East and West witnessed wars between the Muslims and the Greeks in indication – without any precise differentiation – the Byzantines and the Eastern Christians or Orthodox. These wars were not obstacles to active political, commercial and cultural relations. Hamilton Jeb for example had proved that these diverse relations went beyond the caliphate period, the enmity of the previous short period: The Arab considered the Romans as the enemy who was expelled by the conquerors out of Syria and Egypt and chased by the sea to Cyprus and Rhodes and then defeated and conquered in the first naval battle of the Arab fleet. As the Umayyad state was established, things started to change in a ‘critical manner’,55 and the Umayyads ‘officially’ continued their jihad duty, however the relation between the Umayyads and the Byzantines wasn’t in reality limited to mere national or religious enmity in any case, but was subjected to attitudes of inclination and disinclination which was more complicated than it seemed.56

Jeb mentioned many examples about what the Umayyads took from the Byzantines such as management, titles, achievements and customs, in addition to the art of building Mosques. This indicated that the relation of the religious and political enmity had not cancelled the pacific dealings and the admiration whose pictures were still present in many texts.57 It is

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well known that the Abbasids, who turned their cultural directions toward the East, formed an alliance with the ‘foreigners’ against the Byzantines and Umayyads in Andalusia. Each side had resorted to the other against an enemy from his religion. It is said that Haroon el Rachid, who had sent his famous letter to the ‘Roman’s dog’ Nakfour the First, refused the conditions of reconciliation which were accepted by the empiricist Irene. Charlemagne had sent a delegation to facilitate the means of making the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to spread the trade between the two countries, and to sip sciences from their resources in the East. Al Rachid welcomed these delegations and sent the keys of Jerusalem’s church to Charlemagne who became the protector of Christianity. They also exchanged gifts.58

During the 2nd Abbasid dynasty, the Byzantines formed an alliance with the Umayyads in Andalusia to confront the Abbasids. The alliances made during the crusades will prove, in critical context, to what extent the religious frontiers are movable and their overlaps are broad according to interests, by supporting each other in matters other than religion. This is what happened at that time in Syria which offered, according to Claude Cahen: a scene of religious indifference toward the political field and a scene of relations between Christian Byzantines and this or that Muslim prince against other Muslim princes.59

Claude Cahen and others showed60 the importance of trade relations in the crusades and the coexistence they had provided between Muslims and Christians; even ‘those involved in war are occupied by it while the people are in good health and the stronger wins,’ according to Ibn-Jubayr in his ‘journey’.61 In fact the silent collusion between the traders played an important role in mobilizing relations between Muslims and Christians since there was neither good will nor despite between the traders, which held the Ancient Greek and Romans towards the barbarians and the conquering Christians towards the Pagans.62

In general, and according to Andreas Michael who was interested in Islam as a civilization, Islam,

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whether in its space or in its relations with abroad survives, at the end, from exchange. It is important to affirm it. Its strength and weakness depends on this word.63

The issue then is not mainly a religious one but rather an issue of fabricated (complex) historical relations. What Maxim Rodinson said about the image of the Islamic world in the Christian imagination applied oppositely, for the Christian world – and not Christianity – was also considered by the Muslims as an ‘offensive ideological political structure, but it was also a different civilization and a foreign economic region’ that induced different reactions and relations.64 Through his integral vision and humanistic feelings, Braudel expressed to what extent was fabricated the integration relation with enmity or ‘constructive hatred’, since Islam is this opposite West with its double meaning, for it is, at the same time, competition, enmity and donation.65 •

If we exclude the religious factor, what is the reason behind the Muslim’s non-interest in the West? Hisham Gaet summarized the answer as follows: If classical Islam was not interested in the West, this is not because of the lack of its aim for knowledge but because it ignored and disregarded the West as it saw that no significant benefit could be drawn from it.66

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The West, which was disregarded by the Muslims, was nothing but a kind of the other in a field of otherness, which was broad and diverse during the period of the West’s civilizational extension. There were other regions and populations of greater importance with which Muslims had stronger relations and about which had more specific knowledge. Thus the ‘wonder’ about the Muslims’ disregard and even ignorance about the West during that period is a wonder whose source is the modern European centralization. The prevalent error, since the domination of the Western culture and since the West became, actually, a reference, is in giving no adequate importance to the indication of Western absence during periods when it was not present.

2. Muslims had no ‘Berbers’ according to the technical meaning in European history. Neither the land nor the race nor the religion, nor all of them had traced a cultural limit as that traced by the Greeks and Romans and materialized by the ‘Limas’ during the Roman era,

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against the ‘Berber’s invasion’; everyone behind the limit was considered as Berber, whether civilized people from the East such as the Persians or the Egyptians, or from Europe itself such as the Germans. This was before this characteristic gained the uncivilized meaning and then contained the ‘Barbaric’ or ‘inhumane’ meaning before entering the common sense. For this reason, all those who used this concept regarding the Arab culture found difficulty in giving it a precise historical content. Bernard Louis used this concept in a chapter title of one of his books without referring to it. He was satisfied by replacing it with a synonym used by the Muslims: what is not Islam, i.e. infidelity or Christianity.67 Later, he found in another book the word ‘infidel’ which he considered close to its meaning.68 Vincent Monteil committed a more obvious mistake when he translated the word ‘foreign’ into ‘Barbarian’ in some places of Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddima, even if he thought – necessarily – that he meant non-Arabs when he translated the title of the famous chapter ‘that most of the holders of knowledge are non-Arabs’.69 As for Aziz Al-Azmah, who wrote a useful book about the other’s picture in the Arab culture, his error of using the word ‘Barbarians’ was obvious in the book’s title itself: The Arab and the Barbarians: Muslims and the Other Civilizations. He replaced the word Barbarians with ‘wildness’ in the body of his text, considering it an advanced stage of ‘savagery’. Al-Azmah, who deduced the characteristics of wildness from the Arabic texts, concluded that these characteristics didn’t result from a theory about ‘wildness’ or from a theory about the Arab-Islamic civilization, that is it was not an internally or orderly well-organized knowledge but rather a number of characteristics considered by the Arab-Islamic civilization, like the other civilizations including the Greek, as signs and indications about ‘wildness’ and signs about the difference between wildness and civilization.70

What is important here – and contrary to what could be understood from Al-Azmah’s adoption of the principle of contradiction71 – is that neither the Arabism of the Arab nor the Islamism of the Muslim nor the limits of their political authority is a barrier between civilization and ‘Barbarism’ or ‘wildness’. In fact, ‘wildness’ in Al-Azmah’s text is ‘savagery’ in Ibn Khaldun’s text. The characteristics, which he had mentioned regarding the ‘total wildness’ such as nudity, anthropophagy and others were mentioned by Ibn Khaldun as ‘savagery’ in

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the ‘irregular regions’. Since the ‘savage nations’ face construction and not cultural entities, there exist ‘savage people in the Arab deserts’72 who are, according to Al-Tawhidi, ‘sociable despite their wildness’. There are people who are more savage than those living ‘beyond’ the limits of inspection or certainty for they ‘perhaps’ as ‘said’ about them eat each other.73 In fact, there is what Al-Azmah calls ‘the act of enclosing by the contrasts’ as all the cultures do, but the hierarchy is not borderline since what lies behind the border might be better than what is in front of it. Thus, the Arabic texts did not present a fixed cultural border between them and the ‘rest’ of the world ‘as the Greekness of the Greek or the Romanism of the Roman or the Christianity of the European Christian did in the Middle Ages texts’.74 3. The focus on the Koran and the sword in Arab-Islamic history, that is on the religion and state, often preserved the pictures of conquest and its relations and neglected the fundamental truth that the ‘cultural’ has a different historical rhythm for its elements do not react or harmonize, and its visions do not stop or integrate unless during a period longer than the events extending before and after it. For this reason, many historians prefer to speak about the civilization considering it as an outcome of historical accumulation, referring it to the 9th century regarding Arab-Islamic history.75 Hence, the otherness approach in the Arab culture must take into consideration the civilizational extensions of this culture before looking at its ‘horizontal’ relations with the other culture. It is important to consider this culture as an Oriental composition of the cultures of the populations influenced by it. Islam is neither alienation nor mere participation. It is an oriental communication. As considered by Braudel: Islam is the inheritor of the Far East in its cultures, economies, and ancient sciences. The heart of Islam is that restricted area between Mecca, Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad. It is said that Islam is the desert. This expression is beautiful and frequently repeated but it should also be said that: Islam is the Far East the fact which gives it a great civilizational heritage and consequently long centuries of history.76

Thus, there were different reactions to the Eastern and Western sources. Persian influence and even Indian were never viewed as ‘foreign’, as was the Greek influence.77 In any case, the Greek influence – despite its importance in sciences and philosophy – did not find a way to ‘intimate’ domains such as literature. What is weirder is the

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continuance of the idea that the enemy is never considered oriental even if he destroyed Baghdad! 78 The civilizational extension to historical pre-Islamic depths facilitated the recognition of the ‘majesty’ of ‘ancient’ nations that constituted, in the imaginations of the Arab culture, the system of human civilization whose essential core is mentioned in the texts: the Romans (indicating Byzantine and its subsidiaries; they might be called Greek), Persia, India, China, and the Arabs (whose people includes the Muslims). The Arab culture carried patterned positive pictures about these nations where circumstantial or partial references found in these texts had no effect on their stability. The fact of referring for example to AlJahiz (AD 868), Al-Tawhidi (AD 1010) and Said Al Andalusi (AD 1068) proves the constants of these patterned pictures, during two centuries, even if the sequences of the speech or the norms of classification differed. In preserving the expressions mostly used by those writers, the minimum in the Roman would be reflection and wisdom; in the Persian would be the king and the political arrangement; in the Indian science, arithmetic, and astrology; in the Chinese industry and drawing; and in the Arab the rhetoric. These patterned pictures are numerous and they become parallel or integrated with time. Among their aspects there exist some where Al-Tabri (AD 923) needed a discourse in order to attribute nine-tenths of jealousy to the Arabs, nine-tenths of dignity to the Romans, nine-tenths of the preservation to the Turks, nine-tenths of erotism to the Indians, nine-tenths of generosity to the Sudanese, nine-tenths of stinginess to the Persians, nine-tenths of timidity to the women, and the remaining tenth from every moral characteristic to the rest of the people in the world.79 This distribution is mentioned by Al-Nouari, in the 14th century, with some branching and modifications in the interest of the Arabs.80 These remarks were made in order to affirm the material aspect that strengthened the relation between the Arab culture during its period of expansion and other cultures (despite the marginalization of Western Europe which wouldn’t draw the attention except for the status of modern Europe). If we place the situations provided by the ArabIslamic society to live with the racial and cultural diversity – including the religious one – within a ‘typical’ civilizational system imagined by its culture, there was something which urged the adoption of the hypothesis of regular extension in looking at the other. This means that this vision was not created by Arab and/or Muslim ‘serenity’, but resulted from the ‘extension’ of what later became known to the writers such as the diversity of populations and their cultures during one century of Islamic expansion.

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These remarks were necessary as a framework to describe the second scene. It doesn’t need the addition of the indication to the multiplicity of the other’s pictures, for it had never been one picture and it doesn’t need the indication of its development for it is variable not just according to stages or historical moments but also in every stage and moment and according to the groups and the change of their status and obviously to other things. The research here is a research about ‘Matriset’ or great referential sets. At this level only, we could see that the otherness field in the Arab culture was built during the 9th century and its building was ‘saturated’ during the 10th century. In order to describe this stage in its larger features, let’s say that it extends from AlMassoudi and el Makdissi if some of the ‘applications’ of this construction were present, afterwards and from time to time, as it was present in Said al Andalusi’s writings during the 11th century and to a certain extent in al Shahristani’s writings in the following century, when the shock of the crusade opened a new stage and rebuilt the common pictures about the other. •

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The description of the scene of the 9th and 10th centuries doesn’t necessitate the review of the internal diversity covered by the chapters of the writings about the history of the Arab-Islamic society. It requires the focus, in particular, on those social and cultural distances known by the populations and tribes of the Koran’s nations, where we supposed that writers looked at the others and classified them through these distances or as their extension. The description of these distances and the hierarchy referring to it doesn’t need much time. There is the one who said that the foundation of the ‘Islamic state is a Quraysh pre-Islamic foundation’.81 The first tribal–political–economic distance appeared with the appearance of Islam and was used to take distance of renouncement. The first ‘other’ was not outside Islam but a separation from it. If the conquests were a means to spread Islam and to wage war against the infidel, then they were also a new context for the social movement: they were accompanied by immigration and their consequence such as the change of positions and relations, as well as the distribution of unfamiliar wealth: the gain first, as well as the tax and tribute and the possessions made available by the politics or the power of the conqueror. These are economic motives mentioned by the sources ‘with no pretended timidity’.82 These motives became stronger to an extent where the fear from the jihad’s transformation into trade became a used excuse to stop it, as happened at the time of Omar Ibn

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Abd el Aziz.83 But what is important here is that the relation with the other since the conquest was not a mere religious relation with an infidel other. Since the appearance of Islam, and with its rapid expansion, the Arab-Islamic society found at its heart non-Islamic cultures with the situation of the free non-Muslims enjoying Muslim protection, as a guarantee, indemnity and hope of professing Islam. The treatment was on that basis starting with the people of the book as Christians and Jews, then others such as the Sabis and the magi from Zaradacht’s followers and finally people from other confessions like the paganism and Hinduism. There are the non-Muslim jurists under Muslim rule but there exist also those social categories, which were forgotten by most of the quoted writings and texts. The need of those social categories induced the flexibility of the first Abbasid age, while the conditions of jealousy or fear from them caused different forms of severity as the difference between Omar Ibn Abd el Aziz, el Moutawakel and the Fatimide ruler, and the elaboration of strict tests where the climax of its late severity was expressed in the book Ahkam Ahl el Dimmah for Ibn Qayyim Aljuwzi. If we exclude the fact of disqualifying the free non-Muslims under Muslim rule from leading positions in the state, judiciary and army, then the discrimination, basically, is symbolically related to the appearance such as costumes, badges and riding mules and donkeys. It is possible to say that non Arab-Islamic researchers in social history have the tendency to affirm the benefit of the free non-Muslims under Muslim rule from the tolerance of the doctrine and the openness of the treatments in the Arab-Islamic society.84 In order to explain the way of dealing with the free non-Muslims under Muslim rule, it should be remembered that the Muslims were, for a long time, a minority in the countries they ruled. This is in addition to the Arabs. The majority of the populations of Syria, Iraq and Persia for example did not profess Islam until the 2nd and 3rd centuries AH.85 Thus, it was normal to see doctrinal tolerance with this majority and an openness in dealings required by the interests of the state and people. These interests determined social distances which were not necessarily those identified by Alma’thour or jurists. The Jews for example are closer than the Christians because they are few and they do not provoke fear. They are also workmen, money-changers and good agents. The Jews occupied, during the period of some Abassian caliphs, important posts in the state. In his response to the

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Christians, Al-Jahiz was forced to consider the preference of Christians to Jews as a mistake of the common people and explained the friendliness of Christians in the Koran in a way that excluded the Christians of his era.86 This took place when the Christians started to progress in knowledge, management and politics, and when their arguments with Muslims in front of the caliphs became familiar. The religious divergence didn’t prevent the social and sentimental convergence too: as Omar Bin Abed Al-Aziz’s severity regarding the free non-Muslims under Muslim rule didn’t prevent Christians during the first Abbasid dynasty from building a church for his Christian mother to pray, all the religious measures didn’t prevent Christianity in the first Abbasid dynasty from having ‘a power and strength enabling it to expand thus opening missionary centres in India and China’ starting from the land of Islam. This is considered ‘one of the most weird phenomena in Christianity during the caliph’s era’.87 Just as the religious distances and the ‘infidel’s’ pictures were in the land of Islam, the racial distances and the ‘foreigner’s’ pictures were also diverse. In general, the foreigner was a non-Arab, although he was in particular a Persian. However, the Arabism of the Arabs was marked by fanaticism where some had an impact on the constitution of authority and loyalties over the centuries, as was the case of the Arabs of the North and the South or the Adnanites and Qahtanites as two big sections. Ibn Khaldun sufficiently considered the fanaticism leading to supreme power. He also indicated that ‘the religious mission without fanaticism cannot occur’ – supporting his point of view with what was mentioned in the Hadith that ‘God does not send a prophet except to those who are invincible’ – and that fanaticism is composed of many group spirits where one is stronger than the others so as it overcomes and takes over them until they become part of it and consequently there would be a gathering and victory over people and states.88

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It is known that the history of the Arab-Islamic society was present in Ibn Khaldun’s mind. ‘The foreigner’ might be an ally of an Arab group spirit against another Arab group spirit. Such alliance had overthrown the Umayyads and established the Abbasid state, which had reorganized the status of group spirits in a way to balance and recognize them.89 The Arab blood lost its significance to an extent that there were no noble descendants except Asaffah, Al-Mahdi, and Al-Amin from the

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Abbasid caliphs, and the mothers of the rest were Barbarians, Persians, Greeks, Sicilians, Turks or Armenians.90 It is known that the Mawali attended high ranks in administration and politics which exposed them to misfortunes. In the domain of knowledge: it is weird that most of the educated people in the Islamic confession are foreigners and not Arabs who are not educated neither in religious sciences nor in intellectual sciences but rarely. And if one of them was an Arab in his origin, he was foreign in his language, education, and sheikhdom although the creed is Arabian and its messenger is in the Arab.91

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The other Al-Mawla – who is primarily loyal92 – was an active and activating mediator between group spirits or the Arab society minds and also between them and Islam as a religion for the conflict related to the power is a conflict between the Arabs even if they were a minority. Al-Mawali supported protestation movements such as the Shi’ites and the Mavericks. Some of them were more inflexible in their Islam than the Arabs were inflexible regarding non-Muslims. They also supported the Arab tribes to which they were loyal, while some of them were too attached to the Arabic language in the way that Al-Bayrouni preferred that his name be spelled in Arabic rather than be praised in the Persian language. The ‘regionalism’ which was best expressed – in the accurate Arabic language – by Sahl Ibn Haroun, who was put in charge of the management of the philosophy assembly and about which Al-Jahiz presented one of the famous responses, was principally a social demand to achieve equality between Muslims and to recognize the intellectual role of non-Arabs who transmitted their cognition about the Persians and the Greeks! Thus, those responses pointed out to their noble descent more than it underestimated it. If the Arabs had inherent contempt of some vocations and agriculture practised by Al-Mawali, they also had continuous respect for their writers, traders, and scientists.93 Thus, there is a double position expressed by Mouawya, from the beginning, regarding what Ibn Abed Rabbo narrated in his book Al Iqd Al Farid (The Unique Pendant): He said: I saw that these reds [that is the Mawali from the Persians and Greeks] multiplied ... as if I were looking at them leaping over the Arabs and the Power, so I thought of killing half of them and leaving the other half in order to build the market and the road ... then refrained from doing so.94

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This ‘leap’ caused the disappearance of the Arab from the political scene despite the persistence and the power of the caliphate which humiliated them. The correspondence between Arabism and Islam was disordered and the Arab-Islamic society had to embrace the races in order to preserve its unity and coherence, including the return of those who were defeated to teach their conquerors about their own genius and the return to their administrative, political and doctrinal traditions. The pictures of the Persian Mawali had the elements of the pictures of another population where some of its features started to be clear. Since the beginning of the troubles between Al-Amin and AlMa’mun, where Al Kharasaniyoun had intervened in getting rid of al-Amin, they became exposed to the violent retaliation of the Iraqis, the relation between the Arabs and Persians became unbalanced and the Abbasids were directed towards the Turkish Mamelukes. Moreover, as the state was transformed from an Arab state to an Arab-Iranian one, it started to turn into an Arab-Turkish state. Those Turks coming from ‘afar’ would drive the group spirits to form double pictures about them in comparison to the pictures of Al-Mawali, even while attributing to them virtues less than those of the Persians. They are according to Al-Jahiz the ‘non-Arab Bedouin’ who perfected war and participated in the army before attending higher ranks. The pictures of the ‘outsider’ are various pictures built through the distances determined by the paths of social and prestige movements in the Arab-Islamic society, where the conflict induced not only loyalties but also allowed interventions and leaderships. These pictures penetrate the limit of racial and religious differentiations and render the common external comparison between the Muslim and the infidel or between the Arab and non-Arab mere external ones. The internal ‘hierarchical multiplicity’ did not prevent the social integration between the religions as it didn’t prevent racial minorities from ruling other bigger races.95 This fact became a real problem only when the Muslims, were under the control of nonMuslims thus inducing questions and interpretations. This description of some distances of the internal ‘otherness’ helps in understanding the relativity of the Arab and Muslim imaginations about the ‘external’ otherness. This relativity, which signified an openness exceeding the absoluteness of norms and classification, constituted a cultural outcome of the multiplicity of the Arab-Islamic society in its golden age. It is difficult to find a racial, tribal, Arab or Islamic doctrinal affiliation which was not subjected to this relativity

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in all the texts which reached us. The subject is that the author of the text might attribute to others the judgements if he considered them otherwise or if he was searching for a cover to his thoughts.96 This relativity adopted in what is ‘internal’ also considered the subject of the nations and cultures mentioned by some great authors such as Al-Jahiz, and this is before the appearance of the travellers and geographers of the 10th century, especially the ‘explorers’ such as AlMassoudi, Ibn Hokal and Al-Makdissi. Those explorers inspected most of what they had described, but the inspection was often a construction and a coloration of pictures whose biggest features had been drawn previously. Since those features had been previously imagined, the search for the pleasure of exploration finds the constituent of construction and coloration in the anecdotes, prodigies and wonders. This applies in particular to the system of the ‘big’ nations whose constant features cannot eliminate some travellers’ detestation of a few characteristics of the populations of these nations. The basic principle upon which was built the relativity of the other’s view – whether internal or external – is that the qualities and vices are distributed among nations, for there exist no nation without both of them, including the nation of the Arabs and Muslims, which was weird in its contradictions according to Al-Tawhidi, and whose attitudes about big issues were conflicting even if it was a jihad for the sake of God.97 The regions and classes lived their Islam each in its way and from its position. The cleverness of Al-Jahiz helps too much in clarifying the mentioned possibility of withdrawing relativity from the inside to the outside and to the limits of the unknown. If we consider his text in the book titled ‘Turks virtues’ – as they became much stronger – it is based upon two things: the first which compares these virtues with other diverse virtues attributed to their possessors using as a justification the fact that if it were impossible to mention the virtues of the Turks without mentioning the defects of the other soldiers then it is more correct not to mention anyone and it is more firm to leave that book,98

the second which attends the generalization of virtues in all the world’s nations. Hence, Al Jahiz’s speech about the Turks enabled him to show the qualities of the Arabs, Kharasans, Al-Mawali, Albanawi, Alkharaji, Greeks, Chinese and Sasanians, while indicating the difference between Romans, Sicilians, Negroes, Ahbash, Kahtan and Adnan:

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Then he said that he found that every nation, century, generation, and descendant excelled in industries and were better than others in rhetoric or ethics or in establishing authority or in understanding war.99

For this reason, the virtues of the Turks are, in the end, nothing but the fact that they became in war similar to the Greeks in philosophy, the Chinese in industry, the Arabs in what was mentioned, and the Sasanians in authority and politics.100

Al-Jahiz added this remark which limited the returns of affiliation: Not all Turks are as we had described them, not all Greeks are philosophers, not all Chinese are smart, and not all Arabs are eminent poets but those qualities are more prevalent and perfect in them.101 •

We find that these concepts were mentioned – after a century and a half – by Abi Hayan Al-Tawhidi. After attributing Al-Tawhidi to Ibn Al-Muqaffa, ‘since he was inherent in Persians and deep-rooted in non-Arabs’, in defending the Arabs, he was known by his underestimation to others102 and after mentioning that ‘this issue, I mean the issue of preferring a nation to another one, is of the most essentials reflected on and rushed to by people’103 – he expressed his opinion clearly as follows: Every nation has its virtues and vices, every population has its advantages and disadvantages, and every community has perfection and negligence in its formation and dissolution. This means that good and evil, virtues and defaults are given to all creatures. The Persians were prominent in politics, ethics, limits and drawings; Romans were prominent in science and wisdom; Indians have intellect, reflection, humour, magic and patience; Turks in courage and intrepidity; Negroes in patience, hard work and joy; and Arabs were prominent in hospitality, loyalty, bravery, generosity, security, elocution and eloquence.104

Abu Hayan also added that: These virtues which are found in these famous nations are not present in each of their individuals but rather widespread among them. There are some individuals who don’t have any of these virtues but are rather characterized by their opposites that is there exist among the Persians some who are ignorant

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in politics, unmoral, and participants in rabbles and mobs, as there exist among the Arabs some who are coward, ignorant, reckless, stingy, and powerless. The same applies to the Indians, Romans, and others.105

After all, it is possible to imagine intertwinements and integrations that have no ethnic or religious limit. Ikhwan Al-Safa, who was a contemporary of Al-Tawhidi, conceived that the ‘entity’ of the ideal human being was the Persian relativity, the Arab religion, Hanafi’s ideology, the Iraqi ethics, the Hebrew information, the Christian method, Syrian asceticism, the Greek sciences, the Indian clairvoyance, the Sufi’s walking, the royal morals, and the Divine opinion and knowledge.106

It became a habit that classes and even individuals attribute to themselves or are attributed combining glory from its different cultural aspects. The people of Andalusia for example are – in addition to the Arabs’ glory – Indians in their excessive concern and love of sciences; Baghdadis in their cuteness, tidiness, morals, intelligence and thoughts; Nabatians in extracting water, practising cultivation and agriculture; Chinese in mastering professions and the rules of formal occupations; and Turkish in suffering from wars, treating its mechanisms and considering their missions.107 •

Reaching these ‘assortments’ would have been impossible had it not been for the absence of the Sharia’s limits in the structure of the social relations; had it not been broken through by transactions, immigration, loyalties, trade, delegations, intellectual movements, confessions, creeds; and had it not also disappeared in the pyramid of authority which witnessed addiction to alcohol, tearing up of the Koran, thus causing injustice and ordeals, so they were protected by fanaticism more than by religion in whose name they ruled. This facilitated and disclosed the classification of lands and peoples. It is a diverse classification as the variety of sites which give an impression that categorization takes place inside the nation before the outside. If we consider one example on the patterned dualisms, we find a frequent tendency in the texts that Iraqi characteristics range from eminence to hypocrisy, Egyptian from richness to humiliation, Syrian from relief to riots, and many others.108

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The expansion of the Islamic world and its diverse populations and cultures gave the impression that what deviated from it was an extension to what was known as a cognition which cannot be stopped but by the unknown. Muslims compared everything they reached with the phenomena and types of social and cultural distances they had known in their homelands and surroundings. Only the unknown remained a field of absolute divergence of an absolute otherness. For this reason, Al-Tawhidi saw that the travellers – despite their astonishment at the populations’ habits – seemed as if they were always travelling in spaces they knew as a cognition of ‘the remarkable to the unseen’. The first attempt to discover ‘the unknown’ was aimed at affirming the ‘known’. These attempts were carried out by the authority’s order to understand what was mentioned in the Koran: the caliph AlWathiq (AD 847) sent Salaman Aturjuman to the north-eastern regions of Asia to search for the location of the dykes of Yagog and Magog, then he sent Muhammad Bin Moussa Bin Shaker to the place – difficult to identify – where the seven sleepers of Ephesus used to sleep. Those who came after them learned from them, starting with Ibn Khordazaba who was contemporary with them. During the same period, the book Akhbar Al Sean wal Hind (News of China and India) (AD 851), whose author was anonymous, narrated in the language of the listening public the observations of the trader Suleiman Al-Sirafi and the frights from the sea and the wonders of the islands that have ‘behind them’ other islands whose inhabitants are cannibals. These wonders appeared in the lands of Sindibad when their trade boomed after the establishment of Baghdad and before the great geographers such as Ibn Hokal and Al-Makdissi transformed their destination from the sea to the land at the end of the 10th century. In AD 921, the caliph sent Al-Muktadar Ibn Fadlan to the Bulgarian king after the latter had professed Islam and had asked the caliph to send him someone who would teach him the principles of the new religion. If ‘there were in Ibn Fadlan’s letter and description of the trip to the lands of the Turks, Khazars, Russians, and Sicilians’ a detestation of some habits, he found that the Bulgarians had some characteristics of civilization, reign and decency. They were at the edge, in an intermediate position between the known and the unknown, for they were ‘the first population to hesitate between its reality and its attribution to the Turkish populations according to the Arab writers’.109 These attempts towards the border were followed by other initiatives which were more related to the Islamic world. No matter how long

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the travellers’ journeys seemed, they were principally rovers between the regions of the Islamic world, which was not separated by the borders that are present today. Al-Yakubi (AD 905), who was considered among the first to be interested in human geography, didn’t travel outside the ‘land of Islam.’ He introduced his Kitab Al-Buldan (Book of the Lands) with a description of his city of Baghdad ‘for it is the centre of the world and the navelwort’. There were also Al-Astakhri (AD 950) in his book Al-Masalik Wal Mamalek (Routes and Kingdom), and Ibn Howkal (AD 977) in Sourat Al-Ardh (Image of Earth). Although he said ‘I got through the whole face of earth, in length and width, and crossed the equator of the sun’, and even if AlMakdissi (AD 1000) said in Ahsan Al Takaseem Fi Ma’arifat Al Aqaleem (The Best Divisions in knowing Regions) ‘there is not a single region we haven’t entered and not the least reason we didn’t know’, this was not a claim as much as it was an expression of the picture of the distances between the Islamic world and the known world in the mind. Those who had considered the countries and populations neighbouring the Islamic world at their time – starting with Al-Massoudi (AD 956) in Mourouj Al-Thahab (The Meadows of Gold) and then AlIdrissi (AD 1166) who had accurately described some parts of Christian Europe in Nozhat Al Mushtaq (The Lover’s Journey) – while he was living in Sicilia – were eventually few. Anyway, what was prevalent among the geographer and non-geographer travellers was the fact of giving an impression that they were travelling without crossing borders, and that they were always able to find people with whom they became friendly even in the regions of infidelity where Muslims were few, and even if those Muslims were similar to those found by Salaman Aturjuman near Yagog and Magog and who had heard neither about the Commander of the Faithful nor about Iraq.110 This friendliness became an over-blessed situation in the longest trip where it seemed that sultans and good people were waiting for Ibn Batouta to honour him wherever he settled. It is inconceivable here to expose the details of the pictures drawn by the geographers and travellers.111 The aim is to clarify that those people had slightly violated the paradigm of internal otherness in the sense of comparing it with what they knew or imagined before travelling. It is known that the inspection was mixed with auditive reports and adoption of previous texts. It was a common phenomenon. However, it might be necessary to remember that the internal otherness – this is important – had really and possibly the advantages as well as the disadvantages of

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the world. Thus, we notice that Al-Makdissi, for example, described the characteristics of some provinces of Islam by giving them the following qualifications: humour, lowness, infidelity, immorality, prosperity and alienation, amongst others. Then he attributed to Al-Jahiz – as an answer to the characteristics of lands – that he saw the chivalry in Baghdad, eloquence in Koufa, vocations in Basra, trade in Egypt, perfidy in Al-Ray, unfriendliness in Nissapour, stinginess in AlMaru, boastfulness in Balakh, and crafts in Samarkand.

He added: ‘upon my life he said the truth’.112 •

The distribution of characteristics doesn’t deny the disadvantages of the Muslims or the advantages of others. The outcomes of the great nations whose pictures were previously patterned by the literature of the 9th century didn’t change despite the differences in religion. There existed almost stable defects wherever the infidelity was present, but those were defects about behaviour and living which frequently remind us of jurisprudence principles such as purity defects, adultery and the death rituals. These do not deny what could be found in many texts regarding the search for similarities between Muslims and others, whether in the appearances such as the convoys and costumes, the similarity with the Chinese, or whether it was in measuring the classification of the doctrine and the attitudes toward the prophets even if it contradicted the reality of the concerned religion as is the case with the Indians, or whether it was in the homogeneity between the kings for the Arab authors described Al-Bahlari as the king of the kings of India, as the caliph was the king of the kings of Islam, and as Al-Baghour was the king of the kings of China.113

As it is usual for a nation or a group to have the qualities of different nations, the ruler might combine the qualities of the great kings regardless of their places, times and religions. Thus Ibn Battuta, influenced by the reverence of the Sultan Ibn Anana, forgot the reverence of the Sultan of Iraq, his handsomeness that of the king of India, his high morals those of the king of Yemen, his courage that of the king of Turks, his forbearance that of the king of Romans, his religion that of the king of Turkestan, and his knowledge that of the king of Java.114

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There is a cultural ‘logbook’ of the world. A number of texts did attempt to create a state of surrender to it by non-Arabs.115 Other big nations, like China, India and the Romans, were inflicted, as happened to Muslim Arabs and Persians: attributing virtues and vices.

We have mentioned the case of Byzantine whose enmity had not denied the aspects of its admiration. As for China and India, the choice between them often favoured China despite the tied connection to India because it was influenced by the trade relations with them and by the situations of the Muslim minority present in both countries. Although China was intractable for conquerors, it had witnessed a blooming trade until the end of the 9th century when the Muslim community was exterminated in a canton between AD 878 and AD 879. Thus, the direct relations with China remained ruptured until the 11th century; however, the exchange between traders in a market situated halfway between them had never stopped.116 Aziz Al-Azmah considered that the rupture of direct connections with China and their regression with India transformed the stories written about them to wonders. This was also expressed by Al-Massoudi in combining the real and the superstitious and mentioned in Kitab Aja’ib Al-Hind (The Book of the Marvels of India) written around the year AD 950.117 The fact of imagining the great nations often forced geographers and others to ‘modify’ the characteristics of the provinces that they had determined, or at least to find exceptions in a province which didn’t suit this imagination. Al-Idrissi did that when he attributed to the people of Sind, India and China a common brown colour which distinguished them from the Blacks.118 This was similar to the reaction of Ibn Khaldun when he found that his moderate provinces excluded some Arabs, so he considered that he did not object this statement by the presence of Yemen, Hadhramaut, Ahkaf, Bilad Al-Hijaz, Al-Yamama and other places in the Arab peninsula in the 1st and 2nd province for the Arab peninsula was surrounded by the sea from three sides as we had mentioned. Its humidity had an effect on its air humidity and consequently it reduced the aridity and deviation caused by the heat and thus became a little bit moderate because of the sea humidity.119

The division according to provinces had a role in categorizing and transfering pictures despite the difference in interpreting them. According to this division, the moderate provinces included all of the nations of the civilizational ‘logbook’. The problem remained with the populations of the

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North and the South, where the conditions of the relations and dealings with them played a bigger and clearer role in constructing pictures about them. If we are satisfied by the fully developed stage of division, we realize that, despite the long period, the distribution continues with respect to Ibn Khaldun according to moderation and deviation and in conformity with big imaginations of the nations and populations until his epoch: the three intermediate provinces – which are the 4th, then the 3rd and 5th – are ‘characterized by moderation and their populations are more moderate in their bodies, colours, morals, religions, and conditions’.120 For this reason, ‘they had prophecies, confessions, states, Sharia’s, sciences, countries, lands, buildings, cultivation, crafts, and other moderate conditions.’121 The most important nations are those that we had always seen at the same rank as the Arabs, Persians, Sind, Indians and Chinese, in addition to – due to family relationships – Roman, Greek and other nations, or some of them such as foreigners and Franks. This is an ‘openness’ which placed it in a middle position. As for the provinces that are far from moderation or ‘deviated’, their inhabitants are close to ‘wildness’ in their livings and dealings. Among them in the North are various populations such as Turks, Sicilians and many foreigners – and those beyond them – in addition to Yagog and Magog.122 However, in the South, there exist populations from Sudan, some who were known and others – beyond this – were unknown. What is known from the wildness of the North and the South is subject to the attraction of moderation, which brings closer some of their populations to those closer to them in moderation like the populations of Al-Habasha neighbours of Yemenites and Christians before and after Islam; like the populations of Mali, Koko and Tekror neighbours of the lands of Al-Maghreb, who became Muslims from the year 107 until present; and like those who confessed Christianity from the nations of Sicilians and Turks from the North and others from the populations of these deviated provinces in the South and the North.123

This geographical flexibility was imposed by the history’s flexibility a few centuries ago. The Turks, Sicilians and Sudanese are, primarily, the principle subject of slavery, thus it was necessary to differentiate between them and their masters. However, some categories had social and political movements, a fact which changed its positions and consequently modified its pictures. Most of the servants in the palace of the caliphs were slaves brought from non-Muslim populations such as Negroes, Turks, Greeks, Slavs, Armenians and Barbarians, and among them also boys, eunuchs

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and female slaves who were taken as singers, dancers and servants. Some of them were privileged and some female slaves had a big influence on their masters.124 Al-Jahiz pictured some of them in the book Kitab Mafaker Al Jawari Wal Ghilman (The Book of Pride of the Women Slaves and Young Men), in the Book of Qiyan (Ornaments [of Women]) and in other books too. The slaves were at the bottom of the social pyramid, which was why their populations were negatively considered, but the presence of a few categories enjoying some influence as well as the fact of dealing with minorities whose origins were from these populations rendered the pictures different and contradictory. Ibn Al-Mokafa considered that the Sudanese were still ‘careless animals’; Al-Jahiz designated for them a book Fakhr al-Sudan Ala AlBidan (The Pride of Blacks on Whites). Others followed Al-Jahiz in showing the virtues of the Sudanese, such as their favours on Islam. If the Sudanese were divergent categories according to geography and construction stages, it is noticeable that the racial aspect in the pictures of the Blacks gave their categorization some rigidity and rendered them as the most resistant to modification over the centuries. As for the Turks, their status and pictures had enormously changed: the warning against the Turks started since the epoch of the Prophet where the Arabs had no acquaintance with them.125 The Turks, who were still considered by Ibn Al-Mokafa ‘predatory animals’, were shown by Al-Jahiz as a big nation, thus he allocated for them Kitab Manaqeb Al Turk (The Book of Good Traits of the Turks) because they arrived as soldiers, then became leaders and then started to interfere in appointing and discharging caliphs. It is possible to say that the Turks were the most eminent people who represented the dualism of the picture in the field of otherness: they considered that the limits are movable, they are strange and familiar, their contradictions are clear, some are Muslims while others are non-Muslims, they are in-between temporarily.126 Geographers started to describe the world and its provinces being influenced by the Greek heritage. Then they described non-Islamic populations, thus meeting the doctrinal and political–administrative needs as well as the needs of the travellers. Afterwards, with the beginning of the 10th century, they moved back toward the ‘paths’ in the Islamic world.127 In parallel, as from Al-Jahiz, there existed an intellectual and literary movement which mentioned the nations and populations in a civilized system of the world. This synchronism between ebb and flow moved the boundaries and created a merge between the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’. Thus, the regions bordering Islam seemed regions of interlock or penetration, where their movable boundaries were not clear except from the West where lay

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unconquerable Constantine and ‘regions beyond it’. The ‘suburbs of Islam’ were, according to us, broader than they seemed to André Miquel. And if it was geographically narrow it was conceptually broad. Contrary to what he saw, there was no sudden movement in simply leaving the lands of Islam.128 If the movement had resulted from the wonders, the latter were frequently present at the beginning of the trip: at the departure from Siraf if it were by sea. It was not a travel in the known but an imagined travel in the unknown. The picture of the populations of the provinces changes as much as they enter the field of the known and as much as they constitute a side in dealing with it. Thus it is possible to say that the absolute otherness, which didn’t accept relativity, is the otherness of the unknown. Anyone who looks closely at the texts notices that the populations, described as inhumane in their wildness and thus absolutely diverse – such as those populations whose inhabitants eat each other, the maximum degree of ‘wildness’ in the texts – are anonymous populations in front of which travellers stopped and mentioned that there existed some populations having this picture ‘beyond’ the places they had reached, or next to them or at that distance from them or according to the information got. Ibn Khaldun himself didn’t disagree with this idea since after he talked about some Sudanese infidels who were branded on their faces and temples and brought by the traders to be sold in Morocco, he said: There is no significant civilization beyond them in the South but people who are closer to animals than humans, living in deserts and caves and eating uncooked herbs and beans and maybe eating each other and they are not considered humans.129

Before Ibn Khaldun, Al-Jahiz reported that ‘the end of civilization is in Sudan’.130 These populations situated ‘beyond’ civilization are not different in their pictures from the Wakwak: who was said to be composed of one thousand six hundred islands and was given this name because it had a fruit similar to the picture of women hung by their hair on the trees. When these fruits are ripened we can hear the wakwak sound.131

And perhaps the most accurate similarity lies between it and Yagog and Magog, where a description is given of the trip to those places and to the barrier which prevents them from leaving or devastating the earth. Then,

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there is an accurate description of the barrier: where Yagog and Magog are located and they are of two kinds: the Yajouj are longer than Majouj where one of them is between, more or less than one and one and a half cubit.132

The similarity doesn’t lie only in ignoring what was described ‘beyond’ the barrier but also in fearing it. What lies beyond the construction of the barrier, what is absolutely different and totally offensive, is the unknown. Here, the ‘other’ is abstract and seems to be from the infinite – like darkness – or from the invisible.133 Being as such, all deductions are possible: as if it was time! Since the culture which imagined it was a stable and powerful culture, it had conceived it far and not dangerous in place and time. There is in this perception an act of concealing or overstepping the direct enemy of the fortified borderline cities. If the exit of Yagog and Magog was postponed to the end of time, the exit of the Europeans from beyond the Constantine ‘barrier’ was unexpected and non-postponable.

Third: the other becomes the west The scene which we have described excluded western and northern Europe, which were described by few Muslims,134 although they were interested in Far Eastern regions such as India and China or in African regions. This carelessness didn’t result from the caution of visiting or passing by the countries of the infidel – a late precaution – but resulted from the unwillingness of the Christian society, at that time, to receive Muslims and the absence of Islamic communities in addition to the common belief that there is nothing to learn. This fact had not denied the presence of intermediaries between the two societies.135 Anyway, the information left by the Muslims of the Middle Ages about this ‘West’ were insufficient to continue recalling the hypothesis of the typical extension we had adopted in other regions. When comparing the two scenes: the scene of the 9th and 10th century – remembering Al-Jahiz and Al-Tawhidi – and the contemporary scene – the scene of extracting the devil or snake – there is no difficulty in inspecting the difference between them. In spite of what some might consider as communication between them, the rupture of relatives is obvious. This means that the affiliation of the contemporary scene to Arab cultural origins is not proved unless it was an affiliation to the periods of intellectual regression and to the shaking of the culture of self-confidence. It is precisely post cruciferous affiliation.

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Many wrote about the events, goals and results of the crusades. The opinions were diverse, especially about the importance and limits of fencing which was its sequence. There are at least two reasons for considering the crusades: the first is that the crusades constituted a historical turning point in the relations between the Islamic East and the West; the second is that the collective memory continued to today, recalling crises and confrontations as a reference to the Western enmity and to the possibilities of resisting it at the same time. There is no doubt that both sides are excessive in using the crusades to support its exceptional historical circumstances. This excess has often deviated off-track to attach to the crusades old interactions between the East and the West since the wars of Troy and Persia on the one hand and had written in shorthand the diverse internal factors which caused it on the other hand. From the angle which concerns us, it has often given the impression that the formation of the pictures exchanged between the Muslims of the East and the Christians of the West belonged exclusively and precisely to the crusade period. This idea needs to be reconsidered because the crusades, although they had drawn new features of the enemy, had connected also parts of imagined pictures and diverse scattered prejudgements that it had intensified and maintained the essence to strengthen the enmity of the enemy. Since the initiative of direction towards the other was clear as for the West since the 11th century during which the visits to the Holy Land were numerous and regular, it is most likely that the pictures of the Muslim in Christian Europe started to be crystallized before the picture of the Western Christian became crystallized in the minds of the Muslims. It is important that what gave the pictures about Islam were not the crusades as much as it was the ideological unity of the Latino-Christian the world which was slowly formed and had led, at one time, to the careful examination of the enemy’s face and to the orientation of the capacities towards the crusades.136

It is known that the advance of the cross-bearing crusades was preceded by the ‘recovery’ of Sicilia and Toledo. The crusades’ turning point – in the limits of what is important about it here – lies in the appearance of the picture of the Western conqueror. The West – whose nomination is modern – appeared for the first time as a real danger which could overpower the Muslims in their land. If the Islamic

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imagination attributed to the Christian imagination its prediction of Spain’s conquest, it seemed that the Western occupation was not imagined despite the bad conditions including the political divisions and the military weakness in the regions of the advance of the crusades. As for recalling the memory of the Crusaders, the political and religious speech sometimes gave the impression that the Crusades are still continuing in different forms. Amin Maalouf concluded his book Crusaders as seen by Arabs with this remark: The Arab world, which admired and feared the Europeans, knew them as Barbarians and conquered them but later those Europeans controlled the world, don’t consider the Crusades a mere episode of the past. We are often surprised to find to what extent the attitudes of the Arabs and Muslims toward the West remained, in general, influenced by the events that were supposed to end seven centuries ago.137 [Nevertheless] there is no doubt that the split between the two worlds is due to the Crusades which are still considered by the Arabs as extortion.138

If we refer for example and not exclusively to what was written about the Gulf War, we find among the remembered events, historical or mythical personalities, protests about the presence of non-Muslims – from the allied countries – in the land of Islam and the legitimacy of asking for their assistance, a dominant presence of the crusades episode from which this war took the designation of the armies, battles, parties and avarice, including the use of the word European to designate foreign forces.139 This had incited Faraj Foda – who had paid the price of opposing some contents of the memory – to say: Do not hold the slogan of the Crusades without awareness or reflection for none of the coalition forces came with an intention of hitting Islam or Muslims.140

The crusades strengthened the intellectual and jurisprudential regressions that were present at the beginning and added to it a retreat towards the cultural ego as a matter of defending it. Thus, while the field of otherness started to be open in front of the West, its field started to diminish in the Arab culture and to transform into a sharp angle – with the concerned – directed towards an other who had reduced the familiar plural into the singular new enmity. While some of the pictures and compositions of the Western text, since the 13th century, had praised some virtues of Salaheddine Al-Ayoubi (Saladin), and while Dante, at the beginning of the

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14th century, used to exclude Al-Ayoubi, Avicenna and Ibn Rushd from the hell of the Divine Comedy and place them within the limits of his paradise, the pictures and compositions of the Arab text were becoming inflexible in the reactions of the conquered who didn’t assimilate his defeat. The orientalist Francesco Gabrielli indicated, in his presentation of the Arab texts about the crusaders, that the historians – and most of them from the 12th and 13th centuries – had reported the events in a general history for the Islamic world and had described the Muslims and their leaders more than they had described the crusaders. They showed no interest in the organization of European countries or in their economic and social lives and cultures. They registered, in a picture which we don’t know whether it is satisfaction or despise, some cases where the superiority of the culture and the Islamic traditions had great influence on the enemy’s impression.141

However, this did not underestimate what they described as relations of coexistence, coalition and friendship resulting from crusades. This adds to the picture some dualism between enmity and admiration, even if the crusaders were still considered ‘beasts having the qualities of courage and fight only’ according to Osama bin Marqaz who was contemporary with them. This dualism will be deepened later by the stages of colonization and renaissance. However, the culture which started to internally retract and to shake in front of the external danger seemed to give pictures about the world and the other which are narrower and more patterned than they used to be. The pictures of the world as a cultural extension decreased. The boundaries started to appear and get closer while the ‘unknown’ started to lose its unlimited extension. The strictness appeared, internally, in the ‘provisions of the free non-Muslims enjoying Muslim protection’ (AhlDhimma), as appeared the cultural boundaries with the ‘infidel’ which were not seen. Ibn Jabir (AD 1217) who inspected the relations between Muslims and crusaders and wondered at some of the Christians’ virtues in coexisting with Muslims, saw that the human being ‘doesn’t obtain forgiveness from God if he resides in a town of the infidel’s countries unless he crosses it’ and asked for ‘caution, caution from entering their countries’.142 Al-Omari (AD 1347) in Masalik Al-Absar in Mamalik Al-Amsar (The Sights Paths in Monarchies of Lands) deduced the same as ‘what had reached the king of this nation and happened by the words of Islam on the blessed people’. Although he wished to live longer so as to attach to his book a part entitled ‘kingdoms of the infidel’, Al-Omari added:

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I didn’t mention in this book their kingdoms – the extension of their lands – but accidentally and I didn’t write from its details but sentences: so as to provide information and so that I can enjoy the glamour of lights and don’t mix the blackness of the night with the whiteness of the day. And perhaps I mentioned a place situated near the lands of infidelity. I did so for the sake of neighbourhood and I hope that it could be considered as such.143

This introversion is also found in Ibn Batuta despite his long journey and the good reception he got for he could stay at home avoiding scenes of infidelity. In front of the introversion of the world, the people’s imagination was stimulated, not as it was previously motivated by the wonders of the countries, but to break through space and time in order to recall from it and by it glories and personalities he had denied their disappearance. If Antara Bin Shaddad had ‘confessed Islam’ and had taken a Roman wife ‘whom he had married in greater Rome when the king Caesar had sent him to the European lands’ where he killed all those he had killed;144 Al-Sobki (AD 1370) prohibited the reproduction of his biography in the prohibited texts that do not benefit the religion.145 This had not prevented the circulation of the biographies of Antara, Seif bin Yazin, Alhilaliyya, Zat Alhimma, Bibars and others. What followed up to the 19th century needed specific research. The elaboration of these issues might affect the clarity of the comparison between the two scenes that have been focused on. In general, it is possible to say that this long stage with its different episodes didn’t have what could give back the vision its extension and relativity and could list the pictures of the other. After the shock of occupation under the crusades, the Muslims suffered from the humiliation of the expulsion from Andalusia and entered the stage of elegizing in which ‘nothing is perfect’ and ‘who is delighted once is displeased many times’ according to Abi Albak’aa AlRandi. The Moriscos found themselves having the status of free non-Muslims under Muslim rule and resorted to means for defending the cultural ego. They invented ‘A’ajamiah’ as a Spanish language written in Arabic so that at least ‘the Arabic letter would be the barrier between the ego and the other’.146 This reversed situation raised a known debate in the juristic quarters about the Muslims’ provisions in the non-Muslim countries. Some writings attribute the success of the Turkish expansion during the 15th century and some of its victories until the 18th century to the morale regained by Muslims, while they attribute its regression to the total loss of hope. Although it might be true, it is insignificant in the level of the Arab imaginations about the ego and the West. These imaginations were

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distinguished from the ‘Islamic’ vision by some political and cultural characteristics and few relations with Europe. This is regardless of the Arab position from the Turks, which was held later by nationalistic orientations and movements. The depth of colonization is the dualism of its picture: the picture of the advancing enemy. It is almost a fixed dualism since the renaissance and until today even if one of its wings had declined in crises and confrontations. The concept of historic retardation appeared and thus the Arab became between two diverging others: the traditional other and the Western other. Whatever was the reason behind recalling or concealing the past, the picture of the West is obvious and inevitable in all cases even if the reason is to destroy it. It is unquestionable that this general description needs classifications and many exceptions. Not all trips are similar to Tahtawi’s147 trip and the West is not always the West described by Hassan Hanafi. It has various pictures in the contemporary Arab oration and some of it needs a specific approach, as that mentioned in Arab narrations whose events take place in Paris or in ‘the season of emigration to the North’ or in ‘Vienna 60’. ‘The future of the culture in Egypt’ for Taha Hussein like some other writings of intellectuals and politicians in the Maghreb opposed this description. The Gulf War was a test of the farthest and hardest Arab divergences where the ‘ego and the other’ appeared in an unfamiliar picture. This war attributed to the West the vices accumulated since the Crusades as it had attributed to it the unprecedented virtues in the Arab history. According to the events, the ‘pure’ – national and religious – ideologies had to be represented in its attribution scene.148 Anyway, this war had negated Kepling’s statement that the West is west and the East is east and they will never meet.149 As for Israel, who transformed the boundaries with the Arabs to confrontation lines, its ‘peace’ took a new pattern from the orphans of the enemy. The two patterns of speech, which were exposed, are two prevalent typical patterns each in its time. The possible aspects of comparison are numerous. But the angle from which they were seen was the angle of otherness in its extension and narrowness. It became clear that the focus on the West, as an other enemy, was due to the conditions and factors of internal regression and external danger in a more intensified picture since the 11th century. Before, the field of otherness was wide, diverse and subject to the relativity of difference. The picture of the other referred in both cases to the reality upon which it was built: when the society was strong and its culture was extending the other was neither a problem nor a ‘hell’. When the society lost its strength and immunity and its culture shackled and retracted as a self-defence, the

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other, which is threatening it, becomes the sole enemy. If this vision had no difficulty in finding explanations or justifications, it faced a big difficulty in finding origins and examples in the advanced Arab intellectual heritage. From this point of view, the non-historical statements about the structure of the Arab mentality need to be seriously reconsidered. The two models, which are divergent temporally and intellectually – which is more important – belong to this mentality in its relation with history. This could mean – supposedly – that an Arab society, having strength and immunity while being diverse with the possibility of freely expressing it, might let loose its fantasy and widen the field of otherness in this culture so as to embrace others, not only the West and the enemy.

Notes 1. Tzvetan Todorov, La Conquête de l’Amérique, la Question de l’autre (Paris: Seuil, 1982). 2. Régis Debray, Christophe Colomb: Le visiteur de l’aube, suivi des: Traités de Tordesillas, trans. Bernard Lesfargues; et présentés par Bartolomé Bennassar, voies du sud; 2, 2éme éd (Paris: La Différence, 1991), p.7. 3. op. cit., p.11. 4. op. cit., p.13. 5. Abu Al-Qasim ‘Ubaydullah bin Ahmad bin Khirdadhibah, Al-Masalik wa AlMamalik and Ahmad bin ‘Umar bin Rista, Al-’Alaqa Al-Nafsiyya, cited from: Muhammad Al-Haj Sadiq, Wasf Al-Maghrib wa Awruppa fi Al-Qarn Al-Thalith li AlHijra (Algeria, 1949), pp.28, 64. 6. Debray, Ibid., p.23. 7. Rifa’a Rafi’ Al-Tahtawi, Takhlis Al-Ibriz fi Talkis Bariz (Cairo, Al-Hay’a AlMisriyya Al-’Amma li Al-Kitab, 1993). 8. Rifa’a Rafi’ Al-Tahtawi, Takhlis Al-Ibriz fi Talkis Bariz, Introduction by Mahdi’Allam, ’Annu Luqa and Ahmad Ahmad Badawi (n.p., 1958) p.7. 9. See: ‘Al-Taqdim’ in op. cit., p.9. 10. Hasan Hanafi, ‘Jadal Al-’Ana Wa Al-’Akhar: A study on Takhlis Al-Ibriz by AlTahtawi’. A paper presented to the International Symposium organised by the Arab Society on Sociology in Al-Hammamat, Tunis from 29–31 March 1993, Al-’Arab, year 41, No. 12 (December 1993), p.40. 11. op. cit., p.41. 12. op. cit., p.42. 13. op. cit., p.44. 14. op. cit., p.44. Hanafi comments by saying: ‘Tahtawy got out of Egypt on the 8th of Shaban (Higra) 1240, that was 1826’. 15. op. cit., p.48. 16. op. cit., p.48. 17. op. cit., p.48. 18. op. cit., p.49. 19. op. cit., p.53. 20. op. cit., p.54. 21. It should be noted here that the Arabic word Isteghrab has a dual translation: Occidentalism and/or wonderment.

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22. Hasan Hanafi, Muqaddima fi ‘ilm Al-’istighrab, Al-Turath wa Al-Tajdid. Mawqifuna min Al-Turath Al-Gharbi (Cairo: Al-Dar Al-Fanniyya li Al-Nashr wa AlTawzi’, 1991). 23. op. cit., p.788. ‘This time, under pressure of concern of a short life span I was writing this theoretical account on the second front (our attitude toward Western heritage). It came unintentionally combining theory and practice simultaneously, but it was closer to practice than to theory’. 24. op. cit., pp.706–7. 25. op. cit., p.706. 26. op. cit., p.787. 27. Fu’ad Zakariyya, ‘Nahnu wa Al-Gharb’, Majallat Al-Tabyin (Algeria) No. 5 (1992), p.28. 28. This relation to the image or the shade is expressed in a folklore saying in the Tunisian south: ‘If you don’t know what to do with the Jew, just stamp on his shade’. 29. See: Tzvetan Todorov, Nous et les autres: La Réflexion française sur la diversité humaine (Paris: Seuil, 1989), p.32. 30. Edward Said, L’Orientalisme: L’Orient créé par l’occident, traduit par Catherine Malamoud (Paris: Seuil, 1978; 1980), p.353. 31. [Arabic removed, but no translation provided] 32. Said, Ibid., p.234. 33. op.cit., p.349. Edward Said elaborated on this idea in the interview published in: MARS (Institut du monde arab, Paris, no. 4, 1994). 34. Ali El-Kenz, ‘Réflexion autour d’une experience collective,’ a paper presented to the Regional Seminar of the Arab Assciation of Sociology, on ‘The Heritage and Future of Social Sciences’, Hammamet, Tunisia, 16–18 May 1997. 35. For example, by mere chance, this statement made by a prominent Arab writer: ‘Arabs in reality are a people who are good only in boasting words.’ 36. Charles Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, Lettres persanes, ed. Jean Starobinski (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), p.47. Von Grunebaum considered Hadith Issa Ibn Hisham Aw Fatraton min al Zaman [Talk by Issa Ibn Hisham, or a Period of Time] (published 1906), as far as he knew, the first Arabic book to draw cultural psychological features of the East/West opposition. Gustave Edmund Von Grunebaum, L’Identité culturelle de l’Islam, trans. Roger Stuvéras; Preface by Jacques Berque, bibliothéque des histories (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), p.163. 37. Charles Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, Lettres persanes édition etablie et presentée par Jean Starobinski (Paris: Gallimond, 1973) p.47. 38. op. cit., p.164. 39. Said, L’Orientalisme: L’Orient créé par l’occident, p.350. 40. After being called either Christianity or Europe for a long time, it now carries a general but a precise name, that is the West. 41. Michael Suleiman, Tunisia and the World: The Attitude of Tunisian Youth Toward Other Countries. Al-Allam, ‘Mawqif Al-Shabab Al-Tunisi min Al-Buldan Al’Ukhra’, Al-Mustaqbal Al-’arabi (The Arab Future), No. 220 (June 1997). 42. Bernard Lewis, Comment l’Islam a découvert l’Europe, trans. Annick Pélissier (Paris: Gallimard, 1984). 43. op. cit., p.286. 44. op. cit., p.288. 45. Graham E Fuller and Ian O Lesser, Al-Islam wa Al-Gharb bayna Al-Ta’awun wa Al-Muwajaha, trans. Shawqi Jalal (Cairo, Markaz Al-’ahram li Al-Tarjama wa AlNashr, 1997), p.11.

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46. Maxime Rodinson, La Fascination de l’Islam, petite collection Maspéro; 243 (Paris: F. Maspéro, 1980), p.50. 47. André Miquel, L’Islam et sa civilization: VII –XXe siècle, maps by Serge Bonin, collection destines du mond (Paris: Armand Colin, 1968), p.311. 48. Rodinson, Ibid, p.27. 49. Magdy Gabriel Badir, Voltaire et l’Islam, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 125 (Banbury; Voltaire Foundation, 1974). 50. Abu ‘uthman ‘amr bin Bahr Al-Jahiz, Rasa’il Al-Jahiz, ed. Abd Al-Salam Muhammad Harun (Beirut: Dar Al-Jil, 1991) Vol. 3, p.308. 51. op. cit., p.309. Given the beauty of the text and its relation to what the anthropologists call ‘the proper distance’, we are citing part of it: ‘First of all that Jews were neighbours of Muslims in Yathreb and elsewhere; the hostility among neighbours is akin to the hostility of relatives as deep-rooted and constant hatred. Man is the enemy of who he knows, leans on what he sees, and contrasts whom he resembles with, sees the faults of his companion. That is why fights of neighbours, cousins from among all people and all Arabs are longer, and their hostility fiercer.’ 52. op. cit., p.310. 53. op. cit., p.312. 54. op. cit., p.313. 55. Hamilton Gib, Dirasat fi Hadarat Al-Islam, trans. ‘Ihsan ‘Abbas and, Muhammad Yusif Najm and Mahmud Zayid, 3rd ed. (Beirut: Dar Al-’ilm li AlMalayin, 1979), p.63. 56. op. cit., p.64. 57. See for example what Mohamed Taher al Mansouri registered of Arabs’ outlook at the political system (the emperor, the Administration and the Army) and the Byzantine, his appearance, skin and everyday life. 58. Hasan Ibrahim Hasan, Tarikh Al-Islam Al-Siyasi wa Al-Dini wa Al-Thaqafi wa Al-’ijtima’i, 7th ed. (Beirut: Dar Al-Andalus, 1965), Vol. 3, p.240. 59. Claude Cahen, Orient et occident au temps de croisades (Paris: Aubier, 1983), p.17. 60. Mikha’il Zabaruf, Al-Salibiyyun fi Al-Sharq (Mosco: Dar Al-Taqaddum, 1986). 61. Abu Al-Husayn Muhammad bin Ahmad bin Jubayr, Rihlat Ibn Jubayr fi Masr wa Bilad Al-’arab wa Al ‘iraq wa Al-Sham wa Siqilya, ‘asr Al-Hurub Al-Salibiyya (Beirut: Al-Sharika Al-’Alamiyya li Al-Kitab, n.d.) p.201. 62. Roberto Lopez, quoted from Rodinson, La Fascination de l’Islam, p.39. 63. Miquel, L’Islam et sa civilisaiton: VII–XXe sièle, p.150. 64. Rodinson, Ibid., p.24. 65. Fernand Braudel, Al-Bahr Al-Mutawassit, trans. by Omar bin Salim, Turath AlMa’rifa (Tunis: Alif, 1990), p.110. 66. Hisham Ju’ayt, Awruppa wa Al-Islam: Sidam Al-Thaqafa wa Al-Hadatha Silsilat Al-Siyasa wa Al-Mujtama’ (Beirut: Dar Al-Tali’a, 1995), p.15. 67. Lewis, Comment l’Islam a découvert l’Europe, p.172. 68. Bernard Lewis, Le Langage politique de l’Islam, trans. Odette Guitard (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), p.181. 69. Ibn Khald n, Discours sur l’histoire universelle: Al-Muqaddima, trans. Vincent Monteil, 3 vols. (Beyrouth: Commission internationale pour la traduction des chefsd’œuvre, 1967). 70. Al-Arab Wal Baraberah, Al-Muslimoun Wal Hadarat Al-Okhra and Aziz AlAzmeh, Arabs and Barbarians: Muslims and other Cultures (London, Cyprus: Riad alRayyes Books, 1991 [in Arabic]), pp.220–1. 71. op. cit., p.221.

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72. Abu Zayd Abd Al-Rahman bin Mohammad bin Khaldoun, Al-Muqaddima: Tarikh Al-Allama Ibn Khaldoun (Tunis: Al-Dar Al-Tunisiyya li Al-Nashr, Algeria: AlMu’assasa Al-Wataniyya li Al-Kitab, 1984), p.175. 73. op. cit., p.93, 124, for example. 74. This pushed some of the contemporaries to talk about an ‘empire’ to re-establish the Roman convention with the ‘New Barbers’, i.e. between North and South. See: Jean-Christophe Rufin, L’Empire et les nouveaux barbares (Paris: Jean-Claude Lattès, 1991). 75. See, for example, Ju’ayt, Awruppa wa Al-Islam: Sidam Al-Thaqafa wa AlHadatha, p.81. 76. Braudel, Al-Bahr Al-Mutawassit, op. cit., p.113, pp.81, 108. See also: Haytham Al-Janabi, ‘Al-Islam wa Al-Intima’iyya Al-Thaqafiyya li Al-’alam Al ‘arabi’ Qadaya Fikriyya, Books 13–14 (October 1993), p.322. 77. See, for example, Louis Gardet, ‘Vues musulmanes sur le temps et l’histoire’, in Les Cultures et let temps: Etudes préparées pour l’UNESCO, au Carrefour des cultures (Paris: Payot; UNESCO, 1975), p.223. 78. Hasan Hanafi saw that ‘The other for us precisely is the West ... As for the attacks from the East, Tatar and Moghuls, only came for war and retreated facing civilization, and settled in peace sharing in its creation’. See: Hanafi, Muqaddima fi ‘ilm Al-’istighrab, p.696. 79. Abu Ja’far Mohammad bin Jarir Al-Tabari, Tarikh Al-Tabari: Tarikh Al-Rusul wa Al-Muluk, ed. by Mohammad bin Al-Fadl Ibrahim, Dhakha’ir Al-’arab, 30, 10, 4th ed. (Cairo: Dar Al-Ma’arif, 1979), Vol.4, pp.59–60. 80. Nweiri’s account attributes nine parts of the ten of ‘Barakah’ (felicity) to Qureish, of generosity to Arabs, of jealous to Kurds, of cunning to Copts, of scum to Berbers, of intelligence to Romans, of industry to China, of lust to women, of labour to prophets, and of envy to Jews. Taking what is ‘said’ into consideration, Al Nweiri added another division in which nine parts of ten of hatred to Arabs, misery to Persians, eminence to Romans, elation to Sudan, erotism to Jews (division that is different from that of Al-Tabari, who we referred to above, unlike the first who excluded envy and hatred on Arabs). There is also a passive division: it is ‘said that four attributes are not known in four (peoples), generosity in Romans, fidelity in Turks, courage in Copts and distress in Negroes’. See: Abu Al-’abbas Ahmad bin Abd Al-wahhab Al-Nuwayri, Nihayat Al’arab fi funun Al-’adab (Cairo, wazarat Al-Thaqafa wa Al-’irshad Al-Qawmi, n.d., Vol. 1, p.293. 81. That was argued by Khalil Abd Al-Karim, Min Al-Qabila ‘ila Al-Dawla AlMarkaziyya (From the Tribe to the Cental State) (Cairo: Dar Sina li Al-Nashr, 1993). 82. Al-Blathery, Fotouh Al Buldan (Conquering Countries) (Beirut: Dar Al Kotob Al Elmiah, 1991), p.115. 83. See Radwan Al-Sayyid, Al-’umma wa Al-Jama’a wa Al-Sulta: Dirasat fi Al-Fikr Al-Siyasi Al-’arabi wa Al-’islami (Beirut: Dar Iqra’, 1984), p.163. 84. Claude Cahen, ‘Dhimma,’ in Encyclopédie de l’Islam. 85. Filip Khuri Hitti, Tarikh Al-’arab, trans. Jibra’il Jabbour and Edward Jurji, 8th ed. (Beirut: Dar Ghandur, li Al-Tiba’a wa Al-Nashr wa Al-Tawzi’, 1990), p.202. 86. Al-Jahiz, Rasa’il Al-Jahiz, Vol 3, pp.310–11. 87. Hitti, op. cit., p. 425. It is to be noticed that Abbasids did not take the same position vis-à-vis the Nastorian and Jacobin Churches, the two Syriac Churches the majority of Christians were followers of. The real power was that of the Nastorian who had privileges more attained by Jacobans who were blamed for leaning toward the Byzantines (pp.424–5). 88. Ibn Khaldoun, Al Muqaddima, Tarikh Al-Allama Ibn Khaldun, p.217.

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89. See Al-Sayyid, Al-Umma wa Al-Jama’a wa Al-Sulta, Dirasat fi Al-Fikr Al Siyasi Al ‘arabi wa Al-’islami, pp. 152 ff. 90. Hitti, Tarikh Al-’arab, p.400. 91. Ibn Khaldoun, Al-Muqaddima, Tarikh Al-Allama Ibn Khaldun, p.707. 92. See Ahmad Amin, Fajr Al-’islam, 10th ed. (Beirut: Dar Al-Kitab Al ‘arabi, 1969) pp.89–90. 93. See Abd Al-Aziz Al-Duri, Muqaddima fi Al-Tarikh Al-’iqtisadi Al-’arabi, 3rd ed. (Beirut: Dar Al-Tali’a, 1980), p.44, and ‘Al-’ilaqat bayna Al-’arab wa Al-’iraniyyin (Arabic paper) ‘A paper submitted To: Al-’ilaqat Al-’arabiyya-Al-’iraniyya: Al-’ittijahat Al-rahina wa ‘afaq Al-Mustaqbal: Research and Discussions of the Symposium organised by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies with the cooperation of Qatar University (Beirut: CAUS, 1996). 94. Quoted from Amin, op.cit., p.90. 95. See Maxime Rodinson, L’Islam: Politique et croyance (Paris: Fayard, 1993), pp.116 ff. See also Claude Cahen who perceived in his social approach to historical phenomena, more than Bernard Lewis did, to the fact that Jehad did now negate the assimilation of those ‘struggled against’. It also did not deny cooperation links with those jihad was still launched against. 96. See for example what Al Jahiz mentioned of verses cited by Muslims ‘in praise of Christians, Jews, Magus, wicked and little men’. See: Abu ‘uthman ‘amr bin Bahr Al-Jahiz, Al-Haywan, ed. by Fawzi ‘atawi, Vol. 5, pp.243–4. 97. An example is what Tawhidi mentioned: that the people of Musil were divided in two factions in their stand against the Romans in the year 62: ‘The common were divided in two factions, one compassionate for religion and for the dilemma of Moslems ... the other found its opportunity in the frivolity, corruption, plunder and aggression through prejudice to tent. The dignitaries people as protector to Islam ... the other chose to keep silent.’ Ali bin Muhammad Abu Hayyan Al-Tawhidi, Kitab Al-’imta’ wa AlMu’anasa (Beirut, Al-Maktaba Al ‘asriyya lbracen. d.rbrace), Vol. 3 pp.151–2. 98. Al-Jahiz, Rasa’il Al-Jahiz, vol. 3, p. 169. 99. op. cit., p.213. 100. op. cit., pp.217–8. 101. op. cit., p.219. 102. Ibn Al-Moqaffa’a said: ‘Which of the nations is the most reasonable? We thought he meant the Persians, so we replied: Persia is the most reasonable of nations, we intended to be close to him and appease him. He said: no. this is not in or about Persia, they are people who taught, hence they were taught ... They don’t deduct or induct. We said to him: the Romans. He said: It is not in them. They have strong bodies, they have constructions and geometry, they don’t know but these two and they don’t do good in anything else. We said: then China. He said: they are known for furniture and croft, without thought or vision. We said: then the Turks. He said: Lious for sowing dissension. We said: then India. He said: people of illusion myth, sorcery and trick. We said: then the Negroes. He said: lazy bestial. We left it to him to answer. He said: the Arabs ...’ Abu Hayyan Al-Tawhidi, op. cit., Vol. I, p.71. 103. op. cit., p.73. 104. op. cit., pp.73–4. 105. op. cit., p.74. and if all nations share virtues and vices the disparity happens through conflict. That is because ‘Every nation has time turning against it’ (p.75). But there are ‘basic’ characteristics more prevailing in one culture than another. That is because ‘if you aimed at transforming an Arab miser into a generous one, it would be easier than transforming a Roman miser into a generous one; the desire to transform a coward Turk into a courageous one is stronger than desire to transform a coward Kurd into a hero’ (Vol. 3, p.129).

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106. Ikhwan Al-Safa, Rasa’il Ikhwan Al-Safa wa Khillan Al-Wafa, revised by Khayr Al-Din Al-Zarkali, 4 vols. (Cairo, Al-Matba’a Al-Tijariyya, 1928), Vol. 2, p.316. 107. Abu Ahmad Al-Andalusi Al-Ghirnati, Tuhfat Al-Albab, quoted from, Niqula Ziyada, Al-Jughrafia wa Al-Rahalat ‘inda Al-’arab (Beirut: Al-Sharika Al-’alamiyya li Al-Kitab, 1987). 108. These duals are subject to modification according to affiliation. Massoudi, who considered that ‘the middlest of regions is the one we were born in, that in the region of Babilon’ (p.184). He sees Irfq is ‘the fire of the east, the heart of the earth’ (p.181), attributed to kaab Al Ahbar his saying to Omar Ibn Al Khattab when he asked him about Iraq: ‘Amir of the faithful, God, when created things he made everything affiliated to a thing, the reason then said I am affiliated to Iraq, science said, and I join you, money said I am affiliated to Sham; conspiracies: I join you; the fertility said. I am affiliated to Egypt, then humiliation said, I join you. Poverty then said: I am affiliated to Hijaz, content said: I join you. Then recovery said I am affiliated to deserts, health said: I join you’. Abu Al-Hasan Ali bin Al-Husayn AlMas’udi, Muruj Al-Dhahab wa Ma’adin Al-Jawhar, Barbier De Minard et Pavier De Carteille, ed. and revised by Charles Pella, Publications of The Lebanese University Dept. of Historical Studies, 10 (Beirut: The Lebanese University, 1966), Vol. 2, pp.183–4. 109. Al-Azma, Al-’arab wa Al-Barabira: Al-Muslimun wa Al-Hadarat Al-Ukhra, p.157. 110. op. cit., p.209. 111. See in particular Miquel book, an indispensable one in this topic, especially its Part II on ‘Arab Geographers and their Perception of the Universe’. André Miquel, La Géographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu’au milieu du 11e siècle: Les Travaux et les jours (Paris: La Haye: Mouton, 1975), Vol. 1: Géographie arabe et représentation du monde: La Terre et l’étranger. 112. Shams Al-Din Al-Maqdisi, Ahsan Al-Taqasim fi Ma’rifat Al ‘aqalim, quoted from Ziyada, Al-Jughrafia wa Al-Rahalat, ‘inda Al-’arab, p.55. 113. Al-Azma, Al’arab wa Al-Barabira: Al-Muslimun wa Al-Hadarat Al-’ukhra, p.109 and with regard to the similarity between the Chinese and the Indians (pp.101–2, 115). 114. Abu Abdalla Muhammad bin Abdalla bin Battuta, Rihlat ibn Battuta: Tuhfat Al-Nuddar fi Ghara’ib Al-’amsar wa ‘aja’ib Al-Asfar, ed. by Karam Al-Bustani (Beirut, Dar Sadir, 1964), p.657. 115. Massoudi, Morouj Al Zahab (Meadows of Gold), p.169. 116. Ibid., p.166. 117. Al-Azma, op. cit., p.39. 118. op. cit., p.68. 119. Ibn Khaldoun, op.cit., p.124. 120. op. cit., p.23. 121. op. cit., p.126. 122. op. cit., p.126. 123. op. cit., p.124. 124. See: Hitti, Tarikh Al-’arab, pp.409–10. 125. ‘What is curious here is that the relatively early books on the “Ahadeeth” (sayings of the prophet) cite saying on an attempt to define the attitude towards the Turks (peoples of Central Asia) although we are certain that Arabs did not know about them except what they heard of pieces of news on their conflicts with Persians’. Radhwan Al-Sayyid, ‘Min Al Shu’ub wa Al-Qaba’il ‘ila Al-’umma: Dirasa fi takawin Al-’umma fi Al-’islam’, Al-Fikr Al-’arabi, No. 33–34 (May–August 1983) p.337.

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126. See Chapter 5 of Miquel, especially the binary presentation where traits of the Turk are contradictory. Miquel, La Géographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu’au milieu du 11e siècle: Les Travaux et les jours, p.248. 127. op. cit., pp.xiii–xiv. 128. Miquel argues that there is a sudden turn toward the Far East, where consciousness of the interaction of civilizations and cultures is absent. That is why the Muslim does not have a feeling of being in the ‘Islam Suburb’. But such a feeling could take place in the Muslim of Central Asia where borders with the Turk are interlacing. Op. cit., pp.73, 255. 129. Ibn Khaldoun, op. cit., p.93. 130. Al-Jahiz, Rasa’il Al-Jahiz, vol. 1, p.218. 131. Ibid., pp.364–5. 132. Ibn Khirdathabah, ‘Al Masalek wal Mamalek’ (Corridors and Monarchies), in Al-Azma, op. cit. Miquel compared those texts, starting from the ‘Peace of the Translator’ and presented a detailed description of Yagog Magog and the dam. See: Miquel, La Géographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu’au milieu du 11e siècle: Les Travaux et les jours, pp.503–11. 133. Fear of the unknown and the infinite was experienced too by the culture of Christian Europe during the medieval peiod. ‘The Dark Sea’ was at that time the infinite Indian Ocean (Mare Infinitum); its ignorance of this sea was complete up till the second half of the 15th century. Its fantasy was also crashed to the dam behind which existed only ‘temporary’ the anti-messiah of the Yagog Magog races declared at the end of the Universe. See: Jacques Le Goff, Pour un autre moyen âge, ‘L’Occident medieval et l’Océan Indien: Un horizon onirique’, pp.280 ff. 134. Most of those who described Europe are from Maghreb and Andalucia, since the voyage of Ibrahim Ibn Ya’cob in the 10th century; he described relatively remote areas, such as Bohemia, Germany and Ireland; up to Al-Idrissi (AD 1166) who presented in his Nozhat al Mushtaq fi Ikhtaraq Al Afaq (The Longing Picnic to Explore Horizons) the most accurate description of the world up to his time, including most of western European regions. Many extracted from the writings, as well as from Ibn Said (AD 1274) in his Book on Geography, that added new information and covered England. In general, writers of Maghreb and Andalusia had knowledge of western Europe that was broader and more accurate; this was due to closeness and links, whether voluntary or involuntary. See: Lewis, Comment l’Islam a découvert l’Europe, p.144, et Cahen, Orient et occident au temps des croisades, p.48. In this connection the state of the ‘Islamic West’ calls for thinking of a particular pattern of Arab–Islamic relations to the ‘Christian West’. There are those who think it is necessary to distinguish between the view of Muslims to Andalusia as part of the Islamic world and the view of Arabs independent from the Islamic East. See: Gabriel Matinez, ‘L’Adoption de l’occident chez les Omeyyades de Cordoue’, paper presented to Les Représentations de l’autre dans l’espace ibérique et ibéro-américain, directed by Augustin Redondo, 2 vols., cahiers de l’U.F.R. d’éudes ibériques et latino-américaines; 8–9 (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne nouvelle, 1991–93). 135. There were the traders, whom Claud Cahen emphasized their mediation, for example, during the Crusades era. There, also, were Jews and Christians whose mediation was emphasized by Bernard Lewis as prior to the emergence of diplomatic mediation. Cahen, Ibid.; et Lewis, Ibid. 136. Rodinson, La Fascination de l’Islam, p.22. 137. Amin Maaloud, Les Croisades vues par les arabes (Pairs: J’ai lu, 1983), p.303. 138. op. cit., p.304. It is not a sort of exaggeration the reportage we undertook with Sociology students at the Faculty of Human and Social Science in Tunis, 1991–97 (as

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referred to above), and resulted in the other as the West specifically, revealed that students combine Crusades and Gulf War as premium factor of diversion between the Arabs and the West, superseding the factor of imperialism and factors of cultures, values and religion. 139. See for example the Bibliographical Record in: ’alam Al-Kutub (Al-Hay’a AlMisriyya Al-’amma li Al-Kitab’, a special issue on the Gulf crisis and war, No. 33 (January–March, 1992). 140. op. cit., p.178. 141. Francesco Gabrielli, Chroniques arabes des Croisades, traduit par Viviana Pâques (Paris: Sindbad, 1977), p.17. 142. Ibn Jubayr, Rihlat Ibn Jubayr fi Masr wa Bilad Al-’arab wa Al-’iraq wa AlSham wa Siqilya: ‘asr Al-Hurub Al-Salibiyya, p.214. 143. Al-’umari, Masalik Al-Absar fi mamalik Al-Amsar, in: Ziyada, Al-Jughrafia wa Al-Rahalat ‘inda Al-’arab, pp.100–105. 144. Sirat Abu Al-Fawaris Faris Fursan Al-Jazira Antara bin Shaddad (Beirut: AlMaktaba Al-Sha’biyya n.d.), Vol. 8, p.266. 145. Gaston Wiet, Introduction à la literature arabe, collection UNESCO d’introduction aux literatures orientales (Paris: G.-P. Maissonneuve et Larose, 1966), p.103. 146. Ali Umlil, Fi Shar’iyyat Al-Ikhtilaf (Rabat: Manshurat Al-Majlis Al-Qawmi li Al-Thaqafa Al-Arabiyya, 1991), p.68. 147. The multiplicity, and exception, applies to voyages, of which we dealt with Tahtawi’s voyage due to its relation to Hanafi’s reading. What Chedyaq wrote, both in his Al Saq Ala Al Saq Fi Ma Howa Al Faryaq and his Kashf Al Mukhaba’a A’n Founoun Ouroppa, or, thirdly, his Al wastah fi Ahwal Maltah, is at a distance from the ‘essentiality’ of East and West. These writings present various images of both monitored by a critical social vision, through belonging and experience Tahtawi did not have. See: Aziz Al-Azma and Fawwaz Al-Tarabulsi, ‘Ahmad Faris Al-Shidyaq: Su’luk Al-Nahda, Ista’sa ‘ala Al-Ta’ifiyya fa ghayyabuh’, Al-Naqid, No. 79 (January, 1995). If we took one country, like the Aqsa Maghreb, which was characterized by a measure of political power during the time of European expansion, starting with the 16th century, we find in the voyages various perceptions about the West, which we could define some phases of their development. See, for example, Sa’id bin Sa’id Al-’Alawi, Awruppa fi Mir’at Al-Rihla: Surat Al-’Akhar fi ‘Adab Al-Rihla Al-Maghribiyya AlMu’asira (Rabat, College of Arts, 1995): and Abd Al-Hamid Al-Qadduri, Sufara’ Maghariba Fi Awruppa, 1610–92: fi Al-Wa’i bi Al-Tafawut (Rabat: College of Arts, 1995). See: Al-Tahir Labib, ‘Muthaqqaf Al-’Ashhur Al-Sab’a’ in Abd Al-Jalil AlBadawi, Al-Tahir Labib and Dalal Al-Bizri, Harb Al-Khalij wa Mustaqbal Al ‘arab: Hiwar wa Mawaqif (Tunis: Siras li Al-Nashr, 1991). Al-’Alam Al-’arabi (Paris), No. 5, October–December 1992. 148. Al Ahram the Arabic. 149. See for example opinions expressed in the magazine: Al-’Alam Al-’arabi (The Arab World) (Paris), No. 5, October–December 1992. And the refutal of the same thesis among opinions of Mohammed Rumaihi, p.22.

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CHAPTER 6

The African in Arab Culture: Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion Helmi Sharawi

The theme of ‘Black’ successfully competes with the theme of ‘woman’ in the Arab history of literature regarding the profound negative stand and, at the same time, the apology for this stand. Both ‘woman’ and ‘Black’ are at the same time ‘excluded/accepted’ in Arab literature. Against ‘exclusion’ there is an ‘apology’ through the different formulas of their formal presence. Against Sharia (Islamic law) and jurisprudence of Islam (Fiqh), there is the fair, just and righteous ‘Pure Doctrine’. Against history there is a type of ahistoric paradigm, and so on. This phenomenon causes confusion to any study on the central prevailing image of Arab literature, which is predominantly masculine, as the dilemma of acceptance–exclusion is not absolute. While woman is in the heart of the coexisting ‘inner other’, the Black/Negro/Abyssinian/slave, through a long history, was ranging between the ‘inner other’ and the ‘outer other’ in the central consciousness of the Arabs. This dilemma raises a further difficulty for this study to achieve its goal and may even impose a lot of constraints, restrictions and limitations upon it. This paper proposes to tackle its subject through the following topics: I. Some clarifications about definitions and methodology. II. The conditions of forming the image: conflict/exclusion. III. Arab-Islamic empire era: acceptance/exclusion. IV. National independence era: conformity/exclusion. V. What conclusion? What variables?

I. Some clarifications about definitions and methodology 1.1 This study comes across methodological complications, as it deals with a historical paradigm produced in a number of epistemological systems of Arab culture. Prior to the Islamic unification of the Arabs, the

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image was basically formed in the space of the Arabic poetry, making linguistics and literary criticism the foremost authoritative reference of any research on the subject. Subsequently, and for a very long phase, an image has been formed in the vastness of Fiqh, Prophet biography (Sira), literary narration, amiability and travelling literature or Arab ethnography. In contemporary studies we come across the structural and functional school approaches in modern Arab of culture sociology. Moreover, political sciences and international relations researches have invaded both Arab and African cultural space. That is why the assessment of the image seems to differ according to the suggested paradigm among different intellectual systems in different conditions of forming the image. The poet’s assessment of the image is different from that of the Faqih, or the historian, or the geographer, or the traveller, or the modern social researcher or politician. In fact, responsibility still falls on Arab sociology, as it has not broken through the horizontal and vertical sectors of society yet. Arab sociology, which has no significant contribution in this field on the ground of the stem historical materialism or that of postmodernity, does not even have its contribution in terms of traditional interdisciplinary methods. Till now the study of the self and the other remains based on ‘orientalism’ or, in our case, ‘Africanist’ methods which are still subjected to the presupposed (defensive or aggressive attitude). 1.2 The acceptance–exclusion paradigm directly challenges us with the problem of forming the image of the self and other in the framework of literature or history or sociology. When we deal, in particular, with the image of the Black ‘other’, we soon confront the above-mentioned epistemological trilogy. For to explain the dimensions of ‘exclusion’ with its engagement with the trilogy of conflict/acceptance/consonance, we actually face the question of civilizational or cultural or ethnicity/racism. In trying to explain Arab image forming, the ethnicity concept seems unable to stand out though it is to some extent backed by ancient Arab poetry. The concept of the Islamic nation, and the ability of the Arab race to integrate with the other races in the Arab imperial phase, drives the ethnicity concept back, paving the way for the concept of civilization and culture. The same is equally true of the ‘race’ concept which requires a follow-up process to the culture of forming the ethnic (racial) self-image, superiority/preference/vainglory/aggressiveness, besides building up ideological apparatus as was done by the European culture in both Americas, or even that of Nazism later, that is to say a phenomena which ArabIslamic culture was not characterized with. Here, inevitably, both the

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‘culture’ concept and that of ‘ideological hegemony’ will come forth and engage with the self-image centralism of the ‘Islamic nation’ as a cultural structure which was destined to survive for a long time because of political, economic and social reasons. These reasons are actually related to the ‘Arab mode of production’, if this expression is applicable here, i.e. the mode of kharaj (tribute) with a specific cultural structure in which all different ethnic groups and peoples stick together and in which, as the requisites of hegemony impose, the ‘cultural act’ emerges at the same level of the ‘socio-economic act’ rather than being just one of its products or manifestations. Past and recent history often witnesses the transcendence of cultural act over its material base, thus was the case of Greek philosophy before the Roman hegemony on ‘Barbaric peoples’, as well as the case of European philosophy toward the American Indians. The destruction of the structures – and even the very existence – of those poor people, logically, did not need such an ideological effort to be justified. Thus Gramsci’s concept of hegemony or that of Edward Said might be accepted for a primary interpretation of Arab cultural structure and its image of Black ‘other’ contained in it. Gramsci has described how the Italian bourgeoisie built up the image of the ‘Southern’ as ‘excluded’ in order to subjugate him and to set up, at the same time, the ‘Italian nation’s unity’ of north and south. This goal was achieved, according to Gramsci, through an organized process of ‘hegemony’ that led to the well-known fascist ideological apparatus, applied to the whole nation.1 Edward Said’s more recent and comprehensive contribution might give us a broader elucidation, as his inclusive study on ‘Culture and imperialism’2 showed. In this study, Edward Said deals with ‘The European writings’ and their oriental discourse, or the discourse directed towards Africa or India, etc., as a part of the general European effort to justify European rule of those far regions and peoples. As well, Edward Said tackles the issue of rhetorical character of their discourse on the mysterious East or their stereotyped description of the African, Indian or Chinese mentality, as well as the idea of transferring culture to the primitive or Barbarian peoples and the necessary punishment for the peoples in case they do not obey or protest. The reason for punishment is because ‘they’ are not like ‘us’ and therefore we have the right to rule them. It is not surprising, according to Said, that Conrad was an opponent of imperialism and – at the same time – an imperialist, for when he writes about the third world it is a world with no history, no culture, while imperial Europe was living incontestably. It is not surprising also when Conrad adopts a progressive attitude towards hegemony and corruption overseas which raises his pessimism and fears. Culture is but a stage for all political and ideological

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issues, entangled with each other. But when researchers first read their cultural classics, they will, as expected, appreciate it and loyally belong to it, mostly without criticizing their nations and traditions, while involved in struggle against others. It was amazing to note that a few Western intellectuals, as Said saw, adopted the idea of ‘submissive or contemptible races’ prevailing among officials as an acceptable justification to rule India and Algeria for example. The fact is that almost all these intellectuals could not associate oppressive practices, as slavery, racial discrimination and imperial submission, with poetry, novels and philosophy prevailing in society which these practices are based on: Culture, as society’s repository of its finest knowledge and thought, is solidly connected, at a given time, with ‘nation’ and ‘State’. Here ‘We’ is distinguished from others, not without some kind of ‘foreboding from foreigners ... In this sense, culture is the source of identity and its companion at the same time; it is the same process that is manifested in ‘visions of return’ or in modern nostalgia for heritage and classic culture, etc.

This measured attitude of Edward Said might be more appropriate methodologically to our critical study on the image of Blacks in the Arab culture, as it is difficult to apply the colonial situation to the Arab case. If we would like to adopt another approach of socio-psychological analysis, Albert Mimi’s work about colonizer and colonized3 might be useful. He raises a helpful point for our research – even passively – on the requisites of the colonial situation, whose setting up conditions raise the necessity of creating the image of the colonized. An image that makes it impossible to be in harmony with the colonizer, and such impossibility emanates from the character of the colonized himself. This image is necessary in the process of making the colonized submit ... It is adequate, without referring to a racial doctrine, to discover differences and to push them to the boundaries of the absolute ... The colonizer does not care, for instance, for the success of the church mission ... as this might contribute to eliminating the colonial relationships.

We do not, therefore, need this colonial case although its methodology might help us deal with ‘the Wholeness of the Islamic nation’ which presents a composite ideological structure in which the common culture plays the role of acceptance–exclusion at the same time. Arab culture has created a broad space that besieged the Arab ‘ego’ with numerous other social ‘egos’ and among other social strata or centric peoples inside the

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structure of the holistic Arab-Islamic nation. Yet, the researcher should here refer to the wholeness and textual importance of Tzvetan Todorov’s book The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other.4 This book deals with Christopher Columbus who actually discovered himself and his culture rather than discovering America, or rather before discovering America, which was achieved through three impulsive fields: divine, physical and human (material). 1.3 Unfortunately, the limited scope of this study, that it relies only on what is ‘intellectual’ and ‘written’, deprives it of the profitable sociological contribution of folk culture. By ‘culture’ here we should particularly adopt the concept of culture as ‘repository of society’ and as a reflection of the continuance and disjunction, diversity and unity, etc. On the other hand, the ‘intellectual’ and ‘written’ might direct this study towards constructing a non-historical image, although this image has been formed throughout the long history of Arab nation, in the process of creating other social, mostly non-racist egos and ‘others’ through the changeable ‘wholeness’ or transformable ‘community’ in more than one ‘centre’ of those of Islamic history.5 Yet, exclusion examples – whether directly, or through silence and creating vacuums around the ‘nation’ and denying the ‘other’s’ effective characteristics – are considered obstacles not only for this research, but also for the studies on the history of Arab civil society which is rich with other strata, sects and peoples. 1.4 Arab ethnography – represented in Arab travel literature – which we hoped would present a different image of the ‘other’ in Arab culture and thus pave the way for a different Arab sociology on ethnic and other components of Arab society – was, in its turn, subjected to some elements of hegemony of the dominant culture, as we shall see, to the extent that the inherited concept of African ‘vacuum’, which was filled by Arab-Islamic culture, was extended to reach some of the most modern works and writings. This phenomenon challenges the Arab sociology with the question of ‘culture’ and its relationship with social transformations, because the continuation of ‘ahistoricity’ of some of the cultural structures, in this way, raises concerns about the future of transformation and progress of the Arab society itself.

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II. The historical conditions of forming the image: conflict/exclusion 2.1 It is not our intention here to present a ‘historical study’ on the position of the Blacks in Arab world and culture, or to touch on the links between Bilad As-Sudan6 and this region. I would rather hope to clarify, in brief, the ‘historicity’ of Arab reality. The reality that is supposed to present a variety of the ‘African image’ and in constructing the epistemological base of the Arab mentality instead of the image’s obvious ‘ahistoricity’. I hope also that we would not be surprised that ‘Arab perceptions’, as almost all Arab values, suffer from being, to a certain degree, static. Being static throws doubt on the quantity of changes we observe and their radical relation with Arab realities. If sometimes the method of analysis of ‘orientalism’ attracts us, we must not forget that Arab reality was formed through a multitude of relationships that are different from the modern conditions of ‘orientalism’, because the Arab empire mode was not the sole mode all the time. Production modes and relationships do not also seem alike, unless we associate the mode of Arab distant trade with the capitalist Western colonial mode of expansion. 2.2 Before and after this mode, different modes of relationships and interactions prevailed and should be carefully studied by Arab researchers. Moreover, the variety of the elements of the image – as shown later – will shed light on the problem of static/variable. For the purpose of facilitating the research, and not at all to express a final opinion, we shall concentrate our analysis on three essential phases of the historical relations of the image of Blacks: • • •

Pre-Islamic phase: relations of conflict/exclusion. Empire or Islamic internationalism: relations of acceptance/exclusion. National state: relations of conformity/exclusion.

2.3 The first phase: Arab pre-Islamic phase: conflict/exclusion relations: There is no doubt that Arab literature and ‘records’ have always denied the actual occurrences of this phase and its impact on the Arab heritage. The only part retained of this early legacy was the image of the wellknown Arab ‘winter and summer journeys’ or Arab first emigration to Nagashi’s country. Only recently did Arab intellectuals perceive the affluence of that period in fields of mythology, prose, literary creation, poetry and the social system itself. We could now say that what is already known

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about these fields is more than that which was negated. Nevertheless, there are still a lot of other fields that suffer neglect. In this regard, Arab relations with Abyssinians, and the role of the conflict with them in the south of the Arabian peninsula in the setting of an ‘international’ conflict, prolonged for a few centuries in the region, is probably one of the topics which have not been studied well till now. On one hand the process of ‘Abyssinians oppression’ against the Arabian peninsula’s inhabitants, which passed by Yemen and Nagran7 up till the downfall of Kaaba in Mecca, must have taken place during numerous centuries. On the other hand, the process of recalling and reflecting the images of all these events in great epics as that of ‘Antara Bin Shadad’ or ‘Sief Bin Zi yazan’,8 irrespective of whether this preceded or succeeded Islam, exposed the depth of these conflicting relations where the Arab was beaten. This beaten Arab started creating defensive images encouraged by the defeat of Abyssinians in the conflict between the Romans and Persians, the conflict whose results allowed the Arabs to enslave Abyssinians in different parts of the Arabian peninsula. Before Islam, and directly after the withdrawal of the Abyssinians from Yemen, Persians and Jews had controlled this country. Therefore, for Arabs, both Persians and Jews became the enemy, or the direct threat coming from Nagran on one hand, and from the northern side on the other hand. Both also had threatened Jerusalem and Bilad El-Sham, thus blocking the Arabs from their winter and summer trade journeys. Therefore pre-Islam Arabs, as well as Muslim Arabs, looked to the Romans for help. This trend had a positive influence on the ‘diplomatic’ relationship with both Romans and Abyssinians. While the conflict, in this period, was taking place in the Abyssinian plateau, the downfall of the kingdom of Axium – well known for its historical domination – provided propitious conditions for enslavement and activated the slave trade with Arabs on the other shore of the Red Sea and even in Al-Tarz cities, as trade centres, on the Abyssinian shore itself. Arabs were putting up bases for their ‘unified kingdom’, capable and powerful enough to be a partner in the conflict between Persians and Romans, and they were even looking forward to winning this conflict through the influence of their southern/northern trade movement. An ideological cover was required – by the Arabs – to justify their behaviour towards the slaves coming from Abyssinia across southern parts of the Arabian peninsula or directly across the sea. The relationship with Romans in the north had actually provided the Arabs with a consistent mode of thinking (on Berbers) to justify slavery and also with a ready-made philosophy against the Black–Negro–slave.

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The imaginary debate Al-Jahiz conducts between Sudan (Blacks in general) and Bidan (whites in general but Arabs in particular) expresses the above-mentioned atmospheres, but did not attract the attention of the researchers who studied the Al-Jahiz texts because these atmospheres belong to Arab pre-Islamic paganism. Al-Jahiz, in his work entitled The Pride of the Sudan on the Bidari,9 quotes the Blacks as saying: We were the owners of Arab lands from Abyssinia up to Mecca, and our rules were applied and obeyed by all. We overcame Nowas and killed Hemyar but you did not own our lands.

Al-Jahiz also refers to pre-Islamic poetry on ‘Abyssinian’s invasion’ over the Arab lands and their destruction and ‘demolition of what Arabs had built up’ ‘with groups of Axium, who were as black as deadly lions’. More recent references10 mention that Axium engravings (the kingdom of Tigray in Ethiopia), which belong to the middle of the 2nd century BC, portray the Abyssinian king, known as King Axium, establishing his domination over some parts of the southern Arab lands. By the sixth century Yemen had entirely collapsed and fallen into the hands of the Abyssinians. The same period witnessed the establishment of the Ecclesi Church by Abyssinians in order to create a rival to pagan Mecca in the north and to destroy it economically as a step towards the unification of north and south. But some people who made profits out of pilgrimage to the north defiled the church, which act drove Abraha, King of the Abyssinians – in Yemen – to launch his retaliatory expedition to Mecca. Arabs call this event the year of the elephant (which also witnessed the birth of Prophet Mohammed).11 Some authors observe that the defeat of both Abyssinians and Romans, after Aam Al-Feel (the elephant year), was the driving factor for unification, the necessity of which emerged at that time, and leadership of which was a matter of conflict among Arabs. This conflict seemed to some a preIslamic rejection of Islam, while it was actually a refusal of Bani-Hashim’s (Prophet’s tribe) leadership for the dualism of ‘unification/fragmentation’ which dominated the Arabs for hundreds of years. The defeat of Abyssinians and Romans helped the process of unification. The greatest dangers came from the Persians and Jews (either merchants or residents of Nagran), the matter that led to pacification with the Abyssinians (first immigration), particularly with regard to the internal defeat of Al-Nagashi (Abyssinian king). Thus Abyssinians and Negroes, who came from east African shores for trade, became the weakest elements confronting the Arabs in their regional and trade conflicts. This

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situation made it necessary for the Arabs to build an intellectual and emotional structure to face those weakest elements and to justify their oppression and exploitation (duality of conflict/exclusion) throughout the self-growth process in the Arabian peninsula (i.e. crystallization of Arab ego). Fawzi Mansour12 mentions how Mecca’s trade had expanded, in this period, and how its commercial transactions became more diversified and complicated. At the same time: Yathrib, which was later called Al-Medina,13 represented the agricultural mode of Arab settlement, alongside trade and a number of handicrafts including metal works and weaponry.

These economic activities were the foundation of Arab production modes for ten centuries and gave rise to the image of ‘Master Arab merchant’ who dominated the Abyssinian or Negro slave. There are numerous references to the massive presence of Abyssinians and Negroes in the Arabian peninsula (though emancipating people who joined Islam, an abundant number of slaves are mentioned). Furthermore, Qoraish (Prophet’s tribe), because they were not completely involved in warfare, used to hire Abyssinian and African mercenaries. In Mecca there was an Abyssinian settlement, probably a Christian one.14 With regard to the numerous emancipated cases, in response to the new religion’s teachings, it is mentioned that the Prophet had 63 male/female slaves before the ‘mission’ and that Al-Zoubier Bin Al-Awam had emancipated 1,000 slaves. Thus, it is a process of continuous attack and retreat between Arabs and Abyssinians which was prolonged for more than seven centuries before monotheism. This process was controlled by the considerations of neighbourhood, common interests and the limits of the transit trade of those who aimed to monopolize the trade between the southern and northern shores of the Red Sea, while united and strong Abyssinian kingdoms, with their alliances with the Roman Empire, aimed to control the transit road through Mecca and Medina. Reciprocal slave trade between the tribes of the Abyssinian plateau on the one hand and Yemen and the rest of the Arabian peninsula on the other hand, made this trade also an Arab trade, although Arab merchants did not go beyond the Al-Tiraz African coastal cities into the hinterland. That is why the African continent’s internal trade maintained its ‘African character’ for a long time before being controlled by external Arab or non-Arab elements. Furthermore, the experience of the Roman Empire, particularly being very close to occurrences in the region, made the Roman ‘slave model’ very familiar to the minds of the new slave traders.

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With the downfall of the Abyssinian ‘Axium’ Dynasty, the image of Abyssinian as warrior vanished and was replaced by an image of a humble creature in the Arab lands. As one of them expressed himself to Arabs saying: You never saw a Negro, a genuine Negro, you saw but captured people coming from Konbola’s shores, from our downtrodden trash and slaves, that is because the people of Konbola have neither beauty nor brains.15

We here notice the overlap between the Arab ‘outer other’ and ‘inner other’, in a concentration that carries the blackness which oppressed the Arabs imposed on the previous oppressor’s image as a kind of vengeance and a way to isolate this previous oppressor in order to lead him to the exploitation stage, i.e. to work for the ‘Master merchant’. The Arab individual, in the context of Arab Bedouin traditional mentality where the world’s space is very limited and does not exceed home and clan, does not care except for his own environment from which he cannot disassociate himself even intellectually. That’s why, for him, the other does not exist. The Arabs, with this mentality, were not mindful to express the evils of the ‘other’ except through poetry; confining themselves to slavery practices. That is why it was the Blacks themselves who presented some expression of their image as a way to face obduracy or to reject reality in this stage of conflict/exclusion. The Abyssinian here is present in the heart of the Arab ego, lives its model, guards its trade, fights defending its tribe, works as a farmer or in crafts in what Fauzi Mansour calls ‘Oasis correlation’,16 the densely populated regions in the dry desert on the whole Arab level. Arab poetry was the main rostrum for the conflict/exclusion dualism (mentioned above) as poetry was the expression of the identity of the ‘Arab tribe’ at that time, while the poet was the voice, mouthpiece, intellectual and chevalier of the tribe. The complete ostracism of Blacks from this arena is now necessary, even if someone has clandestinely sneaked there. I was personally amazed when I perceived that the famous ‘Mu’allaqat’,17 written by grand avant-garde Arab poets, do not contain any significant references, except some very brief ones, to the status of the Blacks, whether negative or positive, a fact that needs explanation by heritage critics. That is why the ‘Black poets’ were actually ‘aliens among Arabs’ or the ‘alien poets’. Among the most eminent Black poets three or four are recognized: at the top is Antara Bin Shadad, then Khafaf Bin Nidba, Sileek Bin Al-Silka and Aby-Omaer Bin Al-Habab El-Soulami. All in all, seven Black poets are referred to in Arabic literary heritage.18

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The hardest image of Black ugliness is the inheritance of slave woman–mother who stands in the third rank after freeborn and captured women. Therefore, for Arabs, the greatest humiliation and abasement to the Abyssinian was to attribute him to his mother. Antara Bin Shadad was named after his mother Zabiba and the same with both Khafaf Bin Nidba and Suleik Bin Al-Sulka. Antara said: In peace time they call me son of Zubaiba while at the time of horses’ encounter (war) they call me son of the best descent.

Abdo Badawi, in his esteemed work Al Suara El Soud (Black Poets and their Characteristics in Arabic Poetry), provides us with abundant material, for the researchers who might suspect the Arab poetry role in humiliating the black colour and people for a long time that extended for a few centuries before and after Islam. We are not trying to interpret this phenomenon at the Arabs or others, or whether it was a manifestation of a genuine and continuous racial attitude or not. We have rather to focus on the way of distinguishing the ‘ethnic component’ for Arabs and Negroes alike. As conflict was the origin of the image, as it was formed through the situation we have already referred to, its expression was characterized by ‘challenge’ that leads to surrender. Whatever the credibility of ‘pre-Islamic poetry’19 – which included such images of conflict – is, the fact that this poetry was articulated or even plagiarized, in different periods, is in itself a continuous expression of what we focus on here. That is to say regardless of the period you classify this poetry in, its implication will continue to exist. Antara will remain, in the historic period of study or even after, as herdsman, chevalier–warrior and great lover. However, he was never admitted into his genuine Arab father’s relation except at the moment of the father’s death. Even after Arab conquests and with the new and different role in the functions of Arab poetry started to be played by folk epic (sirah), Antara was recognized, after a big defeat, as continuing his role in defending the nation. In the condition of the Negro’s defiance to his contemptible situation, new poetic characteristics have appeared, but are mentioned by ‘alienated’ rather than by a progeny of the stable ideological institution. The Negro poet here starts using the singular form of pronoun instead of plural, and Antara now does not speak on behalf of the tribe, but about his own humiliating position and his specific function as warrior and fighter:

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... and I am the Black and the slave, who walks up to the horses when war is on. Sword and spear are my propinquity; they are my solace when dread hangs supreme.

The desolate poet here is obliged to introduce himself to society defending himself. His social status will not plead for him, nor did his heroic deeds plead for him before. If we go ahead, with some suspicion about the veracity of pre-Islamic poetry, the presented image will be one of the forms of debate inside the Arab creator himself and not necessarily the Negro. Antara’s master poem known as Al-Muzahaba (The Golden) might be the most susceptible of denial among pre-Islamic poetry because of the image it presents about the negation of the slave–Black in the Arab society and its intellectual community of poets. The researcher cannot but notice the rarity of the poetic forms of panegyric or flirtation that characterized Black poets, while both forms were familiar ones in the heritage of preIslamic poetry. This explains the grim image through which the Black poet introduced himself. Here is Khafaf Bin Nidba who condemns his luck, saying: O God, if I were weak, I would be just a slave, and if I were a woman, I would be just a slave woman,

and adds (to his mother): Both are Blacked by his kinsfolk, because of that murky propinquity.

This distress is not consistent with Khafaf as a poet known for his high bellicosity as a warrior, defender of the homeland. But here, the isolation in which the Negro intellectual lived is unveiled because of the ‘Arab intellectual’, the tribe’s egoist, ostentatious and haughty poet. Negroes–poets– ragamuffins have appeared as a progeny of this reality; they diffused dissipation and hubbub brought in the Arabic poetry and did not follow its great themes.20 What they brought out in Arabic poetry was not perceived as renovation or addition – except very recently – but as a distortion of Arabic poetry.

III. Arab-Islamic empire era: acceptance/exclusion 3.1 For ten centuries or more after the advent of Islam, many peoples and tribes imposed their presence on the Arab mentality concerning the

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attitude towards the coloured peoples who shared with Arabs the belief in Mohammed’s monotheism: ‘You were the pick of all nations given to humanity.’ This holy phrase assures us that ‘Qoraish’ (the Prophet’s tribe) is the spring heart of this nation or that the Hashemites are its religious focus. Accordingly and inevitably, we have to expect that ‘acceptance’ mechanisms of this broad base of peoples making up the ‘nation’ are to interact. At the same time, special excluding mechanisms are to take place towards some elements that occupy an inferior status, so as to exploit their efforts completely in that explosive growth, ripe with conquests. Inevitably, Arab self-image becomes inflated before the power of great empires as the Romans and Persians that besieges the emerging nation or challenge it here and there. This inflated self-image was full of antagonistic arrogance, concrete historic superiority and image’s mechanisms – stable in the roving Arab mentality – of a transit trade, rather than exchanging commodities. This challenge created a new self-image of superiority that, undoubtedly in its turn, created an inferior image of ‘some other’ through which the first justifies its own self, as well as its exploitation of that ‘other’s’ material resources including lands and people. This process took place by means of amiable integration (according to the Islamic acceptance rules) or by kind coexistence (according to far trade traditions) with that ‘other’, while Blacks, including peoples, tribes and individuals, were the stuff of that ongoing evolution. We have to notice here the image of the Persian king and the Persians, the unapproachable obstacle on the way to Asia (which is why the contents of their palace were to be exposed and destroyed in front of the 2nd Caliph’s home). We have also to pay attention to the image of the Romans who were beaten early on, and turned into non-resistive ‘Ahl-az’zimma’ (Christians were called Romans in almost all Arab regions). Then comes the image of ‘Egypt’, including territories and soldiers, whetting the appetite for stability, mobilization and abundance. Finally we have the image of the wretched ‘Black’ Negro–slave, who were not attributed to any kinsfolk or any land except in the late 10th century – 3rd and 4th centuries of the history of the empire – and with a flourishing gold trade here the Arab mentality does not inherit but the image of Abyssinians defeated at home, the memory of a destroyed shrine in Mecca, which is a sign of doomsday. The early Abyssinian attempt to resist the development of the new nation and its effort to be unified was a reason for historical punishment of the image of the Negro during the Arab flourishing times. Along with the slave trade in East Africa and the Indian Ocean, we notice the fading of the word Abyssinian clearing the way to a little bit wider ‘Negro’, before reaching the most general words – ‘Black’ and ‘Sudan’ – to describe peoples and

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tribes with whom the Arabs increased their relation channels. This new channel was also opened through the Murabitin in West Africa and the power that overcame the African kingdom of Ghana, opening the way to the Islamic kingdom of Mali with a new weapon, gold, in exchange for Arab-Muslim badly needed salt and textiles. Here, we have to state and correct two points common in contemporary Arab-Muslim thought, both of great importance to explain the image of slaves in the Arab reality. The first is the contention that slaves were quite rare and employed only for domestic work in the early Islamic-Arab society, and that slave emancipation legislations were supposed to free them all had not Muslims violated those legislations later on. The second is that the trade mode was the only mode of production practised by the Arabs, so the Arab slave trade was part of an international trade they did not control alone. Both of these statements – in the writings of Al Aqqad, Abdallah AlMashad and Ahmad Amin, etc. – aim at shoving back the image of exploited slaves to make them look simply as part of other ethnic groups in the vast Islamic lands. The second point deserves more study. But the first is our focal point as it was the historic foundation of that unexplained depth of the Arab-made image of Black exclusion, not mentioning its developments and interactions with the new circumstances of the ArabIslamic world. It is not true, for example, that Blacks counted only some tens or hundreds in the early days of Mohammed’s mission of monotheism as history sources speak of more than 60 male/female slaves who belonged to the Prophet himself, and were emancipated according to the rules of the new monotheism. They also speak of the thousands belonging to close Sahaba like Al-Zubayr or Othman (third Caliph) or some thousands belonging to Abdulrahman bin Awf. The same sources talk about 600 revolting Abyssinians surrounding the third Khalif in his last ruling days. One of the Prophet’s companions commented on the stand of Al-Ansaar (the Prophet’s supporters): ‘Shame enough to suggest killing him ... and to let Abyssinians of Egypt get him.’ This confirms the credibility of the existence of an ‘Abyssinian settlement’ of Christians in Mecca. As for Arab trade, we have already referred to the ‘oasis correlation’ in the Arab mode of economy associated with agricultural development, that is to say Arab rent is the same as the kharaj (tribute) model in agricultural land and in trade. Fawzi Mansour and Sadiq Sa’ad think that this phenomenon led to what is called in the jurisprudence of Malekite Islam ordinance in land issues; they both stress

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that when Abo Yousif dealt with kharaj, he basically referred to state agricultural land revenues not trade revenues.21 This situation, undoubtedly, creates the image of male/female ‘exploited slaves’, but not serfs. We shall soon deal with ‘reifying slaves’. Agriculture did not develop into a capitalistic agricultural mode. That is why, according to Mansour, slaves were not emancipated.22 Furthermore, the abundance of agricultural workers from among slaves in an agriculture that does not undergo any development, especially during Umayyad23 time, is the reason for the situation the Umayyad caliphs had to face because of the intensity of the rural class in the cities around the caliphs, and of the establishment of a broad base of slaves’ insurgence which was inherited by the Abbasids. Because of the deficiency of development patterns of the economies of the Arab-Islamic Empire, this broad base of both exploited slaves and Mawali24 became the basis for Arab ‘militarization’. In this process the Mawali, Persians, Turkish and Asians in general moved upwards, while Blacks moved downwards to the bottom of the scene and were used as tools for the war and soldiers for competitive Islamic emirates. Even during the agricultural stability in the Abbasid dynasty, the abundance of slaves as a result of the conquests was enough to provide growth for the base of insurgence, and exploitation in ‘agricultural oases’ or military squads so as to create a Negro’s image as a person who provokes insurgency. To complete this historic narrative, we might say that the eastern part of the space of the nation becomes a source of Mawalis, whose conditions would improve, while the west of the nation becomes a source of Sudanese (Blacks), the work force for armies, crafts, palaces and homes. We are interested here in two points. First, the significance of ‘use value’, as an alternative to the surplus value, that maintains the political structure as it is for as long a time as possible irrespective of the changes that occur in the productive process of the same mode. Second, the admission of the superstructure as a part of the material production mode’s ‘complex’ rather than as a reflection of its development, or as a transcendental ideal structure that raises paradoxes concerning the analysis of its own subjective stability (religion–ideology). This methodology is useful in understanding Arab production mode (in trade and in agriculture as well) on one hand, and in understanding the stability of some superstructures (including the image of the Blacks, Negroes and slaves) on the other hand. This also enables us to step forward in our research and to achieve some progress in understanding what occurred.

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3.2 Acceptance–Exclusion 3.2.1 The Arab-Islamic internationalism period is associated with the framework of the image of the Blacks we propose, i.e. acceptance– exclusion. Undoubtedly, elements of the acceptance of the ‘other’ were generally available inside the structure of the ‘self-image’. Yet these elements were accompanied by the continuation of the other’s exclusion mechanism through the images of the other’s inferiority and those of the negation of his contributions, or accentuation of his marginalization, or considering him responsible for the fragmentation, rather than unification, of the central ‘self’ (through insurgency, etc.). Despite the dialectic character and the logic of the formula in itself (acceptance–exclusion), it is worth mentioning that it here differs, for instance, from the Roman model for constructing the image of Barbarians or from the image the European invaders of America made of the American Indians. This formula also differs, generally speaking, from that adopted by the colonial intellectual apparatus towards Africa, Asia and the Arab world itself (anthropology, orientalism, etc.), as in these cases we get images of absolute negation and exclusion on one hand, or some kind of sympathy that is part of the ethics of constructing the central serf on the other hand. As for the Arab-Islamic case, we have, first of all, an ideal doctrinal structure that we cannot easily avoid, otherwise it would have produced another output, and not inevitably to be historically reflected in this concrete image. If ahistoricity is the characteristic of doctrines, there is no theoretical warrant for ahistoricity of facts and images. Dialectic logic here has to study the factors of stability of the Arab-Islamic production modes, i.e. factors that made these modes lean on the ahistoricity of Holy Doctrine alone. (Notice here the difference of acceptance in Confucianism, Buddhism and Hinduism and their outputs in the Asian East.) As this is not our main theme, we will step directly to the nature of the acceptance factors of the Arab culture and how it was quickly changed or replaced by exclusion factors, basically, toward Blacks. We have, according to our plan of study, to deal first with what doctrine stipulates (i.e. acceptance), then to follow the formation of the image by the Arab intellectual, Faqih, historian, writer, poet, geographer and traveller (i.e. exclusion). Furthermore, we look up some images that were presented by Black writers who were absorbed by Arab-Islamic hegemony itself. 3.2.2 As concerns the position of the other, in Islamic doctrine, we note that in its essence it is based on several basic tenets and branches. The tenets are definite and direct, while the branches are, mostly, full of implied images.

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Among the basic tenets we find: a) The Holy text says ‘You were created as tribes and communities so as to get to know each other’ which is a prophecy about the vastness of the homelands of Islam that is ruled by faith ‘For Allah, the noblest among you is the godly’. b) ‘You are the best of all nations given to humanity’, i.e. the holistic nation of Islam including peoples and tribes, as Islam is a universal religion. c) ‘Believers are but brothers, and no Arab has ascendancy over non-Arabs except by his godliness’, as the acceptance of Islam includes the acceptance of non-differentiation or distinction except according to the extent of faith. Both individuals and community are meant here. d) Texts refer also to the collective organic structure of Muslims, i.e. human solidarity: ‘Muslims’ friendliness and passion with each others are like the human body, if some organ complains the other organs respond’. e) In the holy texts, we notice the absence of enslavement acts in all cases of formulating relationships with slaves or emancipating them. As for the Branches, in the relationship with the ‘other’, they are implied in pragmatic practices of the indirect doctrinal discourse. In this regard we have the following: a) The Holy text teaches that Allah created the Qur’an in Arabic, so as they (Arabs) can understand it. b) Texts impose the obedience to the Imam ‘even if he were an Abyssinian slave’. c) Other texts: let the people know that they have to choose between two things, being in Islam or in war, but enslavement is a product of war only and is considered as a punishment for infidelity. d) ‘The five famous’ Holy Verses about blackness: ‘A Day when some faces get whitened and others get blackened’; ‘You whose faces got blackened, have you lost your faith?’; ‘In the Doomsday you see those who lied to Allah their faces are blackened, is not the hell the host of apostates?’; ‘when someone is told he has a baby girl, his face goes black’. We notice here that Islam presents more than one epistemological level to comprehend its absolutes on human beings inside and outside the ‘nation’. But the issue of nation’s unification, as it is not an issue of the same

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Holiness of the Mission, soon creates a doctrinal ideology with its abstract jurisprudence that is different from epistemological sociology about the ‘serf’ and the ‘other’s’ structure inside the elements of Islam. Here, the dialectic ‘historicity’ and ‘ahistoricity’ plays an immense restricting role through the actions of the people, especially in the field of Arab heritage. We shall soon study the role of Faqih and legislator in changing or fixing this dialectic. Islam, on the primary epistemological level of ‘constructing the ideal’, had, inevitably, to present the ‘doctrine’ as a social safety value against the blatant pre-Islamic heritage towards some social groups, namely the ‘Blacks’. The doctrine presents equality, faith as a criterion and human solidarity, and from these tenets comes the possibility of acceptance and tolerance (we have always the images of Bilal, ‘and other Black prominent companions of the Prophet Mohammed, and Black fighters’). This possibility, at different epistemological levels, faces a reality where the Prophet was sent to both ‘Red and Black’ on one side, while Blacks are the basis of stability for the interests of merchants who became the great companions of the Prophet or the new elite on the other side. In this situation, blackness is usually associated with evil in a descriptive and objective state (Holy Verses), faith is able to purify blackness – faith in Islam is comprehensive, and this is necessary for mobilizing people in the army of jihad to realize the prophecy of expanding the homelands of Islam. But with the vastness of the territories of Islam homelands, the classification of ‘Muslims’ will be a different issue. Slavery, in Islamic doctrine, is almost the sole phenomenon – as far as I know – which is not consistent with the ideal which the Prophet presented. In spite of the fact that the Prophet did not definitely negate slavery, but rather left the whole issue to all those who are concerned to speak about ‘the necessity of graduation’ as a step forward to negation after the completion of Qur’an (emancipation verses) and according to emancipation rules as we shall see. But Muslims did not follow the principle of graduation in emancipating people because of the intensity of the phenomenon of slavery, the need for slaves and the phenomenon being part of the prevailing global system (the collapse of the Abyssinians and the international conflict being reduced to Persians and Romans). The Qur’an was perfectly true when it does not negate the phenomenon absolutely and does not describe it as an acute phenomenon in the dominant socio-economic reality. And it was difficult for many Faqihs, interpreters and even contemporary researchers to understand this position, not to mention to study it. Slavery, being not negated absolutely by the Qur’an and the development of the practical conditions in Islamic society, led to the continuation of the state of black as a slave for sale and

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inheritance in contradiction with the reference of the plain-spoken text to slavery as a progeny of war only. As a result of Muslims’ disregard of the model, directly after the caliphs, schools of ‘Islamic text’ – in jurisprudence, history and literature – adopted the idea of maintaining the ‘slave image’ rather than the emancipated one, the image of excluded, rather than that of the accepted, one. 3.2.3 We have noted the doctrine’s dealings with the ideal and the construction of the image of the Black as believer, prayer time announcer and fighter, but Islamic law – the second epistemological level – takes a different path which is to tackle reality. Islamic references assert that Islam does not allow slavery, but calls for emancipation, and this is perfectly true. But the judgements of the legislator have to announce the cases that require emancipation which is ‘obligatory’ in five cases and preferable in ten other cases, or the legislator’s efforts to explain 22 positions in the Qur’an about the absence of human freedom associated with slavery, and the ‘Holy Verses’ about the different numerous situations in which a Muslim is obliged to emancipate a slave, as for breaking the Ramadan fasting, or in case of accidental killing or moving from non-Muslim to Muslim territories.25 These judgements create possibilities for acceptance only according to the doctrine and include exclusion images through different approaches to the rules of Islamic law or through the silence of the Faqihs. We note here that stressing the narrow scope of slavery, and to mention repeatedly the individual emancipation cases, highlights the contrast with the vastness of this phenomenon before Islam. But ‘Arab Islam’ if we may call it so, irrespective of the territories they gained as a result of their conquests, did not go forward to emancipate them from the image they constructed for the ‘others’ in all legislation. Here the ‘Black believer’ – who is always supposed to be emancipated and liberated according to Islam – has turned into ‘the slave’ who is objectified as any other properties which Islamic conquest and expansion provided. In his message, Bin Abi Zeid AlKairwani,26 for instance, amazes his readers when he devotes some chapters to the way of dealings and the position the slave occupies in such dealings, and how it was common to treat slaves as any other objects (properties) of free men and women. It is also referred there to the ‘defected’ sold slave (object); or to ‘the possibility to buy slaves, animals and food by instalments; or ‘it being illegal to buy slaves and clothes wholesale’; or slave is to be deprived of his/her money in case he/she is sold to another owner; and that he is to be returned back against refunding the price paid in case he is defected.27

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The process of objectifying working slaves is equivalent to the position of the slave woman inside the family or the sexual treatment in a way that is close to objectifying (the right of the master to have intercourse with his bonded maid before her slave-husband). This position actually associates relationship only with excessive sexual zest principally for the ruling class whose members vied with each other over the number of slave women they owned. Severe competition, in the field of sexual zest, coming from Asian abigails has been a helpful factor in objectifying ‘Black slave women’. As a result, the image of Black woman has deteriorated since the conquest of Asian territories from an emancipated woman during the preIslamic era. After being Antara’s mother and Omar’s mother, in some versions, Black women fell to the third grade after emancipated women and abigails in the houses of the metropolis, which – due to the new wealth – became more splendid and gorgeous. This fact explains the phenomenon of deepening exclusion with the stability of this class’s rule in the remote lands later. 3.2.4 On the third Islamic epistemological level, the level of interpretation (tafsir) and the works of interpreters, numerous images were developed: wine, usury, woman and ideal ruler, which are beyond our research. However, the image of objectified slave was not dealt with by any liberal approach since Al-Tabari28 in the 10th century up till the endeavours of some of the weighty sheikhs of Al-Azhar University such as Abdullah ElMashad in the 20th century.29 Both Al-Tabari and El-Mashad, when interpreting verses 3, 23 and 24 of ‘Al-Nisaa’ Sura, prohibit marriage between freeman and slave maid except in necessary situations, and they rule the divorce between slave woman and her slave husband in case she is sold. While both prevent woman from intercourse with any man except her husband, they allow sexual relations with her master who bought her, and being bought means to end her marriage (with her former slave-husband). El-Mashad assures that these are the judgements of El-Shafii, Malik and Ahmed.30 To conclude this section about the interpretation and jurisprudence of Arab culture – I admit not being an expert on either – we have to refer to the deeply rooted static ethnic nature of the image and the unwillingness to liberate it in this genuine epistemological field of Arab culture. El-Mashad (1962), for instance, justifies the wisdom of prohibiting marriage between freeman and slave maid except in necessary conditions, by saying that preventing such marriages means narrowing the bonds of enslavement, because the newborn generation of such marriages will be enslaved, as the child is usually brought to his mother’s relation in

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enslavement and freedom as well. The distinguished sheikhs (ulema) have decreed the same. They deal here with ‘the backed by mother’ ethnic origin of enslavement; they are not even willing to loosen it a little bit by associating it to the free-father’s origin. Basically this exposes the meaning of the lag of civilization that would not like to renovate itself through interaction with new culture. But while civilization’s requisites do not find a response, trade requisites were realized, as Al-Kairwani’s Fatwa in this concern was neglected, his Fatwa states that: ‘Trade is to be shunned on enemy land, and on the territories extending to the Sudan’. Arab thinker Abdullah Al-Tayeb has reviewed Al-Kairwani’s Fatwa, and in order to allow trade in Sudan he added to this Fatwa the next phrase: ‘Apostates among them’,31 i.e. trade is shunned with ‘apostates among’ the Sudanese. Having a look at the contemporary reality we find that (Black) slavery was not legally prohibited in some Arab countries until the 1960s or even the early 1970s in some places known for either excessive rent system or excessive Bedouin life system in the eastern and western edges of the Arab World. 3.3 Imperial history: acceptance/exclusion 3.3.1 Historiography is part of the ideological structure of the nation. Edward Said, in his book Culture and Imperialism, states that ‘every people has its own narration’ and that image studies are related to narration rather than to historiography itself. Historiography is one of the initiating elements of the ideological hegemony of nation or class, whether writings are about the ‘self or chronology of other’s history and image in favour of the self’. Imperial historiography did create, more than any other, its own ‘literature’ with the help of perceptions, ‘dates’ and formulas of social conditions and this process was mostly facilitated by ‘the absence of the other’. In this context Arab historiography played an important role, and one look at the historiography of Arab or Islamic nation’s unity – despite the overwhelming fragmentation it experienced – supports this opinion. Accordingly, for Arabs, variety equals, in an absolute manner, insurgence ‘fitna’ that only equals infidelity. But what about the position of ‘other communities’ inside the same nation? Arab ideology, very early, and for some centuries, created the images of ‘pedigree’ against ‘mongrel’, as well as ‘crusader’ (exclusion of external element) and ‘Black’ (exclusion of both external and internal). Arab historiography is a reverse ideological process executed by Umayyads and their intellectuals after ‘The benign holy mission’, in order to mark borders of Arabism in their own favour. Thus they fabricated the nation’s history and heritage with duplicity and deceit that they invented among which false Prophetic tradition, prescriptions, texts of the

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Prophet’s biography, poetry, different tales and reports. They actually inoculated ‘history’ with a narrow ideological structure and a crushing power. As a result of this process, the righteous 10 per cent of Al-Bukhari’s Hadith was lost among the 90 per cent of false tradition.32 As a result of the Umayyads’ reverse ideological process, a phrase like ‘The Arabs said’ or ‘Arab Bedouin said’ became a pretext to freeze Arabic language as much as the same phrase was a source of power for the constructed image. This hearsay was disrespectful enough to ascribe false sayings to the Prophet that could never be consistent with the ‘Holy Mission’. Of these sayings, a false one about Blacks alleging that the Prophet said: ‘If they were hungry they steal, and if they were full they commit adultery.’ We find an explanation for this phenomenon in Al-Mas’udi33 who refers to the desire of obtaining holy legitimacy for disparaging images of the Blacks, as that reference to the false discourse of the Abyssinian with the Prophet, where the Abyssinian asked the Prophet: ‘If I would fight on your side, will Allah let me enter Paradise?’ The Prophet answered: ‘Yes.’ The Abyssinian asked a suspicious question: ‘Even if I am stinky and Black?’ The Prophet said: ‘Yes.’ Anyhow it seems that Al-Mas’udi, Al-Tabari, AlKalkashandi and Al-Noairi deserve to be studied well, they mention, for instance, the story of how Sam felt enough shame to look at his father Noah’s genitals, while Ham, his brother, looked and laughed. The Prophet said about Ham’s behaviour: ‘Let Allah blacken your face and make your sons and all your progeny be slaves serving your brother’s.’34 In the atmosphere of the ‘superiority’ of ‘Arab ethnicity’ in the first era of the Arab Empire – in the east – the image of nation, in Islam, was constructed as pure Arab nation, while theoretically ‘Islamic homelands’ gives a different impression. However, I would not go as far as Albert Mimi when he mentioned that the colonizer’s racism takes shape after the creation of an image of the colonized, an image which makes it impossible to be consistent with him and makes this impossibility come out from the nature of the colonized himself. We have to take into consideration the distinguished case of Arab combination with other peoples. Yet Mimi’s rule might be useful: he says that the colonizer does not produce a doctrinal racism, but a practical daily one as a result of the accumulation of behaviours. Then the colonizer starts forming it in three steps: discovering differences with the colonized, evaluating such differences, then pushing them to the borders of the absolute. ‘Generally speaking, the differential feature between two peoples is not among the characteristics of racism.’ From the methodological point of view, this rule might be very helpful. It is well known that the Umayyad era witnessed the establishment of the foundations of Arabism to the borders of absolute, as Mimi says, and this

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had happened before the unification of Arabs through Islam when they were in contact with the Abyssinians (and others) and evaluated them (with others) as we have already seen. Here, in the homeland of Islam, the nation emerged and inevitably was pivoted around Qoraish since the Al-Saqifa35 meeting, but it was difficult for this nation to be purely ‘ethnicist’ or theoretically racial, although the figures that participated in the Saqifa meeting were the same figures that organized the meetings of ‘Al-Nadwa’36 before Islam. However, a weighty companion of the Prophet as Bilal (who was black) could not attend the Saqifa meeting, though he is the same Bilal of whom the caliph Omar said: ‘He is equal to one third of all Muslims’ (Jahiz mentioned this in his essays). It is also well known that Abyssinians had their own quarter in Mecca. But as caliphs were only among the lineage of Qoraish, the meaning of nation’s unification was crystallized, around them and successively this unity was centred around the concept of caliph – Allah’s shadow on earth (succession of the Prophet Mohammed as stated in the Qur’an is a right for all believers). Accordingly, the caliph – prince of believers – was to become a symbol of the unity of all Muslims, as the unity (basically unified authority embodied in his figure) was always an issue of consensus because ‘it is a part of the Qur’anic unified nation’.37 That is why the issue of the impact of renouncing Islam was an exaggerated critical one and was not considered as a mere disputed issue with the new statesmen but ‘insurgence’ ‘fitna’ that is worse than apostasy. Similarly, any dissidence or disagreement with the leader (Imam), the symbol, was considered ‘insurgence’. As the paradigm of nation/state was already established, society/nation components were not taken into consideration. That is why the historian Radwan El-Sayed refers to the fact that the principle of ‘Succession (of the Prophet) being an exclusive right for the lineage of Qoraish’ remained untouchable until the 4th century AH (11th century AD). The Umayyads had established the tradition of building up the ideological apparatus to protect the centralism of the concept of ‘the nation’ irrespective of the diversity of nation’s components. However, history records that ‘actual centralism’ of caliphates was realized for not more than one century. But let us also remember that the unified ideological apparatus – that was established around the concept of nation – continued to be the main factor till the appearance of the Fatimids more than five centuries later who cracked it relatively, then the Ottomans (16th century AD) destroyed it gradually. 3.3.2 It is not just a mere coincidence that poetry, for a long period of time, continued to be the core of the Arab identity and existence and the

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strongest factor of its ideological structure. Therefore, during the era of the empire, poetry was the strongest tool for isolating and excluding Blacks – the weakest component of the new nation. In the first phase of the empire, poetry was a powerful means of isolating and excluding in a manner of full rejection and in contrast with what the ‘tolerant Islam’ paved the way for. Later on, after the social image in the class society itself was established, other forms of expression inherited poetry’s incision. No more incisive than the poem of Yazied Bin Mofaraagh, one of the poets of the 1st century AH, where he lampoons a prince born to an Abyssinian slave mother: Slaves are beaten by stick, while blame is enough for a free man.

El-Farazdak writes about the same topic. He says: The best poetry is that written by the elite while slaves write the worst poetry.

Jareer says: Don’t contemplate to marry from Taghlib since Negro people are better.

We find numerous like examples in the poetry of Jareer, Therroma and Abo-Sa’ad El-Makhzoomi and others. In Proud poetry, it was said: We fought overseas until we released Himyar from the scourge of the Sudanese.

It should be noted that Blacks were not treated in the poetic, or any other text, in a more human way except in their role as warriors or through spreading poetry by Blacks about war, as the new state was in need of them as soldiers (Antra). Moreover, slave-soldiers were not missed after battles or during the process of counting war losses (Al-Jahiz). Only out of this context in describing the beauty of Black women do we feel a human touch (Al-Jahiz). However, there is no more severity than calling Black poets ‘crows’,38 and refusing to collect their poetry, except very late by the efforts of some of their own. Of the poetry that has been collected we find how more than 20 ‘crows’ have created different types of poetry in terms of language and rhythm, genuine masterpieces in studying ‘The image of the Black’ in Arab ‘Sudan’. As for their superiority in describing the everyday life (dissipation, mirth, etc.), Al-Noairi, one of the Arab historians, writes:

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Mirth consists of ten parts, nine of which are in the Blacks and the remaining one is distributed among the rest of the peoples.

As mentioned above, spreading their descriptions of mirth, ravishment, vagabonds and debauched poems was not a kind of appreciation for their contribution in the fields of Arabic arts and literature, but to portray them as the lowest elements in the social hierarchy, elements who do not deserve care and appreciation in the new society. It was also a ploy to justify enslaving them and accordingly their complete exclusion as a result of the ‘image’ they deserve. It would be of great significance to remember what Al-Jahiz wrote about his astonishment, or his assumed astonishment, when he discovered that some Black poets create poems in different poetic modes which were the domain of Arabs as: eloquence (rhetoric), wisdom, Hadith narration and ostentation, in his essay ‘Pride of Blacks over Whites’ (pride of ‘Sudan’ over ‘Bidan’). This image of the ‘inferiority’ of the Black in Arab poetry has been spread through almost all later Arabic writings. When the political situation of Arabs deteriorated and the nation was about to go to pieces, the Hamadani State tried to face this crisis and defend Arab unity through the avant-garde Arab poet Al-Mutanabi. Al-Mutanabi devoted his efforts to the cause of attracting Egypt to the rescue of the Arab state even by composing hypocritical poems to the ruler Kafour Al-Ikhshidi.39 But the reality of the split imposes itself, neither did Egypt join the Hamadani state nor was Kafour saved from Mutanabi’s most famous poems on ‘Kafour the slave’, the same inherited, from the deep Arabic heritage image of the Black. The story of Mutanabi, the ‘Arab chevalier’, and ‘Kafour the slave’ deserves more contemplation, as it implies acceptance possibilities that were presented to achieve the unity of the nation, and at the same time, exclusion poems about which spread to the four corners of earth through Mutanabi and others. In the beginning, Mutanabi was conscious enough of the critical issue of colour and that it was the reason behind the isolation of the fighters and behind the conflict of Sam/Ham that threatened the Ham/Sam unity in the nation. That is why in praising Kafour he writes: Skin is only an apparel, whiteness of the soul is better than whiteness of clothes.

But when his efforts fail, he goes back to his original poetic doctrine when he writes about Kafour as Egyptian ruler:

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People are assigned their worth through their rulers, and Arabs will never succeed if they are ruled by aliens. Wherever I walk I find nations that are ruled, as sheep, by a slave.

As Kafour did not gratify Mutanabi for his good poems, Mutanabi indulged in the most defamatory, insulting and humiliating remarks about Kafour. He calls him ‘father of stench’, ‘father of Blacks’, ‘slave of evil’, ‘castrated’, ‘the Black’, ‘the pig’, ‘the impotent’, etc. This lampoon includes colour, name, origin and body. About his visit to Egypt, Mutamabi writes: How many ludicrous and ridiculous things in Egypt, but it provokes tears rather than laughter. Where there is one (Kafour) of Blacks who questions the propinquity of the people of the desert, A Black – whose lips are half his body – who is called ‘a full moon illuminating the deep darkness’.

We note here, first Mutanabi’s failure to gain Kafour’s aid, hence he rejects his former presentation of the acceptance images concerning Kafour’s colour and ugliness, and finally, Mutanabi’s poetry that spread in all corners of Islamic countries representing absolute exclusion for the image of colour and race that spread in the 4th century AH. These considerations are the basic key to understanding the way in which popular poets attempted to formulate the epic of Antara Bin Shadad or even Sief Bin Zi Yazen in the last centuries of the Arab-Islamic State (14th and 15th centuries AD). The popular poet makes use of acceptance–exclusion dualism when portraying Antara, the Black warrior (not accepted) as the saving hero of his tribe (nation) so that the epic could recognize his Arab fatherhood only and significantly after the decisive battle, not at the last minutes of his father’s life as portrayed in history. The popular poet portrays Seif Bin Zi Yazin when he faces Abyssinians and saves The Book of the Nile from star worshippers, and when he unifies his kingdom and appoints his son Moddar as ruler of Nile kingdom and his son Dumar as ruler of Great Syria kingdom (a symbol of Sam–Ham collaboration), but this description comes after a deep insult by the popular poet to ‘Abyssinians’ and a prophecy about their enslavement.40 3.3.3 Classification of nations: Thus, Arab poetry has already established its stand toward Blacks by expressing overwhelming desire to submit the weakest and lowest elements of the nation (Blacks). We start here with the austere stand of pre-Islam, then the positions taken by the empire, which ranges between forbearance and acrimony, i.e. between acceptance

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and exclusion. Now comes the role of prose, as historiography and literature, to establish the shape of the nation selected from among other nations, who were looking forward to it, or were competing with it in expansion or submitted to it for sometime. In this phase, Arab/Ajam (Alien) formula, as it was formulated by the symbolism and singularity of Arabic, is not helpful enough. Now, with the imperial phase, expression has turned into the logic of describing, distinguishing and sometimes differentiating the ‘other’ from among the non-Arab nations. Yet when it is related to Blacks, expressions stick to the logic of beautification and disfigurement, beautification for Arabs and disfigurement for the ‘other’ Black. Sometimes, in describing other nations, we find characteristics like wisdom and sense that are less than those of Arabs, of course, but when it comes to Blacks, they were described as neglected entities and as the absolute ‘other’ who has no value. Blacks’ numerous attempts to emancipate themselves and their rebellions have led to a deep desire to negate their material existence as mentioned in the news about cleansing this or that city of them. Examples about this attitude are numerous, of which Mu’awiya’s41 desire to put limits to the existence of all ‘red coloured’ and Al-Khorasani’s42 slaughter of thousands of Blacks in Kufa after using them to win his battles, in addition to the role of Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) in isolating them as slaves, in preventing their marriage from free Muslims under the pretext of narrowing the scale of enslavement, besides its absolute silence concerning enslavement in peacetime, while war is the single legal base for enslavement in Islam. Yet, all the above mentioned did not impede some attempts to establish some kind of acceptance during the whole phase of Arab-Islamic Empire, These attempts were basically based on the phrase: ‘even if he were an Abyssinian slave’. Depending on this expression ‘even if’, acceptance/ literature appeared, of which we may mention ‘Pride of Blacks over Whites’. In poetry, we have also seen how the other’s image started to incline to be ‘individual’ rather than ‘general’, a poet about a poet, a master about an abigail or a ruled about a ruler. However, in prose, after confirming the nation’s standing, we meet judgements on the other ‘community’, as well as the use of the term ‘Sudan’ rather than Black, Blacks or even Negro. In geography and ethnography we can find many more such examples. Methodologically, this idea needs, first of all, an epistemological presentation on the image Arabs have of themselves so as to examine if they are interested in building up an opposite image, or a completely different one. Although this is not the context of such presentation as it is available in other studies, I would like to point out that the structure of the pre-

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sented image about other nations confirms, mostly, the desire to complete the image of the Arabs with characteristics that are the opposite to the humiliating ones characterizing the other. We meet, for instance, association of philosophy with sorcery, courage with brutality, etc. Image formation in the era of the empire is characterized by a broad acceptance of the other, which is expressed through the other’s intensive presence in Arab literature in this era, in contrast with the other’s absence in the desert Bedouin isolated life phase. This phenomenon made the image of the Black, though it is mostly the unique negative image, equal with the images of all others concerning depriving the ‘other’ of his character. In this sense we have the description of Bin Fadllan of the ‘Russians’ as ‘the dirtiest creatures of God and that they are as errant donkeys’. Abou Hayyan Al-Tawhidy expressed this intellectual evolution in formulating Arab ideology towards ‘other’, saying: Each nation has its merits and vices, each community has its virtues and sins, and each sect has – in its way of life management – its perfections and shortcomings, that is to say that good, merits, evils and deficiencies exist among all creatures.

Let us now have a look at Al-Tawhidy’s classification of nations43 as he had established early the role of the relativity of cultures and civilizations among nations, as Hussein Fahim informs us.44 Al-Tawhidy in his 6th night of amiability describes to the Abbasid minister the surrounding nations, saying: China is known for its furniture and manufacture rather than thought and deliberation, while Turks are lions of warfare, Indians are the people of illusion, sorcery and cremation, Negroes are errant beasts.

As for Arabs, they are, as Ibn El-Mukafa’a described them, the wisest nation because of their virtuous instinct, their moderate environment, their righteous thought and intelligence and smartness.

The framework given here to compare civilizations and cultures is simply the image of intensive wisdom on one hand and a dispersed one on the other hand, in addition to depriving the Negro of any wisdom at all. Here, basically, we touch the very nature of imperial literature and its inflated ego. Now enough of that as I prefer not to deal here with the issue of Arab ethnic and racial attitudes because we agree with Albert Mimi that it is mostly a pragmatic racism rather than a theoretical one.

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This pragmatism might be the reason for Al-Jahiz’s comprehensive presentation of the debate between ‘Blacks and other coloured races’. This presentation is based on the position of Arabs between reds and Blacks and the position of Indians as Blacks. Al-Jahiz thoroughly explains the Prophet’s, saying: ‘I was sent to both red and Black’ in order to present a formation of the nation as Arab, but Arabs who are associated with other races, in a way that is reflected in the nation’s civilizational formation not only in its ethnic one. For him: ‘Indians are darker than Arabs, they are Blacks’ and ‘Copts are Abyssinian Blacks’, Al-Jahiz quotes what Copts say about themselves: ‘Furthermore, we know philosophy and contemplation. We are the most intellectual of peoples’, and Allah does not make us Black as a sort of deformation, but climate made us Black. As proof, we find among Arabs Black tribes as Bin Salim Bin Mansour ... they employ slaves for grazing, irrigation, crafts and service and they also marry Roman women. Blackness and whiteness are made by climate and by Allah’s mighty will in creating water and soil, and also because of the sun’s position, whether it is close or far, hot or moderate. Blackness and whiteness are not a kind of deformation, punishment, misshape or differentiation.45

I think that both Al-Jahiz and Al-Tawhidy’s opinions are an early attempt to produce the concept of the relativity of cultures and the classification of races and civilizations. But unfortunately this attempt did not receive the deserved attention by Arab intellectuals. Moreover, Arab ethnography failed to deal with this concept with enough rationality, with the exception of Al-Byrouni. This concept was able to deepen the acceptance rationality concerning the construction of the other’s image, in a way that is different from exclusion rationality that is excessively spread in Arab, both traditional and popular, culture. It seems to me that this is what Ahmed Amin meant when, in the preamble of his famous book The Forenoon of Islam, he mentioned that ‘the creation of bodies led to the creation of minds and to the creation of new thought’. He hoped that the physical spread of Arabs might lead to a parallel widening in their intellectual perspectives. We touch on this issue because enumeration of nations’ classification as seen by Arabs in the era of the Arab Empire did not narrow the exclusion’s limits in spite of the readiness of Arabs to accept the reality that was imposed by the empire and its doctrine. We already saw how Al-Tawhidy describes China as ‘people of no thought and deliberation’ and ‘Negroes

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are errant beasts’. Even when Al-Jahiz moves from theory to practice, he adopts the same ideas as Al-Tawhidy when he says: If you hear me speak about common people, be aware that I do not mean peasants, and I do not mean nations like ... and like Negroes and semiNegroes. As nations are but four: Arabs, Persians, Indians and Romans, the rest are barbarians and semi-barbarians.

The same stand is adopted by Ibn Abd Rabbou in his known work Al-Aqd Al-Fareed. When his friends asked him to tell them more about the most smart nations, he said: Persians had huge territories and land, they also unified many kingdoms and defeated many peoples, nevertheless they did not formulate anything for their minds or educe anything for their souls. Romans are people of manufactures, Chinese are people of curiosities, Indians are people of philosophy and Blacks are the worst among Allah’s creatures.

However, we have to mention some forms of literature and writings that tried to maintain some kind of acceptance of Blacks, which appeared with the extension of Arab Empire and the increasing influence of mongrels inside it basically from among Asians and Turks. Ahmed Amin calls this phenomenon an ‘increase of bodies in society and its intellectual impact’. In this framework, writings have been issued such as Al-Jahiz’s essay The Pride of Blacks over Whites. These writings provide us with rich material to study the desire to overcome the exclusion image to an image that admits some kind of acceptance accompanied with reservation not to go far to the extent of integration or equality. Of these writings we have Merits and Vices of Al-Baihaqy, Sudan and their Ascendancy over Whites of Ibn ElMarzaban and Characteristics of Blacks of Ibn Batlan in which the merits of Blacks are mentioned, but in the preamble we find a description of the book as ‘an inclusive essay about beneficial arts of buying and choosing slaves’. The same stand is adopted by Jalal Ad-Deen As-Syuty, the famous weighty intellectual, influential in the field of Fiqh. In his book Promenade in Preference among Whites, Blacks and Coloured, As-Syuty made an ironic commentary of Ibn Marzaban’s Preference based on the latter, saying that he prefers dogs to human beings. In this regard As-Syuty says that: it is not difficult for the person who prefers dogs to human beings to prefer Blacks to whites.

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As-Syuty has a similar comment on a similar preference made by another writer: he says that that writer ‘compares gold to glass’. 3.3.4 The concept of superiority of the nation is reflected in the great concern about the spread of the phenomena of ‘Kharijates’ and ‘Shi’ism’. In opposition to ‘insurgence’ and ‘mutiny’ we find the same superiority in literature in the form of accusations of atheism and humiliation addressed to Negroes in an unprecedented manner and as never happened in the case of ‘Reds’ or ‘Romans’ – those Negroes whom Mu’awiyah and his successors tried to drive out of the cities. The builders of the Abbasid dynasty also associated the image of Negroes with egregious evil that is obvious enough in Al-Khorassani’s concern about the marriage of ‘those Blacks’ with free women in Al-Kufa. That is why Al-Khorassani massacred 4,000 Blacks after using them in his battles and with their help he had achieved victory over the last Umayyad strongholds. But the image of Negro as a person who ‘provokes insurgence’ comes basically from the several riots organized by Negroes whose number had increased in the territories between the Arabian peninsula and the limits of the empire. Negro revolts and riots were not characterized with racial nature against Arabs, but were a part of the whole context of resisting inequality and oppression in the four corners of the Arab-Islamic world. Ruling classes were expected to negate such revolts on both social and political levels, but not in that apparent racial way as historians related. This was obvious enough in dealing with a number of peasants’ repeated revolts in Al-Sham (Al-Mubarqa Al-Yamany) and in Taberstan (Zeid Ibn Ali). Arab Bedouin even attacked Kaaba in AH 226 in a revolt against Abbasid rule and oppression, but, nevertheless, Negroes alone were blamed and execrated. Mohammed Emara,46 when dealing with ‘Zanj revolts’ under the leadership of Ali Bin Mohammed (AH 225–270), presents the revolts and riots that took place before the Zanj revolt. Some of these revolts were really organized by Negroes, but others were just social revolts that were deliberately described as Alawiya (Ali Bin Abi Iamb’s followers) or Kharijate so as to ascribe a religious motivation of the events by the existing authority. But the real Negro revolts were those that took place in Basra among the dredgers who worked clearing the salt off the soil to prepare it for cultivating sugar cane. Thousands of Negroes were sent to these fields from all sides of the empire (At-Tabari estimated them at 15,000, only in southern Basra) as a demonstration of the mass Negro presence in the Gulf region (Bahrain–Oman) where agricultural lands existed, and the Arab trade ports in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean up to East Asia (the silk road). Broad and organized revolt in this region was a fatal blow to Arab interests, especially in this phase of complete

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retrogression for the Arab element, and the beginning of the penetration and influence, then the rule of ‘aliens’, and foremost the Turks. That is why the reaction of Arab literature was nervous especially because the rebels – the Negroes – were among the weakest elements in the Arab image about the ‘other’. At-Tabari, devoted more than 200 pages to this event in his book The History of God Messengers and Kings. Mohammed Emara notes that At-Tabari never devoted such space to any other event. At-Tabari is well known as a weighty historian among Arabs. He is a unique case in his detailed description of Negroes’ revolt. His documentation was the last, before the usual conspiracy of silence that surrounded it by other historians, whose description of the revolt’s leader Ali Bin Mohammed remained as the dominant image of the Negro–rebel, variously described as damnable, dissolute, malicious, ugly, false prophet and traitor. This image continued to be fixed in Arab memory until Al Akkad (1892–1964), who called the Negro revolt ‘atrocious, wanton’, in contrast with the judgement of Taha Hussein, who considers this revolt as a social revolution similar to that of Spartacus! It is not just a coincidence that literary Arab critics exceptionally appreciate Ibn Er-Romi’s poem on Negroes’ revolt, but this appreciation derives from the poem’s literary excellence, with the apparent neglect of all implied ‘racial evils’ in the poem. Abdo Badawi has drawn attention to the poem’s racial content when he published the complete poem, but he did not deal with its implications in detail. Er-Romi first of all excuses Muslims as not being responsible for the revolt and accuses only Negroes who violate Islamic holiness: How can anybody sleep peacefully after the Negroes desecrated the Islamic sanctuaries, and the traitor usurped the religious leadership.

Then the poet asserts that the empire prospers in Basra while slaves try to destroy it, saying: While Muslims were living in prosperity, the Blacks came round and destroyed that prosperity, and the memory of what betook them, causes a fire to burn one’s heart.

Furthermore, Er-Romi calls for the Sam nation to help their sisters subjugated by the slaves belonging to the Ham nation, or else they are the slaves’ partners. This reminds us of what Al-Mutanabi wrote about Kafour: the same intensive presence of the awful image of Negroes and Blacks portrayed by

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Arab eloquence. We must note, at the same time, the absence in social history of the existence of Negroes, and their revolts were deep enough for them to be disclaimed by Shi’ites and Kharijates when they were attributed to them. Only several centuries later were Negroes redressed by a Shi’ite Ash-Sharif Ar-Raddi, who turned the revolt and its leader into a kind of heroic epic that had been forecast by Caliph Ali Bin Abi Talib (Mohammed Emara). During that period and till the end of the 3rd century AH, the Arab concept of the self-centred Islamic nation had slipped before the invasion of the centre by other elements (Persian then Turkish). In the atmosphere of the vast homeland of Islam, where the Islamic nature of the nation was never as clear and concrete as the Arab nature of that nation, ideas and image construction started to derive their mechanisms from geography and ethnography, rather than Islamic theology, jurisprudence, Islamic law and interpretation. In the 14th century AD, Ibn Khaldoon sums up the whole achievements of Arab geography in his famous summary of the philosophy of history and even of the literature of Arab journeys. In geography, as in history, Ibn Khaldoon had his own creative and objective approach that added a lot both in creating and understanding the social sciences. But he stuck to the Arab inherited image when he dealt with the issue of blackness. In his preamble about temperate and harsh regions, Sudan (Black regions) occupies the position of geographically harsh lands which is a geographical fact, but then Ibn Khaldoon cannot escape the inherited image of the Blacks and associates their position with: Religion is unknown there, science is absent among them and their conditions are far from human and closer to those of beasts. (Al Moukadema, p. 124)

Although Ibn Khaldoon scientifically described the relationship between blackness and whiteness on one hand and climate on the other hand, which has nothing to do with race, he does not appreciate any aspect of the civilization of Blacks’ lands, and describes them as feeble-minded, impetuous, singing, dancing and foolish. The only exception he makes is for those that live near temperate zones. These geographic analyses might be the basic knowledge of Arab travellers in their visits to such lands. 3.3.5 The image in Arab travel literature: Arab travel literature is the literary form that could take out the Arab writings – poetry and prose – from

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under the mantle of doctrine, Islamic law and its sciences, and equally out of the rulers’ palaces, though they continued serving the wholeness of the empire that was backed by a few centuries of the concept of central ‘nation’, the nation that was unified by ideological hegemony, though socially fragmented since the 1st century AH. Arab travel literature is a step away from the self-image towards the ‘world of the others’. I should assert here that I do not agree with Dr Hussein Faheem who associates this literary form with the phase of prosperity and Islamic conquests so as to emphasize its political and civilizational superiority,47 while the known facts indicate that the renowned Arab travels had taken place in the 10th, 11th (Ibn Hauqal and Al-Bakri) and 14th centuries AD (Ibn Batuta), which marked the beginning of Arab downfall. This is the phase in which Arab conquests had turned out into trade and the defeat before the crusaders and Asians had also its negative impact. The ‘other’s’ image derives its significance now as a manifestation of the desire to retain a positive self-image irrespective of the reality that has been changed and that is not any more superior, and irrespective of the new different conditions of superiority and objective preference. Here we find an explanation for the withdrawal of the ‘religious’ aspect of travel literature and the predominance of earthbound and material aspects through the diverse world of the ‘other’ that is full of the chances for trade and fortune hunting (gold and slaves). Nevertheless, the religious aspect still has some credibility, basically in describing the ‘other’ so as to maintain the prospect for superiority. The introduction of Ibn Hauqal to his famous book Passages, Kingdoms, Deserts and Perils: Description of the Earth48 describes this new transition and its new aspirations. Ibn Hauqal says: This is a book of places ... regions and countries, since time immemorial, its kinsfolk, its characteristics, excises, duties, big rivers, its coastal cities and metropolises, the distances in between, travel and trade, in addition to tales, news, anecdotes and ancient monuments ... The book includes all pertinent knowledge about regions, their monies, excises, duties, distances along roads, trade. These are the facts about kings, politicians and the elite of society of all classes.

Ibn Hauqal then goes on to say that he left the city of peace (Baghdad) on the same day that Mohammed El-Hassan Bin Abdullah Bin Hammadan left it defeated, at the hand of the Turks who wanted to arrest him, and went to Rabi’a’s homeland. This had befallen Mohammed El-Hassan who had ruled Baghdad and was called ‘Guardian of the state’.

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That is why in the 19th century William Cooley (1841),49 a researcher on the legacy of Arab geographers, summarizes Arab image about the ‘other’ as follows: For Arabs, the ‘others’ were kings who were fighting, merchants, collectors of gold, who went for the pilgrimage so as to gain credibility. Although Arab geographers seldom travelled beyond the homeland of Islam.

What we are interested in here is that the journey, in such circumstances, reflects the possibility of accepting the ‘other’, and even takes the ‘self’ to that ‘other’. Journey is definitely less racial, less ethnic and even less self-centred than poetry and many other forms of religious and literary prose. Since Ibn Hauqal’s arguments about Ptolemy’s map, in a geographic equivalent of Islamic philosophers’ debates with their Greek counterparts, the ‘journey’ became a son of dialogue with another vision. And the creation of a ‘selfcentred’ image of the ‘other’ is not a specific Arab phenomenon indicative of fanaticism, it is rather common in similar social and cultural situations (as Columbus in describing his journey). It even gives the image its historicity so that Arab ahistoricity would not impede the study of that image. Arab ‘travels’ paid some attention to the lands of the Blacks, though not the same as that given to the travels to Asia.50 Arab travels to the lands of the Sudan – recorded by about 15 travellers and geographers – start with an exclusive reference to Islam homelands. Ibn Hauqal refers to all kingdoms of apostasy that surround Islam, western and eastern shores of the sea, while Ibn Batuta refers to the countries of the infidels which he did not visit – near the kingdom of Mali – where a ‘community of those Black cannibals’ live. The traveller hurries up, here, to describe the attention paid by the Black king to the affairs of white Muslims, the king even grants a whole quarter (king of Mali in the case of Ibn Batuta) for white Muslims who call their quarter ‘Medina’, while the king and his kinsfolk inhabit the forest (ElBakri)51 (I believe it was white Muslims who used this name and not Blacks). White Muslims even compare their Medina with Mecca, of course, in case it is in good shape as that of Tad-Mecca (El-Bakri). A good Black is always one who made his pilgrimage, and among his Medina’s elite there are Faqihs and judges. However, both El-Bakri and Ibn Batuta refer to the absence of marriages among whites and Blacks in these regions, as the case of the community of Hansali (Morocco–Casablanca) ‘Because they are whites with good-looking faces’ (El-Bakri). With such an Islamic introduction to a kingdom of Blacks where the journey starts, the traveller begins to shape the image of the kingdom so as to be, politically

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and economically, similar to the city or sultanate where he came from plus his own inherited image on Blacks or Negroes. So, the king is surrounded by slaves (not guards), wives (and abigails), judges, Faqihs, poets and merchants (i.e. Arab palace), in addition to sorcerers who perform, along with poets, amusing acts (Ibn Batuta). Then the traveller starts to describe ‘production relationships’, they are but commercial, as the traveller does not find any other kind of production relationships. Inevitably, the traveller deals with the slave trade (Ibn Hauqal, Ibn Batuta). However, for the traveller the basic economic issue is to find ‘the owners of metals’ (rich people) among them and whether they are Muslims or not, and to ‘woo’ them you have to carry ‘salt and glass ornaments’ (Ibn Batuta). That is because they are simple minded and overestimate trivial things (Ibn Batuta). About Abyssinians, Al-Bakri writes: they have skilfulness and knowledge that distinguish them from among all Blacks tribes. They are not as greasy as other Blacks.

However, he mentions that in the farthest places of Abyssinia there is a community of people ‘who go like animals on four legs’ (Columbus even mentioned that he saw people with tails: Tudorov, AH 327–8). Then we find scores of pages about Blacks from among the owners of gold and silver, who exchange salt for gold and inhabit the territories that extend from Segelmasse to the south of Berber country, to Ghana and Mali. When he describes a town like Masoufa, Ibn Batuta writes: ‘All are slaves working in cutting salt.’ Ghana for Ibn Hauqal, is the most prosperous on Earth, because of the gold it has amassed. El-Bakri describes different kinds of smaragd (green gemstones) exported to India and Morocco, and identifies the country he visits by the gold and silver it has. Ibn Batuta, Ibn Hauqal and Al-Bakri mentioned Blacks’ countries’ possession of copper, ebony, ivory and agate in small villages where life depends on the extraction and sale of these materials. But this rich African with such fortunes is not interesting enough for the traveller to describe his social life and the system of his kingdom which some travellers mention in passing as a country of justice, security and saintliness (Ibn Batuta). Speaking of the kingdom of Mali where Ibn Batuta lived for more than four months, a country that a man needs two months to cross however, he did not pay attention even to Timbuktu that was, at that time, a cultural stronghold and a centre of Faqihs and ulemas in western Africa. He did not devote to it or to his visit there more than two lines. When the traveller deals with the subjective aspect of Black character, he remembers but the sexual dissipation, women’s stripped apparel and

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their deep involvement in superstition that is deep enough to influence the traveller himself who repeats the fable that he had seen a bird crying: ‘AlHussein was killed in Karbala’ (Ibn Hauqal). Arab culture is overcrowded with the image of ‘metal owners’ from Black countries, their daily trade in slaves and their clothes that are imported, made from wonderful Egyptian textiles. Because of this image, the visit of ‘Mansa Moussa’, Sultan of Mali, to Cairo, on his way to the pilgrimage, had a very wide popular response among Egyptians. The Sultan, as described by historians in the 14th century AD mainly by ElKalkashandy, was accompanied by thousands of slaves and thousands of pounds of gold (he was seen in the streets of Cairo on his horseback, and the front part of his cavalcade consisted of 500 slaves each carrying a bar of gold). To what El-Kalkhashandy reported, Abdul Rahman Zaki adds that during the visit of the Sultan to Cairo ‘the price of gold fell’.52 This turmoil and confusion in Cairo during the visit of Sultan Mansa could be understood only in the light of the presence of a big community of Blacks in Cairo. The Fatimids, when they came to Egypt, brought from Morocco thousands of Blacks who were used as soldiers in their army and were left in Cairo after the departure of the Fatimids and were always accused of stirring bias for Shi’ism in Egypt. The visit of Mansa Moussa to Cairo is the most popular in identifying the image of the kings of Black kingdoms because of the inclination of the Arab writer and historian to create an image of Blacks in the Arab image rather than an African one. A contemporary researcher from Senegal has noted that this ideological arsenal made the African figures find their significance only in their Arab origins or through practising authority in the Arab manner.53 The massive presence of Blacks in Egypt might have been a base for a ‘different acceptance’. History knows similar situations with massive presence of Blacks in the armies of Saladin, and of Morocco’s sultans where they were in their thousands, and squads of them were exchanged between Morocco’s sultans and emirs of Andalusia. Yet, because enslavement was related to social life and its diverse models, and also with militias – whose monstrosities are overwhelming in our societies – the negative image of Blacks continued to exist in the Arab region during this phase which was imperial by its nature. For the same reason, the appearance of Mansa and other similar kings with all their splendour did not alter the fixed image, particularly because the historians had created an image that is no different from that of the Muslim sultan where followers (500 slaves) surround him, but they are not even mere followers. We recall here the Sultan’s guards in his country (Mali) whom Ibn Batuta described as slaves.

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Mameluke rule in Egypt in this period allowed the continuation of such inherited culture, as this rule depended basically on murder, usurpation of power, armed plunder and relying on aliens, Mamelukes or Blacks. This is the same period when Ibn Batuta started his journeys from Morocco (14th and beginning of 15th centuries AD) and the same period of the expansion of Mameluke influence and dominance over the territories that extended from the upper Euphrates to the east to Nubian land in the south. This Mameluke dominance made the Sultan of Bornu write to Sultan Barkook the Mameluke Sultan of Egypt, calling him: The Almighty King of Egypt, blessed land of God, mother of the world we face, with our kings a disaster, as Arabians, who are called ‘Ghozam’, have enslaved our free people, women, boys and weak old men and our fellow Muslims. We are the descendants of Seif Bin Zi Yazan the Arab-Qoraishi. Those Arabians have enslaved our free people and sold them to merchants from Egypt and Great Syria who enslave them. Please stop the corrupt Arabians, put an end to their profligacy. You are the Sovereign, and You are responsible for your subjects.54

Sultan of Bomu expected, here, as Mensa of Mali, elimination of enslavement or at least deepening brotherly relationships with the rulers of Egypt or ‘Islamic centre’ to which they belonged. Yet, the characteristics and modes of the 15th-century systems – including Mameluke African systems – did not differ from those of the 8th century and that is why nothing was changed. From Kafour’s period to that of Mamelukes (11th–15th centuries AD), the image of the slave in Arab-Islamic countries continues to be the image of ‘objects’ or of land ‘serfs’ or of mercenary soldiers, notwithstanding the participation of some of them in wealthy trade or in the communities of rich elite, as this image was always useful for this ruler or that. That is why the image of ‘Blacks’ was maintained constant, and strengthened by the raids of Moroccans during two more centuries and, consequently, more harsh literature about it and more cruel trade in slaves (16th and 17th centuries). Before going into statistics about the slave trade at the end of the 19th century, I would like to draw attention to the image portrayed by Negro intellectuals or Blacks themselves who were influenced by the Arab image of Negroes and Blacks. It is sufficient to show how deep the impact was of Arab writings on African heritage in the Arabic language. This phenomenon is sufficiently obvious in Abdul Rahman El-Saadi’s The History of the Sudan (16th century), who was from Songhai kingdom and a son of

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Timbuktu, and later (in 1800) in the writings of Ibrahim El-Timbukty who was one of the Black ulama. Abdul Galeel El-Timimi55 introduced ElTimbukty’s document in the framework of what he calls intermingling between African minorities and Tunisian society, in close relations with commercial families.

But I read this document in a different way. In my opinion it is an angry message addressed to the Bay Hammoda Pasha in 1800 entitled ‘Exposure of the secrets of the infidelity of Blacks in Tunis’, when he visited Tunis on his way back to his Black country from pilgrimage. He expressed his upset and anger with Blacks in Tunis, then condemns their morals, manners, unbelief and disorder: On arriving in Tunis, I found a calamity about which any Muslim who has a little bit of faith could not keep silence, because slaves’ infidelity is definite. All Tunisians know it either for sure or by hearsay.

He goes on to say that they worship their own gods – Turkundu and Matmura and they gather with jinn (demons) – those slaves: those beasts that know neither divine main duties nor the traditional ones. If asked why I call them slaves while they are emancipated and an emancipated person is free, I would answer that it is because they have returned back to the origin of slavery which is infidelity, God forgive us and yourselves ... Every Mufti should prevent any one from emancipating any of their slaves, or else he become party to this community’s insurgence.

Even through Blacks, Arab culture continues drawing such an image of ‘the Black other’, it is the same negative image whether in the phase of Arab prosperity (empire of Kharaj theory) or in the phase of Arab decline (Oriental mosaic theory?). Is there any reason for this aggressive attitude of Arabs towards Blacks with the exclusion it entails? Is this a kind of ostentation in victory and solace in defeat? Should we move from this ethnic ahistoricity to an analysis connected to the continuation of the Kharaj model (rent state) that survives with the help of the revenues of distant trade, i.e. the revenues of peripheral slave trade that is dominant in Africa itself, in addition to the fortunes of gold, copper, ivory, smaragd. We must notice here that the active elements of the empire, which had deteriorated early in the eastern regions, were still active at the hands of the Moroccans (15th–18th centuries AD) as junior partners with the

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Spaniards who were looking forward to establishing their own new colonial empire. History records here that the commanders of the expeditions of Al-Mansour Al-thahabi to Bilad As Sudan (AD 1580–90) were Spanish!56 This situation in addition to the image of the ruling class itself in almost all Arab countries for a long time (Mamelukes and foreign merchants: the case of Egypt) compel Arab sociology to study carefully the Arab socio-political hierarchy where the military were on top, while on the bottom, there were not only the miserable peasants, but also unfortunate Black slaves. Is this situation a sufficient stimulus to also study the phenomenon of intensive marginalization that spread all through Arab history, or to be precise, say in almost all of it? Was this marginalization the reason why it was impossible for the scientists of the historical materialist school, or Arab sociologists in general, to draw an appropriate map of the social structure till now? Is it possible to replace the concept of marginalization by that of exclusion which is based on ethnic or racial aspect, as some think? The phase we deal with now is that of ‘Arab break’ and ‘Western contiguity’, the phase when studies on the image of ‘other’ were addressed to the ‘European’ newcomer, and when Arabs were fraught with feelings of self abasement so as to emphasize the ‘other’s’ superiority and the ‘self’s’ inferiority. On the theme of Negroes and the influence of marginalization on drawing the image of ‘Blacks–slaves’, a French researcher57 in the field of slave trade across the desert reports that statistics show that there were 65,000 slaves in Algeria in AD 1700–1880, 100,000 in Tunisia, 400,000 in Libya, 515,000 in Morocco and 800,000 in Egypt. This means there were almost two million slaves only in the north African Arab world during two centuries. Here Western writers compare with slaves taken across the Atlantic from Africa to the New World and/or Europe. It does not give us much relief to say that their image or the racial practices against them in the Americas were definitely worse than those in the Arab world. Nor, dealing with the phase of the different endeavours to free the image, i.e. the phase of ‘national state’, is it helpful to refer to the impact of imperialist culture of ‘divide and rule’ so as to explain the continuous existence of the negative image in the phase of the national state? 3.3.6 Here I would prefer to put this debate aside and stop for a while on a new situation, i.e. the situation of the removal of Arab/panArab/space to the court of Ottoman Empire. Here, there were several changes, the homeland of Islam became just the mosaic of which consists the empire of Ottoman totalitarianism with its central and non-central organizations. When Ottoman corruption was connected with the

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renunciation of Righteous Islam – the source of legitimacy – brotherhood movements started to spread in the regions of the empire to recover the ‘Arab self’, reminiscent of the resistance movements to the Abbasid state, and to return to the Righteous Islam and its internationalism. The dominance of the feelings of inferiority within the regions of the Ottoman Empire mixed with the memories of the Tartar raids led to various defensive reactions diversified in their manners and forms of expression, particularly because the new tyrannical authority was not a protector, for that mosaic, from the creeping European penetration – again reminiscent of the memory of another foreign invasion viz. the crusaders’ wars. In all regions of the new empire we find – on the official level of the authorities – a distorted imperial position interwoven with that inherited from several previous centuries. In these new circumstances of the Ottoman era, neither the Arabic language nor the doctrine could create a new heritage (Mamelukes in Egypt and Days of Morocco). In this context, the Saadis and Alawis had established their empire – independent of the Ottomans – (Moroccan unity) that was based on expansion in the Sudan, beginning with the abortive raids of Mansour Al-thahabi at the end of the 16th century. Similar endeavours to establish an independent empire were attempted in Egypt near the end of the 18th century and they were accomplished in the 19th century by Mohammed Ali. Such attempts were accompanied with the massive procurement of slaves for the capital of the new empire, which meant that the numbers of slaves within the populations, mainly in the North African Arab countries, reached that high percentage that we mentioned before. On the popular level, epics and poetry of heroism (Antara Bin Shadad and Seif Bin Zi Yazin for example) do not have the same weight they had before (the 14th century) in dealing with the problem of Arab image and that of the ‘other’ Black. These old forms retreated to pave the way for the movements and literature of the ‘brotherhoods’ so as to purify the Muslim self after the corruption that prevailed (18th and 19th centuries). The movements of Wahabis (in the Arabian peninsula), Sinousis (in Libya), Mahdis and sophism movements, and ‘brotherhoods’ spread in the whole Arab and African worlds. African writings, concomitant with their Arabic counterparts, dealt with the revival of the Prophet’s tradition, the suppression of innovations, the necessity for jihad and the re-establishment of the system of Imams by Uthman Dan Fodio. The communities of ‘zawaya’ and ‘conclaves’ also spread. The connections and relationships among all these new social phenomena and organizations from the far north to the west and east of the continent were well established. We must note here that the spread of the ideas of charging people of infidelity by the broth-

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erhood movements helped the spread of enslavement of many people coming from the enclaves of ‘infidelity’ with the approval of the Mahdis, and consistently with the continuation of the practice of slavery. The Brotherhood movements, Al-Tijanys, Murids and Sinous, attracted the attention of French and British anthropologists and through their literature the concept of ‘Africanization’ (rejected exclusion) of Islam was widespread. Meanwhile, Arab studies did not pay enough attention to the concept of ‘conformity’ that would have been easily deduced from the spirit of these movements. The sociology of Arab and African sophist brotherhoods – after the end of the wave of charging people with apostasy – might lead to the features of another ‘Arab image’ of Africans in the Arab heritage. It may also present a more positive assessment of the exclusion image than that we have proposed in this study. The paradox is that the heritage of ‘state’ and its cultural product in contemporary Arab history, i.e. closely connected to plain Westernization of the concept of modernization, seem more similar to a ‘distorted imperialistic’ product than to a ‘brotherhood’ one for several reasons that are not under study here, but come under the title ‘The extent to which the concept of the civil state has interacted within the project of the modern state’. The weak interaction of the concept of civil state led to the continuation of older imperialistic concepts of exclusion embodied in images, some of which are very old, others are transformed in the same logic. Omar El-Tunisy, author of Activating Minds (early 19th century), Omar Tusson, author of Equatorial Province (late 19th century), and the writings on the Egyptian empire in Africa up to the 1940s, all provide evidence of the deformed imperialistic paradigm and the continuation of the image of African ‘slave’. The authors of Journey to the West – in contrast with the orientalists’ journey to the East – have written within the prospect of the disfigurement/embellishment concept in the context of dire ‘desires’ aroused as a result either of being dazzled on seeing the Western ‘other’ or of comparison that imposes itself as a need to ‘review self’.58 The journey to the west was not a manifestation of the need to emphasize the self-image through establishing the image of the ‘other’ – as that African/Asian one – because the traveller finds himself here in front of a strong, new and central nation whose model is desired. As for ‘others’, inside the same texture or around it, in the countries of the South, they are but ‘neglected nonentities’ in the new ‘image’s’ dialogue for the sake of ‘progress’ and ‘development’. The aspiration for building the ‘self-image’ through the reality of the ‘other’ and not conversely is embodied in the writings of Khair Ed-din Pasha El-Tunisy, The Best Ways, and Ahmed Bin Abi Al-Dy, The Best Anecdotes.

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Rifa’a Rafi Al-Tahtawi, in his book Extraction of Gold in Summarizing the Journey to Paris,59 classifies the nations, saying: People are classified into three categories according to the degree of their development, and the distance that separates them from the primitive state: the first category is that of brutal creatures, the second is that of rude barbarians and the third is that of the people of arts, urbanization, civilization and modernism. An example of the first category is those neglected people of countries as Sudan who are always like lost beasts, do not know good from evil, are illiterate, have no knowledge of means of livelihood, their instincts and emotions drive them to satisfy their lusts as beasts. Arab-Bedouin are examples of the second category, who enjoy some kind of human community, know good from evil, and they also read and write. Yet they lack development in matters of living standards and civilization. The third category includes: Egypt, Great Syria, Yemen, the Romans, Persians, Moroccans, people of Sirmar and the Americans. These are countries where there are people of civilization and policies. Westerners have accomplished skillfulness in sciences, while Islamic countries have neglected such sciences and that is why they are in need of the Western countries to gain the knowledge they lack in this domain.

With this text we do not need any comments about ‘balance of power’. AlTahtawi’s point of view – that is a typical point of view repeatedly mentioned in the writings of the Journey to the West in the literature of Arab ‘Enlightenment Era’ – is actually a continuation of the epistemological severance of the Ottoman deterioration phase with the product of the era of Islamic Empire and its knowledge about other peoples. This point of view has restricted the new knowledge in the products of ‘the New World’ and its evolution theories and re-emphasized its resolve not to relinquish the exclusion relationship of the Old World. We may refer here to titles such as Egyptian Empire in Africa by Mohammed Sabri (1947) or Egyptian sovereignty over Sudan by Fouad Shokri as examples of the traditional image retained up to the 1950s.

IV. National independence era: conformity/exclusion 4.1 In the national state: the national revolution for independence and liberation in the Arab world was characterized by ‘confrontation with the West’ and ‘strengthening itself by the help of the South’. This peculiarity necessitated the ‘reconstruction of the Arab self’, but did not require

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‘reviewing’ the image of the West or that of the South. It may be true that this endeavour to reconstruct Arab self tried to get rid of some elements of the previous Image or have changed the formula so as to fit the new situation (i.e. from describing the Black as inferior to describing the Arab as the bearer of a noble mission). Yet, the influence of ‘evolution school’ continued to impose its logic of the dualism backwardness/catching up, for the sake of ‘development and progress’ according to Al-Tahtawi. The new self that was discovered by Journey to the West led to the withdrawal of ‘Pharoism’ in Egypt, of ‘pan-Islamism’ and the withdrawal of ‘Mediterraneanism’ to some extent. However, ‘Islamism’ did not withdraw from the Arab Maghreb, or from the Arabian peninsula, while the Arab nationalism school in the East led to the reconstruction of the Arab nation’s aspiring self through the Nasser politics. How was the Arab newborn self constructed? What was the image it preferred to form about the ‘African other’ in this period of establishing the fundamentals of the modern vision based on building conformity with the countries of the South in order, basically, to promote relationships with the North? 4.1.1 A lot of facts and literature are available here; phases are interwoven and complicated in addition to the urgent need to move from the field of historical or political studies to detailed researches in the field of written and folk literature, to move from historical and political sciences to sociology with its anthropological and ethnographic branches. Unfortunately, the blockage imposed on dealing with the issue of ‘diversity within unity’ in the Arab culture still impedes thorough studies about several important social categories, among which study of the Blacks in Arab countries. Thus, the image continues to be socially/politically idealized, and continues impeding detailed studies about these categories (on an internal level) and getting acquainted with the reality of other peoples (on an external level). This idealism of image has led – exactly as the previous image of inferiority – to separation rather than integration. The previous power of doctrine is replaced now by the overwhelming power of mass media to reproduce the ‘other’s’ image according to the ‘requisites of the new period’. Consequently, without scientific, methodological and exacting studies, there is no way to reach any but the deformed images that might represent the power of autocratic ideology rather than the spontaneous one that prevailed in the previous eras of the empire according to the literature of narration, amiability, journeys, etc. With the rise of the ‘national state’ as a new concept after the Second World War, we note, first of all, the framework of ‘mission’ and ‘civilizing mission’ and ‘role of liberating’ which is the counterpart of the ‘holy

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mission of informing about Islam’, ‘final mission (Islam)’ and ‘establishing the Islamic homelands through jihad’. Consequently, the builders of the newborn Arab self had to construct an image for the African ‘other’, the African who had lost his memories of his glorious old days with Arabism and Islam, who is now subservient and dependent on other forces and who is always waiting for the message of ‘The Voice of the Arabs from Cairo’.60 The African other is now ‘socially fragmented’ and not yet preoccupied, as are the Arabs, with all-encompassing unity, or he is, let us say, a mythical creature that surges from its static state to turn into a giant that destroys shackles like the Arab models with their Egyptian or Algerian leaderships, etc. In 1954, the Egyptian revolution leader issued his booklet The Philosophy of the Revolution, where he referred to the mission of Egypt, the mission of transferring civilization into the remote dark parts of the continent and liberating it from the hegemony of 5 million whites.

Hussein Mu’nes, a famous Egyptian historian well known for his studies on Arab geographers, goes further to deepen the construction of the image which Nasser had initiated. Some even think that he was one of the initiators. In 1955 Mu’nes issued his famous book Egypt and its Mission61 that was reprinted five times up to 1975. The author states: Egypt is the ‘mother of the World’, its mission is to disseminate light and peace because Egypt is the Mother and is the Origin of enlightenment ... its conquests disseminate civilization and not political hegemony ... Egypt has been always the origin and the source of African civilization ... Those who got in contact with Egypt became civilized and progressed, and those who did not remained where they were.

The African here suffers, as always before, a civilizational vacuum, where Egypt, as the Arabs before them, pushes him into the arena of history (Mu’nes explained this idea in details) and fills this vacuum with the light of Christianity or Islam as well. Conformity could be reached for Africans who accept this role, and those who do not accept it ‘exclude themselves’ from history and are subjected to colonialism. The author mentioned Sudan and Rhodesia as examples to explain his idea. The Egyptians built the Sudanese capital halfway between Assyut and Malakal while the Rhodesians fell into the obscurity of colonialism. It was not just a coincidence that the Al-Azhar apparatus was vested to

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achieve this mission and to be the most importa’nt tool of communication with that world on both cultural and civilizational levels, as ‘liberation’ was a political process that was not connected so much to the predominant cultural process. The image here is dual, ranging between civilized ‘acceptance’ for those who accepted integration on one hand and political acceptance for the sake of common liberation on the other hand. However, exclusion here is implied and based on the idea that the leadership of liberation and progress is already, definitely and exclusively decided: it is the ‘Arab self the source of light and civilization’. In the absence of an objective Arab anthropological school, not to mention an ethnographical one, the Egyptian school of history, generally influential in Arab culture and particularly in that period, quoted ancient Arab geographical and historical manuscripts in search of texts about the vacuum that was always filled by Arab light. The references to Africa in this period, arid for two more decades, had such titles as The Spread of Islam and Arabism beyond the Great Sahara (Hassan Ibrahim Hassan, 1957), The Spread of Islam and Arab Culture in Africa: The Role of Arabs in Disseminating Civilization in West Africa (Hassan Ahmed Mahmoud, 1957), The Role of Arabs in Discovering Africa, and the Historical Origins of Arab-African Relationships (Gamal Zakareya Kassim, 1971–5) and Islamic Tide in Africa (Galal Abbas, 1978). We should stress here the strength of the historical school because it was behind the propaganda for the ideas that were easily spread by mass media and education and which replaced reality with history. That is why the texts of Hassan Ibrahim Hassan (1957)62 about Negro peoples who accepted Islam were accepted. He says: As for Islamic culture, we can definitely say that this culture was a pure Arab one without any external influences, because the Negro peoples who adopted Islam and its Arab culture had no cultural traditions as the Persians or the Greeks who had their impact on the Arab culture in the Near East. In the case of the Negro peoples, culture was brought to their countries and they accepted it as it was.

The author continues, saying: Islam has brought a new civilization that provided the Negro peoples with a distinguished civilized character that is still obvious there now, and that had its impact on their political and social systems. Islam provided barbarian tribes with civilization ... and gave the Negro/Black the opportunity to become a free citizen in a free world. (p. 59)

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Another researcher in African history, Gamal Zakareya Kassim (1975), adopts the same stance. The African vacuum and acceptance–exclusion image are found in his writings when he refers to an African conference in Accra, 1958, for the aim of establishing the basis for writing the history of Africa. He says: In my opinion, the Arabs’ role in Africa should occupy a basic position in African history for several reasons, among which are the common destinies of the Arab world and the African continent in different eras of history, in addition to the fusion of Arab civilization with the many civilizations of African peoples that led to some kind of solidarity and understanding between them based on their common struggle.63

Then the author deals with the tide of Africans in common with that of Arabs. He says: The extent of the flourishing of the history of Arabs in Africa is now obvious, how Arab influences on African peoples are manifest, and how a common Arab–African civilization appeared as a result. This occurred because many African peoples considered the Arab civilization as a foundation for establishing their political and social future and many of them have adapted themselves to the Arab spirit and culture willingly and not under duress ... The Arabs established civilized Islamic kingdoms in Abyssinia, and even before Islam they established Axium. [Axium is the Ethiopian kingdom of three thousand years of civilized history, and which predates any sort of Arab civilization.]

He adds: Britain in the 19th century recognized the civilizing role of Egypt in the areas it reached in Africa.

Thus, Egypt and the Arabs move in an African civilization vacuum, an idea created to justify the new role, basically that of national liberation! Let us dwell now on some other intellectual figures whose contribution is not in the field of established historiography, but in other fields of knowledge (Galal Abbas, the Egyptian geographer, and his book Islamic Tide, 1978).64 What did this researcher/traveller see, as a witness of the period of establishing Arab–African cooperation in the 1970s? He says:

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As a result of this diversity (of beliefs) that disorientates minds, and among this proliferation of rituals that wastes life, the African lived in an intellectual and spiritual confusion ... it was difficult for the African to focus his intellectual loyalty on any of those beliefs. The African lived in a labyrinth of sacred creeds, lost and unable to find a haven for his soul ... Those were the reasons that helped Africans to accept Islam.

Galal Abbas then goes on to describe African society and how it became in conformity with the characteristics of Islamic society (polygamy, eradication of tribal formations and conflicts about land, Arabic language, monotheism, etc.). Thus, acceptance or conformity exists here, yet negation or exclusion is also represented and embodied in the stance toward ‘different’ history as Mu’nes mentioned in 1954: Those who got in contact with Egypt became civilized and progressed, and those who did not, remained where they were.

4.1.2 Unfortunately, the sociological or political schools did not present any other image for Africa within Arab culture because sociology was not yet free from the framework of the anthropology of the ‘Nile basin’, human geography and physical anthropology. Sociology was not even free from the influence of British anthropology (physics of Seligman, or functionalism of Evans-Prichard) – hence colonial anthropology. The African, according to this school, is subjected to a race classification that is divided by nature or language into thousands of small units. When these thousands of small units exist in another anthropological paradigm, the result is stateless or segmented society. This is the situation in the Nile valley (southern Sudan and the region of the Great Lakes). Therefore, the image inherited from this legacy was built on the inevitability of social fragmentation rather than integration, and the ideology of tribalism continues to be dominant as a unit of analysis. In this context it was impossible for the social school to make its significant contribution. It was the school of political science that, in its turn, was influenced by the school of modernization, and the school of functionalism that came forward. Abdul Malek Auda presented ‘Patterns of Politics and Rule’ in Africa in an endeavour to create a modern state in Africa like in the European style, without any relationship to historical African societies. The charismatic Arab figures (Nasser of Egypt and Ahmed Bin Bella of Algeria) seemed to be an acceptable model to solve the paradox of the existing discontinuity between empire and modernization and to get

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rid of the negative African image in historical writings. That is why the vision of Pan Movements in both regions (Arab and African) was an appropriate solution imposed from above under the leadership of such charismatic figures. The ‘African image’ was supposed to accept the call for Pan Movement as a progressive one irrespective of the resistance of the social local components, even those who belong to the same school. Acceptance here is the consonance between African image and the Arab one, while negation or exclusion emerges from the ‘reactionary image’ of the ‘opponent’ who is out of the framework of the predominant image. Whereas the images of the ‘role’, ‘leadership’ and ‘dissemination of lights’ are of historical references (Arabs for Nasser and the kingdom of Ghana for Nkrumah). Political and social history, which impedes progress (i.e. taking up, Westernization, modernization), is not to be considered at the level of civilizational break. Only a few – on the African level, and not on that of the Arabs – have examined these sociocultural facts such as Cabral and Walter Rodney in their famous statements about negation from history by colonialism. Such a concept as ‘negation out of history’ did not help those who adopted ‘Arab image’ of the African society to review what historians described as a ‘vacuum’ filled by Arabism and Islam and later by liberation. This endeavour could be understood as a deliberate consonance process aimed at readopting the position of Islamic-Arab State rather than establishing a national liberation state. The protagonists of the political image were amazed by the ideas of Senghor and Nyerere who extended the concept of historical negation so as to include Arab existence itself, and Islam’s disfigurement of African traditions by force or by consent. However, the acceptance or exclusion of a personality like Senghor according to Arab acceptance–exclusion of Western policies in Africa reveals the mechanism by which the Arabs construct the political images of this or that ‘other’ according to the nature of their condition, whether they are liberated or dependent. In contrast with the case of Senghor, we have the case of Sheikh Anta Diop whose theory about ‘The African Origins of Pharaonic Civilization’ had a limited response in Egypt. The intellectual writings of this thinker, and patriotic opponent of Senghor, had limited acceptance though he stressed the relationship between Egyptian and western African civilizations. The problem was that Senghor had widespread acceptance abroad because of his influence in francophone circles that was welcomed, alongside Gaullism, in Arab capitals in the late 1960s. Senghor was even awarded an honorary doctorate in Egypt and his main book Africanism and Arabism was translated into Arabic.

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However, no member of the historical school took the trouble to notice the ideas of Senghor about the separation between African and Arab cultures and that he considered the Arab culture as an interruption of the continuity of African heritage. Senghor called for finding a new formula that would gather Arabs, Jews, Berbers and Africans in a new wholeness with the help of the ‘Northern’ Latin rational philosophy.65 Later, in the 1980s, Egypt and francophone circles established a university in Alexandria in his name, while the Senegalese dedicated a university in the name of Sheikh Anta Diop in Dakar. More recently, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the death of Sheikh Anta Diop, the author of The African Origins of Pharaohs Civilization, a dispute in the mass media blew up in May 1996, when some academic and press circles expressed their annoyance about his theory, since the wind was blowing at that time in the direction of the Mediterranean alternative. This is an edifying exercise of how the production and reproduction of images is based on considerations that are related to internal and not external structures. 4.1.3 The Arab School of Sociology can make an effective contribution in producing an image of acceptance of Africans only if it embarks on serious new studies in the fields of ethnography or anthropology. But, unfortunately, for the time being, no academic institutions for African studies that are interested in such issues exist in the Arab world, with the exception of some sporadic endeavours in Khartoum. Meanwhile, because of the predominance of functionalist schools, the indoor research in Khartoum, Cairo and elsewhere will not easily attain the desired result. We would have been happy had the avant-garde generation of anthropologists continued their previous efforts in this field. Of those anthropologists we refer to Mohieddeen Sabir who recently reissued his early work on the Azande society under the title of The Change of Civilization in an African Society.66 In this distinguished anthropological study, he let the Arab reader come by himself to the conclusion that ‘African–Arab integration can only be achieved through responsible co-development’. In his study, he deals with a Sudanese plan for the development of the Sudanese Azande region after independence in order to contribute to the solution of the problem of the integration of Sudanese north and south, the problem that impeded the national unity of Sudan till now. In his anthropological study, Mohieddeen Sabir portrays an objective picture of the Azande society and the intellectual, religious and social life of this society that was associated in the popular mass consciousness with a remote dark world of cannibals, far from civilization. With the objective approach of the author this society turns into a world of interrelated echelons of a

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society that welcomes change and regional integration. It is not a coincidence that the Azandes still remain a pacification element in the Arab–Negro conflict in the republic of Sudan today. However, the intellectual development of Mohieddeen Sabir himself is also worth studying as an example either of the role of the Arab intellectual in building up the image of the ‘other’ or of the extent of the impact of predominant patterns of hegemony in society on this role. After his experience with the Azande, Mohieddeen Sabir embarked on a new experience with the education of adults with UNESCO, then with the ministry of education in Sudan (in order to strengthen Arabic education!), and later became the head of an Arab organization for education, culture and sciences. During that time he was involved in maturing the concept of ‘Development/Integration/Arab culture’ as a triangle for consonance instead of conflict with African, or Negro, elements. This endeavour led him to a peculiar evolution of his way of thinking. He moves from the Azande model in African society to develop the formula of Arab–African relationship in what we may call ‘African wholeness’. He says: The current Arab reality in Africa today on the level of people, nature and civilization – that is, an integrated organic entity – has great potential possibilities to develop this entity in favour of both Africans and Arabs. Colonialism has always adopted the policy of ‘divide and rule’ between Africans and Arabs ... and among Africans themselves.

According to him, ‘African wholeness’ is basically cultural and social whereas both ‘Arab and African cultures could be melted’. Those were his ideas when under the influence of his Azande experience, or when collaborating with the education ministry in Sudan during the time of the common Arab–African liberation. Later, in the early 1970s, during the period that was called ‘transitional period from the authority of revolution to the authority of wealth’, the ideas of the hegemony of Arab-Islamic culture began to dominate in dealing with this ‘African wholeness’, under the influence of the Gulf petrodollars. Here, the historian dominates the politician and sociologist, both in Sabir and all intellectuals within this framework. The historian dealt again with the issues of disseminating Arabic language, and Islamic culture within the Arab–African wholeness, the latter being based on the assumption of African vacuum, on the one hand, and the renaissance through integration or consonance, and not through the resurrection of the immanent history of the continent, on the other hand.67

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In his writings in the 1980s (Features of Arab-Islamic Civilization in Africa, 1981) he refers to Arab-Islamic culture as the unifying force for Arab–African wholeness. According to him: That is what achieved the full African cultural existence and matured its contribution to the world culture through the Arabic language and Islamic thought ... laying the historical basis of the African states. Before that Arab influence, Africa experienced only a weak isolated tribal civilization.

Mohieddeen Sabir goes on to affirm that Arab–African unity is the fruit of the Arab, not the African, civilization effort. He affirms that the African heritage, the basis of African civilization, and unified character, and the common ideal of their pride, was achieved – in his opinion – in conjunction with one of the greatest of world civilizations, namely, the ArabIslamic civilization (p.8). With the image of the civilization vacuum in Africa in mind, Mohieddeen Sabir goes on to say: a) Africa became a geographic, historical, and cultural extension of the Arab-Islamic world to a degree it never achieved in its history before. b) Until the beginning of the 20th century, Africa considered itself a part of the Arab-Islamic world. c) African languages were first written down in the Arab alphabet, and about 30 African languages were first recorded in that alphabet. d) The Arabs were part of the African-Muslim society, and so were the Africans an integral part of the Arab-Muslim texture. The only real force to oppose colonial cultural and social domination, after the military opposition, was the Arab-Islamic force. Yet Mohieddeen Sabir still realizes the problems of the recent common experience on the basis of bilateral understanding, not Arab–African unity. That is why he wonders: ‘Where to restart our march to civilization?’ He believes that objectivity and good thinking would lead to restart from understanding the African reality, its issues and its problems properly, then estimate the methodological steps and find positive alternatives that outline the cooperation policy to face those issues and problems. In my view, this seems to be one of the mechanisms for moving from exclusion to conformity, if the previous images of the negation of the Africans could be overcome.

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4.1.4 The historians studying the exchanged image between Arabs and Africans will always recall the two periods of 1960–5 and 1975–80 so as to compare the output of two successive five-year periods on the one hand, and the output of five centuries (10th to 15th centuries) on the other hand. Yet this may happen only when a thorough study could see the light – I hope this paper will be helpful in this respect – to deal with the problem of acceptance–exclusion or consonance–exclusion in the image of Africans in the Arab intellectual heritage. Researchers will not fail to notice that a single functional or dialectical methodology alone will not solve the problem easily. As we deal with the issue of consonance–exclusion, a simple explanation is not available for the continuity of reproducing the exclusion components in almost all cultural outputs of the 1960s, which witnessed the high wave of ‘liberation’ with its need for ‘consonance’. Yet this is not the context to present the aspects contradictory to those needs, such as the presentation of the image of Negroes and Blacks in fields as different as cinema, school curricula and even the press. The only possible explanation for this situation is the demagogy of the mass media at that time. As for the second period (1975–80), another simplified explanation may be imagined, i.e. acceptance of disseminating Arab-Islamic culture with the rise of Arab–African cooperation economically, under the influence of oil money and, culturally, through Gulf Islam. We may add here that the fact that the cultural paradox was not solved in the wave of national liberation during the 1960s explains the ease of the reproduction, during the 1970s and 1980s, of the Arab-Islamic ‘image of empire’, particularly because the tribute model (Islamic petroleum) soon made use of the well-known ‘ahistoric image’ so as to fix the situations, mainly the cultural, under the pretext of ‘historic nostalgia’ (new Islamic movements). A study on the ‘Islamic image’ of Africa in more than five religious, Islamic and governmental newspapers during ten years (1977–86)68 shows us how, in that period, the ‘ahistoric image’ was reproduced. The articles in those newspapers were full of the same themes of old image such as: ‘The image of Africa that does not actually know a religion but Islam’, or ‘Africa is but a Muslim continent’, or ‘Its leaders are moving progressively towards Islam’, or ‘the majority of African Muslims are of Arab origin’, or ‘the basic conflict in Africa is that between Muslims and Christians’, or ‘African Muslims consider that Islam is Al-Azhar and AlAzhar is Egypt’.

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In addition to some other ideas such as: The African was not liberated through his own struggles, but Islam is the power that led the process of liberation from colonialism and Christianity

or The Arabic language is the means to eliminate illiteracy, and for education, especially for women, but Arabic is threatened by the policy of developing local languages that Europeans promote so as to divide the continent and not to build up the African personality.

4.1.5 However, this interpretation will face some kind of gap in its mechanisms when we compare it with the works of a number of Arab intellectuals during the same period, who presented different images of the African culture. The evolutionary school may be helpful in this context because we may expect a repetitive negation of the ‘inherited’ or a part of it from one period to another. The dialectical school may also be useful in dealing with the phenomenon and its negation. It will help also in understanding the role of repetitive negation of the components of the ‘inherited’, in culture and society, irrespective of the process of reproduction, always present in Arabic culture. It is not in our plan to present the dialectics of Arab prose in the last two decades; however, some proposals and hints may pave the way for more comprehensive studies in this field. Abdou Badawi is not presently a familiar name in African studies, but he is well known in studies on traditional Arabic literature. Among his books, we are interested in two: Black Poets and their Characteristics in Arabic Poetry (1973); and Blacks in the Arab Civilization (1976). Both are among the references that I found very helpful, and have been mentioned in this study. The reader will notice the sincere desire to present the image of the ‘presence of Blacks’ in the old and historic Arab society instead of the marginalization that Blacks suffer in the Arabic culture. Both books are an example of accepting Blacks into this culture and an explanation of some aspects of exclusion. The approach of the author is defensive as he is known as an Arab-Islamist. Here we feel an aspiration for consonance that might lead to a kind of conciliation and reduction of the existing exclusion, the examples of which are numerous in both books. It might be easier here to introduce Abdou Badawi through his own words in introducing his subject, to find out how he was embarrassed between two positions and consequently two wills. The first is that of discovery where he made a considerable contribution to literature, while the second is fed by

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the idea of ‘liberation’, the idea that he could not carry to its full extent, and was obliged to find excuses for the image of the ‘degenerate Blacks’ for considerations that are simply a part of the Arab image under study in this paper. In the introduction of his book Black Poets, he says: It is true that Arab writers did not pay attention to those who were so called in Arabic poetry ‘Less-productive poets’. Yet Black poets had become less productive not because they were spiritually destitute but because they were not welcomed by anyone. These Black poets were not that kind of beggar poets who could creep into palaces, or penetrate the high elite of society. Those who managed to get there, never became favourites, or real courtiers, ‘because they were never at ease with the rules of palaces as for example Abou Dulama, or asked to be excused to leave, like Nassib Al-Akbar’.

This stance actually made them disloyal to society, or outcasts, their loyalty was rather to the movements that resist and struggle against existing authority, or call for ‘social justice’ as Kharijates, Shi’ites and other revolutionary movements. However, after this defence, Badawi comes closer to their literary and social personal characteristics, with an approach that is unfortunately influenced by the predominant image. So for him, they were well known in the field of ‘licentious poetry’ because they did not own higher motives, and because sexual emotion gives complete psychological satisfaction in the primitive eras and to primitive souls as well. ‘Sung poetry’ as a phenomenon has attracted my attention, and I discovered that Blacks were among the most prominent singing and dancing people at the apogee of Arab civilization ... they sang, and danced their life, and even bemoaned it at the same time ... ancient people have realized this when they said, if a Negro falls from the sky to earth, he falls only rhythmically, or melody consists of ten parts, Blacks have nine of them and all the other peoples have one.

Yet, Badawi sticks to his defensive position, and says: They [Black poets] did not try to destroy the Arabic language from within as Negro poets in France did.

Researchers on ‘Image Sociology’ should follow the impact of Senghor’s lectures in Cairo on ‘The Blacks’ passionate, emotional, artistic and irrational characteristics’ at the end of the 1960s on some Egyptian writers

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including Badawi, who was close to the African research and study centres in Cairo at the time. In contrast, in his book Blacks and Arab Civilization, Badawi presents a different approach when he stresses the role of Blacks, and not the Persians as: The real vanguard of ‘popularism’ [anti-Arab movement] because populists were the first in Islam who called for equality ... This populist trend has represented a material inclination inside the spiritual framework of Islamic civilization.

Serious researchers should appreciate his just representation of the Negro’s revolution in Basra, its social dimensions and its concern with the issue of what Badawi called ‘social justice’ in Islamic society. Mohammed Abdul Hai, a Sudanese intellectual and poet who died young, made a distinguished contribution through a critical reading of modern Arabic poetry, which was written in the 1970s and published in Cairo in the mid-1980s. He believed in ‘new potentials of acceptance’ of African culture and reality into the Arab culture. He also exposed the paradox of exclusion through uncovering the process of ‘escaping’ from the genuine real African image to an ideal, ready-made image, sometimes just an inherited one, in order to reach, not genuine but false, consonance. In his study Africa in Arabic poetry,69 Abdul Hai introduced five poets from Syria, Egypt and Sudan. His notes about their work show the reader the nature of the light in which he sees the image of Africa and its ‘dialogue’ with Arab culture. For a poet like Abdul Baset El-Sofi from Syria, who lived in West Africa, Africa is: a primitive, wild and introvert world, where modern showy civilized apparels do not hide forms of superstition and myths.

A look at El Sofi’s poetry may give the reader a clearer idea. The poet says: Things just jump and populations are without roots, No past ... no history ... time has frozen, Death and superstition, two powers, God and Satan, around fire, dance ...

Abdul Hai criticizes Abdou Badawi as a poet and his book of poems High Lands: An African Opera, where the poet talks about the Kikuyu tribe that was deported from its territories in Kenya, and through this tale the poet Badawi presents an anthropological, emotional and political issue. Yet, though Badawi is a specialist on African culture, he still treats his

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subject from without, as if the events were not separated from their historic, intellectual and objective African nature. That is why he resorts to some kind of ‘emotional deception’, by talking about action, merriment and anger in high affected tones, and resorts also to ready patterns of the African atmosphere and way of life. After introducing examples of ‘Black paradise’ of Badawi, Abdul Hai introduces different examples of ‘Black revolutionary paradise’ from the poetry of Abdul-Wahab El-Baiati (Iraqi poet). Then Abdul Hai thoroughly analyses the case of Sudanese poet Mohammed El-Faitouri, who starts from his deep feelings as a Black, his Negro mien and his endeavours to start with this issue that made him feel negated, thereupon, he goes forth to build up a psychological kingdom. In his first book Songs of Africa El-Faitouri says, ‘Say it, do not be a coward, do not be a coward, Say it in the face of mankind, I am a Negro, so was the grandfather of my father a Negro, and my Mother was a Negro, I am Black ...’

In Abdul Hai’s opinion, Faitouri’s Africa is just a legend to which he attaches a psychological sense of belonging without genuine details, and whose features emerge from the inherited ready images. Yet in the poetry of Mohammed El-Mahdi El-Magzoub, Abdul Hai finds the perfection of Arabic language’s understanding of the liveliness of the African equatorial nature and the intimate relation between the poet and his subject. He writes [El-Magzoub] as if he carves the scenes from his own live heart in a way that makes the reader feel as if the Arabic language and African pictures are perfectly united.

El-Magzoub’s poem ‘Rains of the South’ (1954, while he lived in Waw, in southern Sudan) is a masterpiece of genuine Arabic poetry that comes from African lands and not transplanted to it: Clouds high up rise and fall Waves over the horizon spring forward and retreat A falling mount is followed by a rising one Thunder makes horizons flee in all directions

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Lightning like strings broken in tension I woke to a world like coloured weaving in bitter cold The secret unity between raindrops and soil That makes the chemistry of creation appear and disappear

My purpose here is not to present the image of Africa in modern poetry, but to present the vision of Arab contemporary intellectuals (i.e. Abdul Hai) about the unity and acceptance formula in Africa through an honest critical work that reminds us, when it presents the Arab–African poetic character of El-Magzoub, of the African wholeness of Mohieddeen Sabir. Abdul Hai has another beautiful work: The Masks of the Tribe: Poems from Contemporary African Poetry.70 In this work, he deals with the return of African poetry to the cultural roots of creativity and insurgence against European patterns that constituted the essence of the Negro movement, and led to the abandonment of romantic poetry for contemporary poetry. Abdul Hai believes that the problems of this poetry are closely connected to the intellectual and artistic problems of contemporary Arabic poets. Hopefully such translations could be helpful and edifying, and provide a broader view.

Radwa Ashour makes another serious attempt in contemporary Arabic criticism. In her book The Acquiescent Rises: The Novel in the West of Africa,71 she uses the African contemporary forms of the novel to understand the new artistic values in criticism, i.e. to represent a new image of the African instead of the traditional one that portrayed him as integrated with the values of historic Arab culture, or running after the predominant European form. Radwa Ashour introduces the works of some African novelists from West Africa. In the preamble, she says: The issues raised by this study are not far from the daily preoccupations of the Arab reader. The problems African writers face are the same as those of Arab writers whether they are political, results of the colonial situation and progenies of national liberation phase, or are creativity problems connected to the writer’s stance toward his own African heritage or the European literary tradition that produced the form of the novel.

With this sincere desire to unite with the African cultural visions, Radwa Ashour deals with the existing diversity of the African novel and the sometimes erroneous judgements on it, or the propagandist ones that resort to

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cultural terrorism with the aim of marketing certain novelists, or a particular trend just to satisfy Western circles. Radwa Ashour deals with the novel in West Africa as an early expression before the First World War and between the two world wars, of national liberation, or the affirmation of the historic existence of Africa through writing about it and searching for creative inspiration from within the African folk heritage. The novel in this case is not just a reflection of different forms of struggle for national liberation but it rather presents a genuine image of the African reality and the protest of African intellectuals against the European image of African history.

Radwa Ashour also introduces the contributions of Achebe about the criticism of reality, Kamara with his blocked way to Negroism, and Osman Sambene with his proletarian novel. She concludes, saying: Novelists in West Africa are creating national literature that reflects the national culture of the peoples of the region where the presence of history is integrated with the lived moment. They are searching for inspiration from their own African cultural heritage and are using, at the same time, Western cultural achievements. No doubt we are witnessing a vanguard literature with all the advantages and short comings of such literature.

In the field of theatre, playwright Ezz Ed-Din Al-Madani surprises us with his Negroes and the Revolution of the Donkey Owner (1983)72 for the Tunisian theatre. This work is not just about historical events taken from the African–Arab heritage and presented as a contemporary drama. Rather, we refer to it here as expressing the revolution of the author against his reality. Al-Taher Kika introduces Ezz Ed-Din, saying: For him, the people are the event maker and history maker, that is why his subjects were: peoples’ revolutions, ‘The Revolution of the Donkey Owner’, ‘Negroes’ Revolution’ and Al-Halaj the historic Islamic revolutionary who used to disseminate his opinions through popular uprisings. Thus the Arab intellectual Ezz Ed-Din Al-Madani made the presence of Negroes in the Arabic history a real presence. For him Negroes are either ‘outsiders’ or represent revolution and justice. From this approach Ezz Ed-Din Al-Madani starts his work introducing ‘the council of the Negroes’ revolution’, whose discussions are about the making of revolution. The author interweaves past with present, and turns the play into contemporary life where the Negro of the past is identified with the modern citizen. Members of the council are

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deeply involved in the problems of modern Arab–African revolution including reproduction of the oppression to the extent that the old man says, ‘The only remaining thing is hope,’ and the young man answers, ‘What a failure of revolutions.’ A child in the final scene cries, ‘Revolution will be reborn in my heart,’ and, before the curtain falls, we read the phrase, ‘To be continued!’

These new Arab writings raise some questions for Arab sociologists. What is the static/variable in the Arab intellectual image on Africans? What is the so stable aspect of Arab structure and culture that makes the exclusion elements so strongly anchored, and that swamps the stumbling acceptance elements?

V. What conclusion? What variables? The question I have tried to raise here is the following: Did Arab intellectuals, from various trends, try to escape out of the familiar framework of hegemony? Did they try to stop continually reproducing all aspects that are imposed by a missionary culture or an Islamic imperial one? It seems that these questions are really difficult to answer. The model of the poet – the voice of the tribe – was often too loud even when the tribe was being transformed into a people, and the people into a nation. Those who study Arab culture suffer a lot from ‘the authority of the text’ that surpasses any other hegemony of the text in other cultures. It also appears in the present study that the authority of the text was stronger than reality itself. The conditions of the Black or Negro were deeply changed in Arab and Islamic society as much as those of ‘Mawali’, ‘Mamelukes’, ‘castrated’, ‘neglected’, ‘peasants’ and ‘Christians’. Nevertheless, the text was never as severe towards all of these latter categories as it was towards the Black, Negro, Abyssinian and slave associating them with exploitation and exclusion. Someone may say that this stance of the Arab culture is not unique, which is right to a great extent. The smallest tribe in Africa may reveal worse forms of assessment to its nearest neighbours. But meanwhile almost all cultures have shown some kind of concrete response to social transformations to which they are subjected. Francis Deng, for instance, in his extensive studies on his tribe, the ‘Dinka’ in the south of Sudan, has recorded the images his own tribe draws for the ‘Masai’, or for the Sudanese Arab in the north of Sudan, in an endeavour by the author to reach a compromise for the African–Arab relationships.73 Edward Said also noted the tolerance that had taken place with the spread of liberal culture and its acceptance of the multiplicity of cultures. Yet Arab culture is characterized with a powerful ‘authority of text’ that surpasses the

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strength of transformations, if any. Several researches proved even that this ‘authority’ was being exchanged between culture and folklore or, as some specialists think, it was imposed by culture on the folklore. Some philosophers of the dialectical school believe in the powerful influence of culture in all periods of social change. Yet Arab sociology does not tell us in which of the Arab transformation phases this process takes this form. Or whether or not Arab society passes through the corresponding phases of the familiar international patterns of evolution? The situation of Arab culture raises a number of questions that have to be answered in order to get rid of its ahistoricity. Does the reason behind this phenomenon lie in the association of the text, generally speaking, with religious doctrine in Arabic culture for a long time – at least before the advent of modern literature? Or perhaps the association of the text with central power is the major reason? Why did not the civil society with its multidimensions in Arab history present diversity in the ‘textual images’ so as to create diversity in the texts on Blacks, Negroes and others? Why did not the merchants have their own texts that differ from those of men of literature, story writers and travellers? Is the fact that Arab civilization was established on the basis of ambulant tribute, trade and alien militarist the reason that inherited texts became the weft of a society that was in need of the strength of the concept of the nation as an effective support for that of the central unified state? We know, however, that this state did not live long in reality, though its concept was strong and stable in peoples’ minds for long periods of history. Why was this strong monotheist culture in need of exclusion elements though it accepted unity elements? To what extent could we accept what was reiterated throughout this study that Arabs, who were not unified for a long time and were repeatedly defeated, had found in Blacks – the weakest peripherals – a neglected entity of people associated with the image of inferiority? Is it just because it was easier to rule them or to exploit them in the simplified rent mode of production? Why did not the Persians or Tartar invaders or Christian crusader attackers be portrayed in such an image? This all means that Arab weakness, rather than Arab dominant power, was what created the image of the Africans. This belies the contention of Mimi and Edward Said that the attitude of the Arabs that produced such an image was colonial, rather it may be ascribed to the continuity of the rent Arab production mode. Even in the phase of national liberation – the phase where the social hierarchy was relatively stabilized – African–Arab wholeness was not destined to live long, because the Arabs soon returned to the rent mode of production and to their position of weakness before the overwhelming power of modern globalization.

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Thus, the question remains open about the inability of the Arabs to accomplish the social transformations including capitalist development, the development of civil society, or the central or even the family mode of power. This being so, it becomes difficult to ask, let alone to get an answer, why the image of Africans did not develop in Arab culture?

Notes 1. Antonio Gramsci, Papers from Prison, Arabic translation by Aadel Ghoneim. Dar Al-Mostaqbal Al-Aarabi, Cairo, 1995, pp.104–14. 2. E. Said, Culture and Imperialism, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1993. See introduction and presentation of the book (in Arabic) by Hehni Shaarawi, Bulletin of Arab–African Research Centre, Feb. 1994, p.14. 3. Albert Mimi, The Image of Colonizer and the Colonized (Arabic translation), Dar El-Haqiqa, Beirut, Lebanon, 1980, pp.93–8. 4. Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (Arabic translation), Dar Sina-Cairo, 1992, p.20. 5. Shahid Man, The Hijra To Abyssinia (in Arabic), in Studies on the history of Arabian peninsula, vol. 3, University of King Saud, 1989, pp.31–3. 6. What we mean by Sudan here is not the country but a term to express the extraordinary plural of the word ‘black’. 7. A region in the south-west of the Arabian peninsula and subject of border disputes until now. 8. The two epics are about two strong leaders who worked hard while being neglected from their original people. They both lived before the appearance of Islam in history but their epics have some Islamic motives. 9. Al-Jahiz, Fakhr El Soudan Ala Al Bidhan(Pride of Blacks over Whites), Dar AlGuiel, Beirut-Lebanon, 1991, pp.193–4. 10. Abdeen, A., Bayna Alhabasha wa Alarab (Between Abyssinia and the Arabs), Dar Al-Fikr, Cairo, 1947, p.26. 11. Badawi, A., Alsood wa Alhadhara AlArabia (Blacks and Arab Civilization), AlHaia El-Misria Al-Amma Lil-Kitab, Cairo, 1976, p.68. 12. Mansour, F., Khorouj Al Arab mena Altarikh (The Arabs Get out of History), Dar Al-Farabi, Beirut, Lebanon, 1991, p.54. 13. Yathrib was the old name for Al-Madina Al-Munawarah, the city the prophet moved to after Hijra. It means literally the lighted city. 14. Abdeen, A., op. cit., p.73. 15. Al-Jahiz, op. cit., p.211. 16. Mansour, F., op. cit., p.102. 17. Mu’allaqat are well-known poems from the early period of Arabic poetry and considered to be ideal poetry which was never forgotten, and some critics claimed that they were hanged over the walls of the shrine in Mecca (al kaabah). 18. Badawi, A., Alshouaraa Al sood wa khasaishom fi el shier Al Arabi (Black poets and their Characteristics in Arabic Poetry); Al-Haia El-Misria Al-Amma Lil-Kitab, Cairo, 1973, p.23. 19. There was a lot of discussion about the originality of what we have as preIslamic poetry because it was not written in the beginning and part of it is now known to have been forged. 20. Badawi, A., op. cit., p.15. 21. Mansour, F., op. cit.

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22. Mafeje, A., The Theory and Ethnography of African Social Formations, CODESRIA, Dakar, 1991, pp.85–106. 23. The first kingdom to rule 30 years after the Prophet’s death. 24. Masters–liberated slaves were given this name to be distinguished from slaves on one hand and masters on the other hand. 25. Al-Mashad, A, Al Rik fi Nazar Al Islam (Slavery from the Point of View of Islam), in Studies on Islam, No. 16, Ministry of Al-Awqaf, Cairo, 1962, pp.53 ff. 26. Famous Islamic interpreter and legislator belongs to the Malikite Islamic school of theology. He was called the University of Malikite Islam’s jurisprudence (Fiqh). He is attributed to Kairwan, a city in Tunisia. 27. Al-Kairawani, Ibn Abi Zaid, Al Risalat (The Message), North Nigeria Publishing House, 1983, pp.102 ff. 28. Prominent Arab figure, died in 923. He wrote an interpretation of the Qur’an and huge volumes on history. 29. Al-Mashad, A., op. cit. 30. Three of the founders of the four orthodox Islamic schools of Islamic law. 31. Al-Tayeb, A, Hejerat Al-Habasha wa ma waraiha min Naba, (Migration To Abyssinia), in Studies on the History of the Arabian Peninsula, op. cit. 32. Al-Bukhari, 809–69, the genuine founder and collector of ‘Hadith’ as an Islamic reference to all things related to the Prophet’s life: Prophetic tradition, narrative relating deeds and utterances of the Prophet and his companions. He puts strict measures to distinguish between false and righteous narration about the Prophet, as it was common before him to find false reference to the Prophet. He also collected and mentioned Hadith only through second-hand between him and the Prophet. He collected about 6,000 Hadith and stated that among them there are only 1/9 authentic and the other 8/9 are false. 33. Arab historian, geographer and narrator, died 956. 34. Badawi, A., op. cit., p. 49. 35. Meeting right after the death of Prophet Mohammed and before burying him to decide who was to succeed him in ruling the unified nation in that difficult time. 36. Meetings which were organized by the elite of Mecca before Islam to discuss all their affairs. 37. El-Sayed, R., Nation, Community and Power, Dar Iqra-Beirut, Lebanon, p.75. 38. Badawi, A., op. cit., introduction. 39. He was emancipated after enslavement and was the founder and ruler of AlEchshidi dynasty in Egypt 935–69 which was destroyed by Fatimids, while Mutanabi was a free white man. 40. Khorshid, F, Adhwaa Ala El Sira Al Shaabiya (Lights on Epics), Dar Iqraa, Beirut, Lebanon, pp.117–27. 41. First Umayyad ruler. 42. Army leader of Abbas troops who ended the Umayyad rule. 43. Abo Hayyan Al-Taohidy, 1010, great Islamic philosopher, from theological Islamic school of mysticism-Sofi and Shafi’i. Author of many important works, of which Entertainment and amiability, where he was obliged for tens of nights to retell different interesting things, tales and stories to the Abbasid minister. 44. Faheem, H., Adab AlRehlat (Literature of the Travellers), Aalam Al-Marifah No. 138, Kuwait, 1989, pp.195–6. 45. Al-Jahiz, op. cit., pp.210–20. 46. Emara, M., Thowrat El zinj (The Negro Revolution), Dar Al-Wahda, Beirut, Lebanon. 47. Fahim, H., op. cit., p.192.

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48. Ibn Hawqal, Sourat El Ardh (The Picture of the Earth), Dar Maktabit AlHaiah, Beirut, Lebanon, 1979, p.7. 49. Cooley, W., The Negro Land of the Arabs, Frank Cass, London, 1966 (First edition 1841), pp. 61–8. 50. Lewicki, T., Arabic External Sources for the History of Africa to the South of Sahara, Curzon Press, London, 1974. 51. El-Bakri, Abou Abied, AlMasalik wa ElMamalik (Routes and Kingdoms), AlDar Al-Arabiah Lil-Kitab-Beirut, Lebanon, 1992, p.872. 52. Zaki, Abdel Rahman, Al Islam wa AlMuslimoun Fi gharb Afrikia (Islam and Moslems in West Africa), Yousif publisher, Cairo, p.36. 53. Penda Mbow, Les relations Afro-Arabes, Editor (in Arabic), Iglal Rafaat, Centre for Arab Studies and Researches, Cairo University, 1994. 54. Tarkhan, I., Embratouriyit Al Borno Allslamiyat (Islamic Empire of Berno), AlHaia El-Misria Al-Amma Lil-Kitab, Cairo, p.189. 55. El Tamimi, Abdel Galil, ‘Al Rawabit Al Thakafiya AlMutabadila Bayna Tunis Wa Libya wa wasat Gharb Afrikya’ (Mutual Cultural Relationships among Tunis, Libya, Middle and West of Africa in the Modern Age), Maghreb Historical Magazine, No. 21, 22 April 1981, Tunis, pp.13–39. 56. Al-Gharbi, M., Bidayat Al Hukm Al Maghribi Fi Al Sudan El Gharbi (The Beginning of Moroccan Rule in Western Sudan), Ministry of Culture, Baghdad, 1982, p.208. 57. Lois Blin, ‘Les Noirs dans l’Algérie Contemporaine’, Politique Afncaine, KARThala, Paris, juin 1988, pp.24–5. 58. Naguib, N., Al Rihla Ela Al Gharb Wa Al Rihla Ela Al Shark (The Journey to the West and the Journey to the East), Dar Al-Kalima, Beirut, Lebanon, 1983. 59. Rafii, R., Takhlees Al Ebreez Fi Talkhis Paris (Extraction of Gold), Complete works, Vol. 2, El-Mouasasa El-Arabia Lil Derassat wa El-Nashr, Beirut, Lebanon, 1973, pp.16–17. 60. ‘The Voice of the Arabs’ was the famous Egyptian propagandist radio programme broadcast during some two decades of Nasser’s rule. 61. Mu’nes, Hussein, Misr wa Risalatiha (Egypt and its Mission), Matbouat AiShaab, Cairo, 1976, p.47. 62. Hassan, L., Intishar Al Islam Wa Al Ouroba Fima Yali El Sahara El Kubra (The Spread of Islam and Arabism beyond Great Sahara, East and West of the African Continent), Arab research institute, Cairo 1957, pp.243–4; Mahmoud, A., Intishar Al Islam Wa Al Thakafa Al Arabia Fi Afrikia (The Spread of Islam and Arab Culture in Africa), Arab Research Institute, Cairo, 1957, preamble, p.25. 63. Kassim, G. Z., Al Ausoul Al Tarikhia Lil Ilakat Al Arabiya Al Afrikia (Historic Origins of Arab–African Relationships), Arab Research and Studies Institute, Cairo, 1975. 64. Abbas, G., Al Madd El Islami Fi AfrMa (Islamic Tide in Africa), Dar AlMukhtar Al-Islami, Cairo, 1978, p.21. 65. Senghor, Leopold Cedar, Osos Al Afrikania Aw Al Zinjia Wa AlOuroba (The Basis of Africanism, Negroism and Arabism), Lecture in Cairo University, February 1967. In direct statements after his lectures, he explained that by ‘New wholeness’ he meant the unification of Arabs, Jews, Berbers and Negroes. 66. Sabir, Mohieddeen, Al Taghayor El Hadhari Fi Mougtamaa Afriki (Civilization Changes in an African Society), Al-Maktaba Al-Asreya, Beirut, 1987. 67. Sabir, Mohieddeen, Kadhaya Nashr Al Lugha AL Arabia Wa AlThakafa Al Arabia Wa Al Islam Fi Al Kharij (The Issues of Disseminating Arab Islamic Language and Culture Abroad), Arab Organization for Education, Culture and Science (A1ECSO), Tunis, 1981. See: His introduction to the symposium of A1ECSO on African scientists

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and their contribution to Arab-Islamic civilization, Baghdad 1985 and his intervention and comment on the symposium of Arab–African relationships (op. cit). 68. Otayek, R., ‘L’Islam dans son miroir’, Politique Africaine, Juin 1988, pp.32–49. 69. Abdul Hai, M., ‘Afrikia Fi Al Sheir Al Aiabi’ (Africa in Arabic Poetry), Africa Magazine, 2nd number, Dar Al-Mostakbal Al-Arabi, Cairo, Egypt, June, 1988, pp.8–14. 70. Abdul Hai, M., Aqni’t Al Qabila (The Masks of the Tribe), Dar Al-Nashr ElSakafi, Ministry of Culture and Information, Khartoum, Sudan. 71. Ashour, Radwa, Al Tabie Yanhadh, Al Riwaya Fi Gharb Afrikia (The Acquiescent Rises: Novel in the West of Africa), Dar Ibn Rushd Beirut, Lebanon, pp.5, 11, 163. 72. Al-Madani, Ezz Ed-Din, Al Zinj Wa Thawrat Sahib El Himar (Negroes and the Revolution of the Owner of the Donkey), Al-Shirka El-Tunisia Lil Tawze, Tunis, 1983, pp.31–190. 73. Sharawy, Helmi, Al Arab Wa Al Afiikeyoun Wajha Li Wajh (Arabs and Africans Face to Face), Dar Al-Sakafa Al-Gadida, Cairo, 1984. Social texture of Arab–African relationship, pp.162–82.

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CHAPTER 7

The Dialectics of the Ego and the Other: A Study of Tahtawi’s Takhlis Al Ebriz Hassan Hanafi

Introduction: the subject and the method Throughout history, even before Islam, the Islamic civilization was in constant contact with neighbouring civilizations, with Greeks and Romans in the west and Persians and Indians in the east. As a matter of fact, creative innovations of the Islamic civilization are the outcome of an interaction between the inside and the outside, the innate and the acquired, between local original works and translations, between Arabic sciences and foreign sciences, between sciences of the ends and sciences of the means and finally, as expressed in modern terms, an interaction between the I and the other. This interaction continued through the Middle Ages via the cultural contact with the Western world. The Islamic civilization was then in its golden age; the image of the crusaders was reflected in its mirror. They were perceived as underdeveloped in comparison with the development of Islam, as fanatics in comparison with Islamic tolerance and as savages in comparison with Islamic civilization and modernity. At first, the other (Greeks, Romans, Persians and Indians) was the tutor, while the I (the developing Islamic civilization) was the student. Later, the I (the Islamic civilization in its golden age) became the tutor while the other (the Western world in the Middle Ages) became the student. Finally came the modern age, and the roles twisted back again to their original state, the student I and the tutor other. In the modern age of the I and other dialectic, journeys to the Western world as well as literary works about this world increased, such as stories, novels, travel books, poems and history books. An example of these literary works would be Refining Pure Gold by Describing Paris of Rafaat Rafi’a El-Tahtawi (1801–73). Tahtawi wrote about the other in modern Arabic thought, about the I in The Essence Approach and about the actual direct reality in The Trusted Guide. The rest of his works could be

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classified as thus, about the I, The History of Egypt and Arabs before Islam and The Resident of Hijaz, about the other, translations of Occidental literary works, and about the direct reality, Egyptian Facts. In Arabic, the title Refining Pure Gold by Describing Paris1 is a purely traditional rhyme. The book was given another equivalent in meaning title, Diwan En-Nafiss bi Iwan Bariss, that also demonstrates the tight attachment to rhyme. This title contains two Persian words written in Arabic letters without being translated so that the I culture adopts them as part of the I tradition.2 Translation in the 18th century preserved the rhyme tradition as a means to adhere to ancient works of writing. It kept the style of introductions, conclusions and the Islamic verses of prayer.3 The work Refining Pure Gold by Describing Paris contains six articles and a conclusion. The longest of these articles would be the third, entitled ‘The Description of Paris and Its Civilization’, which is the main subject of the book and covers more than its half. The shortest of these articles would be the second, ‘Travelling from Marseilles to Paris’. A bit longer than that would be the first, ‘Travelling by Sea to Marseilles’. The rest of the articles are of equal length, the fourth being ‘The State of the Egyptian Mission to Paris’, the fifth ‘The 1830 Paris Revolution’, the sixth ‘The French Sciences and Knowledge’. Chapters inside each article are relatively short; they could be of one page. Chapters contain some repetition. For example, the part about sciences and arts in the introduction is repeated in chapter six. The dialectic of the I and other has its share in the division of the book. The I is included in all of the fourth article, in half of the first, in both chapters ‘Travelling from Cairo to Alexandria’ and ‘The City of Alexandria and its History’, in the fourth part of the introduction ‘The Names of the Presidents of the Mission to Paris’,4 and last in the conclusion ‘Returning to Egypt’. The objective is then not only the description of the other but also the description of the I in the mirror of the other. The objective is not only to describe Paris but also to describe Egypt in Europe’s mirror, not only to visit Paris but also to return to Egypt, and not only to learn but to make use of the acquired knowledge.5 Visiting Paris is somehow an execution of the Ottoman law of the ‘Revival of Hearts’ that insists upon and encourages learning. As Ibn Khaldoun described in his famous Introduction the I ‘The Arab Islamic Civilization’, its birth, development, complete growth and finally its fall, Tahtawi in his book described the other ‘The European Civilization’, its complete growth and development after the first French Revolution and during the second revolution in 1830. As Ibn Khaldoun

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divided his Introduction into six parts, ‘Human Development’, ‘Material Development’, ‘Countries and Cities’, ‘Lifestyle’ and ‘Sciences and their Kinds’, Tahtawi divided his book into six articles. Moreover, the sixth article ‘The French Sciences and Knowledge’ in Tahtawi’s book is quite similar to the sixth part of the Ibn Khaldoun’s ‘Introduction’, which was also present in Tahtawi’s geographical description of European countries, in the attribution of these countries to other countries and in describing the geographic particularity of Paris. The perception of the I in the mirror of the other and the perception of the other in the mirror of the I hold no subjectivity, bias or prejudice. Justice is the main criterion of judgement and reason-controlled approval.6 Doing justice consists of having a double objective view of the images exchanged between the I and the other. As for reason-controlled approval, it consists of controlling by the power of reason any enhancement or disfiguration related to human instinct and human experiences. Description should be carried out regardless of any disagreement or agreement with the described.7 Tahtawi therefore refuses the overstatements of historians as Ibn Khaldoun refused the falsity in their tales.8 Nevertheless, judgements remain approximate. They stand revision by other observers in matters related to accuracy in observation and comprehensiveness of the subject matter.9 Tahtawi mainly depended on direct observation, live experience and what he saw in person, in addition to a few written resources of the ancient heritage, the European heritage and of scholars contemporary to the age he lived in.

The I as a geographical setting for the other Even though Tahtawi’s book described the other, it used the I geography for its setting. There is no separate mention in his book of the geography of Paris, for its geography is always compared with that of Alexandria and Cairo or what he referred to in his book as ‘Egypt’. The geographical setting starts from the whole and moves to the part, from Europe and the Ottoman Empire to water and plants. He described Europe with reference to the Ottoman Empire not only because the Ottoman Empire is geographically a part of Europe, but also because one cannot understand Europe (or the other) without referring to the location of the Ottoman Empire (or the I). Moreover, the European population does not only include Europeans, it also includes Muslims. Muslim Europe, in opposition with European Europe, is part of the Ottoman Empire. Geographical division is achieved according to religion (reference to the I) and not according to race, nations, languages or regions (reference to the other). According to the I:

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Asia is the continent of Islam, the celestial religions, the prophets, the messengers, the holy books, the Holy Land, mosques, the Prophet Mohammed and his companions and the Four Imams. Arabs are the best of and the most eloquent of tribes in Asia, the sons of Hashem are the best among Arabs for they are the salt of Earth. Yet even though Islam saw the light and propagated in Asia, it did not reach all parts of Asia such as China and India. As for Africa, it includes the greatest of countries Egypt where one finds the best of Muslim holy men and religious scientists and where Islam reaches the lands of Sudan. As for America, it became the continent of disbelief after being colonized and Christianized by the Europeans. It was full of pagans yet Europeans conquered them when they excelled at the art of war and then took over the country and emmigrated by the thousands to it.

According to the I, Islam and Christianity are the criteria to define the geography of the world and rank continents: Asia first, Africa second, Europe third and America fourth. Marseilles is described by being compared with Alexandria since they are both located by the Mediterranean Sea, as the known is compared to the unknown and the absent to the present. Alexandria is then considered part of Europe, a quality wished for the whole of Egypt: The presence of Europe in Alexandria can be indicated by the presence of Europeans speaking Italian all over the city.

Time in Paris would be determined in reference to the time in Egypt to know the time difference. As a proof of the unity of the Arab nation, to determine time one could also refer to the time in Tunis, Aleppo, Iran, Mecca, Marrakesh and Andalusia. Cold weather would be recognized in comparison to the hot weather in Egypt. The same umbrellas used in France to protect from the rain became parasols in Egypt that offer protection from the sun, since Egyptians have no need to be protected from the cold of Paris but need to be protected from the burning sun. As to urban construction, Tahtawi saw the urban development of Egypt in the mirror of European urban development: Water sprinkles in the streets of Paris make better use in the hot streets of Egypt. The underground plumbing system in Paris is far better than water tanks that are carried by camel in Egypt. The spacious clean squares in Paris are far better and more beautiful than the dirty squares of Egypt.

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To Tahtawi, the images were sometimes identical. The roads of Paris are identical to Shabra Street in Egypt in their construction and with trees along both sides. Gates in Paris are identical to gates in Egypt. The Seine river would be compared with the Nile river in its tide and measurements: There is a difference in taste and in purity between the water of the Nile and that of the Seine. There is also a difference between the soil of Egypt and that of Paris, between the fruits of Egypt and the fruits of Paris except for prunes. As for the difference between the natural fruitful female palm trees of Egypt and artificial barren male palm trees of Paris, it is a difference between fruitful palm trees and decorative palm trees. The love of one’s country does not forbid one from travelling around, on the contrary it incites one to travel to know the other in the mirror of the I and the I in the mirror of the other. A walk along the Seine river recalls the Nile. Life away from home in Paris evokes nostalgia to Egypt. What is wrong with Egyptians who left the country with the French expedition and kept of Egyptian nationalism its name? The love of one’s country is next to Godliness.10

Tahtawi mentioned in his book Monsieur Gomar’s calendar that was prepared as a model to establish development and civilization in Egypt.11 He also mentioned Cossini de Bersoual’s letter, which shows that Tahtawi’s intention in the book was not only to describe Europe and its civilization, but also to incite Egyptians to achieve a development similar to that of the Europeans.12 Ancient Egypt achieved such a development as its ruins show. The theft of these ruins by the Europeans should not be allowed; they should be kept in Egypt as a bridge between the present and the past and between the modern Egyptian civilization and the ancient Egyptian civilization.13

The I: an historical reference for the other Tahtawi applied on the I the Muslim Calendar (of the Hegira), but followed the Christian Calendar of the other even before Occidentalism took over the Arab Islamic world. The course of history of the other thus became the reference to the course of history of the I.14 The discovery of the American continent came after Christians had taken over Andalusia and expelled the Arabs from it and not according to the Christian course of history. The island of Sicily entered history with the Islamic conquest in

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an Arabic naming. The Islamic conquest also entered the island of Corsica into history even though Islam did not stay for long in it. Islam also occupied the kingdom of Naples (meaning in Arabic the oakum) for approximately 200 years. The population of the French City of Molène included many Arabs who accompanied the French from Egypt to France. At that time there were no Arab-French citizens, yet today half the population of France are Muslims. Tahtawi recited a Koranic verse that Sylvester de Sassy recited to the wife of Abdullah Mino, who reverted to Islam falsely and then reverted back to Christianity when he came back home, to convince her to christen her son:15 Those who believe in the Koran and who follow the Jewish scriptures, and the Christians and the Sabians and who believe in God and the Last day and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord: on them shall be no fear nor shall they grieve. (Al Baqra, 62)

Alexandria was named so in relation to Alexander the Great, who according to Tahtawi could be the man with horns mentioned in the Koran, which would make Alexandria originally a city of Islam. So the French took over Alexandria then the English, and finally it was taken over by its rightful owner, Islam. Tahtawi mentions a letter from an enrolled French soldier in Moscow camp in which he describes how courageous the Ottoman soldiers were in their fight against the Russians, how quickly the Muslim soldiers with Islamic patriotic pride stormed into war on the sounds of military music and Kurd horses. Therefore, the objective of recounting history in Tahtawi’s book is to describe the I and not the other, the other is only a pretext to show the merits of the I. The 1830 French Revolution was the outcome of a conflict between two parties: the monarchy and liberty. The first party included bishops, their followers, minorities and those who wanted the monarchy to stay in power. The second party included philosophers, scientists, the majority of the French people and those who called for a republic to take power. According to Tahtawi, the republican regime is similar to the Hammam regime that governed the Said of Egypt. Sheikh Hammam, a faithful follower of Islam, led a revolution that the peasants as well as the Arab tribes supported against the feudal lord the Great Ali Bek. Abiding by the laws of Islam, Tahtawi declared his support for a revolution against the king and justified his position by a Hadith of the Prophet: ‘He who draws the sword of injustice is taken by remorse and worry.’ Muslim eloquent preachers led the revolution, and the role of eloquent preachers is the same as the role of prophets. It is said ‘If divine revelation

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is sent to a people, it is sent to its eloquent preachers.’ La Fayette participated in the first French revolution as well as in the second, although he was a military commander and not an eloquent preacher, for to achieve excellence is to attain a certain degree of knowledge and mastery and to exploit fully this mastery to realize the objective. Tahtawi supported this statement by a Hadith, ‘One’s intelligence is acquired and not innate.’ The sign of the French king was a drawing of lily flowers while that of Islam was a crescent. Tahtawi analysed the political discourse of the religious king showing that the king takes his power from both God and the people. He claimed that he is the king of France by the blessing of God to please the monarchy on the one hand and that he is king by the will of his people to please the republicans on the other hand. According to Tahtawi, there is no difference between the two sources of empowerment because according to Islamic law, divine empowerment is achieved by popular empowerment. ‘Leadership is an expression of the will and choice of people, once their will is fulfilled they should fully obey the leader’.16 In the year of the revolution, in cooperation with the church and government, France occupied Algeria. The archbishop congratulated the king on their victory and considered it a triumph for Christianity over Islam; the king in turn congratulated the archbishop, considering the victory a triumph of the government and an expansion of its lands. Tahtawi in his book showed that the occupation of Algeria was not a triumph of Christians over Muslims, but a purely political occupation based on economic interests. In modern terms, it was a political occupation based on racism, conceit and insolence. It did not lack in religious discrimination even though it was achieved in the age of the revolution of the opposition against the first republic that called for the respect and sovereignty of all religious and ideological beliefs.17 When the revolution against King Charles X started, it was extended to reach the church and archbishop and both were toppled by the revolution, as was the Basha of Algeria expelled by the occupation.18 Yet there is a great difference between being expelled by the occupation and being thrown over by the revolution. Tahtawi did not talk about the occupation of Algeria, which is related to the I as much as he talked about the French revolution as related to the other. He described the occupation of Algeria as a French event related to the other and to the revolution against Charles X and not as an Arab Islamic event related to the I.

The I and the other in the social mirror The other and the I are often described in the social life mirror in order to perceive similar and different images of both. Sometimes a flagrant

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opposition between the two is shown, for example the other is pictured as stingy while the I is pictured as generous. Another time, the other is described without giving the opposing image of the I. Nevertheless, the opposing image of the I is perceived implicitly by reversing the described image of the other. The other is revealed while the I is hidden. Rarely does the opposite happen, rarely is the I revealed and the other implicitly perceived by reversing the image of the I. The other is seldom given an image that applies to the I without being reversed. In such a case, the I and the other share the same image. If the other likes strangers, that does not necessarily mean that the I hates strangers. Similitude between the two is often not explicitly revealed. For example, Tahtawi often let the reader deduce from the revealed what is hidden. Tahtawi aimed to make the reader who had been abroad analyse his own experiences with the I and the other to reach a conclusion. As for the reader who had never been abroad, he aimed to make him refer to the I to reach a conclusion. Examples of the reversed opposing images of the I and the other would be the following. The intelligence of the other as opposed to the stupidity of the I, ‘Christians of Paris are smarter than the Christian Copts of Egypt’. The cleanliness of the other as opposed to the dirtiness of the I: Christians of Paris are cleaner than the Christian Copts of Egypt. Muslims are the cleanest of all since cleanliness is next to Godliness, Egyptians were the cleanest of all peoples yet their Copt descendants did not inherit their qualities.19

The stinginess of the other opposed to the generosity of the I, ‘Parisians are stingy while Arabs are generous’:20 Parisian women are known for their lack of chastity and their men are known for not being jealous while Islam is known for chastity and jealousy. Yet in the Koranic chapter of Youssef, the great Aziz was not jealous for his wife from Youssef. Nevertheless religious men explained his lack of jealousy as restricted to Egyptians.21 The French are also known for women slavery. Moreover, women are slaughtered by unfaithful countries and are considered pleasure instruments in the Far East.

The dialectic of the image of the I and the other could be a dialectic of the absent and the present, the absence of an image in the I and its presence in the other such as the quality of cleanliness, or the absence of an image

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in the other and its presence in the I, such as the occupation of palaces by the Abbasids.22 Sometimes the other is given a revealed image, which is not opposing that of his other. This given image is sometimes negative such as the love of deceit, having a notorious reputation, blinding rage and squandering one’s money on pleasure. Other times the image is positive such as fulfilment of one’s duties, knowing one’s rights, fulfilment of one’s vows, faithfulness, honesty and equality between men and women in rights, duties, tourism and journeys. Tahtawi insisted upon the negative image of the other or what today is called discrimination based on skin colour. If the other is white then his other is black: ‘White is virtue, black is vice. White is beautiful, black is ugly’. That discrimination was the result of the prohibition of mixed marriages between blacks and whites in order to preserve the purity of race and gender. Tahtawi did not know that the island populations in the west of India are of mixed race out of rape or marriage between white men and black women: A black woman slave is dirty and should not be even allowed to work in the kitchen.23

Arab poets praised black beauty just as black poets and philosophers praise nowadays the motto ‘Black Beauty’: The most intense of ecstasies to an Arab is to sniff smoke from the hands of a young black servant.24 The image the other has of the I might be that of slave merchants who sell human beings due to feeling of enmity of the Western world throughout the modern age towards the Turks.25

Tahtawi showed that the conformity of traits between Arabs and French is more likely than between French and Turks. So the I to Tahtawi represents the Arabs and the Turks. ‘The I and the other share the qualities of honour, on which they swear, of freedom, of pride and of descent’:26 They also share the trait of bravery that shows a strong nature, the trait of passion that often shows weakness of the mind and infatuation with poems of courtship and chivalry.27 Time has worn down the Arabs and these traits are worn out due to the humiliation, underestimation, injustice and crises they have had to experience.

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They had to humiliate themselves and beg except for those whose innate traits were not affected by the strikes and blows of time.28

‘Both the I and the other refuse homosexuality’. It seems that Tahtawi did not see the phenomenon outside its historical context contrary to his habit. Arabs knew love for young servants in the Arabian peninsula and in Andalusia. Homosexuality is widely practised in Europe nowadays, and it has also become a human right and an aspect of sexual liberation:29 Although women in Cairo do not let their hair down yet they started to wear wigs as French women do.30 As for theatre, it is of male and female actors similar to the artists (Awalem) in Egypt, it pictures the drowning of the Pharaoh trick and the miracles of Moses, it also re-enacts Ancient Egypt. As for the private balls, they are a group invitation to dancing, singing and promenade, they are almost like the wedding parties (Farah) of Egypt. Dancing for the other is a form of art ElMasoudi talked about and is void of fornication contrary to dancing in Egypt which is restricted to women and is considered erotic. The carnivals in Paris are similar to the period of feasting and revelry of Copts in Egypt before Lent. In this period, women and men are allowed each to be dressed as the opposite sex in disguise.

Tahtawi as a moral scientist and not only as a moralist did not forget to reveal the moral conduct of each of the social classes: The rich as well as the poor know no chastity, only the middle class adheres to chastity for it is the social class that abides to law and order.31

Tahtawi also showed the aspects of difference and similitude between the I and the other in social habits and traditions: There the lady of the house welcomes visitors, while in our country it is the black servant who welcomes them. Yet houses in both environments are quite similar in their division of the rooms and the function of each. Neighbourhoods in Europe do not have gates like the neighbourhoods in Egypt. In Europe, people sit at tables and not on the floor or on a carpet like the people in Egypt do. They eat with a fork and knife because it is more sanitary and each person has his own plate. They do not eat with their hands all

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from a single plate like the people in Egypt do. Their plates are of painted ceramic and not of copper like ours. They have several courses for a meal, one course at a time while we have one course for a meal or several courses that we consume at once. They do not have several names for alcohol as we do knowing that alcohol is allowed in Europe and forbidden in Egypt. Oxen are slaughtered after being beaten or suffocated, thanks to God that we are not oxen. The coffee shop in Europe is a decent place that allows the exchange of ideas and culture and not like in Egypt a place for riff-raff’. The function of the mirror in Europe is decorative and aesthetic for it adds space to the room while in Egypt its function is image reflection. Rest rooms in Europe are cleaner than those in Egypt even if rest rooms in Egypt are better and more practical. They do not have bath tubs like in Egypt. In Europe, people commute in carriages while in Egypt they use donkeys as a transportation means.32 Rarely do houses include servants in Europe while in Egypt houses are full of servants’.33

The I and the Arabicization of the other When it came to linguistic opposition between the I and the other, between Arabic and French, the I resorted to Arabicization and it succeeded more than the other succeeded in making Arabic words sound French. The early stages of modern translation started with the Arabicization of the language of the other and its translation into the language of the I. It was not a simple matter of automatic translation for it revealed the internal logic and general conception used to grasp the meaning of words. Paris is the thrown city for the French as is Istanbul for the Turks and London for the English, Cairo is the power base of Egypt as is Beijing that of China, Calcutta of India, and Sennar of the kingdom of Nubia.

Translation was achieved according to the attribution rule in the Arabic language. A word was also translated into Arabic in a phrase that explained its meaning and not in a single equivalent Arabic word. America

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in Arabic was the land of strange creatures or the New World or the India of the west. The Champs-Élysées was in Arabic the gardens of heaven. Sometimes Arabicization, writing the phonetics of the French word in Arabic letters, was enough: restaurants became ‘restaurat’ and carnival became ‘carnawal’. Arabic terms were often applied to French notions, for example the French law is called ‘Sharia’ Islamic law of the Ottoman empire, mythology is to the Greeks as paganism is to Islam, the minister of finance of the French is the Khazandar of the Ottoman empire, the minister of foreign affairs of the French is the Effendi, chief of the Ottoman empire, the defence minister of the French is responsible for jihad in the Ottoman empire, yet he is not considered a minister in the Ottoman empire. Foreigners are called Ifrenj or Farenja, which is an ancient term used as a term to describe those in contrast to Egyptians, Arabs and Muslims.

Translation did not only depend on giving the corresponding term or the equivalent meaning but on giving the equivalent proper name, for example the French Academy is the Azhar Mosque, academicians are the Platos and are known in Arabic books as the illuminists.34

Describing the French language, Tahtawi focused on the Arabic language as a whole in its style and figures of speech and compared it with the French language. In fact, the description of the Arabic language in his book exceeded the description of the French language for French was only a pretext to talk about Arabic. French was the apparent subject of study while Arabic was the real subject of study: The Arabic language is the richest, most expressive, comprehensive and most musical language of all. It does not know the elaborateness French language is known for, its phrases are short and concise. It is the greatest most delightful of languages that is only mastered by Arabs. Orientalists do not know the Arabic nor do they speak it, it is only spoken by an Arab.35 Orientalists made shallow studies of the Arabic language contrary to the deep studies of the ancients. The translation of French into Arabic draws the French language from the world of darkness into the light of Islam for there are even among languages those who are faithful and those who are not and a translation never conforms to the original.

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What distinguishes the Arabic language from any other language and French in particular are the figures of speech and the beauty of style. The beauty elements of style are weak in foreign languages, therefore the miraculous nature of the Koran was an Arabic language particularity for it is distinguished from other languages in its style and eloquence from beauty of style grows faith and from the wonders of the Koran grows interpretation. Arabic is a living language spoken by Arabs up until now although it is hard compared with the easy French language.

To what extent is rhetoric related to the Arabic language? To what extent is the science of rhetoric known since Greek logic up to modern rhetoric related to it? If Arabic is truly a language of eloquence and beauty of style, to what extent is it possible to consider it, as some modern Arab intellectuals do, a language of literature rather than a language of science, a language of creation rather than information? As for the arts of language such as syntax, poetry and calligraphy, they are not an Arabic particularity. French grammar includes all the sciences of language or what is called in Arabic the sciences of the Arabic language. The art of poetry is also not an Arabic particularity but it is common to all languages, each according to its own rules. As for poetics, it is a particularity of the Arabic language as well as prose philology. The art of calligraphy, its kinds and directions, from left to right in French, from right to left in Arabic and from top to bottom in Chinese, is more a printing art and is a language art known to Arabs since the days of Prophet Jacob.

Tahtawi also mentioned other sciences such as logic and history. Yet in the chapter related to logic, he did not mention the role of Muslim philosophers nor did he mention anything that holds any insinuation to the Arabicization of logic. He only pointed out some general information about logic having no relevance to the dialectic of Arabic or to the dialectic of French: ‘As for history, it is a new science to Arabs, they did not have any works related to history until recent times.’ He certainly meant, by history, modern Arab history and not ancient Arab history.

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Tahtawi finally talked about educational institutions such as institutes, colleges, language schools and libraries and about writing and creativeness in writing: In the office of used Oriental languages and in the French College, people learn Arabic, Persian and other oriental languages. As for public libraries, they are many in French while they are quite rare in Egypt, they include copies of the Holy Koran that call for respect.

Tahtawi found it unacceptable to allow people to read these copies or translate them, though he admitted the use of translation in the propagation of Islam, as the ‘purist of all religions’:36 As for creativeness in writing, it happens at an early age in the I environment while it takes place at an advanced age in the other environment due to the need to acquire knowledge and learning first.

The sciences of the I and the sciences of the other Comparison between the I and the other in sciences is between religious sciences on the one hand and earthly sciences on the other hand. The I excelled in religious sciences while the other excelled in earthly sciences. The I masters celestial sciences while the other masters earthly sciences. If the power of the other lies in his mastery of earthly sciences, the cause of the weakness of the I is its ignorance of these sciences. Europeans colonized America because they knew how to sail, learned astronomy and geography and had the love of travel, adventure and trade. They mastered mathematics, the sciences of the natural and the supernatural. They even gave proof to the existence of immortal souls and an afterlife of reward or punishment. The other knew earth so he knew religion, but the I knew religion so grew ignorant of earth and of religion as well as arts and both specialized and general sciences.37 The Western world differentiated between arts and sciences and excelled at both, while we united them and excelled at none.38 If the other has excelled at sciences of mathematics and nature and did not gain salvation in the afterlife, ‘we excelled at religious sciences and did not find the right path in this life’.39 Tahtawi showed that knowledge develops as history develops and that earthly sciences constitute the final stage of knowledge development: There are three stages to this development. The first is that of the ignorant savages (Sudan), the second is of the rough barbarians (Arabs of the desert)

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and the third is that of the people of literature, civilization and social refinement (Egypt, Damascus, Yemen, Romans, Europeans, Maghreb, Nubia, America and the islands of the Mediterranean Sea). Earthly sciences are more developed and refined than religious sciences contrary to what religious scientists say. They mislead with the idea that religion alone makes us good and science alone makes them worse, if we acquire their science we will have the two goods and they will be left with nothing. Shall we tell you of those who lose most in respect of their deeds? Those whose effects have been wasted in this life, while they thought that they were acquiring good by their works. Bishops consider seeking knowledge in both sciences a duty contrary to scientists of the Azhar who are satisfied with religious sciences alone.40 Even if their earthly sciences contain aberrations that oppose the Koran and Islamic laws, it is hard to refute them. As for the purely philosophical sciences, the Koran and Islamic laws are means to avoid their false conceptions and refute them in case they oppose or shake the foundations of faith.41

Tahtawi preferred some sciences to other sciences, particularly those, which show that Egyptians were more advanced than Europeans in ancient times and in modern times: In arithmetic, Egyptians write digits from right to left just as Europeans do. Europeans experiment on donkeys and mate Arabian horses with Spanish ones. In autopsy, the body is embalmed as happened to the corpse of the Martyr Suleiman El-Halabi who killed a French General while fighting against the French expedition to Egypt. Europeans have excelled in medical treatment and prevention as did Ancient Egyptians.

Tahtawi included in his book a translated text extracted from the works of Mister Jacob about Egypt, in which he recalls the advanced age of Ancient Egyptians and laments their present regression. He says that their regression is due to the ‘extinction of the Egyptian race and its becoming

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a mixture of Asian and African races that shape the face of Egyptian civilization’.42 Tahtawi did not comment on this explanation: Islamic law that is based on reason, on the care for human interests and on reason-controlled enhancement and disfiguration should be able to go beyond comparison between the I and the other and between religious sciences and earthly sciences. It should be able to go beyond a comparison that could reach the extent of contradiction between belief and disbelief, close and far and between cheap and expensive.43 Islamic law is a criterion of judgement for it is based on reason and care for the human interest. In legal judgement and personal honour lies judgement and in law and existence lies the thing. Law is the honour of existence and existence is the realization of judgement.44 Reason and law are a proof of the knowledge of the conscious. The knowledge of the conscious is innate in humans. As for the rest of knowledge, it comes by coincidence or inspiration. Travelling from Egypt to France is an occasion to see how a person acquires knowledge, how innovations occur and how humans start up with religion and end up with science when they see themselves in the mirror of the other and when the other sees himself in their mirror. In this way, both the Islamic nation and European nations can advance, the first by its laws and the second by the power of reason, both on the basis of reason controlled disfiguration and enhancement and on the basis of seclusion and its five foundations.

Yet the manner in which Tahtawi stated this theory is too poetic. Yet it is expected of him to say that the Islamic nation is the nation to advance, for in his opinion it masters religious sciences, arts and justice. According to him, it is quite normal for the French nation to advance for its political sciences are based on reason-controlled enhancement and disfiguration, as has been proved in The Spirit of Laws by Montesquieu. He considered Montesquieu as the European Ibn Khaldoun and Ibn Khaldoun as the oriental Montesquieu: The French nation is not an Islamic parties as called by the ancients, yet in reason-controlled disfiguration and enhancement it agrees in matters and disagrees in other matters with these groups. The French nation denies violation to traditions, adheres to laws of nature, sees religion as a source of good

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moral values and considers development as a substitute for religion, politics as a substitute for law, political sciences as substitutes for religious sciences and the sage as a substitute for prophets. Ancient philosophers also considered them so. The French do not believe in destiny and fate but in the free will of man. They exaggerate in proving the free will of man opening no way for discussion and giving solid proofs. They believe that making one’s destiny is better than accepting one’s destiny as it comes and that making one’s destiny is a form of divine care. The secluded and the sage did not establish a difference between the I and the other, the divine and the earthly, inspiration and interpretation, imitation and innovation, the innate and the acquired on the basis of reason-controlled enhancement and disfiguration. For example, the quarantine or the medical examination of foreigners before they enter the country is a beneficial act by the judgement of law and the judgement of reason. Nevertheless scientists disagree about it, there are those who forbid it and others who allow it according to the holy book and religious laws. Another controversial issue between scientists is that of the roundness of Earth, yet this controversy is settled by science. Islam automatically emerged in Europe as an opposition to Christian belief and rituals that restricts them to their form and not to their essence. It also disapproved of Christian life and its establishment on the basis of reasoncontrolled enhancement and disfiguration such as liberty and the right to political opposition. This basis is equivalent to that of allowing the act of good and forbidding the act of evil in Islam. Europeans refused religion for its bad reputation and its opposition to the sciences of nature yet they took in tolerance, reason, science and the values of enlightenment.45 The French constitution and what it includes as restriction to the power of the king of France and protection of the rights of the people on the basis of justice and equality are not drawn from the Koran and its laws yet they conform to them in essence. Equality and justice are the foundations of the growth of the kingdom and of the well-being of the people.46

Tahtawi translated the constitution and explained to what extent it is based on reason and conforms to Islamic religious laws: There is no difference then between the sciences of the I and the sciences of the other, if they are both established on the basis of reason-controlled enhancement and disfiguration.

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From travel literature to the science of occidentalism These forms of modern literature, such as Tahtawi’s book, take interest in a modern material that reveals the relation between the I and the other, the image of the I in the mirror of the other and the image of the other in the mirror of the I. Yet the main character of this material is still that of travel literature in all its qualities and flaws. It possesses the clarity of style, is written in a literary style and addresses a wide audience. It is impressionistic and superficial and applies the characteristics of a part on its whole. To what extent is it possible to transform the material of travel literature to an accurate science in which the other is studied from the perspective of the I? To what extent can it be transformed to a science where the Occident is the object of study, and the other is the subject of study instead of the Orient being the object of study and the Occident the subject of study? Can travel literature be transformed to a reversed orientalism or to occidentalism? Can it be transformed to an accurate science that has its rules, methods, foundations, hypotheses, results, proofs and evidences, and is not limited to general impressions, widespread common ideas and making a joke out of the difference in traditions and habits between one nation and another? Can it be transformed into a science that describes in depth the Occident or the European conscious in its resources, structure, composition and destiny? This is possible if travel literature is first put into question and then transformed into a science. Being an example of travel literature, Tahtawi’s book is put into question and the following observations are deduced: 1. Most judgements are general observations closer to being personal impressions agreed upon by other tourists. They are mostly personal impressions of an Azhar scientist shocked by the aspects of civilization. He saw the other from the perspective of the I and the I from the perspective of the other. He thus became bicultural, trying to find elements of similitude and difference between the culture of the I and the culture of the other. This process is submitted to accurate reasoning and is not just impressions based on moods and inclinations and subject to accusations of being illusions of the I and their consequences on the image of other, regardless of its literary audacity and its commitment to neutrality and objectivity. 2. Most judgements are generalizations that apply the characteristics of the specific on the general, of Paris on Parisians and of Parisians on Europeans in general. The sample he saw in Paris might apply on all

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Parisians and the method of observation and participation might be a productive method in social sciences, but control of statistics and quantitative analysis are necessary to establish scientific judgement. 3. Including subjects that digress from the main subject made Tahtawi’s work conform to the writing method of the ancients. This method consists of collecting as much information as can be found related to the subject and necessarily about it. The information is useful to the reader in an age when knowledge of the ancients is negligible most probably due to the loss of ancient manuscripts or the lack of interest in them, or the lack of pride taken in the old heritage of the I. Therefore, in Tahtawi’s book there is an abundance of redundancy, digression, elaboration and divergence. Even though Tahtawi declared he wanted to be concise in his writing, he digressed in more than ten subjects. He even praised digression and declared that it was intended in the book: A book is an occasion to gather information for the sake for of those who need to catch up on knowledge. For writing consists of collecting and preserving material and presenting sciences.

It was Tahtawi’s chance to gather general comprehensive useful information from the ancient heritage and the Occidental heritage in an attempt to preserve material written after the age of military invasions especially in the east and because of the loss of bookcases in Baghdad. Alexandria and its history, the story of a Moroccan scientist in quarantine, the shape of the Earth, round or flat, the French language, information about Farabi and his knowledge of languages and music, health and body rules, talks of love and revolution, the people of Egypt, the Pyramids and the daughters of the kings of Egypt are all digressions and are irrelevant to the main idea of the book. 4. Tahtawi’s book is a form of literary art, a form of travel literature that grew common during the 19th century and continues today. In fact, it varies in composition between social-historical description and literary art, poetry in particular. The literary aspect often dominated the historical aspect, and poetry often dominated other literary aspects. The number of poetic quotations reached 170 quotations. The quotations vary between one or two verses and a whole never-ending poem. These quotations were often repeated and occupied whole pages as in a literary work. The poems were either extracted from the works of

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others or Tahtawi’s own creations. Nevertheless, an Orientalist pointed out mistakes he made related to Arabic grammar. 5. The book was written for a wide public and not for a specialized public. It is a form of general knowledge and not a specialized science. It therefore lacked scientific analysis and accurate references which made it more a tourist book than a study of the Occident. Its objective was then to show and impress rather than contain and criticize. 6. Tahtawi was biased in his talks about Egyptian Copts and described them as stupid and unclean compared with the intelligent clean French. Stupidity is caused by illiteracy. It does not differentiate between a Muslim Egyptian and a Coptic Egyptian. As for the lack of cleanliness, it is a common characteristic among all Egyptians whether Muslim, Copt or Jew. It is not restricted to a religion or group. Ignorance and lack of civilization are the cause of dirtiness. 7. Tahtawi included at the end of the book a list about women and its sole purpose was to arouse anticipation in a frustrated society that had no sexual image. The list was surely irrelevant to the main subject of the book. He included love and courtship poems and wrote extensively about disgrace, honour, shame and the difference between the I and the other in these issues. 8. Tahtawi recounted the French occupation of Algeria during the French revolution more as a French event than an Islamic one. It was seen as an event related to the other and not to the I. It was told free of conviction, exposing and a call for liberation contrary to the reformative discourse of Afghani. One must not forget that the occupation of Algeria was the first attempt at modern colonization of the Arab world after colonizing India, Africa and Asia reaching Indonesia and Philippines. 9. It seems that being fascinated by the Occident and admiring the European challenge held Tahtawi spellbound and the modern Arab thought to consider the European model the model of modernization and the enlightenment philosophy the model of European civilization. Criticism of the Occident and exposing the limits of enlightenment were thus absent for fascination and admiration led to imitation and then occidentalization of new generations. Tahtawi saw the Occident as a perfect mirror that reflects the flaws of the I, therefore the

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Occident was not the study matter but the black back of a mirror that reflects nothing. 10. Comparison between the I and the other was a comparison between priority to religion and priority to science. The I preferred religion to science or life while the other preferred science to religion or the afterlife. This division led the modernized to possess the two goods, the religion of the I and the science of the other, the religion of the I by tradition and the science of the other by copying. In this way, the I will never develop religion nor will it innovate in science but will be satisfied in copying it. It will be reassured in adhering to tradition and imitating the modern. When loss in life is less dangerous than in the afterlife, religion becomes better than science and the I better than the other. Despite the fascination, admiration and the pursuit of imitation, the fear of the afterlife gave the I the impression that it does not need an essence because religion is the origin and science is part of the origin. It also had the illusion of being able to take the science of the other for granted and consider it its own after the other had striven and struggled to achieve it. Science is thus given to the other as a donation free of charge and effort. In this way the other will always be the innovator, while the I will always be the imitator. 11. Although Tahtawi criticized the methods of the ancients in writing, his book was full of Islamic verses and expressions. Almost all his phrases included expressions such as ‘Allah knows’, ‘In Allah we trust’, ‘By Allah’s will, victory will be ours’, ‘By Allah’s care, we will gain pride’, ‘By Allah’s power, Islam will triumph’ and ‘Allah will protect us from the cold and the heat’. He started his introductions by ‘In the name of Allah’ and ‘Praise to Allah’; he praised the Prophet Mohammed’s travels to Damascus and his Hegira to Medina. He declared explicitly to which Islamic sect he belonged. He signed as the Slave of God. 12. The book overflowed with praises to the Sultan. Due to their abundance, they seemed false flattery. So in the book, Mohammed Ali of Egypt was given many titles, his Excellency, his Grace and his Highness. He was sometimes given two titles at once. The book also overflowed with detailed descriptions of his qualities: ‘his Excellency the kind and generous’ and ‘the one who delivers nations from the darkness of ignorance’. ‘He is the one who deflowered Egypt and sent missions abroad to acquire knowledge then return to Egypt to restore the glories of Ancient Egypt’. Tahtawi defended him against

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countrymen who accused him of welcoming foreigners in their country, supporting them and depending on them. He justified his act by saying that Egypt needs these foreigners although they are Christians. Mohammed Ali supported foreigners and called for occidentalization. Tahtawi even quotes two extracts from the Hadith: ‘Knowledge is the believer’s sole purpose he should seek it all the way to China’ and ‘Seek Knowledge even if it is in China’. Mohammed Ali was the first to send a cultural mission to Europe and Tahtawi was part of this first mission, so he felt the obligation to praise Mohammed Ali. He wrote poems about him and compared him with Alexander the Great. Even Orientalists that supervised the mission praised him. They even considered smuggling obelisks from Egypt to France an act of generosity. Tahtawi even started his introductions by thanking the Sultan and praying to him. To him, there is no difference between God and the Sultan. Tahtawi even dedicated a whole chapter to the Sultan for he was the one who financed the mission and he was the one who chose France. Orientalists also participated in praising the sultan since they were his employees. Tahtawi offered praise to the Sultan, to the government, to the presidents of the mission, to his teachers in Azhar and to the Azhar, the enlightened place and the heaven of knowledge in prose and poetry: ‘Sciences do not spread unless with the help of his Highness and with the work of scientists for his Grace’. Tahtawi praised the supervisors of the mission as if they were sons of Egypt and supporters of the government and as if there was a mutual loyalty and confidence between the Sultan and them, so he entrusted them with the development of Egypt. There is a great difference between this discourse and the reformative discourse that criticizes kings and princes, the sheikhs and professors of Azhar, opens discussions with orientalists and abandons praise to sultans to defend their people.

Notes 1. The Arabic title is ‘Takhliss El-Ibriz fi Talkhiss Bariz’, ‘takhliss’ is refining, ‘elIbriz’ is pure gold, ‘talkhiss’ is describing, ‘Bariz’ is Paris. 2. Other translation works of Tahtawi carried on with the rhyme tradition. 3. Examples of these translations would be the Arabic translations of the works of Voltaire and Montesquieu. 4. The title of the fourth article is long and quite suggestive ‘about how we worked quite hard to acquire the arts required by the Sultan and how we struggled to find time to read and write, about the financial support offered by the sultan, about the correspondence between European scholars and I and about what I read of art and books in Paris. From this article one can deduce that acquiring the knowledge of arts is quite hard, and one must struggle to realize such an objective.’

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5. The Egyptian returns to his country in order to achieve the true aim of his journey, making use of the acquired knowledge. 6. ‘I have sworn to God to never do any party injustice and to declare what reason allows of approval to the qualities of this country and their outcome according to what the situation requires.’ 7. ‘I therefore often discarded conclusions that should be reconsidered or are controversial by indicating that my sole intention is to recount them.’ 8. ‘Perhaps this is one of the overstatements of historians for they have falsified the truth about many countries such as the wonders of Baghdad including a library that was burnt by Amor Ibn El-A’ass.’ 9. ‘If all this does not do this city justice but is approximate taking into consideration what the city possesses.’ 10. Tahtawi recites a verse where he considers the other a mirror: ‘A person who has not seen Europe or its people knows nothing of the world or people.’ He recites four other verses where he mentions the reflected image of the I: ‘I have sworn to leave Paris for good for the love of Egypt, for Egypt and Paris are both my brides but Egypt is not a disbeliever as Paris is, Egypt is the source of all beauty but beauty happened to shine in Paris.’ 11. This calendar includes handicrafts and professions that should be practised all over Egypt, the trade of Europeans, Asians and Africans, matters of agriculture, the cause of Egyptian wealth, sciences of nature, birth rates and sports, banking and government policies, public health policies, matters of literature, philosophy, languages and sciences, trade, ships, vehicles and roads. 12. ‘When he realized that his country was quite inferior to Europe in human sciences and useful arts, he felt sorry for his country and wanted to awaken in the minds of the people of Islam the desire to acquire knowledge, to be civilized like Europeans and to assume advanced professions. And when he talked about buildings, instructions and other, he wanted to remind his countrymen that they should try to imitate the things he recounts.’ 13. ‘Having acquired the European methods of civilization, Egypt has the right to keep the heritage of its ancestors, depriving it of this right is similar to stealing a person’s jewelry and wearing them in front of him, it is an act of usurpation.’ 14. Tahtawi left Egypt in AH 1240. In his book he did not find the Muslim date sufficient for every time he stated a Muslim date a Christian equivalent of that date followed, hence the effect of Occidentalism. 15. ‘The Koran is in Arabic, you are a Muslim, you should be faithful to the language of your belief. Send for the Baron de Sassy who is the most fluent in Arabic among Europeans for he studied the Koran thoroughly.’ 16. ‘The French King assigned himself as king of France by God’s will, he avoided saying he is king by the will of his people. The people said that he is king because they wanted him to be king and not because God wanted him to be king and they had nothing to do with it. The people understood by “the will of God” his right to be king by breed and birth. Moreover, “king of France” means sole owner and governor of the land. In Muslim terms, there is no difference between the two meanings of the expression ”by God’s will”. His being king by the will of his people is not in contradiction with his being king by God’s will as an expression of God’s kindness and blessing. There is no difference in Islam between the king of the land and the king of the people.’ 17. ‘It is said that after the occupation of Algeria by the French, the previous king went to church to pray to thank the Lord for the victory, the archbishop saw him and went to congratulate him. He said he thanks the lord that Christians have triumphed over Islam and are still victorious knowing that the war between Algeria and France is

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a purely political war based on issues of trade and on conceit and insolence. When the tumult escalated, the French destroyed the house of the archbishop after he ran away, they ruined everything in it and there was no trace of the bishop for awhile. He then appeared to disappear again. They broke into his house again and left him humiliated.’ 18. When the French saw how Charles X had expelled the Basha of Algeria from his kingdom, they mocked Charles X and drew pictures of him and the Basha in the streets and invented jokes and funny stories about them both.’ 19. ‘Parisians among Christians are well known for their intelligence and their excellent comprehension and skills of analysis, they are different from Copts who tend by nature to be ignorant and stupid.’ ‘Parisians are also known among Christians for their infatuation with apparent cleanliness, God has condemned Copts with dirtiness and filthiness and graced Parisians with cleanliness even when they are out in the sea. Parisians are clean although they know nothing of Godliness. Even though they are blessed with cleanliness, which is strange to us, they do not consider themselves one of the nations that take great interest in cleanliness.’ ‘The cleanest of nations are the Flemish, yet the French should be proud of the cleanliness of their houses even if they do not compare to the houses of the Flemish.’ ‘Ancient Egyptians were the most clean of nations but their Coptic descendants did not keep the tradition.’ 20. ‘In fact they are closer to stinginess than to generosity. In fact, generosity is an Arabic trait.’ There were never in the history of France figures of generosity while Arabic history has plenty such as Hatem Ta, his son Oudai and Maan Bin Zaida who was famous for his generosity and unselfishness. 21. ‘One of their worst traits is the lack of chastity of their women and the lack of jealousy of their men in comparison with the jealousy of Muslim men.’ ‘Zamakhshari explained the Koranic verse “O wife, ask forgiveness for thy sin. For truly thou hast been at fault” that her husband the great Aziz was not jealous of Youssef because he was forgiving by nature and because he was Egyptian.’ 22. ‘Nothing is told in their country about their kings and ministers compared to what is told in our country about the Abbassids’, for example. 23. ‘The skin colour of the Parisians is a pinkish white, you rarely find browns among them because they do not marry blacks to preserve the purity of race and to avoid having the child of a slave.’ ‘They even consider blacks lacking in beauty for black is the color of ugliness.’ ‘They do not employ black slaves to work in the kitchen because they consider them filthy.’ 24. ‘How can this land be compared with our land in its pleasures for sniffing smoke from the hands of a young black servant is enough to revive the soul.’ 25. ‘I happened to be walking down a street in Paris when a drunken man called me, “Turk, Turk” and caught me by my clothes. I was near a tavern. I asked the owner if he could give me for the price of the drunken man alcoholic drinks and nuts. He said that the selling of humans is not allowed here contrary to where you come from.’ 26. ‘I have deduced after observing closely the French in social conduct and in politics that they are more similar to the Arabs than they are to the Turks and other genders. They even believe in honour, freedom and pride more than Arabs do. They swear on their owner to fulfill their vows and they do fulfill their vows. Honour is the most cherished of human traits to the Arabian Arabs as their poems and heritage show.’ ‘As for freedom that the French always ask for it has always been a necessity for Arabs.’ ‘There is no nation better than the nation of Arabs.’ ‘There is no Arab that can trace back his descent to his great great grand father.’ 27. ‘What surprised me is that French soldiers shared traits with the Arabian Arabs such as bravery that shows a strong nature, passion which often expresses weakness of the mind and infatuation with poems of courtship and chivalry. I heard a lot of poems that are similar in meaning to those of the Ancient Arab poets.’

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28. ‘The trait of honour which is a common trait between French and Arabs is chivalry. It is a trait cherished by Arabs and considered among their honour traits, if it has disappeared or vanished today it is because the Arabs were crushed by injustice and oppression that led them to humiliate themselves and beg. Nevertheless, a few kept their innate traits and were not worn down by time.’ 29. ‘A trait of theirs that is admired and common to Arab is the lack of tendency to love young boys or try to be more like them.’ 30. ‘A trait of theirs that is admired and common to Arabs is that the women do not let their hair down.’ ‘A strange thing it is that the wig is used by the women of Cairo.’ 31. ‘Chastity overwhelms the heart of middle-class women. As for the women of both dignitary and the riffraff, one doubts their chastity and one’s doubt is often in place.’ 32. ‘You pay by the hour when you commute in a carriage, the transportation fee by the hour is fixed. You find carriages anywhere you go. There are more carriages in Europe than there are donkeys in Egypt.’ 33. ‘How different is Egypt from Europe, in Egypt soldiers have servants.’ 34. ‘It is meant by the Academy of Egypt the Mosque of Azhar or the forum that groups together the greatest of Egypt’s scientists.’ 35. ‘Baron de Sassy could hardly speak Arabic although he wrote The Sunni Masterpiece in the Arabic Language Sciences in Arabic.’ 36. ‘They include a large number of precious Arabic books that are rare in Egypt and other Arab countries. They also include exquisite copies of the Holy Koran of no similar. The French display these well-kept protected respected copies in libraries although respect is not a sought after objective. Nevertheless, these copies are constantly put into danger because anybody is allowed to read and translate them. There are copies of the Koran for sale in the city of Paris, some of which are translations of verses chosen from the Koran added to the Islamic laws. It is said in these translations that Islam is the purist of all religions and it includes what other religions have discarded.’ 37. ‘General sciences are mathematics, engineering, geography, history and architecture. Specialized sciences are of two kinds. The first manages matters of the empire such as natural rights, human rights, positive rights and politics. The second includes military, maritime, mechanical and engineering sciences, life sciences, riflery, medicine, plumbing, ploughing, carving, natural history, foreign affairs and translation.’ 38. ‘Science is either mathematical like arithmetic, geometry and algebra or not mathematical like biology (reproduction, botany, zoology and mineralogy). Art is either mental such as eloquence, syntax, poetry, sculpting and music or manual such as handcrafting and manufacturing. This is how the French classify sciences and arts while we consider them both as one thing except for art is a science independent from other sciences and means to other sciences at the same time.’ 39. ‘Europeans have reached the highest stages of achievement in mathematical, natural and supernatural sciences. A few have even studied Arab sciences and solved its mysteries yet they did not find the righteous path to salvation. Islam has excelled in religious sciences and in mental sciences yet ignored practical sciences, therefore it has resorted to foreign nations to learn what is unknown to it. Europeans consider scientists of Islam to be only specialized in religion and language yet they admit that Arabs were more advanced than them in sciences in the past and that they owe them their present knowledge of things. It is a commonly accepted idea that those who were advanced in the past take all the credit for the achievements of those who are advanced in the present.’ 40. ‘French scientists are not bishops for bishops are only religious scientists. Yet there are a few bishops who are true scientists. The title scientist is only given to those

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who have knowledge of the sciences of the mind. There is no need for science in Christian religion. If a person is called a scientist, it is because he has knowledge in a science other than religion. The benefit of their sciences will someday reach you and then you will know how much our country lacks in knowledge. The Azhar in Egypt, the mosque of the sons of Oumia in Damascus, the mosque of Zeitouna in Tunis, the mosque of Fares and other mosques are only blooming with translation sciences, sciences of the Arabic language and sciences of logic.’ 41. ‘Philosophy contains many aberrations that oppose holy books and are hard to refute. Therefore those who seek the knowledge of philosophy should be well armed with the Koran otherwise they will be deluded and their faith will be in danger.’ 42. ‘Not even a single nation was afflicted with as many crises as Egypt. Horses of Egypt used to raun faster and farther than horses of any other nation in the fields of wisdom, knowledge and pride. It is as if Egypt is destined for either total bliss or total misery. Among ancient civilizations, not a single civilization strove to build monuments that would immortalize it. Yet the Egyptians did and the opposite other pursuit happened: they perished. The people of Egypt today are a mixture of inhomogeneous races from Asia and Africa. You can not identify a single Egyptian among them, as if nations have all conspired against Egypt.’ 43. ‘In telling the cause of our journey to this faithless, far away, expansive land ...’ 44. ‘It is known that I do not approve of what contradicts with Islamic laws.’ ‘To approve or disapprove of what is good or bad is achieved according to the laws of Islam and to personal honour or what conforms to Islamic laws.’ 45. ‘The majority of Parisians are Christians by name but they do not adhere to their religion nor do they defend it against other religions. They belong to reason-controlled enhancement and disfiguration groups that consider every act controlled by reason just.’ ‘If Islam is mentioned to them in opposition to other religions, they would praise other religions for they allow the act of good and forbid the act of evil. If Islam is mentioned in opposition to natural sciences, they would say that what is mentioned in the Koran is not true because it does not conform to sciences of nature.’ ‘In France it is allowed to follow the religion of choice.’ 46. ‘The basis of justice found in the French constitution cannot be denied by those who judge by reason. Even though the majority of what is stated in the constitution is not drawn from the Koran or its laws, the European power of reason came up with the conclusion that justice and equality are the basis of growth and well-being of a nation. European, leaders and commoners, adhered to the constitution, their country flourished and developed, their knowledge increased, their riches multiplied and they felt secured and protected for justice is the basis of development.’ ‘If you observe closely you conclude that the sole aim of the constitution is to establish justice, help those in need and satisfy the poor.’ ‘What they call freedom is similar to what we call justice and equality for to rule in freedom is to rule in justice, apply the same laws and judgements on all citizens and forbid the rulers of the country to do injustice to the citizens.’ ‘Their legal judgements are not drawn from holy books but from political laws which are totally different from religious laws.’

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CHAPTER 8

The Other’s Image in Maghrebi Travel Writings Abdul Salam Heimer

A year after the Gulf War, Europe as well as the Arab world celebrated the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America, whose year happened to coincide with that of the fall of the Umayyad Empire in Spain. Europe is celebrating the year 1492 as an essential historical milestone in its neverending quest for renewed modernity that extends over 500 years. If so, then our Arab Islamic world should ponder upon the historical significance of this year and its indications about its present and future. It is a well-known fact that this year, a turning point in the history of Europe, and the centuries that followed have brought Europe renaissance, progress, prosperity and expansion in the world, while it constituted for the Arab world the beginning of decadence and regression. The Ottoman expansion that reached the heart of Europe was not able to reverse the course of decadence or decrease its intensity. In this general cultural context, Moroccan travel writings draw an image of the developing and growing Europe by describing the direct other. The more writers perceive the development of the other, the more they come to notice the underdevelopment of the I. This revelation led them to implicitly and indirectly describe Moroccan society in their writings, even though their subject material was the description of the other. Due to the increase in the number of travel reports from the 16th century up until the beginning of the 20th century, scholars can easily perceive how the image the elite scholars have of Europe has developed. We have chosen to analyse travel reports that clearly demonstrate how the image Moroccans have of Europe has changed because of the development and progress Europe has known throughout its modern history. The journey of Ahmed Bin Qasim El-Hajari happened during the mercantile development stage of capitalist Europe, whereas the journey of Ibn Othman of Meknes occurred at the end of the mercantile stage. Finally, the journey of Abi El-Jamal Attahir of Fez took place at the industrial stage that was characterized by the strong competition between Europeans to

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take over parts of the world, in particular countries to the south of the Mediterranean Sea.

The journey of the Morisco Ahmed Bin Qasim El-Hajari: ‘The advocate of religion against the unfaithful’ Jack Park believes that Morocco up until the 16th century was not excluded from the general development course; countries in the north of the Mediterranean Sea1 followed. It was not until the beginning of the 20th century that the gap between the north and the south of the Mediterranean Sea started to widen to reach a point where every inch of development of the north resulted in an inch of underdevelopment of Morocco. This underdevelopment extended to all the countries to the south of the Mediterranean Sea and the whole Arab Islamic world. The importance of El-Hajari’s book lies in two things. First, it is a witness to the nature of that age. Second, it fully represents the kind of relations that existed between the land of Islam represented by Morocco and the Ottoman Empire on the one hand, and the land of disbelief and war represented by Europe on the other hand. The author of the book dedicated most of its chapters to the description of his journey to France and the Netherlands, and his visits to several cities such as Saint Jean De Louse, Toulouse,The Hague and Amsterdam. In his book, the author recounted the results of his diplomatic efforts to restore what European sea thieves stole from the Moriscos who had been forced to leave Andalusia and go to Morocco and Tunisia.2 He described the aspects of European urban civilization and talked about his intellectual religious debates with priests, bishops and members of the ruling elite of France and the Netherlands. Among the three elements mentioned above that constitute the book, the element related to his religious debates occupies the largest part and is the most important. The reason might be the disagreement that called for such debates between the two parties. The disagreement was not related to the level of civilization or to military, technological and scientific advances. It was related to the difference in opinions related to religion and faith. The debate between the Ambassador, El-Hajari and his hosts in France and the Netherlands was an expression of a deeper more comprehensive conflict between what scientists of Islam called the land of disbelief and the land of Islam. Both parties considered these religious debates as verbal holy wars against the other whose effect and power are no less than that of the real war of swords and spears. Earthly struggles and conflicts between different groups and civilizations came out in that age as cultural

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religious conflicts. For example, those who debated with the author in the cities he visited did not cease to express their astonishment at his wide general knowledge for it contradicted with his being a Muslim. According to them, a Muslim was the equivalent of an ignorant savage and a barbarian. Therefore, he insisted on showing his victory over his Jewish and Christian debaters who were bewildered by his culture and knowledge. Nevertheless, he insisted on being modest for it was not his victory but the victory of Islam over disbelief. It was the victory of the land of Islam over the land of disbelief and war. According to the author the land of Islam extends from the Far East to Morocco and in it the Arabic language prevails as a praised factor of unity,3 whereas the land of disbelief and war is the land that achieved expansion by expelling Islam from Andalusia and discovering America which El-Hajari called the Far Maghreb: where live the Moroccan Indians who were not reached by Islam, its ancient inhabitants were pagans who worship the sun because they were disbelievers until the king of Andalusia brought them his polytheism and idols.4

The superiority of the land of Islam was demonstrated in elements such as the Arabic knowledge of geography5 and the Ottoman military advancement.6 The author’s religious debates included doctrinal and theological issues such as the doctrine of trinity and the doctrine of singleness, likeness to God and embodiment of God, original sin and Christian confession issues,7 consumption of alcohol and pork meat, marriage to four in Islam, the chastity of priests, the Islamic veil for women, engagement rituals, fasting and material representation of God (statues and icons). The analysis of the arguments of both parties in these debates shows that each party had in mind residues from group experiences, preconceived ideas about the other, his habits and his rules and descriptions of the other that piled up through the turns of history in mind, conscious and feelings. From the sum of these piles rose a particular image of the other manifested in his sayings and doings. What are the main aspects of this image that the scholar can deduce from El-Hajari’s book? The image of the Moroccan (the Arab, the Muslim) in the mind of the European Europeans considered Moroccans who came to their country Turks. In the city of Rouen, one French person said to the author ‘You Turks’.8 In Paris, the French elite nicknamed the author ‘the Turkish man’. ‘In Europe, Turk is a synonym for Muslim’.9 ‘In Europe, in many Christian countries, they say Turk to mean Muslim or Moroccan’.10

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According to the author, Europeans see the Turks as they call them through religious social preconceived ideas that took roots in their group imagination. To them, the Turk is a savage scary warrior who has four wives, who steals and rapes, who practises homosexuality, who is so narrow-minded that he forces his wife to wear a veil and considers her made to satisfy his pleasures, who follows a rough lifestyle and abstains from the pleasures of life like drinking and eating pork, and who is greedy and thirsty for money. The author tried to erase these prejudgements from the minds of his direct interlocutors, first by his practical attitude and second by his culture and good argumentation skills. He spoke Spanish and French. In his debates, he did not only depend on his Islamic Arabic culture, but he also made use of his knowledge of the old and new testaments and of the common religious European culture. The image of the European in the mind of the Morisco First of all, the European is a polytheist and unfaithful Christian who does not fulfil his vows or respects his treaties. For example, Christians of Andalusia tortured, slaughtered, burnt and punished Muslims despite the treaty signed by both parties that guaranteed the liberties of Muslims in Andalusia after it fell under the rule of Spanish kings. The Spanish Christian is a hypocrite and a Machiavellian who blames Spanish Muslims for not integrating in Spanish society and for forming a private isolated group that does not allow its sons to marry Christian daughters, while he continues persecuting them for not adhering to Christianity and for speaking Arabic. As for Spanish families, they persecute sons and daughters who marry Morisco Arabs. It seems that behind this image of Christian Europe as an enemy of Islam and betrayer of vows and treaties, as the author pictured it, another image emerges through quick indications. It is the image of a feudal Europe that is based on alliance between religious men led by the Pope and land owners, who have lots of servants, live in luxury and take great interest in religious debates, reading books, including Arabic books, and translating them. As for European cities, they are far from being equal in beauty and space to Islamic cities such as Constantinople. According to the author, many European cities like Paris can be compared with Cairo or even with Marrakech. Yet a few European cities are distinguished for being world trade centres, such as Dutch Amsterdam about which the author says: There is no city other than Amsterdam that has so many ships. It is said that the sum of all its ships big and small is 6000 ships.11

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The author talked about European merchants and missionaries who travelled the world and reached Asia to trade in spices and other. They even travelled through America. The seas were under observation by the European fleets. He even talked about how the religious reform movement led by Luther and Calvin spread through Europe and mainly in the Netherlands, the world trade centre. He considered Protestantism close to Islam in its principles. He even noticed that Protestant religious men ordered their followers not to hate Muslims and he sensed that they even liked them.12 He sensed the willingness of the ruling elite of the Netherlands to make a political and military alliance with Moroccans against their common enemies. There is not a shred of doubt that the author described the new Europe the capitalist, mercantile Europe that emerged in the heart of feudal Europe as its direct opposite. In this context, the author became acquainted with written works from printing presses and with simple technological innovations such as the machine that lifts water. He even asked a priest who spoke Arabic to tell him the tricks and secrets of this machine.13 Europeans saw in the Moroccan Muslim a narrow-minded man who forces his wife to wear a veil and forbids himself to know her before they get married. As for the author, he saw in the liberation of the European woman, which manifested in her make-up, her beauty, in sitting in the company of men and participating in their conversations and debates, an indication of corrupt values and profligacy. To the author, European women represent the temptation itself, they are tools of the devil that no man, however righteous, can resist. The author said in a tone that indicates suffering and anxiety: She told me that she could teach me to read French and I became her student. We grew fond of each other and I desperately fell in love with her. I said, ‘Before that, I was antagonistic with Christians for money, I supported the holy war for the sake of religion, now I am in conflict with the soul and the devil.’14

Thus in this general cultural context, which is characterized by tension, vigilance and conflict between the north and the south of the Mediterranean Sea and where countries of the north oppress countries of the south, love has become another pretext for tension, struggle and conflict. The winds of contemporary ages are finally blowing. With what is happening currently and with the world celebrating in Lisbon (since 20 April 1992) the 500th Anniversary of the year 1492, we have the right to ask:

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Is it not time for this major anachronism that El-Hajari’s book demonstrated to cease, for it has made it impossible for European modernity to rise and last unless Arab development regresses? The journey of the minister Mohammed Ibn Othman of Meknes (1799) El-Hajari’s book drew an image of the tension between Europe and Morocco, and made of jihad on the western side and restoration on the Spanish side the main issues of tension. The travel report of Ibn Othman is also incorporated in this cultural tension context, for the sea that separates the two sides has become a line that separates two different worlds. Each world has its own time and its own preoccupations. At the core of this tension lies Spain because of its geographical location, its historical characteristics and its occupation of lands that Morocco has asked to be restored and has besieged in the rules of Sultan Ismail and Sultan Mohammed Bin Abdullah. When Ibn Othman’s book was written in the second half of the 18th century, the Spanish were preoccupied with problems in Latin America, wars against Britain for Gibraltar and competition with the other European countries. They could not move forward and continue executing the will of the famous Catholic queen Isabelle, so instead they reinforced Moroccan locations militarily and diplomatically by signing peace and friendship treaties with Morocco. In turn, Morocco was trying to solve its internal problems after 30 years of bloody wars and was looking forward to restoring the occupied Moroccan locations in Spain on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. In an attempt to restore these lands, Sultan Mohammed Bin Abdullah tightly besieged one of the occupied lands in the year 1774. Ibn Othman recorded in his journey some of the characteristics and conditions of the siege:15 Although the siege ended up in totally destroying the land till there were only towers, bridges and fighting, Morocco has once again failed to restore the land because of its internal problems.

It was then forced to accept King Carlos III’s offer to sign a truce and peace treaty, according to the words of Ibn Othman who played a major role in preparing the treaty and determining its terms and conditions. In these critical conditions, Ibn Othman had his journey to Spain in 1780, in the age of Carlos III and Mohammed Bin Abdullah. The objective of his journey was to realize friendship, to make peace and a truce and to release the prisoners. The prisoners were not Moroccans but Algerian Turks, which makes one wonder about the interests of the sultan

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in releasing Turkish prisoners despite the old enmity between Algerian Turks and Moroccans. The answer to this question might be in the nature of the Moroccan government, since it could not have rebuilt itself and reinforced its legitimacy unless it assumed two functions. The first would be that of the jihad and the second would be that of piling up money. Signing peace treaties with Spain and the neighbouring countries and openness to the outside world enabled the Moroccan government to improve its finances out of the revenues of external trade. Moreover, the ransom paid to release Muslim prisoners even if they were not Moroccans was counted as part of the expenses of jihad. It also tightened trade relations with Europeans. These then were the dimensions of Ibn Othman’s journey to Spain and these were its main goals. Anyone who reads his book will find themselves in front of an author burdened by the issues of his age and by the preoccupations of his society. These issues and these preoccupations defined the way he approached the other and the image he had of him. They also determined the criteria to judge the other and to approve or disapprove of him. They provided the author with the criteria of choice to determine what he should not describe and what he should describe at length. The author made sure of informing his government of the situation in the occupied land in case it wanted to besiege it again.16 At a time when geographical science in Morocco was negligible, the author also provided information relating to the geography, demography and civilization of major cities and villages he visited during his journey through Spain. The author was completely conscious of his role as a writer, ambassador and minister of his country. Therefore, he was committed in his writings to take the interests, values and traditions of his country as a reference in describing the Spanish society and its government. Even though his book was based on the idea that Spanish society was the other or different from the Moroccan society, in various parts of the book, he indicated elements of union, similitude, homogeneity and resemblance between the two societies. Union and resemblance Ibn Othman talked about Spain, Andalusia in particular, by describing it as a land of Islam usurped by Christians. It was not a strange land to him for it was the land of his ancestors, the land in which they were buried and their cultural achievements stood as proof. It was a part of his heritage and history. Therefore, what he saw in Andalusian cities and villages he visited through his journey to Madrid was first and foremost its Islamic landmarks or what was left of them. He identified Arabian heritage in its walls,

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narrow alleys and mosques, in its Escorial library and in Arabic writings that decorated mansions, doors and graves of the Spanish city. The Arabic names of these landmarks aroused in his heart feelings of nostalgia, the past got mixed up with the present, he had no choice in entering these cities but to pray to God to restore these lands to Islam. Ibn Othman visited a large number of Spanish cities and villages, such as Cadiz, Leon, Lisbon, Granada, Aragon, Santa Maria, Seville and Madrid (or Majritt, the name of a Barbarian tribe that used to occupy this land during the Islamic rule), and described their landmarks, characteristics and industrial and agricultural fortunes. He started each description with a prayer to God to restore the lands of Islam, expressing thus the intimacy of the relation that links him to these lands despite the inevitable dark reality. Nevertheless, Ibn Othman discovered that Europeans shared his love and appreciation of Arab Islamic monuments. Despite the difference in religion and faith, Europeans considered their heritage too. In a Spanish city he visited, Ibn Othman asked his Spanish friends if there were any Islamic monuments left in the city. They brought him Islamic coins and money, so he asked them to sell them to him for it represented great cultural and symbolic value to him. They ended up giving him some and asked for nothing in return because to them these old things, the Islamic ones in particular, were of great interest and value to them, but they simply passed it from one generation to the other. Ibn Othman saw a sword belonging to a Christian in Lisbon and asked him to sell it to him, but he refused and said that once he was in need of money and someone offered him a large amount of money for it and yet he also refused.17 Ibn Othman even met Spaniards of Arab origin, whose families lived in Morocco. He said in his book that he met a Christian of the ruling class in Spain who greeted him warmly when he saw him and showed deep pleasure. He declared to the author that he was of the Muslim Kurdnash family and that he had heard that the author was searching for what was left of Islamic heritage, so he quickly came to see him driven by longing and anticipation.18 In another Spanish city, a lady came up to the author and told him she was of the Kurdnash family and her mother of the Burkash family; she showed great affection and endearment. Another man came up to him when he heard her talking to him and said that he was of the Briss family and his mother of the Burkash family. The author told them both that their families were of the ruling class in Morocco and asked them to join them. They answered that they could find no way to do so, and mentioned other Muslim families who were known in Morocco and lived in Spain such as Tetuan and Rabat (families of great wealth and fortune).19 These incidents were repeated in various Spanish cities, such as the city of

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Bairen, where Ibn Othman found lots of Spaniards of Muslim origin who came up to him, presented themselves and showed endearment, which was quite surprising to the author. It is obvious that Ibn Othman used the Muslim adjective as an equivalent to the Arab. The author commented on these incidents by saying: It is true that the Spanish families of Muslim origin are our brothers yet they are different from us because they were raised on the faith of disbelief.20

In Ibn Othman’s book, the homogeneity and resemblance aspects of the Spanish and the Moroccans went beyond the human elements to include nature and cultural landmarks. Ibn Othman recognized that plantation lands in Spain resembled plantation lands in Morocco.21 He also noticed the minaret of the mosque of Lisbon that had become a church resembled the minaret of the Katiba mosque of Marrakech: It has the shape of the minaret of Katiba, it is reached without stairs like the Katiba. A Christian told me that he climbed up there on his horse. It has domes in it like the minaret of Katiba, Christians in charge of ringing the bells stay in these domes.22

So what distinguishes between one culture and another is once again the difference in religion and faith. Difference Difference shows first and foremost in religion, tradition and faith. Even though Ibn Othman solemnly declared his opposition to Christianity, his position from the Spanish traditions and laws was not opposing or disapproving. To him, Christianity was a corrupt religion because of the twisting committed by Popes who once in power seized every opportunity to forbid or allow matters without any restrictions or limitations.23 It was also corrupt because of the trinity doctrine, the use of statues and drawings to represent God in churches, the use of confessions to erase sins and wrongdoing, the chastity of priests and nuns, and only abstaining from eating meat during fasting. The difference between El-Hajari’s and Ibn Othman’s books is that Ibn Othman did not turn his meetings with the Spanish government into religious debates. He was committed to his diplomatic mission and wanted to achieve its success as much as the Spanish elite wanted to achieve success in gaining his friendship and trust, in order to tighten the bonds of friendship between the two countries. As the situation demanded, earthly issues weighed more than religious issues

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in political relations that were determined by interests and financial needs of governments. The only time when the Moroccan ambassador could not control himself when it came to religious matters was when he was driven into the controversial religious issue of the crucifixion of Christ. It was in the mosque of Cordoba (a part of which had been turned into a church) and the priest had not yet started the discussion or debate when Ibn Othman stopped him and changed the subject, considering discussion on such an issue vain.24 As for the Spanish rules of conduct and the traditions, the author took a positive position with them except those that contradict the Islamic law, such as the consumption of alcohol. Even though he disapproved of mixed dance parties which were attended by Spanish women who were dressed indecently and wore make-up, he often expressed his admiration for their beauty and good behaviour and social conduct. In various cities he visited, he noted down the participation of women in the economic activities of the country and approved of it. He made sure to describe weird Spanish rituals such as bullfighting and circus parties. He also described the theatre: The theatre was a large building of four levels, a countless number of candles were lit all over the place, and musicians were placed at the lower level. A place was reserved for me in one of the levels facing the stage. I saw wonders in the theatre beyond description. I saw scenes, constructions and animals.25

The author considered the theatre an instrument for entertainment and pleasure. He did not wonder about its functions, its makers or its creation and did not consider it a Spanish cultural and intellectual aspect. The common point Ibn Othman shared with other travel writers who came after him (such as Mohammed Bin Abdullah Essaffar, Idriss Bin Mohammed Bin Idriss El-Omrawi, Attahir of Fez, El-Kardoudi, El-Gaidi and El-Ghassal) is that they did not think to get acquainted with the intellectual and literary creativity of Europeans contrary to some travellers to Europe. Whenever they took interest in a book, this book would usually be an Arabic classic of religious value. As for the Spanish industries that Ibn Othman took an interest in describing, they were industries that did not exist in his country and that he thought would be useful for his country to know about. Therefore, he described water-powered industries such as tobacco, paper, arms, olive oil, money forging, clock making and the glass industry. He described other industries that made use of the power of the wind like the mills that remind us of the world of Cervantes in Don Quixote.

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From the description of these industries emerges the image of industrial Europe as a centre of modern capitalist industry. It was obvious that Ibn Othman admired how Europeans built roads and paved them to facilitate transportation in carriages with wheels that were not used in Morocco. He also admired the accommodation system in hotels and the post system that provided the government with a large income of taxes, in addition to the tax income provided by imposing taxes on the use of roads and bridges by carriages. Ibn Othman mentioned the monopoly the Spanish government exercised on products such as salt and tobacco in a way that provided it with a large income. The Moroccan government needed to know the means by which European government piled up fortunes and the sources of their riches and fortunes. He therefore found it necessary to note these elements in his journey report. He also described in detail the navy academy in Lisbon26 and other military organizations that did not exist in Morocco. Despite all this, it seems that, even though Ibn Othman noted down a number of aspects of European advancement in Spain, he was not conscious of the increase of the cultural gap between European societies and Morocco. We find ourselves in front of a writer and a man of politics who is trying to understand what is happening in the world. He talked about the preoccupations of Spain in its colonies in Latin America and its fortunes in Algeria, about the conflicts between European countries (the land of disbelief and war) and in particular the wars between Britain and Spain over Gibraltar, and about the national fanaticism of the Turks who sacrificed Muslim prisoners of war unless they were Turks, thus opposing the Islamic duty of cooperation and solidarity. Nevertheless, he did not read between the lines and understand that these were all signs of the birth of a new era in Western Europe. He did not understand that Europe was stepping into the age of capitalism, whose logic is different in its earthly and humanistic tendencies from the logic of the past ages. It is an age in which man owning the Earth constitutes the absolute truth in a human world where people dream and work for a never-ending and limitless progress. Two journeys to England Merely 80 years passed after the journey of Ibn Othman to Europe when Europe had gathered through various intense revolutions all the components of ruling the whole world and had grown more ambitious of recreating this world according to its own image as expressed by Marx. Since countries of the southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea were easy to

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reach, they were greatly affected by this ambition. Egypt was invaded, Algeria was occupied, Tunisia was ambushed and Morocco was defeated in successive wars (Asley in 1844 and Tetuan in 1860). These wars resulted in totally integrating Morocco in the capitalist world order, and in the increase of travel and academic expeditions to Europe and the number of Moroccan travel reports about the industrial European societies. One can say that travel reports written before the defeat at Asley in 1844 produced a general image of a rising and advancing Europe. Its advancement would not have made travel writers feel their country underdeveloped and inferior to other countries. This explains why these writers considered the difference between them and the European other first and foremost a religious difference related to a group of values, conceptions and rituals linked to the doctrine of monotheism and the doctrine of trinity. Did Ibn Othman not repeat all through his journey that the Spanish would be Moroccans if not for their religion and its rules? After the defeat at Asley, travel writers were confronted by a new kind of European society that did not derive the legitimacy of its institutions and organizations from Christianity and its institutions. The legitimacy of its institutions is derived from the procedures, rules and laws agreed upon by its individuals and groups who are represented in local and national elected councils, in the press, in the stock market, in banks, in insurance companies, in chambers of liberal professions and in political parties. These societies are established on the basis of attentiveness, good organization and putting everything in its right place. Visitors to Europe give Europeans credit for undivided attentiveness, general foresight in the matters of life, in improving their living and in mastering management skills. Europeans are serious when it comes to making a land prosperous whether by building or planting or any other activity. They do not tolerate any laziness, negligence or carelessness. They make use of everything, one cannot find any forsaken or destroyed land.27 It is not the religious politics that institutes the European society but the politics of time, reason and convention as expressed in the words of the writers of the second half of the 19th century. Foresight, good management, administration and organization are attributions to the mind and products of the mind that lead to another concept treated in the writings of Moroccan intellectuals during that period. The concept is that of order and there is no order without the rule of reason that institutes laws and creates, modifies and cancels organizations according to the demands of public interest. The order Moroccan writers perceived during their travels to Europe in the second half of the 19th century is the same order they noticed in the lines of the colonizing European armies when they were fighting by crawling in tightly

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pressed rows. They agreed to call them armies of order and called to imitate them. They also tried to imitate technological innovations and economic and financial organizations. Sometimes this imitation was not unanimously agreed upon by the religious authority because it contained controversial elements that caused a limitless number of conflicts and struggles enticed and intensified by contradicting interests, different opposing alliances and fear of what the country might become in the future. In some cases, the then current requirements forced the Moroccan government to take measures that were not agreed upon by the religious authority, liberating thus the earthly from the religious and drawing closer to the politics of Europeans called by Moroccan intellectuals politics of time and convention. The more the government drew closer to the European politics the more extremist religious scientists felt like strangers in their own country and tried to leave the country every time they failed to resist.28 There is no doubt that travel reports were useful to the sultan in the second half of the 19th century for they provided him with information about Europe he desperately needed to know. He was only allowed to enter the land of disbelief as a holy warrior. Description in these reports was not innocent or neutral or void of intentions or aims. It was biased, oriented and directed, and depended on the perspective of the mystic religious man and on the needs and interests of the government. This explains the great interest in war techniques, in the sources of income of the modern European country and in political institutions such as the parliament and the government. Description was characterized by the bewilderment of revealing that the one describing felt underdeveloped, inferior and scared from the other whose colonization aims were known to all. Writers of these reports often resorted to justification to overcome feelings of inferiority, handicap and defeat. One of these writers was Mohammed Attahir of Fez who visited England as part of a cultural expedition sent by Sultan Mohammed IV after the defeat at Tetuan in the year 1860. In the same year, the sultan sent another expedition to France led by the minister and writer Idriss Bin Mohammed Bin Idriss El-Omrawi. What was the image created by Attahir’s imagination about modern British society during his journey through England? What was his position concerning modern British technology? In his book, Attahir stood bewildered and confused in front of the order and extraordinary strength of the liberal British government. He discovered the basis and foundations of this strength in technology, in organized army force and in the leadership of the middle class in the military field as well as in the economic field. Since he had left Tangier on his way to

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London, he had not ceased to be astonished and fascinated by what he was seeing: the technological innovations that surround Europeans in general and the British in particular such as steamships thanks to which travelling by sea became easier, the train that rushes through rocky mountains making long distances short and the wire that transmits news, sayings and thoughts to people however far they might be in the speed of lightning. Behold a different culture, a distinguished communicative technological culture.

It is quite ironic to see the two Moroccan expeditions (Ibn Idriss to Paris and Attahir to England) communicating with each other through the telegraph for the first time and being informed about the cholera in Fez. Attahir recounted the following incident in his book: The reason why we entered the telegraph centre, which is usually used to spread news, was that our friends in Paris had heard that cholera had struck Fez and wanted to be sure if that was true. So they wanted to ask us, they asked the telegraph centre in Paris to transmit a message to the telegraph centre in London. They set a time for us to come the next day so we could communicate directly with each other. At ten o’clock the next day we went to a telegraph centre in central London. In a second, the wire moved and we got a message that our friends are at the telegraph centre in Paris. The telegraph man typed them a message by the wire to inform them that we are at the centre and ask them how they were, they answered and asked if the cholera news was true. We answered. The whole process took less than a minute while the distance between Paris and London is 500 miles, for a message to be transmitted by telegraph from London to Istanbul it takes 4 minutes. In short, there is a centre in London that has a wonderful machine which is beyond description.29

The image Attahir drew of the British man is that of an inventor of miraculous technological tools that are beyond description and words. Therefore, description of modern technology and of the British army, which Attahir saw as a military machine, occupied the largest part of the travel report. He described the steamship, the railroads, the barometer, the army parade, war manoeuvres, plants of arms, wood and glass, the telegraph, banks and planting fruits and vegetables out of season in heated glass houses. Yet he did not describe British modern politics. He kept on describing the British government as similar to the Moroccan government except for its extreme wealth and strength which is based on technology,

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science and an organized army force. He did not describe a number of the modernity aspects of the liberal British government for a reason. He justified his discretion by saying: Sometimes silence expresses better than words and too many words are often void of meaning.

Yet that was not enough to explain his discretion concerning a few issues. One must add that the author’s culture and political experience are mediocre compared with those of Essaffar and of Ibn Idriss. His mediocrity made him a witness and an observer whose understanding and comprehension were inferior to those of Essaffar and of Ibn Idriss. Faced with such a technological civilization of which the army of order is an integral part, whether in its organization or in its method of armament or in its style of fighting, Attahir had to search for the secret of existence and development of the British nation. He discovered the secret and it was steam power. The ship that transported him from Tangier to Portsmouth was a steam ship. The train that transported him to London in an incredible speed moved by using steam power. The telegraph, the wood factory, minting of money and the arms industry all worked by using steam power. Therefore, Attahir found it necessary to explain to his readers how the British were able to discover steam power. Attahir called steam power Baboor: They worked hard to understand and acquire theoretical matters until these matters became necessities to them. They came up with their mind power with lots of innovations such as the Baboor. As to how they came up with the Baboor, a boy was playing with a small mill, he then fixed it on top of a kettle filled with water on the fire. As soon as the water started to boil, the mill started to turn by the power of water vapour. A man saw what happened and came up with the Baboor by the power of the mind of darkness. The mind is of two kinds, that of darkness and that of light. With the mind of darkness, one discovers things of darkness which render one a disbeliever. With the mind of light, the believer realizes spiritual matters such as belief in God, in his angels, in his prophets and in whatever makes one close to God. Therefore God described Europeans as lacking in mind, reason and understanding for they use the mind of darkness.30

One deduces from Attahir’s conclusions that the mind is the instrument of invention, innovation and discovery. The British discovered steam power not because they were Christians, but because they depended on the power

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of the mind to discover secrets of nature and make use of them. It seems that the discovery was of no value to Attahir. On the one hand it was originally a childish game, and on the other it was the product of a mind of darkness and not that of light. The mind of darkness studies nature, which is life, and life is an ephemeral evanescent illusion. The mind of darkness is that of philosophers, nature scientists and inventors (who according to Islamic tradition then are all disbelievers). Therefore, whatever comes out of the mind of darkness is of no value. As for the mind of light, it is that of religious scientists and mystic believers who abstain from life to discover divine facts about the eternal immortal afterlife. It is the sublime divine mind. It is the true mind. Things derive their value from the mind of light alone. To Attahir, those inventions and technological innovations were of no value for they were not the works of the mind of light and were not part of its principles and its absolute divine truth. Attahir thus presented a new kind of traditional anthology that does not find it enough to divide the Earthly world into a land of disbelief and war and a land of Islam, peace and faith, but also divides it into a land of life and a land of afterlife according to the following table. Following this logic, Attahir saw in the British technological advancement and in the British Empire where the sun never sets a proof of God’s extraordinary will and power: The barometer is credible according to the will of God. The city of London is an organized city of high buildings and vast gardens and its people own trained tamed horses because God granted them these gifts to show the extent of his power and the mightiness of his will.

Existence

Land of Life

Land of Afterlife

Childish game: resemblance, imitation and mortality ↓ The field of the nature scientist and inventor ↓ disbeliever ↓ Mind of darkness ↓ Satanic dark things (technology and technological methods)

Fixed origin: immortality, eternity, absolute truth ↓ The field of the mystic religious scientist ↓ believer ↓ Mind of light ↓ Spiritual divine matters (absolute divine sublime truth)

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Attahir saw in British superiority an indication that life is of no value compared with God and that life is heaven to the disbeliever and prison to the believer, and afterlife is heaven to the believer and prison to the disbeliever. Nevertheless, Attahir greatly acknowledged the superiority of the British in military and civil technology that he wrote: the British use things that astonish the one who suddenly sees them and makes him lose his balance for a while.31 If afterlife is the land of immortality and life is the land of mortality, then British superiority is temporary and ephemeral since the original human history will prevail again some day and Muslim believers will be superior to Christian disbelievers and other disbelievers.

Using this kind of traditional reasoning and analysis, Attahir faced British modernity. There is no doubt that the mediocre level of culture of Moroccan writers and elite of that time was responsible for the misunderstanding of the other and the I in their exchanged relations. It was also responsible for the inability of the Moroccan government in the second half of the 19th century to revolutionize the country starting with the ruling class. If such a revolution had taken place, Morocco would have escaped its destiny; colonization that led to complete underdevelopment. If Attahir did not take an interest in the European political systems, other travel writers did: Mohammed Bin Abdullah Essaffar and Ibn Idriss in their journeys to Paris, El-Kardoudi and Hasan El-Ghassal in their journey to England. El-Ghassal visited England in 1902 and participated in the last Moroccan government before its colonization. What distinguished ElGhassal’s report from other travel reports was that he mentioned for the first time the British political parties and was conscious of their role in British political organization. El-Ghassal described in his report the following: We went to the parliament where deputies who represent the people meet. Every deputy represents a group of citizens and protects their rights and defends their interests. It is a large building of excellent and perfect construction. The number of lords that meet in this building is seven hundred. The council is composed of two groups, government chiefs and the minister in charge of the discussed matter on the one hand and the liberal party32 on the other hand. If the discussed matter is a foreign affairs matter, the minister of foreign affairs attends the council, if it is a security matter, the minister of defence attends the council and so on.

It is obvious that the image of the British democratic institutions was perceived from a Moroccan perspective. The use of Moroccan vocabulary

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clearly demonstrates that. The description was of great importance since it drew attention to the fact that the right to disagree and to be different is the basis of democracy. Difference is not a tool that breaks the unity of a nation but a tool that leads to the truth in every matter. It is a means to support the unity of the nation in allowing different opinions to reach together a decision that the majority of the nation agrees upon if not the whole nation. El-Ghassal wrote: Discussion in the parliament happens as follows. First a representative of one of the groups gives a speech with the help of a piece of paper on which he wrote the main points of discussed matter. Then a representative of the other group gives a speech where he objects to what was said in the other speech or he approves of it. In the front part of the council, sits the president of the council, with a white cap on his head and surrounded by writers who note down quickly every single word said in the council. At the end, he stands up and gives a speech where he recounts what he understood from both speeches and the disagreed upon points. Then he points out where a group was right and where he was wrong by giving solid arguments and reasons so everything would be crystal clear to everyone.33

Europe had become the other that surrounds, encircles and identifies constantly with the I. It imposed itself as reference according to which the I should define itself and become. The modernization policy34 that the sultans of the second half of the 19th century adopted might have made use of the image travel reports drew of capitalist industrial colonial Europe and of its liberal democratic regime. Yet this policy failed and its failure led to the colonization of Morocco. Modernization did not only fail due to purely internal Moroccan reason, a large part of its failure was due to the other35 whose admired liberalism and democracy did not stop him from opposing the first modernization attempt in Morocco and imposing a protection treaty on the country. The other left the Moroccans with no other choice but to resist him at a time when religious opposition to foreigners was growing enormously, and religious scientists of Fez issued a famous religious opinion, two years after El-Ghassal’s report, that warned the Moroccan government of dealing with the colonial other: Foreigners are the cause of our worries, our underdevelopment, our chaos, our internal conflicts, our loss of independence and our destruction. What good did they bring us? What sciences did they teach us? What did we gain from these sciences?36

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Is that not the same speech that is repeated nowadays all over the Arab world as a desperate attempt to confront the Western invasion, especially after the Gulf War? Whatever the answer, the most common and repeated images of the other among Moroccans and Arabs in general is the image that El-Hajari and Ibn Othman drew on the one hand and the image that travel writers of the second half of the 19th century drew on the other hand. It is the image of the Judo-Christian Europe, capitalist industrial Europe, which was colonial and democratic at once.

Notes 1. Jacques Berque, Ulémas, fondateurs insugés du Maghreb XVII siécle, la bibliothéque arabe, collection hommes et sociétés (Paris: Sindbad, 1982) p.18. 2. El-Hajiri, op. cit., p.44. 3. op. cit., pp.107–8. 4. op. cit., p.95. 5. El-Hajiri mentions that Europeans get their geographical knowledge from Arabic books, the most famous of which is ‘The Yearning’s Promenade In Penetrating The Horizons.’ 6. op. cit., p.99, El-Hajiri says: ‘Each one of the Christian Sultans trembles of fear from the Islamic Sultans and Religion...and they are the dignified virtuous Turkish Ottoman Sultans.’ 7. op. cit., p.118. 8. op. cit., p.48. 9. op. cit., p.86. 10. op. cit., p.86. 11. op. cit., p.105. 12. op. cit., p.106. 13. op. cit., p.52. 14. op. cit., pp.69–70. 15. Meknes, Elixir For The Captive To Be Set Free. 16. op. cit., pp.10–13. 17. op. cit., pp.52–3. 18. op. cit., p.53. 19. op. cit., p.70. 20. op. cit., p.71. 21. op. cit., p.67. 22. op. cit., p.39. 23. op. cit., p.110. 24. op. cit., pp.60–1. 25. op. cit., p.23. 26. op. cit., pp.41–2. 27. Mohammad Bin Abdullah Al-Safar, A Journey To France (a manuscript of the royal treasury, number 113). The journey took place in 1845 after the famous Battle of Asley. 28. We mention here as an example Mohammad Bin Jaafar Al-Katani, the writer of The Advice of Islam People, who immigrated from Morocco before its colonization. 29. Fez, A Journey To England, p.36.

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30. op. cit., p.28. 31. op. cit., p.19. 32. El-Ghassal, A Journey To England. 33. op.cit. 34. Abul Salam Heimer, ‘Morocco and Modernity,’ Researches (Rabat), version 26 (Spring 1991), pp.47–8. 35. Jean Louis Miège, ‘Le Maroc et l’Europe (1810–1814),’ P.H.E. 36. Fez Scientists’ Advisory Opinion was translated into French in the Moroccan Archives (1905), pp.141–4.

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CHAPTER 9

Tunisia and the World: Attitude of the Young Tunisian to Other Countries Michael Suleiman

This study is an effort to discover the perspective of young Tunisians about themselves and the difference existing between them and other people. For the people, anyway, can consider themselves – as they frequently do – as individuals belonging to a more numerous group with ethnic, racial, nationalistic and linguistic ties, rendering it distinct and different from many other groups. We focus here on carefully describing the way the Tunisian people view other populations and countries and on discovering, at the same time, their point of view about themselves through others. This study is principally based on information and data collected from two examination field researches. The first was conducted in 1988 and included sending a structured questionnaire to a sample of students with proportional representation from 16 Tunisian elementary, secondary and training schools. The information was given by students in Grades 4 to 9 (third secondary) in Arabic language. Among several different questions, the research basically focuses on the answers of 1,618 Tunisian students – constituting the country’s pioneers in the future – on a question elaborated from 1–10 on a Likert scale about their personal tendencies regarding 22 different countries. As for the second examination research, it is not subject to a specific structural system. It includes a number of profound interviews with Tunisian governmental personnel working at the Ministry of Education and with several teachers and students during the summer of 1994. The Arab-Islamic civilization, which was prevalent in Tunisia since the establishment of the Islamic empire in the 8th century, started to experience clear and tangible changes especially after the invasion and colonization of the country by France in 1881. The sector of education and schools became a field of conflict between those calling for the adoption and imposition of the French civilization (Western) on one hand, and those defending the traditional Islamic civilization on the other hand.1 Since the 1870s, the great reformists in Tunisia have struggled, in this field, in order

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to reach a perfect equation, which conserves the Arab-Islamic heritage and at the same time adopts from the West – from France and from Europe in general – what it chooses from the products of the contemporary technology.2 This civilizational confrontation with Europe and the West still motivates the enthusiasm of the Tunisian people and provides them with energy.3 This study examines the contemporary orientations of youths in Tunisia as reflected by their regard or disregard of other countries. We notice in Table 9.1 a list of different countries included on the basis of the positive attitudes towards them according to the point of view of the young Tunisians (i.e. those countries having maximum number of points in the column (7–10) of the scale). It is clear in this sense that the Arab countries are on the top of the mentioned list. Moreover, there is a definite difference in ranks between the least popular Arab countries, such as Iraq, and the high-ranked non-Arab countries, such as Japan. In another sense, youths in Tunisia4 are similar to their Arab fellows and prefer them to others. Pakistan, although an Islamic country, doesn’t occupy a high rank as young Tunisians prefer to her other countries to be Western or nonWestern. It is obvious in other parts of the study that young Tunisians do not consider Islam as one of the main characteristics of Pakistan. While they are strongly homogeneous with Islam and any Islamic country, it doesn’t seem that they aren’t with Pakistan as such. Perhaps the ranking is due to insufficient information about Pakistan or due to the fact that its strange civilizational characteristic (non-Arab) is dominant in their minds. Out of the listed countries the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is their favourite country.5 This is probably due to the fact that the Arabian peninsula constitutes the land of Islam where the two cities of Mecca and Medina, which are visited by Muslims to fulfil the hajj obligation, are located. As for Palestine, it is closest to the hearts of the young Tunisians after Saudi Arabia, most likely for political and religious reasons. With respect to the religious aspect, the third sanctuary is located at Jerusalem (the cupola and the Al-Aqsa mosque). As for the political aspect, the Palestinians have been struggling for a century to obtain their rights and preserve the land of their ancestors while confronting the Israeli/Zionist violations and aggression. In addition to this, Tunisia hosted the PLO after its expulsion from Lebanon in 1982. The Palestinian presence in Tunisia induced feelings of compassion and support towards the Palestinians and perhaps this explains why Israel occupied the bottom of the list with an average of 7.1 per cent, the fact that rendered the percentage of support to Israel much lower than that of the next least popular country, the USSR (21.7 per cent).6

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Table 9.1 Attitudes of young Tunisians towards other countries

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Country

7–10 %

4–6 %

0–3 %

No answer %

Saudi Arabia Palestine Morocco Egypt Algeria Syria Libya Iraq Japan France South Africa Switzerland China USA India Spain Pakistan Brazil Greece Canada USSR Israel

69.3 62.0 60.8 58.6 58.3 47.9 46.7 45.7 38.1 30.6 29.2 28.8 28.4 28.1 27.8 25.9 25.4 24.5 23.9 23.7 21.7 7.1

14.2 15.5 20.3 23.9 23.2 25.6 27.7 27.7 29.6 33.7 33.2 34.5 35.4 23.8 33.5 38.0 35.9 34.5 38.3 37.0 31.2 9.4

6.5 12.9 8.4 8.1 9.6 14.9 16.3 15.6 19.5 26.6 24.9 24.6 25.8 38.3 27.1 23.4 25.3 29.1 25.1 26.3 35.4 72.6

10.0 9.6 10.5 9.4 8.9 11.6 9.3 11.1 12.8 9.0 12.7 12.1 10.4 9.9 11.6 12.7 13.4 11.9 12.7 13.0 11.8 10.9

Among the Arab countries situated in northern Africa, Morocco was the favourite, followed by Egypt, Algeria and Libya. While taking into consideration the location of Morocco in northern Africa and in the light of the different efforts made to reach a kind of union in that region,7 it is important to indicate that young Tunisians looked positively at their Maghreb neighbours. After the Arab countries, Japan clearly appears as the most preferred one among the foreign countries. For young Tunisians consider it as an ideal non-Western model of rapid progress,8 which is the model they desire for their country. The two other non-Western models, which are less successful in this field, are China and India. South Africa occupies a relatively high rank according to them, probably because of the national struggle led by Nelson Mandela although he was locked up by apartheid regime. Table 9.1 also indicates that France is no longer occupying a special rank in the hearts and minds of Tunisians.9 Table 9.2 exposes two additional ways of considering these data. The first way is classifying the accurately determined results about the

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Table 9.2 Average and extreme limits of youth answers about their attitudes towards other countries %(0–10) & max. limits (9–10) (0–1) (9–10)

Regard/disregard average according to the scale (0–10) Saudi Arabia Palestine Morocco Egypt Algeria Syria Libya Iraq Japan Switzerland South Africa France Spain China India Pakistan Greece Canada Brazil USA USSR Israel

7.96 7.39 7.26 7.16 7.11 6.38 6.25 6.19 5.76 5.26 5.09 5.08 5.07 5.03 4.97 4.93 4.88 4.87 4.68 4.47 4.35 1.44

1436 1443 1430 1448 1454 1410 1450 1423 1396 1405 1392 1455 1398 1437 1411 1385 1396 1390 1411 1442 1412 1426

69 150 81 74 86 140 162 154 194 210 266 282 208 262 268 262 236 239 282 467 370 1085

4.8 10.8 5.7 5.1 5.9 9.9 11.2 10.8 13.9 14.9 19.1 19.4 14.9 18.2 19.0 18.9 16.9 17.2 20.0 32.4 26.2 76.1

817 801 576 539 575 393 395 342 308 265 251 245 200 217 221 201 157 186 165 282 184 65

56.9 55.5 40.3 37.2 39.5 27.9 37.2 24.0 19.0 18.9 18.0 16.8 14.3 15.1 15.7 14.5 11.2 13.4 11.7 19.6 13.0 4.6

approval/disapproval of youth regarding a certain country according to the grades of minimum and extreme responses (9–10) and (0–10) in the scale. Here we notice four categories of countries and the attitudes of young Tunisians towards them. While the Arab countries are still the most popular, we can clearly observe that Saudi Arabia and Palestine, being the favourite countries, together constitute an alliance which distinguishes them from the next most popular country, Morocco, with a 15-point difference. Moreover, the group including Morocco, Egypt and Algeria – which is the second favourite group among the Arab countries – is clearly superior to the third group, which embraces Syria, Libya and Iraq. As for non-Arab countries, they come after all the Arab countries with different degrees, while Israel alone makes up the least popular group. However, the second method is the examination of the differences between high (10.9) and low (1.0) classification. Once again this clarifies that young Tunisians prefer Arab countries to others and especially Saudi

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Arabia, where their attitudes towards it are the most positive (52.1 per cent), and Palestine (44.7 per cent). Among the non-Arab countries, only Japan and Switzerland have two more positive averages, 5.1 per cent and 4.0 per cent respectively. Among the countries with the most negative averages, once again Israel alone is considered as the most hated country (71.5 per cent) followed with a big difference by the USSR and the USA as a second negative choice, with 13.2 per cent and 12.8 per cent respectively. If we consider the total averages of points for every country – as shown on the opposite side of Table 9.2 – and if we suppose that every average below 5 is a negative response, we can realize that the averages of eight countries are below the required average. These countries are: USA, the USSR, India, Pakistan, Greece, Canada, Brazil and Israel, where once again it is clear that the latter is evidently the most hated country.

Influencing factors in the responses There are many factors that have had significant influence on the attitudes of young Tunisians towards other countries: age, educational level, socio-economic background of the parents gender and amongst others. Many factors will be tackled in this study starting with the educational level. Table 9.3 shows the classification of countries – as seen by the student of the stage under study – where this order is organized, starting with the most positively ranked countries and ending with the least positively ranked countries according to Grade 9 (third secondary). On this basis, there exists many remarks on top of which the fact that Grade 7 – which is the beginning of the intermediate/secondary stage – constitutes an essential change in attitudes towards some countries, where the positive interests in Palestine and Algeria increased. The positive attitudes towards these two countries continues until Grade 9. In fact, the popularity of Palestine is superior to the popularity of Saudi Arabia among the students of the last year of the secondary stage. On the contrary, the positive interest of students in Morocco, Egypt and Libya shows a decrease starting from Grade 7. The attitude towards Iraq and Syria seems confused and not subjected to a steady course. As for the non-Arab countries, China is somehow favoured by the students of the first year of the secondary stage. The USA and the USSR, in particular, are low-ranked by the students of this stage compared with other countries. However, the attitude towards Israel, which is an attitude of rejection and hatred, remains a firm attitude in all stages of education.

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Table 9.3 Young Tunisians’ classification of countries according to their positive ranks (7–10) in different classes Country

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Palestine Saudi Arabia Algeria Morocco Egypt Syria Iraq Libya Japan China Switzerland South Africa Pakistan India Spain France USA Canada Brazil Greece USSR Israel

6 1 9 2 3 4 10 5 12 21 13 19 17 18 8 7 13 16 10 20 15 22

5 1 6 2 3 7 9 4 8 21 11 20 17 14 15 10 12 18 13 16 19 22

4 1 5 3 2 7 8 6 9 16 19 13 20 11 18 12 10 14 17 21 15 22

2 1 3 4 5 6 7 7 9 11 15 10 19 15 18 13 12 17 20 13 21 22

2 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 11 13 12 15 14 18 10 15 20 19 27 21 22

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Although the study is not a longitudinal one, the attitude of hatred towards Israel seems nearly constant. It is also evident that the Arab countries – despite the little differences between them – are favoured by the young Tunisians in all stages. In another sense, the positive social adaptation to the Arab countries, as well as the negative social adaptation to Israel, are two fixed aspects from the pre-school stages. There is no doubt that mass media such as television, cinema, radio and the press as well as the family environment contributes in the development of these attitudes. The mass media also help – in addition to the school – in differentiating between the attitudes towards Arab countries. It is noticeable for example that students of lower grades consider Morocco and Egypt as the favourite Arab countries. This might be partially due to the stability of the political situation in both of them on one hand, or perhaps due to their good relations with Tunisia on the other hand. As for Palestine and Algeria, we should deploy a definite educational effort to explain the dimensions of the national conflict existing

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in both countries, a conflict which is difficult for the students in this stage to understand and assimilate especially because it is not sufficiently introduced in the conversations of the family. It also seems that the same process is required in the political adaptation of students with respect to their attitude towards the USA and the USSR – the two great powers – which are less favoured by the students of high stages because it is enough that they appear in the news either in conflicting positions or in fields where they practise negative influence on other countries. The USSR is less favoured than the USA. On the other hand, young Tunisians in higher grades have the tendency to take a friendly attitude towards China and Japan, the two countries that could be considered as the two great powers of the non-Western world and which deserve to be followed and imitated. As for France’s position, Table 9.2 clarifies that the attitude towards this colonial country becomes less positive than other countries as the student grows up and studies the history of his country and as the strong feeling of identity grows in him, despite the tied relations existing today between Tunisia and France with the exception of the temporary improvement of France’s position in the milieu of the students of Grade 8. The school level – whether elementary, intermediate or secondary – has an important role in influencing the attitudes of the young Tunisians towards other countries, so among the listed countries we see that some have become less popular than before, while a few others have become more popular and others have regained their past positions. Among the countries whose popularity has increased in the secondary stage: Algeria, Palestine, Iraq, China, South Africa, Greece and Pakistan. It is noticeable that all these are, primarily, countries of the Third World. As shown in Table 9.4, the popularity of many countries undergoes reverse fluctuation with the transition of students from elementary stages to academy or high schools. Among these countries: Egypt, Morocco, Spain, Canada, France, USSR, USA and Brazil. What takes place in this stage is the reclassification of countries by youth in the light of the information they had added to their knowledge, while they became more conscious and committed on the political level. The three countries that do not witness any change in position with respect to the students moving from the elementary stage to the secondary stage are Saudi Arabia, Japan and Israel. In another sense, the perception of these countries and the attitudes towards them – the positive attitudes in the case of Saudi Arabia and Japan and the negative attitudes in the case of Israel – are two criteria that were taught early and integrated in the ego of the students, and which remained constant without any change during all school stages.

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Table 9.4 The positive classification of countries (7–10) according to the educational level Country

Elementary stage

Intermediate academies

China France USSR Algeria Iraq Palestine Japan USA Brazil Libya Egypt South Africa Greece Israel Switzerland Morocco Saudi Arabia Pakistan Spain Canada India Syria

21 10 17 6 8 4 9 11 12 5 3 18 20 22 13 2 1 19 14 16 15 7

11 14 21 3 6 2 9 19 20 8 5 10 16 22 15 4 1 13 17 18 12 7

Secondary stage 10 13 21 3 7 2 9 14 19 8 5 11 18 22 12 4 1 17 16 20 15 6

It is also worth noting that the attitude of the students of secondary stages towards the USA and Switzerland is often more positive than that of the students of intermediate academies, and they are more likely to be classified in ranks higher than other countries. One of the possible explanations for this fact would be that the secondary students often enter universities and continue their higher education, thus they consider the academic opportunities available in both countries in principle. While the academy students have similar ambitions, they recognize that their goals are unachievable, thus they become their source of frustration so they consequently classify these two countries approximately in the lowest ranks. If we consider the data on the basis of the students’ age (9–11, 12–13, 14 and up) we find that as the student’s age increases his positive attitudes towards China, Japan and all Arab countries increase too. On the other hand, as the student’s age increases his attitudes become less positive towards the USA, Israel, Spain, Canada, and to a certain degree the USSR. Attitude towards France and Switzerland does not seem to differ much

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until the age of about 17. In another sense, as the student’s age increases, their orientation becomes more Arab centred, for the Western countries start to lose their charm or it becomes less important in political relations with the Arab world. However, France, as an ex-colonial power, has a special charm that doesn’t fade rapidly. Only the attitudes towards Switzerland as a neutral Western country are not affected by the age factor. On the other hand, Israel seems, more clearly, the ‘enemy of the Arab’ with respect to older Tunisian students.

Factors of socio-economic background This section includes a review about the impact of the different socioeconomic background factors on the attitudes of young Tunisians. These diverse factors under study are considered simply different ways to measure the level of social status of the students’ families. Table 9.5 exposes a list of the countries that are characterized by significant relations between the attitudes of young Tunisians regarding those countries and the educational level of their parents. It is also of interest that as the educational level of the parents rises, the attitudes of youth towards several Western countries become more positive. These countries include France, USA, Spain and Canada. As for Brazil and Switzerland, Table 9.5 The educational level of the father: the most positive answers (7–10) Country

Uneducated Elementary Secondary University Significant Coefficient stage stage stage indicator of connection

France USA Spain Canada Libya

70 67 51 52 161

26.3 25.6 20.3 21.0 59.9

90 73 75 57 150

30.4. 116 38.8 161 39.8 0.001 24.6. 104 34.9 149 37.2 0.002 26.2 94 32.3 149 37.6 0.000 20.1 80 27.6 139 35.3 0.000 50.2 158 53.6 185 45.8 0.001

0.130 0.129 0.144 0.147 0.132

The educational level of the mother: the most positive answers (7–10) France 108 USA 114 Spain 95 Canada 87 Brazil 100 Switzerland 129 Libya 259 Algeria 328 Palestine 342

24.6 25.7 22.4 20.8 23.1 30.0 57.7 73.4 77.0

102 86 71 69 66 83 141 190 189

36.0 30.7 25.9 25.3 24.1 30.0 50.2 67.4 67.5

130 103 111 93 85 105 162 207 220

41.0 32.8 38.2 30.0 27.5 34.4 51.6 65.5 70.1

100 96 95 85 87 97 103 125 148

42.6 41.2 41.9 37.1 37.7 41.8 44.2 53.4 63.8

0.000 0.004 0.000 0.001 0.000 0.002 0.003 0.000 0.006

0.178 0.122 0.170 0.138 0.157 0.128 0.123 0.153 0.119

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there exists a significant relation between the educational level of the mother – and not the father – and the positive orientation of the students towards them. The high educational level of the parents is often a positive indicator for two things: first, the availability of information about the West in general and about these countries in particular; second, the parents’ attitude towards these countries are also transmitted to the children. There is an opposite attitude to what was mentioned about several Arab countries, specifically suggesting that as the educational level of the parents rises the student’s attitude becomes less positive towards these countries. This is for example true with respect to Algeria and Palestine when the educational level of the mother is much higher than that of the father. This implies that Tunisians with high educational levels are worried about what they consider as fluctuating policies of extremely radical national regimes in such Arab entities. It is possible in general to obtain similar results if we take into consideration the jobs of the students’ parents covered by this study. In another sense, the high functional level is linked to high educational achievements. There is another way to analyse the data by looking at the relation between the social status of the school and the students’ orientation to different countries. Here we also find similar results that once again point to the strong link between parents with high incomes and a high educational level on one hand, and the social level of their children’s school on the other hand, a fact that leads to similar trends.

The impact of students’ genders on the attitude towards other countries The students’ genders play an important role in determining their attitudes towards other countries. Table 9.6 indicates that girls often prefer Western countries. More specifically, the number of girls who express positive attitudes towards France, Greece, Switzerland, Spain and Canada exceeds that of the boys. It seems that the charm and the extraordinary natural beauty of these countries often attract Tunisian girls, and perhaps they link these countries and democracy on one hand and the equality between the two genders on the other hand. As for Israel, the Tunisian girls’ orientation towards it is less negative than that of the boys, but it remains a definite negative orientation. Compared with the boys, the girls are more positive towards India while the boys prefer Pakistan. Finally, the girls’ preference for Syria over other Arab countries is really astonishing, a preference which is not shared by the boys.

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Table 9.6 The students’ gender and the attitudes of the young Tunisians towards other countries: the most positive answers (7–10) Country

Males

China France USSR Algeria Iraq Palestine Japan USA Brazil Libya South Africa Egypt Greece Israel Switzerland Morocco Saudi Arabia Pakistan Spain Canada India Syria

253 230 189 531 418 554 339 240 211 433 244 479 180 49 218 537 609 251 195 177 205 372

33.2 30.0 24.9 68.5 55.4 72.4 45.9 31.3 28.0 59.2 32.9 62.5 24.4 6.5 29.1 70.7 79.9 34.0 26.3 24.0 27.6 50.0

Females

Significant indicator

Coefficient of connection

197 256 151 392 307 428 266 203 172 304 216 449 192 60 239 424 490 149 215 196 233 385

Not Significant 0.003 Not Significant 0.001 0.000 0.012 Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant 0.000 Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant 0.000 0.000 Not Significant Not Significant 0.000 0.008 0.009 0.004 0.001

Not Significant 0.089 Not Significant 0.099 0.112 0.78 Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant 0.119 Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant 0.120 0.107 Not Significant Not Significant 0.112 0.083 0.082 0.089 0.102

30.1 38.4 23.9 59.6 47.2 65.1 41.8 31.2 27.1 46.0 34.2 67.7 30.1 9.3 37.6 56.2 74.7 23.8 33.7 31.0 35.9 59.4

Tunisian boys are more positive than girls in their attitudes towards Algeria, Iraq, Palestine, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the Muslim non-Arab country previously mentioned. The same tendency also exists with respect to Morocco and Egypt, but it doesn’t constitute any significant relation statistically. The main factors behind this are due to the considerable politicization of Tunisian boys in nationalistic and Islamic movements. It is also worth mentioning the absence of any significant difference between the orientations of boys and girls regarding the great powers and Japan. In another sense, the issues related to these countries are clear for the boys and girls alike and in the same direction. When we examine the data according to the students’ age we do not find significant difference between the attitude of the boys and girls towards the USA, the USSR, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, Greece, Palestine, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The younger girls (between nine and 13 years) are more positive towards Switzerland and Syria and less negative towards Israel. The older girls (14

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years and up) have a friendlier attitude towards France, Spain and Canada. However, the younger boys (between nine and 11 years) prefer China and Pakistan, whereas older male students (14 years and up) prefer Algeria, Iraq, Egypt, Morocco and Pakistan. If we look carefully at the educational stages, we find in the table a clearer model, for the elementary male students prefer China, Japan, Brazil and Libya, while the elementary female students prefer Switzerland and are less negative towards Israel. In the secondary stage, we find that the female students are more positive towards France, USA, Greece, Switzerland, Spain, Canada, India and Syria, where the majority are European countries. On the other hand, the secondary male students prefer Algeria, Iraq, Palestine, Libya and Pakistan, where all of them are either Arab or Islamic countries.

Table 9.7 The relation between the students’ genders and their attitudes towards other countries according to the socio-economic status of schools Country China France USSR Algeria Iraq Palestine Japan USA Brazil Libya Egypt South Africa Greece Israel Switzerland Morocco Saudi Arabia Pakistan Spain Canada India Syria

High–middle/high (s)1

0.020 Not Significant Not Significant 0.002 (s) 0.000 0.022 (s) Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant 0.010 (s) Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant 0.0293 0.005 0.050 (s) Not Significant 0.002 (s) Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant 0.030

Middle/low Significant2

Not Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant 0.014 (s) Not Significant Not Significant 0.041 (s) Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant 0.001 Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant 0.012 (s) Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant

Low Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant 0.003 (s) Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant Not Significant 0.033 (s) Not Significant Not Significant 0.000 Not Significant

Notes: 1. Significant indicator at a 0.05 level, the males more positive than females. 2. Not significant. 3. Significant at a 0.05 level, females more positive than males.

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Table 9.7 clarifies the relationship between the gender of the students and their attitudes towards other countries, while taking into consideration the socio-economic status of the school. It is clear in this table that students entering a school with low socio-economic status express similar attitudes regardless of their gender. We exclude Libya, Pakistan (where the males’ orientation towards it are more positive than that of females) and India, to which females are more positive than males. We find clear differences in the orientation of students entering schools with high and middle/high socio-economic status. For example, males express more affection for China, Algeria, Iraq, Palestine, Libya, Morocco and Pakistan, while females prefer Switzerland and Syria and their attitude towards Israel is less negative. However, males and females alike have the same favourable or unfavourable attitude towards France, the USSR, Japan, Brazil, Egypt, South Africa, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Canada.

Summary and conclusions This study is principally based on profound research with a suitable representation of elementary, intermediate and secondary schools carried out in Tunisia in the year 1988. This research was followed up with more research in the year 1994. In 1988, we addressed a question divided according to the Likert scale in order to determine the attitudes of the young Tunisians towards 22 other countries. As it was expected, the seven Arab countries included in the list got the highest positive ranks. In this group, Saudi Arabia was the most popular country according to the students in the majority of their educational stages and socio-economic status. Palestine, which was ranked sixth by the students of Grade 4, occupied the second rank according to the students of Grade 7, and was ranked first, as the most popular country, by the students of Grade 9 (third secondary). The most positive attitude was towards Palestinians by the older and more mature and cultured male students, especially those attending schools with middle/high socio-economic status. As for the Moroccans and Egyptians, it seems that they are more popular in the milieu of younger elementary students. The share of Moroccans is better in the milieu of males, especially those attending schools with high socio-economic status. However, Algerians are – like Palestinians – more popular in the milieu of the older and more cultured male students, especially those attending schools with high socio-economic status. The students of Grade 4 classify Syria and Libya in a rank higher than that given by students of high classes. The young male students, especially

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those attending high-ranking schools, as well as the students belonging to families with low educational level – males and females – look positively at Libya, while we see that young female students have a more positive attitude towards Syria, especially those attending schools with high socioeconomic levels. While young Tunisians look at Iraq in a positive manner which distinguishes their attitude towards other Arab countries, Iraq obtains the lowest positive average as an Arab country with the presence of little differences among students from Grades 4 to 9, but it takes a more positive classification in the milieu of males, especially those attending schools with high social levels. Among the non-Arab countries, Japan occupies without dispute the rank of the most popular foreign country. This positive idea about Japan starts in Grade 4, improves in Grade 5 and settles down as such during the following stages. What is astonishing is that all demographic sectors in Tunisia share the same positive attitude towards this country. There is no doubt that Japan constitutes for young Tunisians the model country, which they desire to be a model for their country. As for China, it achieved high ranks among all countries where it had occupied the 10th position in the milieu of Grade 9 students after being ranked 21st by Grade 5 students. This positive orientation towards China also includes all stages and students, although males in high-ranking schools are more positive towards it than are female students of the same school level. In general, the positive attitude towards South Africa constitutes an expression of sympathy and support to the African movement in their national struggle, and the positive classification of this country started to improve as from Grade 6, thus it seemed much better in the secondary stage. This positive attitude exists in the milieu of all students covered by the study. As for Pakistan, although an Islamic country, it occupies a rank lower than that of India. However, while these two countries are starting to reach high ranks, we find that Pakistan comes directly before India – where they occupy the 13th and 14th ranks consecutively – in the milieu of Grade 9 students who become in this stage more cognitive and conscious on the political level. Anyway, we notice that Tunisian girls, especially those attending schools with high social levels, are more positive than boys in their attitudes towards India. Male students with their schools’ different social levels often prefer Pakistan than girls do. With respect to the great powers, young Tunisians do not positively estimate any of them and in fact their classification level decreases in higher

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grades. However, the situation of the USSR (rank 21 out of 22) in this regard is worse than that of the USA (rank 14). This low level of support for the USSR exists in all sectors of this model representing the population in Tunisia. The best classification of the USA is found in the elementary stage (rank 11), while we find its worst classification among students of intermediate academies (rank 19). The number of male students who look positively at the USA in schools with middle/low social levels exceeds the number of females. The USA gains more support from families where the mother alone – or the two parents – have a high level of education. France, the ex-tyrant colonial, no longer occupies a special and distinguished rank with respect to the Tunisians. In fact, it differs only slightly from other foreign countries such as Switzerland, USA, Spain, Greece, Canada, or even Brazil. While the attitude towards France remains more positive in lower grades, its classification fluctuates in higher grades until it settles down at rank 16 as classified by Grade 9 students. France, like other foreign countries, gains more positive classifications as the educational level of the students’ parents rises. Finally, Israel is the country with the most negative attitudes in the list. While we notice that young students, especially females, are less negative towards Israel, the dominant orientation towards it is very negative, thus dropping it down to the bottom of the list of countries under study with total points less than that of the USSR occupying the rank 21, i.e. directly before it. From these data we can deduce many conclusions. First of all, young Tunisians of both sexes, regardless of their social and educational level, feel extreme sympathy with their Arab fellows and the tied relation with them, and they are, at the same time, very far from Israel and dislike it for being an entity representing precisely ‘the opposite other’. In general, there exists between these two attitudes three categories of countries. In the first, we find that Pakistan is the only Muslim non-Arab country in the list, in addition to the Arab countries where Islam is a dominant characteristic too and considered by the students principally as Muslim countries. Perhaps this attitude towards Pakistan is a good example of clarifing the attitudes of young Tunisians towards Islamic non-Arab countries in general. As we mentioned ‘Islam’ and ‘Muslims’ the majority’s responses were positive, but they became more positive whenever we mentioned the word ‘Arab’ or the like. When the countries were enumerated, young Tunisians felt perfect resemblance to Arab countries only. In another sense, although Pakistan is a Muslim country, the Islamic characteristic isn’t the first aspect which comes to their minds when Pakistan is mentioned. These young Tunisians are extremely definite in their belief in

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Islam and in their tendency for Muslims in general. However, their tied relations exist between them and the Arab countries which are similar to their country Tunisia for having Arabic language, civilization and history, besides being Muslim. As for the second category, it includes the countries with positive classification for different reasons. Japan and China constitute for Tunisians two positive models suitable to be followed and they are not at the same time threatening sources. Also France was – and still is – considered the model, but it is a dangerous model for two reasons: its ex-colonial status, and the fact of being an attractive model for many people but also a source of fear. As for South Africa, they feel friendly towards it and its struggle for national independence. They consider Spain and Switzerland as two beautiful and attractive foreign countries that do not threaten the security of their country. As for the countries of the third category, they are negatively considered for one reason or another. The USA and the USSR, in particular, represent the opposite ‘other’ because of their power in influencing Tunisia’s destiny on the political, economic and cultural level. Finally, India, Pakistan, Greece, Canada and Brazil do not necessarily represent the ‘other’; they are most likely countries and populations that do not constitute a real or important place in the special world of the young Tunisians. There were many modifications introduced to the Tunisian curriculum in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In many interviews with teachers and official personnel conducted in the summer of 1994, everybody affirmed that the idea of accepting the different others and their different perspectives was the most important axis of these modifications. And perhaps the most urgent factor in this field is the fact that this acceptance should be based on more information about different populations, in order to render the youth in Tunisia less exposed to the negative influence of the prefabricated and shaped ideas about others. It is useful in this field to also make efforts so as to cause adaptations, thus inducing youth to value the differences about main issues. On the basis of the above-mentioned data, we can deduce that the youth category in Tunisia seems to have a fixed attitude and to be very confident in the nationalistic and religious groups to which it belongs. It can clearly distinguish between its ‘entity’ and the different ‘other’, but it considers the Israelis only as its ‘enemy’. There is no doubt that any enlightenment campaign, which is organized and has much precise information about other populations, could decrease the negative classifications in the attitudes of this category towards foreign countries. This would not necessarily undermine the positive attitude of young Tunisians towards Arab and

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Islamic countries to which they feel strongly connected and with which they form ‘we’ against ‘others’ where those others are not necessarily hostile ... but simply different.

Notes 1. For a general outlook at the history, policies and culture of Tunisia, see: Clement Henry Moore, Tunisia since Independence: The Dynamics of One-Party Government (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1965); Norma Salem, Habib Bourguiba, Islam and the Creation of Tunisia (London: Croom Helm, 1984); Kenneth J. Perkins Tunisia: Crossroads of the Islamic and European Worlds, Profiles/Nations of the Contemporary Middle East (Boulder, CO: Westview Press; London: Croom Helm, 1986); Lisa Anderson, The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830–1980, Princeton Studies on the Near East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986); Julia A. Clancy-Smith, Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800–1904), Comparative Studies on Muslim Societies, 18 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994); and I. William Zartman, ed., Tunisia: The Political Economy of Reform (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1991). 2. For reformations of Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi, see: Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi, The Surest Path: The Political Treatise of a Nineteenth-Century Muslim Statesman, translated from the original Arabic with introduction and notes by Leon Carl Brown, Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs, 16 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967). 3. Elbaki Hermassi, Leadership and National Development in North Africa: A Comparative Study (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972); Derek Hopwook, Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia: The Tragedy of Longevity (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992); Abdelkader Zghal, ‘The Reactivation of Tradition in a PostTraditional Society,’ in Post-Traditional Society, edited by Shmuel Noel Eisenstadt (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), pp.225–7; John P. Entelis, ‘Ideological Change and an Emerging Counter-Culture in Tunisian Politics,’ Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 12, no. 4 (December 1974), pp.543–8; François Burgat and William Dowell, The Islamic Movement in North Africa, Middle East Monograph Series (Austin, TX: University of Texas at Austin, 1993); and Marit Tjomsland, Negotiating the ‘Inbetweeen’: Modernizing Practices and Identities in Post-Colonial Tunisia, Report/Chr. Michelsen Institute, Department of Social Science and Development; R 1992: 10 (Bergen, Norway: Chr. Michelsen Institute, 1992). 4. U.K. was listed at the beginning, later deleted from analysis because the word ‘England’ used in the survey was confusing to a large number of students. 5. Another question directed to young Tunisians: what country is preferred to you after Tunisia? Answers often pointed to Saudi Arabia (16.7 per cent) followed by Palestine (14 per cent). 6. In answers to another question: which country do you hate? The name of Israel was often mentioned (45.5 per cent). 7. See: Mary-Jane Deeb, ‘Inter-Maghribi Relations since 1969: A Study of the Modalities of Unions and Mergers,’ Middle East Journal, vol. 43, no. 1 (Winter 1986), pp.20–33; and I. William Zartman, ‘Foreign Relations of North Africa,’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, no. 48 (January 1987), pp.13–27. 8. For trends of development among youth in Tunisia, see: Michael W. Suleiman, ‘Formal Education and Development Orientation Among Tunisian Students,’ in Clement Henry Moore [et al.], eds., Maghreb et maîtrise Techonologique: Enjeux et

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perspectives (Tunis: Centre d’études de recherches et de publications; Centre d’études Maghrébines à Tunis, 1994), pp.425–71. See also: Richard Sack, ‘Education and Modernization in Tunisia: A Study on the Relationship between Education and Other Variables and Attitudinal Modernity,’ (Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University, 1972); and Mark A. Tessler and Linda L. Hawkins, ‘Acculturation, Socio-Economic Status, and Attitude Change in Tunisia: Implications for Modernization Theory,’ Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 17, no. 3 (September 1979), pp.473–95. 9. This opinion is further supported by the fact that France was not mentioned as the most preferred or the least preferred country in answers to other questions in the survey.

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CHAPTER 10

The Image of Arabs and Islam in French Textbooks Marilyn Nassr

Much time has been spent in finishing the research (1988–93) and work on the Arabic manuscript.1 An update was found useful, a decade after the composition of the sample (1986). A new sample2 of textbooks for the 1997–8 school year was put together in order to see if any significant changes had taken place in the representation of Arabs and Islam. Between the previous decade and the present one, the change of regime in France from the socialist left to the liberal right was followed by various partial modifications of school curriculums, which certainly led to the production of new textbooks. The change of textbooks is quite valid since most managers of textbook collections had been replaced in the four publishing houses, except for history and geography secondary school books, which are published by Hachette and were and still are managed by J.M. Lambin. To what extent did these changes as well as the interval of time modify the representation of Arabs and Islam? The answer to this question is the main objective of this chapter. Except for the rare cases mentioned in the new sample, which was published as an annex, only two new textbooks were published by Grade and by subject after the year 1986. The last one, published before 1998, was taken in. The new sample is more reduced than the previous one (40 textbooks) because we did not take in elementary books of history, geography and civics, the 9th and 11th Grades history and geography books and the 12th Grade geography books. Moreover, only the most important points resulting from the analysis of previous textbooks were subject to comparison. Due to lack of time, I did not compare between semiotic tools (maps, schemes, tables), even though they are much more advanced (half the space) in present history and geography textbooks due to the importance new methods of teaching these subjects give to semiotic tools.

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The reading subject in the elementary level (1997–8) The constitution of the reading corpus of the elementary in the previous period has shown that most useful theme texts were found in Grade 3 and 4 textbooks. Therefore, the sample of new textbooks for these two grades was entirely selected. Since I limited myself to three publishers instead of four, I had to make the inventory of the last two editions of each (a total of ten textbooks) to finally find six textbooks that include all in all ten Arabic theme texts. The present corpus is constituted of these ten Arabic theme texts while the previous corpus was constituted of 14. This means that the Arabic theme texts decreased by approximately 50 per cent because the present sample is much larger than the previous sample. One had to look through ten elementary reading textbooks to find ten Arabic theme texts, (a ratio of 1 : 1), while it was enough to look through seven elementary reading textbooks of the same publishers to find 14 Arabic theme texts. Corpus texts are listed by publisher and edition year: Ali Baba, Hachette, Grade 2 The Lotus and the Papyrus, Jiri Tomek, pp.22–3, Hachette, Grade 2, 1993 Amiram the Little Israeli, Francis Maziere, p.24, Hachette, Grade 2, 1993 Mémé in France, Gil Ben Aych, p.99, Nathan, Grade 3, 1990 The Goat of Lebanon, Andrée Chedid, pp.74–9, Nathan, Grade 3, 1996 Idriss and the Photo, Michel Tournier, pp.72–3, Magnard, Grade 3, 1990 Crossing the Sahara, J.C. Baudot and J. Seguela, pp.74–5, Magnard, Grade 3, 1990 In the Desert, Rescued!, Saint-Exupéry, pp.76–9, Magnard, Grade 3, 1990 Memories of a Child of the Desert, VSD, pp.80–90, Magnard, Grade 3, 1990 ‘Hilal and Taer al Layl’, in Contes sous la lune, Jacqueline Sauvard, pp.134–8, Magnard, Grade 3, 1997 The Cunning Jeha, Jean Coue, pp.139–42, Magnard, Grade 3, 1997

The study of the corpus reveals a change in the choice of the extracts, which has led to a significant change in the relation with time, with space and with the characters of these narratives. One notices first of all the absence of authors of the colonial period (except for Saint-Exupéry) and the absence of contemporary narratives that take place in the colonial past. The absence of this kind, which was dominant in the previous period textbooks, has led to the beneficial absence of Arab Bedouin characters, passive or rebellious, that were typical characters of this kind of literature. The introduction of two well-known French-speaking authors (Andrée

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Chedid and Gil Ben Aych) in the elementary grades is a blissful innovation since it gives the inside vision that these authors have of social groups, countries and individuals they include in their narratives (peasants of Lebanon and grandmothers of Algeria). On the other hand, even if the choice of contemporary French authors whose narratives take place in the desert or in the margins of a north African country is still wide in number, it is only included in one textbook (Magnard, Grade 3, 1990). Tales, which were absent in previous elementary textbooks, are included abundantly in new textbooks3, and are of Arabic, Persian and Pharaonic origin. They accentuate the exotic, mythic and beyond-time character of the Arabic Oriental image. In general, the change in the choice of kind of literature has led to a change in the time in which the narrative takes place. The tendency of the previous corpus to include narratives of the past due to the dominance of colonial literature has disappeared, and the present time is dominant in extracts from French literature and French-speaking literature which constitute half of the actual corpus. Recent narratives and tales of old times take place in Arab Muslim world (countries of Maghreb and the Middle East). Unity of place has been broken and the desert is no longer the chosen setting for narratives. Narratives and tales of Frenchspeaking authors included in present textbooks take place in populated places such as cities and towns and are often crowded with characters. In the currently applied corpus, only French authors continue to be fascinated by the desert, on the borders of an oasis (M. Tournier) or in the Algerian Sahara (Saint-Exupéry or Baudot and Seguela), or in a wadi in Ténéré (Memories of a Child in the Desert) or in a small Israeli town that extends to the desert. This habit of French authors confirms the previously mentioned tendency noticed in previous textbooks. To the relative diversity in the kinds of literature corresponds a diversity in characters: Algerian immigrants of urban origin, peasants from Lebanese mountains in French-speaking extracts, tale characters from common places, funny as Jeha, rich and colourful as the eternal Ali Baba, fantasy characters (Hilal and Taer El Layl) and tragic characters (Lotus and Papyrus). One notices that characters in Arab-Muslim literature or French-speaking literature are strongly individualized and identified by their name, place of residence, family environment and sometimes by their profession. Main characters of narratives or tale heroes are always presented in a positive image whether in speech or in action and whether in success or in failure. The configuration of characters is different in extracts from the works of French authors, yet it has also changed compared with the configuration of characters in previous textbooks. The negative plural of Bedouin

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Arabs, submissive or rebellious, has disappeared forever with the disappearance of colonial literature. It is replaced in most present extracts by a positive singular, such as the Bedouin Arab, the anonymous wise man in the works of Saint-Exupéry, the Tuareg nomad Mano Dayak, the tracker in Paris–Dakar or the Berber of the oasis, Edriss the shepherd, in the works of M. Tournier. The previous relation of submissiveness and confrontation has become a positive relation of mutual aid and gratitude, collaboration and admiration and show of friendship. The change is important but is limited to these modifications, for one cannot but notice that in all three cases the Arab and the Berber described by French authors belongs in his own country as well as in previous textbooks to a marginal and poor social group. To this marginality in social status corresponds marginality in role. Even though Mano Dayak is the main character in the narrative entitled Memories of a Child of the Desert, he does not say a word. It is the author who describes the exotic nature of his country and the lifestyle of his tribe. He would have served as a good pretext for a mediocre anthropology lesson! Speaking only to ask for his photo back, Edriss remains silent during the whole narrative and plays a minor role while the dialogue takes place between the tourist and his lady friend. Silence of the main character is also present in the works of Saint-Exupéry, for the wise Bedouin and his co-pilot who died of thirst in the desert have no words of their own. In exploration narratives (Saint-Exupéry), adventure narratives (Baudot and Seguela) and tourism narratives (M. Tournier), the main character is French. Often author and narrator, he himself recounts his adventure whose main aim is to conquer the desert. Battles and victories take place in foreign lands but without any human loss, for the lands are quite vast but quiet or almost empty. Present elementary textbooks like previous elementary textbooks avoid equally the risks of confrontation or contact in choosing extracts from the works of French authors whose narratives take place outside populated regions of the Arab world. The concentration of this kind of literature in textbooks published by the same house (Magnard, Grade 3, 1990) and the fact that it was not included in textbooks published by this same house (Magnard, Grade 3, 1997) shows a decrease in the interest of school-book authors in post-colonial French literature whose common theme, at least as reflected in textbooks, is the crossing of the desert. On what will school-book authors depend in their future selections? If one takes for indication the kind of Arabic theme literature selected in the later published editions, one deduces that the authors at Hachette (Grade 2, 1993) abstained and replaced the Arabic theme by a Pharaonic theme. As for the authors at Magnard (Grade 3,

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1997), they made a wiser choice and opted for Arabic tales, which are safe and conflict free. Nathan innovated and included French-speaking literature in elementary textbooks (Ben Aych in Grade 2, 1990; and Chedid in Grade 3, 1996), but only in small doses if one can say so. Nevertheless, elementary reading textbooks still lack greatly in immigrant literature (although it is a product of the French school) and translated contemporary Arabic literature. Will these two kinds of literature ever fill the currently empty place of Arabic-theme French literature or will French literature eventually leave the desert to explore more vivid fields?

Reading in the secondary level (1997–18) A study of the most recent secondary-level reading textbooks (1992–7) also show a decrease in Arabic theme texts. In a sample of 12 textbooks published by the same publishing houses of the previous sample (Hachette, Nathan, Magnard, Bordas), 18 texts constitute the Arabic theme corpus (or an average of three texts per two textbooks), while the previous Arabic theme corpus contained 30 texts in a sample of 16 textbooks (or an average of two texts per textbook). The relative decrease of the Arabic theme corpus in the most recent textbooks is not at all justified by the instructions issued by the Ministry of National Education for the teaching of French in secondary school. Titles of Arab Berber themes or Middle Eastern themes proposed in curriculums are neither less numerous nor less diversified than those proposed in curriculums of the previous decade. Restricting directives being absent, the interest of textbook authors fluctuates then according to circumstances. The present corpus is presented below. Extracts are classified according to a combination of criteria: the author’s origin, kind of literature, historical period and setting of the narrative. French-speaking authors: A. Maalouf, The Night When Grenada Was Taken, Nathan, Grade 9, 1993, p.189 (Middle Ages) A. Chedid, Music Theories for Eggs, Hachette, Grade 7, 1997, pp.114–21 (20th century) Translated Arab authors: I. Al Amraoui, untitled extract from The Paradise of Women and the Hell of Horses, Bordas, Grade 9, 1993, pp.46–7 (19th century)

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Tales: Sinbad, Hachette, Grade 6, 1996, pp.160–1 ‘A Mysterious Island’, in A Thousand and One Nights, Nathan, Grade 6, 1996, p.22 A Frightening Old Man, Nathan, Grade 7, 1997, pp.112–13 The Rich and the Poor (Nasreddin Hodga), Bordas, Grade 8, 1992, p.166 Contemporary French Authors: Th. Jonquet, The Witnesses of the Tragedy, Nathan, Grade 6, 1996, p.52 J.-M. Pelt, Against Paris–Dakar, Bordas, Grade 9, 1993, pp.325–7 Blake and Mortimer, Magnard, Grade 7, 1997, pp.150–3 Doc, Egypt of the Pharaohs, Hachette, Grade 6, 1996, p.130 Doc, Vacation Dreams n. 1: Cruises in Egypt, Hachette, Grade 6, 1996, p.131 Doc, The Egyptians (Guide Gallimard), Hachette, Grade 6, 1996, p.132 Corneille, Le Cid, Hachette, Grade 8, 1992, pp.276–7 (Middle Ages, Spain) Historical: Reverend D. Busnot, The Portrait of Moulay Ismail, King of Morocco, Nathan, Grade 9, 1993, pp.213–15 (19th century) V. Denon, Donkeys of Cairo, Bordas, Grade 8, 1992, p.60 (19th century) F. Chateaubriand, A Journey from Paris to Jerusalem (The Pyramids), Hachette, Grade 6, 1996, p.131 (19th century) Th. Gautier, The Novel of the Mommy, Hachette, Grade 6, 1996, pp.132–4 (19th century) If one omits tourism documents, considering their reduced number, one remarks that the ratio of the number of extracts of Arab and Frenchspeaking authors to the number of extracts of French authors has increased in the present corpus (a ratio of 7 : 8 versus a ratio of 10 : 20 in the previous corpus). This remark would have been of significance had the analysis of the present corpus revealed that the change of the kind of literature provided a different representation of characters, knowing that this difference in representation should have been achieved in the previous corpus. The decrease of the share of French-speaking literature (two extracts) to the advantage of the tale (four extracts) shows that the previous relation has been inverted and that fantasy is preferred to reality. The introduction of a 19th-century Arab author, I. Al-Amraoui, an oriental traveller to France, constitutes a major innovation. The selected extract

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talks about his discovery of a French railroad and his amazement by it, but it does not reveal the author’s opinion of the French society at the time. One must finally indicate the total disappearance of Moroccan authors. Most extracts from the works of French-speaking authors in the previous corpus were from the works of Moroccan authors. They were replaced in the present corpus by two Lebanese authors. These changes might be explained as an educational quest for diversity. Nevertheless, they contributed to the change of theme and the spatio-temporal setting of the present corpus of selected texts. One notices first of all the non-existence of social theme texts, those which talk about immigrant workers, social condition of women, life conditions in previously colonized countries and racism. Social theme texts constituted more than half the previous corpus. Present textbook authors replaced the Maghreb by the Middle East, thus getting as far as possible from the zone of conflicts and unsolved issues. They opted for exotic surroundings and leisure in a region whose conflicts do not directly concern France. Themes such as a trip to 19th-century France or a trip to Egypt (four texts) or visits to Pharaonic sites (three documents) or detective adventures (two texts and a comic) or fairy tales (three tales) occupy twothirds of the corpus, making of Egypt the new place of pilgrimage. A text of an ecologist author strongly condemning Paris–Dakar, ‘a blind path (parcours) in a place empty of people and vegetation’, was enough to abandon the desert theme. Present textbook authors are not drawn to overpopulated Egypt; they are fascinated by the empty Egypt of Pharaonic sites. Except for a touching text about The Donkeys of Egypt, in which the author mentions ‘those who lend them’ and the Sudanese servant of Andrée Chedid during his childhood in Egypt, none of the other texts about visited or described places in Egypt mention the Egyptians. Even though the desert theme was removed, the theme that has replaced it is even emptier. It is an attractive site for the oriental travellers of yesterday and the tourists of today. Moreover, France is no longer a battlefield due to the removal of the emigration theme; it has become a destination for a journey. This change is illustrated in the works of Al Amraoui and in detective adventures (The Witnesses of the Tragedy). In The Witnesses of the Tragedy, Ahmed, instead of being accused of robbery as was Ali his predecessor (M. Grimand, Nathan, Grade 7, 1982), becomes a decade later the primary witness of a robbery in a butchery (T. Jonquet, Nathan, Grade 6, 1996). If half the texts of the present corpus are empty or simply include walkons, the other half is constituted of narratives of French, French-speaking and Arab authors who use French, English, Castilian, Jewish, Arab,

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Morisco and Muslim characters. Does the representation of characters vary whether the author is French, French-speaking or Arab? In the previous textbooks, a relation of antagonism between the victorious and the vanquished, the master and the servant, the boss and the worker and the good and the bad prevailed between French and Arab characters in the writings of French authors. This antagonism continues in present textbooks but there are some exceptions. Antagonism has disappeared in the works of French authors. If they happen to include it, it is in order to denounce it. In the extract from the detective novel of T. Jonquet, Ahmed, an Arab or Berber immigrant worker, is not considered a suspect but is given the neutral and positive position of a witness, thus considered as an equal to the French character, Claude Lapoigne, of Clochard. J.-M. Pelt denounces ‘the exploitation of the miserable populations’ of the Sahara by the bikers of Paris–Dakar ‘an imposing Media coverage in which Africa rhymes with money’. Dichotomy continues in the written works of the last century or those holding reference to the Middle Ages or the colonial period. Characters are thus represented as the disadvantaged politically, militarily and morally, while their occidental counterparts are given the roles of the great and advantaged. Reverend Busnot gives Moulay Ismail, king of Morocco the correct image of a tyrant who tortures to death slaves, women and subjects. Le Cid and his Castilian army achieve victory over the Moriscos who, vanquished, have to surrender, yet they run away. Finding insufficient the victorious/vanquished, courageous/coward dichotomy illustrated in the verses of Corneille, reading comprehension questions gave them a barbarian/civilized anachronistic dichotomy in a question formulated as follows: ‘Select the terms and expressions that oppose the fine qualities of Rodrigue to the savagery of the Morisco soldiers?’ In doing so, they disfigure Corneille’s text, which gives to the Morisco kings as many fine qualities and bravery as he gives to Rodrigue and his fellow men and describes using the same terms the slaughter executed in the same ferocity by both armies. E. Jacob presented as a friend of Hergé adds to previous dichotomies, a dichotomy of honest/deceitful. One can easily guess that it is Mortimer, a European detective, who would suspect that the three employees wearing the tarbouche, Abdul, Ahmed and Razul (whose names and dark skin indicate their Arab identity), have stolen the plan of the grand pyramid. Even though the origin of French-speaking authors has been transferred from the Maghreb to the Middle East, French-speaking literature characters in present textbooks have the same characteristics as those in previous textbooks. The relation between Arab and non-Arab characters in French-

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speaking narratives is not an antagonism relation despite the difference in community, religion, society and ethnicity. The relation between them is that of solidarity. In the extract from A. Maalouf’s Leo the African, a Muslim woman and a Jewish woman help one another to escape from Granada that was besieged by the army of the reconquest. In the autobiographical extract from A. Chedid’s Mirrors, the Lebanese-Egyptian female narrator recounts her childhood in Cairo in the 1930s and her complicity with the Sudanese servant to help him realize his passion for playing the piano. By pure coincidence, the two episodes take place in the same country and in the same era as those of the French authors’ extracts, the sole difference being that the relations between the characters of the French authors were relations of conflict: Le Cid (Spain during the reconquest) and Blake and Mortimer (Cairo during the time of the British mandate before the 1950s). Yet to sum up in an optimistic perspective, one can notice that in the narratives of the most contemporary French authors (T. Jonquet and J.-M. Pelt) and of French-speaking authors, relations between Arabs and the French are not those of antagonism. Does this mean that the ‘young’ French literary authors of the post-colonial era have a calmer and less discriminatory vision of inter-ethnic relations than that of their predecessors of the colonial era? The limited size of the sample and the partial character of the extracts published in the textbooks are not sufficient to answer this question. Nevertheless, one can hope that the ‘young’ or new textbook authors are more judicious in their choice of literary works and in their selection of extracts.

The image of Islam in new secondary history textbooks (1997–8) A sample of six recent history textbooks (from 1995–7) published by the same publishing houses of previous textbooks (1978–85) was used for study. The textbooks were of Grade 7 and of Grade 10 (grades in which Islamic civilization is taught). Reading its titles and texts show that Islamic civilization, given the new title of Muslim world, is taught only in Grade 7 and is not continued in Grade 10 as it was previously. The 1995 school programmes taught the history of Islam in Grade 10 as part of the history of the 12th-century Mediterranean, the meeting point of three civilizations, teaching the relations between Islam, Byzantium and the occidental Latin world. Although the share of the Islamic civilization was reduced by a quarter, the newly introduced comparative perspective offers the advantage of not limiting the history of the relations between Islam and the Christian world to a series of confrontations during the Crusades and the

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Reconquest. In fact, it dedicates an equal share to the economic, cultural, scientific and technical exchanges that took place between the Islamic world in its golden age and the Christian world in its dark Middle Ages. Moreover, examples are given to make concrete the contact between the two civilizations in Muslim Spain, in Norman Sicily and in Venice, thus promoting the times of peace dimension of the history of the relations between the two worlds, a dimension that was not quite developed in previous textbooks. Authors of previous textbooks (1986) were divided in their conception of Islam and its civilization into two groups: one group perceived it from the inside while the other group perceived it from the outside. While they agreed upon a few points, they disagreed upon many others. This update will consist of pointing out the most important changes that have occurred in the conception of present authors of Islam (1997–8 textbooks). If one studies the nature of the historical documents selected as co-texts in present textbooks, one notices that all co-texts without exception are extracts from the Koran and from the works of ancient Arab authors such as Al Tabari, Ibn Jubayr, Ibn Sina, Al Mawardi and Al Idrissi. There are not any extracts from the works of Orientalists or contemporary Arabists. Even Nathan, which was distinguished in the previous decade by having an imposing number of specialists in Islam, quoted in the margin (Nathan, Grade 7, 1985; and Nathan, Grade 10, 1981), does not quote any. It seems that present authors have all opted without exception for an inside conception of Islam. This approach is a wise one since it minimizes the risk of a critical evaluation of an outside origin, yet it is also impoverishing since it deprives the students of direct access to the texts of current specialists in Islam. One also perceives a wide homogeneity in points of view concerning the theme of the text. Among the three aspects of Islamic religion and civilization upon which previous authors disagreed, only one still arouses controversy in present textbooks. It is the aspect related to the scientific and technical Islamic innovations. As a matter of fact, most authors are parsimonious and do not take interest in this aspect, giving it little space. Moreover, among them, there are those who give priority to the borrowing Muslim scientists did from the heritage of Greeks, Persians, Indians and Chinese and then its transmission to the Western world, and there are those who focus on the purely Islamic innovations and inventions, giving them great priority. Although the first group does not deny the scientific innovation of Arabs, it either reduces it to a punctual addition, such as limiting it to the invention of algebra (Nathan, Grade 7; Hachette, Grade 10), or appreciates it as a whole, such as describing it as a ‘great scientific

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advancement’ (Bordas, Grade 7 and Grade 10). The only textbook that does not give the impression of wanting to cover the subject in a hasty manner (Belin, Grade 7) gives examples to illustrate the variety of the purely Islamic scientific inventions and discoveries, as well as the knowledge acquired by establishing contact with neighbouring countries and the transmission of this knowledge to Europe. The two other aspects that were controversial in previous textbooks are no longer so in present textbooks. The issue of the Islamic community being or not being a productive one during the first six centuries is settled for good. It was partially settled by all textbooks acknowledging the importance of the craft production that grew with the urban growth taking place at that time, a growth which textbooks insist on illustrating in particular. The issue of the Islamic religion being or not being a tolerant one that caused controversy in previous textbooks does not seem to interest present authors. Two textbooks (Bordas, Grade 7; Belin, Grade 7) talk about the tolerance of the Islamic religion and of the Koran towards People of the Book (Koran); other textbooks (Nathan, Grade 7; Hachette, Grade 10) do not talk about this subject. The other non-controversial Islamic themes studied in previous textbooks are still approved by present authors (1995–7). Nevertheless, the evaluation of three themes changed from being disadvantageous to advantageous, and the evaluation of four themes remained the same. Instead of presenting the Islamic civilization as a monolithic civilization, many recent textbooks (Hachette, Grade 10; Bordas, Grade 10) insist upon illustrating its ethnic diversity (Iranians, Berbers, Pakistanis are Muslims but are not Arabs) and its religious diversity (Christians of the Middle East are Arabs but not Muslims). Yet this did not stop the authors of a Belin Grade 7 textbook from committing the same mistake again in stating that the Arabic language and the teaching of the Koran are what unites the Islamic civilization. Even though the Arabic language was and still is the language of prayer for Muslims, spoken languages during the age of Islam were as diverse as the peoples living back then and the Arabic language was not the only written language (Persian, Ottoman and Greek languages). The religious and profane Islamic art theme refocused on mosques. Abandoning the somehow fixed aestheticism of previous textbooks, present textbooks link the architecture and the interior design of mosques to their religious and educational function in the heart of Muslim civilization. In our opinion, the most positive modification concerns the slavery theme. An important adjustment took place in present textbooks representing the Islamic society as a society free of enslavement. Most authors do not treat this subject, proving that it is not characteristic of the Islamic

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civilization. Those who bring up the subject (Belin, Grade 7) say that Islam considers the emancipation of slaves as a good deed. Many themes, upon which authors of previous textbooks (1986) agreed, were not changed in present textbooks (1997). Islam is always defined as the religion of submission while the exact meaning of Islam in Arabic is the giving in of oneself to God. The root of Islam is Sallama, meaning to give and not to submit, and its other root is Salima, meaning being unharmed. Explanations about strategies (weakening large neighbouring empires) and about internal conflicts (a population overburdened by taxes and seduced to adopt the new faith) are pushed quickly forward without giving more details to make way for explanation about the expansion of Islam. As a matter of fact, covering this subject hastily no longer causes astonishment, and many authors do not even include it in textbooks (Bordas, Grade 7; Hachette, Grade 10). The theme of the political division of the Muslim Empire has not been changed and is quite developed in present textbooks. Nevertheless, the contradiction related to this theme that existed in previous textbooks exists in present textbooks. On the one hand, there is the assertion that the political division into various dynasties is due to the disagreement between Sunnis and Shi’ites upon the succession of the Prophet. On the other hand, there is the assertion that there is a religious and cultural unity as well as a similitude in lifestyle and social structure in the Muslim Empire (Bordas, Grade 7; Nathan, Grade 10). In my opinion, the notions of divisions and fragmentation are not appropriate to describe the formation of various dynasties since pluralism is expected to happen in such a wide transcontinental entity and during such a long period of time (nine centuries). The notion of religious unity is also inappropriate since people and residents in this entity are of the same religion. Moreover, these authors themselves are led to believe by this notion that there exists a unity in culture (Bordas, Grade 10) and in social structure (Nathan, Grade 10) in the Muslim world, which extends over culturally, socially and linguistically diverse regions such as the Maghreb, Iran and the north of India. Talking about the establishment of power in the Muslim Empire by using terms such as unity and division supposes an ideological a priori that attributes to Islam (the religion) the project of founding a central unique state or empire. The form ‘Empire’ that developed into kingdoms and then into nation states is purely the product of the historical experience of Europe. The power form historically produced by Islam is that of Khilafat, meaning succession. Although it is not linked to a stable territoriality, it produced dynastic powers more or less extended in time and space.

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The major theme of Islam as an urban and trade civilization acquired greater importance in present textbooks, in accordance with the new programme directives that call for treating the subject of the Islamic civilization and its glory by using a city as an example. All textbooks centre their presentation on the city, which is both the headquarters of the government and the economic and cultural centre. On the other hand, the subject of the glory of the Islamic civilization is reduced to that of international trade and exchange with China and India. Authors make little effort to explore the cultural, scientific and artistic aspects of this glory. Moreover, one cannot but notice that present textbooks, like previous textbooks, implicitly give privilege to the Arabic part of the Muslim world or civilization by choosing Muslim cities in the Arab world as examples. In fact, except for Cordoba (Umayyad Spain), Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo are all situated in the Arab world. Mixing up the terms Muslim and Arab and considering them as synonyms decreased in present textbooks. Authors often use indifferently in the same texts the adjectives Arab and Muslim to describe the conquest, the expansion, merchants, travellers and physicians. Nevertheless, they do not consider all Arabs Muslims, for they acknowledge the existence of Arabs who were Christianized or converted to Judaism in Saudi Arabia (Bordas, Grade 7) and Christian Arabs in the Middle East that never converted to Islam (Hachette, Grade 10). On the other hand, even though one notices that present authors prefer the Arab component of the Islamic civilization in choosing places to give examples and illustrations, they insist as previously noticed on the ethnic diversity of Muslim people. One textbook distinguishes between Arabs, residents of the Arabian peninsula, peoples who were Islamized and Arabized (adopted the Arabic language and culture in the 7th and 8th centuries), and peoples who are Muslims but not Arabs such as the Iranians, the Berbers and the Pakistanis (Hachette, Grade 10, p.88). It is obvious that the distinctive factor is that of language. The war in Algeria: the divergence between publishers in the evaluation of the Algerian actor takes shape My investigation in present textbooks concerning the issue of colonization and decolonization focused on the war of Algeria. The number of studied textbooks is less than that of the previous sample. For representativeness sake, textbooks were selected from two publishing houses, Nathan and Hachette, that had disagreed upon various points related to this war in previous textbooks. In Hachette textbooks, despite its historical importance, it is not studied in a separate chapter of its own but inside various

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chapters related to decolonization and the 4th and 5th Republics. This fragmentation of the subject indicates a will to put it in the shade. On the other hand, Nathan presents the war in an autonomous put together form. This form indicates the great importance the publishing house gives to this event. The title ‘The War in Algeria’ of the chapter is not quite noticeable; it is found at the level of subsections. Moreover, one must not take into consideration that the general decrease in the number of school texts in present textbooks resulting from the educational reform of the teaching of history and geography accentuates the lack of exposure. The number of pages covering the war of Algeria in all five studied textbooks decreased to ten pages, eight of which are co-texts (documents, illustrations, maps and tables) and only two of which constitute the text! Is the co-text having the edge on the text a guarantee of objectivity and impartiality? In general, even though the 12 war documents are equally divided between Algerian sources (FLN, A. Ferhat, M. Feraoun, GPA) and French sources (de Gaulle, J.-P. Sartre, J. Roy, Y. Courrière and R. Cartier), publishing houses remain biased: Nathan prefers the Algerian sources (5/3) while Hachette prefers the French sources (3/1). The educational discourse about the Algerian war How do present textbooks deal with issues studied in previous textbooks? Present texts, due to their brevity, are terse concerning the causes of war. The discourse about the exclusion and domination of an entire population by another in Nathan textbooks constitutes a moderate presentation about inequality: ‘the large economic and cultural disparity’, ‘the demographic disequilibrium’ and ‘the political inequality between Europeans and Muslims’. Hachette textbooks that shared this analysis during the previous decade no longer do so in current textbooks. It might be the lack of space that forces them to cover only the most important or the event itself. The very obvious divergence that existed between Hachette and Nathan in previous textbooks became less marked, making the texts of both quite similar. ‘Insufficient reform’, ‘the opposition of Algerians to any kind of development’ and ‘the refusal of Algerians to picture any kind of independence’ are the same reasons presented to explain the inevitability of the war. ‘Nationalism’ was considered in previous textbooks as a sudden awakening of the collective Algerian conscious. Present textbooks see that events such as ‘the awakening of the Arab world’ (Nathan, Grade 9; Hachette, Grade 9), ‘the struggle for independence in North Africa’ and ‘the total independence of Egypt’ greatly contributed to the armed struggle for Algerian independence. The mechanistic explanation of the causes of war as an eruption of a European kind of ‘nationalism’ is fortunately

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replaced in present textbooks by taking into consideration the mutual aid and the spirit of competitiveness that existed between neighbouring Arab countries, which gained their independence during the same period of time. Yet Third World terms such as ‘national liberation’ that made a shy appearance in previous textbooks no longer do so in present textbooks. Who started the war? Instead of establishing a link between the beginning of the war and the formation of the National Liberation Front (NLF), present textbooks consider that what triggered the war is a series of actions and reactions: ‘anti-French riots’ followed by ‘a violent repression executed by the army’ which preceded the beginning of the revolt of 1954. And instead of presenting the war as a conflict between the French of Algeria and the metropolitan French (Hachette and Bordas 1980–6), present textbooks adopt the second tendency (Nathan, Bélin) and present it as an interaction between three parties: the French of Algeria, the NLF and the French Metropolitan government. The acknowledgement of the Algerian participation in the independence remains weak in the Hachette textbooks. Algerian independence remains the result of a unilateral gesture by the French actor; the NLF is not mentioned at all in Hachette textbooks. Only the dramatization of the national action is removed: it is no longer said that the independence of Algeria was ‘granted by de Gaulle’; it is now said that it was ‘acknowledged by the agreements signed in Evian’. Nathan textbooks continue to be distinguished from those of Hachette by being less Gallo-centric. They present the Algerian independence as the result of a bilateral act of negotiation between two parties: the French government and the NLF. In general, one notices that the present discourse is less polarized than that of the previous period. It is also less self-centred and nationalist. In fact, the question concerning who won and who lost the war, which in previous Nathan and Hachette textbooks constituted separate files, no longer assumes the same importance. Nathan authors no longer suggest the military defeat of the NLF and those of Hachette do not sacrifice a single entire page to prove the military victory of France. Nevertheless, they could not help themselves from suggesting in a roundabout way the military defeat of the NLF (‘In Algeria, the NLF guerrillas were practically defeated in 1959’, Hachette, Grade 9, 1993, p.144). The actors of the war of Algeria and their respective roles Moving from the obvious elaborated level of discourse to its latent implicit level, I studied in detail the representation of the Algerian and French actors and their role in the war. What has changed in the designation of the actors? The avoidance of using the national designation of ‘French’ and ‘Algerian’ (except for

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Nathan) and the use of the more determined community designation of ‘Europeans’ and ‘Muslims’ in previous textbooks are no longer applied in present textbooks. Present Nathan and Hachette textbooks prefer the national designation to the compromising one of ‘Europeans’. It is the ‘autochthons’ designation that continues to be a problem. To call them Algerians is to disclaim their belonging to the French community and to acknowledge that they had a national existence even before they gained their independence and established a nation state. To call them Muslims is to give preference to their religious adherence rather than giving it to their ethnic or linguistic adherence. Hachette authors evade choosing a designation by not naming the indigenous population in their texts except for one time where they opt for the ethnic designation of ‘Arabs and Berbers’. Nathan authors do not opt for one single designation either; they use the three designations according to context. They use the ‘Muslims’ designation that almost disappeared in previous textbooks. The national ‘Algerians’ designation, which was previously reserved to designate autochthons, expands in present textbooks to include retroactively the French of Algeria in the rare cases where this reunion was possible (the 1947 status gave Algerians French citizenship, yet this equality is contradicted by the fact that the Muslim population, ten times larger in number, was given a number of government seats equal to that of the French). The ethnic designation of Berbers and Arabs appears under the ‘Muslims’ designation in a table that compares the demographic and socio-economic situation of Europeans and Muslims in Algeria. The difference in the ways of presenting the subject and the designation of the two communities leads to an unequal presentation of political figures and organizations in question. Having made the study of the war of Algeria part of the study of the 4th and 5th republic, Hachette remains true to itself and mentions only French political figures (de Gaulle, Mendes France, Pinay, G. Molin, Pflimlin), while the NLF stays anonymous. Nathan abandons its previously adopted policy and inverses the situation by naming, as opposing de Gaulle and the Organization of the Secret Army (OAS), the main Algerian actors (Ben Bella, Messali Hadj, Ferhat Abbas, the NLF and the GPRA). Changes in the presentation of the role of Algerian and French actors Given the main role in texts that tell of the war, the French actor has always had the largest share of negatively connoted acts (a ratio of 3 : 1 in both Nathan and Hachette textbooks). In present textbooks, the selfcriticism and decentration of authors are accentuated. Acts of violence are no longer accentuated or attenuated according to whether they are

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committed by the Algerians or by the French. The perpetrator of violence and his victims are no longer hidden if the actor is French or revealed if the actor is Algerian. The one to one cause and effect chain of action that often presented French acts in previous textbooks as a riposte to previously perpetrated Algerian acts is partially abandoned in Hachette textbooks and reversed in Nathan textbooks. The initiative of the negatively connoted act (‘refusal to accept independence’, ‘refusal to accept any development’, ‘attacks’, ‘diverting leading NLF planes’) are attributed to the French actor (‘OAS’, ‘army’, ‘government’, ‘pieds-noirs’). Present textbooks, compared with previous textbooks, show a greater impartiality towards the national actor. Their presentation of the Algerian actor is different and varies according to the publisher. Even though the presentation of the Algerian role did not vary that much between publishers in previous textbooks, the case is different in present textbooks. In Hachette Grade 9 and Grade 12 textbooks, the Algerian actor is not politically analysed by presenting the different currents that animated him, their objectives and the policies they proposed as a solution to the problem in question. The political interaction between this actor and the French local and metropolitan actor is not even outlined. Moreover, the appearance of the NLF, which was announced by its acts of violence, reduced it from an actor in the war endowed with a policy to a factor in the war. Perpetrator of trouble, perpetrator of bloody attacks, leader of a guerrilla, the NLF remains in present Hachette textbooks an unknown, secondary and somehow negative actor. The position of the Algerian actor is presented differently in present Nathan textbooks and constitutes a net progress in comparison with previous textbooks. Present texts (Grade 9, 1989; Grade 9, 1994; Grade 12, 1995) analysed it from the inside and shows the interaction between its political positions and those of the French actor: ‘refusal of the French government to accept independence’, ‘refusal of the pieds-noirs to accept any kind of development’. Insufficient reform resulting in the under-representation of Muslims led to the abandonment of legalist positions by the Algerian elite and to the retreat of the reformists to the advantage of the partisans of direct action and the NLF, which took the initiative of insurrection. The co-text provides more customary documents of the NLF, the ‘call of the GPA to the Algerian people’ explaining the political development that resulted in choosing armed action and the ‘Manifesto of Abbas Ferhat’ representing legalist positions. The rehabilitation of the Algerian actor is limited to its role during the war and does not include its role in gaining independence. Texts are unanimous in both Hachette and Nathan textbooks in attributing all positively

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connoted acts such as ‘negotiations’, ‘signing agreements’, ‘acknowledging the independence’ to the French actor represented by de Gaulle or symbolized by ‘France’. A monolithic conception of national sovereignty makes certain authors not mention the Algerian party in the signature of the agreements of Evian.

Arabs in the contemporary history of the Middle East How do secondary history textbooks used in the 1997 school year deal with issues such as Arab nationalism and political Islam (I), the creation of Israel and the Palestinian cause (II) and the Arab–Israeli wars (III)? A sample of five Grade 9 and Grade 12 textbooks of the publishers of the previous textbooks allowed this update, enabling us to draw out the main changes. The size of the corpus is almost the same. Even though present textbooks give more space to the issue of the Islamic awakening in the Middle East, the majority of textbooks continue to postpone the issue of the civil war in Algeria. Arab nationalism and political Islam The definition school historians give to Arab nationalism shows that they continue in present textbooks, as in previous textbooks, to base it on the adherence of the majority of Arabs to the Muslim religion and not on their speaking a common language. This omission in the definition might be explained by the fact that speakers of Arabic even though neighbours do not seem identical to an outside observer. The unity of the written and taught literary Arabic in all Arab countries and the current development of the Arabic used in Media (simplified Arabic common to the written, oral and visual media in the Arab world) do not seem to weigh against religion for historians, who are actually laic. This might explain the unexpected summing up that one author used in mentioning with the ‘Muslim religion’ the ‘Arabic literature’, instead of the written literary Arabic as an element of Arab nationalism: ‘The revival of Arabic feeling in the Middle Eastern population. The Muslim religion and Arabic literature are elements of unity.’ Nevertheless, one must note down the progress in the definition of ‘Arab unity’. While previous textbooks negatively founded it on the ‘opposition to Israel’, present textbooks add to it a positive element: ‘the feeling of belonging to a one-Arab nation’. ‘The Islamic awakening’ occupies in present textbooks the space it shared with Nasserism in previous textbooks. In previous textbooks, criticism against the ideological aspects of ‘Muslim fundamentalism’ prevailed: ‘a movement that calls for the return to traditional Islam, rejects

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occidental values and wants to strictly apply Islamic laws’. In present textbooks, authors have a contradictory attitude towards current demonstrations of Islamist movements. Authors seem hostile towards the Islamism of the state – ‘Islamization by the Iranian regime’ – which is accused of ‘suppressing liberties’, ‘exercising bloody terror’ and ‘reinforce the influence of men of religion in the heart of the Muslim World’. On the other hand, they seem somehow in favour of the Islamism of the opposition in Algeria by the Islamic Front of Salvation (FIS) that fills in government shortage in social issues, education and health. Vocabulary-wise, one cannot but note down that these diverse demonstrations of political Islam are described by all authors as Islamic and not as Islamist. The ‘national’ adjective describing a movement of a certain independence and unity in the same region has always added to it the suffix ‘ist’ or ‘ism’ in the same textbooks, those of today as well as those of yesterday. Is it a tradition for French school historians to perceive straight away every demonstration of a national political movement in the Arab world as extremist or borrowed and to consider on the other hand every demonstration of a religious political movement as normal, just because Islam as a religion happened to be the spirit itself of that region? The creation of Israel and the Palestinian cause Even though present authors are divided as were their predecessors concerning the creation of Israel, they seem less impartial in presenting the Palestinian cause. Loyal to their previous position, Nathan authors force themselves to appear impartial and abstain from historically legitimizing the creation of the state of Israel. They present it instead as the outcome of the ‘Zionist project in 1954 to create a Jewish state in Palestine’, while acknowledging in the same context the opposition of the ‘Arab League that in 1945 intended to obtain the independence of Palestine’ and was ‘in favour of an Arab Palestine where Jews could find their place’. One finds in Nathan authors a constant of militant laic positions. They appear critical towards historical projects of religious foundations such as the Crusades, the Islamist regimes and Zionism. Hachette authors, less strict when it comes to principles, adopt the Zionist thesis and present forward, without taking any critical distance, a double historical foundation for the creation of Israel: historicity of the Jewish people in present Palestine because ‘Hebrews, ancestors of present Jews, lived in Palestine in ancient times’; and the historicity of the ‘Jewish state’ because ‘Israel is the name given to two Jewish countries, that of 931 to 721 BC or the kingdom of the North of Palestine founded after the division of the kingdom of David and that

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of 1948, the present state’. Faced with this double foundation, Arab residents of Palestine are subjected to a double negation. Negation of their state which, according to these same authors, has no historical existence because they clearly call to avoid confusion: ‘Israel is the name given to two states ...’ (quoted above). ‘Palestine is the geographical name of a region between Lebanon, Syria, the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, a name used by the British Mandate in 1920’. The text does not add that the Arab residents of this country have claimed its independence since 1923. Various terms prepared to exclude the Arab population of Palestine, before 1948, according to various procedures of dispossession: the localization of Jews in Palestine, giving them the status of a regional minority as were given the Kurds or the Armenians, the possession of Palestine by the British, the non-localization of the Arabs of Palestine in Palestine, or the non-specification of the non-Jewish population in Palestine: Three major peoples share the Middle East: the Arabs, the Turks and the Iranians. Yet there also exist minorities such as the Armenians and the Kurds in Iraq, Iran and Turkey and the Jews in Palestine. (Hachette, Grade 9) The British promised to give Palestine to both the Jews and the Arabs. The Hebrews, ancestors of the Jews, used to live in Palestine in ancient times. The Jewish emigration to Palestine becomes more pronounced, the Arabs protest. (Hachette, Grade 9) The Balfour Declaration establishes a ‘national home for Jews’ in Palestine yet guarantees at the same time the rights of the other populations settling in Palestine. (Hachette, Grade 9) The Jewish population in Palestine increases in 1936 to 400,000. (The text does not give the numbers of the Arab population in Palestine; one must look it up in a table in the margin of the text.) (Hachette, Grade 9)

One must wait for the year 1948 and the creation of the State of Israel for the Palestinians to see the light in the text, but then only as refugees out of their country. Present authors no longer ask if the Israelis are responsible for the Palestinians leaving their country. ‘Were they thrown out?’, they shift the question and throw the responsibility for their refugee status on the ‘Arab countries’: Israel proclaims its independence in 1948, 150,000 Palestinians stay in Israel. The rest get crammed into Gaza and the West Bank. The Arab countries

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refuse to integrate them in their population in order to keep pressure on Israel.

Maintaining their policy of ignoring the Palestinians and their claims, present Hachette authors do not mention the Palestine Liberation Organization until the signature of the peace agreement: ‘in 1993, the Organization acknowledges the existence of Israel which in turn accepts it as a valid negotiator’. For the sake of impartiality, Nathan authors present the objectives of the organization since its creation in 1964, claiming a ‘Palestinian state in the region’, then changes tone a few years later and accuses the organization of terrorism and of wanting to destroy Israel: ‘The Charter of the PLO affirms the total liberation of Palestine’ (Nathan, Grade 9, 1994); ‘The PLO makes the destruction of Israel a condition for the liberation of Palestine’; ‘It is by international terrorism that the Palestinian resistance takes over [from Nasser in 1967]’; ‘key notion: terrorism’ (Nathan, Grade 12, 1995). The text does not use a normal tone until ‘the PLO of Yasser Arafat acknowledges the right of the Hebrew state to exist’. One finally notices that while present Nathan and Hachette authors ignore the Palestinian people and its national rights or accuse its national representative PLO, they do not address any criticism to the State of Israel and its schemes towards the Palestinian population in the Arab territories occupied in 1948 and in 1967. On the other hand, crimes committed against the Jewish existence in Europe (the actors and the places of the Holocaust are not specified) are mentioned in a context to dismiss the schemes of the state of Israel and to transfer the accusation of the destruction of the existence itself of the Jewish state to the Palestinians and the Arab countries: The discovery of extermination camps in 1945 caused a strong upheaval of opinion in favour of the Jews. Emigration to Palestine becomes more pronounced, and the Arabs protest. The horrifying discovery, especially in North America, of extermination camps resulted in attitudes in favour of the Zionist project of creating an Israeli state in Palestine. File: Israel facing the Arab World The Western public opinion wish to provide the Jewish people a haven of peace after the Holocaust.

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The Arab–Israeli wars The presentation of the Arab–Israeli wars was divided in previous textbooks between a pro-Israeli majority vision and critical minority vision that narrates the points of view of both parties of the conflict. Present textbooks of the school year of 1997–8 present a more uniform reading of the conflict, close to that of the majority in previous textbooks. Two constants and one variable characterize it. The vocabulary that describes the actions of both the Israeli and the Arab actors has not changed much. It is characterized by the same partiality and attributes in covering the Israeli expansionism. In present texts that narrate the Arab–Israeli wars of May 1948 and June 1967, which resulted in Israel tripling the territory surface area given to it by the Division Plan of 1947, it is not said that Israel ‘annexed’ or ‘conquered’ or ‘occupied’ the Arab or Palestinian territories. The colonization is normalized: Israel ‘expands its territory’ in 1948; it ‘controls Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and Sinai’ in 1967. Having for objectives expansion and conquest, these wars are not described as ‘expansion or conquest wars’, instead they are described as ‘attacks or preventive wars’ waged in defence against the Arab threat of attack. The responsibility for starting the war by an action of aggressive connotation is thrown most of the time on the Arab actor: 1948: As soon as Israel proclaims its independence, the neighbouring Arab countries attack it. (Hachette, Grade 9, 1993) Ben-Gurion proclaims the birth of the State of Israel. The countries of the Arab League invade Palestine. (Nathan, Grade 12, 1995) 1967: Nasser closes the Strait of Tiran that gives Israelis access to the Red Sea. Israel launches a preventive attack against its neighbours. Threatened by Nasser who had decided to close the Gulf of Aqaba not allowing Israelis to path through, Israel wages a violent preventive war against its neighbours. (Nathan, Grade 12) 1973: Sadat wants military revenge. Egypt and Syria attack Israel. (Nathan, Grade 9, 1989)

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To erase the humiliation, Egypt and Syria wage another war in October 1973. (Hachette, Grade 12, 1995) Sadat awaits the right moment to wage another war against Israel. (Nathan, Grade 12, 1995)

Despite the partiality of the vocabulary, one can note down that present textbooks are more moderate than previous textbooks (those of 1986). Less determined to defend Israel and accuse the Arab countries, authors of these same publishing houses appear with time to have taken more distance towards both actors of the war. The stereotype of ‘Israelis always victorious’ and ‘Arabs always vanquished’, already put into question by those who adhere to the minority vision in previous textbooks, is not applied in present textbooks. Nasser is described as having achieved a ‘diplomatic victory in 1956’, and the same Hachette authors acknowledge this time that the Arab offensive of 1973 achieved ‘a clear-cut success and for the first time an Arab army vanquishes even though temporarily Israel’. Even authors who still adhere to this stereotype and describe pompously the military performance of the Israeli army, which was half vanquished in 1973, acknowledge a preliminary Arab victory. The taboo is no longer valid: The war (October 1973) made an Israeli victory impossible. The Arab countries use the oil weapon, yet Israel holds out. (Nathan, Grade 9, 1979) The Egyptian–Syrian attack of Yom Kippur is first victorious for the Arab armies, yet the counteroffensive is here also violent [allusion to the war of June 1967 described in a preceding paragraph as a violent preventive war], the Israeli army invades the Suez Canal and moves forward towards Cairo. (Nathan, Grade 12, 1995, p.106)

Another cliché persists, that of ‘Arab’, ‘humiliation’ and ‘revenge’. When the Arab countries take the initiative of declaring war, not a single author reveals the declared and pursued political objective of the actors of the offensive. The objective of the offensive was to liberate the Palestinian territories, which were emptied of their residents and occupied in 1948 by the budding state of Israel. And later, when Egypt and Syria tried to retrieve their territories, which were annexed by Israel in June 1967, this legitimate desire of ‘Arabs’ (countries, peoples and residents) to ‘liberate’ their ‘country’ or their ‘national territory’ occupied by a foreign authority is not reported (even with the same precaution of the quotation marks) by authors.

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To speak of liberation means to have acknowledged the illegitimacy of the occupation or the colonization of the land of others. This reading, which was outlined in previous textbooks (minority vision, Nathan, Grade 12, 1983) is not adopted in present textbooks whose positions vary between admiration for the strike force of the Israelis and the hope to see the situation of the country normalized in the Arab region. Therefore, one can understand why the motivations of the Arab are expressed in a psychological vocabulary conveying tribal feelings of touched honour and desire to take revenge, instead of conveying national legitimate rights: Sadat wants a military revenge. (Nathan, Grade 9, 1989). In 1973, Sadat waits the right moment to launch another offensive against Israel [objectives not reported]. (Nathan, Grade 12, 1995) 1967, another Israeli victory. Israel doubles its surface area. The Arabs have undergone an immense humiliation facing a small country of 3 million residents. (Nathan, Grade 12, p.164, 1995) To erase the humiliation, Egypt and Syria wage another war in October 1973. (Hachette, Grade 12, p.166, 1995)

Space given to Arabs in present secondary school geography textbooks (1996–7) New secondary school history and geography programmes of 1996 have introduced the teaching of the Maghreb in the part dedicated to the African continent (Grade 7). This regional division constitutes an exception in the teaching of geography, which is rather based on the division per continent and per country and leaves little space for the subregions. The introduction of the Maghreb is explained by the historical and economic interest of France in this subregion of the Arab world. In fact, new programmes recommend emphasizing the special relations this region has with France. Themes related to the Arab world, which in previous textbooks were dispersed, are thus put together in present textbooks, in the context of the study of a region presenting economic, geophysical and social cultural coherence. The sample was selected after reading titles and subtitles of chapters in geography textbooks of Grade 6 to Grade 12, published between 1990 and 1997 by three publishers (Nathan, Hachette and Bordas), which also exist in the previous sample. Only textbooks of

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Grade 6, Grade 7 and Grade 10 were used in the update because they include useful material or corpus treating the following themes: ‘regions of the desert, the Sahara, oil’; ‘major urban agglomerations’ such as ‘Cairo’; ‘cities of developing countries, part of which the Arab city’; ‘the Maghreb’ and themes about the ‘urban growth of agriculture and irrigation, of resources and of industrialization’ studied in the context of the Maghreb; and ‘Algeria’ before introducing the Maghreb theme. Themes that have witnessed a setback are those of slavery, immigrant workers and underdevelopment, mentioned quickly in subsections. The decision to treat the Maghreb as a subregion has allowed the restitution of these Arab countries to the Mediterranean world, rather than mixing them up with the desert zone, thus not applying the division per continent of previous textbooks. The themes of the urban growth of the coastal zones, of the development of the industry, of tourism and of intensive agriculture in countries of the Maghreb (‘west’ in Arabic) and in other regions of the Arab world, such as the Valley of the Nile, take one step ahead of the themes of desert surroundings, nomadism and oil. Except for Egypt, countries of the Mashrek (Levant) as well as the region of the Middle East have reduced coverage in present textbooks. Unlike the Maghreb, that according to the recommendations of the programme is treated as a group (‘one must avoid the monograph of each of the three countries’), the Middle East is considered as a diverse region of countries and peoples. It seems that the economic and political interests of France, as perceived by geographers, influence divisions applied by textbooks and programmes. They are limited currently to the Maghreb, and do not include the Arab world. The latter is not studied as a regional entity as is the Mediterranean world for example. Yet the notion ‘Arab world’ is frequently used in texts and it seems that authors have finally adopted it as a substitute to composed words such as (Arabian Sahara, Middle East, North Africa or Maghreb–Mashrek) used in previous textbooks. The ‘Muslim world’ notion, frequently used in previous textbooks, has retreated to its advantage. Various statements demonstrate the change and show that it is difficult to ignore the existence of the Arab World: Cairo is the largest metropolitan in Africa and the Arab World. (Nathan, Grade 6) The model of Tunis presented here is representative enough of coastal cities in the Arab World. (Bordas, Grade 10)

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Even though programmes recommend emphasizing that Maghreb belongs to the Muslim world, various authors do not follow the recommendation and emphasize its belonging to the Arab world: Maghreb, Arabic word meaning west or the Occident of the Arab world. (Nathan, Grade 7) Maghreb means west in Arabic. It is the Occident of the Arab countries. (Bordas, Grade 7)

If one of the two publishing houses follows in the title the recommendations of the programme – ‘The Maghreb, a part of the Muslim world’ – it rectifies its position in the text by saying ‘It is the Occident of the Arab Countries’, and makes a compromise in an adjacent map by situating the Maghreb in the zone named ‘Muslim Arab world’ that covers the Arab world and extends to the east towards the rest of the Muslim world, of which the non-Arab part is not completed. The resiting of the Maghreb in the Arab world is limited to its geography and does not include its culture. One author evades prudently the question and over 20 pages dedicated to the Maghreb does not mention the languages nor the forms of education. Another author mentions only the presence of the French language without mentioning the Berber languages and the written and spoken Arabic language. He resorts in a provocative manner to the writing of a French-speaking Maghrebian author to affirm, out of the text, what he does not say in the text that French is the only spoken, written and read language: Text: Since independence, French is still spoken by the majority of the population. (Document 4) Document 4: French is the language of economic and intellectual power. It is the only spoken, written and read language. Despite Arabization, French is present in the small and medium bourgeoisie. (A. Yuossi, The Maghreb, Peoples and Civilizations, 1995)

Another important change is demonstrated in present textbooks concerning urbanity in the Arab world. Urban explosion in the coastal zone in the countries of the Maghreb and in the Delta and the Valley of the Nile is emphasized. Thanks to the new regional division, cities (or the

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agriculture) of the desert (previous textbooks) are no longer emphasized to the advantage of the coastal cities and cities by rivers where the population of Arab countries are concentrated far from the desert and near the water. Moreover, the term ‘Arab’ is no longer dissociated from ‘urban’ (previous textbooks), the theme of nomadism has strongly regressed (only one author mentions the tragedy of Tuareg), and the nomads are hardly mentioned in present textbooks. The Arabs join the urban space. Restitution, on the level of the text, of the old division of Arabs into Bedouin (‘Badou’ in Arabic) and urban (‘Hadar’ in Arabic). One can say in a simplified manner that the Arab corpus produced by geographers of previous textbooks (1986) had the traits of a geography of the desert, of nomadism, of oil and of migrations, while the geographers of currently used textbooks (1997–8) have rather produced a geography centred around the urban world, Arab cities, overpopulated regions and centres of production. With the association of Arab with urbanity, cities that in previous textbooks were ‘Muslim cities’ or ‘cities of the desert’ have changed identity in present textbooks. The majority of authors opt for ‘Arab cities’, yet in certain cases they describe the same city as Muslim, Arab or Mediterranean, according to whether they are emphasizing the age of the city, its urban structure or its geographical position: Tunis: the urban space of an Arab city. The model presented here is representative enough of coastal cities in the Arab world. The Arab city (Medina) is organized around a mosque. Medina: historical centre of Arab cities, is surrounded by walls. Cities of developing countries: three cuts of cities: Latin American city, black African city and Arab city. The structure of Medina (the old Arab city): mosque, Koranic school, souks, narrow streets, destroyed walls. Three capital cities of poor countries: A. a Muslim city (Cairo). B. a black African city (Brazzaville). C. a Latin American city (Sao Paulo). Cairo illustrates the specificity of Islamic cities: very old, structure characterized by the Muslim tradition.

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The old city or Medina presents typical Islamic planning: squared zone, small streets, a religious and cultural centre, the Al-Azhar Mosque, the souks (markets in Arabic), and the city walls which were destroyed in the 19th century. Exercises: Algeria, a Mediterranean city.

Medina is sometimes called an Arab city and at other times a Muslim city, even though the same structure is attributed to both (small streets, mosques, souks, destroyed walls). Thus, mistaking ‘Muslim’ and ‘Arab’ for synonyms, a frequent occurrence in previous textbooks, has reappeared. One way to settle the issue would be to compare the structure of Medina with that of an old non-Arab Muslim city such as Samarkand, Kabul or Isfahan. If the structures are identical, we can deduce that Medina is an old Muslim city. If not and if the structure described above is similar to that of old cities of the Arab world, then Medina is an old Arab city.

Notes 1. Published in Beirut by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies in 1999. 2. The new sample of textbooks was published as an annex. 3. Hachette, Grade 1, 1991; and Magnard, Grade 3, 1997.

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CHAPTER 11

The Catholic Church and Islam Anzo Patchi

It is possible that the analysis of the picture, which the Catholic Church is carving in Europe about contemporary Islam, becomes a useful sociological subject on condition that we study this issue in the context of the strategy created by the Church in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The fact of talking about an ecclesiastic strategy means the following: 1. We should recognize, on the level of communicational relations, what type of action the Church institution is seeking now to accomplish: Is it moving according to the will of dialogue – as it declares – or does it want to prove a project of complex mediation between the European community and the organized presence of Islam in this continent? In other words, in what manner are we allowed to interpret the official speech of the Church stating on one hand that the new European political fact has Christian roots and showing on the other hand the opening of a political friendship era between Catholicism and Islam? 2. We should know the identity of the different social actors interfering in the essence of this conversational bet whether with respect to Islam (while knowing what type of Islam will obtain the dialogue) or with respect to the political institutions in Europe. The usefulness of this analysis is not exclusively ideological. The Church is progressively modifying the traditional picture of the other which it had created in the past, and the Church is seeking to achieve this step because this modification effort enables it to play a very important role in the course of the integration of men and women of Muslim culture or Muslim religiousness inside the European frame. Our hypothesis is manifested in knowing whether we are witnessing a change in the perspective of the Catholic Church or not and if it is as such why this change. In other words, we will try hard to study the official

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documents of the European Catholic Church in order to examine the way Islam is being presented and represented. In fact, our work is focused on realizing whether we are witnessing a new symbolic engagement from an institution, the Church of Rome, known for its conservative structural composition, for the purpose of proving its central status for having an active ‘policy’ in the history of contemporary Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. There is no doubt that the Church had explained the end of communist regimes as the victory of the kingdom of good over the kingdom of evil to which it had greatly contributed under the papacy of John Paul II. From this perspective we can explain the ‘papacy letter’ (Centesimus Annus) recently issued. The Church considers that it gained an irresistible moral authority in Europe, i.e. when it became necessary to build the political unity of Europe it had the legitimacy to view itself as an authority entrusted with the moral teachings capable of giving Europe a solid foundation. The Church is conscious of its capacity of offering the ‘European United States’ a kind of new civil religion. According to the Church, the fact of talking about a moral unity which is analogous to the political and economic unity is a project which reaffirms at the same time its centralism in the history and its openness to the dialogue with different cultures existing in the ancient world. With respect to Islam, the mediation – which constitutes the heart of the European Bishopric strategy – might mean two things: 1. Hegemony mediation: among the Christian Churches (Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox) the Catholic Church is the most capable one to gain recognition in the public issue circle for being ‘active’ with a political and moral project ‘for the sake of Europe’. It draws the legitimate limits of the religious and moral fields (the issues of abortion, defending the families, confessional schools ...). In this case, Islam realizes that it is a competitor with capacities and abilities, a foreign competitor to ‘the Christian roots of Europe’. If Islam wants to integrate with the European sequence it has to accept the ecclesiastic mediation that is accepting a ground of dialogue which decreases the missionary allegations of Islam in Europe that became the new boundaries of Islam, as described by Bastenier and Dassetto.1 2. Moral (ethical) mediation: The Catholic Church is aware of its incapability of imposing itself as a moral and political essence active in the European construction unless it shows its readiness to search for an

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understanding with other religious cultures existing in Europe (Jews, Protestants, Orthodox and Muslims at present), in order to achieve a unanimity among different cultures that is a unanimity which is equivalent to a new symbolic and universal capital given to Europe which is still suffering from moral weakness. In this case Islam becomes the most important moral dialogist because the Church considers it a wellorganized religious community and because it witnesses today an increase in its presence in Europe. Before we discuss the primary results of the research, we should specifically say that the strategy of the Catholic Church concerned with Islam is a relatively recent strategy. This interest goes back to the Second Vatican Synod (in 1963) and to a part of events having a great symbolic context such as: • •

•

•

•

The speeches of Pope Paul VI in August 1969 in Cam Bella. Many Islamic and Christian forums which started to supply, at first from Tripoli’s Forum (February 1976), mutual cognition on the theological level and among the ‘experts’ specifically. The meeting between Pope John Paul II and the king of Morocco, Hassan II, in August 1985. The monotheistic ecumenical prayers performed in the years 1986 and 1992 in Assisi. The recent visit of Pope John Paul II to Uganda and Sudan.

However, in order to reveal the development taking place in the construction of the picture of Islam inside the European Christian Church, it is appropriate to remind in brief form the characteristics of the distorted picture of Islam, if that description was possible, where this picture became from now on nothing but a traditional picture resulting previously from the Crusades and historically spread in Europe one century after another.

The Distorted Picture Watt wrote in 1981 the following: Among the greatest international religions the West carries a picture composed of prejudgements. The origin of the picture is ancient for it refers to the Crusades that took place in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries during which the West experts tried hard to identify the Islamic religion. However, they presented a distorted picture about the Islamic society. The West started

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to draw from this picture its imagination about Islam for many centuries. Moreover, the scientific research during the last hundred fifty years was unable to correct this picture.2

It is possible to expose the elements constituting this picture in a synthetic presentation as follows: 1. Islam is a Christian heresy (John of Damascus). 2. Mohammed the promoter of Islam is designated by nicknames just like Jews (the impostor Jews according to the Catholic ritual in the Holy week). 3. The Mohammedan religion is described as the religion of sensual pleasures (compared with Christianity the spiritual religion; this comparison is based on an indicative contradiction previously used to show the difference between Judaism and Christianity). 4. Consequently, Islam occupies a rank lower than that of Christianity (LaGrange). We can continue to gather the negative descriptions attributed to Islam since that time until the Second Vatican Synod that had settled deep in the collective Catholic memory where the most hideous ready patterns had nurtured from it until the present time to an extent where the Gulf War and the Radical Islamic Movement, this new enemy of the West as described by the media, were also able to suggest to people a caricature picture of Islam. What seems to be useful to consider now is: In what way is the symbolic construction of the speech about Islam organized? It is possible to say that Catholicism has contributed to carving the picture of the other showing all the aspects that were capable of amplifying the radical difference between Islam and ‘the sole and real divine religion’ entrusted to the Catholic Church. As the case between Bernard Lewis3 and Laroui4 there was between Islam and Christianity an engaging traditional ‘mirror game’: such as a Muslim’s description of Europe as ‘ignorant and infidel’ states (a picture that is still strong in all contemporary radical movements).5 While Muslims during many centuries had viewed the world as divided into two regions, i.e. the ‘Islam country’ and the ‘enemy’s country’, Catholicism considered that the ideological system, which had organized

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the symbolic construction of the speech, was based upon the indicative comparison between the two sides or between the two characteristics: positive/negative. Table 11.1 summarizes the most significant indicative comparisons that were clarified by Catholicism in the past (taking into consideration that this ‘past’ did not stop until recently: the Second Vatican Synod put an end to this past in 1963–4).

Table 11.1 The picture of Islam in ready patterns as formulated by the Catholic tradition Positive pole (+)

Negative pole (–)

Spirit Truth Superiority Believer

Sexual desire Untruth Inferiority Infidel–Impostor

The logic of the speech comes as follows: • •

Islam is an ‘erotic’ religion so the Muslims are non-religious. As Saint Thomas Aquinas mentioned in the ‘Summary about the controvert of infidel (or pagans) (Summa contra Gentiles)’: Those who were at first loyal to Mohammed were not experts in divine or religious issues but were people ... living in deserts and ignoring God ...

•

•

The violent debate with which Catholicism faced Islam might remind us of some disputes between Christianity and Judaism because we find in the point of view stating that Islam is a Christian heresy an echo of the mutual hatred between ‘two brothers of the same family’, which is the same hatred the primitive Christian communities had toward ‘their eldest Jewish brothers.’ This issue is similar to the Jewish case, for the Catholic tradition applies the theological discourse, then the same psychological or cultural discourses, so that Islam can realize that it is a religion of people motivated by instincts ... ‘The erotic dimension of the Islamic religion’ demonstrates astonishing similarities to the idea of ‘the erotic dimension of the Jewish religion’ and contradicts of course ‘the spirituality and purity of Christianity.’

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It will be necessary to analyse one day the anti-Jewish texts and the antiIslamic texts in an organized manner and compare them in order to verify whether the way of argumentation against heresy is interconnected to the anti-Judaism debate and the anti-Islamic debate or not. If we compare, for example, the letter of Saint John of Damascus ‘In heresy’ with another famous letter written by Saint Augustine ‘Against the Jews’ we find that the Christian rhetoric art often uses the ‘Corporate paradigm’ referring as noticed by Blumenkranz (1991) to the picture of the indivisible body of the Christ (Soma indivisible), i.e. the idea of ‘Total Christ’ (Christus Totus), a metaphor by which he expresses the presence of ‘a body’ or a social, spiritual and legal corpus at the same time and remained historically alive due to the Catholic Church. Consequently, Catholicism considers itself with respect to Judaism or Islam a radical alternative that gives everything diverging from the sole ‘Christ’s corpus’ the characteristics of heresy. Thus, we can deduce that we are facing a specific kind of movement to prove the hegemony and the social and religious identity of the Christian communities and then later the Catholic Church in order to face ‘the eldest brother’ (Jewish) and his competitive successor who declares that he is the Seal of the Prophets (Mohammed and Islam). In this domain we should not forget that Christianity is undergoing degradation in the Middle East in favour of Islam. Referring to Bordio’s theory (1997) in the religious domain, we can say in other words that, starting with ‘the peace of Constantine’, it was in the interest of the Catholic Church to determine a legitimate doctrinal system so that a social and religious identity would be imposed, that same identity which eventually influenced a great part of Europe’s history. The metaphor represented by the comparison between the sensual desire and the spirit (which is, of course, related to the comparison between the highest and lowest) is used in order to show a radical difference in the new spreading religion (compared with the fading Judaism) and in competition (with another religion which is in the phase of its historical propagation, i.e. Islam).

The corrected picture Starting from the Second Vatican Synod in 1963 (Concile Vatican II) Islam was seen from a different perspective. The document that had declared alienation in the past is Nostra Aetate (dated on 28 October 1964). It will be useful to recall its most significant paragraphs in Table 11.2 that focuses on the comparison between the past and the present.

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Table 11.2 Catholicism and Islam in the Nostra Aetate document Present •

•

•

• •

•

• •

The church highly estimates Muslims because they worship the one and only God that talked to humanity. Muslims wish to obey the will of God like Abraham did. They honour Issa the Christ being a prophet. They honour his mother Mary. They are waiting for the judgement day when God will reward all returnees. They estimate the moral life and worship God by prayers, charity and fasting. A mutual and sincere understanding. In order to defend and advance the social equity, the moral values, peace and freedom among human beings.

Past

•

Although they deny that he is God, they mention him sometimes with devoutness.

•

Let us forget disorders and hostilities.

This is a big revolution in the traditional perspective that was placed by the Catholic Church in view of confronting Islam, as certified by Rossano and Caftaro (1989). Based on this official declaration the Church sought for a policy of progressive measures to approach Islam. It is worthwhile to remember the speech that Pope Paul VI addressed to the high Mufti of Istanbul (1967), as well as his letter to the populations of Africa (1967), in addition to his meeting in Cam Bella with representatives of the Islamic confession (1969) in commemoration of the martyrs of Uganda (Pope Paul VI prayed on this occasion for the martyrs of the Islamic doctrine). Under the Papacy of John Paul II, the most important events were his meeting with the Islamic confession in Ankara (1979) and his speech addressed to Moroccan youth in Casablanca (1985) in which he said: We, Christians and Muslims, should value with joy the common religious values and should thank God for this ...

And every time Pope John Paul II visited African countries in which Islam has spread he affirmed the openness toward Islam (this is what he did on his visit to Sudan when he called on the political authorities to respect the religious freedom of the confessions different from Islam). Now we have become familiar with the new position of Islam in the Catholic symbolic system we can better understand the logic motivating the strategy of the Catholic Church in Europe.

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The document, which was clarified by the European Bishopric at the end of the Synod held in 1991, constituted a conciliatory outcome between two positions. The general research carefully discussed the development of the evangelical preaching after the fall of communism in order to build the political unity of Europe. By analysing the preparatory documents of the European Bishop seminar, we can realize the presence of two controversial lines to explain the new letter entrusted to the Church: 1. The first attitude: the end of communism is the victory of the soul; it is a great occasion that enables the Church to strengthen once again the Christian foundations and roots of Europe; this implies the work on reintegrating Christianity in the modern culture (‘the evangelization of culture’) and fighting ‘secularism and practical materialism’ where the subject of the ‘new Christianization of Europe’6 is abandoned. 2. The second attitude: the Church should admit its past mistakes and ‘adopt’ the idea of dialogue between the different cultures and religions existing in Europe, a dialogue which would be the basis of a deeper research regarding a moral agreement among religious cultures (between the Christian Churches particularly), but without neglecting the Jewish roots of the European culture on one hand and the concrete presence of Islam on the other hand; this explains the abandoning of the idea of the ‘Christianization of new Europe’ in order to affirm that the Church has no aim of hegemony.7 The discussion that took place during the seminar allows us to understand how the majority of the participants are willing to support the first attitude. It is useful to notice that only three out of 130 interventions were allocated to talk about Islam. Of course, the attention was given to the new situation in the eastern countries. However, the ambition of the Fathers gathered in the Synod was to clarify a strategy for Europe and not only toward the new reality in the countries of Eastern Europe. In order to represent the way the Catholic Church views the position of Islam in the new political and cultural fact of Europe, we can refer to the picture of ‘a circle surrounded by three stars’: •

•

The Catholic Church thinks that it is capable in Europe of becoming a collective actor that can play the role of the ethical (moral) mediation between the different cultural and religious traditions, its old and new. This is the circle. Based on this attitude, the Catholic Church thinks that it is capable of discussing with the other Christian Churches (Protestant, Anglican,

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Orthodox) the aim of forming an alliance that will shape new morals based on the Christian inspiration (the first closest star to the circle). Far from the circle we see two other stars, i.e. the Jewish and Islamic traditions.

As for Islam, the Bishop Synod document affirms that it is possible to discuss it because the common Islamic origin (Abraham) allows the agreement on the decisive principle of the human being’s morality. The true subject of this intellectual interest in Islam is the social and cultural integration of Muslim communities in new Europe. In order to ensure the best means of this integration the Catholic Church thinks that it is necessary to declare the idea of the recognition of Islam as a universal religion on one hand, and asking it on the other hand to recognize the minimal moral and juristic principles attributed to the Christian European culture (human rights). What is called in the language of the Church ‘the dialogue of values’ is used to ‘defend life and promote justice and peace’. Since justice and peace are common values, the Catholic Church affirms the necessity of helping Muslims in Europe to differentiate between religion and society, faith and civilization, and the adoption of an experience by which the person practices his personal and collective doctrine inside a democratic and secular society which respects pluralism and where the necessary conditions of mutual respect, reception, and dialogue would be provided.

This confirmation gains a double indication: 1. Offering the Christian population a new position for Islam whose presence is concrete and organized in Europe, a more positive attitude and more interested in understanding the other (Islam). 2. Starting with the verification of the limits that should be respected during the social practices required by the dialogue between Catholics and Muslims (these limits consider the use of Catholic worship places given to Muslims in order to perform their prayers or common Catholic and Islamic prayers, issues of mixed marriage, issues of raising children descending from parents of two different religions ...). In conclusion, we are witnessing a development, which is significant in the heart of the Catholic Church:

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The transition from a picture of the different inferior hostile ‘distanced other’ to a picture of a ‘close other’: the Church recognizes Islam for its religious equity regarding the value, but without deducing all civil and social results resulting from this new attitude (especially in the European countries having a Catholic religious ‘Monopole’ such as Spain, Italy and Belgium). The picture of the other, i.e. Islam is still viewed inside the European social and religious milieu as a picture of a competitive religion, a religion where the creation of secularism in it is still less than that in Catholicism, and it is capable of propagating by reproducing itself in the circle of the civil society: by this way the Church seems to be engaged in playing a mediation role which seemed until now to have been swinging between the desire of hegemony and the incitation for an ethical (moral) unanimity among different cultures.

Notes 1. A. Bastenier and F. Dassetto, Europa, nuova frontiera dell’Islam (Roma: Edizioni Lavoro, 1992). 2. M. Watt and T. Welch, L’Islam: Maometto e il Corano (Milano: Jaca Book, 1981). 3. Bernard Lewis, Europa barbara e infedele (Milano: Mondador, 1983). 4. Abdallah Laroui, Islam et Modernité (Paris: La Découverte, 1987). 5. See: Youssef M. Choueiri, Islamic Fundementalism, Twayne’s Themes in Rightwing Politics and Ideology series, no. 2 (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990); Bruno Etienne, L’Islamisme radical (Paris: Hachette, 1987), Intellectuels et militants de l’Islam contemporain, sous la direction de Gilles Kepel et Yann Richard, Sociologie (Paris: Seuil, 1990); Enzo Pace, Il regime della verita: Il fondamentalismo religioso contemporaneo, Contemporanea, 38 (Bologna: Societa editrice il Mulino, 1990); and Olivier Roy, L’Echec de l’Islam Politique, collection esprit (Paris: Seuil, 1992). 6. See the preparatory document under the title ‘Relatio ante discetationem.’ 7. See the document written by the Italian Cardinal Martini.

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CHAPTER 12

The Other’s Image: Real and False Fears in Arab–European Relations Sigurd N. Skirpekk

Prejudging others Man is a social animal, it is said. We all need interaction with others as much as we need groups and to belong to a culture of group identity. Our subordination to society is of no need of justification, yet the subordination of man to others is not always positive for we establish negative relations with others and a negative subordination to them. We might have enemies among the others or we might imagine the others as enemies. Groups we belong to might have enemies as a group. A strong total belonging of ours or our ‘we’ defines in one way or another our relation with the others or the ‘they’. Labelling people by ‘we’ and ‘they’ might be as old as humanity. Yet what has changed through history might be the limits of the ‘we’ or the limits of the different circles that include the ‘we’ and how unfriendly we are with those we consider others. I will mention in this chapter the contradiction that happens in the process, which leads to negative images that might be false about the others in modern societies based on the media as opposed to traditional societies. I will try to see if this so-called free flow of news is breaking unbreakable moulds and erasing prejudgements. In the end, I will wonder about future challenges. For example, will the relation between European and Arab countries be other than that presented in the media and considered in daily conversation as dangerous? I said that labelling people by ‘we’ and ‘they’ is as old as humanity and as old as organized social life. Through human history, the limits between the ‘we’ and the ‘they’ were the limits between those we know and those we do not know either by direct contact or by name or common symbols. In addition to societies built on blood and land or family and common private property, we have distinguished between trust relations and distrust relations based on religion, culture, laws and traditions. The reasons

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for these distinctions are often based on myth or fiction. We always look to true historical events for facts to support our judgements. Yet we must not be content with a few examples and a few historical interpretations as a definitive justification. What we consider a historical fact is often a historical interpretation; interpretations are often composed in a way that the difference between them is very obvious. Real examples that support interpretations are often opposed by real examples supporting an opposing interpretation. This logically leads to the conclusion that general beliefs are often the result of prejudgement. A prejudgement that makes one see only the negative side of those labelled as ‘them’, while seeing all that is related to ‘we’ as positive, is a prejudgement launched or elaborated for various reasons. From a psychological point of view, a prejudgement as such serves the interest of establishing a simple moral system in a complicated world. It also promotes the need to feel superior while tightening the bonds between members of the same group. The majority of people, if not all, are ethnically biased in their opinions of others. The culture of group laws and beliefs that we belong to paves the way for a few cognitive beliefs that define the world around us, and these beliefs might seem natural or universally valid: that is how they acquire their solid moral ground. A majority of people in traditional societies make use of evaluation standards common in their society, even when evaluating others or other societies. That is why their opinions are indisputable.

The programme of enlightenment To understand everything is to forgive everything. That is one of the optimistic statements launched by the callers to enlightenment. The more enlightened we are by knowledge and contact, the more friendships we make or at least the more tolerant we become. The philosophy of enlightenment assumes that the logic is in fact common between people. This means that through education and a proper use of mind, it is possible to make an opinion about an objective truth. Through this fully objective logical stand, it must be possible to analyse and reveal all ideologies based on interests and personal visions. People’s belief that they represent objective common sense has made it easy for them to be indifferent towards religion and the metaphysical, as well as indifferent towards all kinds of morals of narrow psychological and social background. They used to depend on objective science and on common sense in addition to what they agree upon as the dignity of man as an individual.

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Programmes set by the philosophers of what is called the age of enlightenment became in Europe a part of a modernity programme. They assumed that all societies should go through a series of stages before reaching such a level. They also assumed that modern societies should be based on education, knowledge and free criticism or, in short, on knowledge and democracy. They applied this programme to put an end to hostile fanaticism between people or fanaticism based on fear and prejudgement caused by ignorance and narrow personal experience. They thought that this programme would be the means to nurture personal freedom, creativity and economic achievements. This programme might seem partially appropriate for the past two centuries when it comes to development. Cultural and political leadership in modern societies has let go of a number of past forms of prejudgement. Regular people of our age have become able to travel almost perfectly safely to a growing number of places and to establish positive contact with people they did not know before. On the other hand, we all know that this development guarantees the establishment of peaceful relations between individuals, societies and civilizations. There are without doubt a number of reasons for conflicts between humans and nations. Some might be caused by conflicting financial interests related to natural resources and marketing of goods, while non-financial or cultural issues might cause the rest. I will focus in this study on the second set of reasons. We must focus on situations related to the modern technological world that cause conflicts and prejudgements between people. It is simple to say that prejudgement is based above all on ignorance. Ignorance and total lack of knowledge is a characteristic of relations between traditional societies or societies where knowledge and information are based on personal experience and personal contact. In such situations, ignorance might lead to indifference as well as effective hostility. Yet in modern situations that are established by modern media, it is rare that the informed is considered ignorant. Speakers think that they know a bit about almost everything. Yet what distinguishes this knowledge is that it is not based on personal experience but on what the media presents as information and interpretation of this information. This means that we cannot be sure of all that is presented to us unless it contradicts our own personal experience. We are forced to accept what the media and news networks present and to build an image of the world according to a number of black boxes of which only experts know the contents. Information and interpretation presented on television and radio and in newspapers and magazines is the new element in modern societies. Radio and television do not only broaden the horizons of our eyes and ears, they

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also expand the power of the media, which is not only a medium in all that happens or only a device owned by governments and capital interests. Media makers and owners do not want to lie, which is why the selection process cannot be understood from this perspective. They want above all to keep their place in such a competitive world and to ensure a wide spread. Therefore, they want to present things that are familiar, popular and understood by the widest possible audience of spectators, listeners and readers. These motives that are apparently not political have various political effects in real life. Promoting what is popular, spectacular, simple and familiar is a promotion of prejudgement. What we call news is a selection made from daily events. What is chosen as news is often a new event that can be interpreted by traditional interpretation means. News is an overemphasis on what is old. From this perspective, in order to understand the power of media one has to understand common culture and the active ideologies of this age.

Various cultures and various visions Culture is nothing but a group heritage passed down from one generation to the next. Various cultures might be different but not totally different for local culture is a kind of national culture, which is in its turn a kind of wider culture, that of a civilization. Even different cultures such as the Arab culture and the European culture have characteristics in common. The roots of difference are planted in cultural difference. Europe used to be a civilization that tried to mix the old heritage of Palestine, Greece and Rome with Christian heritage, analytic philosophy and super-national governance. The Arab culture has adopted Islam for its spiritual basis, and it is perhaps in this aspect that it is more spiritually unified than Europe. Civilizations also differ on a linguistic basis. I do not mean by language differences i.e. the Arabic language has a thousand synonyms for ‘sand’ while European languages have a thousand synonyms for ‘snow’. The difference here is a difference of language structure, the means of organizing the natural and social world, and the mental structures that automatically follow the language structure. In addition to differences resulting from history in one way or another or from our way of understanding history, we can find actual attempts to interpret representative elements of different civilizations in means uncontrolled by any specific cultural tradition. For example, the interpretation of the 1991 Gulf War by the media cannot be understood as an inevitable cultural result. We should look for alternative interpretation frameworks and for more modern reasons to explain the predominance of one pattern of

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interpretation. This war was considered in a few Arab countries to a large extent as a new conflict between the Eastern world and the Western world, even if a number of countries joined the alliance against the Iraqi regime. Even in Europe, the war was considered as a conflict between the ruling class of the West and the ruling class of the Middle East. Yet this conflict was not interpreted as a sequel of the old conflict that lasted a century between Christians and Muslims, but was considered as a conflict between United Nations’ principles of democracy and justice on the one hand and a feudal ruler on the other hand. A number of newspapers considered it as a conflict between the representatives of universal moral principles and representatives of another set of principles whose sole aim is to increase the country’s wealth. Others considered it as a conflict over oil or a conflict over the principles of national equilibrium in the Middle East. A characteristic of modern European culture is that even if the country itself is a party in the war, not all newspapers of this country interpret the event in the same way. Modern Europe is widely multicultural. It is impossible to speak of a unified European interpretation of the conflict, even if the various presented interpretations have points in common when it comes to their vision of modernity. There is no universal culture. Therefore, no culture can claim to be superior to another culture. Yet this does not mean that all cultures are equal, even if the vision related to a particular culture is equal in being correct or in being wrong or for having a certain function. However difficult it is to find a culture absolutely appropriate and functional, it is relatively easy to find a number of inappropriate and dysfunctional cultures when it comes to facing serious issues.

The image Arabs have of Europe I will attempt on the basis of these general considerations of the cultural situation for our vision of others and the prejudgement and false vision it might be subjected to, to talk about the main question in this chapter: the image the West has of Arabs and the image Arabs have of the West. Those who belong to the Arab world are of no doubt more qualified than I to speak of the image the Arabs have of the West, in particular the part that is related to the Gulf War. Nevertheless, to make the comparison possible, I will present assumptions for what I think is the Arab vision of the West, fully aware that visions differ from one country to another according to the level of culture of each group. From reading, watching and talking to people, it seems to me that the interpretation of the war is often framed by history or by modern Arab

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stands towards the west. My first impression is that the image Arabs have of the West is divided. Europe for the youngsters who constantly watch television is an enchanting place. European countries are to them rich and European social habits very liberated. In addition, they see in Europe a place where self-achievement is wildly possible. This image resembles the image Europeans had of America, Hollywood and California in particular. Lots of people have discovered after the riots in Los Angeles that this image is false; nevertheless, I still see it appealing as an example. Regardless of all reports about conflicts between Europeans and immigrants to Europe, I still believe that Europe remains appealing to youngsters.

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CHAPTER 13

The Other’s Image in Quinnell’s The Mahdi Abu Bakr Ahmed Bakadir

Perhaps we are exaggerating if we say that literature still plays an important role in the construction of a typical picture of the other as it did in the past; and that it also offers those who master it an effective means to create a world, although fictitious or imaginary but more truthful than reality according to the receiver of the literary innovation. The author has no need to be sincere in the details for he presents literary work and not historical narration or journalistic description of reality where its constructor or innovator is asked to be precise and sincere, and where acceptance or rejection of his narration or description depends on it. Because of this freedom, an almost absolute freedom granted by lovers and readers of literature to such innovators, the author (whether poet or narrator or artist or musician, etc.) can sometimes invent a new picture of the reality he desires or imagines. This freedom can allow him to create or find a non-existent world so as to become the sole existent and known picture of the reality or truth; i.e. he has the capacity to achieve what is known as ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ in the sense of creating an imaginary special world which has no analogy in reality. But this imagination becomes reality because of literary and artistic elements and because of reality it can become as it is not known, or rather not as it was desired to be known. I mention this at the beginning to clarify that literary arts, with their enthusiasm, become important when used for political and cultural purposes and then deserve the attention of the social student and the literary critic in their attempt to understand the text on one hand, and as a matter of course to feel the artistic aspects in it, and on the other hand to study its effects on all types of reader. And perhaps we do not need much evidence or many demonstrations to prove that one verse of satirical or panegyric poems in the Arab literature leaves a great impact on individuals, especially those concerned by the verse or poem. With respect to the impact of literature where we are interested in the Western literature in the

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context of the progressive confrontation with the Arab nation, we have to remember the anthem (epic) of Roland, which was sung by the Crusaders heading toward the East as a source of enthusiasm and ecstasy, and which expressed underestimation and intended distortion of Islam and Muslims. We also have to remember how this deformed picture was engraved in the memory of those armies and is still carved in the memory of their successors perhaps even today; and how many stereotyped pictures of Islam and Muslims were created in the novels of the German author Karl May about the imagined East and addressed to all readers and where it would be difficult to replace them with other pictures. In this context, and in light of the attempt to realize the importance of the impact of literature, especially narrative literature, on the readers, I will try here to study and analyse The Mahdi – a novel published in the early 1980s. First, I will try to give a brief extract about the most important characteristics and characters of the novel and some of its features, and then I will present an external formal analysis of the novel. Second, I will present many possible readings about the expected impact of the novel’s events and plot on four types of reader, where I believe that each type will have a different explanation or analysis about the goals of the novel and perhaps also about the sequence of events. This multilevel reading is intended to permit the largest possible number of angles of analysis and consideration and to focus on the text and context of the novel in order to discover the artistic, cultural and political consequences that could result from such text. Finally, I will try to present what could be known as a neutral reading, which tries to be comprehensive, and I will try to clarify, through such reading, how literature can constitute public opinion where perhaps it is useful to understand its mechanisms and facts in order to deal with it. In any case, I will try to expose some points of view, which are perhaps useful in order to deal with such literary or artistic colours. The story starts when Hawke (which means the falcon), who is in charge of US intelligence operations in the region of the East in general, and stationed in Malaysia, a region in fact quiet and far from urban populated areas, meets a retired British intelligence expert named Pritchard, one of the most eminent intelligence officers of his time. After a friendly meeting, during which Hawke and Pritchard start to get to know each other, Pritchard states that the efforts of Western intelligence in creating the seeds of sectarian disunion and dissension in the Islamic world, which is according to him most of their efforts, are not in the interest of Western governments. If the intelligence agencies were to work on controlling a unified Islam, clarifying that what Islam requires (while it is distinguished in this

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sense from other religions) from its believers is the absolute obedience and commitment to its teachings and principles, it would be able to motivate all Muslim activities and about 1 billion believers, and possess natural wealth and material capacities that great powers cannot absolutely spare. Anyway, Hawke attempts to clarify to what extent Pritchard’s ideas are plain and unreasonable perhaps due to his age. However, as the conversation develops, Pritchard’s ideas became clearer. He suggests that the intelligence agencies, certainly US intelligence to which he is presenting his suggestions, should create a new Mahdi. In order to reinforce its credibility among Muslims, the West (America) has to do a miracle which would persuade everyone (especially pilgrims who stand with him on the sacred hill of Mina) that it is the expected Mahdi. Muslims would then submit to the new Mahdi. And since he would be under Western control they would benefit from this. The simplicity of Pritchard’s idea amazes Hawke who starts to think seriously about the possibilities. After many deliberations and discussions through which Hawke tries to discover why a British ex-intelligence officer would offer these ideas to Americans, but not to his compatriots, Pritchard elaborates, clarifying that what interested him in his last working years was the Western dominance and its monopoly of power. But such an operation could not be carried out by US intelligence alone and perhaps it would be better for them to enter in partnership with British intelligence. Pritchard even suggests that Peter Jimel should be the person to work in cooperation with Americans in this dangerous and important operation. As a matter of course, Hawke tries to oppose the possibility of any British participation in such an operation if it were to be carried out, but Pritchard points out that the Americans would be the winners whether successful or not if the British were at the front, but if the operation failed and the Americans alone were involved, it would cause them big losses and the Soviets would be the first beneficiary. The meeting ends with Hawke’s attempt to obtain answers on two questions: What kind of miracle would create the required impact? How could the ‘invented’ Mahdi be controlled? What would happen if his own mentality and orientation conflicted with Western interests? Thus, wouldn’t they have created an enemy and given it all the possible resources? Pritchard doesn’t answer these questions, but he says that a nation with such technological advances could not fail to produce the required miracle with high competence. As for the second problem, Hawke needs to reflect on the issue. Hawke returns to the USA, while he is in the climax of his power and the ‘CIA’ power, with Pritchard’s ideas strongly clashing in his mind and conscience. He was too pleased by the idea and thought of how could he

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pursue his boss with it and obtain the necessary support and assistance to realize the idea, and how could he pursue his boss about British participation. His boss is excited with the idea, after initial hesitation, and the president approves it as ‘Operation Mirage’. A specialized work team is formed to study the details, and specifically the use of laser technology to produce the ‘miracle’. Hawke coordinates with MI6, the foreign branch of British intelligence, to carry out the operation and gets agreement for Jimel to be responsible for the British end of the operation. This leads eventually to the ‘miracle’, a laser beam directed by satellite which slaughters sacrifices offered by ‘Al Mahdi’ on the feast day before pilgrims in Mina, in such a way that all pilgrims can see this beam with its chosen green colour. As for controlling the invented Mahdi, they deduce the necessity that the assistant and the second man of Al Mahdi be one of their men or tools. As a matter of course, during the preparations of this operation there was strong competition, misunderstanding and lack of confidence between the different parties, but they are able to coordinate their efforts with minimum conflict for the sake of common interest so that the secrets of the operation are not leaked to the USSR or to Muslims, thus causing the total failure of the operation. I should clarify here that the author gives details about Jimel’s character: he is a professional and vocational officer in MI6, athletic and a lover of great music especially ballet. The author uses this information as a means by which the Soviets can interfere or get to know about the operation, for Gordak, the KGB operations man in the East, becomes sceptical about Hawke’s and Jimel’s continual moves and meetings. He is eventually able to put a ballet dancer into Jimel’s life, who is able to discover the details of the operation and report them to the KGB, which threatens US and British intelligence with disclosure if they are excluded from participation and benefiting from its results. The author takes us to El Medina, Jeddah and Mecca in order to draw the character of Abu Kader (alteration of Abdul Kader), the man who will play the role of Al Mahdi, and to show us how he is the creation of Western intelligence in addition to the intelligence agencies working for the success of the operation with its amazing details. Moreover, the author takes us to NASA and to the scientific laboratories advanced in space technology, where the ‘miracle’ is prepared. All the details work out and the highly advanced US technology is able to design the device which will carry out the ‘miracle’ and then explode. Near the time of pilgrimage, they carry out two detailed actions: first, rumours are spread about the arrival of the expected Mahdi, starting in an isolated Indonesian village, but through Western media this rumour

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(which takes the form of visions and conversations of people from different social classes) spreads throughout the Islamic world and thus Islamic public opinion expects Al Mahdi in the pilgrimage of the year. The other action is the follow up of the last moments of the operation’s execution. For this reason, all the advanced means of communication works to connect the agencies managing the operation – they choose Oman in order to supervise closely the operation – and their agents in the field. Finally, we are with the pilgrims on their last days in Mecca, then with Arafat and the feast in Mina. ‘Al Mahdi’ moves forward in front of the millions of Muslim pilgrims with his sacrifices to beg God to offer him a miracle in front of all people. Meanwhile, the US operations centre reports that the laser beam transmission device has suffered a technical defect which they are unable to fix and the minutes pass slowly in a situation of expectation and readiness: if Al Mahdi fails to obtain the miracle he might be torn to pieces by the crowds who would consider him a fake Mahdi. At the last moment, with the defect unrepaired, the laser beam is activated, the ‘miracle’ takes place and everybody thanks God and recognizes Al Mahdi. Here ended the story. However, in a supplementary chapter, a meeting between Pritchard and Jimel takes place and we discover how the entire operation was British and that Abd el Kader (Al Mahdi) is Pritchard’s illegitimate son, left in the Arabian peninsula for long years. We also discover how the operation would enable Britain to regain its international position and that the Americans and Soviets would discover this, but would be unable to do anything, for if they insisted on disclosing the operation, North Sea oil would provide Britain with a stable economic life. However, if the operation is not disclosed, Britain will be able to take the biggest share. Before discussing the issues related to the multiple reading which we had mentioned, I would like to draw attention to a number of formal remarks on the book starting with the cover of the book, which shows a picture of the dark, deserted, mountainous and rugged Mina, and pictures Al Mahdi in the garments of a Mecca pilgrim, thus resembling to a large extent the ancient Roman priests, then the sacrifices and the ram, which is a dead ram directed toward the green beams of the laser. Al Mahdi’s name appears on the cover of the book, which also clearly indicates that the story is a thriller story. The author, and perhaps the publisher, wrote on the back cover of the book a paragraph indicating that the Prophet (God’s blessing and peace be upon him) had declared that one of his grandchildren would appear at the end of time to spread justice on earth and be

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named Al Mahdi. As a matter of course, the implication here is clear and sincere. As for the internal cover, it is headed by praise from ‘Chapman Pincher’ who says that the novel entitled ‘Al Mahdi’ is a wonderful story which sells a bold and dangerous idea about the US and British intelligence and that this story is very important and deep. For this reason the author offered it to Muslims so that they would handle the affairs of their religion and not fall victims of some ideologies (I will go back to this issue later)! He also clarifies that the story was narrated from the point of view of Jemil, the British intelligence officer, and he gives a summary for the story. As for the second internal cover, it clarifies that the story’s author is anonymous and that Quinnell’s name on the cover is a fictitious name and that this unknown author had previously written another book, Man on Fire, which had enjoyed the same importance. This page also presents some praises stated in that book. The author, Quinnell, presents his story with the following dedication: To all believers in Islam: we hope that the simplicity and comprehensiveness of their religion do not blind them from the dangers surrounding them.

It is a strange and unexpected dedication, for what could justify this dedication from an author whose story was a detailed plan to hurt Islam and Muslims by the means of Islam itself! Perhaps the suggested multiple readings would reveal one of the reasons behind such a strange and unexpected dedication! It is rare that an author writes while ignoring the expected receivers (readers) because the minimum aim of writing is that of conveyance, that is conveying ideas, information and visions, to others. Even though some consider writing a discharge for psychological needs, once it is registered it owns its own world, which gives it a reference that could be interpreted and explained by the receiver. Thus, the writer, while writing with or without consciousness, would be writing for someone to read. Consequently, ‘who would read’ becomes a very complicated issue that needs study and examination. The writer in advance announces that he expects that Muslims will be among the readers of this book; and, as matter of course, Western readers because he is a writer who has gained fame from his previous book or in another sense has gained a public adoring his inventiveness, which would not abandon him in his new book, that seems to be exciting and deserves to be read. For these reasons, we will imagine in brief four different types of reader who might have read the book. Because they have different angles,

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dimensions and orientations, we expect that they would understand and interpret the subject of the story in a different way. The readers we have chosen are Muslims and Western. The Muslims are both enthusiastically committed Muslims and others perhaps less committed tending to modernism. As for the Western readers, some are fanatical thriller readers while others are ordinary secular Westerners tending to what is called the humanistic approach, despite the presence of US-style pragmatism in his point of view. I will not detail each intellectual composition alone and I will not rephrase the story as each reader would imagine it, but I will directly tackle the issues related to questions and criticisms and rather judgements given by each one of these readers to the book – ‘the text’ – which is under study and analysis. We will start with the Western reader. The reading and the moods of the story would affirm in his mind and conscience how the issue concerning the relation between religion and modern society is still unsolved in the societies of the developing countries and specifically the Islamic world, and how there is an urgent need for a secular revolution through which the society could get rid of the religion’s control over the political capacities of the individuals in particular and thus turn away the religion toward issues of personal worship. This story will present to such a reader much evidence that when religion controls individual attitudes, especially those related to politics, power and values upon which relations between nations and individuals are based, there would be unfavourable consequences. As a matter of course, this type of reader might indicate with sarcasm or disdain that these societies, because of the exhaustion of religious ideas and beliefs that they were witnessing, were an easy bait for non-religious personalities or rather those rejecting religion for mean material interests. Perhaps this reader’s feelings might be that of sadness and compassion regarding the destiny of these societies that are not able to protect themselves or their interests. As the story reflects the picture of the Muslim society, which is considered a powerless society with no self-existence but rather a creation of its enemies who work hard not only to control and exploit it but to keep it for themselves as an attractive gain, the reader might indicate that these societies, despite the great experiences and wealth given to them, live a primitive life not only in their materialistic life but also in their ideas and behaviours that are no longer suitable or adequate for the modern era! In this sense, we can understand the dedication with which the author has introduced the book and the tone of superiority with feelings of sadness and compassion toward the destiny of this nation that has rendered itself – because of religious beliefs – an obedient tool for the exploitation

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and control of the great powers that are always ready to cooperate and coordinate with each other against it. Anyway, they are passive societies waiting for someone to change or direct them. The reading of such a materialistic thriller is dominated by the consideration of the subject from a humanistic angle, for he sees the necessity of developing and modernizing these societies in order to face the powers of ‘retardation and retroactivity’. Thus, anybody like him would be motivated to any effort that might affect the change of the societies and the reconstitution of their basic structure, but from a pragmatic angle he would look at the same time at these societies as if they were disputed influential fields and regions, and a power vacuum region. Then due to his nationalistic loyalties he would give all the justifications and reasons to the legitimacy of the ‘illegal’ intervention in the affairs of these societies, based on the idea that if we do not intervene others will, and perhaps our political and economic interests in that region of the world enjoying all this economic, geopolitical and cultural importance are prejudiced. It is also necessary to intervene immediately in order to ensure the biggest amount of profits and gains. Perhaps the conversation between Pritchard and Jemil at the end of the story is a detailed picture of these ideas and justifications, for each one of them expresses his pleasure and satisfaction about the operation and its success, especially Jemil, based on the concept of British interests and how it would regain its international status if the operation succeeded, for Britain would not be able to return to the international arena unless by benefiting from the defeats or losses of others, whether this other was the Islamic world or the great powers. As a matter of course, many immoral acts could be justified for the sake of this ‘great aim’. However, this reading, despite its atrocity and severity, is not the only Western reading of this story: there is another type of reader who would look at the story from a different angle. I call this other type ‘the fanatic crusader or the contentious crusader’ reader whose imaginations and emotions are nurtured by the experience of the confrontation between the Crusaders and the Islamic world, especially those lies, fallacies and distortions spread out by the Crusaders for long years against everything Islamic, thus constituting, in the conscience of their citizens, a buried enmity to all that is related to Islam as well as accusing it of every defect and vice. As a matter of course, such readers would read the story considering it more evidence that Islam is a false religion, being a group of primitive beliefs that could be manipulated or directed even by those who do not believe in any religion, and that these beliefs are the reasons behind the political and economic problems from which the modern world is

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suffering. Such beliefs create the seeds of violence resulting from the naive compliance to a vision or personal desire or leadership, which are in general mean and ignorant, as shown for example in the story of ‘Al Mahdi’. Although the act of supporting and helping Western intelligence as well as working on giving success to their plans would be for materialistic interests, it does not contradict the hopes, ambitions and orientations of Crusaders. Maybe this type of reader was displeased that all heroes of this operation, from all participating countries, are not advocates of Christianity, although the victory over Islam is considered a victory of Christianity. However, this would not affect the support of the readers, for the story shows how all non-Muslims do not refuse to ‘save’ Muslims from the ‘epidemic’ of the naive surrender to the Islamic teachings!! Although the idea of the expected Christ is an idea already existing in Christianity, Al Mahdi, as described by the story, is a character created for political purposes and for control. It doesn’t hurt the ‘faith’ of the Christian for that idea or religious principle. Moreover, that reader would not feel that he was destroying an idea in which he believes as much as he would refuse a materialistic practice that had used the name of religion. For this reason, although he might feel a kind of alienation towards the acts committed by the intelligence bodies, it doesn’t hurt him in the case of the Islamic world, because the aim is to affirm the control over this world, and maybe through ‘uncovering’ the corruption of its beliefs and ideas it is possible to Christianize its individuals and thus gain them in the camp of the truth forever! I will not discuss now the arbitrariness of these readings, for the text is familiar with it, and for this reason it holds inside it what could cause its bursting and reappearance in a strong picture, as I will clarify later. So let us now look at the possible readings from the point of view of the Muslim. We will start by the reading of the ‘ordinary Muslim’ who was also mostly targeted in the dedication of the author by which he introduced his story. Such readers are most likely to be graduates of modern schools who know the English language and are open-minded toward the West, and perhaps know some aspects of their contemporary civilization. In general, this reader is dazzled by Western civilization due to its great technological and scientific accomplishments, and at the same time he considers himself a true faithful Muslim although his knowledge about Islam is not based on a deep understanding of the tradition of this religion. The reading of this story will stir up the feelings of sorrow and confusion, and perhaps fear and weakness, in front of these strong powers. In fact, the author succeeds in picturing the complications and the depth of

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the methodical planning followed by the intelligence agencies in their detailed study and in their resort to all types of experts and specialists for the success of the operation, the fact which gives a false impression to the reader that such great efforts appear against the primitiveness and simplicity of the Islamic societies, and this is according to what the author expresses in an exaggerated way, which made the gain and victory in the interest of the Western side without any doubt. Didn’t this success succeed in the end? This feeling of fear and inferiority generates doubt and requires selfcriticism from this type of reader. They doubt the feasibility of the values of their societies and how Islam became an easy tool to control and hurt Muslims, and how such teachings generated or rather permitted the propagation of ‘Fakirs’ and the blind surrender to any mission or appeal in the name of religion. For this reason, such reader becomes more sympathetic and responsive to the ideas of enlightenment or perhaps secularization, for he becomes like him convinced that Muslims need a new consciousness about materialistic issues: political, economic and cultural in addition to the limitation of religious practices to the domain of worship and rituals for hermitages only. Moreover, such a reader might feel the possibility that Islamic movements are the creations of foreign powers. Copland’s book, The Game of the Nations, with his evaluation of the loyalties of the Arab leaders during the period about which he had written, had a great impact on the psychology of the Arab citizen, and his indications or rather declarations became in some quarters postulates on the basis of which Arab chiefs and leaders rule. The story’s events might force the reader to doubt, then inquire or perhaps hold the Islamic movements responsible for being agent movements that aim at destroying Islam and the Islamic world from the inside. It seems that this was the hidden aim of the author who indicated as such in the idea as voiced by Pritchard and how he had placed Al Mahdi and his men among Muslims many years previously, in addition to the cooperation of people who seemed to be religious and were rather the religious leadership of the local group. Thus, we discover inside the story that they were mere agents trading in religion, i.e. the narration of events in the story creates with respect to the ‘ordinary Muslim’ confusion and doubts in himself as a civilized being, and at the same time he feels powerless in front of the accurate planning and continual hard work. He also has a hidden feeling about the credibility and then the seriousness of the issue related to the feasibility of the Islamic movements acting in the field. Then he wonders about the possibility of their success and in case they succeed is it possible to rely on them whether they are honest or agents! There is

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no doubt that these confusions and doubts are very dangerous and it seems that the construction and the narration of the story creates them being undeniable empirical postulates, or perhaps the act of accepting them was a reason for this belief under a superficial culture about Islam and its teachings and history. This leads us to the last reading, which is perhaps the most important one of those exposed: the reading of ‘the committed enthusiastic Muslim’. This reader is most likely committed to the Islamic teachings, to believe in Islam and be ready to defend it. As a matter of course, we expect that he knows the English language – the language of the story – and that he is somehow aware of the Western culture and its symbols and enmity to Islam. Such a reader would face such a story with an Islamic cultural background whose most important expressions are ‘the intellectual invasion’ and ‘the crusade enmity’. The approach of these terms, ideas and attitudes would enable the reader to explain ‘the intentions’ of the author in a conscious manner within the civilizational context in the face of the intellectual invasion, the fact which would enable him to refer to the contents of the story and the way of its narration in order to affirm the West’s conspiracy on Islam and Muslims and how they are aggressive to the sanctity of the religion and beliefs for mean material goals!! As a matter of course, if the events of the story affirmed the intellectual invasion, crusade enmity and conspiracy over the Islamic world in which he believes in advance, the ‘distortion’ which the story tries to pass through the doubt in the credibility of the Islamic movements would be his object of opposition, for it would clarify that what was used in the story to defame Islam were mystic movements as well as movements depending on rejecting and hidden beliefs that have no connection with the true Islam, and that Muslims, especially those whose minds and hearts are enlightened by the contemporary Islamic movements, would not be tricked by this idea but would be the first to await it. Perhaps such a reader would indicate how the author was able to conceal such groups in the story, for they are the obstacles facing all anti-Islamic conspiracies. Perhaps the cognizance of the story was an opportunity for this type of reader to point out the numerous mistakes of the writer, whether in mentioning the names or distances between the cities or in picturing the Islamic environment, in addition to the those were related to religious concepts, doctrines and values. It is known that the salvation character of Al Mahdi does not play a central role in the doctrines of the Sunnites; for this reason, such a reader would consider the book’s text as if it were a non-international text whose mistakes indicate its insipidity and then rejection.

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Moreover, his cognizance of the story might help in introducing the necessity to confront the ego and self-criticism in which some elements of the Islamic movement are caught, and how the hostile powers awaiting and watching Islam and Muslims would try to benefit from such mistakes or errors in order to attack and harm Islam. Thus, the enthusiastic reader would become more convinced that the West’s conspiracy and enmity would not weaken Islam, for he would end the story – which depends on the appearance and recognition of Al Mahdi – as dictated by his culture and doctrine where Muslims discover the lie of this Mahdi and that he is the creation of the West and its interests. Thus, Islam would remain a high fortress challenging the storms on condition that Muslims are aware of their role, responsibilities and fulfilment of the mission ... Although the readings mentioned are numerous and conflicting, they find what supports or causes inside the story itself are believed to be inspiring this, the fact which requires from us the presentation of a reading that tries to be ‘neutral’. This expression in the presented context means a reading that pretends innocence, while at the same time it tries to be reflective and critical in the text of the story for being a story, and since it doesn’t have ready ideas it makes an effort to recognize them in the body of the story! The first thing that draws the attention in this reading is the aggressiveness and violence of the West regardless of whether it was an ancient colonialist or imperialist or communist, for its relation and attitude toward the other civilizations are summarized by, first, the use of its powers, technology and understandings about control and hegemony on others. In fact, those who are planning and working on the execution of this matter are its best men, i.e. the new struggling and hard-working generation, which has a modern culture without being prisoners of religious or historical tendencies! Second, the heroes of the story (those sincere representatives of the West and its ambitions) have a clear conscience towards the intrigues and conspiracies they commit against Islam, and their insignificant justifications are in the interest of the free world or the economic profits without looking at the interests, desires and ambitions of other nations and civilizations or rather in fact suppressing these ambitions and working against them. There is no doubt that this becomes sick violence when it is committed by the best representatives of a certain civilization, for it reflects the tendencies of violence in that civilization and their danger to humanity, especially if they possess the means to carry out its criminality and violence. As for the second remark, it is the boastfulness or superiority of the author, which reflects through his heroes the superiority of the Western

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civilization that has a double attitude: an attitude of disdain mixed with pity towards other civilizations, specifically Islam, and, at the same time, an attitude of competition regarding a victim whose killing is considered an act of genius. This reading noticed how the author was able to show, through his narration, the aspects of this double attitude in the discussions, metaphysical, and murmurs uttered by the heroes of the story, their doubts and misunderstandings about their religion and era; besides that the heroes of the story consider that the Western civilization controls and directs the world for this is its destiny! This vision is reflected through the author’s description about the Islamic environment. He had exaggerated in picturing it as a passive primitive and retarded environment despite the presence of all qualifications of success or rather superiority in order to prove that the East, specifically the Islamic world, is not worthy of his environment and the potentials given to him, and then preventing him from benefiting from this rich and promising potential while committing many faults, the author could have corrected them if he wanted by exposing them in front of any expert in Islam and the Arab regions. But perhaps he intended this ignorance in order to clarify that the deep cognition of the Islamic world is not a necessity, for its leading is much easier where there is no need for any effort and time. This reading considers the dedication as an invitation to persuade the reader who belongs to the Islamic world with neutrality and objectivity on one hand and to clarify how he is the victim of ‘old’ beliefs on the other hand. At the same time, it offers the Western reader suggestions that the Islamic world is a victim of its situations and beliefs and that this world has to face its destiny and bear its burdens. On the other hand, it dramatically causes the reader to detest the good intentions of the author who tries to be keen and advise Muslims, as well as to benefit from the greatness and development of the West and to present the moral justification for the West’s intervention in the affairs of the Islamic world. In fact, the act of comparing the living manners of the heroes of the story makes the modern reader respect these heroes for their seriousness, loyalty and devotion to their work, besides being people who build their glories by their own efforts. As for the Muslim heroes behind the story, they are on the contrary either simple retarded people or agents naively working against their religion and nation. This is true in the description of both environments, where we find that the Western environment is developed, conscious, opened and cultured or rather a highly conscious and cultured one contrary to the Islamic environment, which is an environment of traditional villages or cities that tend toward chaos and isolation.

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However, after these different readings, what are the benefits from such stories? It is an adequate and legitimate question, but I think that answering it by mentioning a list of benefits is undesirable, for what is required is the question about the legitimacy of what we are reading and analysing, especially when what is written about us imposes upon us a confrontation, which is in fact a clashing confrontation that tries to impose upon us a kind of contest. While imposing on us the field of contest, it might be taking us away from the domain where we find the study we intend to benefit from. Maybe the ideas that I have mentioned require some clarification and examples. As I mentioned at the beginning of this study, we are dealing with an inventive narrative text that creates in us and for us a world, which is pictured and invented by the author. Perhaps it was able to cause impressions which result necessarily from the difference lying in the receivers’ references. These impressions might be different, but they would create a picture which is capable of entering the receivers’ unconscious worlds, because of the influence of the literary inventive works, thus leaving pictures that are maybe targeted by the author on purpose, that might not be resisted even by those who would try to refuse them. Therefore, the negative picture which was constructed, and would most likely continue, for the West to conserve its hegemony and morally justify it, would perhaps not be considered in the serious studies or policies and strategies in the same clarity and distinction as would be studied in the literary arts and works. The constitution of the Western conscience towards us often takes place through these texts in which the readers are interested and which are not for specialists, besides being far from the pedantry of the specialists and their interest in the ‘academic’ glamour and precision, i.e. they are texts whose nature renders them more powerful and then more courageous to penetrate the internal world of the reader: rejection or acceptance. For this reason, the Muslim cultural faces wishing to recognize what is prepared against them on one hand, and how it is prepared on the other, should closely know these suggestions through which lies the minimum achievement of the ego protection and defence. We should know what our enemy thinks about us and how he prepares his attack against us (I mean here the mechanisms of this attack and its production). As a matter of course, we can wonder in this context: what if we had prepared first for the creation of literature that could enable us to create the victories and strength of the Muslim reader using the same lethal weapon whose mechanisms and means are supposed to be common, especially when we are frankly victims of all kinds of troubles and hellish plans prepared against

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us as a nation and as entities, in addition to the fact of benefiting from the cognition of these tools in criticizing what the West writes about us and about itself and the possibility of inventing a narrative literature even in the languages of the West itself where we could be attackers rather than defenders or targets. Perhaps in what Israel was doing to the mass literature given to its people in Hebrew about Arab and Islam, and what some Hebrews have written in European languages about the Arab–Israel conflict, constitute a lesson to which we should pay some attention.

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CHAPTER 14

Arab and Turkish Images of Each Other Ibrahim Al Dakuki

Introduction Arabs and Turks have lived together side by side in conflict and harmony in this vital part of the world for in excess of 1,250 years. This cohabitation has taken place in a period of human history characterized by rivalry, hatred, European wars, eastern–western wars and western–eastern wars again. The impact of these wars persists as a means of hegemony, exploitation and colonization in all its forms, political, economic and cultural, and have rendered issues brought up in related studies more complicated due to their intricate, intertwined and variable character in local, national, regional and international societies. So one cannot study Arab–Turkish relations or the image the two parties have of one another without taking into consideration the multilateral relations established in the greater Middle East area – so called by the new American concept – or the national, regional and international extensions of these relations. Neither can one visualize a general framework of the image Turkish public opinion has of the Arabs, positive or negative, without considering the Palestinian conflict or the common vision towards Islam and consequently towards Arabs. Moreover, one cannot perceive the image Arabs have of Turks separately from the issue of Cyprus, the Turkish national security issue, the water issue, the boundary issue and the minorities’ issue due to the existence of intersecting mutual influence among all concerned parties in the region or of the interference among them. Therefore, it is important to study the images the Arabs and Turks have of each other and the changes that have occurred to these images during the past 80 years in both Arab and Turkish national subconsciousness, and their manifestations in publications and the media in order to minimize the impact of preconceived judgement and the impact of the negative stereotypes the two parties have of each other. Consequently, the bulk of this study, which has undergone a qualitative context analysis during the period of this research, was divided according to La Zouel theory into subjects, and these subjects were further

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divided into classified symbols in order to reach the aspired results after setting hypotheses related to the subject. Submitting an issue to the rules of the context analysis science requires setting hypotheses to explain the analysis or the purpose of this thorough examination or scrutiny.

The image of Arabs among Turks Cultural exchanges between Arabs and Turks It is necessary to mention at first that cultural exchanges include all kinds of folk culture in its positive and negative1 aspects since the first contact between the two neighbouring countries. Nevertheless, as the relationship developed between Turkey and Arab countries after 1965, the two parties gradually forsook all negative aspects of their folk cultures and attempted to develop the positive aspects of both their cultures. Factors influencing forming the negative image of Arabs among Turks The power of the Islamic Empire – whether Arab or Turkish – resided in the Caliph’s leadership of Islam and in the total obedience of Muslims to him. As a result, the Caliph, who lived by ‘the shores of the Tigris, ruled mercilessly over the Atlantic or the Mediterranean Sea and the neighbouring Bedouin. When the moment of danger comes threatening this great empire, the people will revolt in a holy war’;2 through the declaration of the jihad, ‘the obligation and duty of Muslims for the protection of the Dawa (call) to Islam, in order to stand against any threat to the Islamic religion and believers.’3 Arabism – not as extremist nationalism but as an identity – and Islam are two inseparable entities. The relation between them is that of differentiation, integration and transcendence at the same time: ‘If Arabism is the civilization cultural container of Islam,’4 then Islam, with its modern revolutions, the spirit of faith in Man’s liberty and the rights upon popular and heritage basis, ‘tries to restore the national independence of the home of Muslims, in the face of colonization and Zionism.’5 Islam has transcended the boundaries of old nationalities and confessional conflicts, within the solidarity and integration in the age of large blocs and the new world order. The idea of Islamic solidarity is received with caution and many Arab and Turkish nationalists oppose it. For some Salafists, it is in contradiction with the nationalist call. However, if we look at the reason behind this caution, it would be clear that it is due to the fact that the idea of Islamic solidarity was used during the fifties and

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sixties for political purposes by foreign colonialist forces, and was intended to generate conflict in the struggle for Arab unity.6

It is then possible to define the key elements seeking to distort the image of Arabs among Turks, and study them through the following three subjects. Nationalist extremism The birth of the concept of nationalism in Europe during the 19th century, and its transfer to the Ottoman state by Ottoman students at French and German universities and by most Ottoman thinkers who sought refuge in Europe, led to intellectual outburst at the beginning of the 20th century. This intellectual outburst tried to renew everything from language to philosophy, administration and law, until a group of Turkish thinkers called for the unity of Great Turkey – according to a combination of tolerant Islam, moderate nationalism and western modernization – stretching from the Adriatic Sea to the north of China. The Ottoman political thinker Yusuf Akcura tackled the subject of unity in detail in his famous thesis ‘Three political modes’, published in the Turkish newspaper Turk Ghazte Si, issued in Egypt in 1904 (issues 24–34) and reprinted between 1976 and 1987. He underlined the existence of three unionist political trends in the Ottoman state that the Turkish thinkers must contemplate and chose the best among them:7 •

•

•

The institution of the Ottoman unity based upon the equal rights and obligations of all religions, races and nationalisms of the Ottoman state. Yet the reactions written on this matter assert that the Turkish nationality would be a minority in the country, and that the Arabs will take control over it. Therefore, despite western support, it is not a realistic idea.8 The concept of ‘Islamization’ or the establishment of a state upon Islamic foundations through the establishment of a world Islamic union. The idea first emerged under the reign of Sultan Abdulaziz (1830–76) after many critiques regarding the idea of ‘Ottoman unity’. Sultan Abdulhamid the Second (1842–1918) implemented the idea when he considered that the Holy Koran is the basis of Islamic legislation in the Ottoman state, and adopted Arabic as the language of religious sciences. The concept of ‘Turkish Unity’ through the establishment of the Turanic National Federation extending from the Adriatic Sea to Yang Tze province in China. Although the proponents of this concept think that Russia would be an obstacle in the face of this federation, the fact

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that all Turks are Muslims would facilitate its formation despite that this might lead non-Turkish nationalities to walk out of this federation. However, due to the break out of the First World War, the insurrection of the Arabs against unionists and ‘the Arabs’ agreement with Turkey’s enemy – the English – along with their treason, caused our forces on the war fronts to be in a very embarrassing situation, which turned the war against us.9 Most Turkish intellectuals imputed the bad image of the Arabs among Turks to two reasons: 1. The official Turkish reaction toward the hostile Muslim Arab position against the Ottoman state – i.e. the Turks – the caliphate of the Muslims during the First World War,10 and the persistence of the Arab hostile stand in the face of Turkish affairs until the present day, through the support of Syria and the PLO to the Turkish opposition groups; in spite of Turkey’s support of the PLO in the international conferences.11 2. The orientalist–evangelistic–Zionist–Dunamawist (in reference to the Dunma confession known in Turkey) heated activities that distorted the Arabs’ image by offending them – since they are the driving of Islam – in order to strike Islam indirectly in Turkey. Most Turkish writers, intellectuals and politicians of Islamic tendencies in Turkey believe in that matter.12 Religion The Turks’ knowledge of Arabs before Islam may be the key to the relationship between Arabs and Turks later on. The Arabs were presented in Turkish history books outside any historical context or common history, which described them as living in a tribal atmosphere of war, fighting, looting and captivating presented in the Days of the Arabs (in pre-Islamic times). Yet they had high attributes like generosity (Hatem Ettaii) and allegiance (Hanzala and the King Annoman bin Almonzer) along with negative ones like the tradition of burying newborn girls alive.13 On the other hand, Turkish history books underlined the fact that Arabs worshipped statues, and had many gods during the Jahilya era14. However, we notice that the Arabs disappear from the events starting the Abbasid rule, where their history becomes part of Islam. Moreover, the Arab virtues are not comparable with the Turkish ones: only negative Arab aspects are revealed in parallel with the Turkish positive ones. The

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burying of newborn girls highlights the freedom of the Turkish women, Arab polytheism display the Turks’ belief in one God in shamanistic tradition. Therefore the Turks embraced Islam sincerely and voluntarily in a true response to the Dawa (call). Their beliefs and traditions were similar to the Islamic beliefs: the belief in one and only God, offering sacrifices15 and the belief in the immortal soul, the afterlife and the distribution of alms – food – at the end of the Mawled day celebrations or on the 10th day of Achura. Before, the shaman distributed the meat of the offering to the present celebrators, after every festival. For the purpose of underlining the authenticity of the Turkish culture and heritage, and the role of the Turks in the Islamic civilization, an indirect comparison in the history school books is established between the accomplishments of the Muslim Arabs and Turks in the service of Islam. The Arabs led the conquest of Transoxania and some parts of North Africa; the Turks contributed to the Islamization of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the north of India, Bengal, Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The Arabs had an intellectual contribution to the Islamic civilization, as did the works of Turkish thinkers such as Alfarabi and Avicenna. Perhaps the most important issue in the field of Turkish historical studies through school books is the secularism affair: the Islamic character was Arab in the first place, but it held a Turkish feature during the last thousand years and until the fall of the caliphate in 1924. The Turks at the time held high the flag of Islam in defence of the house of Islam. However, Islam was separated from the state at that period, and the Sheikh of Islam did not interfere in the state affairs, in spite of his high religious position.16 The Turkish feature then did not have any political mission for the state was secular, and it is a clear sign that Islam and secularism can in fact coexist in the framework of a secular– religious–nationalist mixture. Ibrahim Kafass Uglu had pursued the idea since the 1970s, in order to link the historical facts with both the ancient Turkish heritage and the Islamic heritage. Kafass Uglu and his assistants Altan de li Urman, Amin Uktay and Unyazi Akshiit included this idea in history books for intermediate schools in the 1970s and 1980s. Due respect for the great of Islam was restored in these books, in addition to the annulment of all extremist nationalist allusions.17 The believers in the Islamic–nationalist blend think that Islam protected the Turks from extinction, as the Turks protected Islam and the Muslims. In examining history, we find that all the Turkish people who did not embrace Islam as a religion vanished, while Muslim Turks succeeded in building great empires. When the Crusaders invaded Anatolia, Syria and

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Palestine, the Turks were the ones to save the holy land from their evil, rather than Arabs or Persians.18

The image of the Arabs in the Turkish press Through the analysis19 we can extract the image of the Arabs in the Turkish press from the issues it dealt with during the period of the study. There are four main assumptions around which this image is focuussed: 1. 2. 3. 4.

The Turkish press view towards the Arab–Turkish–Israeli relations. Turkey and the Middle East. Arab–Turkish problems. The other side of the coin: a) Sympathy with the Arab and Muslim struggle against colonization, Zionism and evangelistic movement. b) Support for the struggle of the Palestinian people against oppression and aggression.

The analysis technique for the Turkish press requires the following steps, needed to obtain results in the matter of our subject.20

Assumptions of the study 1. The Turkish press is free, which is why the general policy of the newspaper determines how it deals with topics, and columnists and reporters may have different views on the same topic, especially the biggest Turkish newspapers (e.g. Sabah, Hurryet and Milyyet). Therefore the same paper’s point of view regarding Arab affairs can vary according to the writers. 2. Most reporters and columnists show the same Arab image depicted in Western media, a mutilated one through Hollywood films and the influence of the big Western news agencies that supply Turkish newspapers, notably in the times of crisis. The official and private Turkish television stations still run the same Hollywood films. Yet some Turkish newspapers, and a few private stations, managed to elude the spiral of these movies and strong news agencies, and started taking in the right information and objective comments by counting on their own private sources. 3. A religious and cultural gap between Arabs and Turks. The religious gap opened up when Turkey adopted secularism, and widened due to the use of secularism as a tool of pressure and terrorism against the Muslim majority by Kemal Atatürk’s successors. The cultural gap

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opened up in the 1950s when Turkey joined the Western defence alliance (NATO) and distanced itself from the Orient and peoples of the Orient – especially the Arabs. Turkey also eagerly sought to improve relations with Europe as a prelude to joining the European Community (now the EU). Then, in 1952, there was the Egyptian revolt: President Jamal Abdul Nasser led the increasing tide of revolutionary Arab nationalism, and defied Arab rulers who wanted to maintain their regimes and legitimacy in their new-born states; he even defied the West and its allies in the region. The emergence of the Palestinian revoltion and the PLO as the leader of Palestinian struggle, with all the violence, widened the gap even further. The passageway was ready then for anyone opposing the Arabs to arouse public opinion against any Arab leader, Arab state or Arabs themselves. Some strict seculars opposed the Arabs because they considered them the driving force of Islam: every time political parties of Islamic tendencies (Welfare, Happiness, Justice and Development) were mentioned, the Arabs were accused of interfering in Turkey’s affairs and attempting to conspire against secularism by provoking a religious coup and supporting terrorism. 4. Turkish public opinion – backed by the press – shows great sensitivity to two crucial matters concerning the life and heritage of the Turkish people: national security embodied in the unity of the land and the people and (in reference to Kemal Atatürk) Kemali ideas; and the Turkish principles incorporated in social values and the cultural heritage. The study of newspaper content and substance is a reliable way to determine the image of a nation as viewed by another. We adopted this method in studying the Arab image in the Turkish press. Accordingly, ten daily newspapers were examined for three months from 21 November 1993 to 20 February 1994.

The Turkish press view of the mutual Arab–Turkish–Israeli relations When we applied the theory of press content analysis to this subject, we found in the 115 articles published about it in the Turkish press – during the period of study – that: Arabs were accused of ‘terrorism’ 34 times; Arabs were ‘in conflict among each other’, ‘murderers’, ‘thieves’, ‘traitors’, ‘dictators’, ‘oppressors’ and ‘aggressors’, four times; Arabs were ‘collaborators’, ‘untrustworthy’, ‘cruel’, ‘cowards’, ‘violent’, ‘stupid’ and ‘adventurous’,

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twice; while the following attributes (or their equivalents) concerning Arabs and their rulers appeared once: ‘insane’, ‘pretentious’, ‘bloody’, ‘butcher’, ‘enemy of humanity’, ‘barbaric’, ‘back-stabbing’, ‘vengeful’, ‘complexed’, ‘backward’ and ‘pirates’. Arab rulers were the main targets of the Turkish newspapers using negative designations: the Iraqi (40), Syrian (23), Libyan (14) and Palestinian (4) presidents, whereas the United Nations Secretary General, Boutros Ghali, was called ‘vindictive’ and ‘the collaborator’. ‘Zionist collaboration’ was among the designations of other Arab leaders, without one single positive attribute. ‘Terrorist’ was commonly used to designate four Arab rulers (23 times) in the Turkish newspapers, as well as suggestions of oppression, treason, collaboration and hostility towards Turks, mounting up to a total of 84 negative attributes; 52.5 per cent (of 165 negative attributes) designate these four Arab leaders alone. The positive designations of the Arabs – i.e. the Arab people – were five: neighbours of Turkey, brothers, believers, noble people and cultivated; which means 32.5 per cent of positive adjectives against the negative. However, these only appeared in Turkish newspapers of Islamic tendencies: Türkiye, Zaman and Milligazete; as well as Kundum and Idylanak both leftist and more or less close in their comments to Cumhuriyet and Sabah. The absence of trust in Arab rulers and their negative descriptions, with the variety of opinions in the Turkish press, confirm our first assumption in this study.

Turkey and the Middle East If we look closely at the 104 headlines concerning this topic, we see only 21 provide ‘news’, because comments, analysis, interviews and declarations dealt with the difficult local and international Middle East affairs, through their active elements on one hand, the relations among the states of the region, and the interpenetration of interests and their integration with the West on the other hand. Therefore, the internal Turkish problems must be approached in order to examine relations with the other states of the region and the world, on the basis of its influence on current events in the region and it is influenced by them in the context of international relations. Three contradictory positions appeared in the Turkish press about the internal situation, the Turkish position toward Middle East affairs and relations with the states of the region, as well as with the rest of the world. a) Turkey must devote itself to resolving its internal problems away from others’ influence. It must also build balanced relations with the

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neighbours by clearly taking into consideration their realities.21 Thus, Turkey must change its foreign policy by abandoning the West, whereas the Zaman newspaper, in its 6 February 1994 issue, states that, the conflicts in the Middle East exist since the West planned to divide it and created in each state a problem with another.

The proponents of this stand call for the establishment of a common Islamic market for the development of the Islamic states’ economies, specifically because Turkey and the Arab and Islamic states form a distinguished economic unity

in order to prevent Israel from gaining access to the Arab markets for it is not accepted as a member of the Middle East.22 b) The future of the Middle East depends on the Turkish–Arab–Israeli reconciliation because it will generate stability in the entire region through joint action and asserting the importance of Turkey’s role in the Middle East.

c) The ‘Arab divisions’, the incapacity of Arabs to improve their morals and behaviour, and their betrayal of the Turks, are the source of problems in the Middle East because Arabs did not leave positive impacts but were bad leaders and bad examples for all Muslims. Hence, was the Turkish people and Atatürk’s refusal of Arabic Islam inseparable from the Koran. Unfortunately we followed the Arab expounders of Koran.23 The Arab treason of the Turks, and their selling the land of Palestine to the Jews, are but one eternal black stain in history. Therefore, they deserve to be divided into scattered small states by the colonizing states. They will never be able to accomplish the unity they dream of, because they are politically dislocated and fight among themselves even over simple matters, like offering aid to their fellow Muslim brothers.24 Still, the same newspapers support most Arab causes and condemn Israeli aggression. This agreement of the Turkish press opinion of Arabs, underlines our third theory about the existence of a cultural gap between Arabs and Turks, concerning religion, nationalism and patriotism.

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The Arab–Turkish problems When examining the information related to Arab–Turkish problems, during the period of study, we find that most headlines, and titles too, form accusations against the Arabs because they focus on the following: • • • • • • • •

The Arabs use the Islamic religion to harm Turkish national security. Arabs interfere in Turkey’s internal affairs. The Arabs desire the Turkish water. Arabs covet Turkish territories. Arabs incite Kurds and support their separatist movement. Arabs encourage terrorism against Turks. The Arabs are the ones opposing Turkey and the Turks. The Arabs mistreat Turkish minorities in Arab countries.

However, the Turkish national security is the first concern in Turkish news analysis and comment: all other problems with the Arabs are linked to this crucial vital matter, which proves our fourth assumption concerning the Turkish press. The Islamic, nationalist, leftist and secular newspapers agree in condemning foreign interference in Turkey’s affairs, which also confirms our fourth consideration about Turkish public opinion’s sensitivity to national security and principles which the Turkish media refuse to violate, break or doubt.

The other face of the coin Some Turkish newspapers drew a dark image of the Arabs and stated that Arabs exploit religion, interfere in Turkey’s affairs, support terrorism, want Turkish water and territories, and persecute the Turkish minorities in the Arab countries. Nevertheless, another group of leftist, progressive and Islamic newspapers support Arab causes and sympathise with the Arabs in the face of the evangelistic–Zionist–imperialistic attack against Arabs and Muslims. Thus, these newspapers, in defence or support, focused on the Arab struggle against the forces seeking to take the Arab lands and riches, and to recolonize and divide the Arab countries: • Sympathy towards the Arabs and Muslims’ fight against colonization,

Zionism and the evangelistic movement. • Support of the Palestinian struggle. • Calls for reconcilliation and development of relations with the Arabs.

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The image of Turks among Arabs The study to depict the Turkish image in the minds of the Arabs proves all our assumptions. Our first assumption underlines the intellectual custodianship the Arab political authorities imposed on public opinion, regarding the rejection of the other and the violation of human rights through political propaganda aiming at turning the Arab media into the voice of the ‘master’, who does not devote attention to the people of the region. Thus, the media became alienated from its social reality. It became the mirror reflecting mutilated modes, values and concepts of reality on one hand, and a vassal eager to follow the Western media in the content, policies and systems, instead of representing a creative independent media, on the other hand. Our second assumption in this study focuses on the existence of both positive and negative images of the Turk. Based on the analysis of the Arab media approaches, it has shown that most of the political intellectual elite of the nationalist thought in the eastern part of the Arab nation consider the Ottoman rule over the Arab countries as Turkish colonization. They also describe the Ottoman period as one of decadence, underdevelopment and injustice. While the political intellectual elite in the Maghreb view it as protection from the Western crusader colonialist invasion and give therefore a positive image of the Ottoman Turks. Despite the existence of a grey zone between the two pictures, the changes experienced in our contemporary world, and the Arab intellectual calls for promoting cooperation between the Arab and Turkish nations so as to face challenges, build new relations upon well-established basis, surpass negativities and avoid the burdens of history to build a bright future for both nations, all resulted in reconciling the views of many Arab historians for a new look at the history of Ottoman rule, in order to bring to light all its positive and negative aspects through serious scientific studies. Thus only 23 per cent of the Arabs have a negative stereotyped image of the Turks on one hand, and the calls for understanding and dialogue for the benefit of both nations increased on the other. Our third assumption asserts that the mutual negative stereotyped images among the political intellectual Arab and Turkish elites alike, arise from the mistrust among rulers on both sides due to preconceived judgements shaped by the accumulations of the past, miscommunication and lack of attempts to develop the relations for better understanding of the other party. Our fourth assumption is based on the presence of a cultural religious gap between the Arabs and the Turks, which reflects the different political currents that rose within. Each side tried to prove its security readiness

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according to that gap, after the radical secular nationalist current appeared in Turkey, while the traditional religious current remained in the Arab countries. Because of that gap, Arabs and Turks became absorbed by problems due to Turkish accusations that the Arabs were ‘supporting the fundamentalist Islamic terrorism against secular Turkey’. The Arab nationalist and political Islamic orientations responded by describing the modern Turkish state as ‘the state of the Jews, which abides to the wishes of Washington and Tel Aviv.’ This political division was reflected in their policies at regional and international levels and in their bilateral relations in the fields of national security and development, as well as cultural status, which resulted in the formation of the mutual negative stereotyped images. In order to examine the transformations of the image of Turks among Arabs, in the light of the information study and analysis of content, we will deal with the subject in two following themes.

Factors influencing the shaping of Turkish image among Arabs During the 1,250 years that followed the establishment of the Arab Islamic empire until the fall of the Ottoman Islamic empire in 1918, the Turks, after being embraced by the Arabs and having integrated with the Islamic civilization, managed to establish many Islamic empires in the vast lands stretching from China to the Mediterranean Sea. Thus, the Muslim Turks controlled the greater part of the old world for six centuries and the Middle East for almost a 1,000 years. This long historical epoch extending from the 8th century to the 20th century, in the framework of Arab relations with the Turks, led to a cultural accumulation with all its contradictions, complexities, negative as well as positive aspects, and the changes of the international relations in the Middle-East region. So the Arab perception of the Turks varied during that long period of history between positive and negative. Therefore, we believe that the influencing factors in the formation of the Turks image among the Arabs was shaped around the three following axes. Arab national security After contact with the Arabs and embracement of the Islamic religion, the Turks became dependent on the Arab Islamic empire that extended from Turkestan east to Morocco in the west. A region considered by the strategies of the dominant ideologies, like the USA and Israel, as the Greater Middle East ‘rectangle’ stretching from Morocco in the west to Tashkend in the east, as stated by Chomsky in an interview with the French

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newspaper Le Monde.25 However, the establishment of the Ottoman state at the end of the 13th century, its transformation into an empire after the occupation of Egypt in 1517, and its transfer of the Islamic caliphate from Cairo to Istanbul, made the Arab world subordinate to the Ottoman Empire whose seat was in Turkey, and Istanbul the capital of the Islamic caliphate which ‘represented the most important linkage between the Arabs and the Turks after the geographic one’.26 The history of the Arab–Turkish relations has been a mix of agreement, divergences, conflict and cooperation since the beginning of the 20th century. Still, interests due to the neighbouring conditions were often a source of apprehension for both parties: Regarding common interests, the two parties never hesitated to cooperate, and in case of disagreement both often overlooked it. They may of course not have forgotten it or changed their views, yet they never insisted on triggering it,27

despite the fact that the Arab obsession with national security often led to the moulding of a stereotyped image of the Turks. This is where retired general Tal’at Mussallem thinks that the Arab national security interests regarding Turkey are mainly defence, economy and internal security interests, as well as the cultural interests relative to the common values system of the Arabs and the Turks.28

Turkey too has interests similar to those of the Arabs. However, some Arab interests related to Arab national security can only be attained through Turkey for different reasons: its geographic location controls the entire Arab trade with the states of the Black Sea,29 it is the crossing point of the Iraqi oil pipelines to the Mediterranean Sea30 and the gateway that guards the Arab nation against the threats coming from Russia and Europe. It is therefore not in the interest of the Arabs to see present on the Turkish territory any element of threat to Arab security or to have Turkey itself as a source of danger to the Arab nation and as a base for foreign forces that would invade and attack the Arab territories.31

Its natural conditions: it is the source of two rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, vital for two Arab neighbouring countries, Syria and Iraq; the Arab internal security interests in having Turkey not encourage – because of its strategic geographic location – revolutions, uprisings and separatist

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movements in the Arab nation. On the other hand, the Turkish security, defence and economy interests require the same feeling of responsibility from Arabs toward the Turks; for its national security, determined by its vital interests – like the Arabs – cannot be relinquished in the name of national sovereignty and nationalist pride both Arabs and Turks fought for in defence against the violence of the crusades, and against the cruel administration of the Unity and Development Party: successor to the Ottoman corrupt administrative system – and collaborator with the foreign occupier of his land after the First World War – that Kemal Atatürk opposed as well.32

The Arabs’ and Turks’ reasons to fear each other lie in the foreign presence on their territories and issues of water, boundaries and minorities. The main political variables, however, that framed Arab–Turkish relations during the 1950s and the early 1960s, were the following:33 1. 2. 3. 4.

National security (politically and economically). Position from military alliances and the Soviet Union. The Palestinian cause. The Cypriot cause.

After the 1960s, some political changes modified the substance of the image both Arabs and Turks have of each other in the field of national security, from a stereotyped negative one during the preceding 50 years, to a positive open one. In Turkey, the Justice Party led by Suleiman Dimiril, the President of the Republic of Turkey on the eve of the 1965 elections, called for the strengthening of relations with the Arabs.34 Turkey also proved its goodwill during the Israeli offensive on 5 June 1967, when its Foreign Minister Ihsan Sabri Caglayangil declared the day after the offensive that they will not allow the use of the foreign military bases on its territory against the Arabs for the realization of the fait accompli policy in the region.35

The supportive Turkish stands toward the Arab causes – despite Turkey’s relations with Israel and the foreign coalitions – played a big role in the improvement of the image of Turks among Arabs and laying the ground for the development of the relationship between the two sides. The Arabs for their part supported Turkey after its military intervention in Cyprus to save the Turkish Muslim minority in 1974, and after the USA stopped its

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aid and banned the export of weapons to Turkey. Iraq, Libya and Saudi Arabia then rushed to offer financial aid and petroleum to Turkey and the Turkish part of Cyprus. This had a deep impact on the amelioration of the Arab image among the Turkish public opinion that felt humiliated by its ally’s position, the USA.36 Turkey then started supporting Arab causes and contributed effectively in the activities of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. It even hosted the conference in the summer of 1976. Turkish exports to Arab countries increased and reached, during the first half of 1985, to the Gulf Arab countries alone, 3 billion US dollars.37 The crisis of Abdullah Oçalan, leader of the Kurdish–Turkish Labour Party, did trouble the peaceful Syrian–Turkish relations, hence the Arab–Turkish relations in 1998. Nevertheless, the efforts of the Arab and Muslim leaders put an end to the problem and everything went back to normal, especially after both parties expressed their truthful desire in developing their relations, by focusing on cooperation and combined action to repel dangers facing the region. Following the American hegemony over the world, the occupation of Iraq and the attempt to divide the region to the interests of predominant strategies, a shrewd and realistic look at the future that awaits the Arab–Turkish relations would certainly resolve all marginal problems, as long as there is good intention from both parties. The Turks between Ottoman legacy and modern state ideology I would like first of all to confirm that by Ottoman legacy I do not mean the historical Ottoman heritage related to the period of Tanzimat (reorganization) and reforms that started in 1839 and the imprints of the Ottomans in the fields of culture, architecture, arts and folklore that have common characteristics with the Arabs who lived with them for more than 400 years. I mean the cultural heritage embodied in the history, geography and people the Ottoman father left for his sons, us, citizens of the Middle East, Muslims, Christians, Jews and others, without leaving a will to determine the shares of each. Our differences, as Arabs, Turks, Kurds and Armenians, sons of the former Ottoman states, were based on how to exploit this Ottoman legacy for the benefit of all. However, selfishness, greed, feelings of superiority and extremist nationalist thought prevented it. Today, nations gather and unite in blocks according to their historical, geographic and religious heritage, while we Muslims are still disputing over a few kilometres, the water in common territories, the amount of oil barrels or because we covet the riches of others. In the meantime, the prevailing ideologies – that carefully create these differences – are planning to loot our sources and riches, gnaw our lands and steal our water: the USA has controlled the Arab oil after the invasion of Kuwait because the

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Western coalition led by the USA freed Kuwait. Since its establishment, Israel keeps nibbling at the Arab territories and stealing the waters of the Litany, Mount Hermon (Jabal al-Sheikh), Yarmuk and Hasbany! Meanwhile, we plead for water from Turkey and quarrel with it till nearly at the verge of war, as happened in the last Syrian–Turkish crisis that ended with the signing of the security treaty on 20 October 1998. Washington is trying today – after the occupation of Iraq – to restructure the region according to its economic and security interests. Yet ‘the Turks look down upon Syria as one of the provinces of the Ottoman state’, as stated by the Turkish writer Mohammed Ali Brand.38 Also, the Turkish authorities use Iraq’s and Syria’s needs of the Euphrates water as a tool for political pressure. The true understanding of the negative aspects along with benefiting from this great Ottoman legacy of water, land, minerals and peoples (the European states aimed at imposing their supremacy over the Ottoman state by finding breaches in the power and seeking to divide on the basis of religion, confessions and ethnic pluralities in order to create problems for the minorities and impose their hegemony), and the use of the positive aspects for the benefit of the peoples of the region, are the best way to establish Arab–Turkish relations on solid grounds. Then we can move towards building a better future by preserving common interests and facing all threats against the region. British historian Toynbee described the Ottoman rule of the Arab states as ‘the darkness of the Ottoman history’. Lebanese historian Khaled Ziade called it ‘the Ottoman colonization’. The Moroccan historian Mohammad Amin believed that the period was destined to protect the house of Islam from the dangers of the expansion of the Spanish–Portuguese crusades in Yemen, the Gulf, the Red Sea or western Mediterranean basin, and especially the coasts of the Maghreb countries.

The Iraqi historian Sayar El-Jamil, however, described it as the period of ‘the stasis of the Ottoman history’.39 Nevertheless, the variation of the Ottoman image from the protectors of Arabism and Islam, to colonization, darkness and stasis of the Ottoman history, through the Ottoman coup, the First World War, the rebellion of the Arabs against the Unity and Development Party, all the way to the ideology of the modern Turkish secular state seeking to join the European Union, confirm our second assumption concerning the existence of two positive and negative images of the Turks among the intellectual and political Arab elites.

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The international variables in the region and the role of the Zionist media The Turkish state inherited all the Ottoman state’s problems, from which the nations that used to form the Ottoman union in their geopolitical surroundings suffered. Therefore, most political analysts doubt that Turkey is in conflict with its neighbours or that the neighbours want its land, water and natural resources. Multiculturalism in modern Turkey could have been a strong effective factor and an element of cooperation with the entire states of the region. Especially that Turkey has been considered since 1946, after adopting a multipartite system, to have been the first democratic state in the Middle East, and is still democratic, despite the fact that three military coups interrupted its democratic course on the pretext of ‘recovering political balance’. General Kanaan Iferin, leader of the 12 September 1980 coup, affirms that these revolutions ‘did not accomplish anything for Turkey’, because the purpose of the armed forces in a democracy is to protect the system, and not to deal with politics, intervene in political affairs or disable the constitutional institutions. That is the reason why Turkish society faces, on the political level, acute divisions the Parliament still suffers from. Turkey’s economic scene, on the other hand, has many problems: inflation reached around 150 per cent in 1994, then fell to almost 54 per cent at the end of 1998.40 The external debt became a heavy burden, amounting to 100 billion dollars in 1998. The state borrows internally to pay the instalments of this huge debt. The unemployment rate – according to official figures – is more than 10 per cent, which means more than 6 million jobless people. Nevertheless, there are some important positive indicators concerning economic growth that reached 6 per cent in 1998, and tangible industrial development. On a social level, Turkey mainly faces the problem of rural migration, especially in the south-east, where the unproclaimed war continues, since 15 August 1984, against the Kurdish Labour Party that calls for the establishment of a separatist communist Kurdish state in the south-eastern region of Turkey.41

An entire village would move to Istanbul every year, with its inhabitants and problems, and settle on the edges of the city in the shanty towns, some of which have become centres of corruption, breeding grounds for terrorism, organized crime, chaos and violent acts. Still, most political analysts underline the impact of the war between enemy brothers (the Kurds and the Turks): since 1985, it consumes up to 10 billion dollars yearly from the treasury, and it is equal today to the total external Turkish debt, as well as

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the social and economic destruction, unemployment, drug mafia organizations, weapons and white slavery. The political, economic and social handicaps, as well as the geopolitically heavy legacy of the Ottoman state, impede Turkey’s civilization development. Yet the international hurdles resulting from its difficult disputes with Greece, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Armenia and Russia, besides the Egyptian–Turkish and Turkish–Iranian regional competition on one hand, and the Turkish–Israeli political–trade rivalry on the other,42 led to political disputes between the three Islamic states. Europe tried to internationalize the Kurdish cause after refusing to welcome Turkey into its club because the actual system is accused of violating human rights, due to the presence of military judges in state security courts, the interference of armed forces in politics and the existence of many laws that restrict public liberties. This attempt cuffs Turkey’s movement in the Middle East and cancels its role in the new world system, despite its geopolitical importance in the region and the world. Thus, most Arab writers agree with proponents of the second Republic that the assertion of Turkish national pact on the principle of ‘peace within and peace outside’, which refers to realizing social reconciliation inside, peace and stability with the neighbouring countries, was not applied as necessary, for the successors of Atatürk turned away from this principle when they adopted ‘complete secular principles’ as the state’s ideology in 1938 after the death of Atatürk. So they led Turkey to a political isolation on the outside, and to the use of state terrorism and intellectual and economic guardianship on the inside. Turkey opted for military coalitions and the Westernization period started which resulted in the projection of more than one image of Turkey in the eyes of the political and intellectual elite of the Arab world, due to the international changes in the region and the role of the Zionist media in showing tension in Arab–Turkish relations.

The transformation of the Turkish image in recent Arab studies The issues of: 1. Islam, as the root of legitimacy and the framework of reference regarding the social and political systems and the rules of conduct; 2. Nationalism, as a means for liberation, development and unity of a group of people related by culture and history bonds, that lives in a specific location and has common interests; and 3. Secularism, as a set of nonreligious and non-nationalist regulations defining relations and ways of conduct; constitute the background of all the intellectual, political and sometimes military confrontations between the Arabs and the Turks in the time of colonization that controlled the Middle East since the beginning of

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the 20th century. It resulted from the resistance of the following generations to the division plans and colonial rule, and the emergence of conflict between the believers in those causes after adopting them as ideologies for their states which were established in the region following the first colonial partition of the Ottoman legacy after the First World War. Then was the second allotment of the German and Italian empires’ properties after the Second World War, as an outcome of the Yalta Conference, and the decision of the ideologies that were then dominant in the world to implant Israel in the heart of the Arab world. The information and technology revolution in the world today caused big alterations in the common concepts, whereas social contact, the demographic expansion, development planning, administrative centralization, politics, welfare and the common economic market have become characteristics of the modern state, regardless of the prevailing political ideology. These transformations made a significant turn in the Man/Man relationship as well as the Man/authority relationship, through the mass popular society concept and the rise of the state’s communicative role. Its essence lies in creating a nationalist self-conscience by means of effective mass media with a specific strategy of politicizing media in the service of nationalist goals. By the end of the 20th century, the concept of civilization development in the Middle East had taken new dimensions for being related to the fight against imperialistic monopolization, spoliation, Westernization, subordination, racist oppression and media war.43 Hence, the civilization development in this vital region of the world faces many international barriers; in the form of ‘international ideological principles’, the great states set in order to remain the oppressive political force and the dominating ideology, and which small states cannot trespass, unless these states are in the circle of the greater one, were connected to its ideology or served its interests in the region, such as Israel. American imperialism succeeded, through the politicization of media outside by linking foreign policy to media and trying to export the American way of life to the world, and through the media war against the Soviet Union and the Third World during the 1950–90 period, by dividing the world for the third time after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, dismantling the socialist system and establishing the Palestinian administration in the occupied territories in order to handicap the Arab resistance against the Israeli tyranny. Washington’s strategy for the 21st century, and its desire to take over the oil and cereal riches in the Middle East, encourage it to think in dividing the region a fourth time. Thereby, implementing the strategy of control over the Eurasia, which Brzezinski described as: ‘He who controls it can control the entire world.’44 It is

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possible when the new world order is transformed into an American institution, according to the strategist–intelligence American theorists: Brzezinski on globalization, Fukuyama on the end of history and Huntington on the clash of civilizations. That, in order to lead the fight against the rising forces of the Islamic and Confucian worlds. These theorists suggest that the USA must besiege both worlds through globalization, to turn them into mines for raw material, consumer markets and regional factories for the production of marginal spare parts for their advanced electronic industries. Consequently, they are prohibited from developing their military capacities because of economic pressure and the absence of advanced technology transfer, while being subject to high monitoring and surveillance. A psychological intelligence war would be launched against them, by accusing Muslims of international terrorism and Confucianism of wrecking the economy and stock exchanges in the world. The dupery of the Western colonization, and especially the American imperialism, is thus uncovered, regarding the protection of human rights in the world, in order to carry oppressed Man to the higher levels of civilization by means of globalization and world civilization. Facing these challenges and attempts to divide, as well as the wars against national will to impede any civilizational development as all countries of the Middle East fight for a better future, the intellectuals, economists and politicians called for the organization of special forums dealing with the main issues of debate between concerned parties: Arabs, Turks and Iranians on the one hand, and Arabs and non-Arab Muslims on the other, in order to elucidate the relationship of the Islamic religion with nationalism and secularism, by testing it in reality in an intellectual framework of multiple possibilities and belongings. It had already stood the test of time in cognitive operations that might intersect horizontally or vertically through discussions and comments, in order to define all aspects of the issue with open-mindedness and to make it easier when dealing directly with the debated abstract subject. Dialogue after all helps parties to solve problems and be more understanding of each others’ opinions. Therefore, research and study centres all over the Middle East held forums to discuss the region’s affairs, in the framework of international balances within the civilization trinity in the region: Islam–Nationalism– Secularism. Ikhwan El-Safa – of the five researches into Arab Islamic thought – were the first to establish research centres since the 10th century. The Ottoman state had known research centres after its fall (1908), when Mr Amrullah Efendi became Minister of Education. He ordered the establishment of a scientific research centre, chaired by him, which included 132 Ottoman scientists for the purpose of writing an Ottoman

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encyclopedia.45 In the Arab world, the studies centre of the Ahram newspaper was established, after the declaration of the Republic in Egypt in 1952. It was then transformed into a centre for strategic studies for the Ahram institution, aiming to work according to the scientific basis of the American centres for strategic studies: Rand and Springers and Washington Think Thank. After the Israeli offensive against the Arab nation on 5 June 1967, many research centres were established in Arab and various countries of the Middle East. They started preparing for forums on Arab–Arab dialogue and Arab–Islamic then Arab–European dialogue to study the region and world affairs in the framework of dialogue among civilizations. The Arab and Turkish peoples were most subjected to the Western colonization through the provocation of nationalist and religious conflicts. Today, the American imperialism applies the same policy in different shapes of its 21st-century strategy. Hence, Arabs and Turks, in the light of the current data and changes on the level of international policy, felt the need to build a face-to-face dialogue in order to discuss the problems that come across the Arab–Turkish relations. International Arab–Turkish forums and conferences were then organized. An elite of Arab and Turkish intellectuals and researchers continue to meet since the first conference held in the research centre of Hacettepe University in Ankara in 1979 on ‘Arab–Turkish relations: yesterday, today and tomorrow’, and the forum of ‘Arab nationalism and religion’ at the Centre for Arab Unity Studies in 1980. Besides the conferences of the Ottoman Researches and Studies Institute in Tunisia, held every two years since 1982, dealing with the economic, administrative, social and intellectual life in the Arab states during the Ottoman era, there has been the forum of ‘Dialogue between Islam and Secularism’ held by the Centre for Studies of Future of Islam in Algier in 1990; the forum of ‘Arab–Turkish relations: prospective dialogue’, organized by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies in Beirut in 1993; the forum of ‘Dialogue between the Arabs and the Turks: economy and national security’ in the centre of the Arab Thought Forum in Jordan in 1996; and the first round table on Arab–Turkish dialogue concerning the Kemalia and the Kemaliin (in reference to Kemal Atatürk), that was held in the Tamimi Institution for Information and Scientific Research in Tunisia 1998. We tried, through the study of the researches presented to these forums and conferences, as well as some modern Arab studies, to deduce the image of Turks among Arabs, on the basis of the point of view regarding religion, nationalism and secularism. We will examine these subjects throughout the following two themes.

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The image of Turks in the eyes of Arab nationalists Some Arab and Turkish researchers refer to the impact of Western thought in the forging of the nationalist ideas of the Arabs.46 Yet most researchers of the history of birth of the Arab national thought do not raise the diversities of historical situations between the Mashrek and the Maghreb of the Arab nation. Tareq al-Bishri underlines the fact that the nationalist idea was born in Syria in response to the Ottoman authority, while it was born in Egypt to face the Zionist project and fight the British colonization, and in Algeria to stand up to the French colonization.47

Therefore, the idea of Arab nationalism was linked to patriotism as a national liberation movement against colonization and oppression. Thus it was a movement to confront the organization of Young Turks first, then later the tyranny and corruption of the organization – then party – of Unity and Development the Turks themselves revolted against in 1919 in the command of Mustapha Kemal Atatürk. In the same year, Egyptians stood against British colonization in a national movement refusing the idea of the Zionist colonizing project. The Iraqi revolution of the Twenty was also opposed to the British mandate and the Zionist settlement, while the Algerian Arab national idea came in defence of the national identity as a holy struggle to confirm an Islamic Algeria against French integration and mutilation of the Algerian national identity. The idea of Arab nationalism also born in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, was related to secularism and called for the detachment from the Ottoman state where ‘ “the Westerner” Christians and secular Muslims represented one mental pattern’.48 The idea calls for Arab unity that must be attained on a secular basis, where culture and language play a pioneering role and where the Arabs’ relationship with the rest of the Islamic world is only that of brotherhood, friendship and cooperation, without any political integration.49 The Arab secular nationalists believe that the ‘imperial dream’ complex still controls the minds of those who call for a wild unity. So they describe the Ottoman rule over Arab countries as ‘Turkish colonization, they also demeaned the Mamluk rule in the Arab east and considered the periods that witnessed Turkish participation in rule as periods of darkness’.50 Dr Georges Kallas, in his book History of Feminist Journalism, used eight negative attributes in a single page to describe the Ottoman rule: injustice of the Ottoman rule, restraints of freedom, restrictions of liberty, destruction of heritage, killing innocent people, humiliation of the people and intellectual persecution.51 Ahmed Jamal Pasha, Ottoman military commander-in-chief in Syria and Lebanon, was described in most literary

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nationalist Arab works as ‘the butcher’, and his rule is always related to terrorism, exile and the execution of a fine elite of fighters for Arabic independence.52 Speaking of ‘the water crisis in the Arab nation’, Abdul Nasser Fayssal Nahar believes that the Turks use water, in their relation with Syria and Iraq, as a ‘way of extortion’; because Turkey seeks to ‘impose its dreadful water hegemony over the Middle East’, by ‘controlling water ratios’, in order for the Turks to restore a role they had lost when the ailing empire fell into the arms of Mustapha Kemal Atatürk.

Therefore, they demand ‘financial compensation from Syria and Iraq, as a price for the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates’. They threaten to cut off water of both southern neighbours. The following negative qualifications appeared in one page of his book about the Turks: extortion, control, hegemony, regain their lost role, call for compensation, and threat of cutting off water for Syria and Iraq.53 He also accuses Turkey of committing offensive acts in the last pages, such as taking over the water from the source, retention of water, stopping the flow of the Euphrates for a whole month, using water as a weapon of pressure against Arab countries, stressing the Turkish character of the water, getting around treaties, stalling the implementation of agreements, violating international conventions and using the water as a strategic weapon against the Arabs.54 Ahmad Sidqi Al Dajani says that these views are bound by a reaction to a short confrontation period since the unionists took power in Istanbul shortly before the fall of the Ottoman state and the rise of the national state; and that they generalized this view on the twelve past centuries of history.55

Consequently, he backs up the statement of Turkish secular writer Kuluglu in the Beirut conference on ‘Arab–Turkish relations: prospective dialogue’: the greatest mistake ever made up until now is in my opinion the limitation of the Ottoman legacy within the last ten years of the Ottoman state’s existence and on the basis of the last stage.56

However, these negative qualifications of the Ottomans and Turks by the Arabs led some Arab historians to say that the Ottoman colonialist state prevented the flow of the Western civilization to the Arab states, which

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caused its underdevelopment after the Ottomans encompassed the Arab countries and stood between them and the outside world. The history of these countries then was not close to being related to international events ... The isolation of the Arab states was not only political or economic, but also touched civilization.57

Therefore, historian Wajih Kawssarani thinks that the construction period of the national state in Turkey on one hand, and the edification of the Arab regional state on the other, still carried problems of ideological and nationalist disunity.

Borders mapping between the Turkish state and the southern Arab states according to treaties, international and regional balances, oil considerations, political geographic calculations, and ethnic and religious formations (the presence of the Arab-Kurds and Armenian-Turks in the border regions), also burdened this period with tensions and circumstances (the nationalist demands) on both sides in some regions, like Iskanderun (Alexandretta), Mussel and Kirkuk.58 However, the dispute over the Ottoman state legacy between Arabs and Turks, and the revolutionary Arabic nationalist trend of the Ottomans and Turks negative stereotyped images, do not apply for the Turkish people but the Turkish rulers. For this orientation ‘differentiates between the Turkish people and the Ottoman rulers’59 or the new rulers who were patronizing by social classes not only the Arab states, but also the entire Anatolia itself and the centre of the sultanate.60

Accordingly, Nassif Hitti criticized this bipolarity, between the Turkish state and the Arabic movement within the Arab–Turkish relations, during the Beirut forum: ‘Arabs and Turks: prospective dialogue’. He called upon the necessity to remove the ideological factor from the Arabic vision of the relations.61 According to the Turkish secularism, religion is separated from the state while the latter runs the religious affairs. This is the reason behind the total freedom – today – of personal belief and cult as religious teaching remains under the supervision of the state. Therefore, the secular Arab nationalist thinker believes in the need for Arab–Turkish relations based on futurism, which does not mean longing to the past, and certainly not opposition to the past.62

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Most opinions then prove our second, third and fourth assumptions on the existence of two images, positive and negative – with an intermediary grey level – perceived by the Arab and Turkish intellectual elites; and that the Turkish negative images are limited to the rulers and not the people – apart from the cultural gap between them. The image of Turks among the Arabic religious current Based upon the examination of the Ottoman historical facts until the beginning of the Sultan Abdulhamid II’s rule (1876–1909), it is most certain that there was no conflict between the nationalist political thought – in the sense of belonging – and the Islamic doctrine, despite the Sultan Abdulaziz’s (1860–76) European tendency, especially after his visit to Europe as the first Ottoman sultan, and the Khedive Ismail (1863–79), ruler of Egypt, following the steps of his Ottoman sultan in that matter. Still, the weakness of the Ottoman state, the infiltration of the Western powers in all the parts of the empire in the political, economic and social affairs, and the adoption of nationalist ideas by the Arabic, Turkish and Kurdish intellectual elites, all contributed to the fervent discussions within the pages of Tanin newspaper published in Istanbul. They also led to political confrontations inside the Ottoman Board of the two Plenipotentiaries, which developed at the beginning of the 20th century into a political then armed struggle. It was then the fall of the state and the disintegration of the empire. The current of the moderate nationalist movement was closer to Islam than the currents of the rigorous Arab nationalism and the secularism opposed to Islam, because the secularists in the Ottoman state were mostly nationalists like the Turkish Ahmed Medhat, the Arab Sateh Alhossri, the revolutionary thinkers or the socialists such as the Turkish Dyaa Kuk Alb, or the atheists like the Kurdish Abdullah Jawdat. Yet the Arabic renaissance movement had an Islamic current that was not religiously stict, but saw the East and West case as a part of the deterioration of Muslims in the face of Europe’s development.

It was also considered necessary to strengthen the Ottoman sultanate and ties among Muslims wherever in the world, in defence of Muslims everywhere. Among the eminent figures of that current: Prince Shakib Arsalan (Druze), Ahmad Faris Al shidyaq (Maronite who proclaimed Islam) and [Jamal el-Din] Al-Afghani (of Iranian origins).63 Added to these are Mohammed Abdo (Egyptian), Mahmud Chukri Alalussi (Iraqi) and most of the Arab awakening pioneers and North African thinkers. This

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intellectual current still constitutes the political historical background of the Ottomans’ image for most intellectuals in the different parts of the Arab nation. They are viewed, in the frame of this positive image, as the protectors of the house of Islam from the dangers of the Portuguese–Spanish expansion, in Yemen, the Gulf, the Red Sea or western Mediterranean basin, and especially the coasts of the Maghreb.64

The current believes that true Islam and true Arabism are but one, because the relation between Arabism and Islam resembles some crystalline minerals in which the reflections and dimensions of things merge so much it is impossible to draw lines and distinctions.

The ambiguity was then intrinsic to the nature of the relation, and not all ambiguities are necessarily harmful. Some intellectuals, poets and politicians were thankful for ‘the creative ambiguity’ that enriches the vision, mind and heart. In our opinion, this applies to the relationship between the Arabism and Islamic concepts in one condition only: the national surge. In the case of national surge, the ambiguity is indeed creative, and contributes greatly to the mobilization of minds, the unleashing of mental and operational energies and the creation of a tremendous spiritual readiness for generosity and sacrifice.65 Sayar Al Jamil described the work of an elite of Arab historians who corrected many wrong concepts about the Ottomans that were common in Arab society and culture, their long presence in the Arab countries and their great influence in contemporary and modern Arab structure. He also mentioned the religious accusations of the Ottomans’ intellectual, historical and structural problematic, in the Arab speeches, and divided them into three currents:66 •

•

Traditional Sufi speech, secluded from the earthly life (state and society), similar to that of old groups that were and still are yielding to Taraq’ia and its social traditions that conceal the mind in illusions and facts in imagination. Reformist Salafist speech that is situated in the present but lives in the past, as manifested in the religious–reformist movements in the 19th century ... still exists through groups, parties and Arab writers who gathered around the concept of Islamic community or in religious parties during the first half of the 20th century. All of these groups

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and parties stood against the project of the Arab (and non-Arab) modern states in the Islamic world ... Some large portions of the society remain faithful to this current. Past-fundamentalist speech that represents the past in a violent and enclosed way ... like the speech, today, of the fundamentalist– religious groups and organizations that detached themselves from the present and became day after day even more the rigid radicals of the past, after the 5 June 1967 defeat.

The Arab–Islamic current criticized the Ottoman state on many levels, for it ‘objects to the “Turkeyization” process which in itself contradicts the Ottoman state and its historical approach’.67 It takes a negative stand against the modern Kemaliin Turks on one hand, and Mustapha Kemal Atatürk on the other. Doctor Mohammed Jaber Al-Ansari believes that polishing the image of Atatürk on the Arab level today is an attempt to separate the Arab countries from their Eastern–Islamic body and to keep them isolated through the illusion of Westernization, modernization and belonging to the West and Nato ...The Arab entities would then be transformed into void regions, dispossessed of influence and will, in order for Israel to occupy ‘the centre of importance’ and ‘the centre of decision’ in this region. Britain later replaced Ottoman Turkey, after centuries of being the centre of gravity in the Middle East, in the Arab and Islamic worlds, as an effective Islamic command.68

Hence, Munir Shafik accuses Mustapha Kemal Atatürk of being a collaborator with the colonialists because he stood against Arabism and Islam, as did the colonialists; this was the reason why he adopted secularism and separated religion from the state.69

However, the Arab thinker Monah al Solh calls for some understanding of the Mustapha Kemal Atatürk movement, when he says: It is true he was negatively opposed to Islam. But the Islam he opposed was a special type of Islam that tolerated the West as a colonialist domination and occupation, and stood adamantly against the West as civilization values. His opposition to Arabism was partly a kind of bargaining with the West. Some rulers in the Islamic states stood against Arabs and raised disputes with them in order to win the satisfaction of the Western colonizer, while exploiting the feelings of animosity towards Arabs of some parts of the Islamic peoples.70

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On the other hand, the Islamic tide increased in Turkey and turned into a populist movement through the currents of moderate Islam: the Nawrassya, the modern scientific Islam and the official Islam.71 The Party of Welfare – which declared its political programme for the realization of the ‘just regime’, along with restricting riba (usury), and turning toward the Islamic world to strengthen the relations with Turkey, opposing Zionism and the Western colonizer, and calling to refuse secularism entirely in Turkey as opposed to Islam – rode that popular wave. It won the relative majority of the seats in Parliament (451 members of Parliament out of 550), on the 24 January 1995 elections, and formed the 54th cabinet in Turkey. However, the National Security Council, which was on the lookout for the party that had Islamic (political) orientations, decided to consider reactionism (the designation of political Islam used by the secular officials) Turkey’s number one enemy that had to be fought relentlessly. The decisions of the Council on 28 February 1997 then overthrew Arbakan’s government in a white coup and led to the banning of the Party of Welfare on 22 February 1998. The government of Massoud Yalmaz succeeded to power – as a result of political manoeuvres – with the support of the army and the other secular lobbies (capitalist businessmen, secular popular unions, the union of associations for the protection of Kemali thought and big media). It started implementing decisions of the Council, then cancelled the intermediate level in the imams and preachers schools, restricted the teaching of Holy Koran teaching sessions, prohibited the hijab (veil) in schools and public facilities, and prevented veiled students from going to universities. However, the political analyst Fahmi Kuru believes that the 28 February 1997 period was launched only to abolish all the liberal steps former president Turgut Uzal had taken during 1989–93 in the process of democratic and economic openness in Turkey. The Turkish military forces that consider themselves as protectors of the secular ideas in Turkey had probably found these liberal steps a threat to their intellectual authority and power.72

Consequently, the image of the secular rulers and generals of the Turkish army is negative among the Islamic currents in the Arab states. Moreover, most thinkers of that trend believe those leaders are trying to empty Islam from its essence and transform it into a scientific Islam, either in the name of following the wisdom of the mind, or in the name of implementing the Turkish type of Islam that refuses the reading of the Koran and performing prayers in Arabic. This asserts our fourth assumption

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about the existence of a religious–cultural gap between Arabs and Turks, which has also been reflected on the multiple political trends and currents that emerged.

Notes 1. Ibrahim Al Dakuki, ‘Tathir al foloklore Al Arabi bi al foloklore al turkey’ (The effect of the Turkish Folklore on the Arabic Folklore), Majallat Kulliyat Al Adab, University of Baghdad, year 2, issue 21, 1977, pp.329–67. 2. Rimon Charle, Al Hilal Al Shahid: Masir Al Islam fi Zil Al Anzima Al Kaysariyya wa Al Soviatiyya (The Martyr Hilal: The Destiny of Islam Under the Tzarian and Soviet Regimes) (Beirut: Al Maahad Al Dawli li Al Bohouth wa Al Dirasat, 1963), p.27. 3. Ibid., p.29. 4. See the comment of Hasan Hanafi on the study of: Monah Al-Solh ‘Al Tamayuz wa Al Takamul bayna Al Qawmiyya wa Al Islam’ (The differentiation and integration between Arab nationalism and Islam), a paper submitted to The Arab Nationalism and Islam: Studies and Discussions seminar organized by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies (Beirut: Centre for Arab Unity Studies, 1988), p.230. 5. Ibid., pp.236–7. 6. Ahmad Sidqi Al-Dajani, ‘Mustaqbal al alaqa bayna al qawmiyya wa al Islam’ (The future of the relation between Arab Nationalism and Islam), a paper submitted to The Arab Nationalism and Islam: Studies and Discussions seminar organized by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies (Beirut: Centre for Arab Unity Studies, 1988), pp.494–5. 7. Yusuf Akcura, Uc Tarzi Siyaset (Ankara, 1987), 2 baski, p.5. 8. Ibid., p.6. 9. Emin Oktay, Tarih III, (Istanbul: Atlas Kstabevi, 1985), p.264. 10. Ibid., p.309. 11. Osman Okyar, ‘Al Khiyarat al fikriyya wa thaqafiyya lada Al Arab wa Al Atrak’ (The Intellectual and Political Options for the Arabs and Turks), a paper submitted to The Arab–Turkish Relations: a Future Dialogue seminar organized by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies (Beirut: Centre for Arab Unity Studies, 1995), p.244. 12. See most of the articles and comments published in Türkiye, Zaman, Milligazete newspapers issued in 21/11/1993–20/2/1994 and was content analyzed in this chapter. 13. Niyazi Aksit, Milli Tazih Ana Ders Kitabi (Istanbul, 1986), pp.70-960.c. 14. This information is included in the history school books of the second and third elementary classes in the Kemali era, and in the writings of Emin Oktay, Niyazi Aksit, Torhal, Ibrahim Kafas, Oglo, and Altan De Li Orman in the recent period. 15. Al Dakuki, ‘Tathir al foloklore’, op. cit., p.34. 16. Oktay, Tarih, op. cit., p.283. 17. Ibid.; and Aksit, Milli Tazih, op. cit., p.233. 18. Milliyetcilik ve Milliyetcilik Tarihi (Ankara, 1989), p.233. 19. The total attributes in this analysis are more than 115 because there are more negative or positive attributes in each one of these 115 articles that were subject to analysis. 20. Edward Hodnet, The Art of Problem Solving (NY: Appleton Co., 1972), p.13. 21. Adib Emil, ‘Al- Roaya Al-Wadiha’ (The Clear Vision), Cumhuryet, 4/12/1993. 22. See ‘The Islamic Market’ an interview with some Turkish economists by Jamal Kalyonco, Zaman, 9/2/1994, and the ‘Common Market,’ Zaman, 25/12/1993. 23. Rushdi Shardagh, ‘The Arabs were not a role model,’ Milliyet, 15/2/1994.

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24. Mustafa Bukhan, ‘The Arabic Political Division,’ Ortado˘gu, 17/2/1994. 25. Noam Chomski, ‘Orasya: Heart of the World, ’quoted from Milliyet, 15/6/1997. 26. Talaat Musallam, ‘Mashru al nizam al sharq awsati wa mawqif Al Arab wa Al Atrak minhu wa mawqiuhum fih’ (Middle Eastern system project and the Stance of Arabs and Turks of it and their position in it), a paper submitted to The Arab–Turkish Relations: a Future Dialogue seminar organized by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies (Beirut: Centre for Arab Unity Studies, 1995), p.397. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid., p.389. 29. Ibid. 30. Mahmoud Ali Dawoud, ‘Al Alaqat Al Turkiyya Al Arabiyya wa al awamil al muathira fiha’ (The Arab–Turkish Relations and the Factors that affect them), Al Mustaqbal Al Arabi, year 5, issue 45 (November 1982), pp.62–9. 31. Musallam, op. cit., p.398. 32. See Ibrahim Dakuki interjection in the discussions on the study of: Ibrahim Dakuki ‘Nahwa khuttatin jadidatin li al taharruk ala al mustawa al ilami wa tarbawi li taghyir surat Al Arab fi al kutub al madrassiyya wa wasail al ilam Al Turkiyya’ (Toward a new plan to move on the educational and media level to change the picture of Arabs in school books and the Turkish mass media), a paper submitted to The Arab–Turkish Relations: a Future Dialogue seminar organized by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies (Beirut: Centre for Arab Unity Studies, 1995), p.584. 33. Ibid., p.528. 34. A paper submitted to The Arab–Turkish Relations: a Future Dialogue seminar organized by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies (Beirut: Centre for Arab Unity Studies, 1995), p.140. 35. Ibid., p.156. 36. Sim Shakmak, ‘Mawqi Turkiyya fi al hilf al atlasi wa Atharu zalika ala alaqatiha bi al watan al arabi’ (Turkey’s position in NATO and the impact of that on its relations with the Arab world), Al Mustaqbal Al Arabi, year 5, issue 45 (November 1982), p.106. 37. Günes, 6/1/1990. 38. Mohammed Ali Rrand, Sabah, 20/3/1996. 39. The Arab-Turkish Relations: a Future Dialogue (Beirut: Centre for Arab Unity Studies, 1995), pp.44, 78, 89. 40. Milliyet, 5/1/1999. 41. The official authorities in Turkey call the Kurdish problem in Turkey ‘The Problem of South East Turkey’. Although many university, media, and economic scholars have prepared reports on this Kurdish case in Turkey, the official authorities still do not recognize the presence of such a problem in Turkey. 42. Aydogan Vatandas, Armagedon (Istanbul: Timas, 1997). 43. Ibrahim Dakuki, ‘Hurub tahtim al irada fi al mintaqa al arabiyya’ (The wars of destroying the will in the Arab region), Kull Al Arab Magazine (Paris) 28 August, 1985. 44. See Brzezinski’s paper submitted to The conference of new work horizons in front of NATO, Istanbul, 1–5 May 1998, published in Turkish newspapers, and referred to in: Milliyet, 4/5/1998. 45. Markaz Al Buhuth Al Islamiyya, Encyclopedia of Islam, under Mawsua, vol. 30, p.223 (in Turkish). 46. See Hazem Zaki Nusayba, Al Qawmiyya Al Arabiyya: Fikratuha, Nashatuha wa Tatawwuruha (Arab Nationalism: Idea,Origins and Development), trans. by Abed

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Al Latif Sharara (Beirut: Dar Beirut lil Tibaa wa Al Nashr, Franklin for Publishing and Printing, 1959); and Zekeriye Kursun, Yol Ayriminda Turk–Arap Iliskileri (Istanbul 1992) pp.81–2, 106–11. 47. Tarek Al Bishri, ‘Al Kilaf bayna al nukhba wa al jamahir Izaa al alaqa bayna al qawmiyya al arabiyya wa al islam’ (The difference between the elite and the public concerning Arab nationalism and Islam), a paper submitted to The Arab Nationalism and Islam: Studies and Discussions seminar organized by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies (Beirut: Centre for Arab Unity Studies, 1988), p.296. 48. Hisham Sharabi, Al Muthaqqafun Al Arab wa Al Gharb: Asr Al Nahdha 1875–1914 (The Arab intellectuals and the West: The Awakening 1875–1914) (Beirut: Dar Al-Nahar use, 1971), p.47. 49. Saad Al-Dine Ibrahim, Ittijahat Al Ray Al Am Al Arabi Nhwa Masalat Al Wahda: Dirasa Maydaniyya (The Arab Public Opinion Trends Towards the Issue of Unity: a Field study) (Beirut: Centre for Arab Unity Studies). 50. See the comment Ahmad Sidqi, Al-Dajani on the studies of Urhan Kuluglu, The Importance of the Arab-Ottoman Historical Heritage and Its Effect on the Arab–Turkish Relations (first paper); and Abd Al-Jalil Tamimi, The Importance of the Arab–Ottoman Historical Heritage and Its Effect on the Arab-Turkish Relations (second paper) two papers submitted to The Arab Nationalism and Islam: Studies and Discussions seminar organized by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies (Beirut: Centre for Arab Unity Studies, 1988). 51. George Kallass, Tarikh Al Sahafa Al Nasawiyya: Nashatuha wa Tawwuruha (The History of the Feminist Press: Origins and Development, 1892–1932) (Beirut: Dar Al-Jil, 1996), p.15. 52. Yusuf Al Hakim, Suriyya wa Intidab Al Faransi (Syria and the French Mandate) (Beirut: Dar Al-Nahar, 1983), p.6. 53. Abd Al-Naser Faisal Nahar, Azmat al Miyah fi Al Watan Al Arabi: Al Hulul Al Mumkina (The Water Crisis in the Arab World: Possible Solutions) (Kuwait: Dar Suaad Al-Sabah li Al Nashr, 1998), p.92. 54. Ibid., p.93. 55. See the comment Ahmad Sidqi, Al-Dajani, op. cit., p.56. 56. Ibid., p.28. 57. Abd Al-Azim Ramadan, ‘Al Taathir al hadhari li al fath al uthmani fi al mashriq’ (The Cultural Impact of the Ottoman Conquest in the Arab East), a paper submitted to Arab Provinces and its documentary sources in the Ottoman Era, the fifth Conference for the Scientific Committee of Studies prior to the Ottoman Era and the Ottoman period (Tunisia: Markaz Al Bohuth wa Al Dirasat an Al Wilayat Al Arabiyya fi Al Ahad Al Uthmani, 1984), p.209. 58. Wajih Kawtharani, ‘Mawqi al alaqat al arabiyya al turkiyya fi itar al alam al islami’ (The Position of the Turkish–Arab Relations in the context of the Islamic World), a paper submitted to Ibid., p.451. 59. See the interjection of Talaat Musallmm about the study of: Urhan Kulugl, op. cit., p.87. 60. Ibid., p.87. 61. See Nassif’s interjection in the discussions of the study of Kawtharani, op. cit., p.465. 62. See Monah Al-Solh’s interjection in the discussions of the study of Talaat Musallam, op. cit., p.430. 63. George Korm, Madkal Ila lubnan wa Al Lubnaniyyin, Talih Iqtirahat fi Al Islah (An Introduction to Lebanon and the Lebanese, followed by Suggestions for Reform) (Beirut: Dar Al-Jadid, 1996), p.40. 64. See Mohammad Emin’s comment on both the studies of: Kulughlu, and Tamimi, op. cit., p.79.

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65. Monah Al-Solh, ‘Al Tamayuz wa al takamul bayn al qawmiyya al aribiyya wa al islam (The differentiation and integration between Arab Nationalism and Islam), a paper submitted to The Arab Nationalism and Islam: Studies and Discussions seminar organized by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies (Beirut: Centre for Arab Unity Studies, 1988), p.213. 66. Sayar Al-Jamil, ‘Al Arab al muasirun wa al dawla al uthmaniyya: al tahdim, al idiolojia, al maarifa’ (Contemporary Arabs and the Ottoman State, the Destruction, Ideology and Knowledge), Al Majalla al Tarikhiyya la al Dirasat Al Uthmaniyya, no. 13–14 (October 1996), p.103. 67. See Munir Shafik’s interjection in the discussions of the study of: Mohammad Amara, ‘Al Jamia al arabiyya wa al jamia al islamiyya’ (The Arab Community and the Islamic Community), a paper submitted to The Arab Nationalism and Islam: Studies and Discussions seminar organized by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies (Beirut: Centre for Arab Unity Studies, 1988), p.195. 68. Mohammad Jaber Al-Ansari, A Koranic View of the International Changes and the Intellectual Concerns Between Islam and Contemporary Period and an Observation of Early Middle Eastern Attack Against Arab Identity (Beirut: Al Muassasa Al Arabiyya lil Dirasat wa Al Nashr, 1997), pp.62–4. 69. Munir Shafik, ‘Mawqif al qiwa al kharijiyya wa taharrukuha fi muwajahat al uruba wa al islam: nazra kharijyya’ (Foreign Forces Stance and their Movement in the Face of Arabism and Islam: A Historic View), a paper submitted to The Arab Nationalism and Islam: Studies and Discussions seminar organized by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies (Beirut: Centre for Arab Unity Studies, 1981), p.642. 70. See Monah Al-Solh’s interjection in: op. cit., p.669. 71. See Ibrahim Al Dakuki, ‘Surat Al Atrak Lada Al Arab’ (The Turkish Image among Arabs) (Beirut:: Centre for Arab Unity Studies, 2001), pp.105–8. 72. Yeni Safak, 27/2/1999.

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CHAPTER 15

Arab and Iranian Images of Each Other Talal Atrissi

One major difficulty in the study of the mutual views and images of Arabs and Iranians through their adopted school books is that the Iranian books are unified, while the Arab books are as multiple and as many as the countries that use them. Thus, it implies one image of Arabs in Iranian books and many images of Iran in Arab books according to the different Arab states’ policies, teaching methodologies, curricula and natures of the relationships with Iran: peace, war, tension or stability. It is important, before presenting these mutual views of Arabs and Iranians, to note the following: •

•

•

School books in Iran are post-‘Islamic Revolution’ books, developed after the changes made since 1979 to the high school and university curricula and courses that had been in use for a decade under the reign of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. In fact, the deposed Shah’s policy toward the Arabs was a racist and aggressive one. He acted in such a manner when he tried to abolish the entire Arabic vocabulary from the Persian language. He did not succeed due to the difficulty of eliminating such a great number of Arabic words from Persian. The school books in Iraq were the same used during the Iraq–Iran war (following 1980), at the peak of the hostility and bloodshed between the two countries, until the fall of the old regime. It was not possible then to study the books published in Iraq because of the occupation and the instability, as well as the unclear nature of the curricula, courses and books that were to be adopted by the different schools in Iraq under its ‘new regime’. The study is based on history and geography books for intermediate school (the four years following elementary school) and on civic education books if adopted for that level. That phase is of an utmost importance for it is the beginning of the moulding and the development of maturity and awareness of those aged 12–16 years. During

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this period, so many questions arise about being and belonging, identity and values. This allows a wider scope of influence, one that might be more permanent at that age than at any other earlier stage. Since the victory of ‘the Islamic revolution’, Arab–Iranian relations were never steady on one track. They were different and contradictory, ranging from strategic alliance to tension, break up and direct military war. This is the reason why we searched in Iranian and Arabic school books for the perceptions that might or might not reflect the other’s image as it is in reality. We tried as well to know through the analysis of those books’ content whether there is one common image of ‘the other’ or a multiplicity of images. In the framework of our research on the other’s image, defining one’s self-image and the way each party viewed it was crucial; meaning how these books presented and reflected the image of their countries, the role, policies and leaders of the states, opposite the image of the other states – whether that image was revealed or concealed from stating the other or ignoring him bares an important analytical signification on the way the other is viewed. We did not focus our research for this study on all contents and aspects of the school books. They are many, including: images of the Arab, the European, the African; concepts of nationalism, Arabism, Islam, racism, the nation, homeland; the image of liberation movements, Islam, the West, Zionism; and drawings, maps, questions for the lessons; how many times this word or the other was used, the recurrence of a concept or another, the name of the President, the leader or his picture ... All are important and useful elements for the content’s analysis technique. However, we limited the study to the other’s image. The Iranian point of view and the image of the Arabs in the Iranian school books were examined through a comprehensive study in this field, based on the books published after the Islamic revolution. The Arab point of view was examined by choosing five lists of history and geography books, a total of 75 books, in conformity with the official programme and representing five countries: Syria, Iraq, Morocco, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Our choice aims at making these models as representative as possible of different samples or cases of the relations with Iran. Do we know how the policies of these states reflect the image of Iran in their school books? In other words, do alliances or provocation, and animosity or war, always coincide with the image drawn in the school books?

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We chose to analyse each series separately to deduct the elements of the image presented. We could have made a comparative analysis of every element forming the ‘Mother’s’ image in the school books. However, we preferred not to do so because of the probable complexities and to allow the reader to consult each book individually. In particular, at the end of the study we drew conclusions that combine the similarities and differences. We do not discuss in this study the historical and political facts. We present them as shown in the texts, whether we judge them true or not, because many ideas exposed, in the history books for example, can be a matter of dispute between historians themselves. Therefore we have not intervened in the nature of the text or discussed it: the purpose of our study is not to present historical facts or defend a particular point of view. This aspect is very controversial and changes the course and goals of the study. On the contrary, our main subject is the text’s content unaltered in itself, and its interpretation, in a way that brings to light the features of the image we are searching for in the clearest way possible.

The image of the Arab in Iranian school books This image is revealed through school books published after the ‘Islamic revolution’. The contents and objectives had changed; the lessons in the books of the previous period largely concentrated on the importance of old Iran and gave more value to nationalist Persian racism than to Islam, in defining the national Iranian identity in the past and present history. The lessons described the Muslim conquest of Iran as a barbaric occupation ‘by Arabs with no civilization’ over a great radiant city. The lessons also presented the Palestinian cause from a Western point of view, especially an American political one. Still, after the victory of ‘the Islamic revolution’, the ‘old’ established principles of the former regime changed. The glorification of Iranian nationalism switched to ‘a balance with Islam’, considered as an essential component of this nationalism. The studies attempted to evaluate the social and political conditions within the Iranian society before Islam, in order to uncover its positive and negative aspects. This is how, instead of being drawn to the ‘old Iran’, over praising or dispraising it and instead of ignoring the Arab world and the Islamic world, Iran started to look positively at its relationship with Arabs and Muslims ... Since the Iranian high school books are unified and with no diversity, their study was not as large and varied as the study of the 75 Arab books mentioned above. Yet we notice that the Iranian books reveal the image of

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the Arabs only through two dimensions: the attachment of Arabs to Islam and Iran’s interest in teaching Arabic in its schools. The hostile and racist image of Arabs in the school books used under the Shah’s regime has disappeared. Iran did not take the war with Iraq as a reason to change its programmes once again by adding courses provoking hostility against Arabs in general or Iraqis in particular. The books have not been altered even if some lessons mentioned the ‘bloody Friday’ that Iranian pilgrims and hundreds of other people were victims of in Mecca in 1987. Still, its use was never a pretext for racial, nationalist or confessional incitement against the Arabs and Arabism. Ghulam Ali Haddad Adel1 who studied these books thinks that the absence of provocation comes from Iran’s commitment to exclude anything that may weaken Islam or Islamic union, especially the Arabs. Therefore, the school books do not relate the defeat of the armies by the Arab army, the Arab savagery as before in the former regime, but rather to the royal incompetence and tyranny as well as Kissra Abrweez’s injustice that led to the weakening then the fall. Hence, with the Iranian school books’ interest in the ‘geography of the Islamic world’ and ‘Islamic brotherhood’, the ideas of racial superiority towards the Arabs and other peoples disappeared. Also, the stories that showed a negative image of the Arabs were replaced by others related to Islam, from the time of the Prophet, the caliphs and the imams. Direct reference to Arab personalities and symbols were reported in the language teaching books, for Arabic became obligatory for students in the post-elementary school. Thus, Iranian students read about the Egyptian scientist Ibn el-Haitham, they read the poetry of Abu el-Kassem el-Shabi the Tunisian poet, the poetry of Ibn el-Wardi and other great poets. The history books focus on the Islamic dimension in all its different eras. The first year book contains a detailed presentation of Mesopotamian civilizations and the Semitic peoples. The second year intermediate history book traces the history of the Islamic caliphate and describes the geography of the Arabian peninsula. The third year intermediate book has a long study on the rise of Islam and Arab states up to the Abbasid era. Through the basic Iranian commitment to the Palestinian cause, some religious, Persian language, history and Arabic language books dealt with the rights of the Palestinian people, the Zionist conspiracy, the Arab–Israeli conflict and the Israeli aggression. The Iranian school books reveal the following about the image of the Arabs:

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No separation, when mentioning the Arabs, between them and their Islamic belonging (Islamic unity), the Islamic call or the birth of Islam in the Arab land. The definition of the current Arab reality only through the conflict with Israel and the Israeli aggression of Arab countries (the Palestinian cause). Teaching Arabic as the language of the Koran. The absence of the old negative racial image of the Arabs with no evident interest in presenting an alternative positive one. No traces of the war with Iraq and tensions with other Arab states, in the image of the Arabs.

The image of Iranians in Arab school books Iraq The elements of this image were formed by the alarm of the Iraq–Iran war. The goals of war, the necessities of mobilization and the incitement seem clear and direct in all the series of history, geography and civic education books the Iraqi pupil studied. Even when referring to the remote history, the aim is for it to be useful for war objectives and for ‘the defence of the nation and its glory’. The image of the Iranian (the Persian) in these books is unmistakably clear and evident: it is a stereotyped image that has not changed since ‘the dawn of Islam history’, nor has its nature been altered despite the transformations made centuries ago. The Iranian has always been considered as the mean racist Persian who has conspired, since the time of the orthodox caliphs until the ‘glorious kadissya of Saddam’, against the Arab nation, its unity, Islamic Arab civilization and language. He is used to cooperating with the foreigner in order to achieve these goals and his own personal interests. When it was allowed to mention the Persians directly or indirectly, they were perceived as the invaders, the absolute evil that must be deterred, for it is the constant danger threatening the nation and its destiny. These books reduce almost all Arab and Muslim problems, the turmoil and confessional conflicts and the attempts at destroying the civilization, to the Persian role. We will refer to this aspect in the written texts. How do the books express this image? The image presented in the school books does not dissociate from the self-image, i.e. the image implying the Arab nation, Iraq, the Baath party and the Iraqi President. The polemic relation between the two images seems as necessary and vital as the relation between darkness and light: the level of threat by the Persian role will become clear only when faced with

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the greatness of the nation and the civilization; and the strength of the leader, the party and the state will manifest itself only in confronting a dangerous, chronic and comprehensive danger. Defending the state is defending the nation, and war against a state becomes war against the nation. The Persian conspiracy against Arabism and Islam The Persian conspiracy against Arabism and Islam started to rise after the decisive victory of the Arabs in the battle of Qadissya, the liberation of Iraq from their control and after the destruction of their Persian state. Persians exploited the honesty and humanity of Arabs: they saw the leader of the Umma, caliph Omar Bin Khattab (may God be pleased with him), as a target and set to assassinate him ... 2 The Persians started conspiring again by inflicting disturbances. And this is how Persians were responsible for the assassination of the three orthodox caliphs (may God be pleased with them). 3

This accusation is repeated in the fourth part of the same series. In the description of the birth of Islam and the establishment of the Arab state in the time of the Prophet and the caliphs: Omar (may God be pleased with him) was always seeking and working to set the rules and laws of the state ... He was about to complete the liberation of the Arab land had he not been assassinated by criminal sinful Persian hands, Abu Lu’lua, slave of al-Maghira Bin Shoba4 ... This was caused by the increasing hatred of the Persians toward the Arab nation after the victory of the Arabs in the battle of Qadissya in 15Hj.5

Conspiracy in the Umayyad era The Persians maintained their hostility to the Arab nation and its united state during the Umayyad era at two levels: religious and ideological, and political. The religious hostility was called infidelity,6 for the Persians wanted to disfigure Islam and tried to distort the Koran and the noble Sunna of the Prophet. They defamed Arabic, pride of the Arabs and symbol of their nationalist unity; they slandered Arab ancestry and criticized genuine Arab values such as generosity, courage and loyalty. The Arab nation faced this destructive movement ... and aborted its plans ...7 The second, political hostility through which the Persians tried to undermine the strong state by causing disturbance and participating in it.8

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Conspiracy in the Abbasid era Books reiterated ‘the increasing Persian hostility towards the Arab state during the Abbasid period’ as in the Umayyad era, in the form of religious and intellectual hostility and political conspiracy: The efforts of the nation were great in its nationalist and historical stand when facing with courage and determination all the Persian enemy’s political and ideological conspiracies. The nation destroyed and aborted them. The scholars and thinkers like Abu Hanifa, Jaafar el-Sadek, el-Jahez, el-Assmai, Ibn Kutaiba and others, confronted the infidel Persian movements.9

In the fourth part of this series, the Persian threat and conspiracies against the Arab state are recurrent: The Abbasids took the Persians as partners in running the state’s affairs ... Yet they were under strict supervision by the Arab caliphs who sensed the danger of the Persians’ intentions to undermine the Arab state by adding a Persian imprint to its institutions and administrations, so they got rid of them ... The Abbasids’ suppression of the Persians was a natural matter because they had misbehaved and exploited their posts to such an extent that the entity of the Abbasids and the Arab character of the nation were threatened.10

The Persians: foreign challenge and outside enemy invasion of the Arab and Islamic civilization The united Arab state faced throughout history many foreign challenges aiming at destroying its sovereignty and unity. Among the most important challenges: • Invasion by ‘Boweehis’: Persian people who took advantage of the

unstable situation in the united Arab state ... They adopted a hostile policy against the Arab nation ... and they intentionally wiped aspects of the Arab civilization from Iraq ... and encouraged confessional strife. • Invasion by the ‘Salajika’: they were Turks who lived in Iran, took advantage of the unbalanced situation in the united Arab state ... and practised the same hostility as the ‘Boweehis’. • Foreign invasion. • Invasion by the Mongols: ... they are savage peoples from central Asia ... The Persians hateful of Arabism and Islam have joined them in alliance.11

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The Arab army fought great battles after the noble victory in the battle of Qadissya. It pursued its advance to the rest of the Arab nation regions, in order to liberate the Arab lands from foreign control in general and Persian control in particular. The army also confronted all destructive movements and conspiracies set by the hateful Persians.12

The Persians: persistence of hostility in the modern era The Persian hostility towards the Arabs and the Iraqis in particular was maintained throughout history. The Safawi rule had conspired with the colonizers to serve its own expansionist interests. The Shah Reza Pahlavi occupied Ahwaz and annexed it to the Iranian territories, and also controlled the three islands in the Arabian Gulf. The Persian Safawi invasion: The Shah Ismail used religion as a cover for his territorial expansions in Iran and the neighbouring regions ... Iraq was the priority region for Ismail elSafawi ... He practised a racist confessional policy in the city (Baghdad) ... Yet he had to face great resistance from the Iraqis ... The Safawis did not leave any important marks during their rule. They also gave free and open access for Persian merchants to exhaust the Iraqi resources and the Persians also neglected agriculture and irrigation canalization.13 The Persians started to cooperate with the Portuguese colonists in order to achieve their expansionist goals in the Arabian Gulf.14 The Persians also cooperated with the rest of the European invading forces to gain control over the Arab territories. Therefore the Arabs had to resist the European–Persian alliance craving after their land.15 Despite the Ottoman control over Iraq, the Persian avidity never ceased ... The Persian armies occupied Baghdad in 1623 while Basra resisted the Persian invasion. Afrassyab, an Ottoman officer of Arab origins succeeded in establishing an independent authority in Basra that resisted many Persian military campaigns.16 When Shah Reza Pahlavi became ruler of Iran, the Iranian greed in the Arabian Gulf increased. He managed, using armed forces and in cooperation with the British, to occupy the Ahwaz region, annex it to Iran and topple its Arab rulers in 1925.17

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Iranian desires in Shatt al-Arab: In our present time, no state can alter its position without violating another state’s rights or sovereignty, as the Iranian expansionist attempts at the expense of Iraq in Shatt al-Arab and the land territories, and the Iranian occupation of the three islands: Tonb el-Kubra, Tonb el-Sughra and Abu Mussa in the Arabian Gulf on 31 December 1971.18 Mohammed Reza Pahlavi maintained the hostile policy against Iraq ... He used the Persian migration to the Gulf to suppress the Arab national identity there. When the 17–30 July 1968 revolution rose, the Shah’s regime was the first to oppose the revolution in Iraq because he knew that his Persian aspirations would never come true with the Baathist revolution in Iraq ... 19

As to the contemporary challenges faced by the Arab nation, they can be summarized as follows: 1. Colonization, 2. Zionism, 3. Racist Iranian desires, 4. Infidelity, 5. Division, 6. Cultural, economical and social lag.20

Persians are known for breaching treaties and agreements: The policy of the Persian state was always based on stalling and postponing in the matter of conventions until the right opportunity comes for a new expansion.21 After the revolution of 17–30 July 1968 and in coordination with the Zionist entity, Iran announced unilaterally in April 1969 the annulment of the 1937 Iraq–Iran convention and started planning for new expansionist moves ... 22 ... It was possible then to sign the 1975 Alger convention ... Iraq carried out its full engagements and tried to build a relation with Iran based on a goodneighbour policy and common interests. Except Iran, before what is called the ‘Islamic revolution’23 during the Shah’s reign and later, refused and stalled the implementation of the article relative to land frontiers, despite gaining half of Shatt al-Arab.24

The glorious Qadissya of Saddam: The Iraq–Iran war: The second ‘Qadissya’ by Iraqis against ‘the Persians’ is the continuity of the first one, between the two parties: the noble Arab protecting his land and dignity and the hostile Persian moved by his covetousness,

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disturbances and conspiracies. Iraq is the Arab party defending the entire nation against the Persian threat from the east of the Arab nation. Indirect preparation for ‘the glorious Qadissya’ starts then by the two belligerents: Iraq and Iran. The first is historically coveted for its location and role and the greedy second wants revenge for the first Qadissya: On the 4th of September 1980, Iran launched a series of military attacks, using air force, artillery, tanks, the infantry ... in preparation for a sweeping air strike against Iraq; yet they forgot that Iraq had started moulding a new history. So Iraq accepted their military challenge ... 25 Here lies the importance of its geographical location [Iraq]: it is the faithful guardian of the nation’s Eastern boundaries ... [Iran frontiers], the country’s location at the top of the Arabian Gulf gave it a historical responsibility for protecting these Arab waters.26 Due to its location in the Arabian Gulf ... Iraq had a growing importance in the region as one of its strongest countries capable of facing any aggression against the region. Iraq will not stand passive; it will fight all foreign enemies wanting to destroy the Arabism and independence of the Gulf region.27

The reasons behind the appellation: It is the immortal heroic epic led by the Iraqi people in the defence of Iraq and the Arab nation with a great victory over the racist Khomeini Persian enemy. It was named ‘the kadissya of Saddam’ after the great leader Saddam Hussein who led the wonderful heroic battles ... as had done the leader Saad Bin Abi Wakass in the first Kadissya ... about fourteen centuries ago.28 The Kadissya of our Arab ancestors has returned thanks to the hero of Arabism and Islam, the leader Saddam Hussein, against the same Persian enemy ... 29

The reasons for war: They go back to the Iranian position, refusing to answer the Iraqi call for a good-neighbour policy: The government of the revolution in Iraq welcomed the new government regime in Iran after the fall of the Shah in 1979. Yet Khomeini and his aids adopted a hostile position towards Iraq from the first day in power, and instead of answering the Iraqi call for the establishment of good relations and a good-neighbour policy, they increased their hostility against the party and

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the revolution, their aggression of border villages and regions, the Khomeini conspiracy campaign and destruction inside Iraq ... 30 4 September 1980, the racist Khomeini regime launched its armed offensive ... The Iranian officials started declaring they wanted to occupy Iraq, so the Iraqi leadership decided to respond by sending in Iraqi armed forces to the Iranian territories ... 31

In a detailed description of the reasons behind the war, there is an indication of the ‘Khomeini regime’ while it was limited to talking about Iran. This shift from generalization to specification means defining the enemy and the target in a clearer way. There is always of course the mention of Iranian–Colonists cooperation, which is the cooperation between the ‘Khomeini regime’ and the Zionists, while maintaining the self-glorification and that of the Baath ideology: The reasons behind the Khomeini regime aggression on Iraq and the continuation of war are: 1. The Baath doctrine, as inspired by the spirit of Islam and the Arab oriental heritage of the nation, is a threat to the underdeveloped Khomeini thoughts. 2. The Persian racist hatred towards Iraq and the Arab nation is very old and Khomeini used religion as a cover for it. 3. The military in Iran imagined that a conflict with Iraq will let them regain their position and power lost after the coming of the Khomeini regime. 4. The Khomeini rule wanted the war as a way to keep off the Iranian people from the economical, social and political problems in Iran. 5. The Zionist encouragement for Iranian aggression over Iraq ... because Iraq is a big threat to the Zionist entity.32

The lessons are not limited to analysing the reasons of war. They explain how the ‘Qadissya of Saddam’ created a new life for the Iraqi people, developed the military industry, preserved national unity and saved the Arab nation or even the Islamic world from the Persian Khomeini control and aggression, hateful of Arabism and collaborating with the Zionists.33 An entire chapter in the Civic Education book for the third intermediate is entitled: ‘Facts about the glorious Qadissya of Saddam and its role in the march of Iraqi society’.34 The chapter closes with many questions that reaffirm the concepts elaborated in the chapter about the hostility of

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the Khomeini regime and its collaboration with the Zionists, as well as the love of Iraqis for the army.35 In opposition to the enemy danger, threats and long-lasting desires, the school books show an image of the leader President Saddam Hussein equal in its size, importance and courage to the challenges facing Iraq and the nation. This is why the chapters underlined on all occasions the role of Saddam Hussein equivalent to that of the historical leader Saad Bin Abi Wakass and invoked God for his protection. This led to correspondence, in many subjects, between three pillars: Saddam Hussein, Iraq and the Arab nation. Whereas the role of the first is to protect the two others, the threat against the second is one against the entire nation, and the first’s defence through Iraq’s eastern front equals the defence of the nation and the Arab specificity. Iraq always appears as the strongest, ready at any time to face the offensive, while the Persian enemy was the one to violate treaties and refuse calls for peace and dialogue: The Qadissya of our Arab ancestors is ours again thanks to the hero of Arabs and Islam, the leader Saddam Hussein.36 The Qadissya of Saddam is a new rebirth for the Arabs, by which Iraqis won back the glories of their great ancestors who bore the flag of Islam ... like Saad Bin Abi Wakass and Khaled Bin el-Walid ... and Salah Din el-Ayyubi ...37 As to the comprehensive development aspect, Saddam Hussein is its first designer.38 In a decisive battle the President leader Saddam Hussein planned for ... to achieve the victory of Iraq and the Arab nation in the battle of the glorious Qadissya of Saddam.39 Iraq succeeded thanks to its unique leader in defeating all imperialistic Zionist plans.40

In an attempt to instil the concept of nationalism and Arab unity in the Civic Education book, part four, there is a direct reminder of the Persian racism: Racist nationalism implies fanaticism, feelings of superiority and the use of violence to impose the hegemony on other nations and peoples like the racist Persians and the Zionists; while the essence of humane nationalism is pride and the spirit of collaboration ... like our Arab nation throughout history.41

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Other negative elements in the image of the Iranian: When stating Iran’s hostility repeatedly in most of the chapters, a link appears from time to time between ‘Iranian hostility’ and ‘American– Atlantic hostility’ in ‘Umm el Ma’arek’, as well as the Zionist projects in the region. Umm el Ma’arek was the battle the Americans named ‘Desert Storm’, aimed at liberating Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. Yet the books mention only a few words about it to say that it was an aggression and that Iraqis faced it and won. So this battle is summarized by ‘aggression’ with no clarification of its nature. However, every chapter is an incitation against the racist Persian enemy, according to the examples we have shown above, and includes explanations, questions and pictures repeating all concepts of the lessons related to the Persians. The lessons do not include questions about Umm el Ma’arek nor Zionism. Entire paragraphs or chapters talk about the Qadissya of Saddam, while Umm el Ma’arek is solely mentioned as a sign of the offensive or the American-led attack against Iraq. The same applies for Israel. Except for an indication to occupied Palestine as a part of the Arab territory, there is no incitement similar to that against the Persian or Iran in general: The Iraqis fought the hostile invaders ... as they confronted the Iranian regime and American Atlantic Zionist aggression ... 42 Today they pursue their fight for a better present and a better future in the glorious Qadissya of Saddam and the timeless battle of Umm el Ma’arek ... 43

Observations on the moulded image: Apart from the hard apparent elements that form the cruel dark image of the Iranian, Iran is mentioned once in the second and third intermediate geography books, with no adjective or description (Islamic, racist or hostile). It is only considered as a neighbouring country. Even when mentioning the island of Abu Mussa, the book44 does not focus on it as being occupied by Iran. The same applies when talking about the demography or religious factor in Iraq: Iran is mentioned in a neutral way: The presence of holy places and tombs increases the population movements to cities such as Karbala’ and Najaf ... and from other countries like Iran, Pakistan, India ... 45

Still, the same factor (‘the presence of holy places and tombs’) that attracts Iranians to the Iraqi cities becomes in the history book46 ‘the fifth column working for the foreign interests inside the Iraqi society’. The two books

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referred to (history and geography) are addressed to the same third intermediate students and were reprinted again in the same year 1994!! In this book,47 there is not only a neutral indication as we said before, but also one sentence calling for positive relations with ‘the Iranian peoples and the Turkish people’.48 However, it was never mentioned again in any page of the school books upon which we based our study. When mentioning Umm el Ma’arek after a quick link with Iranian aggression, the Iranian exploitative role in that battle is expressed once: Through the implementation of the colonialist scheme in the internal situation and the arousal of its gangs to vandalism, looting and killing of innocent people.49

Apart from the image of the Iranians who took advantage of the American–Atlantic–Zionist aggression (Umm el Ma’arek), the history book, part three, mentions only once (and in no other book) the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait: ‘agents for the colonists, with a mission to drain the Iraqi economy’;50 ‘some Arab parties’, notably the ones that opposed the party and the revolution by encouraging the Khomeini regime in the offensive against Iraq51

and the alliance of traitors of the nation with the criminal Iranian enemy in the aggression over the eastern part of the Arab nation, and with the American Atlantic Zionist aggressors of Iraq ...52

Through the pages of most of the chapters in the history, geography and civic education books, the student gathers, during three or four years, fixed elements in the image of the Iranian ‘neighbour’. They can be summarized as follows, irrespective of their order in the books: •

•

• •

Iran: a continuity of its Persian history. No change even after the Islamic revolution which is not mentioned in any book. Khomeini and his hostile policy are a continuation of the former policy of the Shahs in Iran and Saddam Hussein represents the continuity of the first Arab leader’s policy. The Persians want revenge for the first Qadissya. The Persians are always the first ones to be aggressive and do not accept any peace initiatives presented by the Arab leader.

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•

•

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The Persians are against the Arabism of the Gulf, the unity of the Arab nation and the unity of the Iraqi people. The Persians always collaborate with the colonial forces against the Arabs. Persian nationalism is racist in contrast with the humane Arab nationalism.

Opposed to these detailed elements of the Persian’s image is the image of the Arab (the Iraqi specifically), who defends, sacrifices, offers peace and is not aggressive. The image of the American and even the Zionist is absent behind the total suppression of the ‘Desert Storm’, its reasons and details. It is reduced to ‘Umm el Ma’arek’, which was an offensive Iraqis resisted to and won, like in the second Qadissya. No explanation, detail or picture were given concerning the battle of Umm el Ma’arek and the parties involved, as was the case in the war with Iran, although these books were published in their new editions (1993–4), four years after the end of the Iraq–Iran war. As for the slight indication to good neighbouring with Iran (one time), it becomes a blurry insignificant mark compared with the overflow of hostile descriptions repeated again and again in the chapters dealing with Iran. The image of Iran before the war: In comparison with the previous period, we notice that Iran was completely absent from the curricula of the four intermediate years.53 History, geography or education books, reading or Islamic civilization books, or even literary texts do not state any aspects, positive or negative, of Iran. The self-glorification, the ideology and regime were intact. When some books of that earlier period refer to Iran, we see a ‘positive’ position, unlike the same books published after the war and in contrast with the historical events used to justify the sharp hostile position toward Iran. For example, in Modern History,54 in the chapter dealing with nationalist movements in the Near East: The nationalist awakening that started in Iran since Jamal El-Din Al-Afghani’s call to fight the European colonization ... and the national movement for resistance to the Shah’s tyranny and the foreign powers in 1896 ... 55

The following texts in the same books show other ‘positive’ signs that appreciate the policy of Shah Reza Pahlavi: who worked at fixing the economic and administrative condition in the country by hiring German and Italian engineers, American finance experts

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who organized the treasury of the Iranian government ... he aimed at reviving the economy through the construction of factories and the encouragement of national industries.56

Reaffirming the historical positive cooperation between the two countries, the same text, in the matter of Iran’s foreign policy, points at the treaty signed on 8 July 1937 in Saad Abad, Turkey, by Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan: according to which these four states decided to consult among themselves in foreign policy matters.57

We also do not find any trace of the deep hatred toward the Arabs and the Muslims manifested by King Kisra when the Prophet – God’s blessing and peace be upon him – sent him a letter inviting him to embrace Islam.58

The History of the Arab Islamic Civilization mentions only the letters sent by the Prophet to the kings and princes of that time, and to Kisra and Kaissar, calling upon them to embrace Islam before he goes into war with them.59

Neither are the Persians accused of the murders of the three caliphs: Omar, Osman and Ali. For the same history book only mentions Omar’s death as such: He was assassinated by the sinful criminal Abu Lu’lua, slave of el-Maghira Bin Shoba.60

Osman’s ‘death after twelve years of his caliphate’ and the martyrdom of Ali, while praying in Kufa, a vile assassination by Abd Rahman Bin Meljem.61

As to ‘the Arab nation borders’ problems, in General Geography for the fourth grade,62 they are limited only to ‘territories inhabited by Arab communities, controlled by foreign states’. The book focuses on two main problems: ‘the Somalia Arab territories under Ethiopian and Kenyan control ... and Ethiopian control over Eritrea’.63 The book does not come

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to mention any border or other problems with Iran, which changed, as we noticed in the ‘war books’, to the main source of all envies in Arab territories. Zionism, however, was this time largely accused for its conspiracies to occupy Palestine and the other Arab territories by means of war in 1956, 1967 and 1978. The Zionist expansion and aggression were considered as a new Nazism: much more dangerous and threatening for the peace and security of peoples, especially the Arab people who have only one way of confronting it: popular war and armed struggle ... 64

Syria The image of the Iranians in Syrian school books, in both history and geography books, is a calm image, different from the hostile one given by Iraqi school books. The Persians are not considered the Arab nation’s only danger that stole some territories in certain defined historical circumstances since the Umayyad until today. There were also the Turks, the Mongols and the crusaders. The Zionists are the biggest settlement threat in modern history. Iran is seen today as ‘an Islamic Republic’. Persians from a historical point of view The negative image: The elements of this image were set because of the non-Arab chiefs (Mawali) who stood against the Umayyad; the atheist infidels many Persians joined (they managed to compete with the caliph Harun el-Rashid due to their old administrative experience, and tried to control and demean the Arabs); and the Iranian occupation of Arab territories and islands with British support, before turning to an Islamic Republic: The chiefs (Mawali) are the non-Arab Muslims whose number increased after the sapping of the Persian state. Despite their joining Islam, a large number of them were eager to rebuild the state. This is why they conspired over the state’s security since the rule of Omar Bin el Khattab who was murdered by Lu’lua the Persian, a Mawali. The Umayyad sensed the danger and took away the Mawali rights to equality with the Arabs and forbad them to assume the state’s high positions.65

During the Abbasid era:

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Abu Jaafar elMansour succeeded in tracking the atheists among whom were many Persians (influenced by their ancient cultures) who embraced Islam to hide their previous beliefs in order to achieve their own goals and interests and offend Arabism and Islam ...66 The Arab revolutions against the growing Persian power never stopped. There were many in Syria and Iraq the state succeeded in crushing. Yet the competition was not limited only to the Arabs and the Persians but also the Turks.67

The atheist movement or Shu’bia is a non-Arab movement that claimed equality with the Arabs then surpassed it to control and demean them and offend the teachings of Islam. This was accompanied by a revival of its religious, cultural and language heritage. The reasons behind the rise of such a movement are, first: the sorrow and distress of the Persians after the end of their great state and the control by the Arabs, who are considered as inferior; and second: the bad social and economic situation of the Mawali who then resented the Abbasid caliphate by contesting and defaming Arabism and Islam.68

As to the Qadissya battle which was a focal point in the education, history and geography orientation in the Iraqi school books, it is mentioned here like any other battle fought by the Arabs in their history of conflict with neighbouring nations: The Persians tried, toward the end of their rule, to crush the Arabs. Yet the latter confronted them in the battle of Zi Kar (AD 610) and victoriously won ... This battle had a nationalistic character and influenced the other liberation wars to expel Persians from Arab territories in the battles of Qadissya and Buwaib.69

The ‘stealing’ of Arab territories by Iran, like the region of Ahwaz and the Arab islands in the Arabian Gulf, is not considered as an exceptional aggression or deep rancour, rather a part of the colonial conflict history in the region, which led to the violation of other parts: the province of Iskenderun, the cities of Sabta and Melilla, the islands in the Arab Maghreb with Spain ... 70

When giving a historical review of Iran’s control over Arab territories (Ahwaz), a chapter of six pages focuses on the former kings of Iran

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during the period of conflict with the Ottomans over the region, then on Britain that started strengthening its relations with Iran and supported Reza Pahlavi known for his hostility to Arabs ... until the Iranian Islamic Revolution overthrew his son Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

However, the case of Ahwaz is indeed detailed in a whole chapter, describing again the conflict historically since the time of the Ottomans, to the colonial conspiracy and until the Iranian invasion of it.71

The positive image: Many signs generally express a negative historical role of the Persians from an Arab point of view, a role based on control and infiltration into the high positions of power in some of the Arab state ruling periods, or on the desire of gaining back the glories of their past empire and spreading their culture. Yet the same books give a parallel image showing the Persians belonging to the world of ancient civilizations, their contribution in building them, their influence over and from other civilizations and their establishment of great Islamic cities that became ideology and science capitals: In Iraq, Syria, Egypt and south of the Arabian peninsula, rose the most ancient civilizations ... followed by others in India and Persia ... 72

In the same book, in a chapter about civilizations, the Persian civilization is demonstrated after India and China: The Persian civilization is distinguished from others by its administrative organization: the division of the empire into provinces, the justice system, religious beliefs, the writings, and the art of construction.73 And in Persia the most refined industries of cotton, linen and carpeting ... as were Egypt, Andalusia, the Maghreb, Persia, Kurassan trade pivots ... 74

The influence of the Persians and their traditions touched the neighbouring Arab regions where under the Abbasid rule some Persian holidays were celebrated, like the Neyruz (the beginning of spring) and the Festival (celebrating the beginning

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of winter) ... the eastern regions were also influenced in their holiday celebrations by the Persian ones.75

As to the school of Jund Sabur established under the rule of the Persian king Sabur the First: it was a source of the Greek culture ... its influence on the Arabs was clear in the field of medicine ... 76

Academically, in the stream of the translation and writing movement, many writers of Persian origins transferred some of the heritage of their people into Arabic ... Arabs also studied Persian literature and proverbs ... socially, people were influenced by Persian customs in food, clothing, feasts ... the judges and great officials of the state wore the cowl like the Persians ... 77 The Arabs were familiar (before Islam) with the medicine of the people surrounding them such as the Persians and the Indians.78

The outside invasion of the Arab nation in History of the Arabs in the Abbasid Era, for the second elementary, is narrowed down in the 15-page chapter (pp.141–56), to the Crusades and the Mongol invasions. The colonial aspirations over the Arabian peninsula do not include the Persians (in comparison with the Iraqi books). They are limited to Portuguese and British desires.79 As to Iran’s current situation, it is different from its past, in the way that the country is defined, in the 24th chapter concerning Asia, as: a republic, where a popular revolution against Zionism arose, and one which supports liberation movements.80

This is the book’s only political definition of Iran. The rest of the pages describe the location, the borders, the relief, the population, the climate, the resources ... Compared with other republics such as Turkey, India and the African states, we note that Iran alone had this kind of a positive definition while the other countries were dealt with directly by talking about location and border, with no introduction to their political systems.81 History of the Modern Ages, part two, dedicates a special lesson to the Iranian Islamic Revolution. It gives briefly, in two pages, a historical

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glance at Iran before the revolution and the reasons for the revolution, then closes by affirming the corruption of the Shah’s former regime: The Islamic revolution, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, won victory on 11 February 1978 over the monarchal system. The Islamic Iranian Republic was declared. It withdrew from the ‘Santo’ coalition and joined the Non-Aligned Movement in 1979. It also recognized the Palestinian Liberation Organization and closed down the offices of the Zionist state.82

However, the other revolutions tackled in previous chapters were dealt with in more detail. The Chinese revolution was discussed in two parts of 18 pages (pp. 135–52), the Vietnamese revolution had two 14-page parts (pp.153–67), while the Iranian Islamic revolution had only two (pp.178–9). Observations and conclusions The Syrian school books do not depict an entirely negative image of the Iranians. When they do, they link them back to the past historical stages, without any relation to the Persian occupation of the Arab land or to hostility and rancour. They only state them as facts. The anti-Arab movements are not limited to the Persians. We go from generalization to historical objectivity, where these movements are singled out as ‘including many Persians’. The books rather explain the social and political reasons behind the rebellion and mutiny of the Persians or Mawali. Yet there is no concentration on a detailed bright and special picture of Iran. It is only presented as an Islamic Republic different in its policies from the former Shah’s policy, with no praise or exaggeration. The elements of the image are presented in a general framework of serial historical and current facts. Many books focus on the occupation of Arab territories by the Persians or Iran, yet there is an indication of the Islamic change in Iran and its policies: there is a general engagement in these books to see Iran on one hand from an Arab nationalist point of view that insists on rights, and on the other to see it from an objective point of view that takes into consideration the transformations occurred. However, the developments on the level of the Iranian relations, after the victory of the revolution in Iran and especially the eight-year war with Iraq, are not mentioned in these books. Expressing the contemporary Iranian–Arab conflict is avoided, as well as the reasons and results of it. Nevertheless, the other element Syrian books stress as the ultimate threat to the Arab nation, before and now, is the Zionist racist danger. The Zionist colonization

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represents the typical form of settlement transformed into a developed imperialistic base in the Arab nation ... its mission is to impede any nationalist liberation movement, to instil sectioning, underdevelopment and abort all Arab development plans, which will create tension and threaten peace and security in the region.83

On the other hand, Iran (or the Persians) was never described as such even in the context of its old Persian history. Egypt In the Egyptian school books, the self-image is evident more than any other. The history and geography books for the high-school level have one thing in common: Egypt, with the study of ancient civilizations, modern history, geography of the Arab nation, the Nile basin, Egypt ‘my nation’, and Egypt and the world. This image does not rely on any norm of comparison to show its presence, strength or importance, for ‘the heritage of the past and the ancestry of the civilization since the dawn of time’ are considered to be enough. Still, it does not totally exclude the other images, like the image of the Arab nation, the Persian, the Israeli, the African and others. These books do not offer a clear specific image of the Iranian. When they do, it is restricted to his role in the remote historical events. By coming closer to contemporary history, the image fades away completely as if it does not exist on the geopolitical map of the region Egypt belongs to. Even for what may be considered as an image of the Iranian or the Persian, he is not perceived as a rival or enemy. The events related by the books are smoothly depicted, thought after thought and ‘people after people’ in different consecutive historical facts. The image of the Persians in the ancient time In a quick look at the role of the Persians in history, the geography book only mentions their incapacity to force out the Arab tribes that came from Yemen and headed for the western fertile region of the Euphrates to a place called ‘Al Hira’. They took allies from the Arab tribes to face the attacks and help them in their wars against the Byzantines.84

However, this does not deny the existence of a Persian civilization, implied in the question at the end of the review:

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Why were the civilizations of the ‘Manazirs’ and ‘Ghassassins’ influenced by the civilizations of Yemen, the Persians and the Byzantines?85

In the same historical context, the Persians were mentioned on many different occasions: Some Arab tribes have been introduced to the celestial religions, and the Persians spread Judaism in Yemen.86 The Arabs were able under the rule of Omar Bin Khattab to gain decisive victories over Kisra in Persia [until] Iraq became part of the Persian empire that was then invaded by Alexander the Great in 330 BC ... The Persians entered Iraq once again which became a battlefield for the Persians and the Romans until the Arab conquest in 632. Iraq stepped into a new era of prosperity, the Islamic era.87

In order to reaffirm the importance and the strategic location of the Arab nation, the Persians are shown as one of the great political powers who tried to control it for a long time: The Persians took control over the surrounding seas of the Arab nation in order to control its territories. So did the Romans in the second century BC, then came the Mongols from the steppes of Asia and the Crusades from Europe to win domination.88

The Qadissya where the Arabs beat the Persians is not an occasion for Egyptian pride in Arabism or in doubting the Persians.89 It is considered as a historical event and one of the phases of the Arab conquests in which the Persians were heavily defeated by the Arab army ... Persia became a part of the Islamic state, the Persians embraced Islam and the Arabs called them the Mawali.90 In the Abbasid era, the Persians were referred to as non-Arab elements that contributed to the disintegration of the state: The signs of disintegration had begun during the second Abbasid rule when the caliphs called upon non-Arab elements like the Persians, who had had a big role in establishing the Abbasid state from the beginning, and the Turks the Abbasids requested ... These elements took advantage of the weakness of the Abbasid caliphate ...

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Nevertheless, the roles the Persians played, and their defeats by the Islamic army, do not exclude from the Egyptian school books their deep-rooted civilization with which the Arabs connected and interacted: One of the results of the Islamic conquests was the Arabs’ contact with the centres of ancient civilizations like the Greek civilization ... the Roman civilization, the Persian civilization, the Indian and Chinese civilizations ... 91

The image of the Iranians in the modern era As we get closer to the modern era, the image of the old Iran disappears, and a new image of impartiality in the struggle and conflicts over the territories and borders in the Arab nation emerges. These books do not confirm the Iranian occupation of the three islands: Tonb el-Sughra, Tonb el-Kubra and Abu Mussa, or the region of Ahwaz, like the Syrian or Iraqi books. Hormuz, for example, is an important maritime strait connecting the Arabian Gulf to the gulf of Oman; it is bordered in the north and north-east by Iran, and in the west and south-west by Oman; with some rocky islands like the island of Qoshm, Abu Mussa and others ... The strait is important because it is the only maritime passageway for many countries ...92

The book does not remind us of Hormuz Strait’s role in the Iraq–Iran war that was not mentioned either in the history and geography books. Still, it does relate how Britain occupied the strait of Bab el-Mandab, due to its importance, since 1839 and took over the island of Brim forty years earlier ...

93

As to land borders of the Arab nation, they stretch south to the northern end of the Arabian Gulf, reaching plains connected with Iran and Iraq (the level region of Shatt al-Arab). It is considered as one of the border conflict regions between the two states with no solution up until today.94 The Iraqi and Syrian books confirm the existence of occupied regions in the Arab world, such as Ahwaz and Iskenderun, but the Egyptian books see only Palestine as a continuation of the occupation: The Arab nation has won a strategic (military) importance for its control of the land, sea and air transport. That is why great colonial states have fought to control it since the end of the eighteenth century, and divide it into small states. The Arab people have struggled until the liberation and independence of all the regions, except occupied Palestine.95

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The books do not show a concern over Persian aspirations and threats to the Arab nation, its culture and history: The natural boundaries have protected the Arab nation from the infiltration of non-Arab elements like the Persians or the Turks, except a minimal number that does not affect the character of the Arab nation.96

They do not deal with the details or political and military reasons for the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq, and do not pinpoint its beginning after the victory of the Islamic revolution in Iran. They do not even mention the change in Iran, but give a hint, in the context of praise to the role, activities and participation of Egypt in the regional, international, Arab and Islamic organizations, about the resolution of the Islamic Conference calling to stop the military operations: The Conference calls upon the two Islamic states in war, Iran and Iraq, to put an end to the military operations and start negotiations to solve the problems, and form a committee for that purpose.97

Therefore, Iran is an Islamic state just like Iraq. Neither are considered aggressors because the resolution is not specific on this point; instead it calls on solving the problems through negotiations. This impartiality is evident when the school books describe each of the Arab states, while avoiding pointing out any disagreement among them or between them and the neighbouring states, especially Iran. It also seems that avoiding the political problems and the military wars between the states of the region is deliberate in these books. However, the official Egyptian policy is very different, considering the clear stands toward the Iraq–Iran war or the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. When talking about the latter, in a glance over its past and present, there is no indication of the Iraqi occupation, or of the second Gulf War in which the Egyptian forces participated next to the international coalition forces. The enemy is not Iran What is striking in this education policy is the focusing on the Israeli aggression, and the constant violation of Palestine in all its historical and contemporary aspects. Yet, some chapters do deal with the issue of the peace and reconciliation process Egypt is engaged in since Camp David: The Arabs used oil as an economic weapon for the benefit of their cause in October war 1973, when they prohibited its exportation to foreign states helping Israel in its aggression against the Arabs ... 98

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When praising the role of Egypt and the Arab League in facing the Arab problems, the Palestinian cause is always given as an example: The Arab armies intervened after the institution of Israel on the Palestinian land in 1948, tried to force out the Zionists and almost succeeded had it not been for the intervention of the European states and the United States of America.

In Geography of the Arab Nation and its History in the Islamic Era, second elementary, more than a chapter is dedicated to explaining the Palestinian cause in detail. The lesson includes a definition of Zionism, paragraphs from the Balfour declaration, the Palestinian war 1948, the tripartite aggression over Egypt 1956, the Zionist aggression 1967, the October war 1973, the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, and the Palestinian Intifada. The questions of the same lesson aim at instilling the idea in the student’s mind and they concentrate on the violation of Palestine, the Intifada and the tripartite aggression on Egypt.99 No similar details were given at all concerning Iran in the modern period, negatively or positively. Geography of the Arab Nation and its History in the Islamic Era, second elementary, closes on an invitation to Arab integration. It is not addressed to any of the neighbouring countries (Iran or other), but efforts should be made for integration on an economic basis: The modern spectre of the regional and international problems and circumstances has become very important. Thus it requires economic integration between states for there is no more space for small entities in the midst of the giant political and economic blocs in the world today.100

Observations and conclusions The Egyptian school books only care about focusing on Egypt’s civilization and role related to the regional environment of Egypt and its relations in the world. Hence, the history and geography books tackled through the titles and chapters, the African, Arab, world and civilization spheres, in which Egypt wants to play an effective part. Iran did not get such large an interest. No image of it is clear, negatively or positively, if we put aside the ancient historical events concerning the Persians and their role. These books try, as we have mentioned, to give an impartial character to Iran without implicitly removing its Islamic character. This could also apply to all the Egyptian relations discussed in these books. There are no signs of complications or political, border or security

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problems with any state or political movement, except, as said before, the Zionist hostility and violation of Palestine, as well as the peace to come signed by Egypt in Camp David and a glance at the Intifada. The tensioned relations between Egypt and Iran, the broken diplomatic relations and the mutual accusations in the press and the media, constitute a negative mutual image for the public opinion in both countries. Still, this image was not transferred into the Egyptian school books. Morocco The history books for both elementary and high schools in Morocco deal mainly with Morocco and its history throughout in entire chapters. In some cases, two-thirds of the book are dedicated for that purpose (12 out of 19 lessons for the seventh year of elementary school). The image of the Moroccan includes the large Maghreb context: Algeria, Tunisia and Libya are described in specific lessons. The image of Iran is absent from the Moroccan school books, yet it does not seem intentional. Focusing on Morocco and the Maghreb region does not justify any positive or negative view about Iran; the spheres dealt with in the chapters are only African and Arab. If the students were to read about international facts, the subject would be chosen randomly with no logical link. For example, the books start sometimes (History, seventh elementary) with Europe between the 13th and 17th centuries, then move on to the Islamic East then the Islamic West, and the establishment of the Moroccan state and civilization of the Maghreb. Another book (History, eighth elementary) describes what happened in Europe and America between the 17th and 19th centuries, then discusses the Islamic world and Africa as the centre of the Maghreb. In modern history, the book displays the world’s greatest developments until the end of the Second World War, then moves on to world liberation movements, starting from the Mashrek to the Maghreb, whose movements in each of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco are explained in special lessons. It deals afterwards with liberation movements in the Far East and African countries (History, ninth year). It also discusses ancient civilizations, the sovereignty of the Islamic state and the establishment of the state of Morocco and aspects of Moroccan civilization (History, first secondary). The liberation movements, in the second secondary history lessons, are the nationalist movements in Europe. Contrary to the European expansion in the Islamic world, the Maghreb is described in most of the lessons (History, second secondary). One of the history lessons deals with the general developments in Turkey and the Arab states (History, third secondary), yet does not

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mention Iran in connection with any of these countries, the liberation movements or resistance to the colonization, or even any description given for many European, African, Islamic world and Maghreb states. Iran is non-existent, which means that the changes on the level of the Islamic revolution’s victory, the war with Iraq and even the border and island problems that remain unsolved do not exist either. The Moroccan student learns most importantly in these books about belonging to Morocco and the bigger Maghreb. None of the lessons consider any state as either a friend or a foe. They relate historical events mostly, among which the Palestinian cause and the Arab–Israeli conflict, where it stops at the international recognition of the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1974. The belongingness to the Arab nation too is inexistent, unlike in the Iraqi and Syrian books and less so in the Egyptian books. Its absence from history and geography books became a natural fact, for Iran has no common borders with Morocco, no relations and no historical presence in the region. The only image given by the history books is that of the Persian who played a role in Islamic history, without necessarily leaving any negative impression or feeling of hatred toward Iran. On the contrary, it is a balanced image describing facts historians agree on, without any ideological, provocative political or ethnic approach: With the fall of Baghdad, the Abbasid caliphate that united the Mashrek ended. Other states, among which the Mamelukes and the Safawi, attempted to unite the region.101

In defining the Safawi state, it is restricted to ‘impartial history’, with no political background or fanaticism expressing hatred or hostility: The Safawi state emerged in Iran after being ruled by many small governments since the fall of the Mongol empire. The Safawi state was established by Shah Ismail ... he was the follower of Sheikh Isshak Safi Din considered by the historians as one of Shi’ite imam Mussa el-Kazem’s grandsons. The name of the Safawi state is attributed to Sheikh Safi Din.

On the other hand, we find a description of the civilization of the Persians who the Rashidis copied in matters of military organization in order to join the army and ranks ... The Safawi also cared for the civilization aspect ... They organized the army, established some military industries like the production of canons with the help of the English; they built roads, canals and resting places for caravans all over Iran. They promoted

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the intellectual life, especially in the fields of jurisprudence, philosophy and natural sciences. The construction activity was a notable mark of the Safawi rule. The Safawi did not organize their state by order of the caliphate. Unlike the Mamelukes, they established a Shi’ite state different in its doctrine from the rest of the Islamic Eastern region of Sunni doctrine.102

Even the Mawali, accused of fanaticism, racism and atheism and among which are great numbers of Persians, as expressed in the other Arab books, History (first secondary) gives them a rather ‘fair’ image, upon which we can read the political and social reasons that led to the deprivation of their rights and fields of excellence. Still, no indication to their ethnicity.103 Consequently, there are no signs in the history and geography books in Morocco indicating a specific image of modern Iran. It is viewed as a state beyond the boundaries, with no direct relations with or problems for Morocco. The changes that occurred in Iran are absent. On the other hand, Morocco, as a nation in its past and present history, is focused on, and the European states, their civilization and colonial history are described and defined, probably because no Arab state other than Morocco is directly close to Europe. Saudi Arabia History and geography in the official Saudi school books are taught in intermediate and high schools, with 34 books almost equally divided between the two courses. The lessons can be summarized in two axes: the Islamic world and Saudi Arabia. The axes are distributed according to the following parts and titles: • The Prophets and their calls; • The Islamic state at the time of the rule of the Rashidi caliphs, the

Umayyads, the Abbasids and the Ottomans; • The internal and external waves of aggression on the Islamic world; • Models of historical Islamic personalities, the Salafist call and the

biography of Mohammed Bin Abd el Wahab; • The Saudi state in its three stages, the story of its kings in the modern era; • The threats of Zionism and the history of the Palestinian cause; and • The aspects of modern civilization. These axes are recurrent in the geography books (the geography of the Islamic world and its countries, the geography of Saudi Arabia and its relations with these countries). These subjects dominate the entire

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programme in dozens of lessons, while other subjects are limited to human and natural geography and astronomy. No special image of Iran shows through these lessons, for the interest in the large Islamic world is far greater. Good Saudi relations with all the Arab and Islamic states do not exclude Iran, despite a difference in the level of the relation between one state and another. Although history tells the events of the battles between the Persians and the Islamic armies at the time of the first conquests, the image of modern Iran is not affected by the historic Persian actions. This image remains unchanged in the historical context, with no direct or indirect provocation against the Persians as a people or as an anti-Arab element. Stating their remote history is as plain as talking about the story and the barbarism of Mongols. From here, we can say that the image of Iran is in the first place the image of the ancient Persians, with no attempt to link that people to the image of Iran today. The battles of the Persians against the Islamic armies These battles started under the rule of the first caliph, who sent Khaled bin Walid with an army to Iraq in order to fight the Persians ‘who refused the call of Islam’. The most important battles between the Persians and the Muslims are: • The battle of the Bridge (al Jisr): on the Euphrates river. It was the

only battle where the Persians won victory over the Muslims. • The battle of Bwaib: the Persians were defeated and their leader

killed. • The battle of Kadissya: near the Euphrates River, the Persians were

defeated after nearly a hundred killed. • The battle of Al Mada’en (the cities): the Persian capital fell into the

hands of the Muslims. • The battle of Nahawand: in which the Persians tried to regain what

they had lost. Yet they were defeated, the Muslims took over Nahawand and the Persian countries started falling one after the other before the Muslims.104 There is no indication of the Persian origins of the Shu’bia’s (atheism), one of the reasons for the weakness and fall of the Umayyad state. The Persians were able, when they were ministers at the time of Harun al Rashid, to convince him to assign Al Ma’mun as heir of the Amin rule and grant him the general ruling of Khurassan, and give ‘el-Kassem’ general control of the

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island. It was considered as the first partition ever witnessed by the Islamic state.

The Persians helped the Abbasid caliphs: They handled high civil and military posts, except they tried to compete with the caliphs and exploit the power in order to take back the old position of Persia. However, the Abbasid caliphs ... destroyed them.105

The Safawi state and Shi’ism In the context of the states’ competition over the centre of the Islamic world, the Safawi state ruled Iran and parts of Iraq east of Anatolia and its capital Tabriz. It was headed by Ismail el Safawi famous for his expansionist aspirations and his fanaticism toward Shi’ism.

The Shah Ismail el Safawi was also trying to spread Shi’ism in Anatolia and provoke the rebels against the Ottomans ... until ‘they were defeated by the Ottoman Sultan Selim the First’.106 Nationalism is a reactionary call Despite the insistence of the Saudi school book on the Islamic belonging, as reflected clearly in all history and geography lessons, and despite the introductions that prove to the student that the Islamic world is one nation, no matter how the countries were dispersed in the continents,

the Arab world holds a special part (described in one chapter). One, which is different from the rest of the world, not because of Arabism or common nationalism, but because of its religious importance, for it is the region where the missions were revealed to the Prophets in the call for unification. Nationalism bears no trace in the formation of this world, and it was never a matter of interest or call. This is the reason why Saudi books avoid mentioning the subject of nationalism and ignore the call for it in the modern period of the history of the Arabs. It describes only the importance of the Arab world and its desire in the political and economic liberation from the Ottoman rule; the states fought for it and changed from underdeveloped to developing countries. Still, the fundamental condition for turning

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into strong states is ‘the application of the Islamic Sharia’ and the ‘deepening of faith in the souls of the Muslim citizens’.107 Saudi school books avoid dealing with the subject of the nation, the Arab nation and its nationalism, in contrast to the Syrian, Egyptian and Iraqi books, and they underline belonging to the world of Islam and its unified nation. They also consider nationalism, communism and perverse religious calls as one of the aspects of internal aggression on the Islamic world in the modern epoch. It is perceived as a secular call and new appellation for the fanaticism faced by many states in the past ... Arab nationalism is a fanatic ideological political movement, calling for the glorification of the Arabs, the establishment of one united state on the basis of blood relationship and history, and the replacement of the religion relationship. It is the echo of the nationalist ideology that has already emerged in Europe. Many states aspired to occupy the Islamic East, especially Britain, and so supported the rise of the Arab nationalism in its secular aspect ... the nationalistic call is also an ignorant call of paganism aiming at fighting Islam and destroying its provisions and teachings ... triggered by Western Christians to fight Islam and crush it on its own ground by saying ... It is a void call, a great mistake, aberrant ignorance and clear deceit for Islam and the people of Islam.108

Iran: an old Islamic image Due to this Islamic, not nationalist, belonging, these books see Iran as a part of the Islamic world, not as a nationalist or racist enemy. It is an Islamic country of a great civilization. The Iranian Indo-Europeans settled in the ancient times, and built villages and cities and a civilization remaining until today ... The old Iranians followed Magianism with Zoroastrianism, a decadent religion based on polytheism and the worship of fire ... Islam spread quickly in Persia, as named later on, what saved its people and pulled them out ... into the greatness of Islam ... blessing and fortune flowed in the country.109

The history of Iran stops at its adoption of Islam. There are no indications of the modern changes that occurred before the Shah or after the victory of the Islamic revolution. When discussing the people and language of Iran, the geography book makes only one clarification:

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Persian is the official language and it is written in Arabic letters. Every national group has its own language besides the official one, while the religious schools of all the groups teach Arabic.110

Yet the omission of the contemporary and modern aspects of Iran’s history was not applied for all the countries and cases discussed in the history books. Mentioning Afghanistan is related to the Saudi help against the Soviet invasion and ‘the Islamic republics belonged to the ex-Soviet Union’.111 The books give other examples of modern conflicts like the desert problem between Algeria and Morocco, conflicts between Pakistan and Kashmir as models of differences between the sons of the same Islamic nation, because of colonization.112 Self-image: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: foundation of Islamic solidarity The image of Saudi Arabia falls under belonging to the Islamic world, as a state of initiative, caring for the unity and solidarity of the Muslims. Thus, Saudi Arabia has always worked in that perspective, thanks to all its leaders and the servant of the two Holy Places, by sparing no effort or financial means, in accordance with the teachings and fundamentals of Islam. It was also the forerunner in the unification of the Arabs stand: King Faisal Bin Abdulaziz, God rest his soul, bore the flag of the call for Islamic solidarity ... King Faisal, may God rest him in peace, translated his words into action, in politics and on the financial level: generosity never witnessed before.113 His Royal Highness King Khaled Bin Abdulaziz, God rest his soul, pursued his predecessor’s plan in calling for Islamic solidarity ... The servant of the two Holy Places, Fahd Bin Abdulaziz, continued in his effort for Islamic solidarity as the basis of the internal and foreign policy of Saudi Arabia. Its role is crucial for it proposed the idea of establishing the union of the Islamic world. Saudi Arabia is also the forerunner in the unification of the Arabs stand. Hence, it supports all general Arab effort!

The Saudi Arabian leaders kept seeing the Palestinian cause as ‘the primary cause of the Arabs and Muslims’,114 ‘King Faisal, God rest his soul, set about uniting the Muslims stand’.115 The image of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia becomes formed then by the following elements:

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• The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the heart of the Islamic world; with

their Kiblah ... • The roots of the Islamic civilization that prompted human progress lie

here. • The Kingdom realizes great accomplishments in the fields of science,

economy, culture and architecture. • The Kingdom plays a pioneering role in the resolution of the world’s

general oil problems. • It contributes immensely in the resolution of urgent problems facing

the Islamic world.116 Saudi Arabia and Iran When the Saudi school books discuss the Saudi Arabian relations with other Arab and Islamic states, Iran rather gets the cold shoulder in comparison with the other states. The books do not address the nature of the problems between the two countries since the victory of the Islamic revolution, or the complications and tensions of the pilgrimage to Mecca. They bring to light the historical side of the relationship and give a quick look at the current situation narrowed down to oil questions and the Hajj season: Iran has had historical relations with Saudi Arabia since the conquest of the Arabs. In the present time, Iran and Saudi Arabia have strong bonds and relationships of religion and common interest in the fields of economic cooperation, notably oil ... The Hajj season welcomes yearly a large number of Iranian pilgrims.

However, Saudi Arabia has warmer relations with other Islamic states, such as Turkey and Pakistan, united in the name of Islam and especially the Palestinian cause: Turkey has for long shared relations and history with the Kingdom. Today, the religious grounds of unity and advocacy of Islam strengthen the friendly bonds. These relations are even more deep-rooted through economic cooperation, and the multiple mutual visits to reach one perception in common interests and set plans for the Islamic state issues needed to be solved, especially the Palestinian cause.

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have strong unbreakable ties of Islamic brotherhood ... Pakistan is one of the most important Islamic states interacting with the Muslims on the Palestinian cause.117

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Even Iraq is bonded by religion, blood, language and common borders to the Kingdom. The two states have also special cultural and economic relations; especially concerning oil issues ... They are both members of the Arab League.118

Libya: The Kingdom wishes to preserve the rights of the Arabs. The relations will grow even stronger between the two states for they are the pillars of defence for Islam and Muslims, financially and morally.119

Morocco: A special relation of assistance for the helpless people of Palestine, the Philippines and others.120

Jordan and Saudi Arabia, apart from the strong international political, cultural and economic relations, face one common Muslim enemy. These ties are even closer through the financial and military help offered to help strengthen the Jordanian front: confronting bravely the Zionists and their aspirations. We will have victory soon, God willing.121

The relations with Egypt are multiple and growing thanks to the unity of religious belief, language, blood and common objectives in the service of Muslims: These relationships are strengthened through economic and cultural bonds, as well as political representation to unify principles and opinions in order to serve the political and Islamic issues financially and morally in the international fora, especially the Palestinian cause.122

How was the image of the Iranians shaped in the Arab school books? The Arab school books do not present a unified image of Iran. The elements of the image differ from one state to the other according to its local and regional general policies, and depending on its direct or indirect relations with Iran. The self-image also varies even if there are similarities between the elements of two or more countries. Thus, we can say that the image of Iran is divided into two parts or levels: old and modern.

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The old is related to the epoch of the Persian state and its defeat by the armies of the Islamic conquest. All the Arab school books agree on the presentation of the historical side, when talking about the development phases, the caliphates or the Islamic history stages in general. The approach varies from one book to the other in detail, provocation or no interference in the chain of events. The Saudi books, for example, explain in detail the nature of the battles fought by the Islamic army against the Persians, with no extra ideological notes on the facts. Yet the Iraqi books stress the ideologically provocative text and ignore details about the battles, because the Persians are the enemy of Islam and Arabism and they tried to defame the Koran while refusing Arabic.

The first Qadissya is considered as a sign for the coming of second, ‘the Qadissya of Saddam’, that happened in the modern era. As for the Syrian books, they mention this historical incident, as do the Moroccan and Egyptian books, without any ideological or political projections, even if the facts were quickly presented with no particular detail. Hence, a clear separation shows between old and new Iran. The policies and rulers are not considered as a continuation of its ancient hostile Persian history when it faced the Arab conquests, except in the Iraqi books published during the war, which stress the continuity and link between the two and give Iran a constant Persian background beginning from the dawn of the call, to the present government regime. However, this old/new Iran separation in the Arab school books is limited to impartiality or nonprovocation, without stating negative or positive points of view. The books do not point out the Persian character of Iran today as a reminder of its old historical aspirations, but they do not mention either the victory of the Islamic revolution. Iran is considered as a normal country, while it was even completely ignored in some books. The Syrian books alone mentioned the new situation of Iran as an Islamic Republic, whose politics have differed from the policies of the Shah’s rule. Other books totally skip this important change. We can relate this form of neglect to the worry by most Arab states from the different current Islamic movements and calls. What is striking, again, in these Arab school books, is that the content does not always reflect the nature of the relations between the Arab states, and Iran and them. It applies mostly to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. Egypt and Iran have no diplomatic relations and have been exchanging accusations for so many years. Yet the Egyptian school books do not reflect this reality. Only the role of the Persians in history was mentioned

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and the modern Iran completely obliterated. The Saudi school books also just view Iran as a state within the Islamic world, having some relations with the Kingdom. The Moroccan books on the other hand definitely ignore Iran. Iraq and Syria, despite their obvious opposite stands, clearly express in their school books the nature of the relations with Iran. Iraq violently describes the war with Iran in its history, geography and education books; a real provocation that resets the atmosphere of the eight-year war, despite its end years ago. Syria, on the other hand, has maintained good relations since the victory of the revolution in Iran. The school books reflect this fact: the nationalist Arab history that accuses Iran of occupying Arab territories does not dominate the modern political changes in Iran. A chapter is dedicated to the study of the Islamic Republic, though it does not discuss the problems, internal or regional wars Iran faced. The self-images of Iraq and Saudi Arabia contribute to the hostility toward Iran and its omission from the school books. Iraq presents itself as the defender of the Arab nation, especially after the war with Iran, and Saudi Arabia stands as the foundation of Islamic solidarity and the leader in defence of the Muslim causes in the world. Nevertheless, it is a position Iran takes as its own, so it is normal that the rival party be ignored in the Islamic context of the competition’s nature. The image of the Arabs, in the Iranian school books, is a unified one that does not exclude them from Islam. The Arabs in the present are only viewed through the Palestinian cause and the conflict with Israel; the events in the Arab countries are not of concern to the Iranian school books, which do not dedicate relative lessons or courses. But these books do not reflect any racism, harm or hostility toward the Arabs in general. The Arab school books, however, bear many images of Iran. They join when discussing the ancient Persian Iran, and oppose when mentioning the modern Iran and the post-Islamic revolution events. Some ignore it, others praise it, accuse it or consider it as a normal Islamic state. Therefore, the Arab school books did not always reflect the policies of their states towards Iran. They will keep this image as long as the curricula and programmes remain unchanged. The awaited and expected change is the alteration of the Iraqi curricula after the fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein. We might have to wait to know how the new school books will reflect the image of ‘the new Iraqi regime’, the neighbouring countries and Iran.

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Notes 1. See the study by Ghulam Ali Haddad Adel: ‘The Image of the Arabs in the Iranian school books’ in the conference: Arab-Iranian Relations. Current Trends and Perspectives. Centre for Arab Unity Studies, Beirut, first edition, 1996. 2. Arab Islamic History, second intermediate (Baghdad: Ministry of Education, 1994), pp.24–5. 3. Arab Islamic History, previous reference, p.57. 4. History of the Arab Islamic Civilization, fourth grade (Baghdad: Ministry of Education, 1994), p.38. 5. Ibid., p.38. 6. Arab Islamic History, second intermediate, p.74. 7. Ibid., p.75. 8. Ibid., p.76. 9. Ibid., pp.87–8. 10. History of the Arab Islamic Civilization, fourth grade, p.42. 11. Arab Islamic History, second intermediate, p.88. 12. History of the Arab Islamic Civilization, fourth grade, pp.75–6. 13. The Modern and Contemporary History of the Arab Nation, third intermediate (Baghdad: Ministry of Education, 1994), p.13. 14. History of the Arab Islamic Civilization, fourth grade, part 3, p.14. 15. The Modern and Contemporary History of the Arab Nation, third intermediate, pp.17, 22. 16. Ibid., p.21. 17. Ibid., p.103. 18. General Geography, fourth grade (Baghdad: Ministry of Education, 1994), p.217. 19. The Modern and Contemporary History of the Arab Nation, third intermediate, p.104. 20. Ibid., p.112. 21. General Geography, fourth grade, p. 218. 22. Ibid., p.219. 23. Only time the name of the Islamic revolution is mentioned when speaking about Iran, despite the exclamation or sarcasm. 24. Ibid., p.219. 25. Ibid., p.220. 26. The Geography of Iraq and some neighbouring countries, third intermediate (Baghdad: Ministry of Education, 1994), p.6. 27. General Geography, fourth grade, p.231. 28. The Modern and Contemporary History of the Arab Nation, third intermediate, p.105. 29. The Arab Islamic History, second intermediate, p.47. 30. The Modern and Contemporary History of the Arab Nation, third intermediate, p.105. 31. Ibid., p.106. 32. Ibid., p.106. 33. Ibid., pp.106–8 and Civic Education, first intermediate, pp.47, 91, 93–6 and Arab Islamic History, second intermediate, pp.50–60. 34. Civic Education, third intermediate (Baghdad: Ministry of Education, 1994), chapter three, 12 pages. 35. Ibid., p.49. 36. Arab Islamic History, second intermediate, p.47.

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37. The Modern and Contemporary History of the Arab Nation, third intermediate, p.38. 38. Ibid., p.107. 39. Ibid., p.111. 40. Ibid., p.114. 41. Nationalist and Socialist Education, fourth grade (Baghdad: Ministry of Education, 1994), p.21. 42. Civic Education, first intermediate, p.11. 43. Ibid., pp.17 and 95–6. 44. Geography of the Arab Nation, second intermediate (Baghdad: Ministry of Education, 1994), p.18. 45. Geography of Iraq and some neighbouring countries, third intermediate, p.10. 46. Ibid., p.99. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid., p.114. 49. The Modern and Contemporary History of the Arab Nation, third intermediate, p.114. 50. Ibid., p.114. 51. Ibid., p.106. 52. Nationalist and Socialist Education, fourth grade, p.31. 53. See the books we had the opportunity to examine. They are from the period preceding war with Iran: Modern History; The History of the Arab Islamic Civilization; General Geography, as well as economy and sociology books, reading and text books, literary culture, instructive reading, Islamic education and civic education books. 54. Modern History, fifth/literary (Baghdad: Ministry of Education, 1980). 55. The Modern and Contemporary History of the Arab Nation, third intermediate, p.265. 56. Ibid., p.303. 57. Compare with ‘the image of war’: same source, p.304. 58. Arab Islamic History, second intermediate, pp.24–5. 59. The History of the Arab Islamic Civilization, fourth grade (Baghdad: Ministry of Education, 1980) [published before the Gulf War]. 60. Ibid., p.48. 61. Ibid., p.48. 62. General Geography, fourth grade (Baghdad: Ministry of Education, 1980) [published before the Gulf War]. 63. Ibid., pp.153–7. 64. Ibid., p.153. 65. The History of the Arabs in the Umayyad Era, first elementary (Damascus: Ministry of Education, 1994–5), p.51. 66. The History of the Arabs in the Abbasid Era, second elementary, p.25. 67. Ibid., pp.61–2. 68. Ibid., pp.64–5. 69. History of the Arab Civilization, first secondary (Damascus: Ministry of Education, 1994–5), p.13. 70. The Modern and Contemporary History of the Arabs, third secondary/literary (Damascus: Ministry of Education, 1994–5), p.357. 71. Modern History of the Arabs, third elementary (Damascus: Ministry of Education, 1994–5), pp.120, 125. 72. History of the Arab Civilization, first secondary, p.7. 73. Ibid., pp.40, 42.

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74. Ibid., pp.121, 126. 75. Ibid., p.139. 76. Ibid., p.163. 77. Ibid., pp.184–5. 78. Ibid., p.224. 79. Modern and Contemporary History of the Arabs, third secondary/literary, p.118. 80. Principles of General Geography and the World, first elementary (Damascus: Ministry of Education, 1993–4), p.131. 81. Ibid., pp.131–1. 82. Ibid., pp.178–9. 83. History of Modern Ages, second secondary/literary (Damascus: Ministry of Education, 1993–4), pp.106–7; Modern History of the Arabs, third elementary, p.97; and Human and Economic Geography of the World and its main problems, second elementary (Damascus: Ministry of Education, 1993–4), pp.102–4. 84. Geography of the Arab Nation and its History in the Islamic Era, second elementary (Cairo: Ministry of Education, 1994–5), p.127. 85. Ibid., p.127. 86. Ibid., p.132. 87. Ibid., p.151. 88. Egypt and the Ancient Civilizations, first secondary (Cairo: Ministry of Education, 1994–5), p.137. 89. Geography of the Arab Nation, second secondary (Cairo: Ministry of Education, 1994–5), p.11. 90. Geography of the Arab Nation and its History in the Islamic Era, second elementary, p.157. 91. Ibid., pp.172, 174, 177, 178. 92. Geography of the Arab Nation, second secondary, p.9. 93. Ibid., p.17. 94. Ibid., p.18. 95. Geography of the Arab Nation and its History in the Islamic Era, second elementary, p.10. 96. Ibid., p.18. 97. Ibid., p.109. 98. Ibid., p.78. 99. Ibid., pp.105, 106, 108, 111. 100. Ibid., p.219. 101. History, seventh elementary (Rabat: Ministry for Nation Education, 1991), p.39. 102. History, first secondary (Rabat: Ministry for National Education, 1994–5), pp.70, 74. 103. Ibid., pp. 83–4; and History, seventh elementary, p.46. 104. The Life of the Prophet and the History of the Islamic State, first intermediate (Riyadh: the Ministry of Education, 1994), p.71; and The Life of the Prophet and the History of the Islamic State, first secondary (Riyadh: Ministry of Education, 1993), pp.49–50. 105. History of the Islamic World, second intermediate for girls (Riyadh: The General Office for Girls Education, Assistance Agency for Educational Development, 1993), pp.86, 105, 121. 106. Abdullah Saleh elUtheimin, Sides from the History of Muslims from the End of the Ottoman State until Today, third intermediate (Riyadh: Ministry of Education, 1994), pp.35, 36.

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107. History of the Islamic World, second intermediate (Riyadh: The General Office for Girls Education, Assistance Agency for Educational Development, 1993), pp.4, 38, 40. 108. The Life of the Prophet and the History of the Islamic State, first secondary, pp.87, 88, 89. 109. History (The Islamic World), first secondary (Riyadh: General Office for Girls Education, Assistance Agency for Educational Development, 1993), pp.50–51. 110. Regional Geography of the Islamic World, third secondary/girls (Riyadh: General Office for Girls Education, Assistance Agency for Educational Development, 1993), p.103. 111. Geography of the Islamic World, third intermediate/girls, p.79. 112. History (The Islamic State), second secondary, p.84. 113. Ibid., pp.202–6, 208. 114. History of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, third secondary (Riyadh: Ministry of Education, 1993), p.132. 115. Geography of the Islamic World, second intermediate, p.14. 116. Ibid., p.38. 117. Geography of the Islamic World, second intermediate/girls, pp.49, 55, 63. 118. Ibid., p.56. 119. Ibid., p.105. 120. Geography of the Islamic World, second intermediate/girls, p.26. 121. Ibid., p.72. 122. Ibid., p.92.