The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam Read online

  ISLAM AND THE TRIBAL MENTALITY

  Islam began in a tribal society. The monotheism of Islam marked a sharp break with the polytheism that had prevailed on the Arabian Peninsula until then. The new faith inspired Muhammad’s tribe in its constant battle to fend off neighboring tribes. Muhammad preached charity: once conquered, tribes were not enslaved if they converted to Islam and joined in the battle against nonbelieving tribes. This gave the Muslim religion a strongly expansionist character: much importance is attributed to the conquest and conversion of those who do not believe in Allah. Islam adopted some pre-Islamic spiritual traditions, such as praying, fasting, and giving alms. The relationship between Muhammad and his god is vertical: God is almighty, He is one, and Muhammad obeys His commands. The relationship between Muhammad and his followers is simple and the same: Muhammad’s will is the law.

  The Koran prescribes the ideal ordering of society with rules primarily designed to bring under control the tribal anarchy of the time, with its extremely violent fights against and among clans and tribes. In The Closed Circle, David Pryce-Jones describes how this tribal system functioned. In a vicious cycle of violence, one tribe tried to dominate another, which meant that there was a permanent struggle for power within the tribe, the clan, and the family. At the top of every family, clan, or tribe stood one man. Often this captain had acquired his position through cunning and violence. For instance, Muhammad had managed to get a number of tribes to accept important political and social (and eventually also economic) regulations that supported values central to the tribal way of life, such as maintaining the tribe’s honor and the redistribution of property. These laws brought a lasting solution to the problems between rival tribes and forced them to become allies. The fighting continued, but only against tribes outside the Islamic circle.

  Not surprisingly, many of the laws laid down by the Koran put the social peace of the group first, within which there is a high degree of social control. Many of these laws are related to the honor of a man, his family, or his clan. The opposite of honor is disgrace, so a man is as passionate about guarding his honor as he is about avoiding shame and disgrace. Lies and evasion play an important part in this culture of honor and shame; ignoring or simply denying what has really happened is normal. The tribal culture has a strongly developed sense of mistrust, not only of outsiders, but also of the members of one’s own family or clan.

  RISE AND FALL OF ISLAM

  Islam united ignorant Arabic tribes that had been deeply immersed in anarchy into a world civilization. In the seventh century, Muslims conquered Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and the rest of North Africa and began to move into the Iberian Peninsula. Nothing seemed to stop the new faith from spreading. During the rise of Islam, the only other civilization of a comparable standard and size was China. But Bernard Lewis distinguishes the Chinese civilization from Islam because it was restricted to a single region and one racial group. The Muslims created a multiethnic, multiracial, and universal world civilization. Yet today, compared with the Christian West, the Muslim world has become poor, weak, fractious, and ignorant.

  According to Lewis, the question “What went wrong?” is commonly tackled from either a secular or sociopsychological point of view. Secularists put the role of religion in Islamic society at the center of the discussion and argue that the West’s economic and cultural primacy is the result of the separation of church and state and of the institution of a civil society that follows secular legislation. The others, especially feminists, focus on sexism and the inferior position of women in Islamic society. Not only do these problems deprive the Islamic world of half their population’s talents and energy, they disadvantage their own children by leaving them in the care of illiterate, downtrodden mothers.

  “The products of such an education…are likely to grow up arrogant or submissive, and unfit for a free, open society,” says Lewis. Indeed a growing number of Muslims claim the answer to “What went wrong?” is that they have been struck by evil because of their neglect of the divine inheritance of Islam. This all too simple response is fatal to further economic development because it means a return to a largely imaginary past as occurred in the Iranian Revolution and in other fundamentalist movements and regimes in Muslim countries. In comparison, the secular system of democracy offers more opportunities. Some historical thinkers, Lewis among them, are optimistic about Kemal Atatürk’s Turkish Republic. Others, including Pryce-Jones, are less optimistic about the extent to which secularism and other Western developments are (or can be) truly understood by people who are used to living in a tribal society.

  Lewis’s position is unambiguous. The subtitle of his book, The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East, is revealing. The people who abandoned Islamic civilization have not fully experienced the intrusive, painful but ultimately liberating process of modernization as their neighbors and rivals in the Christian West have. Lewis warns that a downward spiral of hatred and resentment, anger and self-pity, poverty and oppression can result from rejecting modernity, but he hopes that Muslims will use their talents and energy to achieve a common goal, so that one day Islamic nations may become an important civilization again.

  In this respect Lewis is more optimistic than Pryce-Jones. Lewis demands that Muslims relinquish their most substantial values, the things they pass on to their children including the patriarchal family structure and the mind-set that is obsessed with honor and group self-image. But, as Pryce-Jones says, these are the very characteristics that define the tribe, precisely the attributes that make it such a tightly closed community. These tribal values, and the sense of identity that accompanies them, are so deeply ingrained that the people have become blind to their disastrous long-term effects. The total acceptance of these values is perpetuated by the endlessly repeated processes, that legitimized premodern concepts with texts from the Koran. The ideas and traditions of Muhammad’s tribal society are adopted straight into the industrial and urban society of today, without any consideration for their historical context.

  The historian Karen Armstrong believes that in the past Muslims have successfully demonstrated they can separate reason from religion. After all, Muslims once had great philosophers and created a world civilization. She feels that the problem is not so much rooted in Muslims themselves, and their religion, as in the West’s attitude toward Muslim countries. Imperialism and the supremacy of the United States as a trading power have deprived Muslims of the opportunity to come to grips with their own problems.

  Lewis is more skeptical. He agrees that from the nineteenth century onward the British and French came to dominate the Islamic people both politically and economically. This brought about some fundamental cultural changes, such as the migration to cities in the twentieth century. Neither does he dispute that this development transformed the lives of Muslims, in both a positive and a negative sense. He acknowledges that the Americans have strategic interests to protect in the region (securing the stability of their oil supply). Yet, according to Lewis, none of this is the real cause of the lack of progress in Islamic countries. Rather, these are the consequences, just as the Mongolian invasion during the thirteenth century was possible only because the Islamic empire was suffering from internal weakness at the time.

  Both Lewis and Pryce-Jones believe that the main reason for the decline lies in the inability of Muslims to set up democratic institutions that safeguard the right to individual freedom, put the relative values of scientific knowledge and religious wisdom into perspective (scientific research is often brought to a halt when it is perceived as a threat to religious dogmas), and undo the social and psychological consequences of the subjugation of women. They do not say in so many words that Islam as a religion is at the root of the tragic situation in large parts of the Islamic world, but their analysis does point to the fact that the dominance of religious practice in the Muslim world (among orthodox followers and fundamentalists) forms a serious obstacle to social progress and emancipation for all Muslims.


  In July 2002 the United Nations Development Program published the Arab Human Development Report, an analytical survey of the average life expectancy, the level of education, and the standard of life of the inhabitants of twenty-two Islamic countries. The report confirms the theory put forward by Pryce-Jones and Lewis: deep-rooted institutional shortcomings stand in the way of human development. According to the report, the region is plagued by “three key deficits that can be considered defining features”:

  a lack of freedom

  disempowerment of women

  a lack of capabilities or knowledge.

  THE FATE OF THE PEOPLE

  How do people live in this kind of premodern lack of development? The “mass triangle” represents their response. There is also a “power” or “elite triangle,” which will be explained in a moment. Reality, of course, is more complex; categories overlap.

  In accordance with tribal culture, the power in the home countries of Muslim immigrants (with the important exception of Turkey) is concentrated in a triangle, consisting of a political leader at the top (either a president or a king), followed by the army, and then the official clergy (’ulema). These three sectors (just about) reinforce each other. Its members often come from the same family, clan, or tribe and are related by marriage. Their power is partly based on these relationships. To these people at the top, Islam is an instrument, a means to consolidate the existing balance of power. In states such as Egypt, Iraq, and Syria, the secular government monitors religious leaders, and there is a state religion. The political and army leaders have complete control over the official instruments of force (in the absence of an independent judiciary), all sources of government income (tax and trade), the media (radio, television, newspapers), and the economy. The result is a general stagnation in society.

  The mass triangle represents the various ways in which the people respond to this stagnation.

  There is corruption and apathy. Only a section of the population has access to public services through the clan or tribe, and these people take advantage of the endemic corruption within the civil service and the business community. A proportion of the financial aid from Western counties and international organizations is taken by this dominant group, which is out to enrich itself and often resorts to bribery and blackmail. The rest of the population tends to accept the situation as it is, because that is all they have ever known.

  There is a rise in fundamentalism. This rapidly expanding section of the population does not accept the existing balance of power. Fundamentalists are on the rise everywhere, even among professionals with a high level of education (lawyers, doctors, and others). They are disappointed by secular ideologies such as liberal democracy, nationalism, and communism. Fundamentalists believe that all the social and economic miseries—“What went wrong”—are due to the widespread neglect of Islamic values and standards. The Islamic Brotherhood, Bin Laden’s al Qaeda, and Erbakan’s Milli Görüs in Turkey accuse the United States, in particular, of supporting tyranny in their countries. In some countries, the fundamentalists are described as the only authentic opposition group in the Islamic world, but of course many countries do also have democratic and/or secular opposition parties. Fundamentalist power depends on zealous missionary work, an antipathy toward government-supported clerics, desperate force (terrorism and martyrdom), and their own religious centers, such as the Al-Azhar University in Egypt.

  There is significant internal and external emigration. The biggest victims of social stagnation are rural people, peasants from the countryside. Many have been uprooted and forced to look for work in the cities, where they are condemned to accept low-paid, menial jobs; they often receive a cruel, degrading deal in a society dominated by honor and shame. Often they have little or no education, or are illiterate. Numerous other people who do not have the right tribal or clan background (merchants, tradespeople, low-ranking civil servants, et cetera) are also stuck in poverty.

  A small proportion of the peasant masses has been coming to Western Europe as foreign workers since the 1960s. Many left their native countries to escape civil war and famine. A relatively small proportion came to Europe as asylum seekers or to request residence on humanitarian grounds. The large majority—millions—of refugees lives in neighboring countries in Africa and the Mideast, usually in camps managed by the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC).

  The Arab Human Development Report states that many in the Islamic world have a very strong desire to emigrate to one of the rich countries in the West.

  THE MUSLIM COMMUNITY IN THE NETHERLANDS

  The majority of Muslims living in the Netherlands (Turks, Moroccans, and a proportion of asylum seekers) did not make an informed choice to come to the Netherlands, but have ended up there out of necessity. They originally came from the countryside, where tribal traditions still rule.

  If we define culture as the repertoire of knowledge, symbols, traditions, ideas, skills, and rules of conduct that make up a community, then the cultural expressions of the majority of Muslims are still at a premodern stage of development. This cultural background is characterized by three important factors. First, an authoritarian mentality based on strict hierarchy; second, a patriarchal family structure, in which the woman has a reproductive function and is expected to obey the men in the family; if she doesn’t, she will disgrace the family. Third, all thoughts revolve around the group; the group always comes before the individual; social control is very strong; and the fierce protection of the group’s honor makes people obsessed with avoiding shame at all cost, with the result that doing so through lying or simply denying what has really happened becomes the norm. This traditional way of thinking is full of fossilized religious concepts.

  It could have been expected that this would lead to big problems with integration at all levels of society, including the workplace. For instance, when a Moroccan warehouse manager of a large supermarket directs his assistants by intimidating and verbally abusing them, he is acting in accordance with the standards of his group (culture). It is his way of establishing authority and defending his honor; management through “positive consultation” would be a sign of weakness. In Moroccan culture you would only begin an instruction with “Would you please…” if you were addressing a superior, but not someone of a lower rank than you. The Dutch employees, though, have a different frame of reference; to them the Moroccan’s conduct is unworkable and unacceptable. If he refuses to adjust, and to adopt the values of his Dutch staff, he will not be able to function at work and will become unemployed.

  Situations like these occur every day. They lead to a great deal of mutual misunderstanding and mistrust, and can result in Muslims complaining of “discrimination” and employers saying that they would rather not employ “any more Moroccans.” For a Muslim in the Netherlands, the authoritarian approach is bound to fail. Getting others to agree with you and pursuing your own interests is imbedded in the Dutch social code; it takes into account the individual rights and interests of colleagues. A Muslim newcomer must develop his individual identity outside of his group identity and distance himself from the traditional culture of honor and shame. Instead of seeing himself “through the eyes of others” (honor and shame), he must develop a stable inner compass that will help him survive in a modern Western society.

  Another common problem of integration is seen in the relations between men and women. The deeply patriarchal standards of Muslims often seem totally inappropriate, outdated, and degrading in modern society. The virgin/whore cult, the pressure to have as many sons as possible, the circumcision of girls (usually justified on religious grounds), arranged marriages for daughters—these are all products of the mentality of honor. As a group, Muslim women as well as men will have to forgo these practices and their underlying values to succeed in the West. If they do not, the emancipation of Muslims cannot really begin. Or, to put it in the words of the Dutch economist Arie van der Zwan, “this gap between the sealed-off world of non-Western immigrants a
nd the society in which they have arrived cannot be seen separately from the stagnation in their home countries. For most [still] come from the Islamic world, and there is a growing stream of international literature which poses the question of why that world failed: ‘What went wrong?’ The Islamic world has seen little progress in science, culture, or the economy since the eighteenth century, although it once made major contributions in these areas.”

  What is particularly good about van der Zwan’s statement is that he mentions both the international aspect (stagnation as an impetus for emigration) and the national dimension (cultural problems during integration that present a challenge to the host society). In his article he discusses the factors that have led to both the emigration and the fact that Muslims cling to values and standards that are “unsuitable” in a modern society.

  Initially, Dutch politicians and policy makers interpreted the influx of foreign workers from the Muslim world (Morocco and Turkey) as a temporary phenomenon. The newcomers were “guest workers.” The Muslims themselves held a similar view, thinking that they had come to the West for a limited time, in order to earn money with which they could build a future back home. As it became clear that Muslims, like other non-Western immigrants, were settling permanently in the Netherlands, the debate about how best to integrate these people into Dutch society began. There are four positions to be distinguished in this debate, which are relevant to all Western democracies.

  THE POLITICAL-LEGAL POSITION

  In order to become full members of Dutch society, newcomers who possess a residence permit should have the same social and political rights and duties as the native population. Once they meet this political-legal condition, immigrants supposedly can participate in every aspect of society without further government intervention, although the campaign against discrimination and racism remains important to uphold.