Glamour and power

 

Like anybody else I see the glamour of some people; I see how “lucky” people live; I see the growing gap between the poor and the rich...  I say to myself : there were before us, in ancient times, as well as in more recent times, people who enjoyed some glamour, too; there were handsome men and beautiful women who loved each other, who had children, who lived in beautiful mansions, who worked (for some), who listened to music, who walked in beautiful gardens, who said sweet things to each other, who made love, who dreamed of better days, who fell ill, who divorced, who waged war, who killed each other, who got injured, and who died. People just like us. Is it therefore simply a perpetuation of the human species? Where are we heading? Will we, humans, always have the same pleasures, the same frustrations? Why are we here on this earth? Will there not be a day when misfortune disappears forever? What’s life worth if one does not live it fully, in joy and quietude? What's the point of wasting time rehashing questions? What’s the use of History, what’s the use of philosophy, what’s the use of literature... if historians themselves, if philosophers, if male and female writers take their own lives sometimes to escape their terrible realities? I do not have answers to that. However, I just notice that there are many people who do not commit suicide. They confront life with the few means they have. That means that, at least for these people, life is worth living. Now, is life really worth living -whatever our sorrows? 

Question: why was I taught History at school?  I don’t know.  But when I now read History books or ancient tales or poems I can easily notice that people have always been more important than their dwellings, mounts, money or anything else they might possess. Man has always been afraid of sickness, death, poverty, among other things. Man has always needed to feel reassured, protected, safe. Man has always made peace after the war ; he has always created courts to do justice; he has always built schools to educate future generations; he has always built cities and villages to enable men to feel close to each other, to create all kinds of healthy relationships, to join hands, to exchange services, even when personal relations or between immediate neighbours or clans are not perfect. At times man may suffer from the cold, heat, hunger, thirst, fatigue, fear, loss of loved ones... But then he would enjoy the pleasure of eating after hunger, the pleasure of drinking after thirst, the pleasure of rest after getting tired, the pleasure of love, etc.

In the past people brought knowledge -in their heads- from their old people, and then passed it on to the next generations. Each time new palaces, schools, roads, gardens, factories, etc, were built. Man’s knowledge of the world expanded. And each time there was a new kingdom, good or bad. The question is, why didn’t those "good" kingdoms last forever? Why were there "bad" kingdoms as well? That’s a hard one to answer. But, interestingly, History gives us some clues.

Many of the things we use today were invented by different peoples in different places at different times. Bronze, for example, was invented by the Chinese, glass by people in Mesopotamia, paper by the Egyptians, alphabet by Phoenicians, and so on. Each people learned from the other peoples and made their own inventions, thus expanding man’s knowledge of the world. This knowledge spread through trade and conquest. The conquerors inherited the knowledge of the vanquished people and took it home or spread it to other places. At the same time, the conquerors brought in their own way of life, their thoughts, their arts and their religion.

The interaction between so many powers, so many civilizations and so many ways of life made it necessary for each people to defend their own existence. Each people had to defend everything that was at stake for them. That included their culture. So those who happened to believe in a deity, any deity, had to defend their own faith by using all the tools available, including those that had been invented or developed by nations who did not necessarily share their faith. Such tools may have included Phoenicians’ alphabet and Greek logic. Thus all nations (I mean good or bad) were anything but "redundant". They were just as useful to one another.

It is also interesting to notice that most of those early interactions between various contending nations took place just in or around Palestine. The Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Hittites, the Greeks, the Romans, and many more in between -all had a foothold there at some point in history. And then came the Arabs, from Makkah. Those Arabs found themselves thrusting in every direction, going towards nations who had known impressive empires, and ended up building their own empire stretching across most of the then known world.

There followed a magnificent world interaction. The Arabs borrowed old, dormant knowledge from the Greeks, the Persians and other nations, and updated and enriched it, and then spread it in every direction. Baghdad emerged as the world capital of science. And in the West there was Cordoba, in Spain, where Arab science was passed on to Europe through translation. Averroes spoke to Muslims and non-Muslim Europeans of God using Aristotle’s logic.

Baghdad was destroyed, but Islamic knowledge survived. It survived because it was not only in the books that the Mongols threw into the Tigris River, but also in people’s hearts and minds. Like the destruction of the Alexandria Library in antiquity, the loss of Baghdad libraries could have been a much more awful tragedy had there not been what I called interactions. Marrakesh, which was built and made their capital by Morocco’s Almoravid dynasty, was deliberately and completely destroyed by their Almohad successors. These rebuilt the whole city in the most beautiful way possible, because they had already "received" the necessary knowledge from their predecessors.

Even the rebuilding of a whole nation is possible if there is the necessary knowledge and will. Europe made the best use of the early Muslims’ knowledge and rebuilt itself in a matter of generations because its own people had the will to do so.

In Europe the conflict between the Church and new scientists resulted in new thinking. Some clung to their religious beliefs, defending themselves by use of logic and philosophy. Others broke with the Church altogether and called their way "Secularism". They defended themselves by experimenting with their knowledge of the world, excluding any reference to the Unseen Realm.

The new knowledge of the world, based on experimentation, led to the Industrial Revolution. The boom in industry led to the spread of knowledge on a phenomenal scale.

Colonization made it possible for more people to go to more places. Africans "went" to America, taking with them their religions, including Islam. Other Muslims were taken into Europe, where they continued to practise their faith at a time when large numbers of Christians ceased to go to Church. Orientalists (from Europe) went to the Arab and Islamic world to "return" part of the Arabic and Islamic heritage to the newly awakening Arabs and Muslims.

Now that imported material is being re-exported with added value. It is done through the Internet and satellite TV stations. And so Islam has become the fastest growing religion in America. This was made possible by American technology and Arab oil money.

Arab oil money has contributed among other things, to the building of large mosques, big Islamic institutes and libraries, and to the printing of the Quran and other religious books in large quantities in many languages in many parts of the world.

Even within the poorest Islamic states Islam is growing as fast as demography. Wherever you go, there is a new mosque and a new school because there is a new village, town or suburb. Small towns are swelling into big cities, and so small mosques and schools are becoming bigger and bigger.

 

Modern means of communication and transportation together with modern education systems have made world interaction incredibly easier every day. More and more people are overcoming illiteracy. More and more people are learning more and more about each other. More and more people are coming towards each other. Migration, tourism, business travel and war are playing a great role in the ever-increasing exchange of human experience. Globalization has pushed this exchange even further.

When, in the 7th century AD, Islam reached the lands beyond the Arabian Peninsula, non-Arab Muslims (who learned Arabic for social, political, professional and scientific reasons) shared the Arabs' astonishment at the wonderful language of the Quran. If Romans and Persians had hitherto expressed their aesthetic tastes and know-how through the way they adorned their palaces, churches and temples, the Arabs had expressed beauty through poetic descriptions of every beautiful thing they could find or see around them : horses, camels, gazelles, human bodies and faces, landscape, feelings... Putting the same Arabic letters together, the Quran did unimaginably better than any Arab or non-Arab poet. The Quran came with something simple and sophisticated at the same time for both Arabs and non-Arabs. Those non-Arabs used tiny pieces of wood, glass, stone, etc, that they put together in basic geometric forms (in imitation of flowers, stars, etc) to adorn gates, domes, walls, floors, thrones, etc, in the best beautiful way possible.

In a way the history of Islam cannot be different from the history of ancient Egypt or Greece or any other civilization or empire. They all reflect human nature one way or another. Islam was a victim of its own success. Islam appeared in Makkah, then moved to Madinah, then spread in a matter of years to virtually the whole of the Arabian Peninsula. Madinah became the Capital. There was so much money coming in, an ever-expanding territory, and plentiful opportunities for ambitious people. This could only lead to rivalries even amongst Arab Muslims. This is human. This has happened in all nations throughout History. In all nations kings killed sons and brothers and princes killed their fathers and uncles -for the sake of power. The Prophet Muhammad’s grand-sons were both killed for political reasons : Hussein was beheaded and Hassan poisoned. That happened under the Umayyad dynasty, the same dynasty that built the beautiful Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and brought Islam into Spain. The last Caliph of the Abbasid dynasty was, according to some historians, “rolled in a carpet and trampled to death” by the Mongols, the same Mongols who later built the beautiful Taj Mahal in India. The Mongols not only massacred countless people during their conquest of Iraq, they also destroyed the libraries of Baghdad, which contained books of Greek philosophy and sciences, books of Indian and Persian wisdom and arts, books of the Islamic theology: all was thrown into the Tigris River. But those “barbarian” Mongols gave birth to greatly civilized Mongol rulers who brought Islam to lands stretching from India to China to Russia… Most of the old mosques in those places were built by Mongols -the same Mongols who committed atrocities against not only Arabs, but many other nations as well. It’s them who sold into slavery free men from Central Asia, men such as Baibars, who became one of the greatest rulers in Egyptian and Syrian history. The Mamluks, Baibars’ dynasty, had their part of “barbarism”. They too committed atrocities, but people remember them more for their beautiful legacy than for their ‘barbarian’ side. Cairo, Jerusalem and Damascus are full of beautiful Mamluk monuments. The Mamluks were succeeded by the Ottomans, who brought Islam deep into Europe and built a great empire including most of the Arab world.

In my Baccalaureate year, I was assigned to give a lecture in Arabic on Mahmoud Sami Al-Baroudi, a prominent Egyptian poet of Turkish origin. Some classmates were avid readers and they read almost everything, especially philosophy and literature. I knew I would have hard time once they began asking me questions, no matter what my lecture might be like. Their questions were very hard indeed and I was embarrassed, but I had a trick up my sleeve. When I felt defeated, I offered to read excerpts of Al-Baroudi's poetry. I read out one of his love poems and there was loud applause in the classroom! Even those hard-talkers, who had never been convinced by anybody's answers, were bewitched by the beauty of Al-Baroudi's poem. Al-Baroudi was a soldier who loved the Arabic language. He gave it his heart and it gave him fame and glory. (He later became Prime Minister of Egypt.) His time marked the beginning of the Arab Renaissance. This Arab renaissance began with Arabic poetry. Ahmad Shawqi, who was nicknamed "Prince of Poets", was Egyptian of Turkish origin, too. His poems sung by Umm Kulthum 'united' the souls of so many Arabs and Muslims around the world. Those "new Arabs" realized how much important Classical Arabic was even in their time. Cairo, Beirut and Baghdad revived that beautiful Arabic language. As a student, I used to hear the saying: "Cairo writes, Beirut prints and Baghdad reads"! There were Arabic readers, writers and newspapers even in the Americas! Christian Arab writers, such as Jubran Khalil Jubran, Elia Abu Madi and Mikha'il Na'ima, who lived in the U.S.A., further enriched the Arabic literature with their poetry and prose in Arabic. So many old Arab and Islamic books were snatched from oblivion (by Arabs and Orientalists) and broke into print, for the first time. Cairo became the Makkah of Arabic-language writers and translators. The number of Arab schools and Arab literate people started to grow by the day. But not all Arabs were proud of their history, of their language, of their religion, of their civilization. Many Arabs were impressed by the colonizers. Ibn Khaldoun had pointed out in his Muqaddima that the vanquished peoples tended to ape the victors.

A century ago, most Arabs lived in the countryside, most were illiterate, most lived on agriculture and grazing. Under colonial rule, many Arabs drifted to towns, many gave up agriculture and grazing to work as blue-collars in factories or as artisans in small shops. Their children went to school and, when the colonizers went away, became white-collars in franchises. Some became state-employees in the new administration. More and more people tasted the pleasures of lifelong jobs; youths became financially independent, then socially independent. Anybody could lead the life he/she wanted in his/her new home. Within a few decades, villages became towns and towns became cities. A lot of jobs with the state, a lot of factories (mostly franchises), a lot of workshops, a lot of shops of all kinds and sizes. Prosperity was within reach for so many people, literate and illiterate. It was easy for many people to build or buy a home, to send children to school, to set up businesses, to live in the city. Those who went abroad, mostly as blue-collars, sent money back home, then built their own homes, set up their own businesses. Their children became very successful. In newly independent oil-rich Arab states opportunities were much, much more important. You could therefore dream of glamour and power.

Then, the first economic crisis (in the 1980s). Then, the ever-worsening problem of unemployment. Then, the ever-growing crisis of housing. Then, all sorts of problems. Life is no longer as rosy as it was. People are now worried about their retirement pensions, about the future of their children, about the consequences of pollution… Fewer and fewer people dream of lifelong jobs and comfortable retirement. And in the midst of all this, in the midst of the so many newly constructed neighbourhoods, apartments upon apartments upon apartments, you see a new mosque.

What happened in the Arab world also happened in other parts of the world. The Welfare State was created to give people a certain sense of stability, serenity and confidence. Unfortunately, the "Trente Glorieuses" (the 30 year post war boom) is over. Some are still nostalgic for the communist era when they could, at least, find with the state a safe haven: housing facilities, schooling for children, free medical care, etc. Neither the welfare state nor the communist state nor the best democratic state in the world can now reassure anybody any more. Globalization has conquered all aspects of our lives to the point that some have already started talking about de-globalization. Nobody knows anymore what the future holds or will be like. It's the same old story of the fear of the unknown.