| Photo by Jane Scherr |
Ira Lapidus Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
| Photo by Jane Scherr |
Page 5 of 7
As a historian of Islamic societies and somebody who has spent a lot of time understanding its complexity, its diversity, what was your reaction to the response of people in this country to the events of 9/11? After reading your book, I was reminded of a quote from the Bible: "Now we see darkly, then shall we see face to face." I have the sense that we have a very limited vision of what Islam is, whether it's our adversary, its implication in the events of 9/11.
What I think is that that is a disaster. It's a disaster for Muslims as well as for Americans, for Westerners. It's a shocking exaggeration of the element of conflict and rivalry. [The 9/11 events] make the situation look to many people like a conflict of civilizations, which it isn't, I think, in reality. It makes it seem that way to Americans. It makes it seem that way to Muslims, especially with the American military response. So I think that's a disaster, and it obscures the fact that in so many deep ways, we actually have a common civilization, both on secular and religious bases.
We have so many common interests, or at least reasons for good relations, cooperative relations. We have close political ties. We have business ties. There are millions and millions of Muslims living now in Europe and America. We have shared worlds, and it obscures the importance of these shared worlds. I think that's really unfortunate.
At the core of Huntington's argument about a clash of civilizations is a clash of values. Is that what he's trying to get at, or do you have a sense of that?
You have to take people at their word in certain ways. There is a clash of values in the minds of the extremists, and in the minds of people who want an extreme response to this. You can make it into a clash of values. People will try to do that as a justification for the conflict of interest, or for the justification for the violence. They want to say there are deep principles at stake. So it's a choice we make as to how we see it. But I don't think that's inherently the case. What we need is a supple politics that distinguishes violent enemies with whom we are going to be at war from the average Muslim with whom we have no reason to be in conflict with.
You're suggesting that there is [more of] a compatibility of religious values than we realize?
There's more of that and more of a basis for it than we commonly think.
Help us understand the way Islam, or parts of Islam, interface with globalization and American power. Because it seems to be the case that this argument about the clash of civilizations goes on to draw conclusions not just about philosophical values, but about a conflict of interest. And the question is, is that right? Is it ever right? If it is right sometimes, what is it about particular interfaces that lead certain Islamic radicals to see the opportunity in globalization to mobilize people and to direct that animosity toward the United States and its power?
You ask complicated questions.
Let me say first about globalization, there are different levels of it. On a cultural level, the U.S. in particular, but also Europe, is extraordinarily forceful in promoting a consumer culture. All over the world, what people want in everyday life is Coca-Cola, jeans, movies -- those must be the principal American mass products sold everywhere. They are very important to people all over the world because they symbolize liberation from tradition -- liberation from traditional restraints on behavior, liberation from family control, liberation from political control. That has enormous appeal. However shallow we might think it, it's a symbol of something really potent. And so it's an enormous threat to conservative milieus, to societies which still live in small family and village communities. It's an enormous threat. It dissolves the family. People want to go out and make money rather than remain at home and live under the authority of papa and mama. So that is a huge threat. Conservative Muslims all over the world see it as a threat rather than as an opportunity. Many do. That's one dimension of it that makes the unease and the hostility with the West very widespread in the Muslim countries.
Then there are reasons, politically, why the strength of the West provokes antagonism. And that is, essentially, because the United States backs the existing governments in most countries. And backing those governments, we help those governments in Muslim countries to refuse reforms and to put down the opposition. So the Muslim radicals see local governments, and the U.S. behind them, as their dual enemy. In that sense, globalization, the ever-greater influence of America around the world, is provoking resistance and a reaction. In the last decade, the focal point of that resistance has begun to shift from its trying to attack local governments, to trying to attack the United States. I think that's what we see in the World Trade Center.
There is an emergence of a new variant on the notion of a global Muslim identity that relates to identifying with Muslim resistance movements in different parts of the world?
Yes. Say that Muslims are being affected. That is yet another way that globalization impacts Muslims. Muslims --just like European or American professionals and intellectuals and businessmen and people in any technology -- live in a global environment. The national state becomes much less important for people in big corporations, in advanced fields of development. So many more people are involved in international trade, or international economic exchanges, than ever before. That's the primary impact of globalization. The technology allows for a universal diffusion of people's ideas. The web, radio, TV. So there are lots of Muslims who no longer feel an allegiance to a particular national state. They feel they're cosmopolitans; only they're cosmopolitan Muslims. So they think of themselves as representing the true and universal version of Islam without the compromising loyalties to individual countries. And that's a growing phenomenon. You find only a tiny percentage of people represented, but it's a growing phenomenon.
How do you explain al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden in the context of this discussion? Is he a particular variant of this or phenomenon?
He's a particular variant in the extremism of waging war directly to cope. But he's typical in a lot of ways. He's a Saudi, originally, opposed to the Saudi regime. He opposes it from a still more purist religious position than the Saudis take. He opposes them as corrupted and unworthy of continuing to rule. He can't make any political progress in Saudi Arabia. Because he identifies with Islam as the legitimating truth that justifies his opposition, he looks for causes abroad that he can support to help the pure and good Muslims, as he sees them.
So Afghanistan was his first range of activity. Then, he sees everywhere that it's American power that stands behind the evil, local regimes, and that since there's no field of opportunity at home, he's looking for ways to attack the United States. So, he has that global identity. He has the anti-national, anti-Saudi basis for it. But he represents an extremist minority that believes that the only proper response is violence.
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