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Vitaly Naumkin,
D. Sc. (Hist.), Corresponding member, Russian
Academy of Sciences, Director of Institute
of Oriental Studies
CIVILIZATIONS AND CRISIS OF NATIONS
(Arguments in Russia and elsewhere)
"Civilizational" subjects become ever more interesting for researchers, journalists and authors of various type, as well as readers in the context of the transformation processes going on in the modern world.
Questions of cultural-civilizational identity, the character of relations between values of different regional-cultural clusters, and the evolution of nations in the conditions of growing hyper-globalization become more acute and call for a more thorough interpretation.
Problem of Identification Choice
Russia, especially during the latest years of Putin's presidency, considers itself as a state of a special civilization based on spirituality and adherence to traditional standards and values. Among them are responsibility of the individual before society and the state (along with his or her rights) and religious ideals (in contrast to aggressive secularism of Europe). However, this does not stop rivalry between
supporters of various concepts and models of the civilizational identity of Russia.
Islamic Extremism and Islamophobia
For centuries Russia has been an impressive example of coexistence, cultural mutual enrichment, and respect for one another of many ethnic and confessional groups, primarily Orthodox Christian and Muslim, within the framework of a single state. However, a conflict between the West and the Islamic world, Islamic extremism which now exists in Russian regions, as well as large-scale unregulated migration processes have worsened relations between these groups. Supporters of the Eurasian choice seem to be bound to build bridges between Russia and the Islamic world, but they (and not only nationalists) often show biased attitude to Muslim civilization.
Adherents of Russian nationalism of all shades are inclined to accuse the West, primarily the United States, of all evils. The St. Petersburg scholar of Ancient Orient Andrei Vassoyevich, for example, asserts that "radical Islamist groupings are directed by the United States of America." He ascribed the organization of "Al Qaeda" to the United States (which is true, partly), and announced that the British Intelligence Service (but not Sheikh Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab)) created the Wahhabi trend in the 18th century.
Incidentally, we may note that in the 1920s Russian diplomacy expressed certain sympathy to Saudi-Wahhabi expansion on the Arabian Peninsula. It regarded the Puritan movement of the Bedu tribes as a force independent from the colonialists, which set itself the task to unite the Arab people within a centralized and independent state, contrary to the British "divide and rule" project.
It was the Soviet Union, but not Britain, that was the first state to officially recognize the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
In the 1920s, in the period of active Soviet national construction in Central Asia, local leaders showed a quite favorable attitude to certain Salaphite preachers. Salaphism, or Wahhabism, presented no threat to the Soviet authorities at the time. In the 1930s there were even imams in Uzbekistan preaching fundamentalism.
But gradually, the situation has changed. Relying on enormous financial resources obtained through extracting and selling oil, Wahhabism has begun aggressive expansion beyond the borders of the kingdom, which set many Muslims against it.
Russia is rather close to the Islamic world due to the fact that over 15 million of its population are Muslims (along with migrants, the figure is more than 20 million), and also due to its people's attitude to religion and its role in society. The terrorists and extremists under the guise of Islam do great harm to the harmonious coexistence of religious communities in Russia. Perhaps, the Muslim clergy could do more to oppose extremism. However, manifestations of Islamophobia, attempts to present Islam as a religion of intolerance and aggressiveness do great damage to interconfessional harmony.
Religious Traditionalists
and "Renovationists"
One can agree that the dividing line between civilizations of the West and the Islamic world is the role of religion in society and the state, and people's attitude to this role. However, there are countries with a higher level of religiousness in western civilization, although with a secular system of statehood, as, for example, the United States. Secondly, in the Islamic world there have been cases of upsurge of atheistic thinking (especially in the 1920s, largely under the influence of the October revolution in Russia in 1917 and the creation of communist parties in the East), and regimes founded on secular
principles (Turkey under Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatyurk) and his followers), Tunisia under President Habib Bourgiba. The Egyptian Ismail Mazkhar (1891-1962) founded the "Dar al-Usul" Publishers in Cairo for propaganda of atheism and printed an Arabic translation of the work "The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin, so hated by Islamists, and the book by Bertrand Russel "Why I Am Not a Christian." Ismail Adham (1911-1940) was another active propagandist of atheism, who had studied at Moscow University and then organized an association first in Turkey, then in Egypt. He committed suicide and asked to be cremated, but not buried in a Muslim cemetery.
In the late 1920s and in the 1930s interest in Islam began to grow and atheistic and secularist propaganda lost popularity. The Egyptian intellectual Muhammad Khusein Heikal (1889-1956), a Sorbonne graduate, published a three-volume work about Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and became famous after the publication of his classical work "The Life of Mohammed" (1935). A sharp turn toward Islam was made by Abbas Mahmud al-Akkad (1889-1964), among whose pupils was the well-known preacher of radical Islamism Seyid Kutb (1906-1966) (executed in Egypt during the rule of Gamal Abdel Nasser).
Debates continue in the Muslim world whether Islamic standards and rules are compatible with democratic values. This subject is actively discussed at numerous conferences and symposiums, at meetings of religious figures, experts and politicians. According to one point of view, the very problem of combining the values of Islamic civilization with the democratic principles is wrong in essence, because this civilization is democratic in its foundation and does not need to borrow anything from other systems. Adherents of other point of view accuse Islamic societies of authoritarianism, neglect of human rights, absence of freedoms, etc. There are also supporters of convergence.
Modernization and Cultural Convergence
Success of modernization project will largely depend on how relations between different cultures and civilizations will take shape. According to Ian Peters, it is possible to talk of three globalized-cultural paradigms or development prospects of these relations: cultural differentialism, or preserved differences; cultural convergence, or growing similarity (sameness); cultural hybridization, or constant mixture. The key point here is attitude to cultural-civilizational differences: will globalization lead to their leveling, withering away through the absorption of ones by others, homogenization (convergence); will they be, on the contrary, strengthened and prolonged (differentialism as the foundation of the theory of the "clash of civilizations" by Samuel Huntington), or will there be a process of their mixing (hybridization). It should be noted that the concept of hybridization, which came into being in the West in the 19th century, is now connected in literature with the phenomenon of migration.
In the history of the Islamic world there have been quite a few examples of hybridization. One can remember an old fact: the Muslim Ottoman sultans did not object when the Europeans called their capital city in the old way - "Constantinople," but they called it differently -"High Porta," or "al-Istana." In republican Turkey, after adoption of the law on the postal service in 1930, it was decreed to name the capital "Istanbul." But the preservation of the old name corresponded to the wish of the Ottoman sultans to use the grandeur of the Byzantine capital themselves, and present themselves as the heirs of the culture of Byzantium. Double identification served the image of the country.
Arabs and Jews: Break or Rapprochement
Today such possibility is blocked by the existing Arab-Israeli conflict and the continuing occupation of Palestine territories by Israel. 8
The Palestinians, losing faith in the possibility of the creation of their own state, turn more often to the idea of creating a unified democratic Arab-Jewish state. However, they realize that there is no alternative to the concept of the two states, and all ideas and proposals of one unified state are doomed to remaining an empty talk.
At the same time this concept receives support of quite a few western critics of Israel, whose number is growing even in the Jewish community of the United States. Even the critical reaction of western leaders to the words of the Turkish premier R. Erdogan, who compared Zionism with German fascism, was relatively mild.
Function of Historical Memory
The crisis of identity is closely connected with historical memory. Some people have a strong such memory, others - weak. The second category includes not only "new nations." Nations with a long history have great differences in this respect. For instance, the peoples of the Middle East have such strong memory that it exerts a powerful influence on their mentality and attitude to other nations and to life. One can also mention "genealogical memory," which has different duration depending on ethnic origin. Suffice it to ask a statistical Russian and Arab young men about how many of his ancestors he knows. One can rest assured that the Arab lad knows many more of them.
Separate facts of history have sacral character for certain nations (Holocaust for the Jews, genocide for the Armenians). The memory of defeats and losses in wars is especially bitter. The memory of defeats and failures in several wars with Israel is unbearable for the Arabs, it breeds their inferiority complex. They have to feel dignity and superiority in something different in order to overcome it.
Religion gives not only consolation, but also hope, and in combination with the idea of chosenness it gives the feeling of dignity and superiority. The well-known Lebanese intellectual Amin Maaluf wrote that "Islam is the abode for both ethnicity and dignity." Inasmuch as Arab societies have always lagged behind other countries in development (except individual cases), their armies have suffered defeat after defeat, their territories have been occupied and people have been humiliated, "religion, which they gave the world, has become the last abode for self-respect." There is no doubt that these circumstances were among the reasons which provoked the "Arab spring," and a rampage of violence during the exacerbated inter- and intraconfessional and interethnic clashes. The Middle Eastern "sphacelation" is spreading beyond the borders of the region, including in the northern direction.
Amin Maaluf mentions "cultural (civilizational) dignity," with which the desire of any ethnic group to preserve its language and religion is connected (he noted that religion is exclusive, but the language is not). He introduces the concept of "globalized communitarianism," which is one of the most harmful consequences of globalization, when the sharp growth of the role of religious affiliation is combined with people's unification in "global tribes" with the help of the all-pervading flows of information. This is especially noticeable in the Islamic world where the "unprecedented wave of communitarian particularism expressed in the bloody conflict between the Sunnites and Shi'ites comes out along with internationalism." The latter means that an Algerian volunteer goes and fights in Afghanistan, a Tunisian fights in Bosnia, an Egyptian joins the Taliban in Pakistan, a Jordanian can be found in the ranks of the Chechen fighters, and an Indonesian - in Somalia.
Historical memory has an influence outside the boundaries of an ethnic group, which sometimes causes tumultuous political collisions and facilitates powerful information flows.
Memory contains events far away from our present life in time, especially if ethnic groups which took part in them exist in our day and maintain certain relations with other participants in those developments. Suffice it to recall in this context the Kulikovo battle for Russians and Tatars, or the Kosovo battle for Serbs.
All this has direct bearing on the formation of the self-image of ethnic groups. I cannot but agree with Lamont King who noted that a nation is a type of an ethnic group. But "if an ethnic group is other-defined, a nation is self-defined. People referred by other people to a definite ethnic group cannot detach themselves from it, even if they so wish, however, they can renounce their affiliation to a nation. Moreover, a nation "also differs from a generic ethnic group by its desire to rule its state." Historical memory is instrumental here, and its function boils down to maintaining national solidarity and cohesion.
Myths and Symbols
The elements of historical memory are almost always confabulated. In order to understand this phenomenon it would be useful to turn to the theory of symbolic choice, whose central idea is that of the myth-symbol complex. Myth is "conviction shared by a big group of people which gives events and actions a definite significance." Within the framework of such understanding the fact of whether the event fulfilling the function of myth did take place in reality or was invented has no significance. In turn, symbol is understood as "emotionally charged reference to myth." Certain researchers of concrete ethnic conflicts, including those in the post-Soviet area, write that "the "myth-symbol" complex is a network of myths and symbols
connected with them. In other words, people make political choice not so much by calculation as be emotions, answering the symbols offered them.
Within this theoretical discourse the concept of identity occupies an important place and it actually comes out as a factor of world politics (it is not accidental that from the 1990s this concept has been elaborated in the theory of international relations). Then again, symbolic politics can deal with the paradigm of the emergence of proneness to conflict on religious grounds. In any case, fear for the disappearance of Islamic civilizational-cultural identity and, accordingly, the loss of positions of socio-political groups basing their legitimacy on it, is definitely able to give rise to hostility and violence. Suffice it to recall the harsh reaction of many people in the Islamic world to the publication of a cartoon depicting Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper.
The "myth-symbol" complex - with the help of fanning aggression on the basis of various historical and religious myths - can overcome the weakness of identity and difficulties of implementation of a policy of mobilization. Such myths, in turn, are built on the interpretation of politics in ethnic terms. Similarly, mythologizing events of the first ages of Islam through symbols can lead to examining events, including modern ones, in religious terms. The point is that these events are given a certain symbolic significance provoking an action of a political character. In doing this, we should always keep in mind that ethnicity and religion are so closely connected that ethnic mobilization can appeal to religious motivation, and vice versa.
Certain scholars consider that "myth in its modern sense is a collective product of a social group." The myth of the Holocaust as the most tragic event in the history of the Jews speaks of a "collective attempt to find meaning in the death of six million Jews." This
collective project served as a powerful instrument of national mobilization. It is indicative that there is no taboo among Israeli scholars to discuss the symbolic role of the Holocaust. Similarly, the collective project of the genocide of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, the most tragic event in Armenian history, fulfills the same role for the Armenians.
The Crisis of Nations
The above-mentioned crisis of identity is inseparably linked with the weakening stability of the modern system of nations. In recent decades a whole number of states-nations have disintegrated in various regions of the world (U.S.S.R., Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Sudan), and new ones have formed. The "Arab spring" phenomenon forced many experts and politicians to talk about a crisis of the post-colonial configuration of the Middle East, or abut the end of the Sykes-Picot system created after World War I.
Historians can tell much about how hastily the French and British colonialists drew borders between parts of the lands torn away from the Ottoman Empire. For instance, at the authoritative Istanbul forum in 2013 a well-known Turkish author cited one of the reasons for the emergence of the "Arab spring," namely, that the Arab countries did not allegedly know their national statehood, but were created of "splinters of the Ottoman Empire." He neglected, for some reason or other, the fact that Egyptian statehood, despite the periods of foreign domination, numbered several millennia. Undoubtedly, this statement is based on the now popular neo-Ottoman discourse, which shows that postimperial national statehood has not been thoroughly entrenched in the consciousness of Turkish people. I think that Ankara's policy with regard to the Syrian crisis has been prompted, to a certain degree, by
the fact that part of the Turkish political elite is prone to regard Syria as the already-mentioned "splinter" of the Ottoman Empire.
Certain analysts believe that the system of post-colonial borders and state units mapped by them has become obsolete. Such views are expressed in Middle Eastern countries, too.
Nationalism and the State
Speaking of the crisis of nation-states, mention should be made of the territorial factor. A state is a "legal concept" describing a social group occupying definite territory and organized within the framework of common political institutions and an efficient government. Nation is seen as a "social group which is united by common ideology, common institutions, customs and the feeling of homogeneity."
Using the words of the already mentioned Ian Peters, the period between 1840 and 1960 was the epoch of "nations," and the dark side of the building of nations was marginalization, banishment, expropriation, oppression of foreigners, as well as the policy of national purges. Turkey (Armenians and others), Germany (Jews), Uganda (Indians), Nigeria (Ghanaians), Bulgaria (ethnic Turks), India (Muslims) serve as eloquent examples, but this is only the tip of an iceberg. In recent decades the importance of nation-states has diminished and is replaced by globalization, regionalism and ethnicity. The role of diasporas becomes generally recognized, "national" identities become mixed, and the preservation of cultural variety becomes a generally recognized imperative.
Nevertheless, it is precisely the attitude toward immigrants that has become one of the dividing lines between supporters of different development models of Russia, but here both Russian traditionalists and "western-oriented" people often unite in their desire to restrict the inflow of the "aliens." And this is despite the fact that the latter are our
former fellow-compatriots who lived in the Soviet Union. In general, each restriction concerning people's movement from one country to another is resistance to globalization, in which of the three flows of the free global circulation (capital and goods; information; people) only the two first ones cannot be stopped (economic and cultural protectionism is unsuccessful).
Universal Character of Violence
In connection with the often discussed subject of the high level of violence in inter- and intraconfessional and interethnic relations, identification choice and the destinies of nation-states in the convulsions of the "Arab spring" I'd like to remark that outside the boundaries of the Islamic world, too, one can find many examples of bitterness. One American author writes sarcastically that nobody can deny the fact that Dalai Lama is a charismatic and attractive person, the same can be said about Queen Elizabeth II, yet no one can forbid to criticize the principle of hereditary monarchy. Similarly, the first foreign visitors to Tibet were appalled on seeing terrible feudal submission and cruel punishment meted out to people held in the state of complete slavery under the parasitic monk elite. Among adherents of such seemingly peaceful and humane religions as Hinduism and Buddhism there are many murderers and sadists. These facts are widely known. The beautiful island of Ceylon has been ravaged due to violence and reprisals in the course of a prolonged armed conflict between Buddhists and Hindus.
In today's Myanmar, despite the process of democratization which has begun recently, the Muslim minority (up to 800,000) is subjected to harsh persecution. In today's Africa members of certain Christian sects are guilty of cruel murders of Muslims.
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The above-said calls for greater respect of the national sovereignty of independent states, some of which live through a crisis of statehood under the pressure of challenges of hyper-globalization and the need to make identification choice. Inter-civilizating dialogues is an indisputably important instrument of preventing hostility between ethnic and confessional groups, peoples and states to turn into bloody wars.
"Rossiya v globalnoi politike," Moscow, 2014, vol. 12, N1, January-February, pp. 41-58.
Sh. Kashaf,
Leading expert at Russian Academy of State Service, Moscow D. Mukhetdinov, Ph. D. (Political sciences), Rector of Nizhny Novgorod Islamic University RECOGNITION OF IDENTITY: DISCOURSE OF THE ELITE AND POLITICAL CLASS OF MUSLIM COMMUNITY OF RUSSIA
Debates on the problems of identity are going on in most countries of the modern world. As Samuel Huntington said, they are now an inalienable feature of our time. Who are we? What community do we belong to? The need to understand socio-political changes in all their variety and search for new development resources of society adequate to historical challenges prompts political sciences to turn to the category of identity more and more often. However, as many contemporary authors and researchers emphasize, the question of
