Islamic and Arab Imperialism and Irredentism is driving the conflict between the river and the sea
The prevailing paradigm concerning the conflict over the land from the Jordan to the Mediterranean runs roughly as follows. Israel is the last manifestation of Western imperialism and colonialism, the most pernicious and pervasive imperialism the world has ever known, something Western democracies renounced after World War II. They came in the 20th century, displaced the natives and stole their land. Palestinian violence against Israelis is fully justified in response to this terrible offense.
Michael Merriman-Lotze
articulates it clearly in comparing the violence that comes from the Israeli and the Arab side:
in short it is my opinion that Israeli violence is the violence that must be exercised to maintain a neo-colonial military occupation and apartheid-like inequality. Palestinian violence is the inevitable response to that occupation and apartheid-like inequality. Violence therefore will only end when the occupation and Israeli apartheid end.
Although I think this narrative, and the justification it gives to some otherwise unimaginable behavior, is mistaken, both empirically and morally, I think it has every right to be articulated in the public sphere and taken seriously. I don’t, however, think it’s appropriate for this point of view to demand from its audience that they not familiarise themselves with alternative analyses. Here is my serious response.
Consider the imperial-colonial paradigm and the insight it offers us in understanding how imperial and colonial impulses have contributed to this enduring conflict. There is no question that the thirst for dominion and supremacy play a key role in many wars, usually resolved by a battle in which one side destroys the other’s military and establishes its dominion. The pattern of hardened warriors coming from the margins of a society, committed to a supra-moral solidarity (my side right or wrong), defeating an empire gone soft with success, becoming in a few generations soft in turn, and victim to another hungry tribe, inspired the social historian Ibn Khaldoun, to take it as a law of political behavior.
But empires are not merely militarily superior, they have a cultural force that is best observed in the colonial aspect of their activities, their day-to-day superiority over their conquered peoples. When Western progressives oppose ‘colonial imperialism’ they oppose cultures whose sense of superiority over others is so great that they have the right to subject them and exploit them under threat of destroying them. And as any progressive can tell you, these are things we categorically reject.
But were progressive anti-imperialists to acknowledge that their (‘Western’) culture is – so far – the only imperial culture to renounce the right of dominion, and to consider that observation’s implications, they would realise a fundamental conceptual error: in renouncing dominion, the West (at the height of its military hegemony), rejected an international norm that had governed international culture the world over for millennia. Thus, exotic ‘others’ like the populations and cultures of the Orient, have always, and still play by
la raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure. Rule or be ruled. Do onto others before they do onto you.
ARAB-MUSLIM IMPERIAL-COLONIALISM
However, thinking that the West is the
only imperial force worth discussing (and condemning), progressive historians have a marked tendency to ignore the millennium and a half-long history of
Islamic and Arab imperialism. And yet, that is precisely the path of thought and analysis that leads to a progressive resolution to the profound conflict.
Of all the ancient empires that rose and fell, the most enduring was the last, the monotheistic empire of Islam. In Muhammad’s day, Arabs were warrior tribes, primarily based in the Saudi peninsula. And yet, within a century of his teachings, Islam had spread and covered the area from Iran to Spain. For both extent and durability, it was the most stunning imperial conquest in the history of the world.
One of the most important indicators of the penetration of a conquest concerns its impact on language. Take England. When Angles and Saxons invaded in the 6th and 7th centuries, they chased out the Celtic inhabitants and replaced their tongue with a Germanic one (Anglo-Saxon). When Scandinavians invaded in the 9th-11th centuries, they had limited impact on the English tongue. When post-millennial Europeanised Normans invaded in 1066, the language war between their aristocratic French and native commoner English went on for centuries, eventually producing a marriage of tongues that made English one of the richest languages known.
In the case of the two extreme points of Muslim conquest, Arabic did not dominate. Shi’i Iran kept its language and much of its culture; and in Spain the conquest was turned around beginning in the 11th century, leaving a limited mark on the language of the natives. But from Iraq to Morocco something much more colonial and invasive occurred. Arabs came in as victorious Muslims, and dominated so thoroughly every aspect of this vast swath of cultures and languages that their language (and many mores) dominated everywhere, largely suppressing and replacing almost all the local ones (cf. Berbers).
I note this because it’s important to understand the remarkable continuity between this conquest and the Arab world today. Indeed, the similarity between the attitudes of Arabs in modern times, and in the early Middle Ages are remarkable on key points:
- Tribal loyalties: the clan structure has shown great durability in Arab culture: us-them loyalties (my side right or wrong), self-help justice, vendettas.
- Importance of Warrior Honor: one is not a man without killing another man, inflicting humiliation a source of honor, shame is social death, blackened honor is bleached in blood.
- Alpha Male dominance: gender roles are governed by the male need to assert honor by controlling the sexuality of his women. According to some readings, Muhammad opposed honor-killings, and yet they prevail in most Arab and Muslim cultures (Pakistan, Afghanistan) today.
- Strong horse politics: power and the ability to instill fear and inspire loyalty with violence are coin of the realm. Power relations constantly disrupted by power-challenges and vendettas.
- Triumphalist Religiosity: a form of religious belief that insists on public displays of its superiority, it’s honor, over all other religions. Triumphalists feel the need for public signs of respect for their superiority over others. Right up to Westphalia (1648), Christian triumphalism had legitimated wars, including on civilians. The US constitution constitutes the first time in the history of Christianity, that the winners chose tolerance.
- Monotheistic Imperialism: Triumphalist religiosity is a widespread phenomenon among the nations. Certainly, the Greeks had no doubt of their cultural superiority and expected everyone to acknowledge it in the places they conquered. But monotheism takes imperialism to new heights, with its political formula ‘One God, one ruler, one faith,’ and its doctrinal claims to a monopoly on salvation for all mankind.
The unimaginable success of the imperial expansion of the first century of Islam fed this triumphalist strain among followers of the Prophet. It led to the division of the world into
dar al Islam and
dar al Harb: where Muslims rule is the realm of submission, where they do not, is the realm of the sword where infidels who have yet to submit to Islam are
harbi – destined to the sword.
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Richard Landes is a historian of millennialism living in Jerusalem; his most recent book, Can “The Whole World” be Wrong?: Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism, and Global Jihad. Introduction: Rethink...
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