Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World (18 page)

Rationalistic, devastatingly pragmatic, and above all fiercely individualistic, the pre-Islamic Arabs of the
jahiliyya
resisted the monotheism that had won over their neighbors for several centuries, preferring a multiplicity of gods whom they did not hesitate to insult and bully if by chance their wishes were not fully complied with. Throwing stones at a god, insulting it, and knocking it down was routine behavior.

The misfortune suffered by the god Sa
^c
d, venerated by the Banu Milkan, a subdivision of the Mudar tribe, speaks volumes. The idol had the shape of a large rock stretched out at Falat on the coast in the vicinity of Jidda. One of its worshippers came to seek its blessing on a large herd of camels, which constituted his wealth. As he performed the sacrifice to the idol, he witnessed a disaster he had never expected. On seeing the blood of the sacrifice offered to the god ritually poured on the rock, the herd reacted in terror and galloped off into the desert. The bedouin flew into a rage, picked up some stones, and threw them at the idol. “What blessing can you give if you frighten off my herd?” he exclaimed in exasperation. When he finally succeeded in rounding up the herd he recited the following poem, in which he told the god why his fidelity could no longer be counted on:

In another instance Ibn al-Kalbi describes the misadventure of an even more prestigious god, Dhu al-Khulsa, who was viciously punished by one of his worshipers, Imru’u al-Qais, the famous poet of the
jahiliyya.
Before attacking the tribe of the Banu
^c
Assad to avenge the murder of his father, Imru’u al-Qais went to his favorite god to consult the god’s oracle since the expedition would be dangerous and he needed his blessing. When the oracle didn’t give him the response he wanted but rather advised him against taking revenge, Imru’u al-Qais became so angry he didn’t hesitate to insult the god: “Go bite your father’s penis! If it was your father who had been killed, you wouldn’t have consulted me!”
²

These anecdotes give us an idea of the self-confident arrogance of the Arabs. The relationship between the human and the divine during the
jahiliyya
was the reverse of the ideal to be proposed by Islam: it was the gods who were hostage to the will and critical reasoning of men rather than the other way around. The individual was sovereign, criticizing the god and constantly evaluating him according to his own criteria. This sovereignty of the individual imbued with his own power, this arrogance that permitted men to judge the gods and so to pose as their equals, was the characteristic of the
taghiya,
a man such as a tribal chief, a king, or an aristocrat who held earthly power through the cult of personality and despotic ambition.

In the Koran,
taghiya
means “tyrant,” a holder of power that knows no limits. The concept has various aspects, each as negative as the other. Sometimes it is a matter of overweening pride that impedes submission (sura 2, v. 14), sometimes the despotic megalomania of such as Pharaoh, who is mentioned by name (sura 20, v. 24, 43). The
taghiya
is the leader who is contemptuous toward everything, including the divine. According to such a
taghiya
> only fools, in the sense of the mentally deficient
(ial-sufaha
), submit to a god: “When it is said unto them: Believe as the people believe, they say: Shall we believe as the foolish believe?” (sura 2, v. 13).

This complete and irreducible sovereignty constituted the major obstacle to the propagation of Muslim philosophy among the Prophet’s contemporaries. One of the prototypes of this arrogance that opposed the divine was the Egyptian pharaoh, whose disobedience to Moses is mentioned in several suras. Pharaoh, who considered himself a god, suffers a bitter defeat in the Koran, his story given as a lesson for those who lack humility.
³
Taghiya
is a favorite word in the language of modern Islamic fundamentalists; it is the insult they most often throw at the heads of contemporary Muslim rulers.

President Bush often appears in Arab cartoons as Pharaoh. A headline in an issue of the Moroccan daily
Al-Itihad al-Ishtiraki
during February 1990 has Mr. Bush declaiming in mock pharaonic tones, I A
m
G
eorge
B
ush
, IA
m
y
our
S
upreme
G
od
. According to the Koranic version, Moses urged Pharaoh to believe in Allah and to stop considering himself a god, but Pharaoh responded by massing his troops and declaring to them: “I (Pharaoh) am your Lord the Highest (sura 79, v. 24). Allah naturally inflicted total defeat on him, from which he never recovered.

Never have Koranic memory and sacred symbolism demonstrated their power more than during the Gulf War. The whole vocabulary of the press, as well as popular slogans, was drawn from that source. Jingles like “With the Koran and the faith, we will defeat America”
("bi al-qur
an wa al-imam, sanahzim al-mirikan.")
were common. The fact that in Arabic “Koran” rhymes with “American” made sloganeering easy. There were also many references to socialism and democracy, but the concepts of
mas
uliyya
(responsibility),
qarar
(decision making), and
tabaHyya
(dependence) didn’t carry the same emotional punch. Although President Bush had the privilege of being compared to Pharaoh, the Arab heads of state, who didn’t have like power, had to put up with much less flattering comparisons, such as
himar
(donkey), which rhymes with “dollar,” and with being reduced to the level of shopkeepers:
“Fahd ya al-himar, biH Makka hi dollar
“ ("Fahd, you jackass, you have sold Mecca for dollars");
⁴⁴
Mubarak ya dhalil bi
^c
t Makka wa al- Nil
“ ("Mubarak, you beggar, you have sold Mecca and the Nile").

If in the cartoon in
Al-Itihad al-Ishtiraki
the cartoonist has dressed Mr. Bush like a Saudi prince, it is to reinforce the desired association between the American president and the Saudi regime. Both of them, like the Koranic depiction of the
taghiya,
can be nothing but transient figures; only the power of God is eternal. This archetype of Pharaoh
-taghiya
is at the root of the inherent instability of the Muslim political system, whose leaders, from the caliphs of old to today’s presidents of republics, are easily challenged—and often physically attacked, in the tradition of the Kharijite revolt.

The populace has always been mobilized around the Koranic concept of
taghiya.
As long as democracy does not penetrate the popular centers of mass culture, the mosques and suqs—which might be achieved through education and participation in daily decision making—this orientation will not change. The modern Muslim regimes, which have plumbed the depths of sacred symbolism for everything that reinforces the bond of submission, have succeeded in subduing the masses for the short run. But for the long run it is the resentment of the oppressive power of the
taghiya
which Arab leaders have helped awaken, though their television propaganda carefully avoids any allusion to the concept of the despot. Islam is based on establishing an equilibrium between a positive pole (the ideas of
ta
^c
a
“obedience";
salam,
“peace"; submission) and a negative one (those of the
taghiya
and
fitna,
“disorder"). Even if broadcasters on television talk only about the former, always present in the mind of the Muslim listener is the missing pole: the shadow of the tyrant.

Several centuries after the advent of Islam many Muslim leaders kept up the unfortunate habit of acting like Pharaoh, sometimes announcing that they were prophets (although Allah had declared Muhammad to be the last to have that privilege), sometimes taking the great leap into the void and claiming to be God in person. Giving in to this temptation generally cost them their lives, but even so the temptation still exists today, and the cult of personality is rife in many modern capitals in the Middle East.

It can be said that the arrogance of the
jahiliyya
never disappeared. Well after the advent of Islam, Arabs continued to claim to be prophets; some, like the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi
^c
Amri Allah, who reigned in Cairo from 386 to 411 (A.D. 996-1020), even claimed divinity.
⁴
The false prophet Musaylima (d. 12/633), called
al-kadhdhab
(the Liar), appeared in Yemen during the lifetime of Muhammad himself. Many rebels and political challengers who revolted against the caliphs claimed to be prophets: for example, al-Mukhtar al-Thaqfi (d. 68/687), who rebelled against the Umayyads: “Rumor spread that he was a prophet and had received a revelation from heaven.” He left to posterity some speeches in a rhythmically musical language in which he tried to reproduce the poetic effect of the Koran. Many of the leaders of the Qarmatis, an extremist Shi
^c
ite sect that committed such horrifying atrocities and terrorist acts that it was disavowed by official Shi
^c
ism, claimed to be gods and prophets. Zakrawi al-Qarmati, who died in 293/906, claimed to be a god and required the people to prostrate themselves before him. One of his most notorious acts was his attack on a caravan of twenty thousand pilgrims traveling from Khorasan to Mecca, which he virtually wiped out.
⁵

Stories about prophets who came to ask for audiences with various caliphs are legion. The historian al-Mas
^c
udi described one of these surrealistic encounters with the Abbasid caliph al-Ma
mun, whose leaving his door open in order to learn what his subjects thought inspired many legends. The story is recounted by the caliph himself: