From Three Sigma Systems:
The Coming of the New Caliphate
Posted on February 24, 2011 by marc
I have been giving a great deal of thought to the recent events in the Arab World. The most remarkable aspect of these events is their transnational character. An uprising against one despotic ruler or another, can be easily understood, but how is it that the process we are witnessing cuts a wide swatch across all of the nations generally classified as Arab?
In recent weeks, major uprisings have occurred in Tunisia, Egypt,, Bahrain and Libya. There are also ominous rumblings in Yemen, Jordan, Iraq, Algeria, and even Morocco. This social tectonic is also being played out in an even wider domain of Middle East Islamicism encompassing Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Even Turkey, who for a 100 years has straddled the line between Christian Europe in the west and Eastern Islamicism, has recently tilted east.
The synchronicity of these events cannot be ascribed to mere coincidence. We need to ask, what’s going on?
Last night I posed this question to my wife and she echoed what is currently the dominant American narrative. These events, she said, reflect a widespread aspiration among the peoples of the Arab nations to become more like we are in the West. In this narrative, the leveling forces of the Internet have awakened the youthful populations of the Arab world to the benefits of freedom, democracy, free market economics, and consumerism. So powerful is the force of their aspirations, that they are willing to give their lives to become “free”.
I’m not so sure about this explanation.
I do not doubt that young educated elites with laptop computers, IPhones, and Facebook accounts played an important role as instigators of these uprisings, but I believe there are deeper social and historical forces at work. The Arab world was only divided up into European style secular nation-states about 100 years ago. In the U.S., which has existed as a nation for only a few hundred years, 100 years sounds like a long time, but the nomadic Arab tribes united in lifestyle, have occupied what is now called the Arab World for thousands of years. And the Islamic Caliphate, founded around the 6th Century by the followers of Muhammad, united them in a singularly Islamic identity for 1500 years,
To grasp the sheer power of this Islamic social-historical reality, we need only think clearly about the all-pervasive power of Judeo-Christian myth in shaping our experience in the Western world. Even among Western non-Christians, the Judeo-Christian worldview dominates all aspects of Western culture. Central to the Judeo-Christian worldview is the idea of economic progress and individual accomplishment as the yardstick by which we prove ourselves good and worthy. Our competitive striving to have more and be more as a society and as individuals, is in our blood.
Islam was born in the vastness of the Middle East, where nomadic tribes wandered the deserts, occasionally coming together at crossroad cities, and then moving apart again. It was not striving that was valued but rather, The Law as prescribed in The Koran which created a unified worldview and orderly code of conduct. This is why the idea of a Western style secular state is abhorrent to the Islamic mind. The Law of the Koran is much more than a generalizable spiritual guide to man’s relation to God. It is a practical guide to the daily matters of man’s relation to other men. The Koran is an instrument for orchestrating the relationships between wanderers by prescribing universal laws of behavior and punishments for the violation of The Law. The Law is in the blood of the Arab world.
For example, a Christian who does not pray in accordance with a set of strict laws may still be a good Christian, but a Christian who fails to strive toward greater “goodness” is a bad Christian. A Muslim, on the other hand, is a bad Muslim if he fails to pray five times a day. Striving is not necessary so long as he follows The Law,
These deeply rooted social-historical myths give rise to self-created fall-lines along which large social movements occur. In the West they have tended to favor secular enterprise and rational self-interested practice by which competitive striving is encouraged and facilitated. In the East they have favored dogmatic compliance to Koranic Law and relations of honor that transcend secular state laws, business enterprise, and contract.
If we view the recent transnational uprisings through an Islamic rather than a Christian lens, we can see that the fall-line to the future points toward the renewal of an Islamic Caliphate ordered in terms of the region’s common social denominator—Islam.
Although the difference between Shi’a and Sunni are as real as the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, the Islamic worldview remains the overbearingly principal reality that sets the Arab World apart from the Judeo-Christian West.
As events move forward, there is one thing about which we can be certain. The mortal combat between these two irreconcilable worldviews —Judeo-Christian and Islamic—will produce increasingly cataclysmic conflict. The West is already embroiled in war in Iraq, Afghanistan and arguably, Pakistan. Conflict with Iran is on the drawing boards. The West’s supply of oil hangs in the balance, as does the survival of Israel.
We are witnessing first hand, the ongoing passion play triggered by the rise of organized world religion, specifically monotheism, in which the metastatic growth engendered by the Judeo-Christian myth of striving for grace is standing face to face with the renewed power of the Islamic world’s myth of transcendent Law applied in daily practice.
The prognosis is not a good one.
NOTE: I do not favor the myth of striving over the myth of The Law. Either one, taken alone, is a dysfunctional construct paving the road to self-destruction, but taken together they transform the road into a freeway.
The Coming of the New Caliphate
Posted on February 24, 2011 by marc
I have been giving a great deal of thought to the recent events in the Arab World. The most remarkable aspect of these events is their transnational character. An uprising against one despotic ruler or another, can be easily understood, but how is it that the process we are witnessing cuts a wide swatch across all of the nations generally classified as Arab?
In recent weeks, major uprisings have occurred in Tunisia, Egypt,, Bahrain and Libya. There are also ominous rumblings in Yemen, Jordan, Iraq, Algeria, and even Morocco. This social tectonic is also being played out in an even wider domain of Middle East Islamicism encompassing Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Even Turkey, who for a 100 years has straddled the line between Christian Europe in the west and Eastern Islamicism, has recently tilted east.
The synchronicity of these events cannot be ascribed to mere coincidence. We need to ask, what’s going on?
Last night I posed this question to my wife and she echoed what is currently the dominant American narrative. These events, she said, reflect a widespread aspiration among the peoples of the Arab nations to become more like we are in the West. In this narrative, the leveling forces of the Internet have awakened the youthful populations of the Arab world to the benefits of freedom, democracy, free market economics, and consumerism. So powerful is the force of their aspirations, that they are willing to give their lives to become “free”.
I’m not so sure about this explanation.
I do not doubt that young educated elites with laptop computers, IPhones, and Facebook accounts played an important role as instigators of these uprisings, but I believe there are deeper social and historical forces at work. The Arab world was only divided up into European style secular nation-states about 100 years ago. In the U.S., which has existed as a nation for only a few hundred years, 100 years sounds like a long time, but the nomadic Arab tribes united in lifestyle, have occupied what is now called the Arab World for thousands of years. And the Islamic Caliphate, founded around the 6th Century by the followers of Muhammad, united them in a singularly Islamic identity for 1500 years,
To grasp the sheer power of this Islamic social-historical reality, we need only think clearly about the all-pervasive power of Judeo-Christian myth in shaping our experience in the Western world. Even among Western non-Christians, the Judeo-Christian worldview dominates all aspects of Western culture. Central to the Judeo-Christian worldview is the idea of economic progress and individual accomplishment as the yardstick by which we prove ourselves good and worthy. Our competitive striving to have more and be more as a society and as individuals, is in our blood.
Islam was born in the vastness of the Middle East, where nomadic tribes wandered the deserts, occasionally coming together at crossroad cities, and then moving apart again. It was not striving that was valued but rather, The Law as prescribed in The Koran which created a unified worldview and orderly code of conduct. This is why the idea of a Western style secular state is abhorrent to the Islamic mind. The Law of the Koran is much more than a generalizable spiritual guide to man’s relation to God. It is a practical guide to the daily matters of man’s relation to other men. The Koran is an instrument for orchestrating the relationships between wanderers by prescribing universal laws of behavior and punishments for the violation of The Law. The Law is in the blood of the Arab world.
For example, a Christian who does not pray in accordance with a set of strict laws may still be a good Christian, but a Christian who fails to strive toward greater “goodness” is a bad Christian. A Muslim, on the other hand, is a bad Muslim if he fails to pray five times a day. Striving is not necessary so long as he follows The Law,
These deeply rooted social-historical myths give rise to self-created fall-lines along which large social movements occur. In the West they have tended to favor secular enterprise and rational self-interested practice by which competitive striving is encouraged and facilitated. In the East they have favored dogmatic compliance to Koranic Law and relations of honor that transcend secular state laws, business enterprise, and contract.
If we view the recent transnational uprisings through an Islamic rather than a Christian lens, we can see that the fall-line to the future points toward the renewal of an Islamic Caliphate ordered in terms of the region’s common social denominator—Islam.
Although the difference between Shi’a and Sunni are as real as the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, the Islamic worldview remains the overbearingly principal reality that sets the Arab World apart from the Judeo-Christian West.
As events move forward, there is one thing about which we can be certain. The mortal combat between these two irreconcilable worldviews —Judeo-Christian and Islamic—will produce increasingly cataclysmic conflict. The West is already embroiled in war in Iraq, Afghanistan and arguably, Pakistan. Conflict with Iran is on the drawing boards. The West’s supply of oil hangs in the balance, as does the survival of Israel.
We are witnessing first hand, the ongoing passion play triggered by the rise of organized world religion, specifically monotheism, in which the metastatic growth engendered by the Judeo-Christian myth of striving for grace is standing face to face with the renewed power of the Islamic world’s myth of transcendent Law applied in daily practice.
The prognosis is not a good one.
NOTE: I do not favor the myth of striving over the myth of The Law. Either one, taken alone, is a dysfunctional construct paving the road to self-destruction, but taken together they transform the road into a freeway.
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