| Freedom and Justice in Islam By John S. Pinto |
| Here are some of his comments. He said that by common consent among historians, the modern history of the Middle East began in the year 1798, when a young French general, named Napoleon Bonaparte, conquered and ruled Egypt. Bonaparte proclaimed that he had come on behalf of a French Republic built on the principles of liberty and equality. The idea of equality posed no problem to the Middle Eastern Arab world. Equality is a very basic Islamic belief. All true believers are equal. However, it left three "inferior" categories of people: slaves, unbelievers and women. Islam never developed anything like the caste system of India or the privileged aristocracies of Europe. However, liberty was something else. In the Arab world at that time (and probably even today), liberty was a political term but not a legal term. You were free if you were not a slave. Liberty was not used as a term to describe good government as was in the Western world. The idea of a republic founded in the principles of freedom was hard to understand. Some years later, Sheik Rifa'a al-Tahtawi, who went to Paris as chaplain to the first group of Egyptian students, wrote a book about his adventures and explained his discovery of the meaning of freedom. He wrote that what the French call freedom is the same as what the Muslims call justice. By equating freedom with justice, he opened a whole new phase in the political and public discourse of the Arab world. In the Western world, there are two views of the Middle East. One is that, whatever the West does, Muslims will be ruled by corrupt tyrants. Therefore, the aim of our foreign policy should be to insure that they are 'our' tyrants. This is the predominant view in the departments of state and in the foreign office -- which is complete nonsense. It is this view that has caused us so much trouble. The second view is that Arab ways are different from ours. They must be allowed to develop in accordance with their cultural principles, but it is possible for them to develop democratic institutions of a kind, with outside help. This is the imperialist view. In thinking about these two views, it is helpful to step back and consider what Islamic and Arab society was once like and how it has been transformed in the modern age. Today's Arab societies bear little resemblance to past Arab societies. The dictatorships of Sadam Hussein in Iraq, the Assad family in Syria or the Mubarak regime in Egypt have no roots in the Islamic past. In 1786 (three years before the French revolution), a letter written by Count de Chisel-Goofier, the French ambassador to Istanbul states, "Here, things are not as in France where the king is the sole master and does as he pleases. Here, the sultan has to consult with the former holders of high offices, with the leaders of various groups and so on. The process is slow." This scenario is very different from the common image of Middle Eastern governments today. So, what happened? More in the next issue. |
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| On July 16, 2006, Bernard Lewis delivered a lecture on Islam. Mr. Lewis was born and raised in London. He studied at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies where he received a Ph.D. in Islam. He is currently Princeton University's Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies. He also has written more than two dozen books. |