"The attacks on the USA in September 2001"
were, according to Halliday, the author of
this book, "the first time in five centuries
that a 'Southern' enemy has hit back in a
major assault on the territory of a Western
State..." The US's response was "war on
terrorism, which goes beyond terrorism
proper to reshape international relations".
Halliday himself takes the event as a point
of departure to examine the thesis of a
developing clash between the West and the
Islamic countries, a clash not in the sense
of contradictions between two centres of
power but with something primordial,
mystical about it. And he rejects it.
This thesis of conflict is being built up
not only by some interested theorists in the
West but also by the Islamists in the Muslim
world. The author has a simple answer. There
have been trade or territorial conflicts
between them but none up to now which could
be termed "civilizational". Anyway, neither
the Muslim world is undifferentiated nor the
European one. There are possibly more
conflicts among the Muslim countries than
they have with the West.
The Europeans seem to think primarily of the
Middle East when they speak of the Muslim
world, although it has only a small part of
the world Muslims. The reason was originally
strategic, to which the discovery of oil
added an economic dimension. The important
point here is that the old ruling classes
continued to retain power in the newly
independent countries and thus enter into a
neo-colonial relationship with Europe and,
later, the US.
Halliday also notes the special nature of
oil production. It creates no backward and
forward linkages and, therefore, no
secondary development. The income generated
from it is rentier. He should have added
that its political effect is powerful making
the rentier state strong against its own
people and commensurately vulnerable to the
advanced world.The third historic
development in the region was the Jewish
immigration, as Britain closed its own doors
to the European Jews but opened those of
Palestine to them. The defeat of the Arab
states by Israel was a shock to the Arabs
but the Palestinian problem was used by the
Arab states mainly for demagogic purposes.
The Palestinians were left practically to
their own fate.
The point, however, is that none of these
conflicts - struggle of the radical
movements against their own regimes,
anti-Western movement or the Arab Israeli
conflict - is of a religious nature. They
are about the issues that engage the people
throughout the world.
Again the Iranian revolution, though
expressing itself in religious idiom, was
about mundane issues. The rapid pace of
economic change in the later years of the
Shah's rule had brutally unsettled the
middle class and the peasants which
mobilized to overthrow him. But the
revolutionary authority conducted itself
like any Iranian nationalist government.
Halliday holds the revolution was
"comprehensively reactionary harking to
previous older and rejecting ideas of
historical progress". However, he overlooks
the fact that ideology often hides the real
interests of the revolutionary class. The
mobilized Iranian masses confronting the
army and forcing it to surrender meant it
was a genuine revolution with power shifting
within the bourgeoisie, from the compradors
to the nationalists.
However, his belief that it was made mainly
by those who had benefited from the Shah's
modernization is not correct. It was
propelled not only by those who had been
marginalized.
The greatest failure of the Islamist
movement in general, according to Halliday,
is its lack of an economic programme.
The Gulf war of 1990-91 was, of course,
partly a result of the Iraq-Iran war. But
its roots lay in the Baath regimes'
inability to solve Iraq's problems. The
rentier scheme could increase social
benefits or finance arms purchase. It could
not bring development. The war had two
results: (a) end of the Arab nationalist
movement as it had shaped since the fifties
(b) the legitimization of large scale US
intervention in the region.
On the thesis of an Islamic threat to the
West, he says the Muslim states are too weak
to pose it. He also denies that the West
needs an enemy. But he does not explain, or
not adequately, why the spectre of an
Islamic threat arose in the West and racism
in Europe took on a more explicitly
anti-Muslim character after the Bolshevik
menace was eliminated.
The Islamist movements, he says, are aimed
at the post-colonial regimes of the Muslim
world, who have so clearly failed to solve
the problems of these countries. They may
turn against the West as the protector of
these regimes. However, there is nothing in
Islam to encourage terrorism. Further, it is
wrong to treat Islam as timeless. Politics
and economics of the Muslim countries evolve
like those of others. Their people conduct
themselves according to the problems they
face today.
The modern anti-Muslimism, according to
Halliday, is not a revival of old animosity
but a new phenomenon, though it may draw
upon old myths. Anti-Muslimism in modern
Europe combines popular prejudice with
strategic fear born of the rise in oil
prices, the Iranian revolution, etc.
Relations of the Jews with the Muslims
deteriorated after the establishment of
Israel, as the immigrant Jews not only
displaced the Palestinians but also
exhibited civilizational arrogance.
The book also discusses Orientalism
following Edward Said's critique. Said is
right that it is a discourse of domination.
But, more importantly, Halliday points out,
its assumption is the basic staticity of the
"Orient". And there is a new trend now.
Instead of the advanced countries'
orientalists travelling to the Muslim lands
to study them for the education of their own
ruling classes, the oriental orientalists
settle in the West to perform the same job
for them. The previouspractice characterized
territorial colonialism. The present one
suits new-colonialism.
Every book by Halliday on the Arab East and
Iran enriches the readers' thought. This
book is no exception. The fact that it was
written before the US invasions of
Afghanistan and Iraq does not take away any
of its value.
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