Clash or Continuity: Huntington, Hezbollah and the al-Saud

Coming of age in post-September 11th America means hearing a great deal of political rhetoric about ‘Islam’ and ‘the West’. Much of this rhetoric centers on the moral incongruence of liberal democracy, often conflated as ‘Western values’, and fundamentalist Islam. In the wake of the so called ‘post 9/11 world’ a crop of U.S. policy makers have produced a corpus of political theory, which has sought to completely exclude Islam from the Western cannon, and extend essentialized perceptions of Arabs into the cultural argot of American main-stream media. No piece has had more influence on these policy makers than Samuel Huntington’s 1993 Foreign Affairs article, which coined the phrase ‘clash of civilizations’. In 2008 the ‘clash of civilizations’ is understood in political discourses as a sort of euphemism for ‘Islamic Jihadism’ versus ‘the West’. Huntington’s article argues that future international conflicts will be the result of contradictory civilizational discourses, and that the events and outcomes of September 11th are the clearest indication of this ‘civilizational clash’. Huntington’s theory assumes the world is comprised of well-articulated civilizational lines defined by religious adherence. Though, many who conclude that Huntington’s hypothesis is merely oversimplified make some dangerous assumptions. The first is that ‘the West’ acts and speaks with unanimity, a supposition that fails to recognize that there are indigenous actors and minority groups within ‘Western’ states who are often opposed to the military and geo-political policies of those states, which claim to represent them. The second assumption presumes that the terms ‘Islam’, ‘Muslim’, ‘Jihad’, etc. are monolithic, and neglects the debates within the Muslim Community about the meaning and political implications of these terms on state actors. The Middle East has served as a focal point in the race to understand the phenomena of ‘Islamic terrorism’, as well as the viability democracy in predominately Muslim states. In the cases of Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, religio-political discourses, instilled in colonial imposed borders, have codified varying forms of governance and political philosophies. If the international conflicts arising between the ‘West’ and ‘Islam’ are not best characterized as civilizational disputes, then perhaps they can be understood as the political tactics of citizens involved in a process of decolonization, nation building and identity.

In a new book by King’s College professor and anthropologist Madawi Al-Rasheed, she discusses the current state of politics in Saudi Arabia, paying close attention to the relationship between the authoritarian government of the al-Saud and Saudi Arabia’s religious establishment. What makes Al-Rasheed’s book unique to past works on Saudi’s political climate, is that she engages her material as an ethnographer, paying close attention to the nuanced meanings of terms like Wahhabi and Salafi. Al-Rasheed claims that ‘outsiders’, and especially the West, have oftentimes reified the terms Wahhabi and Salafi in their media and scholarship on Saudi Arabia with little understanding of the political, religious or historical implications of the terms. Al-Rasheed opens her work by explicating the roots of the Wahhabi religious revivalist movement (Wahhabiyya), which legitimized itself by characterizing other groups as bid‘a (corrupt), and institutionalizing Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s tafsir (exegesis) as the purest form of the shari‘a (law). Al-Rasheed also claims that within Saudi Arabia the term Wahhabiyya is employed hegemonically by government and religious elites to consolidate and maintain their grip on power. As Al-Rasheed states, “Wahhabiyya and the Al-Saud were accomplices in the salvation of Arabian society, then they must be obeyed, revered and sanctified.”

Al-Rasheed’s book hints at far-reaching implications about the formation of statehood and national identity, the process of decolonization, and the emergence of resistance movements. As a Saudi living abroad, Al-Rasheed engages her ethnographic study not only through scholarship, but she considers the role of global media campaigns, mass education and modern, innovative notions of tafsir. Al-Rasheed claims that these tools of modernity have opened spaces (if only virtual spaces) for a more robust dialogue that challenges the government and the traditional religious elites in Saudi Arabia. In these ways, Al-Rasheed’s book hopes to “capture the ongoing public debate” within a country that has no domestic spaces for unguarded dialogue.

Contrastly, the case of Lebanon offers a consociational governing system unique in the Arab world. Nicolas Noe’s Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah presents the polemical speeches of Hezbollah’s current Secretary General. Noe’s introduction explains that Hezbollah, under the tutelage of Iran’s Shi‘a leaders, has emerged from its roots as an under-represented ‘Islamic’ resistance group within a deluge of civil-war era sectarian militias, to one of the foremost powerbrokers and political reformist parties in Lebanon today. Alternative versions to Noe’s history claim Hezbollah’s connection to Iran is only incidental, and credits Hezbollah’s rise to power as the direct result of being the sole militia to remain armed after the 1982 Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon.

The National Pact of 1943, Lebanon’s current power-sharing agreement, was reached between the zu‘ama (leaders) of the various confessional sects following the end of the French Mandate. The Lebanese consociational system is based on sectarian divisions, with each sect receiving a certain amount of representation in the Lebanese government. However, the viability and fairness of Lebanon’s confessional system is constantly in question, as decades of civil war, economic stagnation and regional instability continue to fragment already strained relationships. "Today, a weakened Lebanese government is once again facing a crisis of legitimacy as the deadlock, which began with the resignation of three opposition cabinet members in late 2006, continues."

In 1989, after nearly fifteen years of civil war, representatives from all major sects of Lebanon’s confessional system went to Ta‘if, Saudi Arabia in hopes to sign a ‘National Reconciliation Accord’. The Ta‘if Accords signaled a step towards the end of colonial control over the Middle East, by according more political power to the Muslim majority within Lebanon, who had been largely left out of the upper echelons of government by the National Pact. The Ta’if Accords also reasserted Lebanese authority in Southern Lebanon, which had been occupied by Israel for close to a decade. Saudi Arabia held the talks as a way to strengthen its role in the region, raise its international profile and flaunt its chummy relations with the U.S. It is clear by the example of this accord, both Saudi Arabia and Lebanon were engaged their own projects of self-determination, regional preeminence, and nation building.

The works of Noe, Nasrallah and Al-Rasheed provide intimate views on the internal and regional debates shaping much of the political climate of the contemporary Middle East. If U.S. policy makers are interested in opening an interpretive space pursuant to hypotheses about the future of international conflict between ‘the West’ and ‘the Middle East’, Nasrallah and Al-Rasheed have provided the political and cultural mapping that will garner more appropriate notions as to the nature of the disputes. Civilizational arguments like Huntington’s, though they have some intuitive merit, fail to recognize too many overwhelming issues starting with the fact that many of the actors in the 9/11 bombings were Western educated, college graduates. Though the rhetoric of a ‘clash of civilizations’ continues to provide the political justification for al-Qaeda’s clashes with ‘Western imperialists’, and ‘Western imperialists’ need to ‘rid the world of terror’ it is easy to see where these roles are failing to provide any justice or security for any ‘civilization’. Furthermore, and to the disappointment of U.S. policy-makers and Jihadis alike, the future of the Middle East for the time being, appears to belong to journalists in Qatar, dissident, London-based groups like MIRA and burgeoning political parties like Hezbollah. Perhaps the future Al-Rasheed sees for Saudi’s, “free citizens able to articulate, choose and live narratives of their own making” is the future for us all.