Sunni Islam's Internal Ethnic Conflict
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••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Sunni Islam’s Internal Ethnic Confict The Cognitive Dissonance Between Universal Faith and Ethnic Origination ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Dr. Patrick James Christian A psychoanalytical anthropologist specializing in ethnic confict, Dr. Patrick James Christian received his doctorate in the psychopathology of ethnic and cultural confict from Nova Southeastern University in 2015. Before that, he spent several years in the US Army as a Green Beret, earning such distinctions as the Bronze Star Medal for his service in Iraq. Currently, Christian serves as the senior US Social Scientist for NATO operations in Kabul, Afghanistan. ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 48 • al noor | spring 2016 2495_ Text CC17indd.indd 48 1/17/17 5:58 PM ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• •••••••••••••••••••••••• ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• ew major religions tie the ethnic and historical identity of their frst messengersF and adherents to their central tenets as efectively as Islam. My awareness of this aspect of Islam began during time spent living within the contested divide between Arab and African versions of the Muslim ummah. Night afer night, the Muslims conversing would argue their respective positions in circular logic with each position seeming to be rooted in a particular ethno-cultural perspective. Their clashing approaches appeared to confict with attempts made by the Prophet Mohammed to raise his newly revealed message above the thick boundaries of the ties of blood and marriage. An enduring ethno-cultural divide in Muslim identity seemed to be evidenced by the ongoing dissonance of Islamic application in this non-Arab setting. ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Sunni Islam’s Internal Ethnic Conflict • 49 2495_ Text CC17indd.indd 49 1/17/17 5:58 PM ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• I identify two separate conceptual psychological “dis- Christian faith, become so acculturated across socio- sonances” within the Islamic identity as it emanates logical psychological states of being that their central outward from its origins at Mecca and Medina—dis- progenitors change ethnicity, race, language, or even sonances that are central to confict discourse within gender depending on the needs of their adherents. the multi-ethnic Muslim ummah. These cleavages The Islamic faith, on the other hand, never moved involve points of confict in and of themselves and beyond its Arab roots. Te faith is inseparable from increase the confict efect when combined. Te frst the linguistic constructions found in the Arabic lan- is the historical dissonance within the pre-Islamic guage of the Qur’an, and from the cultural context of Arab identity, involving psychological and cognitive the testifed example (sunnah) and speech (hadith) of imprinting of geography, geology, spirituality, and the Prophet Mohammed. nomadic-sociocentric constructions of society. Te second dissonance is between the pre-Islamic Arab Te comparison of the conficted Arab identity against identity and the new Islamic identity promulgated by the image of a trans-tribal, universalistic Islam pro- Qur’anic revelations and the life of the Prophet. vides the basis of research for this paper. Te hypoth- esis is that the Islamic identity that emanated from Te former suggests a society that was already inter- the Arabian Desert consisted and consists of primary nally conficted prior to the Qur’anic revelations and archetypes that are in constant states of cognitive dis- the latter suggests that this confict was deepened and sonance, a condition exacerbated by interaction with then promulgated across vast spaces and into thou- non-Arab ethnicities. With this paper, I suggest that sands of non-Arab cultures. Te spread of a cultural the Islamic archetype remains in perpetual dissonance religion that masquerades as a universal faith would with the original Bedouin spirituality and the Arab create conditions for extended psychological and soci- ethnicity of historical origination and that collectively ological confict as each afected culture works to sort the two halves continue to create even greater disso- out the diference between (unwanted) foreign culture nance as they cross the Arab-to-other ethnic cultural and (wanted) universal faith. boundary. The foregoing is not intended as a pejorative con- As a religious text, the Qur’an engaged both the ceptualization of Islam. Rather, a careful reading metaphysical hereafter and the physical present of of the Islamic faith suggests a divide between what individual, family and society. Tis contrasted with Mohammed intended and what eventually emerged Christianity, a faith that surrendered the physical from the Arabian Peninsula.1 I suggest that most, if present in favor of the metaphysical hereafter and not all, religious faiths begin deeply imbedded within with Judaism, which focused on the earthly ordering the culture from which they emanated. Some, like the of Jewish society. Unlike the Christian Gospels, the “Te revelations of the Qur’an served a dual purpose: change to the existing social order and change to the existing spiritual order. Had these two objectives been realized, they would have negated the central archetypes of Arab ethnic identity.” ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 50 • al noor | spring 2016 2495_ Text CC17indd.indd 50 1/17/17 5:58 PM ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• the Arabian Peninsula consti- tuted two distinctive sociological structures that were nonetheless linked together by common his- torical origination and a symbi- otic relationship. Te frst was that of the badawah (Bedouin), which was gener- ally acknowledged to be, if not the ideal, then at least the origi- nal Arab culture. The second was that of the hadarah (seden- tary society) consisting of tribes settled in established towns and cities, supported by farming, trading and support of the cross desert caravans. It is the hadarah that figures most prominently in the Qur’an and the hadith, as Mohammed and his family were of the sedentary Quraysh tribe A Bedouin family in a traditional tent, 2005. Tanenhaus, Creative Commons. of the city of Mecca. But it is the badawah that ultimately trans- mitted the Qur’an throughout Qur’an does not rely on earlier texts for its context, the Arabian Peninsula and extended the geography of but is self-contained in describing the past, the present Arab-Islam north into the Levant and south into the and the metaphysical future.2 Te importance of these Maghreb and the Horn of Africa. points is that the revelations of the Qur’an served a dual purpose: change to the existing social order and Te evolution of nomadic herder, trader, and hunter- change to the existing spiritual order. Te combina- gatherer to the collectivism of agro-pastoralism is not tion of these two objectives, had they been realized unique to Arab society. Within the normal evolution in their fullest form, would have conceivably negated of societies across this developmental spectrum, the the central archetypes of Arab ethnic identity in much archetypes of individual and family identity change the same manner that the spread of the new Christian as part of normal construction and reconstruction identity negated the originating Jewish ethnic iden- – albeit in many cases, violently. Two underlying tity of its new adherents. Tis leaves a question of the sociological issues continuously surface as part of the fulfllment of original Qur’anic intent—an intent that explanations for the ethno-religious interplay in the I argue was ultimately subverted by the pressures of conficted Islamic identity. Te frst issue involves the ethnic identity and historical origination. effects of cognitive imprinting on nomadic society that can be found in all such sociological structures The Cognitive Dissonance of Arab regardless of ethnicity or religious tradition.3 Te sec- Identity in a Pre-Islamic Context ond issue involves the encapsulation of a communal identity in the early stages of evolution from nomadic By the time of Mohammed’s first revelation in 610 to sedentary into a religious faith promulgated as C.E. during