Caught in a Dream: Nine Paradoxes from Middle-Eastern Medievalism

By Muhammed Al Da’mi

Caught in a Dream is based on the hypothesis that the Middle East is currently a problematic region in so far as world peace and regional stability are in question. It is problematic intrinsically because it is hooked on an ancestral dream on both the governmental and popular levels. Middle-Eastern medievalism is instrumental for the survival of undemocratic forms of government; and it guaranties a backward public opinion that complements the magic circle of the illusive vision through the demagoguery of the prevailing radical Islamic groups which are now fuelled and maintained by the petrodollar the industrial world provides in return for oil. To verify the above hypothesis, Professor Al Dami examines nine demonstrative paradoxes which crystallize the obsessive and blinding medievalism of this `region of paradox through discussions of the geographically loose and derogatory denomination of the `Middle East, the durable residual impact of Ottoman legacy with its issues, the failure of constant and accumulative progress due to intermittent governmental change, the incongruity between state authority and the cultural elite, the toleration of despotism as a result of resilient medieval relationships and social structures, the futility of progressive change attempted by oppositions which carry identical reactionary values, the dilemma of the educational systems, the American involvement in Iraq and the region which stimulated cultural responses of revealing meaning. An Essay on Mesopotamianism demonstrates the continuity of the Western approaches to Iraq as a model case of regional significance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481739375

Muhammed Al Da’mi

Muhammed Al Da'mi is Professor of English and Orientalist Literature. He worked in the academia for more than 27 years, Baghdad, Aden, Irbid and ASU (Arizona). He is author of a number of books and numerous scholarly papers in Arabic and English. He contributes to the Arabic press almost weekly. Al Da'mi is a member in a number of Iraqi and Arabic cultural and specialized societies, including The House of Wisdom, Baghdad. He has been interviewed by tens of satellite channels both in Arabic and English.

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© 2013 by Muhammed Al Da’mi. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/22/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-3938-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-3937-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013906592

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Contents

Preface

Chapter I Introduction On the Threshold of the Dream

Chapter II The Paradox of Denomination: The ‘Straightjacket’ of European Authority

Chapter III The Paradox of the Post-Ottoman Era: Which Way for the Middle East

Chapter IV The Paradox of the Barber of Baghdad

Chapter V The Paradox of which God for the Middle East: The Despot as the Shadow of Divinity

Chapter VI The Paradox of State vs. Culture

Chapter VII The Paradox of the Thieves of Baghdad: Government vs. Opposition

Chapter VIII The Paradox of the Crooked March of the Mind

Chapter IX The Paradox of Columbus’ Voyage Reversed

Chapter X The Paradox of the Cultural Response to America in Post-War Iraq: Islamists, Pan-Arab Nationalists and Liberals

Chapter XI Finale The Triumph of the Past: The Confluence of the Petrodollar and Radical Islamism

Appendix An Essay on ‘Mesopotamianism’

Endnotes

Guide to Further Readings

Sources in Arabic

To Liqa’ al Ward,

with love and gratitude

Preface

Caught in a Dream is a descriptive and analytic study of the resilience of medieval values, behavioral norms, methods of governance and social structures throughout the majority of the Middle-Eastern countries currently. Its hypothesis is, therefore, not difficult to grasp as the physical appearances of daily life there, particularly in the urban centers, cover a complex paradigm (the term paradigm is used here with reference to its sense in the social sciences) of an unhappy ‘region of paradox’. Because appearances are frequently misleading particularly in the Middle East, we are bound to peel off the façade to reach deep into certain indicative and meaningful paradoxes as touchstones for examination, touchstones that can verify the survival of a medieval culture that catered to and sustained a reactionary frame of mind throughout the successive ups and downs of the various historical epochs right to the present day. The nine paradoxes selected in the chapters that follow, though abundant with significance and potential, serve to indicate also the branching outgrowths of minor sub-paradoxes which popular culture fosters and the media assists constantly in a trans-generation cross-cultural manner.

The following chapters challenge the widely held conviction that the optically impressive manifestations of urbanization and mechanization in Middle-Eastern countries are not reflections of actual social change and genuine modernity as they thickly envelop persistent medievalizing factors which are operative in the Middle-Eastern societies today exactly as they were in the previous two centuries.

Intrigued by this ‘split’ character of such uncertain Middle-Eastern societies, I tried to trace the causes of their failure to the confluence of the petrodollar and the corresponding persistence of the Islamic radical ideologies and groups, both making up the medievalizing mentality which rules supreme in the countries of the region in the forms of paternal governments and through the elderly custodians of the tribal tradition and orthodox formal religion.

Thus the prevalent medievalizing mentality in the region is not a passing fad; it is rather an emblem of permanence proven by its transnational and trans-cultural retarding force which is responsible for the making of the so-called Jihad zealots who frequently substantiate the medievalist reaction by gathering from almost every part of the world to participate in the grand march to demolish modern civilization which seems to them totally ‘out of joint’. They are like the barbarians of the north who were upon Rome in ancient times. This is the barbarism of our age. It concentrates on superheated locations to storm them and establish a foothold in each of them to expand or branch perniciously in every direction. Its primitive and fierce mobs represent the sharp edge of the axe, while the difficult-to-grasp ‘soft edge’ moves covertly through financial channels and economic transactions which are essential to twist the mechanism of ‘oil-for-money’ to become ‘money-for-terror’, ironically enthroning the industrial world as the ultimate sponsor of terror.

The reader is invited to keep the above painful mechanism in the back of his mind while shifting from one paradox to another in the tapestry organized in this volume. Although some of the paradoxes may look funny or absurd, the reader’s smiles are not to make him or her forget that the whole drama of regional medievalism falls in the genre of ‘dark comedy’ which is meant to give the reader a painful shock of recognition.

The reader will inevitably notice the recurrent references to pre-invasion Iraq (before 2003). He is requested to pardon this relatively high frequency of the Iraq references due to the author’s lengthy experience (of more than 54 years) in this unhappy country which is accursed by its very wealth. Nonetheless, we must note that almost all of the Iraqi cases examined in the following pages apply to, and fit squarely into the countries of the sham-fraternity of the so-called League of Arab States, a governmental organization of regimes that share with the Iraqi consecutive reactionary regimes common interests and identical qualities. No less significant within the discussion of the following pages is the notable exclusion of Israel. It is accounted for by the author’s meager information about this state due to the longish decades of isolation from its Arab and Muslim neighbors and to the subsequent wars and decades-long boycott against it. This drawback is, hopefully, to be pardoned by the reader. A completion of this significant topic, with Israel included, may be accomplished in the future.

I have made my best to be consistent in the use of the Library of Congress transliteration system for Arabic words because of its relative accuracy and ease to readers of English. No small Arabic-English dictionary is added to the book simply because all such words (in transliteration) are coupled with their English equivalents instantly and incorporated within the text.

I owe a wholehearted expression of gratitude to Lulu, my pretty and supportive wife, Liqa’ al Ward, for whom this volume is dedicated. She worked with me step by step in every stage of this and other works, Arabic and English, in addition to handling the tiresome typing of my three weekly columns that appear in Al-Watan daily of Oman for no less than ten years in a sequence. She never let me down, most probably because she is an intellectual beauty, to borrow P.B. Shelley’s words. Thanks are due as well to my promising sons, Hayder and Ali, who are constantly supportive.

Muhammed Al Dami

Peoria, Arizona

March 31, 2013

Chapter I

Introduction

On the Threshold of the Dream

O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space___ were it not that I have bad dreams.

*William Shakespeare

In this volume as in a number of my essays and weekly columns (in the Arabic press), I have tried to demonstrate the dispiriting situation of the Middle-Eastern nations (governments and peoples) which are caught in various visions and revisions of ancestral dreams that are obsessive in nature, indorsing a medieval past that can neither be recreated nor imitated due to various factors, some internal and some external. The most active and effective of those factors is the withdrawal of the creative initiative in front of the approaching force of the imitative tendency in a world where the passive and idle have no place under the sun. Simply put, my argument hypothesizes the existence of an obsessive medieval dream coupled with the imposing presence of its custodians who benefit from its continuation abundantly and indefinitely. Unless the Middle-Eastern nations break free from this hypnotic dream, they would remain spell-bound in a curse, like the one which befell Sisyphus in his futile endeavor to achieve that which could never be achieved.

This argument is not meant to condemn the ruling classes in the countries of the region as the taming of their peoples is actually itself part of the curse to which they were heirs. The retarding dream has become a way of life that can arguably be justified, defended and cherished as part of the ancient pillars of stability, no less significant than its presentation as a superior way of life compared to others. The real dilemma arises from the strong and shock-resistant social controls which are assisted by inescapable age-old political frameworks which have grown old and immovable due to being annexed to religion and tradition up to the present day. As such, the region ultimately poses an unsolvable riddle to almost the whole world particularly as it holds the flow of the life-blood of the modern industrial world (oil) in the one hand and holds some of the most destructive arms in the other, refusing to yield to change and to set itself free from the fossilized shell it was inserted into for centuries despite the continuous hammer strikes of the new and the brave.

The original idea of this work is inspired by the recollection and examination of significant touchstones and meaningful paradoxes with a specific value for the verification of the ‘dream hypothesis’ which is originally developed from the selfsame questions that puzzled and confused the so-called Arab-Islamic Nahdha pioneers more than a century and a half ago. Those are questions that are meant to explain why do the nations of this very region preserve a backward position compared to the progressive industrial nations; and how the medieval past, its invocation, and continual preparation serve as retarding factors which indivisibly connect the present and the future to a huge gearwheel which is rotating a whole mechanism of auxiliary gearwheels amounting to a complex mechanism that is particularly problematic when it is automated by an original motor of an archetypal nature, in-built within the collective psyche that recurs to the supposedly ‘glorious past’ which is metamorphosed, despite glittering, into a retarding agent instead of its intended and proper use as an incentive to change or a force for progress. The dream exceeds the limits of the collective subconsciousness to grow into an imprisonment, to be sure.

The most retarding outcome of this imprisonment lies in its blinding darkness which makes such nations shrink from the light and hide away from the fresh and refreshing glare which questions the very stagnation that blocks all ways of escape. This depressing metaphor is not to be interpreted as one of an untimely value judgment made prematurely right from the outset of the present work because imprisonment in the medieval grew acceptable, if not enjoyable by millions of people as a mode of social and political existence.

To distance one’s self from the accusation of sheer ‘unconstructive’ criticism is a significant step forward so as to proceed with the major argument of the book because it turns the composition highly descriptive rather than discursively aggressive with a sub-textual will to urge and incite inspiring change for a better future. The book is no attack on any one or any group of people; it is rather a mirror to reflect the self in some detail to enable the Middle-Eastern peoples and those who are interested in them, not only to see the truth, but also discern the causes of the wrinkles and scars that are fast surfacing on the face of the Middle East, most probably, from an internal malady.

As the major argument in the following pages is not designed for the purpose of refuting, accumulating or responding to previous views or opinions, it capitalizes quite meagerly on published material and critique. And as noted above this effort is mainly retrospective and introspective, Hence its retrieval quality which relies more often on the self and capitalizes on other writers or historians to trigger the ‘stream of consciousness’ and, at times, to verify and document what is necessarily significant and meaningful for the development of the central argument of the work.

Because the Middle-Eastern region is trapped in a regressive historical vision that keeps on building fences and erecting barriers to prevent the new and the brave, we are to note particular controlling factors which benefit from the very dream-like imprisonment above-mentioned. Those are pernicious retarding factors that pull the nations of the region back to an uncertain medieval past, still subject to controversy and historical verification. In this case, the past is no basis of certainty, to be sure.

Because the prison is a vision which penetrates deeply into the psyche of the individual right from the first time he goes to school, it develops collectively when pupils chant the glories of a fading past with the headmaster’s stick waving up and down conducting the melody the young throats of children extrude loudly into the open skies in the hope that they grow up and substantiate the dynastic vision into reality. No less significant are the household tales and fables that parents consider essential in the moral and right upbringing of their promising children. Together with the deeply digging ‘Religion’ and ‘History’ lessons, the dynastic message spawns the early thin bubbles that encircle the ‘little ones’ during the early stirrings of the consciousness and the conscience, accordingly. More contributive to the making of the illusionary vision are the state-run media programs and channels which shape and sharpen the make-belief dimensions of the medieval dreamland, producing ‘the dreamers of dreams’ who populate almost all the cities, towns and villages of a fluid and uncertain social existence with overlapping boundaries.

The hypothesized medievalism of the Middle East is, like the shifting sands of Arabia, basically both a complex and mobile paradigm of paradoxes that surprise the outside beholder, reflecting on the wide gulf which extends between ‘the spirit of the age’ prevalent in the countries of the Middle East and its opposite prevalent elsewhere throughout the various parts of the world. The resultant cultural lag becomes painfully retarding in times of encounters and confrontations with other cultures and civilizations that are progressive and bold.

The school children’s ancestral dream, like all dreams and nightmares, has no specific pattern of development as it sometimes branches, extends or swirls endlessly to reformulate and reemerge into an obsessive force that continues building castles in the air till the make-belief world is fully constructed to become a maze that constitutes the set of paradoxes, major and auxiliary, which require investigation one by one, priority given to the major ones, of course.

Because of its complexity and constant mutability, the paradigm cannot be tackled as a whole, though it can be projected in its entirety and complexity. A study of it is, therefore, bound to search touchstones that can be investigated and analyzed separately in some depth and detail to enable the reader develop an idea of the ‘paradox paradigm’ and make an impression of its obsessive impact on life and social existence in the region, its present and future. In accordance with the available materials and the individual author’s limitations, touchstones become the only bases of certainty to develop a dialectic for a comprehensible argument which is worth following.

Among the various paradoxes that need to be discussed is that of the changing destinies of nations which are preoccupied by the global rivalry of superpowers for domination, the rivalry that failed the region by giving it no sense of character and cultural identity when it sufficed to loosely label it ‘the Middle East’, sorting it from the various ‘Easts’ so to speak, which are made to share the inferiority complex engendered in the time of European empire-building.

As the golden age of European colonialism (specially British and French) was by no means the outcome of peaceful interaction or acculturation, its toxic influence on the region took place in the aftermath of World War I when the nations of the region had to