The Multiple Identities of the Middle East

163 Pages·1999·4.51 MB·English

by  Bernard Lewis

ALSO BY BERNARD LEWIS
The Arabs in History
The Emergence of Modern Turkey
The MIISlim Discovery of Europe
Semites and Anti-Semites
The Political Language of Islam
Race and Slavery in the Middle East:
An Historical Enquiry
The Shaping of the Modern Middle East
Cultures in Conflia: Christians. Muslims
andJews in the Age of Discovery
The Middle East: Two Thousand Years of History
from the Rise of Christianity to the Present Day
The
MULTIPLE
IDENTITIES
of the
MIDDLE
EAST
BERNARD LEWIS
Schocken Books
NEW YORK
Copyright © 1998 by Bernard Lewis
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by Schocken Books Inc., New York,
and siml/ltaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Distributed by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Originally published in Great Britain by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, in 1998.
SCHOCKEN and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lewis, Bernard.
The multiple identities of the Middle East / Bemard Lewis.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8052-4172-8
1. Middle East-Civilization. 2. Ethnicity-Middle East.
3. Group identity-Middle East. 4. Politics and culture-Middle
East. I. Title.
DS44·L49 1999
305.8 '00956- dc2 1 99-20735
ClP
Random House Web Address: wwu'.randomhouse.com
Book design by Fritz Metsch
Printed in the United States of America
First American Edition
2 4 6 8 9 753 I
CONTENTS
List of Maps IX
Preface Xl
INTRODUCTION 3
I DEFINITIONS 9
2 RELIGION 25
3 RACE AND LANGUAGE 40
4 COUNTRY 57
5 NATION 80
6 THE STATE 91
7 SYMBOLS 105
8 ALIENS AND INFIDELS 111
9 ASPIRATIONS 131
References 143
Further Reading 145
Maps 147
Index ISS
LIST OF MAPS
PRESENT-DAY POLITICAL BOUNDARIES
2 LANGUAGES OF THE MIDDLE EAST
3 MAJORITY RELIGIONS OF THE MIDDLE EAST
PREFACE
THE NUCLEUS OF THIS BOOK WAS THREE PAPERS, SUBMITTED
to conferences held in Wolfenbiittel (1989), Rome (1993), and
Castelgandolfo (1995). These papers were published in the con
ference proceedings. In expanding and recasting them for this
book, I have also drawn on some other lectures, articles, and con
ference papers. My thanks are due to the conveners and editors
who persuaded me to take up this subject, and to the partici
pants, whose comments and questions helped me to refine and
improve my perceptions of these matters.
Once again, I would like to express my thanks to my assistant,
Annamarie Cerminaro, who with her usual combination of skill
and patience nursed my manuscript from first draft to final pub
lished text. I should also like to thank Robin Pettinato, who
helped her greatly in this process.
Finally, a word of thanks to twO friends who were kind enough
to read my draft-Buntzie Churchill and Michael Curtis. I offer
them my thanks for those suggestions and improvements that I
accepted; my apologies for those that I resisted. From this it will
be clear that any faults that remain are entirely my own.
INTRODUCTION
THE TITLE OF THIS BOOK, AS THE READER WILL RECOGNIZE,
is borrowed from the language of psychology or, to be more pre
cise, of psychiatry. In using this title I do not mean to suggest
that the Middle East is suffering from morbid psychological
problems. Still less is it my intention to offer any kind of therapy.
What 1 want to convey by this title is something of the
complexity and variety of the different identities which can be
held at one and the same time by groups, even more than by
individuals-the constant change and evolution of identity in the
Middle East, of the ways in which the peoples of the region per
ceive themselves, the groups to which they belong, and the differ
ence between self and other.
Even in the Western world there are multiple identities. Since
the foundation of the United Kingdom, everyone of its people
has had at least three identities: by nationality, as a British sub
ject, later as a U.K. citizen; by what we nowadays call ethnicity,
as a member of one or more of the four indigenous components
of that nationality, the English, Scots, Welsh, and Irish; and
by religion. In modern times, the range of both ethnicity and
religion, within the common British nationality, has been greatly
widened, and the subgroups are increasingly mixed. They are
even more mixed in the United States, where, similarly, every
citizen, in addition to his U.S. citizenship, has other identities,
defined by race, by ethnic origin or, often, origins, and by his per
sonal or ancestral religion.
4 The Multiple Identities of the Middle East
Like America, Russia too embraces many ethnic groups, ac
quired not by immigration but by conquest and annexation.
France and Spain both have important regional minorities; some
of them, like the Bretons and the Basques, preserve languages
that are totally different from the official national language. But
these are old-established and indigenous, and show no significant
cultural or religious differences from the dominant majorities.
Elsewhere in Europe ethnic minorities have hitherto been small,
few, and without legal or political status or even claims.
This situation has now changed dramatically, as the immigra
tion of millions of newcomers has created new minorities. These
are numerous, widely dispersed, and differ ethnically, linguisti
cally, culturally, religiously, and often even racially from the
majority indigenous population. Naturally, they bring with them
their own concepts and perceptions of identity, which may differ
significantly from those of Europe and the West. Both terms,
"Europe" and "West," are of course European and Western, and
until the nineteenth centuty had little or no meaning in other
parts of the world, notably in the Middle East. The same is true of
the names "Asia" and "Africa."
Europe is a European idea, conceived in Greece, nurtured in
Rome, and now, after a long and troubled childhood and adoles
cence in Christendom, approaching maturity in a secular, supra
national community. Asia and Africa are also European ideas,
European ways of describing the Other. All human groups have
terms, often derogatory, to designate those who are outside the
group. Some of these terms have acquired an almost universal sig
nificance. Barbarians were originally non-Greeks, gentiles are
non-Jews; Asians and Africans are non-Europeans, and their con
tinents mark the boundaries of Europe, as perceived by Euro
peans, in the east and the south.
During the long struggle between Christendom and Islam,
these boundaries changed many times. Barbarians did not, of
course, regard themselves as barbarians, nor did gentiles regard
INTRODUCTION • 5
themselves as gentiles until both were taught, by the processes of
Hellenization and Christianization, to see themselves in this alien
light. The Hellenization of the barbarians took place in antiquity;
the Christianization of the gentiles in the Middle Ages. The
awareness among Asians and Africans of this European-defined
identity dates, in the main, from modern times, when they
were taught this classification by European rulers, teachers, and
preachers. By the present day, the Greek invention of the three
continents of the Old W oeld has been universally accepted. The
enterprise and ingenuity of mostly European explorers and geog
raphers have added several more.
"Middle East" is self-evidently a Western term, and dates from
the beginning of this century. It is a striking testimony to the
former power and continuing influence of the West that this
parochial term, meaningful only in a Western perspective, has
come to be used all over the world. It is even used by the peoples
of the region it denotes to describe their own homelands. This
is the more remarkable in an age of national, communal, and re
gional self-assertion, mostly in anti-Western form.
Within every society there are multiple identities, each with
variations and with sometimes conflicting subdivisions. These
identities may be social and economic-by status, class, occupa
tion, and profession. Generation and gender provide two major
demarcations of identity; so toO do such contrasts as civil and
military, lay and ecclesiastical, and the like. In the Bible (Gene
sis 4), the story of the first clash and the first murder is told
against a background of socioeconomic rivalry. "Abel was a keeper
of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground." Both brought offer
ings to God, the one "of the fruit of the ground," the other "of the
firstlings of his flock." God preferred the second, and Cain, in
anger and envy, "rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him."
The rivalry between nomadic herdsmen and peasant cultivators is
a recurring theme throughout Middle Eastern history, and in
many parts of the region the clash of interests between the twO