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West's narrow view of Yemen conflict

Global Arab Network - - George Haddad

Thursday, 03 September 2009 23:01

The military confrontation between Yemeni government and Al Houthi rebels has made headlines in the international media over the past three weeks. It also attracted the attention of Middle East 'experts' in Western academia. The conflict has been presented as a sectarian, tribal war. It served as a further demonstration of the absence of statehood in the Arab world and the lacking of a modern civil society.

For years, Western academia has invoked religion and culture to explain the lack of reform and the slow pace of change in the Arab world. At times, comparisons were made to underline the supremacy of these factors in the life of Arabs and Muslims, rendering the impact of foreign influences almost nonexistent.

For instance, when Western academics tried to compare the application of 'modernisation theories' to the Middle East and Latin America and the possibility of democracy to become the norm in these two regions, Leonard Binder, a prominent American scholar, noticed that whereas Western experts who conducted such studies have concentrated on the socio-economic factors in the case of Latin America, in the Middle East, by contrast, the focus was on the "otherness" of the region and the resistant nature of its cultural heritage. However, by way of reversing the effects of this view, Binder noticed that whereas Latin Americans were solely concerned with economic exploitation when opposing Western penetration, the apprehension of Middle Easterners stemmed mainly from cultural penetration.

Other scholars such as Samuel Huntington, Amos Perlmutter and Elie Kedourie found the answer in the nature of Islam as to why democracy and civil society have not flourished in the Arab world. Huntington believed that Islam was intrinsically un-democratic. The only Arab country to have experienced a sustainable form of democracy was Christian Lebanon. "Once Muslims became a majority", Huntington argued, "Lebanese democracy collapsed".

Perlmutter held similar view and argued that particularly in the Middle East "democratic or even pluralistic regimes are unachievable".

Elie Kedourie in his argument relied heavily on the writings of medieval Muslim scholars, such as Al Ghazali, to explain why the Arab and Muslim world was lagging far behind the rest of the world in terms of good governance.

Al Ghazali argued that stability under a tyrannical ruler outweighs the chaos created by the tyranny of the people against each other. A few have, in fact, noticed that Kedourie had ignored the counter argument presented by another medieval Muslim scholar: Bin Taymiyya, who believed that revolt against a tyrannical ruler is an obligation for all Muslims. Ironically, Kedourie's argument was cited by Middle Eastern regimes, who have always tried to highlight the thought of Al Ghazali, through the media, while ignoring Bin Taymiyya's.

In recent years, however, and as a response to US difficulties in stabilising Iraq and establishing a flourishing democracy in Lebanon, a new tool of analysis has been employed. The focus has shifted from Islam as a religion and culture to tribalism as a key component of Arab society and a major hindrance to political and social developments in the Arab world.

"Conflicts within the Middle East cannot be separated from its peoples' culture. Seventh-century Arab tribal culture influenced Islam and its adherents' attitudes towards non-Muslims. Today, the embodiment of Arab culture and tribalism within Islam impacts everything from family relations, to governance, to conflict. While many diplomats and analysts view the Arab-Israeli dispute and conflicts between Muslim and non-Muslim communities through the prism of political grievance, the roots of such conflicts lie as much in culture and Arab tribalism", Philip Salzman wrote in a recent issue of Middle East Quarterly.

Clearly, Islam is no longer a useful tool to explain why reform and modernisation in parts of the region have failed. The success of democracy in some Muslim countries such as Turkey and Indonesia has shown how flawed this argument was. One should not be surprised, as a consequence, that tribalism has replaced Islam as the focus of Western experts on the Middle East. It is, therefore, very likely that studies on 'tribalism' will draw significant attention in academic circles in the coming months and years. The 'civil conflict' in Yemen will serve as a prime example for this trend.

Global Arab Network

Dr Marwan Al Kabalan is a lecturer in media and international relations at the faculty of Political Science and Media, Damascus University, Syria. This article is special to Gulf News

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