Clash of Civilisations or Competing Supremacy?

The clash of Islamist State and Europe resembles the religious holy wars for a contending position of supremacy.

Crusaders thirsting near Jerusalem, Palazzo Reale (Photo: Web Gallery of Art)

When Russia began its military intervention in Syria, the Russian Orthodox Patriarch blessed the campaign, calling it a holy war.

When ISIS claimed the Paris attacks, its statement read “Let France and all nations following its path know that they will continue to be at the top of the target list for the Islamic State, as long as they partake in the crusader campaign.”

Increasingly, the conflict is being framed in terms of a holy war. Of course, ISIS defines itself on religious lines. So, is this a back to the crusades war? Or is a Huntington kind of clash of civilisations taking place?

In the post-colonial world, religious and cultural identity is being redefined and playing an increasingly important role. This should actually be expected as a great part of humanity, decolonised in the middle of the last century, is beginning to assert its identity more openly.

Independence, Elites and Cultural Resurgence

In a recent book, The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counter-revolutions, political theorist Michael Watzel traces the religious awakening (revivalism) in secular Algeria, India, and Israel. He suggests that the reason lies in the countries’ founding fathers’ derision of ancient traditions. The alienation between the liberating elite and the liberated masses played an important role in the return of tradition, after its suppression.

A supporter of the Algerian Islamic Party Movement for Peace and Society (MSP) holds a placard during a rally at Al-Harcha gymnasium in Algiers in 2006. (Photo: Reuters)

Tomer Persico, a fellow at Jerusalem’s Shalom Hartman Institute, offers an additional reason – that the religious revivalism in all these three countries is also as much about a response to a foreign political and social superstructure – in all these three countries, Perisco explains, “the religion that returned to centre stage is not Christianity.”

In other words, all the three faiths had at some point in recent times, been colonised or subjugated by Christians. But only Islam has challenged Christendom, with which it has clashed for over a thousand years.

So, while the example of Algeria is relevant, to that must be added the historical memory of Muslim conquest of Christian lands, including those which lay at the heart of Christendom, and vice versa.

Historical Clash Between Islam and Christianity

Christian Europe, not used to defeat, watched with horror as Muslims rapidly spread across West Asia, North Africa, and into Southern Europe, taking over lands ruled by them.

Prophet Mohamed even invited Christian kings to convert to the new religion; Christians often ridiculed him as a false prophet, since wars were declared in the name of faith, the response was also in similar terms. Warring Christian sects and kingdoms closed ranks under the banner of the cross and wars were framed in religious terms.
The first crusade or Christian holy war was fought over the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem, which became important to Islam because of its centrality to Judaism and Christianity – faiths, traditions which Muslims believe Islam has roots in as well as completes.

Enthusiasts wearing costumes ride horses during a re-enactment of a decisive Crusaders battle in Israel. Now, history is repeating itself in a much more real manner. (Photo: Reuters)

How Religion Bridged Identity Gaps in Muslims

Fast forward to the 20th century, and finally, Muslim power begins to wane. Exactly a hundred years ago Christian powers – UK and France – connived with the backward Wahabis, to carve up the last caliphate into their spheres of influence under the Sykes-Picot agreement.

In South Asia, Muslim power was ceded - first to the British, and thereby to the Hindus. Muslims remained divided across the three nation states.
Muslim Central Asia, which had fallen to the orthodox Russian Empire, became part of the godless Soviet Union.

Academic Joshua Landis explains that people in the Middle East owe their allegiance to their tribes and sects. Religion alone allows them to overcome their narrow clan or tribal differences.

One of the objectives of Prophet Mohammed had been to unite all the hitherto warring tribes of Arabia. He had been both the spiritual and political head of the Muslims, who then proved themselves a formidable power. That is why, perhaps, Muslim societies are characterised by a tension between their immediate identities – national, ethnical, cultural – and their larger communal identity as a Muslim belonging to the ummah.

That is why time and again, whenever resources have been required, (pragmatically) religion has been turned to. Iran defined its revolution as an Islamic one, appealing to all Shias. Similarly, the Saudis began to stress the Sunni identity rather than the Arab one.

ISIS: A Product of Victimhood and a Glorious Past

ISIS Flag. (Courtesy: The News Minute)

The present nation state system in West Asia is a European one; Islamists see it as another method of keeping Muslims divided and subjugated. The creation of Israel, though in the ancient homeland of the Jews, is seen as a western ploy to perpetuate this injustice. Resource rich Gulf states, well protected by the same Western powers, help maintain the status quo. They allow regimes to be toppled, Muslim societies to be devastated, resources to be plundered, while they are preoccupied with their own survival. Lack of democracy does not allow legal avenues for redressal of legitimate grievances, and a narrative of victim-hood focuses attention to the beyond.

This narrative of victim-hood, together with memories of a glorious past becomes a potent tool for recruitment of activists for those like the ISIS. No matter how few in number, or how badly equipped, the promise of Badr spurs the jihadists. Armed jihad, which includes an optimum use of suicide bombing, is not seen just as a duty, but as an act of supreme love for God. This death is not shunned, but embraced. Moreover there is an afterlife.

Europe on the other hand, with its emphasis on relegating religion to the private, seems to have moved away from God, indulging in the kind of hedonism that has prompted some analysts to comment that nothing would really change after the Paris attacks. People will not give up their individual rights easily for the sake of collective security, but even western secularisation sprang from Protestanism and is shaped by its “religious models”, according to Persico.

Therein hangs a tale - a narrative of competing supremacism.

War is never inevitable, change is the only constant, and in every conflict there is always something retrievable.