The Missing Element in Islamic Society

Bret Stephens argues that the war of the Islamists against the West has been overtaken, to some degree, by the war of Muslim against Muslim. In particular, the turn of the Sunni tribes in Anbar province, Iraq, was due to the campaign of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia against tribal authorities and traditions. Stephens identifies three "significant blocs" in Muslim societies: "A 'pre-modern' element, consisting mainly of tribesmen, peasants, and the like; a 'modern' element, typically urban, educated, and, by the standards of their societies, middle-class; and an 'anti-modern' element, consisting mostly of Islamists but also of members of the Baath party and other fascistic groups."

This tripartite analysis is quite interesting, and, with one exception, useful in an analysis of the rifts within Islam today. The exception is that, in my opinion, Stephens has misplaced the Baathists and "other fascistic groups" in the anti-modern category. Fascism, like communism, is a relatively modern ideological creation, and one which depends upon a modern industrial society to flourish. The Baathists are modern types - murderous and authoritarian moderns, certainly, but moderns nevertheless.

I would ask the reader to compare this article to the analysis of British and American religious (and political) positions by Walter Russell Mead, in his fine book God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World. Mead contends that the forces of scriptura sola (embodied by the Protestant and evangelical movements), tradition (both folkways and the Christian traditions embodied in the Catholic Church), and reason (Enlightenment modernism) balance one another, so that society doesn't fall of a precipice of monism. That short description does not do justice to Mead's book, which is well worth reading, but it does set up a nice comparison with Bret Stephens's article.

The Muslim world can indeed be divided into three groups, and those three correspond to Mead's three forces:

• The "pre-moderns" are representative of tradition
• The "anti-moderns" are equivalent to the scripturalists (with the Quran replacing the Bible as the relevant scripture)
• The "moderns" are more involved with what we understand as reason.

The problem in the Muslim world is that only two of the three sides have any substantial political force. The moderns, far from being the strong force so often decried from American pulpits, are weak, few in number, and too much identified with foreign influences. And that sets up a nice dilemma: It would be good for America and the West to have the forces of modernity and reason strengthened throughout Islam, but any visible attempt to strengthen them will rather weaken them, by validating the accusations that they are foreign ideas which must be rejected.