But it comes down even to the very language Arabs speak. You are used to speaking in different levels of vocabulary, from the most private to the most public occasion. How about having two completely separate languages, one public which is pan-Arabic and has remained largely where it has been in the 1200s, and then many thousands of hyper-local dialects which are so different from one another, fellow Arabic speakers must negotiate throughout each conversation the very vocabulary they would use for “napkin” and “fork.” The phrase “How do you say…” is used frequently in conversation not just between Arabs living a great distance from each other, but by Arabs from neighboring cities in the same country.
Sadly, the constraints of Islamic culture on the Arabic world are so enormous, they introduce a kind of self-involvement reminiscent of Amazon forest tribes. Arabs hardly translate works from foreign languages, they have truly bizarre notions about history and politics, they buy conspiracy theories so easily because their culture bars them from employing scientific methods in exploring their world. In short – today’s Muslim Arabs are a lot like any 15th century Frenchman out in the countryside who wasn’t even aware of the fact that he lives in France, and has a French language.
And so, Islam and the Muslim countries are politically still mired in the period of hopeless wars that marked the emergence of the nation states of Europe. It’s no wonder that the only Muslim countries with even a semblance of a democratic tradition and state institutions are, by and large, non-Arab: Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia. These countries better fit the European model of nation-states (which Europe is now in the process of abandoning), and so they suffered less from the colonialist method of drawing borderlines across tribal territory, lumping together strangers and foes and dividing with autistic nonchalance whole tribes and families.
(It’s funny to note in this context that the only Arab group that fits the European national model are the Palestinians, even though historically they did not exist as a nation before the first world war. This is because they modeled their political development on the Zionist movement, which they’ve been copying with great success since about 1920.)
To put it bluntly: most Muslim countries are still in their baby stage, and will remain there as long as they continue to try and solve their problems within the restrictive borders imposed on them by, largely but not exclusively, the British and the French.
Expecting President Bashar al-Assad, for instance, to be a benign ruler of all his subjects is a joke, always has been a joke. Syria, as it was cobbled together by the French who “liberated” it from the Ottoman Empire in 1917, is comprised of Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Christians, Druze and Kurds, any one of whom would love to see all the others dead. It’s true that the Alawite Assad is butchering his Sunni enemies today. But as soon as they become the rulers, believe me, they’ll go about slaughtering Alawites and Shiites with the same zeal.
How do you solve this French-imposed problem? By creating five or six states, each containing the largest possible homogeneous population. Vice President Joe Biden, who understands the Middle East better than most in Washington, ran for the Democratic party nomination in 2008 on the idea of solving the Iraqi problem by dividing Iraq into three independent states: Sunni, Shiite and Kurd. In fact, the Kurds, both in Iraq and in Syria, have already done this for themselves and appear very happy and very prosperous.
The French themselves recognized the need to separate these volatile minorities from one another when they decided to create the state of Lebanon, tearing it off the Syrian map where it had belonged, together with Palestine, since before the Roman occupation.
In Europe, Islam is being used as a political tool, to advance the cause of violent, intolerant people. I suggest that Europe follow the example of Israel, inviting its Muslim minority to partake in the benefits of the culture and the economy, while at the same time not tolerating expressions and acts of thuggery and intimidation. Perhaps because it has been at it longer, Israel has been applying its principles of civilization and morality to its tenuous relationship with its Arab citizens with admirable success. Israeli Arabs enjoy the benefits of democracy, as well as the safety net services of a Western system. It’s not a perfect story, there’s a lot of room for improvement, but I’d venture to say that if France, Germany and Great Britain employed the Israeli approach of respecting their Muslim citizens while at the same time not tolerating their anti-social behavior, the greatest benefactors would be the rank and file Muslims in those countries – followed closely by society at large.