Zeitgeist to Zarqawi

This is my last day for completing all the letters of the alphabet. Before I write today's entry, Zeitgeist to Zarqawi, let me wish all the mothers of the world blessings and love on this mother's day! Many of them are the unknown heroines of the world.

Zeitgeist is a German word adopted by the English language, which roughly means "the spirit of the times." Or, "the spirit of the age and society." When we talk about zeitgeist, we refer to the political, economical, cultural, social, intellectual, and moral (and ethical) climate of the age. It was German Romantics such as Herder that first identified a zeitgeist, but also Hegel in his philosophy of history. Hegel saw human history evolving towards a more advanced universal spirit. For Hegel, there was a World Spirit, but each nation also had its spirit that was part of the larger World Spirit. Nations play different roles in creating a World Spirit. Nations, insisted Hegel, rise and fall in terms of their impact on the World Spirit. Zeitgeist for Romantics like Herder often treated the past as an essence, not as a generalized description of an epoch. So sometimes the German meaning of zeitgeist is different from its English connotation. But we might think of the zeitgeist as the collective consciousness of our age.

Today I will try to identify the zeitgeist of the world. Given the diversity of nations, cultures, and political outlooks, is this possible? I will contrast this zeitgeist with my other Z word, Zarqawi. Zarqawi's full name is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (1966-2006) (top right), the Jordanian-born Islamist and former leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. He was a veteran of the Afghanistan War in 1979, which would eventually drive the atheistic, communist superpower from a Muslim country. He also led an Islamist group, Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Group of Monotheism and Jihad), from the 1990s until his death by a US air strike in 2006. In 2004, the group made a pledge to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and became known as al-Qaeda in Iraq. Zarqawi's group included Jordanians, Iraqis, and other radical Islamists.

Zarqawi's foes were Westerners, the United Nations, the United States, foreign forces in Muslim lands, Iraqi security forces (seen as US agents), the monarchical regime in Jordan, and Kurdish and Shi'ite militias in Iraq. Zarqawi's group follows a fundamentalist brand of Sunni Islam, which played a key role in perpetuating the de facto civil war in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003. It was an extremely ruthless organization known for beheadings of foreigners (American, South Korean, Turkish, Bulgarian, etc.), the killings of 86 Shi'ites at the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf in 2003, bombings in Baghdad and Karbala during the Shi'ite Ashura holiday in 2004 that killed 178, as well as suicide bombings of UN personnel, Iraqi government officials, Italian and US troops, and oil pumping stations. Its operations have been spectacular, shocking, and cruel.

So Zarqawi is part of the zeitgeist of our age. He is an expression of the rising tide of Islamism, particularly militant Islamism, in the Arab and Muslim worlds. We think that al-Qaeda and Zarqawi are merely products of 9-11. Yet, historians of the Muslim world from Bernard Lewis to Edward Said (from two very different schools) pointed to the rising Islamic tide back in the 1970s.

This rising Islamist militancy, which has as its goal the creation of a pan-Islamic state following the shari'a (Islamic law) throughout the Muslim world, has both internal and external causes and key triggering events. These include the following:

1) Western or foreign presence on Muslim lands is viewed as occupation. As a result, Afghanistan and Iraq are hot Islamist hotbeds. For Islamists, violence is viewed as permissible in wars of self-defense against foreign occupiers.

2) The creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. Iran became a model for Islamists all over the world because an authoritarian, US-backed regime was overthrown and the dream of national sovereignty for Muslims was restored. Note it does not matter that the Iranians are Shi'ites and Zarqawi and bin Laden are Sunnis. They unite in their desire to cleanse all Muslim lands of foreign forces, end cosy relationships with great powers, get rid of secular laws and replace them with Islamic law, and restore the Muslim world to its grandeur in the history of world politics (i.e., the period of the Islamic conquests from the 7-9th centuries, or the 500-year reign of the Ottoman Empire that officially ended after World War One with the creation of a Turkish secular republic).

3) The victory of expelling the Soviets from Afghanistan after the 1979 invasion. Bin Laden, Zarqawi, and other Islamist militants got their start here and see it as their duty to come to the defense of Muslims wherever they are threatened, whether they are in Bosnia, Palestine (Israel), Kashmir, Afghanistan, or Iraq. The victory in Afghanistan by Islamist fighers became a model for taking on the Americans, which bin Laden infamously called a "paper tiger." It inspired fighters with low technological sophistication, stealth, and religious fanaticism to challenge the United States in Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and even the US homeland. Bin Laden's logic, as well as Zarqawi's, is that the US is a superpower in name only. Once it takes losses, the public will not stomach it and ask for the return of its soldiers home. Paper tigers are made out of paper, not steel and determination. When it gets heavy, they will flee as the United States did in Somalia in 1993. This emboldens Islamists to fight to gain more victories.

4) The failure of imported, Western ideologies in the Arab and Muslim worlds: Pan-Arabism, liberalism, socialism, and communism. Islamists are viewed as more indigenous, pure, and less tainted by the temptations of power. Or, Islamists are seen as an alternative to US-backed monarchies or military regimes that block popular democracy. The rigid authoritarianism in the Arab world will continue to produce violent Islamists because it is very difficult in the region to express oneself openly.

Yet, Islamists are becoming more clever and nuanced. They won elections in Algeria in 1992, which were late annulled and in Gaza under Hamas in the new millennium. Over 100,000 Algerians died in the ensuing civil war between the military and Islamists. A de facto civil war took place between the secular Fatah and Islamist Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank. Winner takes all in the Arab world. There is no compromise with opponents, but either expulsion or annihilation of political opponents.

5) The creation of Israel in 1948. Israel is viewed as an "alien body" in the region by Islamists. It is a daily reminder of the constant losses of the Muslim world vis-a-vis the West. Israel for Islamists is seen as an extension of the West, a colonial Jewish outpost. It is also a shock for Islamists to see Israel thrive in the international community. At the same time, Arab and Islamic unity are weakened by feuding national interests. Moreover, there is a feeling of defeat among the Arabs. There is little hope of restoring the ancient glories of Muslim empires of the past. Yet, this is precisely the dream of Islamists. Iran's stated goal of annihilating Israel strikes chords in the Muslim world because Israel is seen as usurping Palestinian Muslim land and undermining preponderant control over the "abode of Islam".

6)The Islamists offer a comprehensive, total, community-based response to the ills of globalized modernity: the loss of community solidarity, the decline of Muslim political sovereignty, alienation of individuals increasingly living in urban landscapes, the loss of faith, loose morals and permissive sexuality, the onslaught of mercantilist Western and US values, the lack of social and economic development, and lack of concern for the poor and social justice. Islamists might valorize the first Islamic polity created by Muhammad in Mecca in the 7th century, but they also want what A.J. Gregor has termed a "developmental dictatorship" that will rescue Muslims from social and economic backwardness. In this respect, the Islamic Republic of Iran's quest for a nuclear bomb should be viewed in the context of a developmental dictatorship that wants to restore national sovereignty and grandeur to Islamic countries through aggressive military posturing. Islamists are not against technology, development, or modernization per se, but they must be in defense of Muslim values and nations.

Zarqawi and his ilk are certainly enemies of liberal or socialist politics of a secular type. They are fans of violence, like the extreme communists, fascists, and Nazis of the inter-war era that all sought to overturn liberal parliamentary democracies. There is no gentleness or compromise with political opponents. They are genocidal vis-a-vis Jews, Christians, Shi'ites, and Westerners. In terms of their tactics, they are indeed madmen without morality, even for their own people. And they are mostly men, seeking to restore the order of a puritanical, male-dominated Sunni Islam. But are they mad? Or, merely the guardians of the zeitgeist of our age? And what is the zeitgeist of the age? Surely it is Zarqawi and Barack Hussein Obama, the newly elected black US president.

Each epoch has its defining zeitgeist. In the 1960s, the hippie generation, flower power, Che Guevara, and peace, worker, student, and anti-war demonstrations marked the era. The feminists made their mark in the US in the 1970s. In the 1980s, Wall Street greed, Reaganism's attack on social services, and a hyper neo-liberal capitalism marked the age.

Perhaps the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago and the attendant end of official communist states from the Soviet Union to East Germany marks my generation. It was a wonderful moment to see that wall of division crumble, people spontaneously crying and embracing, and the symbol of communist totalitarianism crumble like a house of cards. See one such photo above in the middle, from November 11, 1989, of Germans helping each other scale the Berlin Wall. I was touched by the opening lyrics of "Winds of Change" by German heavy metal band Scorpions, the 1990 anthem that defined freedom from communist tyranny:

I follow the Moskva
Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change.

The Scorpions had been in Moscow in 1989 and could already feel the beginning of the end for Soviet communism. We won't miss the secret police, one party dogma, the gulags that killed bodies and hopes in the millions. We won't miss Soviet tanks rolling into Budapest, Prague, and Warsaw to quell democratic reform. We won't miss the ruthless crushing of more democratic variants of bottom-up socialism. Germans paid a heavy price for supporting Nazism with the division of their country and people for almost 50 years, and in 1989 Germans were united and forgiven by the international community. We should still, however, maintain a deep memory in respect of the inglorious German past.

Yet, the fall of the Berlin Wall means very little to the students I teach today. It is for them a "point of detail in history," to paraphrase Jean-Marie Le Pe'n's awful remark about the Holocaust. They live in the age of the corporate university, Facebook and Twitter, gadgets and stars. They live in the age of show-me-the-dough and get me the job. History, even recent history, is an afterthought and luxury.

But my generation is perhaps no better. I was born in 1967, but I cannot say that my generation has defined itself. We are a generation without a dominant zeitgeist. We let history largely determine our fates, rather than determining history ourselves. And the more we do this, the more the Zarqawis of the world will define our age, both in the Muslim world and in the West. Yet, we must be proud of Obama and happy about the fall of the Berlin Wall.

What will the zeitgeist of tomorrow be? We in the West might be a little smarter and less malevolent. Do we really need to be in Muslim lands? By being in Muslim lands do we not create the seeds and soil for future Zarqawis? How do we expect to "pacify" Afghanistan when the British, Soviets, and Americans have all failed? The "surge" in Iraq might have worked, but what does not work is our imposition of a system of government on a supposedly sovereign state. How can we mediate between so many competing ethnic, cultural, religious, and tribal identities in Afghanistan and Iraq?

It is true that trying to compromise will not work with the Zarqawis of the world. The Pakistanis are learning this with the Taliban today. They are hitting the Taliban hard, as I write these words. A few months ago a deal was brokered between the Taliban and Pakistani regime in Swat. Swat could amazingly have its Islamic law. The Taliban Islamists understood that if you give us Swat, we will continue to march to the capital city in Islamabad. They began to occupy towns outside Swat. The Pakistani army had to act, particularly as they were also under US pressure in the "war on terror" with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Sadly Zarqawi is part of the zeitgeist of the age. The trick is to convince Muslims that where you have Islamists, you have more repression, suffering, authoritarianism, violence, and complete intolerance. The trick is to democratize the Muslim world. Where are the takers?

Obama (top left) is a great hope of our age. His election in 2008 might be the third defining moment of my generation after 9-11 (and Islamism) and the fall of the Berlin Wall. His politics is of a different style, which is certainly more inclusive. He provides great hope to minority groups throughout the world. He reinvigorates the liberal dream of greater participation for all cultural groups based on the principles of universal equality of opportunity and merit.

But my generation needs to dream more. What are we without our dreams? We need to dream of social justice for the huddled and poor masses of the world still yearning to be free. Billions that will not eat properly, never mind read this post. We need to dream of making peace in the Middle East, with two sovereign states (Palestinian and Israeli). We need to dream of democracy throughout the Arab world. We need to dream of more direct democracy in the West and other lands. We need to dream of people being allowed to speak out openly, from China to Myanmar, to their corrupt, despotic leaders. We need to find better ways of solving simmering national, ethnic, cultural, and religious disputes. We need to heal the earth, the depleted environment that is crying for help, but has very few real champions in key positions of power. We need to go beyond the shallow cults of money and technology towards an inclusive spirituality and politics, which puts people and the environment rather than ideology at the centre of our quest for a better world.

My generation, my generation cannot just fade away. It must enter history and dream. Dream more and bigger and better. Our zeitgeist can be truly universal and the greatest in human history. Are we up for the challenge?

Tamir Bar-On