No Separation, No Success
By Eric Swanson
Background:
The Islamic religion experienced tremendous growth after its creation. Muhammad, the prophet that was inspired with Allah’s revelation, was able to start a new religion from humble beginnings and make it into a united religious and political empire. After Muhammad’s death, many other Islamic leaders helped expand the Islamic Empire through great successes on the battlefield. This came to no surprise to the Islamic world, because their religion taught them that they will have success in battle and beyond, due to their inspired word and supremacy of their religion. In the seventh century, Muslims were able to capture many countries that were originally part of the Christian faith such as Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and much of North Africa. The Muslims from the Middle East was able to expand their empire as far as Spain. When the Muslims sacked Rome, the Christians mobilized to recapture Jerusalem, their Holy City, in the many efforts called the Crusades. However, no success by the Christians was made during these many battles due to the strength of the Islamic Empire. The Muslims had created a superpower out of their humble religion and led the Middle East and the West economically, politically, militarily, scientifically, and socially.
However, much of the grandness and superiority of the Islamic Empire started to decline after the 1400s. After this time period, history reveals that the lands that Muslims controlled were slowly being taken back by the Christians and more specifically by Western countries. In 1492, the West was able to recapture Spain, opening the way for conquests back into North Africa; as well as Russia was able to find liberation from their Muslim leaders through a decisive victory in battle. In addition, when the Portuguese were able to travel around Africa and establish a trade route from the Far East to the West, the Muslims found that their monopoly on the Far East trade was significantly being challenged. These events were just a few of the many indicators to the Muslims that their reign of power was being challenged and being diminished.
Since the time of transition of world power, the Middle East has not been able to reclaim their greatness of old. What is really tragic to the Middle East is realizing that they are not only just lagging behind the superpowers of today, but that they are lagging behind a long list of other middle power countries and third world countries. By every standard of measurement for a civilized and secure region, the Middle East lacks stability in all regions including economically, politically, socially, and militarily. This raises the huge question in their minds which is “What Went Wrong?” How can an Empire with such great success and potential in the beginning of its reign become such a wasteland in the modern society? The reason why the Muslim Empire crumbled and why it is still lacking in power is due to the lack of separation of religion and state. Without the separation of religion from the secular state, no country will be able to evolve and create forms of power, security, stability, and wealth.
Analysis:
“Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's.” (Luke 20:25) This verse was interpreted by many founding Christian fathers to establish the separation of church and spiritual issues from those issues dealing with the secular state. For many centuries, the Christians entangled the state with religion. Therefore, though the spread of Christian beliefs were strong, the nation states were not. This allowed the Muslims who did control a strong state to conquer many Christian countries. However, as soon as the West, who was predominantly Christian, started establishing a separation of spiritual and secular affairs their countries in turn became strong. So strong, that the West was able to usurp and crush the domination of the Islamic Empire. However, not all blame for the poor situation the Middle East finds them in today can be attributed to the West gaining and establishing their dominance. The key thing to understand here is that the Koran has no mention of a separation of spiritual ideas and secular ideas. This exclusion has created the problem. Without the separation of ideas, a nation state can not determine the true value of evolving and staying competitive for the power struggles found within international relations. When an all powerful being instructs that all knowledge has been given to you, it is hard to accept any other ideas but what is put forth by what has been instructed. This absolute belief is essential in spiritual matters, but is harmful in secular matters. Unfortunately, the Muslims had to experience this truth first hand. Without the separation of ideas, the Muslims lacked creativity in all aspects of modernization therefore constricting their power and future progress and eventually leaving them in the poor situation they find themselves in today.
This inclusion of religion in the Muslim state inhibited the state from modernizing their military. This had a visible affect of the power of the West verses the Middle East. This disproportion of power was first compared in Islamic documents around the early 1700s. This document was made soon after the Treaty of Carlowitz that demonstrated to the Muslims their lack of military power and diplomacy. This treaty was established due to the fact that the Muslims had lost to the “infidels”. When the document compared military styles, it was recommended that the true believers of Islam mimic the military organization and conduct of warfare of the West. Basically, this document suggested that the state should modernize the military to stay strong against its enemies. However, before the Treaty of Carlowitz the suggestion of mimicing the infidel West would not have ever been suggested. According to Islamic Law, Muslims were instructed to despise any religion that was different from theirs. Therefore to accept teaching and conduct according to infidels would have been unacceptable to Allah. Since the state was dictated by religious law instead of secular law, the entire state never benefited from other religion’s developments in warfare. Also, since all knowledge was considered all ready available, there was no need to create new forms of organization and conduct during war. This created stagnation within the military that allowed the Muslims to be defeated in battle. In addition, the West always established embassies in other countries to perfect and practice the skill of diplomacy. This allowed the home country to wield power and influence without having to go to war. On the other hand, since Islamic law dictated to stay away from the infidels no such embassies or ambassadors were created for the Muslim state. This inhibited the Muslims to wield their power within negotiations. Once again, the Muslims could not establish power due to the fact that laws of the state were the laws of religion. Soon the Muslims learned another terrible truth. When Napoleon conquered Egypt, the Muslims found once again that their organization, conduct, and technology could not match the West’s military. The Muslims continued to fight to reclaim Egypt. Eventually, Egypt was overthrown again, but it was not by the Muslims, but by a British Admiral named Horatio Nelson. This showed the Muslims that not only could the West conquer what they please, but that the only region that could get them out was another Western country. Through all these military loses by the Muslims, it was suggested to learn from the infidels and to adapt and assimilate their military technology and organization. However, in reality very few individuals actually got to go the West and learn the skills the West was free to explore and experiment with. The inclusion of religion and state was the key contributor to the Muslim lack of skill on the battlefield.
This inclusion of religion in the Muslim state further inhibited the state from modernizing to create wealth. In the West, merchants were free to establish trade with any other country. Free trade helped the Western states to establish economic power all over the globe and create wealth unimaginable. However in the Middle East, Muslims were not allowed to freely trade or travel and especially not live in an infidel country. The general consensus of the Muslim religion was that it was impossible to live a pious life based on Muslim laws inside a non-Muslim country. Therefore it was highly discouraged to travel outside of Muslim areas. This seclusion greatly hurt the ability for Muslim merchants to compete in the international market. Without new money coming into the Empire, there can be no growth of the state economically. This seclusion also inhibited those within science to create new technologies for merchants to be more productive within manufacturing, agriculture, or creating new products for sale. Knowledge in the Muslim realm was considered something that needed to be stored, acquired, or even bought, but never developed or grown. This is a great departure of the Christians in the West. The west was free to explore and experiment. This helped Western nation states to establish their dominance in the market by creating new, more productive machines or ways of producing products. The Muslims lacked the freedom by the state to do the same, because the state’s religion did not allow free thought outside what was dictated to them by Allah. The lack of freedom of thought stifled the ability to create wealth for the Muslim state.
The key to gaining this freedom of thought is by having a government that is based on the freedoms of man. This is a very western idea of course. The freedom of man to think and to do as he sees fit in the secular world would not be allowed in the Muslim world. The government in the Islamic realm looks almost like a feudalistic society. One has Allah on the top with the Sultan below him as his mediator and the people below him. The Sultan is supposed to reign according to Allah’s law. It was stated, “Islam, the ruler, and the people are like the tent, the pole, the ropes, and the pegs. The tent is Islam, the pole is the ruler, the ropes and pegs are the people. None can thrive without the others.” This is very similar to the kind of government in the early middle ages in the West. However, due to the freedom the Christian religion provided to the West to separate religion and state, eventually the “Holy” word of the King became only the word of a mere man. The God in the West was dethroned from its position high above the secular state and replaced by the sovereignty of the people and the unity of the nation. With this understanding the West was free to create new more successful forms of government and politics that would establish an environment of modernization. This separation helped make the West have a superior form of government than the Middle East. The Muslim’s restriction on the separation of religion and state hindered their ability to modernize their government. Their strict ad heritance to the religious law slowed the progress of their nation in politics and therefore ruined their ability to modernize.
The lack of modernization included the fact that social equality remained a distant abstract idea to the Middle East due to their continuing support of their theocratic government. The Koran strictly prohibits the equality of men and women and completely supports the owning of slaves. The Muslims even believed in polygamy and concubinage. These beliefs furthered the gap of equality between men and women. Women were also expected to dress extremely conservative in comparison to men. The Muslims believe that they are honoring the women by hiding her beauty, but in the real sense that are confining her choices and freedoms. Women were not treated equal in cultural, nor political realms. Women were not even allowed to hold political offices. In addition, slaves were considered to be the right of any true believer of Islam. All these inequalities and allowing the slave trade was also considered acceptable by the West for many centuries. However, due to political and religious freedom, many Westerners were enlightened to the fact that most of their society was not being productive. So much was being wasted by not allowing the freedom of all citizens to contribute to the culture, science, politics, and economy of the nation state. After much struggle, these ideas of equality and freedom for all humans became the norm for Western life. In the West, political freedom not based on sex, race, or religion was considered an unalienable right by all mankind. However, these ideas did not make its way into the minds of the Middle East until just recently. These ideas of equality and freedom from slavery were considered heretic ideas by the state and religion. No true believer of Islam would dare to establish a law allowing the equality of women and the freeing of slaves if Allah himself promoted it. Since the Middle East was never able to disassociate their religious laws from their secular laws, they were not able to modernize the social stability within their countries like the West has been able to do. Once again, the inclusion of the Muslim religion into state politics prohibited them from utilizing most of their society for cultural, political, scientific, and economic improvement.
Social inequality, archaic politics, slow economic development, and old tactics of warfare have all contributed to the downfall of the Middle East. However, these are not just random unfortunate events to a once great Empire. All these realms were affected by the Koran not stating that there needs to be a separation of religion and state. Without that statement, the followers of the Muslim religion included the religious laws as state laws. These state laws based on religion prohibited the freedom to think and experiment in all realms of society like the West was able to do. The West was allowed this freedom by their religion, and therefore was able to think and experiment new ideas about doing things i.e. make a civil society based on secular laws instead of religious laws. Therefore the West was able to modernize and evolve their society and create the power it so enjoys today. Without the separation of religion and state there can be no success in that nation state.
Assessment:
There are many other ideas that might explain the downfall of the Middle East. One easy reason for the downfall, made popular by the Marxist’s beliefs, is that the rich West conquered the Middle East and is now keeping them down. In this belief, if the Middle East is able to throw off the oppression by the West, usually by a violent Revolution, they will be able to return to prominence. Another belief, made popular by the Nazi Fascist, is that problem lies within the Jews. This idea suggests that if the Middle East could eradicate the Jews that might be able to restore their Empire. One last idea that could be considered to make this nation great again, would be to make nation states return to their traditional beliefs. This belief considers that when the Middle East returns to traditional beliefs of the Koran that Allah would find favor with their region and then would restore their region to prominence. All these ideas could have valid points towards being the reason why the Middle East fell from greatness, but it does not explain the fundamental problem that stole away that regions power and prestige.
Works Cited
Lewis, Bernard. "What Went Wrong?" Oxford Press, New York. 2002.
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Date this page was last updated: 12/06/2002