Positively Medieval
the longer i stay here, the more the medievalist in me marvels at the parallels between the current state of affairs in iraq and the dark ages of the western world. i'm staggered that no anthropologists or medievalists have tackled it yet... at least as far as i've been able to divine. now, obviously, my contact with the local populace is severely limited (despite the fact that i live in closer proximity to the iraqis than any coalition forces other than those who actually walk the streets daily), so perhaps my perceptions are skewed, but there are simply too many correlations to ignore.
first of all, the hierarchy of authority is thus: islamic sacred law (sharia) takes precedence over all, followed by the dictates of one's tribal elder, and finally the government of the state. this is almost completely analogous to a feudal era where many provinces were united only loosely, if at all, under a central crown, and the power and authority of the catholic church was supreme. it necessarily forces the impotence of any government that fails to align itself with the precepts the divine, that problem being further compounded by the existence of two warring religious factions; it also paves the way for inter-tribal strife independent of sacred concerns.
secondly, where learning still exists (as most of the educated people of means have fled the region), it does so only tenuously, not entirely unlike the monastic centers of knowledge in anglo-saxon england. only fractions of the populace advance past the fifth grade, less than one third of them achieving secondary education. literacy rates are likewise dreadfully low, though not so depressingly so as education statistics. a nationwide literacy of approximately 75% for iraq is heartbreaking when compared to the purported 99% for the united states.
even more telling is the gender divide evident in education and literacy, which speaks to the poor state of women's rights in the public sphere. despite the anglo-saxon law codes of alfred the great, which granted women considerable rights, the chrisitan-mediterranean culture eventually effaced the germanic anglo-saxon traditions, relegating women for a long while (centuries) to the private sphere.
rule of law is also tenuous, and by no means standardized. extra-judicial killings--what we in the united states would deem murder--are still perfectly legal, and death squads operate regularly out of government installations such as national police buildings. the lax requirements for evidence would shock the average american (though i must say that when it comes to dealing death to bombmakers and emplacers, i have no sympathy). one of our greatest western literary heroes fought against such injustices, perpetrated in that instance by the tribal elders of nottingham fame.
what are the implications of these similarities in terms of creating solutions for this plagued nation? we have seen this all before, in our own history, and have even labeled the periods: the dark ages, followed by the rennaissance spanning the centuries from the 14th through the 17th and paving the way for the enlightenment. encompassed within those periods are years of serious civil and religious strife and persecution--notably the reformation and counter-reformation--but ultimately reason prevailed, and our western world became (ostensibly) a secular land of freedoms for all men, and women. instumental in this transformation were the 15th century work of william tyndale in translating the Bible into vernacular english, and the printing press which made that translation available en masse. they revolutionized the western world by making thought available to the common man.
i believe very strongly that blind adherence to religion fills the gaps that education leaves behind in its absence; an educated mass would be far less likely to allow themselves to be shepherded by radicals. i cite here as a magnificent example frederick douglass' essay learning to read and write, excerpted from his autobiography. in one remarkable passage, of words he writes:
"they gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently flashed through my mind, and died away for want of utterance... the reading of these documents enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery... i would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. it had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy... any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking!"
thinking! if we could only funnel the passion and zeal of religious fervor into rational thought, we could perhaps make greater headway (and i do not mean in our political goals, but rather in the hearts and minds, cliché though it may be, of the local populace--in their personal desires to better themselves as beings and as a nation). i perceive that the iraqis with whom i work and eat on a daily basis are some of those who do think, but they have yet a ways to go... unfortunately, a robust literacy and education program is difficult to establish in the face of destabilization, and it is by no means the only answer.
as it stands, due in part to its own ignorance, but due also to our selective western memories and immense hubris, the middle east may necessarily relive the past five centuries that the western world seems to have forgotten it experienced.
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NOTE: all statistics employed above were researched from legitimate sources, and then reasonably rounded.
2 comments:
Though medievalism is not my specialty, I think your comparisons are quite apt. On the subject of gender divides, while such cultures often appeal to religion to justify the practice, this is not always the case, as in classical Athens, perhaps the most misogynistic society ever known. The root of the issue really is the divide itself: problems begin when the genders do not share responsibilities in both spheres. In almost every case of female subjugation in the public sphere, it is coincident with female hegemony in the private. An old Middle-Eastern history professor once told me that not even Saddam Hussein would disobey his mother in her own house....
In Athens, as the home became the demesne of the women, the male population became convinced they were scheming and hatching plots, a paranoia which led to even greater oppression and control of movement. Of course, the more women were kept in the home and out of sight, the more certain the male population became that they were up to something.
In northern Europe, if I am not much mistaken, the expulsion of women from the guilds and subsequent sequestration of women in the private sphere was concomitant with the rise of the cult of the Virgin. Perhaps a comment about pedestal height is appropriate here.
On Frederick Douglass. I would interpret the passage somewhat differently. Education and literacy are massively important, and I would not presume to state otherwise. But they are not a panacea. Key bit:
"...learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. it had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy..."
Of course, Douglass didn't give in to these frustrations, and he lived in a place and time when he could take tangible steps to improve his lot. But as you point out, it took Europe five centuries to get from feudalism to the Enlightenment, and any attempt to accelerate that timeline for other developing cultures must be very careful indeed to match economic and infrastructure development to educational progress, as the Shah of Iran and his US backers learned to their chagrin. Even educated people, (dare I say especially educated people) are vulnerable to rapturous sermons when other options are exhausted. Christianity itself was a relatively minor cult for hundreds of years, until in the collapase of Roman society it provided a solace that rationality could not...
Even today religion captures the imagination of many intelligent and learned people, but it is not a new phenomenon. You can call Thomas Aquinas many things, but illiterate isn't one of them.
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