Waiting for Saladin

The Muslim world today represents the tragic story of Medusa, an ill-piloted French naval ship in the early 19th century that ran aground because of its incompetent captain’s blunders and his dependence on others for navigational guidance, leaving behind a sordid tale of helplessness, death, and desperation.

The story begins in Paris in 1816. The French monarchy had been restored to the throne by the English after they had defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. In a show of support for the newly reinstated king, they offered the French the port of St. Louis, in Senegal on the African West Coast.

The French king, Louis XVIII, appointed a Frigate-Captain, Hugues Duroy de Chaumereys, to lead the fleet in taking possession of the gifted port. He had never commanded a ship, let alone a fleet. Throughout his career, he had worked only as a customs officer. A painting in a Paris Art Gallery shows Medusa’s wreck still lying on the West African coast. Like Medusa’s wreck, the Muslim world is just lying out there, aimlessly floating like a sunken ship with no one to steer it out of the troubled waters. Representing one-fourth of humanity, it’s a weak and helpless community of 57 states with few incredibly rich and most pitiably poor.

Mostly, poor and dispossessed nations emerging from long colonial rule may have become sovereign states, but they still lack genuine political and economic independence. With rare exceptions, they are all at the mercy of the West for their political and economic survival. Other than being members of the United Nations, they remain virtual colonies of the West with no sense of freedom or dignity. With royalty or dictatorship reigning supreme, they are all bankrupt politically, with no established tradition of democracy or pluralism. They have a chronic aversion to constitutional and representative governance.

Every ingredient of political life in these so-called sovereign states has been faked. To make things worse, there is no urge or desire anywhere in the Muslim world to come out of its ostrich-like medieval mode. Peace is the essence of Islam, but the Muslim nations have seen very little of it, especially after the Second World War. Conflict and violence are pervasive in the Muslim lands. Some states are home to foreign military bases, while others have allowed foreign forces to use their territory freely and even to conduct their “operations” at will. There are others selflessly engaged in proxy wars against their own people.

Some of them have allowed themselves to become the “hotbed” of religious extremism and militancy and are paying a heavy price in terms of violence and social disarray. The tragedies in Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Chechnya, Iraq, and Afghanistan represent the embarrassing helplessness of the world’s Muslims. What aggravates this dismal scenario is the inability of the Muslim world to take care of its problems or even to overcome its weaknesses. Historically, the European-led geopolitics in the wider Middle East and Africa contributed to the Muslim world’s colonization during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.

And the British Empire played a key role in politically destabilizing the region. During World War I, it convinced Arab leaders to revolt against the Ottoman Empire (then allied with Germany). In return, the British promised them an independent Arab state in the region, including Palestine. In 1917, General Allenby spoke of the West’s sense of victory over Islam when entering into Jerusalem, he shouted, “The crusades have been completed.” Likewise, when the French military commander entered Damascus, he went to Saladin’s tomb and cried, “Nous revenons, Saladin.” (We are back, Saladin).