Sadik al-Azm on the crisis in Syria: Self-Criticism or Self-Defeating Critique?

Sadik Jalal al-Azm

Syria's leading philosopher, Sadik al-Azm, has written an insightful analysis of the situation in Syria, which -- from 2011 onward -- has gone from bad to worse. Known as one of the most incisive minds of contemporary Arab thinking, Sadik al-Azm made name with penetrating writings, including Self-Criticism After the Defeat, where he criticizes the general intellectual mood in the Arab world, and 'Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse' which challenges Edward Said's account of the relationship between the Muslim world and the West, again holding up what must be an uncomfortable mirror for many Arab intellectuals and cultural critics. An earlier response to the uprising in Syria can be found here.

While the article's subtitle, 'understanding the unthinkable war', points up the sheer impossibility of making sense of what is pitching Syrians against each other in the present conflict, it seems that as he develops his argument, al-Azm falls victim to the very failings he seeks to highlight: The loss of an overarching sense of 'Syrianness', leaving in its place a polarized fragmentation into other senses of belonging, now increasingly of a sectarian character, which -- with a nod to Ibn Khaldun's notion of asabiyya -- are by many taken to be of a more primordial nature. There is a poignant contrast between the beginning of the essay:

The people’s intifada in Syria, against the military regime and police state of the Assad family, took me by surprise. I was fearful at first that the regime would crush it almost instantly, given its legendary ferocity and repressiveness. Like other Syrian intellectuals, I felt total impotence before this devouring monster, which precluded any thought of an imminent, or even possible, collective “no.”
I was surprised by the revolution, but I should not have been. Daily experiences and recurrent observations foretold a crisis that many Syrians tried hard to deny. And deny we did. Let me explain.
After the violent suppression of the Damascus Spring in 2001–2002 and again after the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in Beirut in 2005, which led to the humiliating withdrawal of Assad’s troops from Lebanon, angst spread throughout Syria. [...]

Like many in Damascus, I found myself beginning, almost unconsciously, to weigh every word according to the religious affiliations of passing acquaintances and close friends alike. Social engagements lost spontaneity. Confidence and trust evaporated, and offense was taken more quickly than ever before. An unusual dose of suspicion seeped into the Syrian intelligentsia’s traditional solidarity against oppression.

 ..and its closing paragraphs:

The solution can come only with the termination of political Alawitism. This is pretty much the way the Taef Agreement, in 1989, brought the Lebanese civil war to an end—by jettisoning political Maronitism and its predominance over Lebanon. In Syria’s case, that means the end of the dynasty, the end of Alawi supremacy, the end of the sway of the minority, and the rebirth of the republic. The West does have a role to play. Instead of letting Syria bleed, the West needs to help end Assad’s grip on the country and its future and negotiate political accommodation for Alawis within a democratic framework that will necessarily favor the Sunni majority. The West will inevitably intervene because the great powers will not permit Syria to fall into the hands of jihadi Islam. The question is whether that intervention will be guided by a proper understanding of the war.

As I write, no one claims to know where Syria is heading or what will end the bloody struggle. Still, I am certain that the Assad and Alawi dynasties will never rule again.

To read the full article, click here

Sadik Jalal al-Azm: Muslim Secularist talks about the Syrian Uprising

Last week, the Syrian website Al-Jumhuriyah, run by a conglomerate of Syrian writers and researchers supporting the uprising against Bashar al-Assad, published a lengthy interview conducted in January 2013, with one of Syria's foremost thinkers, the philosopher Sadik Jalal al-Azm, who has It focused  on his views about recent developments in his country and the role of intellectuals in bringing about change.

Syrian philosopher Sadiq Jalal al-Azm

Sadiq al-Azm's thinking is very much shaped by Marxism and  he has written on a wide variety of subjects, including Arab political affairs after the defeat of June 1967,  freedom of thought, platonic love, secularism, democracy, and globalization. However, he has also written very perceptive studies on religion, including critical assessments of Islamic thinking and Muslim responses to Orientalism

When asked how the author of A Critique of Religious Reason and other skeptical works about Islam could join a revolution that had started in the mosque, he responded that for too long intellectuals had closed their eyes to Syrian reality just in order to preserve their own mental and physical survival. Now:

the revolution is a Syrian settling of old accounts and an overdue payment of bills that were the result of Syrian silence and cowardice in moments such as the siege of the city of Hama in 1982, and its destruction and killing of its people

Moreover, it is not the first time that he sided with a revolt towards regime that was led by religious people, including clerics; Muslim and non-Muslim:

The author of Critique of Religious Thought also stood with the revolution of the Iranian people against the rule, corruption, and tyranny of the Shah, and against his famous intelligence apparatus known for its ferocity (the SAVAK). He stood with it despite the fact that that the leadership role of the clergy and ayatollahs was evident from the outset, and as I recall, the left in those days was almost entirely in favor of the Iranian people’s revolution despite the fact that demonstrations emerged from mosques, cemeteries, and funerals

The author of Critique of Religious Thought also stood with Liberation Theologists in Latin America and other places, because Liberation Theology supported people’s liberation movements in those countries against base tyrants such as Samoza in Nicaragua, criminal coup-makers like Pinochet in Chile, and the rule of the bloody generals in Argentina. After all this, is it possible for the author of the mentioned book to fail or let-down in the issue of standing with the revolution of the Syrian people against the rule that has surpassed Samoza, Pinochet, the Argentine generals, and the Shah of Iran combined in its tyranny, murder, and destruction?

What tilted the balance of inaction towards action in the case of his home country was set in motion in 2000; when a republican government was changed into a hereditary dynasty and the indignities the Syrian people had to suffer simply became too much. Still, there is a chill and sinister side to al-Azm's words

Syria swallowed the humiliation quietly and sedately, which was an unenviable position these days, and blood is being spilled today to erase its effects. The moment that the “Damascus Spring” tried to light a candle at the end of the tunnel, it was eliminated with a visible ferocity, and once again, Syria was silent and it accepted the suppression of the Damascus Spring with shocking normalcy. I will say again, in its revolution today, Syria spills this much blood in order to atone for all its past sins and erase its shame, and for this reason, I am with it.

In response to a question why, as a  leading representative of the intellectual left he had decided to throw his weight behind the uprising, whereas many of its other exponents have remained at best equivocal in their support, or even refused to back it altogether, Sadiq al-Azm explained that this would first need an explanation of a development within the Syrian left:

 ... it is known that the left brings together committed activists and advocates from different religious, confessional, doctrinal, regional, ethnic, and tribal backgrounds for the sake of a future civil state which surpasses these primordial affiliations and loyalties. After the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the left and its dispersal everywhere (especially the numerous and differentiated communist parties), many of these leftists reverted back to their primordial and more primitive loyalties, especially the religious, confessional and doctrinal ones

[...] the left split into a large block that adopted what might be called “the Civil Society program”. It is a program which emphasizes certain issues, such as: Respect of human rights (even if only in word, or in the minimum possible manner), priority for the idea of citizenship and its practice in addition to civil rights and public freedoms, equality before the law, separation of powers, a secular state, an independent judiciary, democracy, decentralization of power and effective governance rather than passing power around between family members, as is happening in Syria today. In other words, the largest bloc of the left retreated to the second line of defense in the form of a “civil society program,” and its defense in the face of military-security-familial tyranny on the one hand, and medieval religious obscurantism on the other hand. I think that this bloc of the left in general sympathizes with the revolution in Syria

Al-Azm stresses that he has not given up his leftist convictions and that he still considers Marxist analyses of social and political situations convincing. However, he adds the caveat that he is not referring to classical Marxist analyses, but the approach advocated by Frantz Fanon, which he considers more relevant to  developments in a country like Syria:

..it is useful to return to it today for any attempt at diagnosing the Syrian revolution and understanding its nature, especially given that Fanon was a real pioneer in describing the mechanisms and the stages of transformation of political powers, parties, and organizations that start as parties and national liberation movements in oppressed third world societies but change into a clique of rulers completely separated from their beginnings, their popular foundations, and their liberal programs that they had adopted which formed the purpose for their coming to power, only for them to oppress and step on the neck of the wretched of their population

Returning to the issue of joining a revolutionary cause that was initiated by religious activists, he also takes a swipe at another leading intellectual, the poet Adonis (see also the blog post of 30 October 2011).

The contradiction here is not in my position, but in the position of those who once stood in support of the revolution of the Iranian people or the Liberation Theologists and their churches or for movements of national liberation almost everywhere, yet refuse to support the revolution of the Syrian people under the pretext that its demonstrations and protests spring from the mosque and not from the opera house or the national theatre, as Adonis justifies.

 Adonis preferred denial, evasion and justification in his dealing with the changing reality of the Arab Spring, and especially the popular revolution in Syria. Adonis had raised the slogan “positions for change, freedom and creativity” in his famous magazine Mawaqif (Positions); however, when the serious change began to occur in Syria and freedom was near, Adonis retreated more than two steps backwards instead of absorbing seriously and critically the development of the changing Arab reality, and instead of critically reviewing the axioms of his cultural and epistemological apparatus in light of the mobile and new Arab Syrian reality. His slogans imply that such an intellectual would be at the forefront of people leaning towards change and freedom in Syria and defending them, but he preferred to distance himself from all of this and he discarded his slogan in the dustbin of history.

Al-Azm also cautions against having exaggerated expectations of what a revolution can achieve in terms of structurally changing a culture that has become very much set in its ways: 'cultural change is socially cumulative and historically slow'. For convincing argumentations making that case, he refers to the writings of fellow progressive thinkers from the Maghrib, among others: Muhammad Abid al-Jabiri, Abdallah Laroui, and Egyptians like Fouad Zakariyya and Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd. As for Syria, he believes inspiration can be drawn from such thinkers as Jamil Saliba, Anton Makdisi, Adib Allajmi, Adil Al-Awwa, Yasin al-Hafiz, Tayyib Tayzini

Returning to the ideological dimensions of realizing drastic changes in a culture and society, al-Azm believes that the key to genuine change is secularization and the creation of a civil society which can enact such social transformations. This is also the reason why he helped establish the 'Committee for the Revival of Civil Society' (al-Mowaten) and became an active participant in the 'Damascus Spring' forums:

what is most important in secularism and democracy is their energetic capacity, particularly in diverse and pluralistic societies… In addition to this capacity to provide a good, positive atmosphere to restore civil peace, and not to oppress and use bare force, and to provide well tested mechanism (in many countries and people and societies and cultures today) for peaceful transfer of power as widely as possible in society. Among the characteristics of secularism and democracy is that they provide a neutral ground for the meeting of the various religious doctrines and beliefs that are exclusionary by nature, allowing them to interact in the public space, the national arena, and the political landscape based on common denominators and voluntary, free consensus that makes it impossible for any of these doctrines and dogmas to survive in a vacuum

 He rejects the notion that some religions or cultures are per definition incapable of secularizing and therefore unsuitable for democratic systems of governance:

democracy is usually acquired, and the secular state is also acquired and is not that easy to launch. There has always been a great many obstacles, internally and externally, for all. I also do not think that the enlightened secular elites’ goal was originally only to prepare their communities to become eligible to accept democracy. Their goal, ambition, as well as their demand was a comprehensive renaissance of the vocabulary of democracy and secularism.

In analyzing why the secularization and democratization of Arab societies and political systems is such an uphill battle, the influence on al-Azm of Third-Worldist discourses as articulated by Frantz Fanon is clearly detectable: 

This not only happened to us, but to all civilizations, cultures, and peoples. In the search for our enlightenment and renaissance, we always come back to Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani and Mohammad Abdo, but a bit of scrutiny will show that there was something like al-Afghani and Mohammad Abdo [Abduh, ck] and what they represent in Iran, Russia, India, China, Japan, and Africa. So I think that the issue of enlightenment is much larger than groups of educated and secular elites that are trying to make the people eligible to accept democracy through public awareness of the need of secularism and secularization to overcome the failures and existing deficit. And I do not think that the current Arab Spring revolutions are able to set aside the idea of a broader enlightenment in ahistorical sense, if they had wanted to, because they also speak the language of reform, democracy, renewal, freedom, dignity, renaissance, and constitutionalism.

As for the role of intellectuals in recasting Syria's future in terms of securing a democratization process in the wake of the anticipated regime change, al-Azm notes the following points:

one of the most important things that intellectuals can do in the beginning is get rid of what is called the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Information, then form their own cultural bodies, literary forums, intellectual circles, and independent autonomous unions, and manage them all without abidance to anyone or the dominance of one over the other.

 Then, it is up to the intellectuals to be generous with the best that they have to offer to the people, so that the intellectual in the New Syria is active and engaged. 

Read the full interview here.

This year's Arab Spring in London (1) - A Syrian contribution

The next few posts will present a number of events that have taken place this Spring and Summer in London, confirming that the city is still in many respects at the centre of critical developments in the Arab and wider Muslim world.

Aziz al-Azmeh at AKU

On 21 June the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilization (ISMC) at the Aga Khan University (AKU) hosted the renowned Syrian Scholar of Islam Aziz al-Azmeh, who delivered a lecture under the title The Relevance and Irrelevance of Muslim Political Traditions. Beginning with an unexpected quote from Paul's Epistle to the Romans that there is 'no authority but God' and other references to the view of the Gospels that we must obey God rather than man, he provides some contrast with the perhaps more often cited statement in Matthew of rendering unto Caesar in order to challenge the generally held assumption that , unlike Islam, Christendom clearly separated State and Church.

His objectives in this talk were not to compare Islam and Christianity or oppose them to each other, but to reflect critically and present some purposeful discriminations. Al-Azmeh declared the argument that Scripture prescribed Europe's political system absurd, because it flies in the face of sociological evidence: Dogma and practice have always differed.

Sociological thinking insists that political systems cannot be reduced to cultures and that cultures cannot be reduced to Scripture. The great transformations of modernity have made social, political and cultural diversity and complexities only greater. This observation, al-Azmeh insists, that applies as much to the Muslim world as it does to the West.

However, regarding the latter, al-Azmeh discerns the same disinterest and lack of analytical rigour among Muslim and Western observers when studying Muslim societies. The prevailing presumption still is that the Muslim world in the 21st century is only just emerging from the Muslim traditions which require a religious legitimation for political structures. Muslims are 'frozen' into their traditions and the what he terms as 'Super Muslims' like to perpetuate this stultified view.

The profound changes in Muslim societies in the course of the last few centuries are still 'bracketed', in spite of the fact that -- although they may be unevenly distributed -- are very real. These changes may have been of European provenance, but they have been indigenized and adapted to local contexts.

Through his analysis of the characteristics of these changes in Muslim societies, al-Azmeh wants to transcend the tendency of coining the description of Muslim society and the history of the Muslim world in dogmatic terms.

In his responses to various questions, al-Azmeh rejected the contention that there are textual prescriptions for the organization of Muslim society or depiction of Islamic history in the Qur'an, as if Muslims are afflicted with some congenital nomocratic disposition . He wants to contest and break-down the 'logocentric clichés' which hold the analysis of Muslim societies captive. Prior to the nineteenth century, such articulations were unknown to the Muslim mindset, and al-Azmeh contends they are the result of the influence of both Catholic and Protestant traditions. 

In this respect, he argues that the Islamic concept of ijma' -- the consensus of the community of religious scholars -- was as multilayered as early Christian Patristics. Islamic theological traditions have been very diverse and were often in conflict with each other. Muslim history manifests different caliphates, Sultanic traditions, and other political systems.

He does not deny that the emphasis on scripturalism has been enormously influential, but, to further clarify the point he wants to make, this must be seen as a 'Protestant inflection' -- which can in turn be explained through  its disenchantment with Catholicism. Subsequently, this view has been transplanted and transposed into analyses of the Muslim world.

Pushing his argument even further, al-Azmeh maintains that there is no evidence of a specific political reading of the Qur'an prior to the twentieth century. In his view, the fuqaha' or legal scholars were practical men, and only ideologically disposed in a secondary sense. This demands a rethinking of Islam as jurisdictional and nomocratic -- at least in the reductionist fashion in which it is generally presented. The praxis of law in the Muslim world was complex, and very distinct from classical Islamic legal theorizing. Consequently, he dismisses the notion of Shari'ah as an 'artificial gloss'

The violence involved in imposing Islamic law in the way the Islamic Republic of Iran has tried to do it is at odds not only with standards of equity and justice in the contemporary world, but also at variance with both Islamic historical practice and legal theory. The way in which Islamists are implementing Islamic law makes for what al-Azmeh calls a 'bizarre spectacle'

Aziz al-Azmeh

Commenting on Muslim reformism, al-Azmeh does not deny that it tends to be apologetic and that there is a lot of 'social engineering' going on on the basis of an Islamic variety of scripturalism which some perceive as 'authentic'. In addition, aside from the emergence of political islamism along 'intellectually rudimentary' Salafi lines, social conservatism has also grown. The social salience of Salafism has pushed genuine reforms to the margins. Al-Azmeh dismisses its claim of being representative of the tradition as false, rejecting the 'scripturalist' reshaping of Islamic tradition as an unnecessary interpretational mode.

Interpretations such as those put forward by the likes of Abu'l-Ala al-Maududi or Sayyid Qutb would have been inconceivable to the medieval scholars who were truly intertextual in their outlook. Maududi and Qutb are products of modernity and their ideas do not reflect a revival of Islamic authenticity. In fact, there is no univocal answer to that constitutes a genuine 'Islamic tradition'. It was never fixed for all times, on the contrary: tradition has to be understood in the context of spatio-temporality. 

 It can be taken as a self-description, it can constitute religiosity as a personal belief and participation in certain rituals, it can be regarded as adhering to a 'minumum of social practices', or a more rigorous modification of personal behaviour and language reflecting a deeper piety. Finally, when the latter is reflected in political and social behaviour it can become stuck in a political framework and leading to a complete resocialization.

The same applies to the term 'Muslim' as used by al-Azmeh in the title of his lecture. This also requires a 'situational' understanding.

In this presentation al-Azmeh positioned himself in a discourse shared by other Syrian intellectuals such as Sadiq Jalal al-Azm (1) and Bassam Tibi (even though the latter and al-Azmeh himself have been working for decades in the West as 'exilic intellectuals'). Their work calls into question the overeasy pigeon-holing of Western thinking as somehow more susceptible to secularity than the Muslim intellectualism. Hopefully, it will be not for too long, before these kind of ideas are allowed to flourish again in Damascus and elsewhere in long-suffering Syria, ansd beyond.

(1) For an earlier appeal by al-Azm, dating back to 2005, calling on the Baath Regime to allow a 'Damascus Spring', click here.