"This is language that we have not heard since the time of Gamal Abdul Nasser." Thus wrote the influential chief editor of Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, referring to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's fiery response to the Israeli assault on the Gaza flotilla -- adding that such "manly" positions and rhetoric had "disappeared from the dictionaries of our Arab leaders (since the demise of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser)." He lamented, "Arab regimes now represent the only friends left to Israel." (From the CSM, here)
What is Renovatio? Simply, it is a national revival that takes the form of a restoration: Where things once right and true triumphantly return. Renovatio represents identity reborn.
This is how Romans and Byzantines spoke of restoration. But for them it was not simply the nation restored (lower case) -- Renovatio had an imperial and universal meaning: The world restored, the whole of Romanitas brought back to its full glory.
The world of Islam was the last great creation of Greco-Roman antiquity, and Muslims today still hold to a sacred narrative of identity rooted in Renovatio.
What does this mean, and why is it important? It means that Muslim history for 1,500 years has been a narrative of falling down followed by Renovatio, just as for 1,500 years it was so for Romano-Byzantines. After all Islam itself emerged during the 7th century falling down of the great Renovatio of Justinian.
So in the 19th century we see Muhammad Ali and the Sudanese Mahdi. So in the 20th century we see the emergence of Pan-Arabism and the Brotherhood. Nasser was thus the Muslim World's best-effort 20th century Renovatio.
In our new century we can see a slew of Muslim competitors eagerly invested in the waiting Renovatio. Al Qaeda represents the most romantic within Muslim imagination, seeking to reawaken the mythic calling of original Ghazi and the emotional claim of Al Ansar, the Brothers of Muhammad, sweeping out of the Wilderness like a wind from the desert.
But their framing was primitive and savage: Their fantasy resonates only with emotionally susceptible Arab men. The Muslim Brotherhood has been far more effective in evoking historical memory and sacred narrative among real communities. This is what resonates with most Sunni Muslims: Emphasizing social welfare and community virtue and shared piety. Brotherhood proselytizing is remarkably effective.
Then there is the premiere Sunni state: Saudi Arabia. Not only is it the richest of the rich but also the guardian of the sacred sites. It has aggressively pushed its Wahhabist mission throughout Islam and beyond. Moreover those it cannot convert it believes it can always buy.
Finally there is the Shi'a vision of Renovatio: Steeped since 1979 in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Its claim as agent of restoration is vested in part in its provenance as original core of the exalted Abbasid Khilafat itself, but even more in its calls to purity and sacrifice in pursuit of Muslim transcendence. Here Hizbull'ah is the authentic representation of everything that a Shi'a Renovatio stands for, implicitly indicting corrupt Sunni state establishments (like Saudi Arabia and Egypt) that are no more than false beacons to Muslim restoration.
These have been the competition. But remember, all of these contemporary enterprises have either failed or settled into empty unrealized national establishments (like Saudi Arabia or Iran).
So this takes us back. We ask: What was the last great Muslim Renovatio?
We called it the Ottoman Empire. Paradoxically the first triumphant Ottomans saw themselves as leading not a Muslim restoration, but a true Romano-Byzantine Renovatio. Mehmet II conquered Constantinople as the new Basileus Autocrator, restoring an empire divided since the 7th century. Hence he gave equal weight to both "east and west." He was a ruler at least half-Greek, and he carefully co-opted the Byzantine aristocracy and Patriarchies into his vision of Romanitas reunited. A couple generations later Suleiman the Magnificent actually imagined himself as Justinian, reading Prokopios by his bedside in original Greek. He sought to recreate the whole of the old Roman Empire. His vision failed at Lepanto and before Vienna.
But historical memory should remind us that the last successful gambit for a universal Muslim Renovatio was the Ottoman achievement. Remember the Ottomans were as much a European as a Muslim power -- for 400 years -- and their civilization was a blend of Byzantine and Levantine Islam. The closest Islam ever got to a complete and lasting Khilafat with universal promise was with the Ottoman Sultanate.
Which brings us to today's Turkish Renovatio.
It has been sparked into a flare by the Mari Marmara incident. Suddenly Turkey has become a competitor in the stakes for a Muslim Renovatio. How could this be? What exactly are the stakes, and what is the practical framework through which a real Renovatio might be achieved?
The framework for restoration has been established, for better or worse, by the Israeli state. Israel has unwittingly shaped a framework for both Ummah narrative struggle and narrative fulfillment, by establishing a lighting rod for the unfolding of Muslim sacred story. Consider: the original lighting rods in Muslim memory are the twin despoiling invasions and occupations of the Dar al-Islam by Latin Crusaders and the Mongol Khanate. Together they nearly destroyed the Ummah.
But more important the ways in which Islam responded became the core of mythic story, and the foundation for the next great Renovatio. Indeed Muslim identity was forged in these struggles. Egypt and Syria only became majority Muslim societies during this period. In contemporary Muslim memory this was a time of heroes. It was the making of modern Islam. The Ottomans emerged at the end of this epoch, defeating the last surge of Latin-Hungarian crusading, and surviving the last Mongol surge of Timur.
So without reference to our historical vision, it was inevitable that Muslims would interpret the Israeli enterprise -- especially since 1967 -- as transcendental identity calling.
Hence championing the Palestinians becomes the vehicle for symbolic leadership in the Ummah -- and thus is also at the heart of the current competition among aspiring leaders of a new Renovatio.
It is moreover a relatively "safe" arena for such symbolic competition -- Again, thanks to Israel. The Israeli state has become the regional military superpower, by both conventional and nuclear yardsticks. Therefore it is unnecessary and impossible to mount a direct and dangerously classical military challenge.
This is strategically liberating. Israel has in effect created a secure umbrella in which competitors for Renovatio-leadership can contest and prove their worthiness without real material harm to their societies. Instead Israel itself assigns the true signs of heroic worthiness to lead.
The new dynamic is about provoking the "Crusader" (where Israel is the Crusader and the US the Mongol superpower) to do evil. Sacrificing to stand up to evil -- to willingly martyr oneself -- thus becomes the essence of leadership worthiness.
Hence Hamas -- in the story it spins -- provokes Israel in the most ritualized fashion, drawing down Cast Lead to show its worthiness in contrast to the pusillanimous, comprador Fatah, puppets of the "Zionist Entity."
Hence Hizbull'ah -- in the story it spins -- provokes Israel in the most ritualized fashion, drawing their invasion (Operation Grapes of Wrath) and in heroic, even ancestor-mythic resistance, proving Shi'a worthiness to lead.
But the contrast is equally damning for those who play nice with the US and Israel. While Hamas fighters died, so the narrative goes, Egyptian and Saudi rulers looked the other way. It is said that the Pharaoh, Hosni Mubarak, supports the Israeli blockade of Gaza as a way to buy US buy-off on deep dynastic hopes for his son, Gamal. So they say, if he does Israel's bidding, Israel will put in a good word with Washington, and Gamal will get his Pschent double-crown.
Saudi Arabia is no less complicit, if a bit less visible a comprador. What have Saudi princes done for the Palestinians lately, especially for the open-air blockaded prison that is Gaza? Nothing. They talk a big line but they look increasingly like client princes too. The two big Sunni Arab states seem to have abdicated their place in the competition. Quite a contrast to bold Saudi intervention in Bosnia in the 1990s -- then Wahhabism was on the frontlines, on an Islamist roll.
So bring on the Mavi Marmara. Now there is another state actor to compete with two non-state actors -- Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood -- and Shi'a Iran.
Turkey potentially upends the competition, and here is why:
So what about Turkey? Turkey today is the inheritor of its own Ottoman tradition. Moreover a more Islamist Turkey pulls the nation away from the now-fading insular nationalism of Ataturk. A contemporary Turkey that is robustly part Western and also part Islamist in fact represents the most valuable model for the future Ummah -- and especially for its Arab-Urdu core.
Enough time has passed now that old Arab-Turkish scores should have receded, just as they have recently among Turks and Greeks. The Mavi Marmara incident -- if followed up strongly and unrelentingly -- can assert a neo-Ottoman claim to symbolic leadership of an emerging Muslim Renovatio.
Such a restoration would unfold in ritual terms. But is that not the point -- the point that the US and Israel stubbornly refuse to see? The whole design of the fabled Khilafat was in reality always that of a Muslim Commonwealth, not of a unitary state (save for Al Qaeda fantasists). Renovatio means a restoration of collective identity and purpose. But it also requires a leader: A Champion who will right wrongs and bring Islam back to the glory of the "Rightly Guided." Not as political order but as renewed collective consciousness.
It is supreme irony that (after a decade!) we cannot see what lies before our very eyes, or that those who hate Islam most will be the agent of their next deliverance.
David Shasha: Losing the Jewish Soul
The inability of Zionism to integrate the traditional culture of the Middle East into its national program has led to an endless series of conflicts with the Arabs.
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/israel-s-greatest-loss-its-moral-imagination-1.295600
Beside, check out any recent polls on 1.2 Billions Moslem to see which country they admire more than even their own governments let along Turkish or Saudi, it's Iran which can even fill gap between Moslems and non Moslems (Armenia, China, India, etc.) since the other two don't have any non Islamic period in their resume as a functioning state!
"[the alleged] shift toward Islam in Turkish foreign policy fails the empirical test. Turkey has been promoting close relations with Russia, the Balkan countries, Africa, and Latin America as well. Instead, Turkey's growing economy mandates expanding economic relations with all countries. Iran, a growing market, a source of energy for Turkey and a potential supplier of gas and oil to Europe with transit pipelines through Turkey, is an important economic partner. In addition, Turkey feels that UN sanctions have not proven to be effective and harm neighbouring countries with no compensation. Adversarial behaviour toward neighbours creates wounds that take a long time to heal.
Like Brazil, Turkey, as an emerging power, wants a greater say in world affairs whereas the current world order is run by institutions and actors that reflect the power relationships of the immediate post-World War II era. It seems that Turkey's policies regarding Iran can be explained better by "love yourself" than by "love thy neighbour".
http://www.ipsnews.net/columns.asp?idnews=51764
Can't they think of any better contributions to humanity as a basis for pride?
This is very sad.
But Turkey as we see it now wants to be a member of NATO, humiliator of the US, a member of the EU, the primus inter pares of Turkic Central Asia, an examplar of free market capitalism, the defender of Sunni Sharia' government in HAMAS, a military ally of Israel, the smasher of Israel, champion of theocratic and repressive Iran, a defender of civil universalism, a defender of Turkic particularism, a supporter of national self-determination, a destroyer of Kurdish self-determination even in other countries, a bastion of free speech and modernism and the policeman of language control and censor of history.
Bridge all that, Turkey, and more power to you, (really, not joking) but maybe you want to organize your own house very very carefully before you step on the gas.
By the way, this was a very interesting article. In fact, it is one of the best articles I have ever read on the Huffington Post. Thanks, Michael.
Like the nation states prefer to call the opposing activists as terrorists, the colonialists prefer to call the rebels as Islamic terrorists.
Fact of matter are, it's only Iran which have historical and cultural influence in a region which is filled from Moslems, Mithras, Hindus, Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians and anything and every ethnic groups in between way before they even existed and no other nation can claim that!
Beside, check out any recent polls on 1.2 Billions Moslem to see which country they admire more than even their own governments let along Turkish or Saudi, it's Iran which can even fill gap between Moslems and non Moslems (Armenia, China, India, etc.) since the other two don't have any non Islamic period in their resume as a functioning state!
What's particularly interesting is your point that modern Turkey and Greece have achieved a modus vivendi. No small accomplishment. However, the Cyprus issue remains outstanding.
It appears to me that the Ottoman Empire was religiously and ethnically quite pluralistic in the earlier years and to some extent, modern Turkey follows that pattern of tolerance. Much more than in many Muslim countries.
There is one point where I have a question: The article states, "The closest Islam ever got to a complete and lasting Khilafat with universal promise was with the Ottoman Sultanate."
But what about the Islamic Empire centered in Bagdad from about 800's to 1200's?
Moslem revival is a dangerous thing when its mixed with ferocious religious zeal -- it is. Following decades of aid and the transfer of technology, the Islamists no longer fear the West. Turkeys democracy was always at the barrel of a gun. Without that gun to keep Islam in place, Turkey will drift back to its historical roots. The slumbering giant of radical Islam has awoken. Prepare for war instead of pretending its revival is a good one.
This analysis is pathetic. Remember that Turkey would be in a different place if E.U could get its house in order.
And check your facts about why all those people never lost their language or religion during all the years of Ottoman rule. Can you say the same about Jews in Spain or Protestants in France?
Yet too many want to drag us to the past where they hold utopian fantasies (and they were fantasies)...
The colonialist elements of the west have always used religion when it suited them. Now the chicken are coming home to roost.
'The west' has been stupid before, so they should be stupid too?
"US led western colonialist attack on the Islamic world"
Ok......does that include Turkey who is a NATO member and ISAF in Afghanistan? Or Jordan, Albania, Bosnia, and the UAE who also are members of the ISAF?
Just wondering.......
Didnt they Colonize Greece, the caucuses, and the Balkans?
as well as the middle east and arabia?
You model does not apply to South America and as somebody else said the crusaders lasted 150 years. The Arabs lasted much more in Spain.
We will have to wait since we have two reference points.
There are too many loose cannons in Turkey. They have recently elected an Islamist leader and drifted sharply to the East (Religion) and away from the West (Money). As we sit here talking, travel agents around the globe are busy fielding calls from Jews and Christians cancelling their tours of Ephesus and Kusadasi. I was in Turkey last year and found it beautiful. Boatloads of people, 6,000 a clip, come ashore in Turkey now. This will stop, if it hasn't already. So when the money gets real tight, and corruption at the top prevails as it always does, won't the Turks go looking for a new form of government that re-embraces capitalism more than religion?