 |
| Volume XIV, Summer 2007, Number 2 |
| |
BOOK REVIEW
|
| |
|
| |
Cities of God and Nationalism: Mecca, Jerusalem, and Rome as Contested World Cities, by Khaldoun Samman, Boulder & London: Paradigm Publishers, 2006. Index, 249 pages. $72, hardcover.
Ghada Hashem Talhami,
D.K. Pearsons professor of politics, Lake Forest College
In this unusual study, a comparison is made between the impact of universal religions and modern nationalisms on three of the world’s greatest spiritual centers: Mecca, Jerusalem and Rome. Nationalism per se did not transform these cities, but its introduction as a modernizing phenomenon changed the lives of their communities drastically. Cities that existed until this time as demographic, cultural and religious amalgams eventually were subjected to powerful nationalist forces that reversed their rich pasts and brought them under the control of a single ethno-religious group. The repression of antiquated religious traditions is often accomplished under the pretext of targeting religious and cultural accommodation. Indeed, whenever the integration of sacred space into the modern world has been attempted, it has always been accompanied by violence. These cities shared the expression of universal religious aspirations of the “civilizational imagined communities” and boasted a more inclusive system than what is envisioned by modern secularists. Still, they found themselves caught in the contradictory concepts of nation and civilization. The very notion of identity, space and belief began to function differently when these cities proceeded to adapt to modernity. A pilgrimage to one of these cities in the past resulted in experiencing feelings that were more powerful than those generated by a visit to a national center. These cities functioned as transnational centers and nurtured transnational communities.
In some cases, a modern ideology attempted to resolve the conflicted tension between civilizational and national “imagined communities,” to borrow Benedict Anderson’s famous phrase. Zionism, for instance, based its notion of recapturing Jerusalem on a near-successful synthesis of religion and nationalism. This was largely achieved through emphasizing the particularistic elements of its patriarchal religion. Zionism does not accept the inherent contradictions in its ideology and insists on maintaining claims of legitimacy for its vision of Jerusalem as a world city and an emblem of a contemporary sacred world as well as a national capital. This contrasts with the Palestinian movement and its Muslim and Christian communities, both of which, universally extended, have been unable to bridge the gap between Jerusalem as a spiritual center and a modern national capital. In the core of these communities’ beliefs, Jerusalem is simply the property of the umma or the oikoumene.
What led to the new discourse favoring the nationalization of spiritual centers is a secular view that credits religion with a predisposition towards intolerance and violence. This view has been expressed in studies of the Islamic resurgence such as Benjamin Barber’s Jihad vs. McWorld, Bernard Lewis’s The Roots of Muslim Rage, Roger Scruton’s The West and the Rest, Robert Spencer’s Islam Unveiled and Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations. All of these ignore the visible role of self-described Zionist ideology in inflicting a narrow form of religious nationalism on the spiritual heritage of Jerusalem.
This study, written by a sociologist, attempts to correct the viewpoint that regards the spiritual past of these cities with disfavor by exposing their rich history of collective struggle with modernity. Often buried under the debris of national symbols, this struggle failed in some cases and partially succeeded in others. But nowhere was the conflict clearer than in the case of Jerusalem, which suffered further erosion of its sacred space with each succeeding hegemonic faith. The author begins with the imposition of Hellenistic rule, which used the local population’s definition of impurity and uncleanliness against the very people who invented it by impressing upon new converts the necessity of avoiding any Jewish contamination, including Palestine itself. Due largely to the influence of the Apostle Paul, a Hellenized Jew, the holy city of Jerusalem became insignificant to the Christian imagination. The Christianized cities of Antioch, Corinth, Galatia and Rome rose in significance. Basing his reading of this history largely on the work of Karen Armstrong, the author explains the changes resulting from Paul’s understanding of the resurrection of Jesus as “a revolutionary moment that theologically nullified those laws which were applicable only to Jews….”
The Muslim revolution has similarly succeeded in universalizing Mecca by using the impact of the new trade routes on the tribal and clan worlds of that city to interject its own brand of universalism into its spirit. Under the old, pre-trade solidarity system, bonds of ancestral proximity to family, clan and finally tribe were stronger than other ties. Islam rose as this system collapsed under the weight of the new economic reality, where the expansion of trade caused diverse social groups to become more useful than the clans, dislodging the older tribal institutions of Mecca. Beginning with his Constitution of Medina, Muhammad made an effort to end tribal strife and replace it with a universal loyalty to the Islamic umma (nation). According to some scholars, Muhammad devised unusual techniques to transcend pre-Islamic divisions. The ritual of prayer, for example, removed the link between the believer and his tribe by making all Muslims perform a series of identical physical actions at regular daily intervals. Thus, the umma was placed above the tribe. Muhammad then, according to the author, succeeded in “de-centering” Jerusalem by relocating the center of Islamic holiness to Arabia and ushering in the new monotheistic branch. Yet, after the Arab conquest of Jerusalem, Muslims tried to revive the monotheistic tradition of the city by building their shrine on top of the rock marking the center of the Jewish temple.
Samman’s discussion of the consolidation of Christianity at Rome following the conflict with Byzantium is both competent and very instructive. Emperor Constantine, we are told, began to advance his credentials as the representative of Christianity by convening, in 452, the Council of Calcedon, which proclaimed that Constantinople was on a par with Rome. The papacy soon became a territorial power, claiming according to the “Petrine Doctrine” that its primacy derived from the powers that Christ himself assigned to St. Peter. Samman writes that “the Papacy rested its case upon an indisputable notion that Rome was the first see, ‘indeed, an apostolic see.’” The existence of St. Peter’s tomb in Rome inspired the belief that a visceral link tied the church to heaven. Christianity in the late Middle Ages, therefore, was represented by a transnational identity. The church was placed above nations and was expressed through the institution of the papacy. Mecca experienced a similar transformation when, after the relocation of the center of temporal power north, the city remained the center of pilgrimage, a place for the spiritual sustenance of the far-flung Muslim empire. Saladin, however, reinforced the spirituality and universalism of Jerusalem by reintroducing eastern Christianity and Judaism following its recapture from the crusaders.
The coming of modernity did not augur well for these cities. Rome’s brush with nationalism actually preceded modernity: during the fourteenth century, the curia were relocated to Avignon as an act of domination by the French monarchy. The Reformation also challenged Rome by denying its sanctity. Luther claimed that a faithful Christian was one who hears the voice of God, not one who observes the church’s imagery. Rome was viewed as unworthy of a place in God’s kingdom. After the rise of Italian nationalism and attacks on the Papal States in the nineteenth century, the domain of Pope Pius IX shrank from 17,000 square miles to a few acres in the heart of the city. The pope, nevertheless, rejected a German offer to seek asylum in the Benedictine monastery in Fulda since he was moved by the memory of Avignon.
Mecca, on the other hand, lost its status as a result of the decline of its temporal patron, the Ottoman Empire. With the elimination of the institution of the caliphate at the hands of Ataturk, the Islamic world lost its institutional unity, although Mecca continued to gain in international stature. But Arab nationalism after World War I severed the Arab Islamic identity from the two holy Arabian cities. Arab nationalists wanted Mecca to remain central to their vision of the future, but only as a national symbol of the pre-Islamic age. The new colonial powers that wanted to manipulate the caliphate by anointing Sherif Hussein of Mecca as the latest caliph contributed greatly to Mecca’s loss of sanctity. The Wahhabis also took it upon themselves to purify Mecca of its Shia associations.
Much of Samman’s focus in this study remains on Jerusalem. Under the heading “Modernity and the Unraveling of Jerusalem,” he proves that this city endured one of the most violent outbreaks of modern nationalism ever seen. The flood of Jewish immigrants finally destroyed the holy city’s ancient and medieval topography that always allowed the Jewish Quarter inclusion, rather than the exclusion, of the European ghettoes. Some would claim that illegal Jewish settlements reversed the prototype of the ghetto by isolating and separating Palestinian Arab towns and villages. Samman also illustrates the disdain with which most of the European immigrants regarded the oriental character of the Old City of Jerusalem. This was amply demonstrated in a variety of ways, particularly by the destruction of the entire Moghrabi Quarter in 1967 and the removal of 123 Arab families in order to widen the plaza facing the Wailing Wall. The pressure on the city’s Arab population continued. Residents were never permitted to return to their homes in West Jerusalem; in fact, they were transformed into “resident aliens” liable to lose their residency through the rampant practice of bureaucratic cleansing. Triumphant Israeli nationalism also pursued a vigorous effort to enhance the Biblical identity of the city by authorizing extensive archeological work bound to weaken the Arab and Islamic character of the city. Ironically, Israelis were aided in this effort by Christians of the American Zionist variety, who have a stake in unearthing the remains of ancient Jerusalem.
In this thought-provoking study, Samman ably employs the methodology of comparative analysis. Although some studies- such as Paul Knox and Peter Taylor’s World Cities in a World-System (1995) and Victor Turner’s The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (1995) — have already examined the sanctity of space and the modern state, this study is distinguished by its choice of these particular cities and its emphasis on ethnic and sectarian conflict. The author is able to make his case well, largely due to his familiarity with not only historical literature, but also political and sociological theory. He makes a point of demonstrating the applicability of the theories of Benedict Anderson and Earnest Gellner to his emphasis on the destructive impact of nationalism and the revolving nature of popular identities that often impact sacred space. He is the first scholar, however, to focus on the tragic fortunes of Jerusalem’s Arab population in the context of these theories.
Reading this book is an enriching experience that will inform, challenge the imagination, and raise serious questions about the world’s responsibility to centers of universal traditions. Although the author’s comparatively minimal coverage of Mecca may be justified by the paucity of historical literature describing that city, much could have been made of the Arab and Islamic preference for the separation of administrative and religious centers. Throughout the long centuries of Arab rule, Ramleh was the administrative center of Palestine, and Jeddah and later Riyadh were seats of government. The Arabs also laid great emphasis on the duties of safeguarding their holy cities and managing their religious affairs. The Hashemite Hejazi dynasty, for instance, was delegitimized by the Saudi critique of its neglect of the Haj. This explains the current practice of referring to the Saudi monarch by his spiritual title as Khadem al-Haramein (the Servant of the Two Mosques).
|
|
