THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 25, January 25, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE MIDDLE EAST'S TRIBAL AFFLICTION
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
WHY IS THE ISLAMIC MIDDLE EAST SO AT ODDS WITH MODERN LIFE, LAGGARD IN EVERYTHING FROM LITERACY TO
STANDARD OF LIVING, FROM MILITARY PROWESS TO POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT? CULTURE & CONFLICT IN THE
MIDDLE EAST -- TRIBAL AUTONOMY & TYRANNICAL CENTRALISM AS THE TWO PATTERNS OF RULE THAT HISTORICALLY
HAVE DOMINATED THE MIDDLE EAST -- BALANCED OPPOSITION AS THE BASIS OF TRIBAL SELF-RULE -- RELYING ON
EXTENDED FAMILIES & AGNATES FOR PROTECTION -- THE NEGATIVE & POSITIVE EFFECTS OF AFFILIATION SOLIDARITY --
HOW THE DUAL PATTERN OF TRIBAL SELF-RULE & TYRANNICAL CENTRALISM CONTINUES TO DEFINE LIFE IN THE MIDDLE
EAST -- INDIVIDUALISM AS THE CURE FOR THE MIDDLE EASTERN REGION'S AFFLICTION
FULL STORY:
Why is the Middle East so at odds with modern life, laggard in everything from literacy to standard of living, from military
prowess to political development?
A profound new book by Dr. Philip Carl Salzman, Professor of Anthropology at McGill University, a book with the
deceptively plain title Culture and Conflict in the Middle East (Chicago: Prometheus Books, 2008), offers a bold and
original interpretation of Middle Eastern problems.
An anthropologist, Salzman begins by sketching out the two patterns of rule that historically have dominated the Middle
East: tribal autonomy and tyrannical centralism. The former pattern, he argues, is distinctive to the region and key to
understanding it. Tribal self-rule is based on what Salzman calls balanced opposition, a mechanism whereby those Middle
Easterners living in deserts, mountains, and steppes protect life and limb by relying on their extended families.
This immensely intricate and subtle system boils down to (1) each person counting on paternal relatives (called agnates)
for protection and (2) equal-sized units of agnates confronting each other. Thus, a nuclear family faces off against another
nuclear family, a clan faces a clan, and so on, up to the meta-tribal level. As the well-known Middle Eastern adage sums up
these confrontations, "I against my brother, I and my brothers against my cousins, I and my brothers and my cousins
against the world."
On the positive side, affiliation solidarity allows for a dignified independence from repressive states. Negatively, it implies
unending conflict; each group has multiple sworn enemies and feuds often carry on for generations.
Tribal autonomy has driven Middle Eastern history, as the great historian Ibn Khaldun observed over six centuries ago.
When a government faltered, large tribal confederations would form, leave their arid badlands and seize control of the cities
and agricultural lands. Having seized the state, tribes exploited their power unabashedly to forward their own interests,
cruelly exploiting their subject population, until they in turn faltered and the cycle started anew.
Salzman's tour de force lies in updating Ibn Khaldun, demonstrating how the dual pattern of tribal self-rule and tyrannical
centralism continues to define life in the Middle East, and using it to explain the region's most characteristic features, such
as autocracy, political mercilessness, and economic stagnancy. It accounts, likewise, for the war of annihilation against
Israel and, more generally, Islam's "bloody borders" – the widespread hostility toward non-Muslims.
The dual pattern even explains key aspects of Middle Eastern family life. The imperative to aggregate more agnates than
one's neighbors, Salzman argues, means developing tactics to outnumber their male progeny. This has several implications:
Marrying one's daughters to cousins, as a way for the family
to benefit from their fertility.
Practicing polygyny, so as to benefit from the fertility of
multiple women.
Scrutinizing other families' females, hoping to catch them in
an immoral act, thereby compelling their men-folk to kill them and
forfeit their fertility.
This last point suggests that balanced opposition largely accounts for the well-known Middle Eastern custom of "honor
killing," whereby brothers murder sisters, cousins murder cousins, fathers murder daughters, and sons murder mothers.
Significantly, the woman's indiscretions are tolerated within the family and lead to murders almost only when they become
known outside the family.
More broadly, balanced opposition means the Middle East lacks abstract principles by which to measure actions "against
general criteria, irrespective of the affiliation of particular actors." Instead, intense particularism requires a family member
to support a closer relative against a farther one, regardless of who may be at fault. Tribesmen and subjects, not citizens,
populate the region. That most Middle Easterners retain this us-versus-them mentality dooms universalism, the rule of law,
and constitutionalism. Trapped by these ancient patterns, Salzman writes, Middle Eastern societies "perform poorly by
most social, cultural, economic, and political criteria." As the region fails to modernize, it falls steadily further behind.
It can advance only by breaking the archaic system of affiliation solidarity. "This is possible not through the replacement
of traditional groups by newly conceived groups [such as political parties], but by the replacement of groups by
individuals." Individualism will make headway among Middle Easterners, however, only when "what they are for is more
important than whom they are against."
That fundamental change may take decades or even centuries to accomplish. But Salzman's deep analysis makes it possible
to understand the region's strange affliction and to identify its solution.
© Daniel Pipes 2008
Originally Published in the Jerusalem Post, January 24, 2008
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from the Daniel Pipes Mailing List, January 24, 2008
Article URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5412
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is the Founder and Director of the Middle East Forum,
the Founder of Campus Watch, a signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S.
Institute of Peace, a former adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the
U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and
Technology, and a former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the
University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for Front Page Magazine, the New York
Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and developments in the Middle East
have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington Post, the New York Times,
and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network television, as well as at universities and
think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on
BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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