Islam and the Modern Middle East

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IT IS related that Abdul Malik ibn Merwan was reading the Koran when he received news of his succession as ruler of the Arab Empire (A.D. 685). Closing the sacred book, he said regretfully, "This means a parting between me and thee!"

Thus early, if apocryphally, did Muslims discover that the demands of their faith and the necessities of practical affairs might stand in conflict. Many times in subsequent generations this lesson was repeated. In every age and area, the role of Islam has been affected by contemporary political movements, national policies, economic needs and cultural patterns. An eminent Muslim scholar has said that Islamic history can only be understood as a constant tension between the "ruling institution" (politics, economics, society) and the "religious institution" (law, theology, savants).

This tension is particularly acute in the Middle East today. The same forces of modernity that have reshaped our Western world are invading Muslim lands and society. But the rate of invasion is vastly accelerated; changes with which the West made its peace through four centuries of adjustment have been compressed in the East into a scant century and a half. The result has been an explosive dislocation of the old ways that augurs a "parting" from traditional Islam far more radical than anything that has gone on in the past. There is both pathos and penetration in the words of a young Muslim scholar who wrote at the beginning of the twentieth century, "The days have cast us, together with our religion and our honor, into a field with ravenous lions."

It is therefore understandable that many observers predict the rapid decay of Islamic influence in the Middle East. Yet, though the evidence of the practical impotency of traditional religion in many current affairs is unmistakable, this conclusion is unwarranted--at least as a generalization. Throughout its history, Islam has been in constant interplay with the processes of society and the result has been a working compromise between Muslim and non-Muslim elements that reflects the conditions and needs of each era. To say that Islam is changing its role today is not necessarily to say that it is on the verge of disappearing--only that one more compromise is taking place, the final form of which cannot yet be determined...