| Pitfalls,Quagmires and Quicksand This book analyses the continuing conflict between the Islamic and Western civilizations, which is one of the central issues of our time. It assumes that, like every historical process, it has antecedents and roots, and the present stage of this conflict is the culmination of past events. That rule is not specific to this conflict. All present history is the end result of all past events. Looking back upon past events in this conflict, they seem to be links in a very long chain, with beginnings lost somewhere in the primeval mists of time, where only archeologists dare to step. We can look back and see an unbroken chain of events and leaders, if we belong to the schools of von Ranke or Carlyle, or currents of history and impersonal vectors of force, if we belong to the schools of Tolstoy or Braudel.1 We are specially lucky in that we can look back on history and the further we look, the more clearly we can see the basic elements of historical processes, uncluttered by superfluous human foliage.2 There is a school of thought, inspired by the principles of von Ranke and Carlyle, asking the famous what-would-have-happened-if questions. What would have happened if Lee had won at Gettysburg, or Napoleon at Waterloo. The obvious answer should be that nothing different would have happened, as they would have lost the next battle or the battle after that. Lee was a better general than Meade, or even Grant, just as Napoleon was a better general than Wellington or Blucher, but the North was incontestably stronger than the South, and the allies were much stronger than France. The bones of the demographic bulge that carried the French armies from Spain to Moscow were spread in graves all over Europe, and this was the important factor, not Napoleon's generalship. There are nearer and much more obvious examples too. In one of the major books about history of civilizations, Jared Diamond wrote the following:3 "A familiar modern example is the narrow failure, on July 20, 1944, of the assassination attempt against Hitler and of a simultaneous uprising in Berlin. Both had been planned by Germans who were convinced that the war could not be won and who wanted to seek peace then, at the time when the eastern front between the German and Russian armies still lay mostly within Russia's borders. Hitler was wounded by a time bomb in a briefcase placed under a conference table; he might have been killed if the case had been placed slightly closer to the chair where he was sitting. It is likely that the modern map of Eastern Europe and the Cold War's course would have been slightly different if Hitler had indeed been killed and if World War II had ended then. "Less well known but even more fateful was a traffic accident in the summer of 1930, over two years before Hitler's seizure of power in Germany, when a car in which he was riding in the 'death seat', meaning the right front passenger seat, collided with a heavy trailer truck. The truck braked just in time to avoid running over Hitler's car and crushing him. Because of the degree to which Hitler's psychopathology determined Nazi policy and success, the form of an eventual World War II would probably have been quite different if the truck driver had braked one second later." It is impossible to prove the truth or the falsity of the sentences above, but logical analysis shows that none of the imaginary occurrences would have any effect on the final outcome. In July 1944 the Allies have already announced their policy of unconditional surrender. This policy was formulated to avoid the error of World War I, when the German Army was allowed to retreat, seemingly undefeated, and which gave rise to the famous 'stab-in-the-back' theory. The fact that the German Army was allowed to retreat in good order from the Western Front, later allowed the nationalistic parties, the Nazis amongst them, to claim that the German Army was not defeated, only the internal opposition prevented its victory in the war. The Allies were determined that Germany should be defeated in such a way that every German would know that it was a complete and total defeat, This is what happened at the end. The German officers who conspired to kill Hitler wanted to prevent that. It is doubtful that the Allies would have gone along with the attempt; they would have demanded unconditional surrender. As there were plenty of high-ranking officers, plus the apparatus of the SS and the various Nazi organizations, who saw the gallows at the end of the road, they would have preferred to go down fighting, and this is how it eventually happened. The second scenario, of Hitler being killed in a traffic accident and thereby changing history, is even more unlikely. Hitler was the leader of the Nazi movement, but he was not alone. If he would have been accidentally killed in 1930, there were plenty of people in the leadership who could have replaced him. In 1930 Goering was still a dashing war hero, not a caricature of his later days, Rohm was still around, and so was Gregor Strasser. The late Adolf Hitler would have been promoted to the position of patron saint of the movement, as happened to Lenin in Russia, and the leadership would have been decided in a straight fight between Goering and Rohm, e.g. between the Party and the S.A., the Sturmabteilung. The Nazi Party came to power as a result of popular enthusiasm. In the circumstances of the conditions after World War I, the early thirties in Central Europe, the economic depression, the traditions of German history etc., the personality of Hitler alone was not the decisive factor. If Hitler had been eliminated, a new 'Hitler' would have been found. The same book seems to contradict its earlier assertion by quoting Otto von Bismarck, who was a practical statesman: "The statesman's task is to hear God's footsteps marching through history, and to try to catch on His coattails as He marches past." As God is usually on the side of the bigger battalions, Bismarck's saying is really an assertion that a statesman has to act according to the vector of forces.4 It should be obvious, however, that force is always dynamic and never static. If we return to the well-known example of the Napoleonic wars, and attempt to analyze the forces on the two sides of the conflict, then we find on one side the principles of the French Revolution, the demographic preponderance of France, the generalship of Napoleon, the internal lines of communication, and last but not least, the incompetence and the unpopularity of the Old Order. The strength of the allies lay first in their domination of the seas, the strength of the English economy that could sustain the war effort, and the increasingly patriotic feeling in Spain, Germany and Russia. None of these factors were constant; they changed all the time, until they tilted the balance against the French. This book examines a historical process whose current status may be seen thus. There is a conflict between the rich West and the poor Middle East. 5The historical process and its outcome is examined in the light of just this. According to the underlying theory of this book, forces beyond human control shaped the process, and no human activity could have reversed it. Salah-ad-Din defeated the Crusaders at the Horns of Hattin, and effectively put an end to the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. If not Salah-ad-Din and the Horns of Hattin, then someone else, someplace else, would have done the same. The balance of actual power (or lack of it) demanded this and nothing could have deflected it. If feudal Europe had decided to strengthen their hold on Palestine and not abandon its outpost to wither on the stalk, then maybe the disaster of the Horns of Hattin would not have happened. But then, it would have been a different equilibrium of power. As with the Crusades, the same with larger pictures too. The destruction of the Roman Empire and the establishment of the successor nation states as it is now, shaped Europe. Sometimes one asks what would have happened if Augustus and Tiberius, would not have decided to stop the advance to set the frontier of the Empire along the banks of the Rhine and Danube. It was a sensible decision. It made for a nearly unbroken river defense from the North Sea to the Black Sea. They might have decided to set the frontier at the Elbe, or even on the Oder; it would have given them a shorter river line, maintained by less force. Would it have created a different Europe than we have now? Probably, not. The Empire might have had German Emperors, as it had Emperors from Spain, North Africa and Illyria. If the Roman Empire would have incorporated German colonies, then the names of Alaric, Theodoric, Odoacer, Genserich and Clovis would appear today not as invaders, but as Emperors from the German colonies. It would not change too much; it shouldn't be forgotten that most of Aetius's soldiers against Attila were Germans. The dissolution of Europe into nation states would have happened in any case, as it reflected the weakening of the central authority, which happened long before the destruction of the Western Roman Empire. In 395 AD, the children of Theodosius, Honorius and Arcadius divided the Roman Empire into two parts. East of the dividing line was the Eastern Roman Empire, which survived for another 1000 years. West of the dividing line was the Western Empire, which was much shorter lived. The separation did not cause changes on the ground, it only confirmed the actual situation. On one side of the line they spoke Greek and on the other they spoke Latin. The same division exists today on the ground, with Orthodox Serbia, Bulgaria, etc. on one side of the line and Catholic Croatia and Slovenia on the other. The same applies to the Middle East as well. The power center of the area was always in the North, in Iran. Sometimes, it was called Persia, sometimes Parthia, but it always dominated the region. In the 7th Century AD a merchant from a desert trading town, Mecca, caused a religious revival which united the monotheistic doctrines of the Middle East. There remained adherents of the old religions, like Jews and Monophysite Christians, but by and large the area converted to Islam. The result of it was unification of the Middle East. The new religion and the demographic bulge of the desert Arabs swept the whole area, destroying the Persian Empire and fatally weakening Byzantium. Within a few generations, power moved north, first to Syria, to the Caliphate of the Umayyads and later to Baghdad, that of the Abbasids.6 With the Abbasids the actual power returned where it had been. Historical processes are shaped by forces, over which we have not much control and not much understanding either. As the book will constantly refer to one or more of these forces, they are explained in successive pages. It should be stated here that they are examined as honestly as possible. However, political correctness is not among the constraints. The basic thesis of the book is that there were climatic changes at the end of the last Ice Age, which affected the basin of the Mediterranean, the Near East, Western Asia and Europe. It affected the whole world, but as this book is interested only in the changes wrought by that climatic occurrence in those parts of the world listed above, the other areas are disregarded. The climatic changes caused a snowballing effect, starting with the transition to agriculture, to a settled way of life and eventually to urban civilization. All these happened in the last 10,000 years. The following chapters analyze the events in chronological order, together with subjects, like myths and religions, which are part of the whole complex. The aim of these chapters, dealing in climatic changes, early agricultural settlements, urban civilizations and development of religions, is to find a direct connection between the present world order, together with its major problems, and the history of those formative years. There is one more point that should be clarified here. According to Braudel's dictum, a historian can work on three planes, events, episodes and civilizations.7 This study wishes to examine an inter-civilizational fault line, with its timescale as the whole of recorded history, or even before that, to the period when civilizations themselves were created by natural, nonhuman forces. It is a period of about ten millennia. Therefore, if the continuity of the inter-civilizational struggle is to be proved, then seemingly unrelated events in history should be compared to check whether the events fit into a pattern, as was shown with the fate of Smyrna, since its foundation until it was emptied of its Greek citizens by the hostile countryside around the town. Indeed, the timescale of such a study should be the timescale of human history as a whole. In this respect, this study wholly underwrites the principles of the school of World History, which claims that history should be examined utilizing a scale appropriate to the subject, even if it is on the scale of the whole universe.8 It is certainly not an entirely accepted practice of historical research 9. Admittedly, this method might bring oversimplification and empty generalities, but there are historical phenomena that cannot be examined and proven by any other means. To illustrate the principle, one clear example is now given below. One of the conflicts between the east, not yet Muslim, and the west, not yet fully Christian, was the case of the Monophysite sects of Christianity. They were the forerunners of the present-day Copts, Ethiopians, Syrian Jacobites and Armenians. The main stumbling block between the Monophysites and the other Christian denominations, both of the Eastern and the Western varieties10, was that the Monophysites were completely monotheistic and refused to accept the principle of the Trinity, even in a watered down form. The final break between the Monophysites and the Orthodox occurred at the Council of Ephesus, in 431 A.D., and at the Council of Chalcedon, about 20 years after that. When the Council of Ephesus recognized Mary as Theotokos, the Mother of God, the breach with Monophysites was final, Egypt and Palestine rose up in bloody demonstrations, but the town of Ephesus went wild with joy and excitement.11 Ephesus was the sacred city of Artemis, its temple was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It was built by Croesus of Lydia, burnt down in 356 B.C. by Herostratus and finally destroyed by the Goths in 262 A.D. The Ephesians, good Christians and good Greeks, that they were, identified Artemis, the virgin Goddess, with Mary, the virgin Mother of God, and they celebrated the victory of their patron Goddess. When 200 years later the Muslims, the ultimate monotheistic religion, swept over the Middle East and Asia Minor, the local Monophysites hailed them, e.g. the non-Greeks, as liberators.12 It was not the first time that the Ephesians were involved in religious conflict. When St. Paul visited Ephesus for the first time, the silversmiths complained that : "This man Paul has persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they are not gods which are made by hands, and not only is there danger that this trade of ours may come into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be made of no account, and that she will even be deposed from her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worships".13 Presumably, until the Council of Ephesus local silversmiths learned that sales of silver crosses, reliquaries and other religious objects can replace the sales of statues of Artemis. This is one example of the techniques of the extended timescale. It compared two events in a timescale of 1200 - 1500 years, that of the establishment of the Greek cult of Artemis in Ephesus, and the objection of the Eastern Christians to that cult, and the principles behind it. The following chapters analyze subjects which are indeed full of pitfalls, quagmires and quicksand. However, only by honest and impartial analysis of the reasons and the routes of mankind's civilizational development can the subject of this book, the constant feud, be properly understood and evaluated. The roots of the conflict reach very deep in time, and the following chapters intend to reach down to the very roots. Notes: |
