The Companions of the Prophet, Al-Muhajirun and Al-Ansar– the early and latter converts – and the early days of Islam are all matters that are strongly present in Arab life. They occupy a central position in its present in such a way that it almost appears as though the main battle of the Arabs revolves around them, their deeds, their legacy, and their shrines. Saddam Hussein, Iraq's erstwhile ‘secular' and ‘modernist' president, went too far in this regard, and together with his nemesis Ayatollah Khomeini, they drew extensively on the sacred past, albeit in diametrically opposed directions. Khomeini in fact founded his entire revolution and republic on the basis of the “legitimacy" of breaking away with modernity and returning to what history had settled upon hundreds of years ago. However, the Iraq-Iran conflict, which culminated in a war in the 1980s, bore witness to the extent at which the two authoritarian governments in Baghdad and Tehran had controlled the elements of this dispute and its direction. But with the rise of al-Qaeda and its ilk, the same dispute was devolved to the individual sects and the groups that represent them, as the omens of the fast approaching fragmentation in the Arab Middle East began to appear and multiply. Indeed, al-Qaeda and its ilk played the biggest role in this ‘revival' that summoned the past, with unrestrained moral absolutism, to the heart of the present, full with its names, symbols, and shrines. In the meantime, those who were not known to be fanatics over this direction, such as the Syrian Baathists and their regime, did not try to oppose this tide or develop an alternative worldview that would keep pace with our times, even if in small measure. At the same time, the regimes, as well as the groups mentioned above, were wagering on this fusion between ‘the people,' the past and the ‘heritage' against the foreign enemy. This way, the rehashing of old worldviews became a necessary pre-condition of the battle (against 'colonization,' 'imperialism,' 'infidels,' 'Jews,' 'Zionists,' or 'international Arrogance'). But in reality, that fusion only contributed to fuelling the fragmentation of the region's communities, which already had many reasons for fragmentation to begin with, in our Arab Middle East. Ultimately, our political discourse shed almost everything except two themes: Religion, in an interpretation that harkens back to bygone times; and a system centered on kinship and its extension in sectarian-ethnic bonds. The first theme is widely advertised, and the authorities invoke it whenever needed. At the same time, this theme is also a refuge for oppositions in countering the tyranny of those authorities. The second, meanwhile, is ever present in our actions, in the ordering of our societies, and in defining our aspirations, and is often exploited (just like nationalist fervor before it) to provide a cover and a justification for primordial affinities. In parallel, efforts were made to render Islam in the image of its pristine, early self. In this context, the Ummayad and Abbasid civilizations, and their achievements in the domains of ideas, sciences, literature, culture, critical thinking, translation, and even luxury and consumption, have only received interest from a number of orientalists, whom we have met only with scorn. The populist political ideas that we embraced all urged us to shun the manifestations of social stratification, “ostentatiousness," and the mixing with “foreigners." Islam became poorer as it was interpreted exclusively from the prism of its early iteration, and the ‘Rightly-Guided' epoch during which the Muslims lived alone with little social differentiation in a simple, two-dimensional world. This is a bleak portrait indeed. But it is unfair and even ill-intentioned to blame this on the Syrian revolution alone, albeit it is important to criticize the fact that this line of thinking is blighting the revolution. Does fairness and integrity not require us to assign blame as such, and appropriately?
