Islam's geopolitics as a morality tale

Throughout history, the rise and fall of civilisations has been freighted with meaning, usually the favour or disfavour of the gods, or more recently, the superiority or inferiority of cultures. The relative decline in power and reach of the Islamic world since the Middle Ages is no exception. Many Islamic thinkers have tended to blame the soiling of the purity of Islamic practice as the root of the decline. Christian societies, on the other side, have tended to view their rise as a vindication of Christian theology or, more recently, as a proof of the superiority of their own culture. Geopolitics are read as a morality tale.

In fact, the role of culture in the relative decline of the Islamic world is vastly overrated. The difficulties in Islamic societies have more to do with geopolitics and geography than with any unbridgeable differences with the west. The chances for melioration are better as a consequence.

Islam was both made and undone in part by its geography. The Christian-Islamic divide is also an ecological divide, between the temperate zone of Christian Europe, and the encroaching aridity (desert and steppes) of the Middle East, Islamic north Africa and central Asia.

When Islam was in the ascendancy in 800 AD, the populations of Islamic and Christian European lands were about equal, at roughly 30m each. The Islamic lands boasted many of the world's largest and most dynamic trading cities. There were 13 Islamic cities of more than 50,000 people, including Alexandria, Baghdad, Cairo (Fostat), and Mecca. Western Europe had only Rome.

Over the course of centuries, the demographic balance shifted decisively in Europe's favour. Europe not only regrouped politically under a more stable feudal structure, but also developed technologies such as the moldboard plough to farm the heavy soils of the northern European forests. Its population grew sharply after 1000 AD, reaching 100m by 1600. Islamic societies, by contrast, were hemmed in by aridity and lack of resources such as forests for timber and firewood. Their population remained nearly unchanged for centuries, increasing sharply towards the end of the 19th century with the advent of the industrial revolution and the technologies that it brought. The temperate-zone Turkic lands did somewhat better demographically than the Arabic desert regions, and not coincidentally the Islamic leadership passed from Arabia to the temperate-based Ottoman Empire.

Outnumbered, Islam was also outmanoeuvred, especially by Vasco da Gama, who found the sea route around Africa to Asia, thereby connecting Europe and Asia through oceanic trade that entirely bypassed the Silk Road and Red Sea routes of central Asia and the Middle East. Islamic control over Indian ocean trade similarly fell to superior European naval power. And by the time the Suez Canal restored trade through the Red Sea in 1869, it was too late for Islam. Europe had already won, and would assert control over the Suez Canal and the associated ocean-based trade through military occupation and financial control.

By 1900, at the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Europe had coal, hydro power, timber, and iron ore. The Islamic countries had few stocks of these 19th-century necessities for industrialisation. The oil fields were discovered and exploited only after the Europeans had seized colonial control.

By the 20th century, then, the Islamic countries had lost control over trade routes, primary commodities such as oil and even sovereignty itself in much of the region. The European powers taught few lessons of the bounties of open society. The British and French empires schemed and stole, and ran their colonies for the economic and military advantage of the metropole. Local threats, such as the commercially oriented Hashemites of the Arabian peninsula, were suppressed in favour of more malleable groups.

When political independence came again, as in Egypt in the 1950s, many Arab leaders chose poorly. Regarding the west as a threat, in line with centuries of experience, they aimed for autarkic development or for socialism linked to the flawed Soviet model. These choices are understandable in historical terms, if no less disastrous economically. Only in the last 20 years did some of these countries begin important and promising economic reforms, often linked to trade deals with Europe and the US.

The long, sorry story has led to grotesque mythologies on both sides of the divide. Many in the west believe that Islamic societies are hopelessly retrograde, stuck in 7th century idylls, and incapable of joining the modern world despite the impressive institutional and economic performance of countries ranging from Tunisia to Turkey to Malaysia, or more recent economic reforms in Egypt and Jordan. By misreading the decline of Islam as a morality story rather than one of demography and geopolitics, they fuel misunderstanding, condescension and bigotry.

The small proportion of Islamic fundamentalists believe that internal cleansing of society will restore a golden age, not understanding that technology, demography and geopolitics have changed since the day when Islamic cities were the crown of global civilisation. Yet Islam's military defeat and manipulation by western powers remains a powerful fuel of such millenarian sentiments.

Solutions to the current crisis must start by re-thinking the boundaries of Islam and Christianity as open borders rather than military divides, and by the US and Europe regarding the Islamic world as more than the oil in the Persian Gulf and central Asia to be manipulated for economic gain. By objective standards, Islam's cities are not part of the global network of trade, ideas, technologies, and cultures. This must change. Amman, Damascus, Tunis, Cairo, Alexandria, and Tehran need to be connected with London, Paris, Boston - and yes, Tel Aviv - in intellectual exchanges, academic conferences, sporting events, foreign investment and trade.

US and European trade policies should accommodate these shifts by admitting Turkey into the European Union and by extending favourable trade arrangements to other countries of the Middle East. It is the networks of civil society that in the end will overcome the centuries of war, distrust, and manipulation by the dominant western powers.

There are, of course, reactionaries in the Islamic countries who will fight this, as there are bigots in the west who will sneer. But the vast majority of scientists, businessmen, artists, and the rest who stand in the middle will be eager for such connections, knowing that they will bring to the fore the best in both civilisations.

The writer is director of the Centre for International Development at Harvard University Copyright Financial Times Limited 2001. All Rights Reserved.