By Aslam Farouk-Alli
President George W. Bush’s now infamous Baghdad media conference on the 14 December 2008 may aptly be reframed as the story of The Tyrant, The Scribe and The Flying Shoes, even though the nightmare of present-day Baghdad does not, in any way, resemble the mythical capital of One Thousand and One Nights. The Arabic literary classic relates stories of Aladdin and his flying carpet, amongst others, and offers important life lessons in the process. The events of the Bush press conference, on the other hand, tell a less romantic story, but one that is equally pregnant with significance and loaded with moral lessons, for tyrant and layperson alike!
Most accounts of the event have concentrated on the actions of the Iraqi journalist, Muntazer al-Zaidi, who could not stomach President Bush’s description of his visit as a farewell gift to the Iraqi people. In a fit of poetic rage, al-Zaidi hurled his shoes, one after the other, at the sheepish-looking American head of state, shouting, “This is a farewell kiss, you dog!” with his first throw and, “This is from the orphans, widows and those killed in Iraq” with the second flick of his wrist.
Reports have elaborated on the symbolism of the shoe insult in Arab culture, on the possible consequences for the perpetrator in the next few weeks, and on the reactions of civil society in the Arab world and in the West. Few have examined the incident in its broadest context, considering the symbolism of an event that brings together the victorious tyrant, the subjugated leader of the vanquished people and a lone protestor. This is a story that is as old as time itself, and philosophers in both the Western and Islamic traditions have had much to say about it. In its most basic form, the story portrays two perennial expressions of the human condition in situations of conflict: that of submission and that of resistance. Both these expressions have been influential in shaping conceptions of a philosophy of history that attempt to make sense of human destiny.
The 19th century German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) argued that history needs to be understood in terms of a struggle for recognition. In his Phenomenology of Mind, Hegel portrays the mortal struggle between two individuals, a fight to the death by the prototypic “first man”. The relationship of lordship and bondage came into being when the vanquished combatant chose to submit to a life of slavery rather than being slain. Therefore, dominance, and, ultimately, social stratification are determined by one’s attitude toward violent death.
This idea was clothed with moral justification by another German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). In On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche endeavours to uncover the historical origin and constitution of our conception of “truth”. He laments “the slave revolt in morality” that gave birth to values, expressed in religious conceptions of good and evil, or the idea of an egalitarian society. In its place, Nietzsche offers the “will to power”, where existence is liberated from ideas such as moral and spiritual enlightenment or self-preservation, and replaced by the pursuit of domination and the increase of power.
This worldview not only directed the European colonial and imperial encounters of the 19th and early 20th centuries, it also culminated in two of the bloodiest wars in human history, initiated and fought predominantly between countries of the European world who take pride in viewing themselves as “civilized”.
In spite of the more than 650,000 civilian deaths, the displacement of almost 5 million people, and an estimated price tag of $3 trillion as a consequence of the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003, President Bush still believes that progress is being made! Fortunately, the myth of “progress” – a fundamental component of the Hegelian conception of linear history – as it relates to Iraq now remains convincing to only a small, power-hungry elite.
While the Iraqi leadership may be cowering in submission, forced into that position by the sheer might of brute force, history has repeatedly proven that there will always be someone who is willing to risk life and limb for the sake of resistance. The spirit of resistance is poignantly expressed in a tradition attributed to the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, who said that whoever witnesses a wrongdoing should strive to change it with his hand; if he is unable to, he should change it with his tongue; and, if he is unable to do even that, then he should at least attempt to change it with his heart, the last option being the weakest form of faith. In light of such wisdom, one could argue that when al-Zaidi decided to hurl his shoes at President Bush, he was merely fulfilling a religious obligation!
Michael Cook’s magisterial study called Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought provided rich elaboration on this obligation. Cook argued that this duty was unique to Islamic moral philosophy and was not encountered in other traditions in such an elaborate and well-articulated manner. He related the incident of the goldsmith of Marw in 8th century Persia, who had persistently rebuked Abu Muslim, the architect of the Abbasid revolution, and had eventually been killed for his persistence. The historical accounts of this event provide little elaboration on the reason for the goldsmith’s rebuke but make the point that he had fulfilled a moral duty by choosing to speak the truth to power.
Hegel’s conception of linear history envisaged an end of history, when society will reach its apogee and civilization will be completed. However, the process of “civilization” has tended to favour the few over the many, and the desire to achieve power has not been able to bend the human spirit, in spite of the genocidal attempts by those who have attained to power.
The Arab father of modern sociology, Abd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), offers an alternative to Hegel’s philosophy of history. Ibn Khaldun aphoristically wrote that “civilization is detrimental to societal development”. This unique insight emerged from the realisation that the material affluence required to promote the pursuit of progress and development of civilization would always be the exclusive preserve of powerful elites. Inevitably, the amassing of great fortunes by these elites is accompanied by the desire to maintain exclusive rights over such wealth, and, as such, the masses will always be left out in the cold. On the basis of this analysis, Ibn Khaldun argued that the course of history was a cyclical process. Powerful civilizations reach a peak, but ultimately collapse because the path to power leaves too many stranded along the way.
If we were to consider President Bush’s “flying shoes” media conference as part of the broader canvas of history, then al-Zaidi’s act of defiance may perhaps represent another turning of the historical cycle. The paradigm of forced submission has, ultimately, to give in to the paradigm of resistance because in a world still fully engrossed in the process of relativizing all truths, such a rare certainty as the inevitability of resistance seems to be humanity’s only hope.
* Aslam Farouk-Alli is a Research Associate of the Afro-Middle East Centre
