Why the online enthusiasm for an “Islamic NATO” in the Middle East is largely premature?
A Dividing Line
Commentators (first of all, one would like to address representatives of the Global South, but not only them), a moment please! Moderate your enthusiasm and simply think, Look a little further. Imagine the alternative: do you want the next new alliances in the world to be created on the basis of religion as well? Or rather, the question may be put this way: do you understand that many will be eager to pit one against the other and, in the process, to pursue the self-interested goal of ensuring their own security at others’ expense? Are you really prepared for that?
Look at the Middle East; a Shi’a bloc has already practically taken shape, where only a formal name is missing. In the same vein, the world may witness the emergence of international military organizations of radical Catholics and/or Protestants (plenty will be willing, as EU migration policy has driven many to the edge), an international union of radicals based on some marginal militant current in Buddhism mixed with martial arts, and international unions of pagans of every kind will follow. How is that for a thought?
And then what? In effect, every representative of the Global South adding to the enthusiasm for the “Islamic pact” is moving precisely in that direction, pulling after him those who until recently still retained a more or less rational view of life, where religion remains at home, within the family circle, or in the church/mosque/holy place, but not at the table of international negotiations and military agreements. What one believes in is a deeply personal matter; to raise it on the banners of international politics and, what’s more, of war has been fraught in every age. Does the Global South want to return to the era of religious wars? Religions can unite people inside a family or a community, but on a global scale, when recklessly thrown around, they can just as readily divide humanity and create serious chasms.
Two Approaches and the Racist Huntington
On the one hand, these lines are natural, as we all have different cultures, beliefs, views of the world. But such a factor can be treated in two ways: either one regards it as a cultural particularity, studies it from that standpoint, and stimulates the development of history, archaeology, ethnography, cultural studies, and so forth, or one underlines this difference, emphasizes it in every possible way, and at every given opportunity. Then one may easily point and say: “here are the Shi’as, there are the Sunnis; here the military Muslims, there the military Buddhists; here the Alawites, there the Kurds.” And one may mutter in the tone of Samuel Huntington (who, despite his contribution to an operationally logical and elaborated civilizational approach that explains many processes in international relations, can nevertheless, as a person, easily be suspected of racism and fanning conflicts in a manner constantly focusing on inter-religious enmity and so beneficial to the West): “Islamic NATO, Islamic military infrastructure, Islamic response to the United States…” As some may remember, people once muttered about an “Islamic nuclear bomb” in the same way.
Followers of the Muslim faith like to say that “Islam is a peaceful religion.” What about in the case at hand? Or is “this different”? People normally unite against an aggressor, against a danger, but in no way on the basis of religious division. It even makes one question how a military alliance created with such intentions can last. Should a difference of opinion arise over some religious detail among the countries that have joined in an alliance “against all on the basis of religion,” then that shall be the end of it. If commonality is fanatically cultivated, the “us-versus-them” aggression will, first of all, spill over onto former brothers-in-arms. Then we will be left with a religious conflict, a fratricidal massacre fueled by religious hatred.
Moreover, such an organization is limited and discriminatory from the get-go. Can it be expanded to the Mediterranean zone, where one finds Christianity? Can the Shi’a Iran be invited? As a foundation for international systems of collective security, a religious undercurrent simply does not work. It is an eternal pretext for conflicts if mishandled, but a productive and long-term factor for international mutual understanding and unification? Please.
The Future of International Organizations
But what, then, despite all our cultural differences, can truly unite people and states? Let us take a look at history (though nobody ever learns from it). Truly deep foundations for unification are laid not along dividing lines but along constructive ones. Saying, “our organization is an organization of military pagans, and that is what distinguishes it from all others!” is by no means a sound basis. Take the USSR; until it was destroyed by the colossal efforts of external enemies and by the internal traitors hired by them (who were not hanged in time), it succeeded in the impossible, namely uniting different cultures and societies for the construction of an economy unmatched in power and resilience, of military strength and, most importantly, of a human being of a new type, a single community of the “Soviet people” with high ideals, high morality, education and upbringing.
Within the framework of BRICS and the SCO, it would never occur to anyone to plunge themselves into any inter-religious thickets or to pit parties against one another. The goals of these platforms are entirely different, including economic development, security, transport interconnectivity and joint work toward their achievement. If something is created on the foundation of dividing lines, just look for who benefits. One need not go far! Paradoxically, even Israel benefits from the existence of anti-Israeli organizations, as it gives the state an excuse to arm itself still more, provoke its neighbors, make use of US resources and concoct diplomatic maneuvers to turn blocs (Shi’as and Sunnis) against one another. What of the Kurdish question? Is it not the United States and Israel who twist it as they please, cultivating inter-religious hatred around it in the Middle East and parasitizing upon it?
From geopolitics and conflict studies we know that the most serious, practically irresolvable conflict is not over territories, resources or power, but is a conflict of ideas. Ideas treacherously mixed with the deeply personal – religion and psychology – are capable of zombifying a person and turning him into a rightless instrument of politics. Religious fundamentalists make use of this. They instrumentalize psychological processing for the sake of their own undivided power, turning those who have listened to their sermons into brainless fanatics ready to blow themselves up in order to kill the “infidel.” Now, excessively warlike states, it seems, are beginning to play with this conflict of ideas. Perhaps they have no place else to channel their human potential and want to direct it not toward creation, education, scientific discovery, development, building a knowledge economy, but toward turning people against their neighbors out of religious hatred.
Humanity has a great many dividing lines. Must the countries of the Global South, already exhausted in history by the colonial period and by endless wars, create yet another one? Or is there, perhaps, still time to reconsider?
Ksenia Muratshina, PhD in History, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Culture Editor of “New Eastern Outlook”
Follow new articles on our Telegram channel
