Unrelenting terrorism has created a global public relations nightmare for the Islamic world of West Asia. Equally, though, the right-wing American press led by Fox News and CNN has come to equate the region and its dominant religion with a dour, monochrome fundamentalism that is quite at odds with reality. This received US wisdom about Islamic culture has done as much damage to the geopolitics of the region as the suicide bombers who kill in the name of Allah.
In that sense, this book hasn’t come a moment too soon — and not just because it contradicts many of the demonising myths that have metastasise into accepted fact. The fact that it is written by an American with ground-up experience of the area adds to its significance and credibility. As the eye-catching title suggests, there’s a wide gap of perceptions.
Neil MacFarquhar was the New York Times’ Cairo bureau chief from 2001 to 2005 but has reported in the region for at least two decades. But he dates the time West Asia started “exerting a gravitation pull” on his life with a diary entry, written at age eight, on June 5, 1967: “The war started with boming in Kiro”.
MacFarquhar’s diary referred to the start of the Six-Day War between the Arabs and Israel that altered the politics and life of West Asia forever. The diary entry was made several hundred miles to the east, in Libya where his father worked in a refinery owned by Esso, then one of the world’s largest oil companies.
Growing up in a closed, expatriate township MacFarquhar recalls a happy but slightly bizarre childhood where contact with local people was mostly restricted to domestic staff. Nevertheless, those halcyon days left MacFarquhar with a resolve to return, which he did as a reporter. Unlike most Americans in the region — including diplomats and intelligence officials — MacFarquhar took the trouble to learn Arabic (the spoken version, not the formalised style that is often taught overseas), which provided him with rare access.
“Unexpected encounters in the changing Middle East” just about sums it up. His knowledge of the lingua franca meant MacFarquhar was able to interact with a wide range of personalities from political leaders, extremists, feminists, internet entrepreneurs, chefs, singers and even the proprietor of a hugely popular dial-a-sheikh service (a kind of Islamic agony aunt). In short, he has been able to go boldly where few Americans have gone before.
The result is an amusing, sympathetic but dispassionate analysis of cultures and peoples simply because he is able to acquire perspectives that go beyond the standard expat experience. His chapter on Fatwas, for instance, is one striking example. For most foreigners, the word has come to be associated with fanatical instructions issued by fire-and-brimstone Ayatollahs, mullahs and sheikhs. MacFarquhar shows how the fatwa is actually a standard rubric of daily life — not unlike the pronouncements of priests in Hindu society.
Ordinary people seek fatwas for all manner of things: from how to perform ablutions to whether men and women can travel together on work. These guidelines can be issued in excruciating detail — such as how far the hand can venture into the anal tract to distinguish between sinning and cleanliness — but are in no way binding. His photographer, for instance, found the cost of hiring two cars, one for himself and one for his female colleague, too expensive. So, he found another sheikh who issued a fatwa endorsing joint travel as within the bounds of Islamic law. “This technique is sometimes called fatwa shopping, fishing around for a religious scholar who will endorse whatever the supplicant wants,” MacFarquhar writes, adding later, “Fatwa shopping has helped breed fatwa chaos.”
On a more serious level, of course, the proliferation of the fatwa in daily life also “underscores one key problem in trying to foment any change or reform in the Middle East. There are so many competing voices, all claiming legitimacy, that it is difficult for anyone to separate fatwas rooted in a genuine desire to interpret the faith from those formulated to achieve political goals.”
Part autobiography, part reportage, the book is written in a readable and light-hearted style but the message is serious. As he writes in an extensive Epilogue: “My long years in the Middle East convinced me that there are two key flaws in the way Washington conducts itself there. First, rather than trying to convert the Arabs to American values, to the way we do things, the stress should be on human values. …The second major problem is that American foreign policy has become an extension of domestic policy. Washington tries to solve problems overseas in a way where the benefit to the politician at home matters more than what happens to the people who live with the actual consequence.” Pity this wasn’t published during the Bush presidency.
THE MEDIA RELATIONS DEPARTMENT OF HIZBOLLAH WISHES YOU A HAPPY BIRTHDAY
UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTERS IN THE CHANGING MIDDLE EAST
Neil MacFarquhar
Public Affairs Books
359pp; $26.95