Rishon Rishon

Three different things

One of my oldest Internet discoveries, of the ones I still cherish, is David Warren. My readers know that I quote him from time to time. What they may not guess is how eagerly I await his postings, and how disappointed I am when they don’t arrive. Of those early-discovered posts, the one that has stuck in my mind, indeed, which to me is the proverbial must-read on the Islamic world is Wrestling With Islam. It is a perspective that you’re unlikely to find anywhere else, but one which to me is not unfamiliar. A word of warning: it is exceedingly long.

I have just revisited it, and I must say it has worn well. I will now take issue with a side-point of his, which by no means devalues the whole, but which to me personally is of utmost interest:

The whole story of the Old and New Covenants can be read as one continuous attempt to escape from tribalism. As the Old Testament itself progresses, through time, one follows this development of the self-understanding of the Jewish people, who are gradually transformed from a tribal to a spiritual social order. And along this path, the commandments of the Jew's God, leads them consistently away from the "tribal gods" and the "graven images" of their ancestors, towards universal principles that go beyond the tribe. They are presented explicitly as a light to the Gentiles; as example, not precept.

We Christians believe ourselves to be completing that ancient, Jewish covenant in the new covenant of Christ, to be carrying the Jewish spiritual logic forward, in an enlargement of the chosen people to include all the elect of God, all who can see the Messiah. The Gospel message is radically anti-tribal, and the apostle Paul carries this into practice in the very cosmopolitan, urban world of late Hellenism and Rome. The whole doctrine of the Virgin Birth, quite apart from the question of its historical veracity, has the practical effect of bringing Christ into the world, and taking him out again, without leaving male blood relatives.

Islam, from its beginnings in the Koran, openly embraces precisely what the Jews and the Christians have through our histories been walking away from: the very thing we left in the desert of our own antiquity. The entire social scheme expounded in Koran and Hadiths, is in its nature neo-tribal. It is not merely built upon Arab-Bedouin tribalism, but stresses genealogy and lineage, in questions that still divide Sunni from Shia today. A whole social and military order was built up on the male blood-bond, and dependent personal relationships. And as Islam spread it attached non-Arab peoples through their own existing tribal bonds, absorbing and affiliating Berber and Turco-Mongol peoples as "Malawi", or "clients" of the Arab tribes.

… We could go on at length about the contrast in the use of such keywords; it is indeed a profoundly interesting subject. But I will leave it here with the bald statement, that in their central teachings on the social questions of "how to live and what to do", Judaism and Christianity go this way, and Islam goes that. They are not "three of a kind" but rather, "two of one kind and one of another".

Judaism, Christianity and Islam are not two of one kind and one of another, but three different things. I am not nit-picking here: they are different in precisely the way that David says two are the same. All three religions are universal, in the sense that their concern is for the entire world. In this way they profoundly anti-tribal, the essence of which, through most of human history, has been unconcern for those not of the tribe. Each of the three, however, have chosen a different path to universalism. I will not argue about the paths of Christianity and Islam. To the extent that I know those religions, I think that it is true: Christianity rejects tribalism, while Islam seeks to bring everyone into its tribe. Indeed, Christianity’s rejection of tribalism is the bedrock underlying the foundations of the western world, while Islam’s tribalism is the power propelling the jihadis of east. But Judaism has taken a third way, and like all true third ways, it is not some bland or incoherent mean (which the Greeks hold to be golden) but something else entirely.

The traditional Jewish view of the world is profoundly tribal, in the old-fashioned multiethnic sense of the word. Look in the Bible: there is nobody who does not belong to a people. It is understood that every individual is part of a nation, though it may occasionally change, it doesn’t simply disappear. Ruth 1:16 – Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God (El asher telkhi elekh uva’asher talini alin `amekh `ami velohayikh elohay). The post-Biblical tradition continues this worldview: neither are there peopleless individuals in the Talmud. Judaism universalizes this reality not by seeking to change it, but by giving it order. While not concerning itself overly much with the purpose of other peoples, beyond specifying seven commandments that all people must follow (which I will talk about some other time), it is quite specific as to the purpose of the Jews: to follow 613 commandments set down in the Torah, and as a more general mission: to be a “light unto the nations.” This leaves open the possibility of a perhaps similar (or different) purpose for other nations. Indeed, it is an article of faith that, “the righteous of all nations have a portion in the world to come” (sadiqey ha’umot yesh l’hem heleq l`olam haba’).

One of my profoundest moments of intercultural understanding came a few years ago in Taos Pueblo. It reminded me of the Old City of Jerusalem, where I was living at the time: a place where tourists come to gawk, but nevertheless a home, in this case to the Tiwa Indians. The natives recognized me immediately as a somebody, rather than an anybody. They were very curious, and asked a lot of questions, but for once I didn’t feel as if from another world. Their world was my world. They had their tribe, and I had mine, and though few of our traditions were remotely similar, the mere fact that we had any brought us together.