The Idea of Tradition in the Middle East

‘Life comes and goes, mankind is no different from animalkind. We lay and roll, like the village headman's horse, and so spend our lives. We were born here. We got sick here. We grew up, got married, dried out and rotted, and we are still here. One day we shall not be able to walk or even to rot, and will still be here. It seems that there is something that keeps me here. Even if there were not anything that kept me here, I still could not go. If you go by that mountain, another mountain comes into sight, and I don't know what is beyond it. My wives don't, either.’¹

The problem is rather whose idea of tradition. For the concept is not only used to denote ahistoricity, it not only absorbs the vicissitudes of time, but in the hands of some it becomes part of cultural time. It becomes the 'them' of Us and Them, it becomes the 'then' of Now and Then — although even here remains an ambiguity when those who use it thus themselves stand in the same relationship to yet another 'us'. And neither is this to suggest tripartite relationship. For what from the viewpoint of one of the parties seems to be consistency on the part of the others, will on closer inspection turn out to be perhaps an even greater 'diversity'. And neither will the boundaries between them seem so clear.

In the first place, as part of cultural time, it is used by 'Westerners' (I use this term with caution and without implying a bounded entity — merely as a useful paraphrase) to distinguish what is perceived as two different ways of life. In general, the 'traditional' life is that situated in the past and which 'looks' back, that which is out-of-date and which impedes the survival of something called civilisation or development or modernity, yet at the same time it denotes that which is changeless and which is regular: That which is secure against the turbulence of modern times. Another meaning, that of tradition as a code of legitimations, a model for social life, a tradition, sometimes is used within the schemes suggested above but at other times, depending on the speaker, is less to do with the past than a recreation of something which stands outside worldly time or, rather, is legitimated from outside time though its earthly manifestation is within it.
      In the first case 'tradition' becomes a quality or adjectival. We may speak of 'a traditional culture' or 'a traditional people' or 'a traditional action' (synonymous with a 'custom'). On the other hand, we 'follow a tradition' in the second sense of the word. This tradition can legitimate an action or a custom and imbue it with a sense of outside time. Tradition here is of religion or of God.
      It follows therefore than when the first usage (in whatever form) is applied to an action which for the actor is imbued with the second meaning of the term we have a conflict of time-orientations — but not only this. It can also become one of conflict of moralities, of the way things 'should' be.

This is however to dichotomise the issue perhaps a little too far. As indicated, traditional may be applied to people who themselves apply the term to others. It has been mentioned elsewhere² that cultures are themselves "arenas of interpretation" and in the same way we should not speak of one Middle or Near East but of Middle or Near Easts. It is not simply that 'intellectuals' of various loyalties and more recently, as for example in the Lebanon, political and economic bosses differentiate themselves from rural and/or poor peoples, but that even in the sense of 'a tradition' there are many interpreters with their own moral orders.
      As Gilsenan writes—

'Tradition ... is put together in all manner of different ways in contemporary conditions of crisis;  it is a term that is in fact highly variable and shifting in content. It changes, though all who use it do so to mark out truths and principles they regard as essentially unchanging. In the name of tradition many traditions are born and come into opposition with others. It becomes a language, a weapon against internal and external enemies, a refuge, an evasion, or part of the entitlement to domination and authority over others. One of the single most important elements in what is often called Islamic fundamentalism is precisely this struggle over the definition of what is the tradition. This means not only a religious interpretation but a whole form of life.'³.

And for the peasant as much as for a member of the Moslem Brotherhood the idea of tradition can be a rebellion, a statement 'born' of conflict. Although in the first case it may be more a self-conscious codification of the self-evident, and in the latter a search for or reaffirmation of a presumed Golden Age of Islam: one that existed under the Prophet and his four immediate successors. The former may refer his actions to the latter, and the latter seeks in some cases to institute some of the customs of the former.
      And then there are those 'reformists' to whom such (superficial) categorisation is less easily applied, and yet the term 'apologist' may be to misunderstand the dilemma of legitimising one's actions in terms of the ahistorical when they are seen as non-traditional in both 'peasant' and 'fundamentalist' senses.
      Here then within the Middle East are just three very rough areas of tradition, though there is still the problem of how far the classification of customs, rituals and beliefs⁴ as traditional, of tradition, or modern can be taken, given the different centres of definition and their inconsistent and shifting application.
      In Eickelman's study of Boujad, Morocco, for example, religious tradition changes with the status of the worshippers — from the elite's point of view. When the peasants move into the old town and take over the saint, the latter "for so long an inestimably vital part of prestige and legitimation, relatively swiftly becomes something that both old and new bourgeouisie regard as part of popular religion". The latter then justifying this essentially class distinction in theological terms.⁵
      Do we see customs as masking a more intrinsic reality, as a veneer upon either the old or the new relations ?  Is the resumption of the 'veil' and the seclusion of women by the migrant hiding the extension of the relations of capitalism into the relationship between the migrant and wife as well as indicating to others that he can now look after her in the 'traditional' manner ?  Is the apparent freedom of choice in elections an example of a modern innovation when at the same time it reinforces village factionalism along 'traditional' kinship lines ?⁶  In trying to convince others that one faction in the same village in Tunisia were not of higher but of equal status to his own, an educated man disproved the former's relationship to the local saint from whom it derived its privileges. Such action was part of the 'rational' self, according to Abu-Zahra, since in the past such questioning of the descent was not made. Yet at the same time while "trying to refute the Zawya people's prestige, (the person concerned) believes in their capacity to exorcise the jinn".⁷  Thus modern analysis is produced when the occasion demands it.

Since much of what has been said above begs the question of what actually constitutes modern-tradition for the speakers, I will look at three sets of those who, in general, subscribe to the Western cultural time view of tradition:  the Middle Easterner, some anthropologists, and the 'developer'.
      As has been suggested, self-conscious tradition in this sense may rise from a confrontation of sorts between the imposition of a certain order of things and the self-evident: in effect, the imposition through development or modernisation of the life-style and social structure of North American and European society, sometimes known as 'Westernisation'.
      Thus those facets of life which are discontinuous with Western culture become the points about which self and other contrast themselves and, in Western language, where modern stands in relation to traditional. And where the line of change in historical time is drawn.

      Change, for development Westerners is affecting all parts of the Middle Eastern world through migration to the cities and factory life, new agricultural technology, increase in communication, education, emergence of national states, new political forms, Western secular legal codes, use of science and technology in building industry and in medical care.⁸ Above all it is seen in the new secularisation where although the educated may believe in God, he does not "prompt every physical and social event".⁹
      Family law has come under pressure¹⁰ and women in Turkey, for example, are said to have become more emancipated — the transition to multiparty system gives them more responsibility; urbanisation, industrialisation, and other legal changes precipitating this change.¹¹
      Development as a Western concept encompasses the idea of a rise in the gross national product, a formal graded education system and universal literacy, nation building, democracy, rational administration, mass participation, nuclear family, individual responsibility, low fertility rate, social mobility, achieved statuses and equality between the two genders. Approaches to development have varied — stressing legal formal, economic, administrative, political or cultural avenues to achieve its goal.¹²
      This aim is, in effect, to draw any other 'system' into what constitutes Western civilisation: ultimately defined by its insistence on rational calculation — both in its economic system and its way of thinking. Both of which demand the above changes. That all societies would 'progress' towards this if there were no impediments is not doubted by some. And some see the active participation of man in this process a continuation of the notion of the responsible Christian stewardship of nature combined with evolutionism — that present conditions demand that societies change in order to survive and succeed, and that the epitome of social survival and success is found in the modern industrial system.¹³
      From another perspective, development and modernisation can only help profit the indigenous elites and Western capitalists.

      But the modern idea of development is not the only way that Westernisation has been conceived. In Turkey, the Levant, and Egypt from the 18th century, elements of Western culture were introduced which included the printing press and military methods in Turkey. But not until the beginning of the 19th century did the country see the rise of nationalist-separatist movements. Under Mahmud II's reign the official distinction between wordly and religious affairs with the institution of Turkish penal codes outside the Şeriat and the absence of council to advise him on religious affairs. Reforms of dress and education were limited to the army and new intellectual class however. Isolated writings proclaimed ideas of liberty and progress and technological advance as a result of Western greatness although, while occasional industrial exploitation developed from the 1880s, Turkey politically proclaimed anti-Westernism. By the First World War state and religion had been effectively separated and the identity of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey's links with the West only settled ostensibly when Mustafa Kemal established power.¹⁴  Relations with Islam varied. Extreme nationalists blamed the downfall of the Turks on the "'dead hand of Islam'", others wanted to Turkify it. Ataturk saw it "more important to resemble the Europeans, as the most 'advanced' nations of the world and the admired bearers of 'civilisation'..."¹⁵ — yet his reforms in the case of women only affected a privileged urban elite.¹⁶
      Likewise in the Levant and Egypt an educated elite, separate from the ulema arose. Their sometimes uneasy relationships with the ruling circles prompted them to travel and form groups with common aims. Some were for pan-Islamic unity, others of literary orientation and nationalist agitation.¹⁷  Those Moslems who did look to the West without desiring for secularisation saw it as a source of technical progress. Mohammed Abduh (1849-1905) approved of this and the diversification of political institutions, but suggested the balancing of this with social justice, family structure, and a "strong social fabric, all through belief in and the worship of God".¹⁸  The difference later with Christians and Muslim reformists was that while they both condemned materialism in the West the Christians saw change as a fact and espoused Social Darwinian ideas where it is the best man who wins. Science was the only way to progress for some of them.¹⁹

      While the turning moment for West-Middle East relations on the developers modern-traditional continuum may be said to lie somewhere in the region of rational economics — for the early Arab intellectuals it seems less to have concerned money and power than rational education and attitude.
      Due to modernisation in Turkey the upper class were still part of the same society but were assumed to know more than the villager.²⁰  With Westernised education the 'gap' between them changes its nature — two societies begin to emerge. The educated man antagonises the villager with his impious ways. Education should mean greater piety and knowledge but secular education does not seem to provide this.²¹  Conversely the educated see the villagers as ignorant and bigoted and misleading in their information to the outside world about them.²²  Intellectuals in Turkish literature saw themselves as spokesmen for the whole of society and responsible to provide "enlightened leadership" and help for the villager. During the 1930s they discussed the wretchedness and illiteracy of the peasant,²³ his fatalism and his passivity.²⁴
      On the other hand, the more religious minded poetry attacked inequality but decried the loss of morality (eg, through the seclusion of women) and the disregard for Islamic Law.²⁵  At the end of the 19th century in Egypt Abduh had too forewarned of the loosening of family ties and materialism on relations between relatives, the family bonds were crumbling and the roots of society being cut off.²⁶
      During the 1950s those funding education programmes warned that education abroad might de-culturise those going through a different education system. That they would return home to find their knowledge inapplicable to the conditions there.²⁷  Doctors going out to the countryside in Middle Eastern countries would despise the villagers they were sent to and present to the latter a different knowledge system which had little relevance for them. To work amongst such backward and traditional peoples was an onerous duty to be got over with as soon as possible.²⁸  Later educated women would see their position as leading the peasant woman into emancipation, away from unhealthy habits such as circumcision and over-fertility.
      Effectively this divide is expressed in terms of rural-urban relations. Some Turkish writers saw the peasant's life as ruled by possibly pagan beliefs and "obscurantism". Those who encouraged the peasant in this view were members of religious sects, while at the same time profiting from the services they rendered him. The allusions to city dweller and countryman's attitudes to each other is a frequent theme, the peasant portrayed as the village idiot cheated by town clerks and other officials. More recently the town itself becomes the centre of provincialism, dogmatism and "ossified Islamic concepts, which make it an almost invulnerable fortress of conservatism". Women are deprived of freedom and subjected to the moral rules of Islam.²⁹
      This relationship of Islam and tradition is detailed by Sharabi in his study of Arab intellectuals, and may well say more about his own attitude than that of the former. Islamic conservatism and Islamic reformism is classed as "tradition-based thought" and characterised by a "Tendency to look backward, Salaf (predecessors), Dogmatism, Authority, Reality-transcending doctrine, Teleological orientation of thought, Static views of social values, and Permanence of truth."  These compare with looking forward, "Progress, Pragmatism, Science", materialism, "Dynamic views of social values", and "Relativism of truth" for those Christian Westernists and Muslim Secularists.³⁰  The difference between the reformists and the conservatists turned on the former's "rational response to the intellectual and political challenge of the West", thus "transcend(ing) the formalism and inertia of the conservatives".³¹
      Just as the teachers were the future present amongst the past — so too does Sharabi see the Christians as the "natural vanguard of change" since they were the most responsive to "the new forces".³²  Later the European comments would indicate that they too were witnesses from the future, though when the rest of the country is undergoing development it becomes a matter of "normalising" village behaviour.³³
      Education, of course, was never a leveller. The position of the Sheikhs in the Lebanese Shi'ite village described by Peters was based on learning, where the other branch of the Learned Families acquired their authority through the founding ancestor.³⁴  This, however, would be classed as 'traditional' learning, ie, to do with regular customs rather than providing knowledge which accumulated and changed with new discovery.
      It is also misleading to picture secularisation as leading to the demise of religion. By setting up an opposition it created that which it was said to have destroyed. The downfall of the ulema from high places within the Ottoman State first and Mustafa Kemal's Turkey afterwards turned a privileged religion into a mass one. Rather than a displace(ment) by laws a 'shift' in the true believer took place — religion became a language of opposition and the forces disrupting the life of the poor was seen as imposed by "unbelievers". Religion in the State's eyes was sectioned off as "traditionalism".³⁵  In the same way, villagers that Stirling spoke to saw the Turkish War of Independance as a triumph of Islam over the infidels rather than as the national victory of a secular republic" and on closer examination he realised that they used the word 'Turk' as a synonym for Muslim.³⁶  To cite the country as becoming more secular is to take the ruling version as representative of all interpretations of events, and to assume that people in a society where the demonstration of religion is not encouraged will be able to express alternative versions to outsiders.

      Anthropologists, pre-1960, in many cases subscribed to the view that villages were isolated, self-contained systems. The peasant culture was defined by its relation to the town — areas of influence and dependability differing amongst writers. For some (eg, Redfield) the main dependancy was cultural although he saw the peasant supplying the food the city needed and city returning with some product the peasant wanted. While economically he was deemed self-sufficient, money, law, education and organised religion were again derived from urban areas. Differential relations within the village with the 'outside' appear to have been ignored in many cases.
      Laura Nader³⁷ argued against these views, commenting that within Levantine society the contact between village migrants and their families is extensive, resettlement, educational institutions and the presence of the cash market broke up any isolation that may have existed sometime before.
      Quint, in his article on the Iraqi village, himself mentions that there were established links between the village members and relations in various Iraqi towns. The poverty he mentions may well be the result of the encroachment of Western capitalism, where landlords abrogate peasant rights which existed under a previous feudal system in favour of absolute property rights — as happened in Iran.³⁸
      The other theme that ran through anthropological literature in relation to traditional (rural) societies is the 'peasant view of the bad life' (F. Bailey). Here the peasant's reaction to the outsider is determined on stranger's distance from Ego. Peasants are used to 'multiplex' relationships — those with outsiders are amoral. Bailey's question is how one introduces change — via a mediator, and what about planning when the peasant sees his life without much security and attributes failure or success to "malevolence of human spirits" or luck. Innovation for the peasant derives from wickedness since while precarious his life still has a certain regularity and needs to explain any change. Time for the peasant is cyclical, rhythmic, and seasonal. Thus the summary view of the peasant is xenophobic, static and unwilling to change. Bailey however presumes that peasants are equal, and when he suggests that they are impervious to change fails to consider that much buying and selling requires credit, experience, and that if traditional methods satisfy needs there is, of course, no particular reason to change. Another assumption with this view, is that all members of a village will have 'equal' relations with the outside world.
      A number of these concepts turn up in Antoun's analysis of why, given a new economic differentiation (which still leaves the agricultural half of the village marking time in the fields to the seasons with monotonous regularity), the egalitarian ethic and conservatism still maintains. Antoun's answer is that Islam is responsible. Islam prompts the custom of slaughtering a sheep for the visitor passing through the village: thus bestowing honour upon it. So through investment in sheep and the subsequent status accumulation wealth is dispersed. The existance of multiplex relationships contrasts with that of the single-strand kept for government employees and schoolteachers. The former frequently getting frustrated when things are not done.
      In order to explain why traditional behaviour is maintained outside the village, Antoun sees social control as spreading beyond village boundaries since even those in the army depend on relations back home for possible marriage partners. But for those who wish to continue their town life, polygamy provides the answer where they can leave their non-literate wife behind at home and marry someone more in keeping with their 'modern' lifestyle, ie, an educated woman.³⁹
      Certainly in two of the situations that Antoun mentions we are left uncertain as to the actual status of the actions that he sees a part of the ever-present conservatism. Is the sheep slaughtering merely a 'traditional' gesture, legitimated by reference to Islam? Is 'polygamy' yet another useful social institution which enables the husband to continue on with a modern life? For the 'actors', it appears less that they belong to one life or another — as Antoun seems to suggest — than a use of available institutions to deal with the 'life-situation'.

      Others were less circumspect than Antoun. Tradition was a state of conservatism, a "clinging" to the ways of earlier generations. It displayed a "regularity", where life in Egypt was "determined to a great extent by the behaviour of the river itself."⁴⁰
      One anthropologist visiting what he carefully describes as being a very isolated village in Iraq comments that —

"...one might well believe that time itself had gotten turned around and that he had somehow returned to some remote period before the birth of Christ. He would see the scantily-clad, brown skinned peasants stooped over their rice.... This was grain threshed 5,000 years ago.... The visitor would neither see nor hear any manifestation of our 20th century and its raucous technology."  Village technology is "reminiscent of models found in the tombs at ancient Ur and Babylon.... And, only as the sun set, would he realise that he was still in the 20th century."

— and that was then they brought out the aluminium pots.⁴¹
      In general this kind of anthropological viewpoint suggested the stability of certain institutions like marriage, the extended family, the kinship system and the informal methods of control.
      Tradition was order and rules — problems that the traditional person faced were usually the ones which were "faced and solved in the past". The villager had little to decide — the "traditional patterns" had already been set, unless he wished to "risk censure". Regularity thus pervaded every breath he breathed, as did the categorical norm.
      His conformism hampered progress — he was incapable of independent decision where modern development and political institutions demanded public responsibility, initiative and 'grass-roots' democracy.

      But if these anthropologists' versions of tradition oscillated between an almost idyllic version of communitas and gemeinschaft preserved from 2,000 years ago in comparison with the Brave New World, and one of rule-bound behaviour, it compared favourably with that of the moderniser-developer-seculariser. For this person it was a world of impedimenta enshrined in certain institutions which were all surface and no depth: no symbols nor ambiguity. Village social systems were described as "archaic", having a "deep traditional basis"⁴², and village ways were "stereotyped". Rural differences were historical and cultural "survivals"⁴³.  The peasant reacted to situations, was "conformist" and "predictable".⁴⁴  In all, he was suspicious and averse to change.
      Tradition was clung to with a "tenacity" and provided a "cultural wall",⁴⁵ "...(O)ld traditions die hard", and customs and habits were "so inbred in some of the older women that they cannot understand why they should change".⁴⁶  With the assumption that man was rational and could only move towards the most virtuous state (ie, Western) it was suggested that either culture or Islam, or Islam giving value to culture or custom, was holding back what should have been inevitable progress.⁴⁷  For example, in the case of female circumcision ahadith in favour of sunna circumcision is frequently quoted according to Assaad. Circumcision, it is said, protects female modesty and chastity. "Traditionalists" should be told that the female is not going to develop masculine characteristics if she is not circumcised and therefore have her chances of marriage jeopardised.⁴⁸
      Given that indices were unquestionable signs of modernisation, upper class educated women were defined thus. Since they were in some places subject to purdah, this must be due to Islam.⁴⁹  Moslems shared "important fatalistic themes" with other religions which stopped them consciously trying to control fertility or reduce illness or postpone death. While these attitudes were found in many traditional societies it was the "tenacity with which old beliefs and practices are maintained by Moslems and influence life today".
      Why?  Modernism was associated with Christianity and gave rise to conflict. Islam was also an undemanding religion — conformity to practices was the most important facet of it: marriage institutions, sexuality and the subordination of women.⁵⁰ More diplomatic statements give precedence to the peasant side of the Middle Easterner, fatalism resulted from too little control over his livelihood and persistent bad luck.⁵¹

      For those outside the field it may seem, by the number of apparent European-code type laws which are passed, that the essential bastions of Islamic traditional society are being eroded. For example, in Kuweit women can marry the man of her choice, and seek divorce through a court of law.⁵²   But each country differs, and not all are as successful as Ataturk — who often failed: the moment the law banning the Arabic rendering of the Call to Prayer was abolished the latter form came straight back in.⁵³ Islamic tradition is pitted against other traditions in an attempt to secure financial benefit, as when Bourguiba argued that the struggle for economic liberation was Holy War and thus excused the workers from fasting at Ramadan — without success.⁵⁴  The downturn in economic conditions can find traditional doctrine resurrected as when a UAE federal law was drafted to ban alchohol in the Emirates.⁵⁵
      Laws banning circumcision will result in secrecy,⁵⁶ labour legislation concerning women may result in fewer being hired,⁵⁷ and laws raising the age of marriage may contain their own defeat.⁵⁸  The banning of the veil in colonialist Algeria merely led to it becoming a symbol of the oppressed since it attacked their 'centre' — women and the family.⁵⁹  And, lastly, who does one get to carry out such laws when they may well affect the position of the latter.⁶⁰
      Tapper criticises the use of indices like changing clothes-style or using the "extended family as a baseline", assuming that the emancipation of women will follow from this.⁶¹  She suggests life crisis rituals as an index since they are not under "political pressure of scrutiny" and may reflect accurately changes which have taken or are taking place in other areas of social life".⁶²  This she demonstates with reference to a wedding ritual.
      But what is of significance to us here, is the way women are singled out as epitomes of tradition. They are less literate and therefore less modern. They are not affected by business law but family law which takes longer to change. The "earlier attitudes" in the more "progressive" states are seen in low level education of Moslem women. Their situation is presented through the veil, polygamy and circumcision. They denote backwardness, the village dayah is a force to be overcome, the mother-in-law is resistance. Older women just don't apparently see the need to change. They are the bastions of tradition — though here 'low' tradition. It is the women's organisations and higher class who encourage literacy classes.⁶³
      In one way it is the men who stall her 'freedom' by saying that people will comment that he can't provide for her.⁶⁴  Shame will descend on the family through her almost inevitable sexual misbehaviour.
      But for the peasant woman herself the guarding of certain customs makes her preserver of the community and gives her a power base.⁶⁵  What is segregation and a symbol of the past for the outsider, may be a self evident future possibility of leadership for within an all female hierarchy.
      Besides which — what was this idea of progress ?  The villagers in Umm al-Nahr, Iraq, talked of progress (taqaddum) and tractors, dams and medical facilities. But they presumed progress was to be brought by a benevolent agency and which would make their lives more like that of the 'village elders'. It would effectively raise their status, since they saw the latter using development to further their own prestige which then became part of the meaning of the term for them.
      Other items like education were mixed blessings since they also destroyed the social order by disrupting the father's demand for total obedience, but to have an educated son was prestigious. And as for the educated member of the family — in the end he belonged neither to town nor to the countryside.⁶⁶
      What Westerners wanted to do, according to an old man, was to destroy the social order ordained by God — and then bring something "'which is usually worse'".⁶⁷  But, while legitimating what they did at present with reference to God — in a Turkish village they failed to use this argument when paying interest on an Agric Bank loan. And here they seemed aware that their customs did not always follow the Şeriat.⁶⁸

According to the Muslim Reformist Mohammed Abdu, the loosening of the family ties with European education and travel was like cutting off the roots of society.⁶⁹  A fervant proponant of the ijtihad, someone who fought both the 'ulema for their false innovations and the people for adopting misleading customs, he saw that the tenets of the Koran had become "distorted" through "misinterpretation and abuse". By clinging to such falsehoods the way to modernisation was being obstructed.⁷⁰  What was ostensibly different about his modernisation was that it instituted the Islamic morality. In his evolutionary scheme, first there was ignorance (without religion), then Prophethood (the introduction of religion). Then came Confusion, when a "generation becomes estranged from its religion through the passage of time and the intrusion of corruptors". But the dynamic part of society (religion) would eventually reassert itself. Religion was conservation of society and "preventing moral disintegration".⁷¹  Thus both concepts of conservation and modernisation could be placed together if the moral order was reaffirmed.
      Van Nieuwenhuijze comments that change within Islamic thought is slow and seen as decay by some. The reason for why society did not resemble the here and now of God that it should was due to this disintegration. Why it was not always perceived by people was because through constant absorption into the tradition in the issuing of new fatwas by the elite, such degeneration was hidden under a "cloak of continuity".⁷²  Traditionalism was not the same as this classicism but found its legitimation in it, and theologians did the same. Thus the result was to make reality to comply with the norm.
      Both constituting moral orders, and allowing in effect for a number of them.

¹ Fakir Baykurt 'Çilli', quoted in Karpat 1960a:153.
² R. Burghart 1983:279 & personal communication. My understanding of this idea may differ from that of its propagator. Such is the decay between origination and interpretation, object & subject & subject & object, [etc].
³ Gilsenan 1983:15
⁴ This division into customs, rituals and beliefs is, again, a pragmatic one.
⁵ Eickelman, D. (1976) Moroccan Islam: Tradition & Society in a pilgrimage center, University of Texas Press. Mentioned in Gilsenan 1983:260.
⁶ Abu-Zahra 1972:280-1.
⁷ Abu-Zahra ib:282-283.
⁸ Berger 1964.
⁹ Stirling 1958:407.
¹⁰ Caldwell 1982:111.
¹¹ Abadan-Unat 1978:305.
¹² Khoury 1976:15.
¹³ I have discussed this in greater detail in the essay 'Changing conceptions of the Other: population control and family planning discourse' (1984).
¹⁴ Berkes 1964.
¹⁵ Stirling 1958:398-401.
¹⁶ Abadan-Umat 1978:291-293.
¹⁷ Sharabi 1970:3-5.
¹⁸ Khoury 1976:5.
¹⁹ Sharaby ib:77-78.
²⁰ Stirling 1958:407.
²¹ Ibid: 407-8. See also in relation to Iraq, Quint 1958:379.
²² Stirling ib:408.
²³ Karpat 1960:31-36.
²⁴ Ibid 1960a:153.
²⁵ Ibid 1960:31-38.
²⁶ Khoury 1976:36.
²⁷ Rockefeller Foundation Annual Review, 195?.
²⁸ For example, Freidl 198?. See also a numer of editions of Middle East Health magazine.
²⁹ Karpat 1960a:158-160.
³⁰ Sharabi 1970:10.
³¹ Ibid:14.
³² Ibid:17.
³³ Middle East Magazine 1983:9.
³⁴ Peters, E.L. (1963) Aspects of Rank & Status among Muslims in a Lebanese Village, mentioned in Gilsenan 1983:62-4.
³⁵ Gilsenan 1983:43-44.
³⁶ Stirling: 1958:480.
³⁷ Nader 1965.
³⁸ Keddie 1972:367.
³⁹ Antoun 1965.
⁴⁰ Encyclopedia Brittanica Macropedia VI:460
⁴¹ Quint 1958:370-371.
⁴² Arafat 19??:400.
⁴³ Srikantan 1973.
⁴⁴ Quint ib:376.
⁴⁵ Kirk 1966:569.
⁴⁶ Middle East magazine 1978 (May):78.
⁴⁷ In the spirit of Platonic ethical determinism, given the correct knowledge with reference to the virtuous state man will, seeking this state, follow it. Should he be doing something else (the 'specious' good) it is due to ignorance.
⁴⁸ Assaad 1980:5-9.
⁴⁹ Kirk 1966:570-571.
⁵⁰ Ibid: 569.
⁵¹ People 1979:6.
⁵² Middle East, May 1978:83.
⁵³ Stirling 1958:400.
⁵⁴ New York Times (1960?) Feb 20, p.8 & Mar 1, p.9.
⁵⁵ Middle East, Nov 1977:70 — it was said to be in reaction to the end of the boom which was blamed on Western advisers.
⁵⁶ Assaad 1980:12. If the girl then hemorrhages, she will not be taken to hospital in case those who arranged it are caught and punished.
⁵⁷ Middle East, June 1983:10. Labour legislation stating daycare centres should be established for women once over a certain number are employed (for example, 100 in Egypt) will find employers only hiring up to 96 women.
⁵⁸ Momeni 1972. As in Iran where the law also allowed underage marriage on religious grounds — even if there had been an efficient vital registration system to check whether the law was carried out.
⁵⁹ Franz Fanon 1962 — quoted in Michel 1974:4.
⁶⁰ Stirling 1958:404. Local notables were used as administrative officers early on — let alone understand what was going on a central government level, he would certainly not have campaigned for the position of women.
⁶¹ cf. Arafat 19??:400-399 appears to see women in miniskirts and jeans in Cairo as a sign of modernisation rather than consumerism.
⁶² Tapper nd:2 & 5.
⁶³ Assaad 1980:5; Middle East May 1978:83; Kirk 1966:571; Middle East June 1983:12; ibid: May 1978:78.
⁶⁴ Middle East quote, June 1983:9.
⁶⁵ Bybee 1978:199-200.
⁶⁶ Quint 1958. Cf. Nader 1965:20 on affect of education.
⁶⁷ Ibid: 379.
⁶⁸ Stirling 1958:405.
⁶⁹ Khoury 1976: 36.
⁷⁰ Ibid: 1976:32.
⁷¹ Ibid: 99-100.
⁷² Van Niewwenhuijze 1971:681-90.

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