The Arab Spring uprising of 2011 is portrayed as a dawn of democracy in the region. But the revolutionaries were-and saw themselves as-heirs to a centuries-long struggle for just government and the rule of law. In Justice Interrupted we see the complex lineage of political idealism, reform, and violence that informs today's Middle East.
-
Front Matter Front Matter (pp. i-vi) -
Table of Contents Table of Contents (pp. vii-viii) -
PREFACE PREFACE (pp. ix-xi) -
[Illustrations] [Illustrations] (pp. xii-xiv) -
INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION (pp. 1-10)In 1599, an Ottoman bureaucrat named Mustafa Ali returned to Cairo with fond memories of the city he had visited a quarter century before. “But in the course of time the state of the world had changed,” he reported. “The various classes of mankind had become distressed in the matters of livelihood, and peace and order had been chased from the face of the earth.”¹ He urged the sultan to restore justice by imposing stricter Ottoman rule and Islamic law over the Land of the Nile.
Mustafa Ali uncannily detected the beginnings of fundamental change in the Middle East’s position...
-
I THE RISE OF A CONSTITUTIONAL MODEL OF JUSTICE, 1839–1920 -
1 MUSTAFA ALI: Ottoman Justice and Bureaucratic Reform 1 MUSTAFA ALI: Ottoman Justice and Bureaucratic Reform (pp. 13-36)Mustafa Ali of Gallipoli was a curmudgeonly old man. Disappointed, but not yet defeated by life, he boarded a ship in July 1599 to cross the Mediterranean from Istanbul to Egypt. His career had begun so brilliantly back home in Gallipoli, a small seaside town on the European side of the Dardanelles. As a young poet and star student from a family of religious scholars, he had won entrance at age fifteen to an imperial school in the Ottoman capital of Istanbul. Those were the glorious days of Sultan Suleyman the Lawgiver (1520–1566).
Now past his prime, at age...
-
2 TANYUS SHAHIN OF MOUNT LEBANON: Peasant Republic and Christian Rights 2 TANYUS SHAHIN OF MOUNT LEBANON: Peasant Republic and Christian Rights (pp. 37-60)In 1858, something extraordinary happened on Mount Lebanon, some 600 miles southeast of Istanbul. Christian peasants in a dozen villages united to protest against heavy taxes and brutal treatment by their landlords. They targeted the Khazin family, landowners in thirty villages, whose power was recently shaken by drought, European trade, and by political rivalries of other elite factions. As one eyewitness wrote, “Terror was instilled by the Khazin family into the people of Kisrawan. For they no longer took any account of their subjects.”¹
Revolts spread across the region that year, but this one took a different path. The peasants...
-
3 AHMAD URABI AND NAZEM AL-ISLAM KERMANI: Constitutional Justice in Egypt and Iran 3 AHMAD URABI AND NAZEM AL-ISLAM KERMANI: Constitutional Justice in Egypt and Iran (pp. 61-88)On October 29, 1882, Colonel Ahmad Urabi sat in a jail cell in Cairo and composed a testimonial for the trial for his life. Six weeks before, he had been commander of the Egyptian army and leader of a revolutionary government. The revolutionaries had stood up to Britain’s bombardment of Alexandria and declared their monarch, Tawfiq Pasha, unfit to rule. They elected a people’s government in Cairo. In September, however, British troops easily defeated Urabi’s peasant army. In his testimonial, Urabi defended himself against charges of treason:
My sole objective was the emancipation of my country and the prosperity its...
-
-
II MOVEMENTS FOR LOCAL AND COLLECTIVE MODELS OF JUSTICE, 1920–1965 -
4 HALIDE EDIB, TURKEY’S JOAN OF ARC: The Fate of Liberalism after World War I 4 HALIDE EDIB, TURKEY’S JOAN OF ARC: The Fate of Liberalism after World War I (pp. 91-116)On the afternoon of May 19, 1919, a small figure of a woman dressed in black climbed a podium in front of Istanbul’s city hall. British warplanes buzzed the crowd from above; black draperies shrouded the stage. Halide Edib, age thirty-five, looked out at the 50,000 people before her. She saw black veils, white turbans, red fezzes, a few hats, and the flowered headscarves of ordinary women. With a deep breath, she began, “Brothers, sisters, countrymen, Moslems: When the night is darkest and seems eternal, the light of dawn is nearest.”¹
The Ottoman empire had surrendered to the Allies six...
-
5 DAVID BEN-GURION AND MUSA KAZIM IN PALESTINE: Genocide and Justice for the Nation 5 DAVID BEN-GURION AND MUSA KAZIM IN PALESTINE: Genocide and Justice for the Nation (pp. 117-149)On September 7, 1915, Ohannes Pasha Kouyoumdjian arrived by train at Aleppo, Syria, and checked into the famous Baron Hotel, a favorite lodging for travelers on the Orient Express. Except for his fez, he might have been taken for a European tourist: aged fifty-seven, he dressed in a fine, long frock coat, pince-nez glasses favored by Woodrow Wilson, and goatee. Fluent in French, Ohannes was governor of Mount Lebanon, and he had just won permission for an official leave from the commander of the Ottoman Fourth Army, Jemal Pasha.
Ohannes was not on vacation. He was in flight for his...
-
6 HASAN AL-BANNA OF EGYPT: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Pursuit of Islamic Justice 6 HASAN AL-BANNA OF EGYPT: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Pursuit of Islamic Justice (pp. 150-176)On February 12, 1949, a taxi waited on a quiet boulevard in central Cairo, outside of the Young Men’s Muslim Association building. Shortly after eight o’clock, a bearded man of medium build, wearing a fez and overcoat, walked down the building’s ornate stone staircase. Just as he stepped into the cab, a black car pulled up. Two gunmen jumped out and shot him. The victim was Hasan al-Banna, the forty-two-year-old leader of the largest political movement in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). Banna was rushed to a hospital, where he died that night. The Egyptian government declared a state of...
-
7 COMRADE FAHD: The Mass Appeal of Communism in Iraq 7 COMRADE FAHD: The Mass Appeal of Communism in Iraq (pp. 177-206)It was called “Al-Wathbah” by the thousands who witnessed it. The word is inadequately translated into English as “the Leap,” as in the leap of the Iraqi people into history. In 1948, ordinary citizens rudely interrupted their prime minister’s plan to prolong Britain’s presence in their country.¹ At news of the secret Portsmouth Treaty, they flooded the streets of Baghdad. Through the month of January, crowds of 100,000 repeatedly gathered. As historian Hanna Batatu observed:
It was the social subsoil of Baghdad in revolt against hunger and unequal burdens. It was the students and the Schalchiyyah [railway] workers braving machine...
-
8 AKRAM AL-HOURANI AND THE BAATH PARTY IN SYRIA: Bringing Peasants into Politics 8 AKRAM AL-HOURANI AND THE BAATH PARTY IN SYRIA: Bringing Peasants into Politics (pp. 207-236)On a September evening in 1951 a small, wiry man stood before more than 10,000 cheering peasants in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. Akram al-Hourani, leader of the Arab Socialist Party (ASP), looked out at the banners praising him and declared:
My friends! We are weak when we are alone, but stronger than iron and fire when united! With the blood of our ancestors flowing through our hearts, we can rebel against tyranny and injustice!¹
The 1951 Syrian peasant congress “opened a new chapter in the life of the country and its future,” according to a local paper. The...
-
-
III STRUGGLES FOR JUSTICE IN THE ABSENCE OF A POLITICAL ARENA, SINCE 1965 -
9 ABU IYAD: The Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Turn to Political Violence 9 ABU IYAD: The Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Turn to Political Violence (pp. 239-274)On November 13, 1974, Yasser Arafat stepped to the podium of the General Assembly at the United Nations (UN) in New York City. As leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), he appealed for recognition of a Palestinian nation, as a step toward statehood. He ended his speech with a dare: “Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom-fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”
The speech was Arafat’s “apotheosis,” according to British journalist David Hirst. It transformed him from a renegade guerrilla into a national leader.¹ Arafat won the hearts of...
-
10 SAYYID QUTB AND ALI SHARIATI: The Idea of Islamic Revolution in Egypt and Iran 10 SAYYID QUTB AND ALI SHARIATI: The Idea of Islamic Revolution in Egypt and Iran (pp. 275-308)In December 1968, when Time magazine’s cover featured Yasser Arafat as the face of Middle Eastern revolution, two manifestos were quietly circulating for the next revolution: Islam. Sayyid Qutb published Milestones in 1964 from an Egyptian prison cell. It called for revolt against the tyranny of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Arab socialism and the establishment of an Islamic state. In Iran, Ali Shariati galvanized Mashhad University with lectures on Islam as a permanent revolution. In the capital Tehran, many read his 1968 book Islamology as a challenge to Mohammad Reza Shah’s monarchy.
These two manifestos sparked the Middle East’s Islamic revival...
-
11 WAEL GHONIM OF EGYPT: The Arab Spring and the Return of Universal Rights 11 WAEL GHONIM OF EGYPT: The Arab Spring and the Return of Universal Rights (pp. 309-336)As in Egypt in 1881 and Iran in 1906, the “Arab Spring” revolutions of 2011 began when citizens suddenly and collectively refused to accept the tyranny of their regime. Like their predecessors, the 2011 revolts soon assembled broad coalitions of political groups around a unifying demand for constitutional government. The century-old hope to gain justice through universal principles revived, but now in a vernacular deeply rooted in Middle Eastern experience.
On December 17, 2010, a street vendor in Tunisia set himself afire after a government official harassed him. For years, officials had demanded bribes and confiscated the cart he used...
-
-
CHRONOLOGY CHRONOLOGY (pp. 337-340) -
NOTES NOTES (pp. 341-393) -
FURTHER READING FURTHER READING (pp. 394-401) -
INDEX INDEX (pp. 402-418)