On Muslim identity and self-hatred

I read Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk's political novel "Snow" on the flight back. The book kind of petered out for me in the end, but I found in its pages lots of insight into the psychological, social and religious dilemmas facing the Islamic world, caught between tradition and modernity. Here's a passage in which Blue, an Islamist terrorist, tells the protagonist, a Turkish poet-journalist back from German exile, that when he himself was in Germany, he used to find one German in a crowd to focus on:

"The important thing was not what I thought of him, but what I thought he might be thinking about me. I'd try to see through his eyes and imagine what he might be thinking about my appearance, my clothes, the way I moved, my history, where I had just been and where I was going, who I was. It made me feel terrible but it became a habit. I grew used to feeling degraded and I came to understand how my brothers felt. Most of the time it's not the Europeans who belittle us. What happens when we look at them is that we belittle ourselves. When we undertake the pilgrimage, it's not just to escape the tyranny at home, but to reach the depths of our souls."

One theme of the book is how the Turks -- and presumably, many Muslims -- are caught between wanting the material progress of the West (and feeling ashamed of themselves for their material poverty and backwardness relative to the West), and defensive pride in their own culture. Let me put it another way: they imagine that the West is obsessed with them, and in looking down on them, and that Western gaze calls forth their deep insecurities. In this inner drama, some throw themselves into radical Islam as a way of escaping the psychological anxieties having to do with radical shame. They know that their societies are being left behind, and this humiliates them. Yet they can't bring themselves to give up those aspects of their culture that inhibit their material progress. Radical Islam offers them a (false) way out.

Here's a passage in which Ka, the protagonist, meets with Muhtar, a former left-wing activist college friend who reinvented himself as an Islamist politician:

"After my years as a leftist atheist, these people come as such a great relief. You should go and meet them. I'm sure you'll warm to them too."

"Do you really think so?"

"Well, for one thing, all these religious men are modest, gentle, understanding. Unlike Westernised Turks, they don't instinctively despise the common folk. They're compassionate and wounded themselves. If they got to know you, they'd like you. There would be no sharp words."

As Ka had always known, in this part of the world faith in God was not something achieved by thinking sublime thoughts and stretching one's creative powers to the limits; nor was it somethign one could do alone. Above all, it meant joining a mosque, becoming part of a community.

It emerges in the book that what these people are desperate for is a sense of meaning, of recognition, of not being alone in the world. The Islamists are so attractive because they provide all these things. Here's one character describing why a particular Islamist sheikh in the town is so influential:

"He'll speak to you and then all of a sudden he'll throw himself on the floor. He'll take some ordinary thing you said and say how wise it is. He'll insist you're a real man. Some people even think he's making fun of them at this poitn. But that's His Excellency the Sheikh's special gift. He does it so convincingly you end up believing that he really thinks what you've said is wise, and that he thinks as you do, with all his heart. He acts as if there's someone much greater inside you. After a while, you begin to see this inner beauty too, and because you have never before sensed the beauty inside yourself, you think it must be the presence of God, which makes you happy. In other words, the world becomes a beautiful place when you're near this man. And you'll love our esteemed sheikh because he's brought you to this happiness. All the while another voice whispers inside your head that this is all a game the esteemed sheikh is playing and that you are a miserable idiot. But, as far as I could figure out from what Muhtar told me, it seems you no longer have the strength to believe in that miserable idiot. You're so wretchedly unhappy that all you want is for God to save you. Now, your mind -- which knows nothing of your soul's desires -- objects a little, but not enough: you embark on the road the sheikh has shown you because it is the only road in the world that will let you stand on your own two feet. Sheikh Saadettin Efendi's greatest gift is to make the wretch sitting before him feel special; even more at one with the universe than His Excellency himself. To most men in Kars, this feel like a miracle. For they know only too well that no one in Turkey could be as wretched, poor and unsuccessful as they. So you come to believe first in the sheikh, and then in the long-forgotten teachings of your Islamic faith. Contrary to what they think in Germany, and to the pronouncements of secular intellectuals, this is no bad thing. You can become like everyone else, you can become one with the people, and, even if it's only for a short while, you can escape from unhappiness."