Is the concept of the military institution a Eurocentric one?

The modern-liberal paradigm assumes that the people who serve in any military is or should be divorced from politics. One should not have a particular allegiance, charismatic or otherwise, with their bosses or leaders. Within histories that have been written in a similar vein, the military in any non-European country is merely one of the many institutions playing catch-up with Eurocentric models of sovereignty. 

However, if we observe the history of Middle Eastern society without assuming a teleological narrative that culminates in the modern nation state, then we would possibly see that the military institution similarly did not have a smooth path toward the current model. The following sections will shift focus to scholarship of the Middle East. 

Shah Ismail I, Sheikh of the Safavi tariqa, founder of the Safavid dynasty, commander-in-chief of the Kizilbash Armies

Scholars of modernity and Islam have noted how colonialism and other factors have influenced histories of social organizations such as the ulama. There is a common method that looks for knowledge within the ulama, and historians are possibly biased in this respect, since the ulama is the institution that most resembles the current-day university. However, if one does not presume that soldiers are without a culture, then the rich history of Kurdish Alevis, Albanian Betakshis as well as Arab Shi'i tribes would be of great use for writing an alternative history of knowledge. A new method of history must review the bifurcation of "the people who fight" and "the people who study" as interlinked and criss-crossing, rather than atemporally distinct. Studies of Sufism such as the Naqshbandis have made very important contributions in this regard (see a quote on the similarities of ideas in Sufism and Shi'ism in footnote 1).

Worshippers circle the shrine of El-Sayed El-Badawi; this mawlid is considered Egypt's most famous. Tanta, Egypt, Oct 16, 2014. Mosa'ab Elshamy

The transmission of Shi'ism and affective ideas of Shi'ism in regions such as Turkey, Iran, Iraq and the Gulf cannot be told separate of its military aspect. There are serious lack of comparisons in knowledge and ideas in this respect. Current scholarship generally assumes that the ulama has a greater say in matters of Islamic theology and doctrine. The divorce of certain Islamic practices from textual knowledge has been rightly pinned on colonial intervention and the rise of the nation-state. But what role has historians played in this process of privileging the ulama as an institution of knowledge? Paradoxically, the military as a modern phenomenon has also been studied as an important site of reform. Many military personnel from the Ottoman Empire accepted European training and played a decisive role in introducing new ideas that still reverberate in modern politics. Interested readers might look into the episodes of Ottoman History Podcast that devote to this particular subject, such as Military Education and the Last Ottoman Generation and Jafar al-Askari: Modernization, Martial Discipline and Post-Ottoman Iraq. Yet "military" and "education" in some histories have taken on a modernizing narrative trend, in which there could not have been educated military personnel before the advent of European knowledge. This neglects the alternative modes of education prior to European influence and/or colonization. Modernity in some aspects were imported, but cultural memory remained attached to alternative notions of justice and war, such as jihad. In this aspect, one could delve into earlier times, or review the interwar period with an even more skeptical view of modernity.

To recover jihad from a colonial and stereotypical view of jihadis or fanatics, one must recuperate military traditions within the context of Islamic history as well. Shiism is particularly an interesting facet to look at these issues, since they have provided significant alternative concepts of jihad. Recovering different modes of military knowledge can also help us revisit the erroneous assumptions that the Middle East was hegemonically dominated by one form of Islam.  

Footnote:
1. Quote from How to Conceptualize Ottoman Sunnitization by Derin Terzioğlu

Review of "The Ba'thification of Iraq"

As a writer, the author of  The Ba'thification of Iraq (2015) can be commended for his command of Arabic political terminologies. He also has a penchant for Stalin and Nazi rants. He offers the Baath-Nazi-Commie analogies liberally in almost every chapter, which reveal his obvious ideological leanings as an advocate of the 2003 U.S. intervention. The U.S.-led post-invasion debathification process used the experience of de-nazification from the 1940s rather dogmatically, as documented by Dr. Aysegul Keskin Zeren in her 2017 work "From De-Nazification of Germany to De-Baathification of Iraq."

Published November 15th 2015 by University of Texas Press

If the author went beyond facile analogies of Stalin and Saddam, he could possibly see clearly that many strategies and slogans of the Baath Party was copied and / or adopted from the Iraqi Communist Party. The 20th century analytical theme--the party system functioned as a crucial apparatus for state formation--is lacking. The author is primarily focused on establishing the Baath Party as an exception rather than the rule.

As a historian, the author of this book stresses certain contexts out of proportion and overlooks other contexts, such as British imperialism. He portrays Ottoman political culture as faction-ridden and corrupt and uses this distortion to explain the lack of coalition building in Iraq and the demise of Abd al-Karim Qasim in the 1958 coup. Iraq seems to appear out of Oriental chaos, only to be saved. 

This author has used his privilege as an American (official) to access the Baath Party documents which have been housed in Hoover Institution Archives, courtesy of an agreement with the Iraqi Memory Foundation; the negative implications of this arrangement for the historiography of Iraq and ordinary citizens have been explained by historian Saad Eskander (http://libraryjuicepress.com/blog/?p=439).
Finally, this review could not have been possible if I did not have years of engaged readings on the functioning of the Chinese Communist Party. More cross-region comparisons should be employed for de-Orientalizing histories of the 20th century.