Clerical credentials
In times of political uncertainty, clerics take central stage. Not always usefully, writes Azmi Bishara
Identity politics in Israel has been working overtime. Its aim is to fashion a collective sense of kinship, on an ethnic or any other basis, for people with sense of communal aggravation. Identity politics is a form of political activism. It is an attempt to bring certain groups a notch or two up the social ladder. In the course of such a process, identity becomes symbolic capital, a means of rallying people behind parties speaking on their behalf. These parties proceed to manufacture communal identity, reproduce it, and draw the borders separating one group from another. The 1980s and 1990s saw the rise of several religious characters embodying a traditional oriental identity. These characters often found their audience in festivities around mausoleums, and searched for supporters among the amulet-purchasing masses. Identities were manufactured; at the centre of which resided the character of a living person, a man of piety, styled after the example of venerable rabbis -- the likes of Abu Hasira, for example.
Modern media, in its insatiable quest for imagery and myth, for epic and spectacle, for a dime-a-piece anthropological gig, would end its weekly news review with a colourful scene of such symbols, giving currency to charisma, marketing it to people as an embodiment of popular beliefs, prodding the public accept it at face value. Soon the character turns into a mythical figure, into what politicians love to have -- a photo opportunity. Silly? Even the politicians who partake of such scenes must know how silly they look. But once one of them reaches for the populist chalice, the rest are bound to follow.
Politicians would flock to receive the blessings of a Hassid or a rabbi, their supporters egging them on. No matter if the politician in question is secular. No matter if he thinks it's all a charade. He would still go along, for the totalitarianism of popular culture is unstoppable. Mass culture is merciless, more so in a society where elections polarise the nation just as much as media and consumerist culture do. How ludicrous to see politicians going in and out of Ovadia Yosef's door. No doubt the latter memorises part of the Talmud by heart and can take you from one story to another, extracting rudimentary morality from each, but he is not a scientist or a politician. Neither is he a part of the power game, the meticulous calculations of party rivalries.
The typical politician would speak of the rabbi respectfully on camera, disparagingly afterward. He would turn the rabbi into a source of infinite wisdom, of insight worthy of media fecundity. Eventually, the character turns into a pivotal persona, into a symbol for Eastern Jewry, ultimately into a farce. The rabbi's assistants and spokespeople divide up, each supporting a different party, each with rival opinions, with positions based on concrete interests, with views linked to material connections. Veneration turns into caricature, the media reinforcing both -- those who live by the media die by the media.
The media portrayal of the image of the rabbi, the man who moves the faithful with a word or a gesture, went too far in the case of Rabbi Kadouri, a man who everyone knows is not in touch with reality, not on account of his sublime spirituality, but rather because of old age, if not senility. Rabbi Kadouri was never known to be of great religious knowledge; he is a creation of the media and eager politicians. Netanyahu used to wait for Kadouri's blessings impatiently, blessings that the rabbi would stumble through, without knowing who exactly he was blessing, or what exactly the Likud was. These were things new to him, his latest clear memory being that of the Mapai in the 1950s.
These were all characters groomed and mocked by the Israeli media at once, elevated on purpose, then shelved unceremoniously. In general, the clerics never spoke in the name of people on political matters; only governments, parties and parliamentarians did.
In Arab countries, a distinct, far less humorous, phenomenon has surfaced. After the fall of a despotic regime, clerics appear and start speaking on behalf of the people. Gradually, they become public figures, not simple sect leaders known to their own followers. It is curious how politicians are portrayed as private persons who speak for themselves or in the name of a political party (of narrow party interests, many would say). When politicians are categorised as private and clerics as public, one has to start worrying. The weight of political parties diminishes when the number of parties increases to match the number of people wishing to play a political role.
Historic political ideologies have received a fatal blow. They have been pulverised through brutal repression, through claims that the regime is the only rightful owner of a certain ideology. Civil society organisations, vitalised by the domestic bourgeoisie, have reproduced themselves in a manner relatively independent of state control. The state was thus left with nothing but clan loyalties to mediate between the government and the individual. This Ottoman-style hierarchy offered some protection to the individual, while mirroring the authoritarian hierarchy of the state. The authoritarian state, meanwhile, maintained the clerical class, to use it on occasion, as if it were disposable scaffolding bearing the mark of domestic identity groups.
People still gathered in holy sites, seeking refuge from crisis, even while aware that no sanctity could protect them from the blows of dictatorship. Yet, they kept holding on to their collective identity, if not for protection, then for solace, for the communal consolation of other victims. Repression reinforced the sentiments of the sect, reviving the past legacy of heroes and tales, and contemporary clerics made sense of it all.
When sects abound in a country lacking plural democracy, men of religion become communal spokesman, supplanting political plurality. Only, they speak for no political party. They are viewed as religious savants, human points of divine reference. Theirs become the final word for a factional identity that has nothing to do with the profound understanding of religious law. Some are charismatic, some less so. Some are wise, some less so. This has nothing to do with the stature they acquire. The stature is born of circumstance, stimulated by the collapse of civil society groups. This happens because parties are seen as instruments of political ambition -- as tools incapable of satiating people's search for meaning in a bewildering world. People search for identity in the ambiguity of a new situation, for certainty in an uncertain, evolving scene, and are ready, meanwhile, to turn theological credentials into political status.
The more ambiguously elusive the character is, the more room for manoeuvre he offers followers, the more interpretive liberty he gives to supporters and experts. The latter draw the lines of the character, impart him with the esteem they seek to exact. The silence of the character turns into profound wisdom. And since there is more silence than words, the words must be unfathomably pertinent, fraught with meaning, with innate insight that calls for analysts to analyse, for commentators to comment. The more conflicting the interpretations the better, for the character in question would thus be helpful in more than one way. Any common utterance would sound more perceptive than a political article, more enlightening than an analytical study.
Some clerics may be truly disinterested in material matters. Most, however, are not above seeking media and political attention. When things are transitory and change is in the air, when people gather in houses of worship, a sense of clerical power develops. Clerics speak for divinity in the course of prayers, and afterwards, when the media approaches, speak for the people.
When violence turns into criminal insanity, when ardent sectarians start taking lives, the role of clerics becomes crucial, for the latter can denounce sedition, rather than fanning its flames, and this gives them a sense of power. One has to commend the wisdom and moderation clerics often exhibit. But this is still a far cry from a democratic system, one involving a social contract among individuals, one that can curb sedition not through recourse to clerical tolerance but through democratic institutions and the rule of the law. Democratic federalism is not best established among religious institutions, not even ones sponsoring secular institutions with communal identities.
Are the clerics speaking temporarily on behalf of their communities? Is their role confined to a transitional stage in which the state has fallen apart, having destroyed all institutions that were supposed to speak for the people and opine on public matters? Or is this the beginning of something new, of a clerical age in which political institutions and parties may emerge, but would always need the blessing of the religiously accredited? The answer is not yet clear, but the questions are pertinent.
