Night Draws Near Chapter 13

Night Draws Near

Chapter 13 of Anthony Shadid's chronicle of the American military's recent experience in Baghdad Night Draws Near is intriguingly entitled "A Bad Muslim." Americans often state explicitly or imply that goodness and Islam cannot coexist, or the only 'good' Muslims are those Muslims who serve the interests of a secular, pro-American state first, with the Islamic faith a distant second in terms of their ideological priorities. Shadid's title asserts that this is certainly not true in the mindset of Iraqis, and that what constitutes good moral standards for many Iraqis Muslims are profoundly different from the pro-secular American mindset.

Iraqi standards of morality are often based upon a past sense of religious and national heritage that Americans cannot understand. Americans regard their own system of values as universal and neutral, while Iraqis regard Americans as encroachers into their territory and as no less partisan and imperialist in their ideology than any other foreign power. Shadid makes a compelling case at very least that the American mindset is indeed foreign to the minds of most Iraqis, and to Iraqi culture, or cultures, given the religious and ethnic pluralism endemic to the Middle East.

Shadid is intent in pointing out in this chapter that there is often a tremendous difference in the status given to religion and national origin in the mindset of Americans vs. The Iraqi mindset. Americans come from a young nation, and saw themselves as liberators in Iraq, as liberators of an oppressed people from a tyrant's rule. "The Americans in Baghdad frame the tumult in Iraq from the perspective of their own heritage and expressed them in the familiar vocabulary of democratic ideals" (279). Familiar, that is, to Americans. In the American mindset, democracy is inevitable, as is progress from the past, national, and religious ideals of Islam into an embrace of truth, justice, and the American way. Secularism and pluralism are good; parochialism and fundamentalism are 'bad.' Ideas such as those expressed by one Iraqi: "Under Islam, you should not shake hands with Americans, you should not eat with Americas, and you should not help Americans" are incomprehensible, like part of another, past feudal era (284). Was not, Americans might point out, their army quite influential in making Iraq freer by liberating it from a tyrant -- why should America be viewed with hostility when they made Iraq 'free'?

Iraq, however, according to Shadid, is a nation where grievances cannot be swept away merely by toppling a regime, rather it is a land where these grievances accumulate, and have accumulated, year after year. Although the American army may have been initially embraced by some Iraqis with open arms, even those Iraqis with grievances against Saddam Hussein did not wish to pay homage to an America army they regarded as secular and foreign. Most Iraqis, moreover, no matter what their feelings about Hussein, or their religious status, perceived the occupation as illegitimate, and a threat to their identity and way of life, as Iraqis, and as Muslims.

While the Iraqi opposition lacked in formal military power, it possessed the strength of grass roots "religion, centuries of culture, and oral tradition" and finally, guerrilla military tactics (280). The opposition was sometimes nationalist, sometimes pro-Islamic, and always anti-American, whether its rhetoric was framed in secular or religious terms. Even the Iraqis who enlisted enthusiastically in the American military, part of the policy of shifting responsibility from the American forces to Iraqis, made grim jokes about how their families had already earmarked plots for their corpses. Already, they expected opposition from their fellow Iraqis. In other words, the chaos that transpired that surprised the American military was no surprise to ordinary Iraqis. The volunteers are described as a "scared, disheartened, and confused lot" who were more interested in the money offered by the Americans to feed their starving families, than in the ideals of democracy (283).

We don't love the Americans, but we need their money" says one man, with explicit cynicism (283). "We have to work, it's my job," one soldiers say to a religious man who challenges their decision and identifies America with past occupiers of the Middle East (283) in a land where money, food, and jobs are scarce, the only reason to serve America is the temptation of money, not ideology. One of the more surprising statistics cited by Shadid is that in post-war Iraq, jobs with Americans are actually the most plentiful source of labor, and pay the best, from $130 up to $175 a month (284).

This statistic starkly underlines how the hope of America pulling out of Iraq without causing economic as well as military chaos seems bleak. The volunteers soldiers still hold fast to the sunrise to sunset fast of Ramadan, and feel grateful that they are able to help their families during the nightly feast in a month that is so sacred -- but not because they feel the ideals of America are important to their nation's collective future. Of course, for some Iraqis, no matter what the salary, joining the occupying forces was morally wrong, and simply not worth the money, however high, that Americans might pay. The enlisted Iraqi soldiers worry about retaliation, stating grimly that opponents will "not forget" their faces (285).

This is a nation, Shadid stresses, that never forgets anything -- not a betrayal, not a religious conflict, nothing. He quotes religious, militant Islamicists, who speak of cleansing their nation of all foreign forces and find, in an atmosphere of poverty and degradation, at least some pride that their children may have died fighting for Islamic ideals, and have not fallen in with America. They use tactics that Americans would call terrorism, but what to many Iraqis is noble resistant to foreign, Western forces (290) "In a confusing aftermath...nothing was confusing" to men who believed in fundamentalist tenants of faith (291). In one bombing described by Shadid, "once again, the gulf between occupier and occupied" was filed with "unavoidable slights," even after the man had died, like leaving the man his back his family was allowed to identify him (296).

The Americans scoff that the instigator was motivated by money, although the man's family insist that it was faith. Ironically, when Iraqis volunteer for the Americans to serve in the national army, the Americans view this as idealism, while the volunteers defend their decisions to their neighbors on economic grounds. But when a man reacts violently against the Americans; the Americans think that money must have something to do with it, while many Iraqis call the man a martyr to Islam.

However illogical some fundamentalist actions and reactions may be, however "elastic" their interpretation of the Koran to justify violence or hatred of America and Israel, it still shows how once again, Shadid suggest, America has blundered in the Middle East (303). America shows its own illogical reasoning in explaining the mindset of the people it is freeing, or occupying -- the verb used to describe the invasion depends on what side is speaking.