By Menachem Wecker
Many of today’s political conflicts, however contemporary they may seem, can be traced back to the Middle Ages. So argues Anouar Majid in his book We Are All Moors: Ending Centuries of Crusades Against Muslims and Other Minorities.
Dr. Majid, director of the University of New England’s Center for Global Humanities, discussed his book at an event at GW on Dec. 3 jointly sponsored by the University’s Institute for Middle East Studies and the Moroccan Embassy.
In his introduction, Marc Lynch, director of the institute, called Dr. Majid “one of the more controversial and more interesting” authors.
“I am particularly excited to have him here,” Dr. Lynch said, “because we don’t do enough justice to North Africa, to Morocco and to that part of the Arab world in our focus on Iraq, Iran and the problems of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I think it is extremely important that we get this perspective.”
Jorge Dezcallar de Mazarredo, the Spanish ambassador, and Aziz Mekouar, the Moroccan ambassador, attended the event. Amb. Mekouar told the audience that his wife, after reading Dr. Majid’s book, said that 10 books could have been written based on each page.
Dr. Majid said one of the reasons the discussion is so timely is that 2009 marks the 400- year anniversary of Phillip III’s expulsion of the “moriscos” – Spanish for “Moor-like” – from Spain. In Dr. Majid’s estimation, the Moors became sacrificial elements in the establishment of the modern nation state, which defines itself in opposition to minorities.
In an e-mail, Dr. Majid discussed the significance of his book’s title. “We are all minorities and strangers, and we become part of some mainstream – national, religious, ethnic, racial, etc.,” he said, “only by excluding others, for some imagined reason.
“It could also mean that we are all impure, made up of various cultural and genetic strains,” Dr. Majid added. “While it may have been easier to imagine systems of homogeneity in pre-modern times, to think that we are now insulated from contact in the age of globalization is pure madness. And potentially murderous, too.”
According to Dr. Majid, immigration issues today show that the sort of destructive nationalism that the Moors faced is still prevalent. There is a need, he argued, to prevent the nationalism that makes it possible to persecute others, particularly in an age of globalization.
Over e-mail, Dr. Majid offered a specific message to the University. “It would be nice if the GW community remembered that a lot of the modern world was born out of the medieval clash of Christianity and Islam,” he said. “This clash, in many ways, gave birth to Europe and eventually left its imprint on much of world history, particularly in the post-1492 period.”
By allowing Catholic Spain to consider the Moors a nation unified by faith, language and race, the Moors allowed themselves to become a prototype for modern minorities, he added. “Minorities allow nations to define themselves, but such nations do their utmost best to get rid of these undesirable elements. This is the nagging paradox in all national formations.”
Graham Hough-Cornwell, a master’s candidate in Middle East studies at GW, echoed Dr. Lynch’s enthusiasm to hear about a region that rarely makes headlines in the West.
“It was really interesting to hear this issue of Muslim-European relations tackled in such a historical way, and especially through the lens of North Africa’s close connections with Spain stretching back a thousand years,” he said. “These issues often get glossed over, so it was great to have them examined as the product of real historical interactions between Muslims and Christians in Western Europe.”